[lbo-talk] Rabbi Michael Lerner using the Antisemitism card against the US Green Party

andie nachgeborenen andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com
Sat Feb 11 22:25:55 PST 2006


I dunno, Chip knows a lot about right wing wackiness, but in my too many decades of experience all across the left I have _never_ encountered anything I would identify as left wing anti-semitism.

Of course I am a non-Zionist who views Israel as just another nasty and vicious militaristic apartheid state and (since 1967) a junior partner in US imperialism that has no business claiming to speak for the Jews, a presumption that incenses me, especially when what it presumes to say for the Jews is that they should level Palestinean houses, steal Palestinean land, shoot Palestinean children, carry out murder missions with widespread "collateral damage," build Berlin walls with my tax money, and so forth. I don't advocate the military annihilation of Israel, but the basic attitudes it provokes in me are loathing, shame, and anger. In a lot of people's books that makes _me_ an anti-semite or "self-hating Jew." I think that people who have this view are conscious or unconscious shills for violent and oppressive racist nationalism. (This made for interesting discussions with my parents when they were alive.)

I don't know if that is what Chip means. If he means, however, that there are people on the left who hate, dislike, or discriminates against Jews because they have stereotypical ideas about Jews (Jews are greedy, pushy, uncouth, conspiratorial, clannish, whatever), just speaking personally from my own experience I have not encountered that. On the contrary, it's been my experience that Jews have been not merely welcome but overrepresented in every capacity of activism and leadership on the left in ever group I've had contact with on the left from DSA to Marxist-Leninist outfits.

Maybe Chiop or others have had different experiences, though.

jks

--- Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> wrote:


> Jim wrote:
>
> > my guess is that there's anti-Jewish bigotry all
> across the US
> > political spectrum, but that the left suffers from
> it less than the
> > right does. For example, my right-wing East-coast
> relatives (part
> > of the Connecticut country club set) are
> anti-Jewish.
>
>
> I agree with Jim. Far from anti-Jewish, how the
> Green Party
> resolution for divestment came about is a model of
> Jewish ethic as
> Bryan notes. The leaders of the Wisconsin Party
> that introduced the
> resolution are Jewish (Ruth Weill) and Palestinian
> (Mohammed Abed).
> The Wisconsin Party noted: "Our membership includes
> Muslims and Jews,
> as well as a variety of others, who are working for
> the rights of
> Palestinians in harmony with both Israeli &
> Palestinian peace groups.
> The resolution for divestment was authored through
> the collaboration
> of members with Jewish and Muslim backgrounds. It is
> through people
> working together with such diverse backgrounds that
> we gain the
> wisdom to see our way to peace" (at
> <http://wisconsingreenparty.org/
> blogs/WIGPnews/archives/000458.shtml>). Jews and
> Palestinians
> working together like that ought to be commended
> rather than disparaged.
>
>
> Yoshie Furuhashi
> <http://montages.blogspot.com>
> <http://monthlyreview.org>
> <http://mrzine.org>
>
>
> ___________________________________
>
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>

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