Anti-Zionism IS antisemitism!
Stop conflating your bullying with the truth.
This fortnight is Anti-Zionism is Antisemitism fortnight, a collaboration between Moral Clarity and Daniel Clarke-Serret’s Guerre and Shalom Substack (do subscribe).
Today is the MAIN EVENT. In an exclusive polemic for Moral Clarity, Daniel argues that Anti-Zionism IS antisemitism, and directs his ire at those who doubt it. It is powerful read so strap in.
This follows Daniel’s photo essay in Part 1 about good and evil, his fascinating essay in Part 2 about what antisemitism is, and my own piece in Part 3 about the importance of understanding that Judaism is different to other religions.
So, without further ado, here it is.
“Antisemitism IS Antisemitism!” by Daniel Clarke-Serret
[Image: October EIGHTH 2023, London]
It's been a long time coming, but now I'm ready to call it; anti-Zionism IS anti-Semitism. Of course criticism of the Israeli government is justified. I should know. I'm highly critical of it and do so regularly in my Substack writings.
What isn't justified is to only criticize Israel. If, when faced with a multiplicity of world conflicts, you only turn your attention to the Jewish state and you only spew your bile against the Jewish state and you do so not only once, but decade after decade, then what other conclusion can be drawn than that you have an anti- Israel obsession?
If it were restricted to mere words, then perhaps the charitable could forgive it, but it goes far beyond words and into dangerous actions:
How many of you would protest outside Muslim institutions because of the actions of the entire Islamic world in not respecting human rights?
How many of you would boycott Saudi students or Iranian students or Yemenite students or Syrian students?
How many of you would arrange annual anti-apartheid weeks based on the treatment of Arab governments and peoples towards minorities and their women?
How many of you would shut down University campuses on the basis of a Sudanese starvation brought about, lest we forget, by an Arab Muslim government?
How many of you would boycott China based on its mysterious concentration camps filled with Muslims that no Muslim gives a damn about?
And how many of you would justify two years worth of negative headlines on your national broadcaster based on the actions of the Nigerian government against Boko Haram?
We need not answer these questions; they are rhetorical. The fact is that you only care about Israel and you only feign interest in the Palestinians because you care about bashing Israel. Your humanitarian compassion regarding the Congo, Sudan, Xinjiang, Yemen, Syria and Afghanistan has been absolutely overwhelming.
[Image: Antisemitism with a smile.]
Now, of course, you would argue that “we fund Israel” . Well perhaps Israel should stop supplying you with weapons too, so that you can be even more insipid in your fight against Islamist terrorism? Perhaps Israel should stop buying weapons from American arms suppliers and start producing all of its own?
But even if we were to buy into this nonsensical argument, it is undermined by your hypocritical application of its tenets. Did the West not fund Saudi Arabia in its absolute annihilation of Yemen, that which caused mass starvation and mass suffering? Where were your protests then? Where were your calls for boycott and your inane flotillas?
Or how about closer to home? How about the wars funded by the West in which the West participated?
How many of you went on the streets when America and Britain bombed Yemen recently?
Can any of you name the casualty figures?
Can any of you name how many women and children died?
Have any of you quoted the Houthi Health Ministry for accurate statistical analysis?
No, of course not. You don't give a damn about Yemenis and you don’t give a damn about dead children, whether brought about by America or Britain, by Western supplied arms or those from China. All that gives meaning to your pathetic lives is bashing the world's only Jewish state which every second of every minute of every day is fighting for its right to be.
Your two-faced hypocrisy has always been ever so evident, but since October the 7th you have excelled yourselves. Not content merely with supporting a death cult over a democracy, you’ve described Israel's actions, the most humane in modern history on a combatant-civilian death count basis, as genocide. A more pathetic, blatant, evil lie one could not hope to tell, yet you have done so repeatedly and with ever increasing ardour.
Frankly it is incredible that you're able to lie with such nonchalance.
Never in human history has there been a genocide where the population is bigger after the event than before.
Never in human history has a nation accused of genocide set up a terrorist-free aid mechanism to feed the enemy population.
Never in human history have the unjustly accused done everything in their power to reduce civilian casualties despite the overwhelming desire of the international community to keep civilians trapped in a densely-packed war zone.
