I second the motion on Andie's post in it's entirety, especially this part:
"...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,"
andie nachgeborenen wrote:
> 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
>