World War 4 Report today unveils a preview of our new website, New Jewish Resistance: Fighting Zionism and Anti-Semitism, Defending Pan-Semitic Unity. New Jewish Resistance aspires to be a movement, not just a website—uniting all Jews who believe in fighting Jew-hatred in the diaspora, not rallying around an illegitimate settler state. We will have the .org online soon (at the moment only the .com is up), but think of it as an organization in embryo. We will have more bloggers writing for us in the coming days. And we will post the following mission statement:
WHAT WE STAND FOR
Jews are a multiplicity of ethnicities (Ashkenazi, Mizrahi, Sephardi, etc.) with common bonds of identity and shared histories of persecution. Whether or not you believe that these ethnicities together constitute a nation, Zionism is deeply inimical to Jewish interests and survival.Israel is an extension of US imperialism, doing its dirty work of intimidating regional enemies with periodic military aggression and a rogue nuclear arsenal. The US has no special interest in oppressing the Palestinians, but they are powerless enough to be expendable in the Great Power game.
Israel is replicating the historic function of anti-Semitism: providing useful scapegoats for when the system goes into crisis. Now that the system is starting to do so, anti-Semitism enters mainstream discourse, with bizarre theories proliferating that the Jewish client state actually controls the imperial center, Washington. (Similar theories, not surprisingly, also proliferate about the oil-rich Arabs.) Even so-called “progressives” increasingly embrace these fascistic ideas.
The way to fight back is by advancing a legitimate anti-Zionism that defends pan-Semitic dignity. Jews, long oppressed by European power as a Semitic people, have become the goy empire’s proxy police force against fellow Semites. Other Jews—the rest of us—have every interest in repudiating this, and building solidarity with the Palestinians and other civil resistance forces in the Arab world.
Zionists have thrown in their lot with The Man no less than the Jewish tax-collectors of 19th-century Russia and Poland. It was the peasant Jews who paid in the pogroms when the backlash came. It is time for Jews to wise up.
We call for pan-Semitic unity between Jews and Arabs against both Zionism and the related pathologies of Jew-hatred and anti-Arab racism.
Please support our efforts.
New initiative
This is a great initiative. Even though I am not Jewish, I have always had a fond regard for the ordinary Jew around the corner, in my street and in my city. I have many friends in the Jewish community and I think if a movement like this can be extended worldwide, most non-Jews will feel more comfortable with Jews. Whether right or wrong, most people see the unfortunate happenings in the middle east as the fault of all Jews.
I wish you success.
Comment on the NJR mission statement
I am a goy, and very much in sympathy with the views expressed in this mission statement. Not in every detail and every emphasis, but it is basically moderate, sensible, and compassionate. Jews are terribly ill-served by Zionism and Israel, as are Americans by the polices and actions of their government in the Middle East. A deluded right-wing power elite runs the show in both cases, with reckless disregard for the destruction they inflict. I cannot say I fully understand their motives, since what they say and what they do is so removed from any recognition of the real world they operate in, or what they pretend to be—unlike the frankly autocratic or theocratic Middle East states, they claim to be morally accountable democracies. But I know it is beyond foolish, and I think it is wrong. I hope NJR will get some traction in this arena. All opposition seems futile, but—you never know!
In fairness you can say that both the US (and the Americas in general) and Israel are “illegitimate settler state(s)”, but they are not going away, so whatever solutions are found, they will be part of them. But an initiative like that of NJR should have a place in the broader pursuit of a more peaceful and prosperous place for all of us to live.
Illegitimate settler state
Harry, thank you for your comment. By “illegitimate,” we mean in its actions—its open defiance of the World Court and international law. As anarchists, we view all states as “illegitimate,” but some are less legitimate than others. The US has certainly lost plenty of legitimacy through its indefensible doctrine of “exceptionalism,” its flouting of the Geneva Conventions at Guantánamo, its illegal invasion of Iraq, its ongoing illegal drone strikes in Pakistan, its defiance of the World Court’s 1984 ruling on Nicaragua. et cetera. That said, the US is a settler state in its origins, and theft of indigenous lands within its national territory certainly continues and must be opposed—but Israel is a settler state in a far more aggressive sense in terms of its current actions. It is continuing a colonialist project of displacement, both sides of the Green Line. And the US at least ostensibly guarantees equal status under the law to all. Israel institutionally favors Jews in many ways, especially in access to land and housing.
