The Volokh Conspiracy

First she sent out a tweet on Sept. 30 from @freegazaorg, stating that “Zionists operated the concentration camps and helped murder millions of innocent Jews.” The tweet linked to a video claiming, among other things, that the word “Nazi” combines the words “National Socialist” and “Zionist.”

Berlin and the movement later put out an improbable excuse claiming that the tweet was for a private group “discussing propaganda and racism, and this link was an example of the terrible propaganda that could be spewed on websites.” Ali Abunimah of the Electronic Intifada, a leading pro-Palestinian activist who tries to police his side of things to prevent it from being discredited by the anti-Semites who are naturally attracted to it, investigated and concluded that the claimed “context does not exist.”

Larry Derfner then interviewed her, and asked her about this and other instances in which she has seemed to promote anti-Semitic views (including those of Gilad Atzmon). She claims that Abunimah looked into the wrong private internet group, and that she was referring to another group. But she still refuses to release screen shots of the purported discussion in question to show the “context,” if indeed it exists. Derfner nevertheless believes her, or at least finds no reason not to believe her. Others might not be as credulous. Naomi Klein has resigned from the Free Gaza Movement’s Board of Advisors. Bishop Desmond Tutu, among others, remains.

Readers will recall the controversy over the University of Chicago’s John Mearsheimer’s endorsement of a recent anti-Semitic book, The Wandering Who, by notorious anti-Semitic provocateur Gilad Atzmon.  When Atzmon’s background and anti-Jewish passages from the book were called to Mearsheimer’s attention, to even his harshest critics’ surprise instead of backing down he reaffirmed his endorsement.  Almost no one defended Mearsheimer, save his University of Chicago colleague Brian Leiter, and, less prominently, libertarian activist Sheldon Richman (who I’ve known and otherwise liked for years, but who has a serious blind spot when Israel-related issues come to his attention.)

The latest news is that the “Electronic Intifada” website, which is exactly what its name suggests, has published an open letter signed by various self-described “Palestine Solidarity Activists,” calling for “the disavowal of Atzmon by fellow Palestinian organizers, as well as Palestine solidarity activists, and allies of the Palestinian people, and note the dangers of supporting Atzmon’s political work and writings and providing any platforms for their dissemination.” Perhaps to preempt Atzmon’s inevitable claim that this is further evidence of a Jewish conspiracy against him, all of the signers have noticeably Arab names.

Signators include such dubious characters as Columbia’s Joseph Massad.  As the Elder of Ziyon blog puts it, these activists found “Atzmon’s nutty anti-semitic rantings too crazy – even for them.” But not, apparently, too crazy for Mearsheimer and friends.

H/T Reader Louis Offen

UPDATE: I missed an earlier letter along the same lines, signed by dozens of far left “Palestine Solidarity” activists.  Apparently, though, not everyone has gotten the message–I see that Atzmon spoke today at the Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church in D.C., and is speaking tomorrow at “Peace House.”

A postscript to this earlier letter states, “We wish to reiterate that we consider many of those promoting Atzmon’s work to be allies, but would ask that they reconsider their decision to do so. This is not a call for censorship, but for consistency and accountability.”  Maybe it should occur to the letter writers that their “allies” might be supporting Atzmon not because they are unaware of his views, but because they are aware of them and agree with them, and that the source of their “anti-Zionism” is not “solidarity with Palestine” but something much uglier.

Greenwald has another post on the “Israel Firster” controversy.  It’s easy to miss this in Greenwald’s typical avalanche of verbiage, but he (finally) acknowledges that the term was originally coined by anti-Semites, and is “gratuitously inflammatory.” He analogizes it to using the word “fascist”  to describe contemporary politics or making comparisons to Nazis.

This, however, is just a side point in a screed that among other things takes to task Jeffrey Goldberg and others for “smears.” The accusation that Goldberg is accusing Greenwald and others of being anti-Semitic and anti-Israel as a way of attempting to silence them.  Goldberg can speak for himself, as he has previously in response to Greenwald. [UPDATE: VC Commentor Eyeysay notes that Greenwald was far from precise in characterizing Goldberg's comments.]

But what I find remarkable is that in a post devoted to “smears,” “silencing,” “trite attacks,” and the misuse of language for political purposes, Greenwald refers to Goldberg as a “neocon,”  even though, to my knowledge, Goldberg’s political views are centrist leaning a bit to the left, and Goldberg has no obvious associations with the Commentary crowd or other centers of neocon thought.

More within my direct sphere of knowledge, Greenwald links to one of my posts while putting me in the category of “neocons like Goldberg.”  I’ve written about neoconservatism a fair amount, and when I’ve provided a normative opinion, I am always very critical (for example, here and here; there are other examples, but the VC’s move to a new host seems to have ruined the links, at least for now.)

Really, the only relevant things Jeffrey Goldberg and I–a moderate and a libertarian, respectively–have in common, and therefore the only reason to refer to us as “neocons,” is that we are both Jews who are far more favorably inclined toward Israel than is Greenwald.

Most of Greenwald’s readers undoubtedly have no real clue as to what neoconservatism is, beyond that it is associated somehow with conservatism, with Israel, the war in Iraq, and with Jews, and, from their left-wing Salonish perspective, is somewhat sinister. Assumedly, however, Greenwald knows better, and is simply using “neocon” as a slur, a way of relying on his readers’ prejudices against anything associated with the word “neocon” to discredit his intellectual adversaries, in exactly the same way he claims that the “neocons” are using slurs to discredit him and his allies. In fact, the only reason to associate “neocons” exclusively with Jews and Israel is to try to silence the other side with a slur.

So, if Greenwald wants to have an honest, intelligent debate on Israel and related matters, he can start by acknowledging that neither Goldberg nor I are “neocons,” apologize for suggesting otherwise, and promise to blog more responsibly in the future.