And never in human history has a political entity, run by an elected terrorist organization, done everything in its power to cause the utter destruction of its own people - including by building an enormous tunnel infrastructure under a built-up area in which only their own genocidal fighters may dwell - yet not be held even remotely to account by the most influential in our world. Instead, it is those who have been invaded, mutilated, raped and kidnapped who are to be scapegoated in the manner of a Levitical sheep.
It is so, so disgusting but so, so predictable. And the reason is clear: you are vile antisemites. You're a bunch of horrific bullies, up to your necks in crime and corruption, so you diverted the world’s attention by placing your sin on one outsider nation: the same nation on which you've always placed the blame.
[Image: Paris synagogue attacked by “pro-Judaism” Palestine activists.]
“Oh how dare you conflate,” you indignantly cry. “ Judaism is separate from Zionism!” Now quite how you are experts in Judaism the mind boggles, but it’s not an issue into which we need delve too deeply. After all, it’s you who are protesting outside synagogues and intimidating Jewish students. It is you who are ensuring that your London hate parades run close to vulnerable synagogues.
If it weren’t the Jews who were under threat, why are Jewish places of worship being graffitied in Paris?
Why are elderly men being beaten up on the streets of New York?
Why are our co-religionists being murdered for daring to frequent the promenades of Washington?
But, most of all, why are Jews being forced to undergo a loyalty test? Why are we being asked to denounce the only Jewish country in the world, all the while lending our backing to a dictatorial, theocratic, homophobic, racist and sexist terrorist-run entity where female apartheid is a way of life?
Only if we loudly and proudly lend our signature to the “Free Palestine”, intifada-globalizing, cult will you allow us a stay of execution. If your beef were just with Israel and not with the Jews, then why not allow my diaspora co-religionists to simply have no opinion at all on the issue. Why do you insist that we pronounce our complete rejection of our own people before your lust for complete submission is satiated?
You didn't ask the Chinese to denounce their Orwellian government and rightly so. You didn’t ask a billion Muslims to disown Saudi Arabia (or Iran or Pakistan or Afghanistan or…) and quite right too. Yet uniquely of all the peoples of the world, the Jews are held responsible for the policies of a foreign government in which we have no democratic say.
Now as it happens, the actions of Israel are infinitely more moral than all the countries just listed, but that isn't the point. If there really were a separation between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism you wouldn't hold one standard for the Jews and another for the rest.
I am not saying that Israel is perfect and I am certainly not saying that the current administration is (though it is by many multiples far preferable to the two governments on the other side). What we're saying instead is that you’re playground bullies. Guilty of precisely the same as Israel at best and far, far worse in reality, you place all the problems of the world on our tiny shoulders.
I am a teacher and I know bullying when I see it. It's disgusting. When you war criminals and genocidaires sit proudly on United Nations Human Rights Councils to pronounce on the guilt of the victim, your actions can only be classified in one way: pure antisemitism.
Let us be plain. You, the long-settled peoples of the world, have always hated the nomads. You've always hated the people without a home. You don't even have a tear to wipe away when the Yazidis are slaughtered or the Cantonese are overrun by the Mandarin foe. That Kurds have no home is a matter of complete indifference to you and that African minorities face hell is something you've long ignored. So when a nomad people, the Jews, finally achieve statehood, it’s something you cannot accept. It contradicts nature. It offends the way of the world.
Self-determination is the international principle that settled peoples have self-determination. And only them. To be sure your minorities have rights - at least in theory, at least in the liberal democratic West, almost only in the liberal democratic West - yet these are civil rights alone. The nomadic minority has no real say; their vote a necessary sop to affirm the right of the settled majority to rule.
It is more than justified that nomads have a home to grow, to self-determine, to legislate and to be safe. Yet you, the settled of the globe, deny the nomadic the right to call somewhere home in the fullest sense.
Zionism is the flag of the nomad, both of the Jews and of those who are less fortunate. The banner of blue and white gives hope to all minority peoples; that the current Christian-Muslim, English-Spanish-French-Arabic cartel on self-determination can be defied. That all peoples have a right to dignity.