We are not “rejectionists” in the sense that the term is commonly used in the Palestine debate. Both sides have got to acknowledge the legitimate territorial rights of the other.
Opposition is never futile. We encourage you to post this comment at NJR; that is where this debate really needs to take place.
Arab antisemitism
This week was the 70th anniversary of the Farhud massacre of 180 Jews of Baghdad. Haven’t heard of it? You should do some research if you haven’t. What was remarkable about the Farhud? It took place seven years before Israel was born.
Now you can blame the British, as some do. You can say that some Arabs saved Jews, and some did.
But one fact is undeniable:this was a massacre of Jews by their ‘Semitic’ brothers.
Why do I mention this? Because your underlying assumption that Jews and Arabs coexisted peacefully before the creation of Israel is a lie.
If you really want to understand Middle east politics I suggest you study the true relationship between Arabs and Jews over the centuries, an unequal relationship between master and vassal, and not the rose-coloured nirvana you think it is.
Jewish anti-arabism
Yes, I know about the Farhud massacre. What is your point? Jews got along fine in Mesopotamia for some 3,000 years before that. The pogrom happened in a context—which had to do with the rise of Zionist designs on Arab land in Palestine, and Nazi ideological exploitation of the Iraqi anti-colonial struggle against the British. There were plenty of massacres of Arabs by their Semitic brothers too, like Deir Yassin. “Arab anti-semitism” is nearly an oxymoron. Arabs are Semites, and Jew-hatred and anti-Arab racism are genetically linked phenomenon, as we have repeatedly argued. You may feel free to comment on our new website.
“Jews got along fine in
“Jews got along fine in Mesopotamia for some 3,000 years before that”
Another lie.
http://jewishrefugees.blogspot.com/2011/01/massacre-of-jews-by-muslims-before-1948.html
We Jews indigenous to the Middle East – now half the Jewish population of Israel – know what it was like to live with our ‘Semitic brothers’ the Arabs for 14 centuries – that’s why we will never support your anti-Zionism. Zionism liberated us from being the ‘slaves’ or ‘dogs’ of our Arab masters.
We are the real victims of Arab imperialism. And we are not the only victims: look at the other indigenous minorities of the region – Copts, Assyrians, Berbers, Kurds – all oppressed, all being hounded out.
Instead of acting as stooges for Arab imperialism you should be supporting us indigenous peoples in our fight against Arab colonialism and imperialism.
We support Copts, Kurds, Berbers —and Palestinians
The very map that you link to of “Massacres of Jews by Muslims before 1948” lists exactly two such massacres in Mesopotamia/Iraq—in 1941 and 1828. Given that Jews have been in Mesopotamia since 597 BCE, that’s a startlingly good record. The flight of Jews from the Arab and Islamic nations in 1948 impoverished these countries and helped lay the groundwork for the narrow religious intolerance which reigns in most of them today—and which Zionism ironically reflects. There are some indigenous Middle Eastern Jews who join us in condemning Israel’s crimes. If you have been reading this web-journal, you will know that we avidly support the struggles of the Copts, Assyrians, Berbers, Kurds, and all indigenous peoples fighting for their rights and dignity. It is for exactly the same reason that we support the Palestinians. I don’t see how you can oppose “Arab imperialism” and support Zionism. They are both predicated on notions of ethnic supremacy.
Double standards
Bill, you support self-determination for all Middle East peoples, except the Jews. Why the double standard? Why is Palestinian ethnic supremacy legitimate, but a sovereign state for Jews not?
I suppose we should be grateful that there were only two massacres in Mesopotamia – but there were plenty of other massacres taking place in the neighbouring provinces of the Ottoman empire. It’s a bit like saying Red Indians were well treated in the USA because those in Massachussets were not massacred although those in Nevada were. And my map is not exhaustive – it does not show the depradations of successive invaders such as the Mongols, who destroyed the city of Baghdad.
What is your answer to the master-slave relationship between Muslim and Jew through the ages? Are
you denying that it existed? Are you advocating that Jews should revert back to their subservience under Muslim rule where they were never treated as equals. They had to pay heavy taxes to the Muslim rulers for their protection – just like the Mafia.