Glenn Greenwald has a very Glenn Greenwaldesque post on the controversy over alleged use of anti-Semitic language by bloggers at the Center for American Progress, which I discussed last week.

One would never know from reading Greenwald’s piece that the controversy primarily revolved around the use of the term “Israel-firster” to describe supporters of Israel, much less that one can say two things about that term without much fear of contradiction: (1) it originated on the neo-Nazi fringe, and has only been adopted by left-wingers in the last few years; (2) it’s a term that not only substitutes insults for argument, but it implies loyalty to a foreign power, a longstanding theme in anti-Semitic literature.

As I said before, that doesn’t make the phrase somehow “objectively” anti-Semitic if used by individuals who had no anti-Jewish intent. However, as I also noted, most people of good will try to avoid using phrases related to Jews once they recognize that they have the odor of neo-Naziism about them (and indeed the CAP bloggers deleted the posts in question after the controversy broke). Others, however, like Greenwald, continue to think the phrase perfectly appropriate.

Moreover, left-wing writers tend to be especially sensitive about using language that has potentially racist implications, and also tend to be quick to accuse others of using “dog whistle” phrases–phrases that sound neutral, but are meant to stir racial animosity or invoke racial stereotypes.

In Greenwald’s defense, unlike many other left-wing anti-Israel writers who are quick to reject colorable charges of anti-Semitism, he has been a fearless opponent of political correctness, and has defended Republicans and conservatives from questionable charges of racism.

Actually, that’s not true. Actually, the opposite is true. Here, for example, is Glenn Greenwald in 2008, accusing John McCain of delivering “one of the ugliest, nastiest, most invective-filled” attacks “a major candidate has ever delivered, blatantly designed to stoke raw racial resentments.” The offending language? (Italics are Greenwald’s): It’s as if somehow the usual rules don’t apply, and where other candidates have to explain themselves and their records, Senator Obama seems to think he is above all that . . . His campaign had to return $33,000 in illegal foreign funds from Palestinian donors, and this weekend, we found out about another $28,000 in illegal donations. Why has Senator Obama refused to disclose the people who are funding his campaign? Again, the American people deserve answers.

Let’s get this straight. Suggesting that the usual rules don’t apply to Obama, stating that he returned illegal campaign contributions from Palestinian donors, and claiming that Obama refuses to disclose his funders isn’t just overheated (or silly) campaign rhetoric, isn’t even just ugly and nasty, but “is blatantly designed to stoke raw racial resentments.”

So, mentioning illegal Palestinian donations = blatant racism; adopting language appropriated from neo-Nazis within the decade about Israel’s supporters = clearly not anti-Semitic. Suggesting that a Obama has avoided “the usual rules” = blatant racism; suggesting that pro-Israel Americans care more about Israel than about the U.S. = clearly not anti-Semitic. Accusing someone of using anti-Semitism for using the Israel-firster slur makes you part of a “smear campaign”; accusing John McCain of blatant racism for claiming that Obama has not disclosed his campaign donors makes you a courageous left-wing blogger speaking truth to power.

I’m not going to argue that Greenwald’s racism argument is completely absurd–he’s a good lawyer, and he makes at least a marginally colorable argument in the rest of his post. But his argument is MUCH more of a stretch, or, if you will, much less well-founded, than the argument that “Israel-firster” is anti-Semitic language.

Obviously, Greenwald’s sensitivity to offensive language depends on whether he likes/agrees with the target. When his favored candidate, Barack Obama, was being attacked by John McCain, he was extremely quick to accuse McCain of using language designed to appeal to racist sentiment. When pro-Israel activists and politicians, a Greenwald-disfavored group, are being attacked by his anti-Israel compatriots, suddenly they are inherently immune from any hint of using anti-Semitic (a form, of course, of racism) language unless, perhaps, they are wearing swastikas and celebrating Hitler’s birthday. And the fact that Greenwald can and has come up with examples of where some of Israel’s supporters have used charges of anti-Semitism in inappropriate or exaggerated contexts is quite irrelevant to the point, just as it would be irrelevant to Greenwald’s post about McCain if someone pointed out that charges of racism against Obama’s opponents are at times inappropriate or exaggerated.

UPDATE: Here, in its entirety, is Greenwald’s response:

On a different note: both Jeffrey Goldberg and David Bernstein have posts about my arguments on the smearing of CAP that rest on the same premise: namely, that to point out that someone has “dual loyalties” is an accusation of disloyalty to their own country or even worse. As I explain here, that premise is false. There’s nothing inherently wrong with dual loyalties: those are common among many groups, especially in a country of immigrants, and are typically benign. What’s menacing is to smear those who discuss its existence and the way in which it influences our politics.

This would obviously be a more persuasive argument if the “Israel-firster” meme had not migrated to the left directly and very recently from the blatantly anti-Semitic right, a point Greenwald does not address. Indeed, the offensive aspect “Israel-firster” is not whether it’s inherently libelous to accuse someone of “dual loyalties,” any more than it’s inherently libelous to accuse someone of taking donations from foreign Palestinian sources. Rather, as Greenwald suggested with regard to McCain, the question is whether the use of the language is “designed to stoke raw racial [anti-Semitic] resentments.” Clearly this is the case when the language is used by the likes of David Duke, and the question then is whether the language magically is purged of such connotations when used by M.J. Rosenberg and others on the “mainstream” left.

[Additionally, a commenter points out that "Israel-firster" is not an accusation of "dual loyalties," but of primary loyalty to a foreign country.]

There has been a controversy brewing over allegations that several bloggers at the liberal Center for American Progress have used anti-Semitic rhetoric when criticizing Israel and its American Supporters. Critics have particularly focused on these bloggers’ use of the term “Israel-firster.”

