Pay Attention to Why This Praiseworthy Jewish Pro-Palestine Demonstrator Tries, But Totally Fails to Refute the Zionist Accusation that the Demonstrators Are 'Antisemitic in EFFECT'
Anti-Zionism LEADERS are to blame. Read why here.
Please watch this interview of a Jewish student, Jon Ben-Menachem, who is one of the pro-Palestine demonstrators at Columbia University. He very eloquently explains the entirely moral purpose of the demonstrators and also eloquently contrasts that with the shallow self-centered-ness of many of their Jewish critics who just don’t want to acknowledge the enormous immorality of Israel’s genocidal violence against Palestinians in Gaza.
Fine!
But here’s the BIG problem.
Ben-Menachem apparently does not realize that his attempt to refute the (false!) accusation of antisemitism that the Zionists use against the pro-Palestine demonstrators totally fails to PERSUASIVELY refute that accusation. Here’s why.
The antisemitism accusation goes like this:
“You pro-Palestine demonstrators are antisemites in EFFECT (not intent) because you are opposing what Israel does and must do to make Israeli Jews safe from antisemitic violence by Hamas. It doesn’t make any difference if you are Jewish or if you like Jews.”
The only way to persuasively refute this accusation is to show that Israeli violence against Palestinians is NOT in any way whatsoever for the purpose of making Jews safe. One must explain that in fact its real purpose is the opposite: to make of the Palestinians a bogeyman enemy that the billionaire rulers of Israel pretend to protect ordinary Israeli Jews from and thereby get away with severely economically oppressing the Israeli Jewish working class and getting rich off of them. (I prove this in my articles here and here and here.)
But Ben-Menachem does not say this. He says nothing even close.
What Ben-Menachem says to refute the “antisemitic in effect” accusation is that there are Jews among the pro-Palestine demonstrators and that they even conducted a very moving Jewish Passover Seder ceremony as part of the activities of the pro-Palestine students.
Ben-Menachem obviously thinks that this is a persuasive rebuttal of the “antisemitic in effect” accusation. Well, it is indeed a persuasive rebuttal of the “antisemitic in INTENT” accusation. But it is not at all a rebuttal to the “antisemitic in EFFECT” accusation, which is the MAIN Zionist accusation.
The Zionist argument (at least their MAIN argument) is not that the pro-Palestine demonstrators dislike Jews. The Zionist argument is that—for whatever reason, even if it has nothing at all to do with disliking Jews—the pro-Palestine demonstrators, INCLUDING THE MOST SINCERELY DEVOUT JEWS AMONG THEM, are demanding that Israel stop doing what it must do to protect Israeli Jews from antisemitic Hamas violence, and THIS demand is CLEARLY (say the Zionists) antisemitic in effect if not intent.
Because the anti-Zionism movement does not persuasively refute the Zionist accusation of “antisemitic in EFFECT,” that Zionist accusation wins over a substantial number of good and decent people to oppose the pro-Palestine demonstrators; it wins over people who know about the Holocaust and are—to their credit!—horrified by it and do not ever want to support the side that they believe is going against the Jews in effect if not intent.
If the public knew that Israel’s government for decades has been funding Hamas and working to keep it in power in order to keep the Palestinian bogeyman enemy maximally frightening so that Israeli working class Jews would be cowed into submission to the Israeli billionaires who severely economically oppress them, then the Zionist accusation of “antisemitic in effect” would no longer be persuasive. But Ben-Menachem apparently doesn’t even know this fact about Hamas, which I prove here.
Why do people like Ben-Menachem not understand this?
The reason is that the fact that the REAL purpose of Zionist violence against Palestinians is what I explain above—not to protect ordinary Israeli Jews but on the contrary to enable the billionaire ruling class of Israel to oppress the Israeli Jewish working class—is totally censored by both the U.S. and other ruling classes AND by the leaders of all the U.S. (Western) anti-Zionism organizations, as I show here.
Indeed the Jewish Voice for Peace organization—likely one that Ben-Menachem and/or many of the pro-Palestine Jewish student demonstrators belong to—expelled me from that organization (both from my local chapter and the national organization) as soon as I mentioned the real anti-working-class—including anti-Jewish-working-class—purpose of Zionist violence against Palestinians, as I report in detail here.