Few of that tiny group of far=left Young Mizrahim you quote never lived in Arab countries, downplay the antisemitsm that forced their parents and grandparents out and are totally unrepresentative of the great mass of Israeli Mizrahim.
No, precisely the lack thereof
“Self-determination” does not mean the right to expropriate another people’s land. Note your own double standard: the Palestinians seek “ethnic supremacy”, but the Jews merely want a “sovereign state.” Israel is in fact predicated on ethnic supremacy, with Jews officially privileged in numerous ways. I oppose the de facto privileged status of English-speaking whites in my own country (the USA), so how can I not oppose the de jure privileged status of Jews in Israel?
I pointed out that there were only two massacres listed on your map in Iraq/Mesopotamia because you had portrayed 2,500 years of continuous persecution, which was not the case. We both know that Jews prospered and flourished in Mesopotamia for centuries under the Parthians, Sassanids, Safavids and Ottomans. The fact that the two massacres occurred in the past two centuries indicates that Jew-hatred is linked to the rise of nationalism.
Jews faced periodic episodes of persecution in other Arab countries even before the rise of nationalism (especially Morocco under the Almoravids and Almohades), but generally, Jews did much better in the Arab world than in Europe before Emancipation, as we both know. There were even periods in which Jews held a privileged status as warriors and advisors under Arab rulers, particularly the Habban dynasty of contemporary Yemen. So yes, my “answer to the master-slave relationship between Muslim and Jew through the ages” is that it didn’t exist. Precisely. The Mongols are irrelevant, since they destroyed everything indiscriminately, not singling out Jews (and weren’t Muslims).
Indians certainly were massacred in Massachusetts. You should brush up on your history.
It is at least slightly problematic to speak of Arab anti-Semitism when the Arabs are also Semites.
Jews have no rights
“Self-determination” does not mean the right to expropriate another people’s land.”
How strange, that’s exactly what the Arab Muslims have done to the Jews. Jews were three percent of the population of Iraq in the last century – now there are seven Jews in total. The World Orgnaisation of Jews from Arab Countries estimates that Arab countries seized deeded Jewish land of 100,000 sq. km – that’s FOUR times the size of Israel itself.
The master-slave relationship certainly did exist. Jews did not have rights under Islam – they could not testify against a Muslim in court and there are umpteen other examples of discrimination under Sharia law (previous to the nationalist period). In Yemen there was a subcaste of untouchable Jews whose job was to clean the latrines. But what the hell, how can Semites oppress other Semites? A vacuous argument if ever there was one.
Double standard on Semitic suffering
There are so many things wrong with your assertions that I hardly know where to begin. I don’t know where you got the idea that there are only seven Jews left in Iraq; I’d like to see some documentation for that claim. (There were at least 30 as recently as 2003, and if 23 have fled since then, thank George Bush for unleashing the cataclysm.) The exodus of Jews from Arab countries since 1948 has had at least as much to do with Israeli efforts to promote emigration as with their being pushed out by their Arab neighbors. It certainly is not analogous to what the Zionists did to the Palestinians in ’48. But more to the point: If it was wrong for the Arabs to expropriate the Jews in this way, why do you feel it was OK for the Zionists to expropriate the Palestinians? Again, please examine your own double standards.
The “master-slave relationship” is a gross overstatement at best. There was also a caste of honored Jewish warriors and advisors to the sultan’s court in Yemen. And being denied equal rights does not make you a “slave.”
Semites certainly can and do oppress other Semites, the most obvious example today being Jewish oppression of the Palestinians. But that doesn’t mean either that it is inevitable or that we have to accept it.
Moreover..
Note your own double standard: the Palestinians seek “ethnic supremacy”, but the Jews merely want a “sovereign state.”
I deliberately make the distinction between Abbas does not want a single Jew living in his Palestinian state – ergo it is an ethnic supremacist state, while Israel is a sovereign Jewish state but with a million non-Jews living there, all with full rights.