I haven’t paid all that much attention to the controversy, but today I came across a piece by Jamie Kirchik in which he alleges that the term “Israel-firster” was first popularized by Willis Carto’s anti-Semitic The Spotlight, and that the term gradually migrated from the anti-Semitic far right to the “Progressive” left.

So I decided to do some research. I couldn’t find any online archives of The Spotlight, but here is what I did find.

The “Israel-firster” slur was not used in “mainstream” discourse until the last few years.

Before that, you can find it occasionally in the early 1980s and 1990s in sources such as Wilmot Robertson’s anti-Semitic Instauration journal, a 1988 anti-Semitic book called “The F.O.J. [Fear of Jews] Syndrome, and a 1998 anti-Semitic book “Rise of AntiChrist.” I also found a couple of references to “Israel-firsters” in the extremist anti-Israel publication, The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, and from writers associated with this journal.

By the early 2000s, one can find “Israel-firster” being used by a variety of anti-Semitic “right-wing” sources like DavidDuke.com and the Vanguard News Network. As the decade wore on, the phrase occasionally pops up in far left anti-Israel sites that have ties to the anti-Semitic far-right or are known for playing footsie with anti-Semitism, like Antiwar.com, Norman Finkelstein’s website, and Indymedia.

Finally, over the last few years the term has become increasingly used on the anti-Israel far left, especially by blogger M. J. Rosenberg of Media Matters, who Kirchik calls the “worst offender.”

Obviously, the phrase “Israel-firster” should be expunged from reasoned discourse, regardless of its origins–it amounts, as Kirchik points out, to name calling as opposed to argument. And it certainly questions the patriotism of Jewish Americans to whom the moniker is applied, which at best potentially plays to anti-Semitic sentiment.

But is the phrase clearly anti-Semitic, even if used by those who have no anti-Semitic intent? I don’t think we need to reach that issue. Some of the “Progressive” bloggers who have used the phrase may not have been aware of its origins in the depths of unhinged neo-Nazi land.

So the question is, does your average Progressive recoil at the use of terminology that migrated recent from the far-right racist kook fringe to refer to members of minority groups? They sure do. Should they recoil less if the terminology is aimed at Jews, as opposed to other minority groups? They sure shouldn’t–unless they are themselves prejudiced against Jews.

Therefore, regardless of what cockamamie post hoc excuses they come up with (Rosenberg, for example, claims that when he talks about “Israel-firsters”, he only means “Netanyahu firsters” [in the sense they always think Netanyahu is right--if Rosenberg meant the latter, then he was being intentionally provocative, and not in a good way), if bloggers want to claim status as Progressives who are not anti-Semitic, they should treat the phrase "Israel firster" the same disdain as any other phrase that recently emerged from the sewers of racism.

UPDATE: The following passage from Kirchik's piece is relevant: "While CAP publicly denied that its employees were trafficking in anti-Semitism, an e-mail from the organization's vice president, obtained by The Jerusalem Post, deemed 'Israel-firster,' to be 'terrible, anti-Semitic language.'" That's further then I'd go, in the absence of proof of intent. But the point, once again, is that self-styled "Progressives," as a rule, bend over backwards to be politically correct and hypersensitive on linguistic usage as pertains to members of minority groups. They wouldn't deign to use the equivalent of Israel-firsters to refer to other minority groups (indeed, they'd likely be attacking "conservatives" for using such language), and if they did, they would surely take some care to examine the origins and implications of the phrase. But when it comes to using borderline anti-Semitic language, not only does sensitivity go by the wayside for certain Progressives, but they delude themselves into thinking that by ignoring Jewish sensitivities, they are "speaking truth to power."

So I'm neither claiming that the bloggers in question are anti-Semitic, or had anti-Semitic intent, or that, in general, writers should engage in self-censorship on matters related to Israel. What I am arguing is that there is a double standard, in which standards that are applied to other groups are not applied to Jews. (I made a related point here.) [Here, for example, is Glenn Greenwald, who has prominently defended his use of "Israel Firster," attacking John McCain for racism for engaging in rhetoric "blatantly designed to stoke raw racial resentments," for such statements as "the usual rules do not apply" to Obama,
and questioning why Obama "refused to disclose the people who are funding his campaign."]

Indeed, I’ve occasionally seen this justified explicitly by “anti-Zionist” leftists on the grounds that Jews, unlike other minority groups, are “powerful.” Just sixty-six years after the end of World War II, and with calls for the annihilation of Jews still emanating from a variety of rather significant sources (Hamas, Hezbollah, various radical Islamist groups, etc.), and still rather high levels of anti-Jewish prejudice even in the most enlightened countries, I think it’s rather early to proclaim that anti-Semitism is no longer a matter of significant concern for “Progressives.”

FURTHER UPDATE: “Fanatically pro-Israel” or “pro-Israel fanatic” would (and often does) serve the same rhetorical function, without either the imputation of foreign loyalties or the neo-Nazi origins.

Over at Balkinization, Andrew Koppelman (Northwestern) has an interesting and thoughtful post on the state of originalism. Synthesizing analysis by Jamal Greene and Jack Balkin, Koppelman writes, “Originalism is fundamentally about a narrative of rhetorical self-identification with the achievements of a founding historical moment. That is the real basis of its power. An originalist argument will be powerful to the extent that can persuade its audience that it can keep faith with that identification.”

Thus, “Originalist argument is an artifact designed to recall the Constitution’s origin and connect what we are doing now with that origin. Once this functional definition of originalism is understood, it follows that the range of possible original arguments is quite broad. It is not, however, infinite.” So, argues Koppelman, the fact that originalists differ among themselves in many important details about what “originalism” really is, is not a fatal flaw. Simiilarly, there are many different things called “aspirin” (e.g., Excedrin, generic products, St. Joseph’s children’s aspirin, etc.), but they all contain acetylsalicylic acid, and they all have a generally similar function. Which particular one you use at a given time will depend on the particular purposes for which it is needed.

