Following my letter in last weekend’s Melbourne Sunday Age about the blog The Sensible Jew and parochial and bigoted Zionists, this letter is published today in response:
Antony Lowenstein subjects us to his usual wild and vicious diatribe against Israel and adds a call for a “campaign to boycott Israel” (Letters, 14/6). Sadly, one is no longer shocked by such anti-Israel statements. Anti-Zionism has become so widespread and “politically correct” and it is so extreme and so divorced from political and historic reality that one suspects that it masks even more dangerous and more ancient hatreds.
The call for a boycott of Israel is an indictment not only of Lowenstein’s political judgement — Israel is, after all, the only true democracy in the Middle East — but also of his commitment to democracy. Whatever happened to the idea that open and free debate, argument and counter-argument, are central and crucial to democratic discourse? Why would anyone call for a boycott of Israel when examples of regimes that really are awful abound? Does Lowenstein favour a boycott of China, Burma, Zimbabwe, Somalia, Iran, Sudan, Russia, North Korea?
Lowenstein would claim to be a progressive and clearly sees himself as the voice of progress. If his views do indeed represent progress and thus the future, I fear that there are dark days ahead for us all.
BILL ANDERSON, Surrey Hills
Even Nazi Germany had its defenders in the West, amongst the populace but especially in high places.
After all, Germany was a nation of substance and high culture, and the Eastern European and Balkan countries and cultures were of a lower order. Hitler’s desire to dominate their domains was part of the natural order of things. (Russia of course was not accorded the same status, being itself a nation of the lesser breeds.)
German Jewry was a ‘natural’ casualty of a larger inevitable project.
Bill Anderson is part of that glorious tradition of infamy, albeit on the rabid end of the spectrum.
The Zionist support squad however are probably distinguished from earlier versions of the Imperial arrogance tradition by having to camouflage their racism through the pervasive dependence on outright lies and the attendant abuse of language.
Palestinians are the new Jews, and Anderson is merely a gauleiter for the new master race.
It’s a sickness.
Actually, AL hasn’t singled out Israel. But what other unsavoury regime is the beneficiary of an army of foot soldiers who inundate the media with their undying devotion to Israel’s bloodlust? And if Israel is given carte blanche for the entrenchment of inhumanity as its raison d’être, can we then do other than not merely condone but actively support comparable practices by various juntas against their own populations?
It’s a sickness.
“…vicious diatribe against Israel”
…masks even more dangerous and more ancient hatreds
…fear that there are dark days ahead for us all.”
This appears to be standard boilerplate Zionist blather.
I’m an expert on this stuff, I’ve been reading it on and off for a few years now and can spot it a mile off.
The real giveaway is where, in the last sentence, the correspondent reveals that criticism of the current Israeli regime is not something for Israel to address, but rather, it is everyone else’s problem.
This type of blame shifting/veiled threat is a well established Zionist talking point.
“…He (Olmert) said Germany “may have economic interests (with Iran),
but you have much deeper and more fundamental moral obligations to
yourselves, your past and your future”.
“And no one will be able to avoid it, and get away with it. No-one…
12 Dec 2006″
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,453934,00.html
Antony, you should take this “vicious diatribe” as a compliment. You must be landing a few blows on the local lockstep monolith in this most lapdog of nations.