Mr. Netanyahu, you and yours are responsible for the “demonization” of  Israel

By Alan Hart/ STAFF WRITTER

When Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America recently, he was relaxed, charming and at his deluded best. For Jewish audiences which don’t want to know the truth of history, there’s nobody who can deliver Zionism’s propaganda lines and lies more effectively than him. (Though he didn’t say so, he was obviously delighted that President Obama had taken a hammering in the mid-term elections).

I could take issue with Netanyahu on many of his mad assertions but on this occasion I will settle for challenging just one of them.

At a point he was quite (not completely) fulsome in his praise for Theodore Herzl, who is generally regarded as the founding father of Zionism’s colonial enterprise. Herzl, Netanyahu said, was right about many things. “He was right about the conflagration that would soon engulf Europe and right about the need for a Jewish state and for a Jewish army to defend that state.”

What Netanyahu didn’t say is that before he came up with the idea of a Jewish state, actually in places other than Palestine, Herzl believed that the only way for the problem of anti-Semitism  to be solved was by Jews converting to Christianity. As his complete and uncensored dairies reveal, Herzl put a great deal of effort into advocating such a course of action and trying and failing to make it happen.

Netanyahu went on (my emphasis added):

“Yet Herzl was too optimistic in believing that the rebirth of the Jewish state would gradually put an end to anti-Semitism.

“The establishment of Israel did not end the hatred towards the Jews. It merely redirected it. The old hatred against the Jewish people is now focused against the Jewish state… Today in many quarters Israel is demonized, singled out and denied the rights automatically granted to other nations, first and foremost the right of self-defense.”

My first point of challenge is this. After the obscenity of the Nazi holocaust, and because of it, the giant of anti-Semitism would most likely have gone back to sleep, remained asleep and, most probably, died in its sleep if – IF Zionism had not been allowed by the major powers to have its way, ethnic cleansing and all.

My second and related point of challenge is this. What we are witnessing in the world today is not anti-Semitism re-directed but a gathering, global manifestation of anti-Israelism.

This is happening because of the Zionist (not Jewish) state’s arrogance of power, including its resort from time to time to state terrorism; its contempt for, and defiance of, international law and a host of UN Security Council resolutions; and its insufferable self-righteousness.

Simply stated, the more the peoples of nations (if not their governments) become aware of Israel’s racist policies and criminal actions, and that its leaders are not interested in peace on terms the vast majority of Palestinians and most other Arabs and Muslims could just about accept, the more anti-Israelism will continue to grow.

Implicitly Netanyahu was saying to his audience – he didn’t need to be explicit – that if American Jews do not support without question whatever Israel does, there is a danger that it will not be capable of becoming the refuge of last resort for all the Jews of the world when it turns against them.

The truth and the tragedy in the making is the opposite of what Netanyahu was implying. The only way for American and European Jews to best protect their own interests is by distancing themselves from Zionism’s monster child.

In an article for The Financial Times on 7 December 2009, the late Tony Judy put it this way:

“If the Jews of Europe and North America took their distance from Israel, the assertion that Israel was ‘their’ state would take on an absurd air. Over time, even Washington might come to see the futility of attaching American foreign policy to the delusions of one small Middle Eastern state. This, I believe, is the best thing that could possibly happen to Israel itself. It would be obliged to acknowledge its limits. It would have to make other friends, preferably among its neighbours.”

In the Epilogue to Volume Three of the American edition of my book, ZIONISM: THE REAL ENEMY OF THE JEWS, sub-titled Conflict Without End?, I speculate that an  Israel that was obliged by the Jews of the world to acknowledge its limits might also be an Israel that was prepared to listen to the wise words of one of its own – Avraham Burg. Between 1999 and 2003 he was the speaker of the Knesset. By the end of his term in that office he was a leading advocate of the idea that Israel and a viable Palestinian state could coexist in peace. In August 2003 he wrote a most remarkable essay which was published in its original Hebrew by Yediot Aharonot and subsequently newspapers in Europe and America.

His lead point was that Israel had to “shed its illusions” and choose between “racist oppression and democracy.” The Jewish people, he wrote, “did not survive for two millennia in order to pioneer new weaponry, computer security programmes or anti-missile missiles. We were supposed to be a light unto nations. In this we have failed.”

My own guess is that Netanyahu’s biggest fear is that America’s Jews  might be on their way to understanding that support for Israel right or wrong is not in their own best interests. There is some evidence to suggest that might, repeat might, be so. If it is, perhaps there is some reason to hope that the countdown to Armageddon can be stopped before it is too late.

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Alan Hart

Alan Hart is a former ITN and BBC Panorama foreign correspondent who has covered wars and conflicts wherever they were taking place in the world and specialized in the Middle East. His Latest book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, Vol. 1: The False Messiah, is a three-volume epic in its American edition. He blogs on AlanHart.com.