I do want to quibble, though, with one particular legal history claim that Koppelman makes: “Thus originalists struggle with the problem whether the general purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment, to mandate the legal equality of blacks, should trump the framers’ specific intention to permit school segregation and miscegenation laws.”  Michael McConnell and Randy Barnett have written on the school segregation issue, but I’d like to add something on miscegenation. I don’t think that the historical record unambiguously supports the claim of a specific intent in the 14th Amendment to allow the continuation of laws against interracial marriage.

We do know for certain that one very specific intention of the 14th Amendment framers was to provide a solid constitutional foundation for the Civil Rights Act of 1866. According to the Act: “All persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall have the same right in every State and Territory to make and enforce contracts, . . . as is enjoyed by white citizens. . .”

Early exposition by courts is one source of original public meaning. (Although this source is not always guaranteed to be reliable. See, e.g., the Slaughter-House majority’s dicta). In 1872, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that the state’s 1866 constitutional ban on miscegenation  violated the “cardinal principle” of the Civil Rights Act and of the Equal Protection clause. Burns v. State, 48 Ala. 195 (1872). According to the unanimous Burns court, the idea that contracts could be limited to members of the same race was absurd: “Marriage is a civil contract, and in that character alone is dealt with by the municipal law. The same right to make a contract as is enjoyed by white citizens, means the right to make any contract which a white citizen may make. The law intended to destroy the distinctions of race and color in respect to the rights secured by it. It did not aim to create merely an equality of the races in reference to each other. If so, laws prohibiting the races from suing each other, giving evidence for or against, or dealing with one another, would be permissible. The very excess to which such a construction would lead is conclusive against it.”

That same year, the Texas Supreme Court unanimously ruled that  the “the law prohibiting such a [common law] marriage [between a white and a black] had been abrogated by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.” Bonds v. Foster, 36 Tex. 68 (1872) (inheritance case). As detailed in Peggy Pascoe’s book, What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America (2010), in the years after the Civil War, eleven states repealed their bans on interracial marriage.

It was the Indiana Supreme Court  that figured out the way to evade the clear statutory language about the equal right of contract. According to the court, marriage is  ”more than a mere civil contract”; it is an institution fundamental to society. The Indiana court insisted at length that the 14th Amendment had not limited the traditional police power of the states. If Congress could ban states from imposing a racial  mandate on the right to enter a marriage contract, then Congress would (supposedly) have the power to legislate on all aspects of marriage. State v. Gibson, 36 Ind. 389 (1871).

I don’t find the Indiana court’s 1871 reasoning persuasive, and, apparently, neither did the Alabama and Texas Supreme Courts in 1872. But courts cannot stand forever against the sustained will of the electorate. After four losses, the proponents of anti-miscegenation won on their fifth try in the Alabama Supreme Court. When the courts in the various states finally acquiesced to anti-miscegenation laws, Gibson was the essential citation, because it came from a state where slavery had never legally existed. The Texas intermediate Court of Appeals provided the legal reformulation that marriage was “status” and not “contract,” and was therefore not covered by the Civil Rights Act: “Marriage is not a contract protected by the Constitution of the United States, or within the meaning of the Civil Rights Bill. Marriage is more than a contract within the meaning of the act. It is a civil status, left solely by the Federal Constitution and the laws to the discretion of the states, under their general power to regulate their domestic affairs.” Frasher v. State, 3 Tex. App. 263 (Tex. Ct. App. 1877). (The regressive Frasher decision is one more data point in support of the observation in Henry Sumner Maine’s great 1861 book Ancient Law: “we may say that the movement of the progressive societies has hitherto been a movement from Status to Contract.” Maine’s book elaborates in great detail why marriage law fits this paradigm.)

By the time that Plessy v. Ferguson was decided in 1896, the Supreme Court majority, which was willfully oblivious to contemporary social reality (e.g., if blacks consider a segregation mandate to be a “a badge of inferiority,” that is “solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it”) , was also lazily ignorant of legal history: “Laws forbidding the intermarriage of the two races may be said in a technical sense to interfere with the freedom of contact, and yet have been universally recognized as within the police power of the state.” The sole citation for this allegedly “universal” recognition was State v. Gibson. The Court was right that as of 1895, miscegenation laws were constitutionally safe, but the Court seemed quite unaware that during the first years when the 14th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act were the law of the land, the issue was in dispute.

Although the late Professor Pascoe’s book is suffused with critical race/gender theory, readers who find such theories useless will still find Pascoe’s book enormously useful. It is an excellent legal history of anti-miscegenation laws and cases, and not just during Reconstruction. You will learn about the national panic to spread such laws during the early 20th century because the black boxer Jack Johnson (who defeated a string of opponents who were billed as “the Great White Hope”) notoriously consorted with white women; how courts struggled with interpreting miscegenation laws in the West (which were mainly aimed at Asians, and which raised questions such as whether a ban on white marriage to “the Mongolian or Malay races” applied to Filipinos); the NAACP’s political opposition to new miscegenation laws coupled with its great reluctance to mount legal challenges to existing ones; and the extremely risky litigation (not endorsed by NAACP) which led to the landmark 1948 California Supreme Court Perez v. Lippold decision (won mainly on void for vagueness, the fundamental unenumerated right to marry, and First Amendment  free exercise of religion, rather than a categorical attack on all racial discrimination).

