From: wmcguire@world.std.com (Wayne McGuire)
Subject: Antisemitism
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1992 01:36:13 GMT

To: Ron Evans

>Ah yes, the old anti-Semitism smear. Doesn't it embarrass you to
>use it?

 RE> A fair question.  Should one be embarrassed to point
 RE> out antisemitism altogether?  Not in my opinion.
 RE> I have unabashedly done this in the case of David
 RE> Irving, Robert Faurisson, and the bcpu-group on this
 RE> network.  It was easy to see through the standard defense,
 RE> I'm not antisemitic, I'm antizionist."

Well, good for you. You would be remiss if you didn't battle real
anti-Semitism wherever it exists. The problem is that too many
emotional pro-Israelists have sloppily thrown around
anti-Semitism smears to compensate for their inability to engage
in rational and fair debate about particular controversial
policies and ideologies within Judaism, Zionism, Israel and the
Jewish tradition in general. The term, in fact, has become so
unlinked from any real meaning, due to its frequent misuse, that
I don't think many people give a damn one way or another whether
they are target of the charge. Hell, it's practically a badge of
election these days. No one is doing any real thinking who
doesn't get on the wrong side of Israeli zealots and labelled as
the spawn of Adolph Hitler.

 RE> Now, as for the case at hand, a suggestion that Israel has a
 RE> policy to drive out citizens based on their non-Jewishness
 RE> alone strikes me as antisemitic innuendo. I am not at all
 RE> embarrassed to say so.

You know, I think it's really sad that so many Israeli apologists
like yourself are so unfamiliar with the range of excellent
information sources that are available to any intelligent person
who wants to acquaint him- or herself with what is going in
Israel. There is a deep strain of thought and feeling in
contemporary Israel, hardly confined to the fringes and spreading
deep into the highest levels of the establishment, that would
most assuredly like to drive Palestinians out of the occupied
territories, and even Arabs out of all of Israel. If you want to
label Ehud Sprinzak, Moshe Leshem and other respected Israeli
writers as "anti-Semites" for daring to reveal these facts, then
by my guest. It just adds to the general hilarity that surrounds
most behavior on the Israeli political right these days.

  RE> Damn, I was caught in the act of trying to divert world
  RE> attention from the double standards in judging Israel and
  RE> judging other nations in the area such as Iran, Iraq,
  RE> Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Jordan, ...

I have little respect for the political values of the states you
mention, but none of them, with the possible exception of Iran,
have claimed to be "a light unto the nations" lately, nor does
the American taxpayer generously provide aid to each and every
one of the citizens of any of these nations at the rate of nearly
$1000 per annum.

It's the gap between posturing and reality which makes Israel
look so ridiculous of late. If it would drop all the prophetic,
badgering rhetoric, particularly in regard to "the nations," the
world would be less likely to "Swaggartize" it. The fact is,
Israel has Swaggartized itself. It is being hoist on its own
petard.

 RE> Is Israel increasingly becoming a Jewish theocratic state,
 RE> or is this more innuendo?

If in the U.S. the Roman Catholic Church received special
political perks, financing, and offices from the government, at
the expense of all other religions, Christian, Jewish, and
otherwise, would you consider the U.S. to be a theocratic state?
Or would you be engaging in nasty innuendo--evil anti-Catholic
hatred, no doubt--if you expressed any objections to such a
political system?

Try to be serious, Ron.