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mass murder
The False Charges of 'Antisemitism' by Apologists for Israel's Atrocities in Gaza
The gist of the trick is to equate Israel with the Jewish religion—and then to equate opposition to Israel with antisemitism.
Mar 21, 2024
If we condemn Hamas for its October 7 attacks in Israel, we’re not accused of anti-Arab bigotry. Nor should we be. Nothing could possibly justify the atrocities that Hamas committed against hundreds of civilians, who were the majority of the 1,200 people killed as a result of the attacks by Hamas forces. And nothing can justify the taking of civilian hostages.
But if we condemn Israel for its actions since then, we might be accused of antisemitism. Meanwhile, nothing could possibly justify the atrocities by Israel in Gaza, where the death toll is now estimated at 32,000, while uncounted thousands of other Palestinian people are buried under rubble. Seventy percent of the victims have been children and women.
The U.S. government continues to make the atrocities possible. As retired Israeli Major General Yitzhak Brick said midway through the second month of the war: “All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it’s all from the U.S.” He added: “Everyone understands that we can’t fight this war without the United States. Period.”
Because of federal laws and minimal decency, the U.S. should have cut off all military aid to Israel long ago. A single standard of human rights should apply. But adhering to that simple, basic precept can provoke the virulent epithet of “antisemitism.”
The gist of the trick is to equate Israel with the Jewish religion—and then to equate opposition to Israel with antisemitism.
While Israel continues to slaughter children, women and men–no more guilty of anything than a crowd you might see at a local supermarket—the extreme misuse of the “antisemitism” charge often boils down to: Be quiet. Don’t protest. Don’t even speak up.
And so, writing in the New York Daily News last November, an official at the American Jewish Committee declared that a “virus of antisemitism has spread to the U.S., where college campuses and city streets have been taken over by anti-Israel protesters raging, ‘From the river to the sea!’—a call for the mass murder of Israelis, and ‘Globalize the Intifada!’—an appeal to kill Jews worldwide.”
As Peter Beinart pointed out in a 2022 essay, “Under the definition of antisemitism promoted by the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee and the State Department, Palestinians become antisemites if they call for replacing a state that favors Jews with one that does not discriminate based on ethnicity or religion.”
While Israel continues to slaughter children, women and men–no more guilty of anything than a crowd you might see at a local supermarket—the extreme misuse of the “antisemitism” charge often boils down to: Be quiet. Don’t protest. Don’t even speak up.
Of course antisemitism does exist in the United States and the rest of the world, and it should be condemned. At the same time, to cry wolf—to misuse the term to try to intimidate people into silence while Israel’s atrocities continue in Gaza—is an abuse of the word antisemitism and a disservice to everyone who wants a single standard of human rights.
Last week, 17 rabbis and rabbinical students went to Capitol Hill urging a ceasefire and an end to the unconditional U.S. military aid to Israel. Rabbi May Ye said: “We are rabbis representing hundreds of thousands of Jews affiliated with Jewish Voice for Peace Action imploring our leaders to end their complicity in the Israeli military’s genocidal campaign in the name of tzedek (justice) and real safety for all people.”
Are we supposed to believe that those rabbis are antisemitic?
The Jewish American author Anna Baltzer grew up learning about the evils of antisemitism. “Much of my family was killed in the Holocaust,” she wrote in a November op-ed at Common Dreams. “My grandparents arrived at Ellis Island traumatized by the unfathomable murder of their families in the gas chambers of Auschwitz while the world let it happen.” And she added: “We must get clear that Israel’s wiping out of entire families in Gaza is not simply revenge for October 7; Israel is continuing its long-existing practice of forcing Palestinians out of Palestine and closing the door behind them.”
Do Baltzer’s words make her antisemitic?
To cry wolf—to misuse the term to try to intimidate people into silence while Israel’s atrocities continue in Gaza—is an abuse of the word antisemitism and a disservice to everyone who wants a single standard of human rights.
In mid-October, 43 Jewish American writers, academics and artists—including Michael Chabon, Francisco Goldman, Masha Gessen, Judith Butler, Tony Kushner, and V (formerly known as Eve Ensler)—released an open letter to President Biden saying: “We condemn attacks on Israeli and Palestinian civilians. We believe it is possible and in fact necessary to condemn Hamas’ actions and acknowledge the historical and ongoing oppression of the Palestinians. We believe it is possible and necessary to condemn Hamas’ attack and take a stand against the collective punishment of Gazans that is unfolding and accelerating as we write.”
Along with denouncing Israel’s “war crimes and indefensible actions,” the statement added: “We write to publicly declare our opposition to what the Israeli government is doing with American assistance.”
Do those words mean that the signers of the statement are antisemitic?
Or how about the more than 100 Jewish Americans who signed the statement released this week denouncing AIPAC, the Israel-is-never-wrong lobby?
Ten years ago, 40 Holocaust survivors issued a statement condemning Israel for its “wholesale effort to destroy Gaza.” The statement, also signed by 287 people who were descendants of Holocaust survivors or victims, called for “an end to all forms of racism, including the ongoing genocide of Palestinian people” and decried “the extreme, racist dehumanization of Palestinians in Israeli society, which has reached a fever pitch.”