Justice Carter’s concurrence in Perez is a good illustration of the main thesis of Koppelman’s post, and of the point made by the second Justice Harlan (and also by Jack Balkin) that our “tradition is a living thing,” in which our national understanding of the original meaning can be deepened by new experiences. Rebutting respondent’s collection of social scientists who contended that race-mixing was destructive to the health of the white race, Justice Carter quoted some essentially similar claims from Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Justice Carter continued: “To bring into issue the correctness of the writings of a madman, a rabble-rouser, a mass-murderer, would be to clothe his utterances with an undeserved aura of respectability and authoritativeness. Let us not forget that this was the man who plunged the world into a war in which, for the third time, Americans fought, bled, and died for the truth of the proposition that all men are created equal.” And so, “In my opinion, the statutes here involved violate the very premise on which this country and its Constitution were built, the very ideas embodied in the Declaration of Independence, the very issue over which the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and the Second World War were fought, and the spirit in which the Constitution must be interpreted in order that the interpretations will appear as ‘Reason in any part of the World besides.’”

Prompted by the controversy over Mearsheimer and Atzmon, Bob from Brockley has a good post on anti-Semitism, including this discussion of non-anti-Semitic anti-Zionism, with my added emphases:

Anti-Zionism that also takes a consistent opposition to all nationalisms (including Palestinian nationalism) is not antisemitic; Jewish religious anti-Zionism such as that of the Satmer Hasidim is not antisemitic; Jewish anti-Zionism which rejects the Zionist solution to the questions of Jewish survival and continuity (such as the position of the Jewish Socialist Group or others in the tradition of the Bund, folkism and other diasporist traditions) is not antisemitic [Editor: though one wonders about the relevance of these traditions in 2011, when there is an existing Jewish state with almost eight million citizens]; anti-Zionism from the perspective of Israeli citizens (Jewish or Arab) who want to see Israel as a democratic state for all its citizens (rather than a Jewish state) is not antisemitic; finally anti-Zionism which sees Zionism as a form of imperialism and takes a consistent opposition to all imperialisms without singling out Zionism as unique is wrong-headed, but not in itself antisemitic. All of these forms of anti-Zionism can be used as fig-leaves for antisemitism or be used to feed antisemitism, but they are not themselves antisemitic. [Editor: And I would add one more. Islamist anti-Zionism that is based on the idea that "Palestine" is Islamic territory that for theological reasons may not be governed by non-Muslims is not, by itself, anti-Semitic.]

Unfortunately, it’s increasingly the case that even those who approach anti-Zionism from one or more of these perspectives are at best tolerant of the anti-Semitism indulged in by some of their allies, and at worst engage in rhetoric that smacks of classical anti-Jewish themes, even if the individuals in question are not themselves anti-Semitic.

As I’ve noted before, there are two basic reasons for this phenomenon. The first is that given longstanding Western cultural prejudices against Jews, marrying anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism can be extremely effective from a rhetorical perspective. And, second, if you are inclined to believe that Israel and its policies are an especially grave danger to world peace and security you will tend to err on the side of being tolerant of anti-Semitism to the extent that you think it is furthering the anti-Israel cause [update: because you see Israel as a greater threat/danger/cause for concern than anti-Semitism]. Neither of these explanations are excuses, of course.

A few days ago, I sent John Mearsheimer an email with my post inviting him to use the Volokh Conspiracy to defend some specific (and obviously anti-Semitic) quotations from Gilad Atzmon, given Mearsheimer’s insistence that Atzmon is not anti-Semitic. I have not heard back from Mearsheimer.

Meanwhile, Harry’s Place and Pejman Yousefzadeh have further documented Atzmon’s anti-Semitism, apparent both in his general writings and specifically in the book Mearsheimer blurbed.

Andrew Sullivan, who has turned harshly critical of Israel in recent years, seemed initially skeptical of the criticism of Atzmon. Eventually, however, did some additional research and concluded: “I still haven’t read the book but the excerpts are so vile and the mind behind them so patently warped and hateful, I really don’t care to. Why would anyone blurb a book like this?”

A group of far left British writers called on the publisher to withdraw Atzmon’s book given its overt anti-Semitism. The last few British leftists who were willing to have anything to with Atzmon at “Solidarity with Palestine” have renounced their ties with him (as discussed by leftist anti-Zionist Tony Greenstein in this post).

Mearsheimer and Atzmon have received support or defense from the far-leftist conspiracy-mongering Counterpunch website, from various Neo-Nazi and 9/11 conspiracy sites, and, bizarrely, from Mearsheimer’s Chicago colleague Brian Leiter.

But then again, maybe it’s not so bizarre–perhaps what Leiter wrote is exactly what one would expect. As a Jewish [and I assume] anti-Zionist , Leiter’s prescribed role by the Elders is to help “deliver an image of pluralism” while secretly pursuing the Jewish supremacist agenda (as Atzmon put it in a recent charming interview explaining how Jewish anti-Zionists are secretly in league with the Jewish Zionists to promote Jewish interests, an interview that I came across via a link from Leiter).

From all of us in the worldwide Jewish conspiracy, thanks, Brian, and Shana Tova!

John Mearsheimer has written a lengthy and somewhat rambling response on Stephen Walt’s blog to criticism of him, especially by Jeffrey Goldberg for endorsing an anti-Semitic book by a kooky fringe anti-Semite, Gilad Atzmon. One could go blow by blow through all the overwrought distortions in Mearsheimer’s post, but I’m going to focus on one. Mearsheimer is not content to argue, as he does, that he didn’t know Atzmon from a hole-in-the-head, and endorsed the book because he found it provocative and interesting. If he had limited himself to this, he could have then added that he wasn’t aware of Atzmon’s anti-Semitic background and didn’t read the book in that light. Now that he knows, he regrets his association with Atzmon and the book.

