The Official Goal of BDS is Ending Israel, Not Just the ’67 Occupation. By M.J. Rosenberg.

The Official Goal of BDS is Ending Israel, Not Just the ’67 Occupation. By M.J. Rosenberg. The Huffington Post, March 26, 2014. Also at Tikkun.

Ultra-Orthodox Settlers Moving Into Heart of Palestinian East Jerusalem. By M.J. Rosenberg. The Huffington Post, March 20, 2014.

Mondoweiss and Is Anti-Semitism Dead? By M.J. Rosenberg. Tikkun, March 16, 2014.

Why I Don’t Support the BDS Movement. By M.J. Rosenberg. Tikkun, February 21, 2014. Also at The Huffington Post.

M.J. Rosenberg’s Critique of BDS Movement. Partners for Progressive Israel, March 19, 2014.

I Need to Stop Reading Ali Abunimah’s Twitter Feed. By M.J. Rosenberg. The Garbanzo Annex, October 2013.

Rosenberg:

I stopped reading racist, homophobic, and anti-Muslim twitter feeds a long time ago and my life is so much better for it.

 

But, for some reason, I still read @aliabunimah although, to me, it is clear that he cannot stand Jews.

 

He gets worse and worse. Right now, his feed is one hateful tweet after another. Yeah, yeah, I know he is careful to scream about Israelis or Zionists and not Jews, but he doesn’t fool me. Or any Jew who doesn’t want to be fooled.

 

But there is one good thing about Ali Abunimah. There is a tendency among Jews on the left, including myself, to argue so vehemently that being anti-Israel does not make one an anti-Semite that we don’t notice when being anti-Israel coexists with anti-Semitism, that one just feeds the other. We should.

 

Bottom line: I believe that Ali Abunimah would be ecstatic if Israel was destroyed, blown off the face of the earth, along with every one of its people because, after all, the Jews in Palestine are, by definition, Zionists, even the kids. Settlers, colonialists, baby killers, torturers, invaders and all the other labels he uses that exempt no Jew in any part of Israel or Palestine.

 

So, thanks, Ali. As long as there are people around like you, I will never lull myself into believing that anti-Semitism is a thing of the past.  It isn’t.


MJ Rosenberg Rips Ali Abunimah for Antisemitism. By Brian Thomas (Brian of London). Israelly Cool, October 13, 2013.

BDS movement distilled – when Israeli soldiers not raping Arab women is racist. By William A. Jacobson. Legal Insurrection, October 19, 2014. Includes MJ Rosenberg post attacking Ali Abunimah.

MJ Rosenberg owes Ali Abunimah an apology for false accusations of anti-Semitism. By David Samel. Mondoweiss, October 22, 2013.


Rosenberg [Mondoweiss]:

Lately I have been struck by the raw anti-semitism evinced on anti-Israel websites (most egregious example, Mondoweiss). http://mondoweiss.net/

 

There is nothing novel about it. It’s not “the new anti-semitism” that the Anti-Defamation League likes to talk about. But the old kind, masquerading as anti-Zionism but manifesting itself as support or, at least, sympathy for every group or individual hostile to Jews: from Pat Buchanan to Hizbullah.

 

The only difference between this anti-semitism and the old-fashioned kind is that it has no impact. If you don’t visit Mondoweiss or other websites like it, you won’t know it exists. It threatens no one. It is just ugly. But ugly and irrelevant.

 

Still we would all be better off without it.

 

And that is why Jewish organizations should stop feeding it. The efforts by Jewish organizations to shut down free debate on Israel by banning anti-Israel speakers, closing down organization that support the BDS movement, or getting state legislatures to penalize universities that support it, does nothing except fuel anti-semitism.

 

Yes, I understand that anti-semitism usually exists apart from anything Jews do. (I don’t think the people posting at Mondoweiss would dislike Jews any less if Israel returned to the pre-’67 borders tomorrow or disestablished itself as a state.) But I believe that some hostility to Jews is caused by banning free discussion of issues relating to Israel. The act of stifling, of smothering, free inquiry can and often does ignite resentment and often hate. The BDS movement, and its supporters, has as much right to propagate its views on campus as Hillel or the Young Republicans. What does it signify when the only issue on campus where the censors are out on force is Israel? When did AIPAC, AJC and the ADL get an “Israel exemption” added to the First Amendment?

 

The Jewish community needs to end its politics of suppression. We should be the last people burning books and ideas.

 

As for the anti-semites, they will always exist no matter what Israel or Jews do. Right now there don’t appear to be very many of them (in this country, at least). We should do all we can to keep their numbers small and their impact nil.

 

If I avoid reading Mondoweiss, I’d hardly know they exist at all. But still, why give these people fuel?