Mondoweiss and the “Antisemitism Strawman”
Mondoweiss is a blog run by Philip Weiss. It’s been around for nearly a decade. Jews of Weiss’ ilk have been around much longer. We all know the type. The type who wear their Jewishness as some sort of badge that boasts shame. Knowing non-Jews can cite him on Israel: If a Jew believes that Zionism is racist and that Israel commits war crimes then it must be true. Hell, people like Gideon Levy, Amira Hass and Gilad Atzmon have built entire careers on this.
I know that Weiss basically thinks I’m a Palestinian baby killer. I know that he and his friends probably think I’m chomping at the bits, waiting for the next war so we can finally demolish Gaza (spoiler alert: I’m not). He blames me for living in a country that isn’t mine to live in. He blames me for enabling an apartheid government, which is insulting to those who actually lived through apartheid.
Guess what else he blames me and my country for?
The rise in attacks against Jews. Yes, ladies, gentlemen and others. Antisemitism is not at play, just like, if Obama is to be believed, radical Islam has nothing to do with ISIS. Jews the world over aren’t being targeted because of their Jewy goodness but because they somehow represent an extension of Israel and her policies.
That is like saying a woman’s rape in Iran is unrelated to mysogyny and in fact has everything to do with women in New York dressing provocatively. The wrongness of this sentence is layered, like an onion. First, it finds fault in a tangentially related group. Secondly, and more importantly, it insidiously implies that a man is justified in committing rape if the female in question is scantily clad.
Essentially, the folks over at Mondoweiss believe that at best the murder of Israelis is understandable, if not justified.
He quotes Uri Avnery:
When Binyamin Netanyahu does not miss an opportunity to declare that he represents all the Jews in the world, he makes all the world’s Jews responsible for Israeli policies and actions.
Obama represents all Americans, that doesn’t make any individual American responsible for the decisions he makes. And as an Israeli Jew I’m not responsible for Netanyahu’s. If I were, things would be very different.
Now, I’m not saying that Weiss is a self hating Jew, though he makes it difficult to think otherwise. Iraqis globally haven’t been attacked because of ISIS and their extracurricular executions. No one is shooting up the local Korean market because of Kim Jong Un and his (lack of) human rights record. So to say that the rise in violence against Jews is not related to antisemitism is either flirting with the notion of self hatred or outright naivete.
In the words of Dr. Frankfurter in Rocky Horror, “You better wise up, [Philip] Weiss.”