Moderators/Skinner. Please read the whole message if you're thinking about moving this to another forum. If you do move this, please PM me so we may discuss. This morning I was reading about Michael Savage calling Jimmy Carter an anti-Semite in
another thread. Michael Savage is a marginalized kook, and that's putting it charitably. I was interested to see what a mainstream internationally-recognized organization like the
Anti-Defamantion League would have to say about Carter's book. From Abe Foxman's (National Director of ADL) Nov. 13th
statement:
One should never judge a book by its cover, but in the case of former President Jimmy Carter’s latest work, “Palestine Peace Not Apartheid”, we should make an exception. All one really needs to know about this biased account is found in the title.
From the opening sentence I gather he does not find the book balanced. Ok, fair enough. Reading on down we get to the third paragraph:
In some ways, Carter’s book reminds me of the outlandish paper on “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” by professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, though he doesn’t go to their extremes. Like them, his examination of almost every issue concerning the conflict results in blaming Israel for most or all of what has gone wrong.
Ok, so it
reminds Mr. Foxman of something he has previously-described as
anti-Semitic, but maybe not quite as anti-Semitic as Mearsheimer and Walt's paper. Will he go further? He does:
As disturbing as Carter’s simplistic approach is, however, even more disturbing is his picking up on the Mearsheimer -Walt theme of Jewish control of American policy, though in much more abbreviated form and not being the focus of his work. Referring to U.S. policy and the “condoning” of Israel’s actions, Carter says: “There are constant and vehement political and media debates in Israel concerning its policies in the West Bank but because of powerful political, economic, and religious forces in the U.S., Israeli government decisions are rarely questioned or condemned, voices from Jerusalem dominate our media, and most American citizens are unaware of circumstances in the occupied territories.” In other words, the old canard and conspiracy theory of Jewish control of the media, Congress, and the U.S. government is rearing its ugly head in the person of a former President.
That last sentence.
"In other words..." In other words, Jimmy Carter is spouting anti-Semitic propaganda as well, apparently.
Michael Savage is a two-bit radio host who panders to a conservative audience as far to the right as NeoCons, or arguably farther. The number of people who listen to his show or even take it seriously are very, very small.
However this is not the case with the Anti-Defamation League. It's a $40-million dollar a year organization with around 30 offices located in the United States and a few offices in other countries as well. It is not the Michael Savage show. It is, in fact, a mainstream organization which works closely with the police forces around the world to combat bigotry and has been recognized as such. Mr. Foxman (who's been the chairman of the ADL for 30 years now) has been given awards several times by organizations and statesmen, recently including France's Legion of Honor award.
So these allegations, when made by the ADL against president Carter, are much more serious and worthy of note. Also of note is a term and the ideology behind it, which are responsible for accusations such as the one above:
The New Anti-Semitism. "The New Anti-Semitism" sets out to prove that conventional anti-Semitism around the world has been augmented by a sort of "coded anti-Semitism" which is not as easy to detect because it does not follow the conventional rules of anti-Semitism. The main tenet of this ideology is that criticism of Israel, in many cases is, in fact, coded or thinly-veiled anti-Semitism. Something which the ADL's National Director accuses Jimmy Carter of.
In the case above, Mr. Foxman deviates a bit from his
publicly-defined view but the reasoning works as follows:
:bluebox: Jimmy Carter states that because of "...powerful political, economic, and religious forces in the U.S., Israeli government decisions are rarely questioned or condemned"
which Mr. Foxman interprets as a statement indicating that Israel exerts undue control over the U.S. Government
Knowing that, and the following:
:bluebox: That one of the tenets of anti-Semitism is that Jewish people exert undue control over the U.S. Government
The resulting similarity between these two points, when using the arithmetic from Mr. Foxman's
formula is:
:redbox: "In other words, the old canard and conspiracy theory of Jewish control of the media, Congress, and the U.S. government is rearing its ugly head in the person of a former President." (from Mr. Foxman's analysis)
Why is this important to bring up? Well, war and peace in the Middle East are on all of our minds for the last six years at least and I think it's likely that many of us at DU are likely to speak about those issues. I think that it's also likely that you're familiar with what constitutes anti-Semitism but
The New Anti-Semitism contains much broader criteria (as well as relationships between different words and ideas, forming a "code") for defining and classifying what is or is not anti-Semitic and I think that if you do speak, you should be familiar with this new arithmetic.
President Carter's words are not immune from charges of promoting anti-Semitism from this major organization. What will this new arithmetic reckon from your words?PB
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