Neither of those statements are true
The putative Abbas quote is “I will never allow a single Israeli to live among us on Palestinian land.” Note that he (supposedly) said “Israeli,” not “Jew.” But I doubt the authenticity of this quote altogether. A Google search for it brings up almost exclusively right-wing Israeli sources. Even the Wikipedia page on Abbas cites as the source for this quote the rabidly pro-settler Arutz Sheva. The same article cites “the official Egyptian Maan News Agency” as the source for the quote. But Maan News Agency is Palestinian, not Egyptian, and independent, not official. So much for accuracy. And I cannot find the supposed original quote on Maan, after much searching. When someone shows me a legitimate source for this quote, I will accept its veracity.
Furthermore, even if Abbas said it, the context is the ongoing 40-year effort to settle and expropriate Palestinian lands in the West Bank. If Israel wants the Palestinians to be more tolerant of Jews, it should consider getting its boot off their necks.
Arabs by no means have equal rights in Israel. The body that controls public lands in Israel and distributes them for settlement and development is called the Jewish National Fund, and it is constitutionally required to favor Jews. Arabs are even today having their lands expropriated for explicitly “Jewish” towns within the Green Line.
An inherently “Jewish state” cannot be anything other than ethno-supremacist. I oppose moves to make my own country, the USA, an officially Anglo or Christian state, and for the same reason I oppose the notion of a “Jewish state.” It is time for Israel to join the 20th century, now that we are in the 21st.
Half the Israeli population are refugees from Arab antisemitsm
You seem to know better than my own family – and 50 percent of Jews living in Israel today who are descended from Jews from the Middle East and North Africa – why we left Arab countries. We left because of ARAB MUSLIM ANTISEMITISM. Suggest you find out a bit more about it. Start here:
htt://www.jewishrefugees.blogspot.com
http:// http://www.jimena.org
Living in the comfort of US you have NO IDEA of the persecution we went through – the Jews executed on trumped-up charges, Jews arrested for no reason, Jews tortured in prison, Jews stripped of their citizenship and property – and we were not Zionists. But we are now! Thank goodness for Israel: you might not need a Jewish state but we certainly did, and you have no right to lecture us on why we don’t need one. We are not going back to being a vulnerable minority under Arab Muslim rule.
Please do some reading before you criticize
Bataween, I utterly reject your assumption of my ignorance. This website has aggressively covered persecution of Jews in Yemen, in Tunisia, in Egypt, and in Iraq, as well as the question of Jewish refugees from Arab lands living in Israel. Click on the links and read for yourself. You have absolutely no grounds to accuse us of ignorance or insensitivity on this issue.
I am not asking any Mizrahi refugees in Israel to return to Yemen or Iraq. This question has absolutely no bearing on our opposition to Israeli crimes.
You have no solution for Arab crimes
By the way, that last link you gave me is is not about Jewish refugees from Arab countries, it’s about Iranian Jews (who are not Arab)’resisting’ pressures to emigrate to Israel. Let’s face it, so obsessed are you with ‘Israeli crimes’ you have no solution to ‘Arab and Iranian crimes’. Israel committed the ‘crime’ of allowing Jewish refugees unrestricited entry and full citizenship for any Jew who was seeking a safe haven there – that is the meaning of Zionism.
But from the comfort of your American armchair you would rather Jews always lived as a vulnerable minority under Muslim rule.
Once again, I ask you what is your SOLUTION for Jews fleeing ARAB and MUSLIM persecution. If you say let them go to the US, I would say that the US shut its gates pretty firmly to WW 2 Jewish immigration, and is pretty hard to get into now if you are a white English-speaker with a good job. We Jews need Israel – we don’t ever want to be at the mercy of others again.
I never said I had any “solutions”
I fixed the link.
I never said I had any “solutions” to anything. I don’t have to have “solutions” to have the right to protest. This website is one of the few in the whole blogosphere to have covered the recent anti-Jewish pogroms in Yemen, one of the few in the left-wing blogosphere to treat anti-Semitism as a serious question. But we are not going to be silent about Israel’s crimes either. Why do you put Israel’s “crime” in quotes? Do you feel the ongoing occupation of the West Bank and theft of Arab lands both sides of the Green Line are not crimes? Operation Cast Lead and the 2006 Lebanon campaign were not crimes?
Why do you keep repeating that I want Jews to live under Muslim rule? Am I calling for Israel’s Mizrahi Jews to return to Yemen and Iraq? No, I am calling for Israel to end the occupation, and the officially privileged status of Jews within its borders. Just like I am calling for Saudi Arabia to end its official oppression of women, and Yemen to protect its Jewish minority. I make no apologies for that.