Nope. Mearsheimer actually defends Atzmon from the charge of anti-Semitism. So here’s my challenge to Prof. Mearsheimer: I will give you space on the Volokh Conspiracy to explain how you can absolve Atzmon from anti-Semitism after reading this excerpt from an interview with Atzmon, not coincidentally hosted on the website of notorious anti-Semite “Israel Shamir”.

“There is a lot of pressure on me to denounce Obama. He has done quite a few things that have made me suspicious of him – but I want to give him a chance.

“I could see that the Israelis were really concerned and were quick to evacuate their forces before he took office.

“They have a lot of people around him already and reading the Israeli press they know something about this man being ethically concerned, and this is something that didn’t happen in America for many years.

“He wants to amend the damage caused by those Jewish political strategies such as Neoconservatism, such as the sub-prime mortgage crisis that was led by Alan Greenspan, who is not exactly a Rasta.”

[Interview author:] The financial meltdown is all just part of the programme, he says.

“I don’t think it was a credit crunch, I think it was a Zionist punch.

“This war in Iraq may have something to do with energy but largely it was America acting as an Israeli mission for fighting the last pockets of resistance, led tactically by Neoconservatives and the Federal Reserve.

“Alan Greenspan’s job was to create a financial boom so America’s people were not concerned with the tactics used in the Middle East.

“It should have worked but it didn’t work because the all-American boom was done at the expense of the most deprived Americans, and they just couldn’t pay the mortgages so it all collapsed.

“It’s not only Jews that have adopted this world view either. Bush behaved Jewishly (ideologically) – he is a supremacist, he was a tribalist, but he is not a Jew as far as I’m aware.

“Even in Christianity, this tendency to go Old Testament – into tribalism, into supremacy, into violence, into shock and awe . . . . This is something we have to fight against.”

I will sent this post to Prof. Mearsheimer, and await his response, but meanwhile I have one further comment.

Mearsheimer accuses his critics of suggesting that he must be an anti-Semite, given that he is intellectually in bed, so to speak, with the likes of Gilad Atzmon. Certainly, it’s reasonable to suspect Mearsheimer of anti-Semitism as this point, given that the main alternative explanation, that he is simply a fool who endorses highly polemical books attacking Jews and Israel without reading them closely or knowing anything about the author, has now been rebutted by Mearsheimer himself. But one could also posit Mearsheimer has decided to adopt a “Popular Front Strategy”, willing to accept any anti-Israel allies even from the blatantly anti-Semitic fringe. Regardless, it’s a pathetic fall from grace for Mearsheimer, and it’s disappointing to see that his co-author Walt is enabling him rather than pulling him back from the brink.

UPDATE: Or perhaps Mearsheimer simply agrees with this charming quote from Atzmon: “Because Anti-Semite is an empty signifier, no one actually can be an Anti-Semite and this includes me of course.”

And while we’re at it, Mearsheimer also defends Atzmon from the charge of being a Holocaust denier. Here’s a quote from Atzmon that I found on his own website: “I must admit that I have many doubts concerning the Zionist Holocaust narrative. Being familiar with many of the discrepancies within the forcefully imposed narrative, being fully familiar with the devastating tale of the extensive collaboration between the Nazis and the Zionists before and throughout the Second World War, I know pretty well that the official Holocaust narrative is there to conceal rather than to reveal any truth.” Res ipsa loquitur.

FURTHER UPDATE: A lot more at Harry’s Place.

Writing a good book review of a bad book is always a challenge, and I always admire those who do so successfully. So here is a very well-done review by Matthias Kuntzel and Colin Reade of “The Arabs and the Holocaust.” One quick excerpt:

Achcar even manages to find excuses for the dissemination [in the Arab world] of Hitler’s textbook for the Holocaust, the so-called Protocols of the Elders of Zion. “There is a qualitative difference,” he claims, “between a delusive, anti-Semitic approach that believes, or seeks to make others believe, that the leaders of the Jews of the ‘Jewish race’ are conspiring against the rest of the world, and an equally delusive but not racist [!!!-DB] approach that seeks consolation by mobilizing a conspiracy theory [that Jewish leaders are conspiring against the rest of the world!--DB] to explain Zionist successes.” And that’s not all: he even deplores the failure of other authors to “make the necessary distinction between the anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist reading of the Russian forgery.”

Given that the Protocols constantly talk not about Zionists, but about “Jewry,” which, the Protocols claim, is seeking to take control of the world, Achcar’s attempt to defend Islamist propagators of the Protocols from the charge of antisemitism is truly bizarre. One might just as well recommend an “anti-Zionist reading” of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, another book with a wide circulation in the Middle East, and one which has an explicitly anti-Zionist orientation.

One could easily dismiss Achcar’s book as typical fringe claptrap, but for the fact that Kuntzel and Reade report that it’s being taken seriously in mainstream circles, in part because, as they acknowledge, there is some serious historical work mixed in with the vociferous efforts to justify, minimize, and sanitize anti-Semitism when the perpetrators are Achcar’s ideological fellow-travelers.

Lots of folks couldn’t believe that John Mearsheimer, distinguished international relations professor at the University of Chicago, would endorse an anti-Semitic book by fringe kook anti-Semite Gilad Atzmon. Perhaps he was misquoted, or simply blurbed the book without realizing what he was doing? Surely he would retract once a public controversy erupted?

Nope. Blogger Adam Holland:

I had trouble believing that a distinguished professor at one of the world’s greatest universities would link himself to a hatemonger like Atzmon. So I sent Professor Mearsheimer an email quoting the blurb and asking him to verify it’s accuracy. I also gave him an opportunity to amend it or add to it.