Were the 327 Jewish signers of the statement antisemitic?
For that matter, when I write here that the Israeli government has been committing mass murder and genocide in Gaza, does that mean I’m antisemitic?
There’s a word for seeing—and saying–that Israel is engaged in large-scale crimes against humanity. And that word isn’t “antisemitism.” It’s realism.
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Once Again. Once Again. Our Mass Murders Continue
And not just at American schools and banks and churches and shopping malls, etc., etc., etc. The toll is rising around the planet.
Apr 13, 2023
Once again . . . once again . . . once again . . .
I’m sure you know what I’m referring to. Yeah, another — the latest (?) — mass shooting in the United States, this one at Old National Bank in Louisville, Kentucky, on April 10, two days ago as I write. Five killed, eight injured. The shooter, an employee of the bank, was killed in a shootout with police. Three officers were injured, including a rookie officer (ten days on the job), who was shot in the head and is struggling to survive. The gunman’s weapon was a nice, reliable AR-15-style rifle, legally purchased at a local gun shop a week earlier.
That’s the basic data.
Loved ones cry in stunned grief. People demand saner gun laws. The mayor of Louisville, “noting the enormous amount of blood needed to treat gunshot wounds . . . urged residents of Louisville to donate blood.”
What will happen next, of course —in the larger context known as the United States of America —is nothing. Politics will harden, of course: voices will rise, protests will erupt, Republican legislators will stand tough against demands for gun control. And eventually another mass killing somewhere will grab the headlines.
And while yes, yes, yes, I believe that assault weapons should be banned and legislation should be enacted requiring background checks, I don’t think legislative —superficial —efforts will begin to address the country’s mass-shooting epidemic. The Louisville shooting was apparently number 146 in the country this year (“mass shooting” defined as at least four people killed), with each one seen and reported as an isolated action by a violent loner. Nothing can begin to change until we dig into the national soul and find the connecting context.
As I wrote two weeks ago, in the wake of the Nashville shooting: “This is not simply a loner’s psychological flaw: the denial of full, or any, humanity —any spiritual value —to chosen others. It’s a phenomenon embedded in the social norm. We have enemies. We need them. We kill them.
“We go to war!”
And going to war means one thing above all else: dehumanization. While a loner’s mass shooting spree means dehumanizing the victims at a personal level, war means dehumanization at the national level. Every American citizen is expected to acknowledge the need to kill the enemy du jour: via bombs, via tanks, via torture, via radioactivity and whatever poison our weaponry leaves behind. Strategy is what matters. Dead bystanders —dead children —are collateral damage.
As Peter Turchin wrote a decade ago, in the wake of the killings at Sandy Hook Elementary School: “The reason we should be worried about rampages is because they are surface indicators of highly troubling negative trends working their way through deep levels of our society.”
He called the victims “canaries in a coal mine.” Their toll is rising. And not just at American schools and banks and churches and shopping malls, etc., etc., etc. The toll is rising around the planet. Humanity has organized itself politically in the context of us vs. them, and this context is expanding. As the world grows technologically more connected —oh, the irony —its need to “defend itself” from the other has grown more ferocious. As soon as it’s labeled “war,” the concept of defense has virtually nothing to do with understanding.
And the United States, the most militarized country on Planet Earth, is at the heart of it all, fighting its forever war against terror: continuing to bomb, torture and poison evil itself out of existence. The 2023 U.S. military budget is $816.7 billion, with the 2024 budget likely to expand well beyond that. Karen Greenberg, director of the Center on National Security at Fordham University, puts it this way: “In fact, it now seems as if this country is moving at breakneck speed out of the era of Forever War and into what might be thought of as the era of Eternal War.”
And let there be no mistake. The era of Eternal War includes America’s mass shootings. What the lost souls who commit them have access to, before they can go around the corner and buy an assault rifle, is the concept of dehumanization. Mass murder would not be possible without it.
Yeah, I know, when we go to war, it’s all done bureaucratically. It’s all classified. The enemy is determined, dehumanized and killed at the highest level of national government, blah blah blah. American citizens get to read about it in the newspaper, watch it on television, cheer (allegedly) and even protest, but the decision to kill is impersonal and “democratic.”
Well, too bad. War creates war, not peace —especially when the “tools of war” are so readily available. One reason we are apparently entering an era of Eternal War is that it’s accessible not just to the commander in chief but to every lost soul in the country. Everyone wants to feel empowered. And the seduction of war is that it seems like such a simple obvious solution: Choose the enemy, dehumanize it and kill it. Problem solved.
I blame the media: for mostly going along with the sham at the governmental level and for failing to notice, let alone report on or analyze, the broken social context revealed by every individual mass shooting.
To paraphrase the mayor of Louisville, an enormous amount of understanding is needed to address, and ultimately prevent, gunshot wounds. We all need to donate what we can.
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Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Gratuitous Mass Murder
Aug 09, 2015
The atomic age began in real time on August 6, 1945, after its July 16 pre-dawn open-air birth in successful Alamogordo, New Mexico, testing.
