Hi. I intended sending you a listing of several interesting
and important events, happening next weekend. I just got
this double article, and it so fits in with the past few mailings
it acts as a coda. I'll send the calendar Monday or Tuesday.
Ed

Two tonight, from Judy Rebick and Justin Podur, the second reacting to the
first.

==================================

ZNet Commentary
Is anti-semitism an issue for the Left?
by Judy Rebick
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2003-01/03rebick.cfm

Last week end in Canada, a respected native leader and a former National
Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, David Ahenakew, gave a speech in
which he made racist attacks against a whole series of minorities in Canada.
Following the speech, he told a reporter that he thought Hitler was right to
"fry" the Jews since otherwise they would today be owning everything today.

Response from aboriginal and other community leaders was swift. A chorus of
denunciation was heard across the land. Nevertheless, the fact that a
well-respected elder of the aboriginal community would publicly support the
slaughter of six million Jews, something that not even Neo-Nazis have dared
to do, creates a familiar fear about the rise of anti-semitism.

I am the first generation of Canadian Jews not to experience discrimination
because of my religion. My father had to fight his way to school every day
against gangs of boys calling him dirty Jew. In his day, he used to tell me,
signs on Sunnyside beach on the Lakeshore in Toronto said, "No dogs or Jews
allowed."

McGill University, which I attended, lifted its quota limiting the
attendance of Jews just a few years before I began my degree. Nevertheless,
for me, being Jewish was never a barrier to what I wanted to do. Being a
woman was a much greater barrier.

I have experienced anti-Semitism, of course, but in the form of hatred, not
in the form of discrimination. During the intense struggle for freedom of
choice on abortion, the anti-Semitism of some of the anti-abortion forces
was intense. From cartoons of Dr. Henry Morgentaler looking like a Nazi
caricature of a Jew, to comments from drivers yelling at the Morgentaler
clinic, "Why don't you kill Jewish babies in there!"

There has been more discussion of anti-Semitism in Canada in the last month
than I can remember in my adult life. Earlier this month, three respected
men on the left accused the left of anti-Semitism. for its focus on
criticizing Israeli policy without simultaneously criticizing Arab
countries. At Concordia University, the Students' Union has been accused of
anti-Semitism for opposing a visit by far right-wing Israeli politician
Benjamin Netanyahu.

Even that tireless human rights fighter, NDP Member of Parliament Svend
Robinson has faced charges of anti-Semitism for his outspoken views on the
Middle East.

Anti-Semitism is a peculiar kind of ethnic hatred because it is not based on
thinking a group is inferior but rather based on resenting the achievements,
privileges or power, imagined or real, of an ethnic group. Hitler played on
those resentments to come to power in Germany and then took them further
than anyone could have imagined in their worst nightmares.

The horror of the Holocaust cleansed our society of anti-Semitism at the
official level but the simmering resentment of a group that is different,
that maintains its identity, that has been pilloried throughout history by
religious and political leaders remains. At times of political polarization,
it gets stronger.

A few months after the events of September 11, 2001, an airport taxi driver
was talking to me about his terrible working conditions and how the owner of
the taxi company was ripping him off. Then he said, "Of course, my boss is a
Jew."

"I am a Jew too," I said to him. "What does his being Jewish have to do with
his ripping you off? You know a lot of people think that all brown-skinned
men are terrorists."

"You are right," he answered. "I'm sorry. I am from India. What do I know
about Jews?"

I knew then that anti-Semitism was on the rise. If a taxi driver feels
comfortable talking to his customer like that, you know that there is a lot
of open anti-Semitic talk going on. Similarly with the vile remarks of
Ahenakew. Obviously, he has held these views for some time but now feels
able to express them publicly.

Jews in North America do not face discrimination. They are well represented
in the corridors of power whether political, economic or social. This is why
it is hard for people on the left who generally identify with those without
power in the society to identify with the struggle against anti-Semitism. It
is an abstraction.

But any kind of bigotry is immoral and unacceptable. Anti-Semitism has
always been a tool in the hands of reaction. The left has been on the front
lines of fighting neo-Nazis, but anti-Semitism can also take more subtle
forms and these too must be opposed, even when they come from an oppressed
group. The most terrible thing about the Ahenakew affair is that a
representative of the most oppressed, persecuted people in North America is
taking out his frustration on the Jews.

