What happens when a leftist critic of Israel actually does veer into vile, high-octane, Klan-grade anti-Semitism?
In recent years, one of the few unifying Israel-related experiences on the North American left has been that of sincere critics of Israeli policies being unfairly and often vociferously attacked as anti-Semitic. What happens, though, when a leftist critic of Israel actually does veer into vile, high-octane, Klan-grade anti-Semitism? Is the anti-Israel hard left prepared to denounce the real thing – authentic Jew-hatred from a progressive?
The test case is before us. It comes from Oberlin, the elite liberal arts college in Ohio, seen as the first institution of higher learning in America to have admitted female and black students as a matter of course in addition to white males. Late last year, Dr. Joy Karega, a professor of Rhetoric and Composition at Oberlin, posted a graphic on Facebook showing banker Jacob Rothschild. A text framing Rothschild's likeness, his abundant nose prominent, read:
“Hello there, my name is Jacob Rothschild. My family is worth 500 trillion dollars. We own nearly every central bank in the world. We financed both sides of every war since Napoleon. We own your news, the media, your oil and your government.”
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...Most agreed that Oberlin, while defending free speech, should have denounced Dr. Karega's remarks. "Anti-Semitism is not free speech – it is illegitimate and must be condemned," said veteran peace activist Gershon Baskin, who called the remarks "disgraceful."
"Any tweet or Facebook post that talks about Rothschild and Jewish bankers, or a world-wide Jewish conspiracy, is bona fide anti-Semitic," said Professor Charles Manekin of the University of Maryland.
However, the hard left websites Mondoweiss and Electronic Intifada, the exponent platforms for anti-Israel sentiment and hair-trigger responses to moral infractions by Israel, were conspicuously silent over the Oberlin professor's remarks.
Mondoweiss and Electronic Intifada, it should be noted, are sites in a class by themselves. A class in which it has become a matter of meme, that if you are strongly leftist on most issues, but can be seen to be pro-Israel in any way shape or form, even, or especially, if you are a two-state, pro-democracy progressive, you run the risk of being labeled, and therefore thoroughly discounted and dismissed, as PEP - Progressive Except (for) Palestine.
Perhaps it's time we added one new designation, for those self-elected arbiters of public morals, the pure of anti-Israelism, who cannot bring themselves to condemn pure Jew-hate out of hand:
PEAS - Progressive Except For Anti-Semitism.
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http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.706182
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