But Mearsheimer didn’t take the opportunity to save what’s left of his reputation. He wrote back: “The blurb below is the one I wrote for ‘The Wandering Who’ and I have no reason to amend it or embellish it, as it accurately reflects my view of the book.”

according to the publisher’s his publicist’s website [and confirmed by a search on Google books.] The proud individual in question would be Gilad Atzmon, who has remarked

I’m not only a self-hating Jew, I’m a proud self-hating Jew! When you try to think of the biggest humanists ever, Spinoza Marx [sic: Marx was born and raised a Christian, albeit of Jewish descent] and Christ were basically proud self-hating Jews also. Why? Because of growing up in this kind of racist, nationalist, tribalist, chauvinist, supremacist society – and this is exactly what they stood up against.

If the book, The Wandering Who? was about Atzmon’s vocation, jazz, that wouldn’t be news, but in fact the book in question seems to be what one might call a meditation on Jewish identity–but an anti-Semitic, or, if you prefer, self-hating one. (Among other things, we learn that his hero and role model is one of modern history’s best-known Jewish anti-Semites, Otto Weininger.)

Mearsheimer’s take: “a fascinating and provocative book .... Should be widely read by Jews and non-Jews alike.” Says David Schraub: “we should recognize the tragedy of [Mearsheimer's] fall. It has been swift, shocking, and very, very ugly.”

I wrote five years ago that “many of [Mearsheimer and co-author Stephen Walt's] critics are erring in accusing the authors of anti-Semitism without supporting evidence.” That now seems hasty on my part, especially given that this isn’t Mearsheimer’s first foray into very questionable territory.

Added bonus: The Harry’s Place blog’s revelation of Mearsheimer’s endorsement of an anti-Semitic book by a self-described self-hating Jew came the same day that Glenn Greenwald wrote a post entitled The Mainstreaming of Walt and Mearsheimer, in particular expressing typical Greenwaldian sputtering outrage that some of their critics had accused them of anti-Semitism.

UPDATE: Pejman Yousefzadeh: “Either John Mearsheimer–via his endorsement of the vile and repulsive ‘ideas’ of the loathsome Gilad Atzmon–has outed himself as an anti-Semite, or he is completely ignorant of what Atzmon professes, and Mearsheimer has outed himself as a fool.”

FURTHER UPDATE: Just to be clear for those too lazy or busy to follow the links, Atzmon is not some controversial cultural or religious critic, but a plain old-fashioned kooky anti-Semite. Here is an example of his erudite commentary on the financial crisis:

I don’t think it was a credit crunch, I think it was a Zionist punch.

This war in Iraq may have something to do with energy but largely it was America acting as an Israeli mission for fighting the last pockets of resistance, led tactically by Neoconservatives and the Federal Reserve.

Alan Greenspan’s job was to create a financial boom so America’s people were not concerned with the tactics used in the Middle East.

It should have worked but it didn’t work because the all-American boom was done at the expense of the most deprived Americans, and they just couldn’t pay the mortgages so it all collapsed.

It’s not only Jews that have adopted this world view either. Bush behaved Jewishly (ideologically) – he is a supremacist, he was a tribalist, but he is not a Jew as far as I’m aware.

In January, Delta Airlines announced that Saudi Arabian Airlines is joining Delta’s SkyTeam network of international airline partners. Yesterday, WorldNet Daily reported that Delta employees would be enforcing a no-Jews policy when checking in passengers on SAA flights from the United States to Saudi Arabia.

I looked around the web for verification, and found the following: In 2004, a Saudi government website, promoting visits to Saudi Arabia, did state a “no Jews” policy. Apparently in response to extensive U.S. criticism, that statement was removed. The visa required for entry to Saudi Arabia mandates that the applicant disclose his or her religion. The typical advice for American visitors is to write “non-Muslim” or “Christian.” However, a 2007 article in Commentary magazine by scholar Joshua Muravchik reports on his recent visit to Saudi Arabia; he wrote “Jewish” on his visa application, and was nevertheless granted a Saudi visa.

It does seem to be widely reported, without contradiction, that Saudi authorities will deny visas to anyone who has an Israel entrance or exit stamp on his passport. This category would include not only Jews who have visited Israel, but also the many Christians who visit the Holy Land, as well as business travelers to Israel. Several other African and Asian governments apparently have similar policies.

At airport check-in in the United States, a responsibility of the U.S. airline which is checking in travelers for an international partner airline is to verify that the travelers have the appropriate documentation required by U.S. law (e.g., a passport) and by the foreign airline (e.g., an entry visa from the Saudi government).

The WND article reprints two letters from Delta Airlines to a person who raised questions about the above. Essentially, Delta’s position is that they just enforce whatever the destination government requires, and if you don’t like  the destination government ‘s discrimination, go complain to the U.S. State Department.

I would have preferred an answer to the effect of “We have confirmed that Saudi Arabia does not discriminate against Jewish visitors, or people who have visited Israel, and we would never partner with an airline which would require us to enforce such reprehensible policies.”

Saudi Arabian Airlines is government-owned (with some ancillary services, such as catering, being privatized). Delta Airlines is exercising a choice to make its employees complicit in the enforcement of the Saudi government’s policies of hatred and discrimination against anyone who visits Israel. If Delta’s business alliance with the Saudi government is conditional on that government not reinstating a formal ban on all Jewish visitors, Delta has not taken the opportunity to say so. When I travel, I will exercise my own choice not to fly Delta.

I’ve heard some people argue that the proposed circumcision bans (one of which is now on the ballot in San Francisco) is motivated by hostility to Jews. I quite doubt it, for a reason I mentioned in an earlier post: As of 2005, about 56% of newborn American boys, and about 31% of American boys in the Western states, were circumcised. (In the Midwest, the fraction was nearly 75%.) Since Jews and Muslims — the two groups that generally circumcise for religious reasons — make up about 3% or so of the population, it seems that over 90% of all circumcisions are not religiously motivated. The fraction might be lower in San Francisco proper (I know of no statistics limited to that city), but I suspect that even in San Francisco, the great majority of circumcisions aren’t religiously motivated; only about 5% of San Francisco residents are Jewish.