Sorting out the real rise in anti-Semitism from the false charges is not
easy. As a Jew who opposes the cruel occupation of the Palestinian
territories by Israel, I do not believe for a minute that the opposition of
much of the left to Israel is based in anti-Semitism. But I do understand
why many Jews perceive it that way.

The story of the Holocaust that every Jew knows so well is that the German
Jews were the most integrated in their society. They felt safe when the
Nazis began to gain support. These brown-shirt thugs were at first almost
laughable. We've learned that lesson -- any sign of anti-Semitism has to be
stopped before it spreads. On this I agree.

The problem is that the Israeli leadership has skilfully woven the myth that
opposing their policies is opposing the Jewish people, that criticism of
Israel is, in and of itself, anti-Semitic. It is my view that Israel's
actions in the West Bank and the Gaza strip are a betrayal of the history of
the Jewish people. I speak out against them because I cannot accept that my
people, who have been so persecuted over centuries can persecute another
people.

Hopefully, the selection of a Labour Party leader who is against the
occupation will give a higher profile to the critics within Israel and thus
give lie to the idea that criticism of Israel is anti-Semitism.

Discussion of the rise of anti-Semitism today without talking about the even
more serious rise of racism, particularly against Muslims and Arabs after
September 11 feeds into the unwillingness of the left to take anti-Semitism
seriously.

Hopefully, critics of Israeli policy inside the Jewish community will find
more courage to speak out despite the intense pressure not to do so. One
impact of the rise of anti-Semitism in the society is for Jewish communities
to close ranks against any and all opposition. This is the worse response we
could possibly have. Tribalism feeds bigotry.

Jews who oppose Israel's persecution of the Palestinian people must speak
out, as must Muslims and Arabs who oppose suicide bombers. It is not easy in
either case, but if we are going to find a way to work together across
difference, those of us on the left have to break with those in our own
communities who are promoting violence and hatred.

As George Erasmus President of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation and himself
a former Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, so eloquently put it in his
letter to the editor in the Globe and Mailrecently.

"It is my hope that the people respond to the spirit of hate, wherever it
appears, by renewing their commitment to the long and difficult task of
healing and reconciliation. We have seen, endured and overcome much. But
when the minds and spirits of our own peoples are conquered, we are lost."



Judy Rebick is the publisher of www.rabble.ca, where this article first
appeared.





ZNet Commentary
Anti-Semitism And Anti-Colonialism
by Justin Podur
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2003-01/04podur.cfm

When Judy Rebick, in her recent Znet Commentary ("Is anti-semitism an
issue for the left?") told this story:

"My father had to fight his way to school every day against gangs of
boys calling him dirty Jew. In his day, he used to tell me, signs on
Sunnyside beach on the Lakeshore in Toronto said, "No dogs or Jews
allowed.""

I couldn't help but remember the signs that I had heard of that were up
in colonial India saying 'No dogs or Hindus allowed', or in
Japanese-occupied Shanghai that said 'No dogs or Chinese allowed'. And
since Judy's piece was prompted by the words of David Ahenakew, an
indigenous man, it seems fitting to mention that around the Sun Peaks
resort in British Colombia, Canada, the site of a bitter struggle
between a multinational resort corporation and the Secwempec indigenous
who that corporation is trying to displace, there are reports of signs
that say 'No Indians allowed by order of the BC government'.

The Holocaust was the most horrific event in a long, continuous history
of European anti-semitism. In the rules of that anti-semitism, Jews
were confined to ghettos. They were not allowed to farm or own land.
They were restricted to a small number of occupations, one of which was
moneylending (which also happened to be taboo to Christians) and then
resented for it, and periodically dispossessed when those they had
loaned money were wealthy and powerful. Whenever Europe got ready to go
on Crusade, against external infidels in the Muslim world, the Jewish
ghettos would be the first to suffer pogroms, riots, and massacres.
After the last kingdom in Muslim Spain-- where Muslims, Jews, and
Christians had coexisted-was conquered by Europe in 1492, Muslims and
Jews were given the option of conversion to Christianity or expulsion.
Many chose to convert so they could keep their lands-but the Holy
Inquisition was founded to root out those converts who were secretly
still practicing Islam or Judaism, burn them at the stake, and, of
course, take their land.

