ZIONISTS, BACKERS MISUSING ANTI-SEMITISM LABEL
The label has lost its original meaning and impact
HISTORY was made in the US in November 2018, when two Muslim women were elected for the first time into Congress — Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, both Democrats.
When Somali-American Ilhan tweeted about the influence of the powerful Israel lobby, she was accused of being anti-Semitic and she had to apologise due to pressure from her party leaders. But she maintained her stand about the problematic role of lobbyists in US politics.
Her Muslim colleague Rashida Tlaib, the first ever PalestinianAmerican congresswoman who proudly paid homage to her heritage by wearing a traditional Palestinian thobe for her swearing-in ceremony, put “Palestine” on a piece of paper to attach to the world map in her office, covering Israel.
She said that she intended to shake up Congress about the suffering of the Palestinian people and rein in the US’ “most proIsrael” president in history, Donald Trump.
As expected, she was accused of being anti-Semitic, especially for her support for the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.
“Calling out the oppressive policies in Israel, advocating for Palestinians to be respected, and for Israelis and Palestinians alike to have peace and freedom is not anti-Semitic,” she tweeted in December 2018.
“We all have a right to speak up about injustice any and everywhere.”
When Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad recently slammed the Australian government for recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and following the US government’s lead, he was, as expected, accused of being anti-Semitic.
I first wrote about “antiSemitism” in a local daily on Oct 29, 2003 to defend Dr Mahathir’s famous speech at the closing of the 10th OIC Summit in Putrajaya on Oct 17 the same year, just before he retired as prime minister.
His speech, which evoked a storm from the Western media accusing him of being anti-Semitic, was about the powerful influence of the Jewish lobby in the West. He also urged Muslims to be united, move away from senseless violence and focus on being smart and effective while striving for real peace based on justice.
So, what really is “antiSemitism”?
The Semites are people who descended from ancient times in West Asia, Middle East and Africa and they included the Jews, Arabs and several others. Anti-Jewish attacks, exclusively by racist whites, started in the West, especially in Europe before World War 2, when the Jews were perceived to be a “threat to society”, especially in Germany.
After the war, the term “antiSemitism” was used by certain influential Jewish groups with an agenda to justify the forced formation of the state of Israel. The term has been used to refer to anything they perceived as antiJewish and more recently, for taking a stand against Zionism.
True, there are still xenophobic feelings and racist attacks against the Jews today by white supremacists and extreme rightwing groups in the West. Such attacks are indefensible and should be opposed by all sane and decent people.
Zionism, as opposed to Judaism as a mono-theist religion, is more a modern-day racist and fascist ideology based on the socalled supremacy of the Jewish faith. The ideology is not much different from Nazism, whose leaders exterminated six million Jews during World War 2.
The Zionists believe that they have the God-given right to violently and cruelly expel the Palestinian people, who played no role in the extermination of Jews, from their homeland (when they have been living in Palestine for thousands of years), treat those who stayed back as second-class citizens in an Apartheid-like state and to continue going around today to grab or annex land from the Palestinian people in the occupied West Bank against the condemnations of the international community but with the tacit support of the US.
All Zionists are Jews but not all Jews are Zionists.
There are many prominent Jews who are opposed to Zionism and they include Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, Isaac Asimov, Erich Fromm, Noam Chomsky, Hannah Arendt, Richard Falk and the list is endless. Can these highly distinguished Jews be accused of being anti-Semitic for opposing Zionism and Israel?
Israel and the pro-Zionist lobby in the West seem to have a deliberate agenda of labelling anything that is opposed to Zionism as anti-Semitic. It is like accusing anyone who is opposed to Nazism as being anti-German. All Nazis were Germans but not all Germans were Nazis.
This “anti-Semitic” label has become so misused and overused by the Zionists and their backers that it has lost its original impact and meaning when it was used, rightly then, to oppose and condemn the real attacks against the Jews.
Oppressors never learn and the Zionists, with the power and influence they have, think that they can do anything they like and get away with it. History has shown that the world would never accept oppression and injustices of any kind. Change for the better will happen sooner or later.
Israel and the pro-Zionist lobby in the West seem to have a deliberate agenda of labelling anything that is opposed to Zionism as anti-Semitic.
The writer is a socio-political analyst on local and global issues. He is also the chief executive officer of a large Asian peace and culture tourism project in Kuala Lumpur