Now it’s true that circumcision bans are likely to affect Jews more deeply than others, because Jewish parents are more likely to feel strongly about circumcising their children. But it would still be the odd anti-Semite who so wants to hurt Jews that he’s willing to try to in the process forcibly change the practices of over 50% of the population — overwhelmingly non-Jews — and thus to incur the political opposition of that big chunk of the population.

Of course, it’s likely that some critics of circumcision have come to disapprove of Judaism, to the extent that Judaism mandates such circumcision, just as they disapprove of non-religious beliefs that support circumcision. But that’s not anti-Semitism, just as (say) disapproval of conservative Islamic restrictions on women isn’t bigotry against Islam: It’s opposition to behavior with tangible secular consequences, whether the behavior is religiously or secularly motivated.

Relatedly, some other people argue that Jews aren’t going to comply with the law and seem to imply that the law will therefore be futile. I agree that if any circumcisions bans remain just city ordinances (rather than prompting similar state or federal laws), many Jews will just go out of town to conduct the circumcisions; and even if the laws lead to more comprehensive bans, the really devout will avoid them (at the extreme, by leaving the country).

But my sense is that the anti-circumcision activists would feel that succeeding in stopping 97% of all circumcisions is quite a big win. If you really think that circumcising infant boys is a serious wrong against them — to the point that you’d invest time and effort into backing this proposal, with all its potential legal and political difficulties — wouldn’t you think that even a merely 97% complete victory (or perhaps even a considerably lesser victory) is pretty good? To be sure, the anti-circumcision activists wouldn’t want any religious exemptions, just as people who are trying to stop other things that they see as harmful generally don’t want any religious exemptions. But my guess is that if the ordinances are enacted and then upheld against a parental rights challenge, the backers would think they’ve triumphed even if Jews and Muslims get religious exemptions in court, or leave the jurisdiction to get their children circumcised.

UPDATE: A commenter asks, “Would you agree that the refusal to put in a religious exemption into these laws is motivated by hostility to those religions which practice this? In fact, if you read the Santa Monica petition item, it goes further than merely not including a religious exemption but by explicitly clearly disclaiming one. I don’t see how that can be interpreted as anything other than hostility to circumcision as a religious practice. How is that different from hostility to the groups which perform the practice?”

As best I can tell, opponents of male circumcision believe that it’s a serious interference with the rights of boys, and the men they’ll become, and a serious harm to those boys and men. If that’s so, then there’s every reason for them to think that it’s just as much an interference with rights, and just as much of a harm, when the conduct is done for religious reasons. And therefore it makes perfect sense that, with no hostility to the religion as such, the backers would refuse to include a religious exemption. The refusal to give people a religious exemption from a ban on behavior that you think is harmful and rights-violating hardly shows a hostility to religion — it shows a hostility to the behavior, whether the behavior is religious or otherwise.

Consider a wide range of laws that ban behavior that you think is harmful. It might be female genital mutilation. It might be sex discrimination, race discrimination, religious discrimination, or sexual orientation discrimination. It might be trespass, murder, rape, or what have you. Now imagine someone asking for a religious exemption from those laws, for instance from the ban on female genital mutilation. (Assume that some group does indeed believe that female genital mutilation is a necessary religious ritual.) Would you refuse to put in a religious exemption into the law (if it’s up to you)? If so, does your refusal show that you are hostile to the group? Or does it simply show that you think the practice is wrong, regardless of whether its practitioners do it for religious or other reasons? (To be sure, you might well think that circumcision of boys is unlike these other practices, because you think that it’s not that harmful or rights-violating; but that’s a separate question from whether a person’s refusing to provide an exemption is evidence of religious hostility.)

The nonsense spewing from the various usual suspects–the European left, left-wing NGOs, leftist international law experts [update: here's an excellent example from an Israeli commentator]–regarding the takedown of Osama bin Laden by U.S. forces should provide an important lesson for advocates of Israel.

The hostility emanating to Israel emanating from these sources is not, primarily, a result of anti-Semitism or other Jewcentric mental maladies. Rather, it is a natural result of a cauldron of ideologies–pacifism, anti-liberalism, Third Worldism, hostility to the West, warmed-over Marxism, and so on, combined with a dash of naive human rights idealism–that dominates certain intellectual circles.

Israel receives more grief than almost anyone else from such circles for several reasons: (1) because of its precarious security situation, it uses military force more regularly than other potential targets; (2) because of its precarious political situation, it is far more vulnerable to such criticism than, say, the U.S. (which will studiously ignore criticism of the OBL operation); and (3) unlike in the U.S, Israel has a significant and influential domestic far left that encourages and magnifies such criticisms. Indeed, given universal military service among Jewish non-Haredi adults, Israel often faces criticism from its own leftist soldiers and reservists of the sort quite rare in the U.S.

That’s not to deny that some leftist critics of Israel are anti-Semites, and that an even greater number are content to play on anti-Semitic themes when they find it rhetorically useful. But let’s face it: if you can’t get the leftist Europeans, NGOs, etc. behind a surgical strike on Osama Bin Laden, they are hardly going to approve of much broader Israeli military action in Gaza or Lebanon.

Given that many Jewish supporters of Israel have left-wing tendencies themselves (though the hard leftist types have long abandoned Israel), it’s far more comfortable for them to identify anti-Semitism as the main source of anti-Israel hostility. But the first step in defeating an intellectual enemy is to identify that enemy’s underlying, motivating ideology, and, in this case, for the most part, anti-Semitism isn’t it.