Running with the jackals of hate [Excerpts]
By Jonathan Tobin
Sometimes, the most daring thing a scholar or an organization can do is to mention the obvious. That is a lesson that Indiana University's Professor Alvin H. Rosenfeld and the American Jewish Committee have recently learned to their sorrow.
Rosenfeld is the author of a 30-page study titled " 'Progressive' Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism," which was published in December by AJCommittee. In it Rosenfeld, briefly surveys the international rise of anti-Semitism and then goes on to touch on the various excesses of intellectual anti-Zionists with an emphasis on those leftist Jews who are important elements in the massive contemporary assault on Israel [1].
Rosenfeld's conclusion is that those Jewish writers and thinkers who have aided the assault on Israel [1]'s legitimacy and its right to exist cannot pretend that their stand is unrelated to the wave of violent Jew-hatred, which is itself largely focused on the delegitimization of Israel [1] and Jewish self-defense. He rightly asserts that anti-Zionist Jewish authors such as British historian Jacqueline Rose, New York University's Tony Judt and Pulitzer-Prize winning playwright Tony Kushner have been carrying the intellectual water for a weird coalition of the far-left, the far-right, and the Arab and Islamic propagandists.
Rosenfeld is careful to specify that questioning policies of Israeli governments is not the same as being anti-Israel [1], let alone anti-Semitic. But he has the bad manners to point out that those who aggressively question Israel [1]'s right to have any government or to defend itself against those who seek to destroy it are, at best, unwitting allies of a growing anti-Jewish movement.
It is not innuendo to note, as Rosenfeld does, that calling Israel [1] a "Nazi state" and urging its dismantling is not unrelated to the attacks on Jews in Europe or to the verbal violence against Israel [1] that is becoming bolder here. That anti-Zionism has established a beachhead among leftist intellectuals and academics in this country cannot be denied.
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0207/tobin021907.php3 [2]
Links:
[1] https://www.thebereancall.org/taxonomy/term/51/israel
[2] http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0207/tobin021907.php3