From: wmcguire@world.std.com (Wayne McGuire)
Subject: Real Antisemitism
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 13:12:40 GMT

To: Ron Evans

 RE> How can one determine when anti-Semitism is "real"? Is
 RE> Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson anti-Semitic?

If I were Jewish, what I would consider "real" anti-Semitism.
anti-Semitism worthy of combating tooth and nail, is the sort of
anti-Semitism which is trying in some practical way to do harm to
Jews, either physically or by denying them their fundamental
human rights. That's the real anti-Semitism to worry about and
fight. There is enough of that to take on not to get bogged down
in shit-throwing contests with people who simply want to express
intellectual skepticism about questionable aspects of Judaism,
Zionism or Israeli government policy.

In discussions and arguments about aspects of Judaism or Zionism
I would rarely if ever rely on charges of anti-Semitism to win
points. A practical point of self-interest would come into play:
as a Jew I would want to be able to exercise freely my critical
intelligence on Christianity, Islam, American foreign policy,
etc. without being smeared and dismissed as anti-Christian,
anti-Muslim, anti-American, etc. When it comes to intellectual
debates about ideology and policy, give me some slack and I'll
give you some slack. You can tell me freely what bothers you
about the baggage in my cultural background, and I'll do the same
with you, and if we keep our heads we can do so without hating
one another and perhaps learn something in the process.

I was brought up Roman Catholic. Do you have some problems with
any aspects of Roman Catholicism? Go ahead and talk about it. I'm
not going to call you names because you have an inquiring mind.

Faurisson on the basis of the evidence I have seen may well be an
anti-Semite. I wouldn't cut him down by calling him an
anti-Semite, however; I'd make mincemeat of his peculiar theories
by contradicting them with incontrovertible evidence. That's much
more effective.

 RE> So where is the evidence?

That many Jews in Israel have wanted or now want to drive Arabs
out of Biblical Greater Israel? Try reading books by Friedman,
Lustick, Sprinzak and others on the attitudes and plans of
militant nationalists with close ties to or a presence in the
Israeli government. I'm not saying that the Israeli government
has monolithically embarked upon such a policy. On the contrary,
the current Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin seems to be making every
effort to pursue a moderate course. I wish him the best of luck.
But if he fails, the extremists could take control of the
government and proceed with their plans.

 RE> One would think that the billions of dollars provided by the
 RE> American taxpayer to Egypt would at least rate a diatribe or
 RE> two about government favoritism toward Islam over the Coptic
 RE> Church.

I think we should cut foreign aid both to Israel and Egypt, and
reallocate it to other nations around the world who desperately
need help. I think aid to Egypt, however, can be seen largely as
an annex of aid to Israel: it was a payoff to keep Egypt from
engaging in further attacks on Israel. The Mideast is consuming
far too much of our foreign aid (not to mention our attention)
vis-a-vis other regions of the world, particularly the former
Soviet Union. (Btw, on a per capita basis Israel is receiving
around 10 times more U.S. aid than Egypt.)

 RE> Some caution should be exercised when comparing Israel with
 RE> the United States.  The U.S. is not surrounded by violent
 RE> groups like Hamas that want to turn it into an Islamic
 RE> state.

I'm very sympathetic to Israel's security problems, which are
formidable, to say the least, compared to the U.S. The only peace
agreement which Israel should accept is one which provides
ironclad security arrangements.

The problem is that aggressive messianists in Israel strongly
associated with, or in, Likud have clouded the distinction
between policies based on authentic and pragmatic defensive needs
and policies based on messianic expansionist ideology. The
blurring of these distinctions has weakened sympathy for Israel
in the Western democratic world during the last decade or so,
ever since Likud came into power in the seventies.

Does Israel want to hold on to the Gaza Strip and the West Bank
for security reasons or because some Jews believe that God
promised this land to the chosen people? Increasingly it is
difficult for the world to comprehend what is motivating Israeli
behavior. Real defensive needs we'll support; messianic
obsessions are another matter. The Christian fundamentalists eat
up the messianic line, but most Americans are not Christian
fundamentalists.
Newsgroups: talk.politics.mideast