At the time, perhaps prophetically General Thomas Farrell said "(w)e were reaching into the unknown, and we did not know what might come of it."
Called by some "the father of the atomic bomb," Robert Oppenheimer quoted from the Bhagavad Gita: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
August 6 marks the 70th anniversary of one of history's great crimes, followed three days later by incinerating Nagasaki.
At least 200,000 died, many others scarred for life, future generations to this day harmed by radiologically caused birth defects and other serious health problems.
Big Lies still claim bombing both cities hastened war's end and saved many lives. Truman informed the public deceitfully, saying bombing Hiroshima "destroyed its usefulness to the enemy."
"It was to spare the Japanese people from (further) utter destruction...If they do not accept our terms, they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, which has never been seen on this earth."
Nuclear bombing both cities were two of numerous American genocides - beginning with a conquering the new world from sea to shining sea, ravaging and destroying one country after another ever since, endless wars of aggression continuing today.
Japan was defeated and ready to surrender when Truman authorized testing America's new toy in real time - twice, not once. Not to win a war already won. This was done to show Soviet Russia America's new might, what its leadership already knew, and what might follow against its cities if Washington decided to attack its wartime ally.
US leaders always considered human lives expendable. Many thousands of Japanese victims were considered a small price to pay.
Terror bombing is an international high crime. Article 25 of the Laws of War: Laws and Customs of War on Land (1907 Hague IV Convention) states: "The attack or bombardment, by whatever means, of towns, villages, dwellings, or building which are undefended is prohibited."
Post-WW II Geneva IV protects civilians in times of war - prohibiting violence of any type against them, requiring sick and wounded be treated humanely.
The 1945 Nuremberg Principles forbid "crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity," including "inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war," - notably indiscriminate killing and "wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity."
In his book The Good War: An Oral History of World War II, the late Studs Terkel explained the war's good and bad sides through the experiences of people who experienced it.
The good was America "was the only country among the combatants that was neither invaded nor bombed. Ours were the only cities not blasted to rubble," said Terkel.
The bad thing was that it "warped our view of how we look at things today (seeing them) in terms of war" and the notion that they're good or that we should fight them. This "twisted memory....encourages (people) to be willing, almost eager, to use military force" to solve problems, never mind how they exacerbate them.
Wars are never just or good. In the nuclear age, they're "lunatic" acts - horrific by any standard.
On February 24, 1945, Japan wanted to surrender, asking only to retain its emperor. Roosevelt wanted the war to continue. So did Truman after his April 1945 death.
The late Howard Zinn said, "(t)he bombing of Hiroshima remains sacred to the American Establishment and to a very large part of the population in this country."
It's been falsely portrayed as an expeditious way to end the war and save lives - a myth believed to this day by most Americans, ignoring appalling gratuitous mass murder by any standard.
"Hiroshima and Nagasaki were unforgivable atrocities," Zinn explained - "perpetrated on a Japan ready to surrender...a wanton act of gargantuan cruelty (not) an unavoidable necessity."
What "could be more horrible than the burning, mutilation, blinding, irradiation of hundreds of thousands of Japanese men, women, and children?"
"And yet it is absolutely essential for our political leaders to defend the bombing because if Americans can be induced to accept that, then they can accept any war, any means, so long as the war-makers can supply a reason."
Endless US wars of aggression from summer 1945 to this day killed countless millions from conflict, subsequent violence and chaos, starvation, untreated wounds and diseases, as well as overall deprivation.
"There is endless room for more wars, with endless supplies of reasons," justifying the unjustifiable, said Zinn.
Before bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Secretary of War Henry Stimson briefed Dwight Eisenhower on their imminent use, saying: "Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary."
After its use, Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral William Leahy called the atom bomb "a barbarous weapon. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender."
In mid-July, four days before Truman, Churchill, and Stalin met in Potsdam to discuss post-war issues (two months after Nazi Germany's defeat), a Japanese Foreign Minister Togo telegram to Ambassador Sato in Moscow discussing negotiated surrender terms said:
"It is his Majesty's heart's desire to see the swift termination of the war." Washington intercepted the message. Japanese codes were broken before the war began.
At least from summer 1940, US intelligence began reading Japan's diplomatic messages. Earlier in 1945, Japan sent peace feelers.
Two days before the February Yalta conference, General Douglas MacArthur sent Roosevelt a 40-page summary of its terms.
They were nearly unconditional. The Japanese would accept an occupation, cease hostilities, surrender their arms, remove all troops from occupied territories, submit to criminal war trials, and let their industries be regulated, asking only that their Emperor be retained.
Roosevelt categorically refused. So did Truman. They wanted war to continue and be followed by unconditional surrender.
Zinn said America "was determined to drop those bombs. " Churchill advisor PMS Blackett called using them "the first major operation of the Cold War diplomatic war with Russia."
The bombs of August are an ominous reminder that what happened to Japan can repeat whenever lunatics in Washington believe it's to their advantage. Humanity may not survive their madness.
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