From jeff salamon Sent Tue, Feb 10th 1998, 20:22
From jeff salamon Sent Tue, Feb 10th 1998, 20:22
Greg Clow wrote: > > Two nitpicks: > > (1) In the (admittedly very few) interviews I've read with Bryn Jones of > Muslimgauze, he has never referred to the Jewish people as a whole, only > to the Israelis. There's a difference. > > (2) Arabs and Jews are both Semites, so "anti-Semitic" is not an > appropriate term to use in reference to Jones and his politics. > > Simply, then, Jones is not anti-Semitic, and he is not anti-Jew. He's > pro-Palestine and anti-Israel. > i hate getting into all because i think the idm list is a piss-poor forum for talking about serious politics, but i can't let the above remarks stand. professing hatred for every single jew who lives in israel while tolerating jews who live elsewhere is a distinction without a difference. if someone said they wished every black person in america dead, would you so blithely respond that they're not racist because they're willing to leave the people in africa alone? being anti-israel is one thing (and i agree with much of the critique, if not all its particulars), but declaring worthless the lives of every single jewish citizen of the nation -- millions of them, from every corner of the globe, many of them refugees from arab countries who have more in common culturally with arabs than with american or european jews, some of them black, many of whom have devoted their lives to fighting the right-wing forces in israel, many of whom are survivors of the nazi's genocide -- saying that all these people can be grouped together as one indistinguishable mass who are legitimate targets for contmept and death, steps way over the line from radical political engagement to something that is distinguishable from racism only by pedantic nitpickers who are so impressed with their own hair-splitting ability that they can't think straight about much of anything except where they can go to pick up the latest boards of canada 12 inch. (imho, of course.) as for your sophistry about the term anti-semitism -- yes, arabs are semites, but the term "anti-semitism" has long been used as a term for hatred of jews (i don't know if it was a jew or a jew-hater who coined the term, and at this late date it's pretty irrelevant). if you've got a better term you'd like to try and work into the global discourse (anti-judaic?) i wish you luck in getting it adopted. meanwhile, we're stuck with that one, and since basically everyone knows how it's used, this controversy only comes up when a guilty party tries to dodge the charge of jew-hating by changing the subject. and by the way -- since modern biology has conclusively proved that blacks do not constitute a distinct, separate race (there are people in central africa who are genetically closer to scandinavians then they are to southern africans) i guess we can't call anyone a "racist" anymore either, can we? i look forward to seeing mr. clow's letter in my local paper complaining about a news story that describes aryan nation skinheads as "racist." just nitpicking, of course.