speakingcorpse writes:

Dear Anti-Semite,

In your article in the Washington Post today ("The Left's Anti-Semitic Chic"), the following paragraph appears:

The term anti-Semitism is used to denote people who dislike Jews. These people include those who say: We do not dislike Jews, we only dislike Zionists -- although to live in Israel is to endorse the Zionist enterprise, and all Jews are implicated, as sympathizers, in the crime that is Israel.

As I understand it, the part of the last sentence that appears after the dash is your analysis of the implicit anti-Semitic logic of those of us who are "anti-Israel." Those who criticize "the crime that is Israel" are, you say, also critical of Jews per se, because only Jews (no Palestinians) live in Israel and all Jews worldwide are "sympathetic" to Israel. If you change the last phrase of the last sentence from "the crime that is Israel" to "the crimes of Israel," you have--as you must know--a clear condemnation of all critics of Israel as anti-Semites: all critics of Israel's crimes are critical also of the Jews who are, by definition, "sympathetic" to Israel (and, presumably, to those who perpetrate crimes in its name). No doubt you mean to make this smear: critics of Israel's crimes are, you seem to be sure, really just critics of "the crime that is Israel."

I am concerned less with your assertion that all critics of Israel are really people who are opposed to its existence, than I am concerned with your inverse assertion--that all Jews are "sympathetic" to Israel, and don't believe it to be a crime (or to be guilty of any crimes). It seems to me that you are guilty here of attributing a political position to all members of an ethnic group (Jews). All Jews are "sympathetic" to Israel, you say. You imply, moreover, that to be "sympathetic" to Israel is to be opposed to the critics of Israel's crimes, who are really only critics of the "crime that is Israel." Thus, you are clearly saying that no Jew is a critic of Israel (for to be a critic of Israel is to be an anti-Semitic critic of the crime that is Israel, and no Jew, except a self-hating one who has disavowed his own identity, could be a critic of Israel or its founding crimes).

So: all Jews are supporters of Israel like yourself. You are just joining the natural cause of, and stating the natural position of, the Jews.

Put aside for a moment the fact that there WERE crimes involved in Israel's founding (a fact that does not make Israel itself a "crime," but a fact nonetheless--a difficult fact that has been denied by SOME Jews for too long (though for partially understandable reasons)). Put all of that aside.

Simply note that you, Anti-Semite, have made the absolute claim that ALL Jews naturally take your position, a radical position that insists that most or all criticism of Israeli crimes is really criticism of the "crime that is Israel." I take this to be a slur against the ethnic group to which I belong--the Jews. I know many Jews, and Israeli Jews (not the same), who are critical of Israel's crimes, even of the crimes that are inseparable from Israel's founding, who nonetheless do not believe that Israel is itself a "crime." In fact, MOST Jews worldwide, and many in America, are reluctant to associate themselves with many aspects of Israeli policy. You would deny the existence of such Jews--of a diversity of positions within the tenacious and admirable ethnic group that has piqued your concern and "sympathy"--and would instead insist that all Jews are blind, unquestioning supporters of policies undertaken by demagogues in the name of a flattened, caricatured ethnic identity. You, Anti-Semite, are casting aspersions against Jews.

The fact that many (though certainly not all) Jews make arguments similar to yours does not make them any less anti-Semitic. The complicity of oppressed groups of all kinds with their oppressors has a long and sad history. But that does mean that you are not also an oppressor. (Just as the complicity of Yasser Arafat, and certain unscrupulous organizers of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, in the suffering of the Palestinians does not absolve Israelis of responsibility for this suffering.) You, Anti-Semite would aggrandize your own patronizing sense of goodness by taking it upon yourself to "help" the Jews, all of whom you define only by their historical victimhood and all of whom are susceptible, you assume, to the crudest sort of group-based appeals. You would reduce all of us to JEWS--Jews who look out for each other, who need our own special state, who are always delighted to find another Christian benefactor, and who are unable to conceive that our dignity might depend upon the dignity of other ethnic groups.

Well, I refuse your "help."

In fact, your "help" is a crude insult. I shouldn't be responding to you with a reasoned argument designed to persuade you to stop insulting me. I should respond to it by telling you to fuck off or, better, to eat shit. Anti-Semite, you deserve to rot in hell, under a huge pile of flaming, excrement-based tar.

You should suicide bomb yourself.

Sincerely,
speakingcorpse