International Political Will

A book meant to stimulate intelligent debate about the Israeli-Palestinian issue has, instead, stimulated the Israeli-American propaganda machine and the “liberal media” that spews their message as it would legitimate facts. Unfortunately, Carter’s book will fall on deaf ears until the accepted definitions in America are restructured to accurately reflect the political realities that have been obscured by years of misrepresentations.

Former President Jimmy Carter’s new book Palestine: Peace not Apartheid has been attacked from all angles. As he tries to fend of accusations of “anti-Israel” bias instead of discussing the content of the book, it is inevitable that the word “anti-Semite” will be thrown about in order to further erode any credibility Carter might have. His assertion that the power to move toward ending the crisis in Palestine lies with the Israelis is refuted as idiotic due to the “terrorist group” Hamas having “taken control.”

The allegedly “liberal” Voice of America article is just one example of how the media purports to show how Western governments are “elected” yet in Muslim countries when a political party wins democratic elections they “take control of the government.” Subtle wording creates a vision of despotic authoritarian maniacs who have taken over the region despite the wishes of the public, when instead it is allies of the Western world that have taken control of their countries against the best interests or democratic inclinations of the body politic. Leaders like Mubarak in Egypt, Musharraf in Pakistan and the Sauds in Arabia are described as “moderate” despite the complete lack of any democratic process.

Another example of the pro-Israel spin that abounds in U.S. media is the recent spat between a member of the Carter Center, Kenneth Stein, and Carter himself. Stein resigned from his post citing the book contained “unvarnished analyses; it is replete with factual errors, copied materials not cited, superficialities, glaring omissions, and simply invented segments.” The only specifics Stein points to is a few maps that Carter may or may not have used from another book without properly citing his sources (nothing has been proved so far). Even if this allegation were true, that Carter used maps without citing his sources, it hardly negates the content of Carter’s book, nor does it take away from the serious discussion needed inside America about Palestine and the tacit approval the U.S. gives to an apartheid state.

But instead, the Los Angeles Times runs an article with the headline “Maps in Carter’s book are questioned,” creating the blatantly obvious insinuation that there is a factual error in Carter’s research. Yet once the reader gets into the news story, if they even decide to read the article, they will find in the fourth paragraph a quote from Stein stating that it “could be incredibly coincidental, or it could not…But it goes to show…the way citations should be made when material is borrowed.”

Few readers will make it that far into the article - especially those that most need to consider real discussion about the Israeli-Palestine issue. Those with their biases already entrenched will read the headline and perhaps the first graph and move on, convinced that they were right and Carter is just an anti-Semite and just another democrat that, for some unexplained and yet widely accepted reason, “wants the terrorists to win.”

Before any real debate about the Israeli-Palestinian issue occurs inside the U.S., there needs to be a real and factual distinction made between what Zionism and anti-Semitism truly is. There is absolutely no correlation between the two, despite what the Israeli propaganda machine might want the public to believe.

Anti-Semitism is a racially-motivated hatred of another ethnic group of humans due to deliberate misconceptions and stereotypes that fit the “other” into a role of an enemy. The word “Semite” in itself is inclusive of more than Jews - it includes Arabs as well, making the notion of an Arab being an “anti-Semite” difficult if not impossible.

Zionism, on the other hand, is a form of nationalism - specifically, a political party that believes in the establishment of an ethnically and religiously exclusive state. When neo-Nazis or KKK members in America speak of creating the same state - an ethnically and religiously exclusive state (ideally, a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant America) they are rightly accused of being racist and hateful. Their views are pushed to the margins of society and they are labeled as anti-social and abnormal.

Yet someone who is anti-Zionist is incorrectly labeled by far too many Americans, including politicians, academics, lobbyists and the media as being an “anti-Semite. (Of course using the definition that “Semite” means Jewish only, because to be prejudiced toward the Arab or Muslim is tacitly approved of in American society, especially since September 11, 2001.)

Before the Israeli-Palestinian peace process can move forward, because of long-time unconditional American support for Israel thereby requiring the assistance and arbitration of the U.S., the definitions in American society must be reexamined and redefined. Zionism and Jew are related by coincidence only and do not need to coexist, just as there are plenty of white Americans who do not identify nor sympathize with groups like neo-Nazis or the KKK.

But, alas, even some of the most reliable of sources, Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, has bought into the propaganda. It offers the following definitions:

anti-Semitism:

1: hostility towards Jews as a religious or racial minority group often accompanied by social, economic and political discrimination

2: opposition to Zionism; sympathy with opponents of the state of Israel

Trackback URI | Comments RSS