This is all Europe's history, the story of Europe's cruelty to Jews whom
white supremacy has always seen as a foreign enemy no better-and it is
important to emphasize this-no better than any of the other black and
brown peoples of the world.

European colonialism is responsible for holocausts all over the third
world. Belgium's King Leopold ruled over the deaths of perhaps 10
million in the Congo in the late 19th century. English colonialism
presided over the deaths of tens of millions to famines in India. The
European slave trade killed untold millions over centuries in the Black
Holocaust. The genocidal European conquest of the Americas killed tens
of millions of indigenous-and was the model on which Hitler explicitly
based his conquests.

The point in all this is that anti-semitism is part of a larger story of
racism and white supremacy that spans the entire globe and a history of
centuries. That racism is interwoven through the history of
governments, economies, and societies. If anti-semitism is peculiar, it
isn't because, as Judy argues, 'it is not based on thinking a group is
inferior but rather based on resenting the achievements, privileges or
power, imagined or real, of an ethnic group.' This is true of racism
against the Asian 'model minority' as well.

Anti-semitism is instead peculiar, and poorly understood, because Jews
are in some contexts treated to all the hatred that racism has to offer,
and in other contexts become simply Europeans.

When Palestinians resist Israel's occupation of their lands and Israel's
ethnic cleansing, they are following a certain history, acting in a
certain tradition. But this isn't the history of European
anti-semitism. It is, instead, the history of struggle of colonized and
oppressed people against European colonialism-of Algerians against the
French occupation, or the North American indigenous against the
colonists. For people who have suffered from colonialism, how could it
not be confusing when Jews, who so recently suffered from racist
oppression themselves, become the implementers of racist, colonial
policies?

But this is how racism works. For some of its victims, sometimes, it
offers this deal: help us oppress those below you, and you can rise.
Asian immigrants to North America know this deal well. We get to be
'model minorities', so long as we don't join Black, indigenous, Latino
struggles for justice. Just in case we forget our place, hatred and
resentment can always be nursed, and stirred to violence-the occasional
hate crime is enough to make sure we remember.

And Zionism, for its part, is not an ideology of liberation for a
colonized people. It is, instead, the ideology of a colonizer.
Dissident Jews like Norman Finkelstein and Tim Wise point out that it is
a white supremacist ideology, springing right out of colonial
Europe-like anti-Semitism did.

Judy Rebick says "The most terrible thing about the Ahenakew affair is
that a representative of the most oppressed, persecuted people in North
America is taking out his frustration on the Jews." The same is true,
in a sense, about Israel. The most terrible thing about Israel's
ongoing ethnic cleansing in Palestine is that a people historically
oppressed and persecuted by white supremacy and colonialism is today
aggressively colonizing a people that has shared much of its suffering
over the centuries.

But to talk about Israel's policies without talking about the US's
active support, and sometimes design, of these policies, is a mistake.
Israel has been encouraged to do what it has done in the Middle East
because it has served the agenda of the US. To frame the issue in terms
of Jews and anti-semitism is to blind oneself to the reality that Israel
is acting as part of the larger project of imperialism and control over
the region. Both incidents of anti-semitism Judy describes in her
commentary-the Ahenakew affair and the Indian cab driver-occurred for
analogous reasons: people oppressed and discriminated against see a
'Jewish conspiracy' where there is instead white supremacy, racism, and
imperialism, and fail to see that the centers of power are elsewhere.

Anti-colonial struggles are at their best when the colonized understand
what they are really facing, find each other, struggle together, and
find and build solidarity. Judy herself is consistently critical of
Israel's
policies: "It is my view that Israel's actions in the West Bank and the
Gaza strip are a betrayal of the history of the Jewish people. I speak
out against them because I cannot accept that my people, who have been
so
persecuted over centuries can persecute another people." Since
anti-semitism, racism, and zionism spring from the same root, all are
welcome to the struggle against all three