You ask what Judaism is. I’ll tell you plain. It doesn’t exist. Judaism is a European, Christian label to describe a Hebrew phenomenon. What you call Judaism is the survival kit of exile; that which the Hebrew exiles used to maintain their peoplehood in foreign climes.
The synagogue is the model of the Temple that used to stand in our capital. Our festivals are a retrospective of the days when we used to plough the Land of Ancient Israel. Our stories are tales from the Middle Eastern desert.
We pray daily for our restitution to our ancient land. Judaism is an exercise in nostalgia for the State we used to have and an ardent prayer for the State that we wanted to reclaim. Now we have it. Which is why Zionism is Judaism. Zionism is real self-determination fulfilled.
None of this is to say that a Jew must be a Zionist. It is entirely legitimate for a Jew to favour assimilation over return. It is entirely legitimate for a Jew to practise a symbolic Judaism in exile. It is even legitimate for a Jew to utterly renounce their nation in favor of another. This is why our European ancestors fought so hard for emancipation and equality.
But here's the rub: you didn't let us. We tried to be more German than the Germans and you exterminated us. We try to be more American than the Americans and you insist not only that we renounce our ancient nation but that we denounce it. It is all very well saying that we should be satisfied with exile given the equality it promises to bring, but that supposes that we are in fact treated equally.
When we are asked to pass loyalty tests; where we are asked to have an opinion on a foreign conflict; where we are forced to have an opinion just to protect our very safety, then the promise of emancipation has failed.
With every firebombing of our synagogues and every security guard posted outside our schools, it is you that makes the case for Zionism ever more loudly. Judaism is Zionism, but even if it weren't, you have given us no alternative.
[Image: Peter Tatchell showing how to be a decent, non-hypocritical, left-wing activist.]
What to me would be an example of a fiercely anti-Israel, but Jew-friendly, protestor? I'll tell you: Peter Thatchell. Peter is a left-wing activist whose positions on this Gaza War are very much the reverse of my own. His use of the Great Genocide Lie is to be condemned in the strongest possible of terms. But, nonetheless, he is clearly not antisemitic and the reason can be stated plainly: he criticizes the actions of all governments everywhere.
In acts of incredible bravery, he has attempted a citizen’s arrest of Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe and mounted a protest in Central Moscow against Putin’s anti-gay legislation. He fiercely criticizes Israel, but he also launches devastating assaults on Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. He exposes uncomfortable facts about the terrorist government of Gaza: it’s a dictatorship, it abuses human rights, it tortures prisoners and it murders opponents.
Unlike almost every other long-term critic of Israel, he is equally unequivocal in his condemnation of the October 7th atrocities and is genuine in his call for the release of the hostages. Of course I believe that some of his criticism of Israel is misplaced, but of hypocrisy, he has none. Year after year, this fearless campaigner has put his life on the line to fight against all the evils of the world.
Peter proves that it is possible to criticize the Israeli Government, no holds barred, but nonetheless be entirely free from the stain of antisemitism. Yet Peter is the very lonely exception that proves the rule of hypocritical evil in our world. Peter shows what’s possible but not what happens. His mention in this article is testimony to his utter uniqueness in the world of political activism.
If you decide to follow Peter Tatchell’s lead, I will continue to pillory you for spreading the Great Genocide Lie, yet your intentions will never be placed in question. Unfortunately, you won’t be doing so. For you kicked Peter out of your Gaza march for impurity and thereby showed the nefariousness of your intentions.
So let me be clear:
You can criticise Israel, so long as you criticise other nations too with just as much ferocity and regularity.
You can criticise Zionism, so long as you reject the entire principle of self-determination including that you claim for the Palestinians.
You can criticise the movement of populations in 1948, so long as you criticise the movement of populations in 1945, 1946 and 1947 throughout the world.
Put simply: You can be Peter Tatchell, but you may not be Jeremy Corbyn.
To single out Israel alone is bullying writ large. It is the hatred that ultimately led to the Holocaust. It is the hatred, the oldest hatred, that has plagued the Jews for thousands of years.
Until you change your ways, I say this in a loud voice and without regret:
Anti-Zionism is antisemitism.
You are antisemitic.
Thank YOU.
Fabulous