One of the biggest puzzles of out time is how the Left, not part of the Left but all of it, has turned themselves into the greatest Israeli-haters of them all. In this essay Steven Plaut describes the process of hatred for Israel, put-down of Israel, hatred for Jews, put-down of Jews – are both one and the same thing.

This is the central point that has to be dealt with in Ireland. The question is: Does this hatred of Israel and hatred of Zionism equate to a hatred of Jews? On this I am with Steven Plaut. To my mind it definitely does.

The central idea behind Zionism is that Jews are a Nation and that this Nation is no different to any other, it needs to have a Homeland. The Jews decided that this Homeland had to be in the historic land of their birth as a Nation.

The Jews did not throw any Arabs off the Land. When land was available for sale they bought it, sometimes at highly inflated prices. Arabs remained within Israel when it was founded and were given full democratic rights just as much as any Jew.

But, and this is the great mistake and weakness of the Zionist movement, they did not allow for the awful Jew-hatred which exists, both in the world outside and in the world of Islam.



Steven Plaut’s article starts here:

Zionism's Greatest Achievement. Jews Now Seen as "Bullies"
Written by Steven PlautThursday, March 18, 2004

In some ways it is a depressing period in Jewish history. The American Jewish Diaspora community, or at least the non-Orthodox bulk therein, is in the process of committing cultural/national/religious suicide. Most American Jews are indifferent to their Jewishness; intermarriage is close to and may be above 50%; and the dominant ''religion'' of the American non-Orthodox Jews is the pseudo-religion of Liberalism-as-Judaism, its chief tenet being that Judaism is nothing more nor less than the political agenda of the American left, never mind that this agenda is totally bankrupt intellectually on its own demerits. The Reform movement and the Deconstructionist Reconstructionists are simply religious Liberals, where political liberalism is their dogma.

Many Conservatives (as in Conservative synagogues) are also. No, liberal Conservative is not an oxymoron. The ''defense'' organizations, American Jewish Congress, Bnai Brith, etc., are also largely devoted to the practice of political liberalism as pseudo-religion.

And then we have the chattering classes in Israel, the media, and intelligentsia and literati, devoted to seeing Israel weakened, dismembered, and then destroyed through the Oslo process of national suicide.

We have even the Likud, first under Netanyahu and then under Sharon, still pursuing the delusion of the ''peace process,'' still trying to buy Arab toleration through strategic endangerment of Israel's existence, still thinking that just a few more concessions to the PLO will nudge the PLO away from terror and its genocidal ambitions and move it to peaceful coexistence.

Well, in these days of frustration, I think there is one idea that we should bear in mind. And that is that the Zionist movement and ideology have many fantastic accomplishments under their belt, one of the more important of which is that Zionism forced a major change in the nature and expression of anti-Semitism.

Not that anti-Semites are really any different when they hide behind the mask of anti-Zionism. These are the same gutter bigots, the same people who refuse to acknowledge that Jews are humans, that Jews are entitled to rights and equality. But they have been forced to express their bigotry DIFFERENTLY.

This should be obvious any time you observe the campus anti-Semites, the Left, and the Arab fascists and the self-hating Jewish leftist Uncle Toms, demonstrating against Israel. For centuries, the slogans of the anti-Semites were that Jews were racially inferior, intellectually inferior, cowards, money-grubbers, killers of God, sub-humans. But observe the main slogan of anti-Semites TODAY! It is that Jews are mean. They are mean to the poor Palestinians. Ooooh, soooo mean.

What a marvelous transformation! The main calumny now thrown at the Jews is that they are bullies, meanies. What greater accomplishment of Zionism could be imagined?

Of course, this does not mean that the anti-Semites really DO think that the Jews are mean or cruel to the Palestinians. The anti-Zionists do not give a damn about the Palestinians, and the last thing they care about is Arab human rights. This is why they have absolutely nothing to say about the treatment of Arabs in Arab countries or by the Palestinian Authority's Gestapo. When Saddam Hussein ordered Kuwaiti civilians to be forced to drink gasoline and then had his troops shoot into their bellies to make them explode to the cheers and laughs of his storm troopers, there was not a single anti-Zionist who expressed disapproval or concern.

The anti-Zionists know perfectly well that Arabs are treated 1000 times better in Israel (EVEN if one were to believe all of their accusations and allegations of mistreatment) than are Arabs in Arab countries, and, of course, they refuse to admit that the Arab treatment of non-Arab minorities in the Arab countries is even a legitimate topic of discourse.

The anti-Semites lament supposed Israeli mistreatment of the poor Palestinians because they think this is an effective way to delegitimize and undermine the existence of Israel. In other words, they are motivated by hatred of Jews and not by any compassion for Palestinians.

They seek to see Israel destroyed, not the Palestinians enfranchised, or rather their only interest in Palestinian enfranchisement is as a tool to endanger Israel's existence. Of the enormous territories of the Middle East, larger than the United States, the only place where they suddenly are concerned for the welfare and civil rights of Arabs is in Israel. The other Arabs can go to hell.

And if they can accuse Israel of violating these civil rights, never mind that 90% of their accusations are invented, then they can pretend to be compassionate and interested in peace, not gutter bigots who hate Jews.

The anti-Semites have lost their ability to march about and accuse the Jews of ritual murders and similar medieval libels, at least outside the Arab world's press. Such things make them laughable in the West. No one outside the Arab world takes the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as anything other than an embarrassment for anti-Zionists. So they have seized onto a new propaganda tactic, complaining that the Jews are Oh So Mean and Cruel and Bullies.

At long last--after two millennia of exile--to be accused of being bullies! To leave the anti-Semites with no more effective weapon than heaping invective upon the mean Jews. For this, one must say a blessing of thanksgiving, a Shecheyanu! And often.

It is Zionism's greatest achievement.