Make up of Israel’s population.
I have enormous empathy with the Jews who had to leave Arab countries. However, are you aware that the Zionists secretly planted bombs in Iraqi and other middle east Synagogues to scare Jews away and bring them to Israel?
Jews bomb themselves?
We are certainly aware of such claims. We have never seen any documentation of them.
Jews Bomb themselves?
Your question/statement is typical denial. You should read the book by Reb Moshe Schonfeld: “Holocaust Victims Accuse”. Furthermore, I did not say Jews Bombed Jews, I said Zionists did. I can give you a list of more than 20 books and probably 1000 articles where Jews (not the so-called self hating Jews) expose the criminality of Zionist leaders ever since Herzl. I can understand that you are in denial mode, that is only human. However, if you want to be honest and help build a safe future for Jews, you should make a concerted effort to get your knowledge up to date. Stay away from places like Simon Wiesenthal centre as you will find only the most perfect propaganda that the world has ever seen. One of the first things that exposes him as a liar, is a picture early in his book of memoirs where supposedly three Jews were shot at the stake. The picture is a perfect fake taken out of Life magazine circa 1942-3. I take my hat of to his artist because in those days “Photo Shop” was not even thought of. The original picture is of three German soldiers shot by the Americans.
You may also want to visit the website of the True Torah Jews Against Zionism.
Jews Bomb themselves?
Accusing me of “typical denial” is not the same as providing documentation. It is especially ironic since I didn’t “deny” anything—I admitted my ignorance. Are you capable of doing the same?
I have read Holocaust Victims Accuse. As I recall, it primarily accuses Zionist leaders of connivance with the Holocaust by rejecting proposals to pay Nazi officials to allow Jews to escape (with the aim of exploiting the genocide for propaganda purposes). Isn’t it funny—when Zionists did make efforts to pay Nazi officials to allow Jews to escape (in the Ha’avara Agreement) they were also accused of connivance with the Holocaust! In any case, that is what the book was primarily about—I certainly don’t recall that it provided documentation that Zionist provocateurs were behind the anti-Jewish violence in Arab lands in 1948, or even that it touched on this question. Furthermore, even if Zionist provocateurs were behind some attacks, does that mean there was no genuine Arab violence? This argument reminds me of that used by Zionists to blame the Arabs for their own cleansing from Palestine by pointing to supposed commands by Arab leaders that their people flee. Even if there were such cases, does it let the Zionists off the hook?
Get it?
The Zionists who carried out the putative provocateur attacks were presumably Jews. So you certainly are charging that Jews bombed Jews. So much for that red herring.
We ourselves have noted the problems with the Wiesenthal Center, but we’d like to see some documentation of the doctored photo claim.
Stop making bogus accusations of “denial” and argue honestly.
Finally—”True Torah Jews Against Zionism”? We hope these aren’t the same “True Torah Jews” (Neturei Karta and its ilk) who attended Ahmadinejad ‘s Holocaust denial confab. How about “secular leftists against Zionism”?
Jews Bomb Themselves?
Man!! You Zionists are experts at name-calling:-) Seriously , now…
Even if I sent you a hundred books and thousands of articles and other matter proving the fraud, you will still find an excuse. The official figure per the international Red cross is 370 000 and most of them died from typhus. The great pity is that ordinary, decent and well meaning, honest Jews have swallowed this nonsense as truth. Up to 1960 there was virtually nothing said about the “holocaust”.
Lastly: Answer this question: Why is there a law in Germany (demanded by Jews) that no research is allowed into the holocaust facts and figures? You may rephrase my question in any way you like, but the fact is that freedom of research and speech is totally banned.
Jews Bomb Themselves?
I am not a Zionist, I am anti-Zionist. I have not engaged in any name-calling in this thread.
You haven’t provided any citation of a book or article “proving the fraud,” much less “thousands.” I am calling your bluff. Give us one citation. We’ll be waiting.
I am not aware of any law in Germany barring “research” into the Holocaust. And we have already made clear that we oppose laws criminalizing Holocaust denial.
But you clearly already have your mind made up about everything, the facts be damned.
You know, I really love getting it from both sides. Thanks for the vindication, Derick and Bataween!