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Abstract
Jews have figured prominently in the propaganda war aimed at undermining Israel. They have joined in, and at times taken the lead in, branding the Jewish state a pariah nation and seeking to cripple its economy, deprive it of basic rights of self-defence, and challenge its very right to exist. These Jewish attacks on Israel almost invariably entail false, defamatory arguments. Their corrosive impact goes beyond the attacks themselves and entails providing an aura of legitimacy to anti-Israel attacks by non-Jews who seek to buttress their own arguments by citing Jews who make much the same arguments. While there are various reasons why individuals turn against their communities of origin, such alienation and hostility are particularly common within communities under siege. Members of such communities commonly embrace the indictments and calumnies of the attackers, however bigoted or absurd. Some will seek to reform their community in conformity with the attacks against it in the hope that, if the community follows their lead, it will appease the besiegers and win relief. Others seek personal relief from the siege by distancing themselves from the community, or even overtly joining the camp of the community's enemies. This article seeks to explicate how the history of Jewish defamation of Israel conforms to these patterns within communities under chronic attack. The phenomenon of such defamation will inexorably continue as long as Israel remains under siege, and the response to this defamation should incorporate understanding of its roots and offshoots.
Notes
1. Neve Gordon, “Boycott Israel,” Los Angeles Times, August 20, 2009.
2. Gilad Atzmon, The Wandering Who? A Study in Identity Politics (Winchester, UK: Zero Books, 2011).
3. Atzmon, “The Banality of Jewish Symbolism,” first posted on his own website, http://www.gilad.co.uk, March 9, 2010.
4. John Lewis, “A Manic Beat Preacher,” Guardian, March 6, 2009.
5. John Lewis, “A Manic Beat Preacher,” Guardian, March 6, 2009
7. For examples of this demonization in its various forms, see the postings of The Middle East Media Research Institute (www.memri.org.) For examples drawn more specifically from the institutions of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, see the postings of Palestinian Media Watch (www.palwatch.org.)
8. A translation of the charter can be found, for example, at the website of the Institute for Palestine Studies, www.palestine-studies.org
9. See, for example, “Israel Using Holocaust Guilt to Continue Gaza Op, Says British Jewish MP,” Haaretz, January 15, 2009.
10. Sara Roy, Hamas and Civil Society in Gaza (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 2011), 10.
11. Daily Star (Beirut), October 23, 2002.
12. The statement can be found, for example, on Finkelstein's website, http://www.normanfinkelstein.com.
13. For example, the voice of the blog “Tikun Olam” (which has now widely come to mean somehow healing the world by attacking and seeking to undermine the Jewish state), one Richard Silverstein, declared, regarding Iran's nuclear threat, “Of course, the Iranians do not have an ICBM to carry such a warhead. Nor do they have a nuclear weapon. But these are mere technicalities when it comes to frightening the world into adopting the Israeli government's priorities and interests” (posted May 21, 2009).
14. See James Traub, “The New Israel Lobby,” New York Times Magazine, September 9, 2009.
15. Yaron Ezrahi, Rubber Bullets (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997), 14.
16. Richard Goldstone, “Reconsidering the Goldstone Report on Israel and War Crimes,” Washington, Post, April 1, 2011.
17. For a comprehensive analysis, see CAMERA, “The Goldstone Report: A Study in Duplicity,” November 3, 2009, http://www.camera.org.
18. See, for example, NGO Monitor, “NGOS in Israel 101: Background to the Debate and FAQS,” November 15, 2011, http://www.ngo-monitor.org.
19. New York Sun, October 14, 2002.
20. John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007).
21. See Alex Safian, “The Fraudulent Scholarship of Professors Walt and Mearsheimer,” February 11, 2008, www.camera.org. Also, Tamar Sternthal, “Update/Correction: “Akiva Eldar, Mearsheimer's Righteous Jewish Source for Misinformation,” May 12, 2010, www.camera.org.
22. Martin Buber, “The National Home and National Policy in Palestine,” and “The Wailing Wall,” in A Land of Two Peoples: Martin Buber on Jews and Arabs, ed. Paul R. Mendes-Flohr (New York: Oxford, 1983), 82–91, 93–5.
23. Haaretz, November 16, 1939; cited in Yoram Hazony, The Jewish State (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 244.
24. See, for example, Gloria H. Falk, “Israeli Public Opinion: Looking Toward a Palestinian Solution,” Middle East Journal 39, no. 3 (Summer 1985): 247–69.
25. Benny Morris, One State, Two States: Resolving the Arab Israeli Conflict (New Haven, CT: Yale University, 2009).
26. Rafael Madoff, The Deafening Silence (New York: Shapolsky, 1987), 113.
27. Rafael Madoff, The Deafening Silence (New York: Shapolsky, 1987), 178.
28. Norman Podhoretz, Why Are Jews Liberal? (New York: Doubleday, 2009).
29. See, for example, Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab, Jews and the New American Scene (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1995), 152.
30. Rael Jean Isaac, “New Jewish Agenda,” in With Friends Like These: The Jewish Critics of Israel, ed. Edward Alexander (New York: S.P.I. Books, 1993), 187.
31. Rael Jean Isaac, “New Jewish Agenda,” in With Friends Like These: The Jewish Critics of Israel, ed. Edward Alexander (New York: S.P.I. Books, 1993), 174.
32. Amos Oz, “An End to Israel's Occupation Will Mean a Just War,” Observer, April 7, 2002. See also “What We Israelis Must Do to Bring Peace to Our Land,” Independent, April 18, 2002.
33. David Grossman, “Fictions Embraced by an Israel at War,” New York Times, October 1, 2002.
34. David Grossman, “Fictions Embraced by an Israel at War,” New York Times, October 1, 2002