Friday, June 20, 2008
At Z-Word, there is a brief exchange between Ben Cohen and Antony Lerman on the subject.
Perhaps needless to say, I take Cohen's view in large part. The comments start interestingly enough, but quickly devolve into a common pattern, with one commenter casting the distraction concerning anti-Zionist Jews like the Satmar and the Neturei Karta. "Well," the argument goes, "would you say anti-Zionist Jews are anti-Semites...if not, then I myself cannot necessarily be called anti-Semitic either."
Of course, the first thing is that no one says anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are necessarily synonyms, it's just that they usually end up that way. Is it possible for a practicing Jew to be an anti-Semite? Are members of the Neturei Karta particularly, who are particularly vicious in their loathing of Jews who do not believe just exactly as they do (and who go far out of their way to display their venom), can an argument be plausibly made that the term "anti-Semite" applies to them? I think it can, but that's a distraction in this context.
The crux of the matter is, whatever reasons some highly religious Jews have for opposing Zionism, that cannot possibly be the same reason that the average -- generally far-leftist -- non-Orthodox Jew has for opposing the existence of a Jewish State. The people who use these Jews as ideological human shields to claim that they cannot possibly be anti-Semites are in engaging in the worst form of tokenism. They are in fact naked, without any protection at all. They do not share the Orthodox' reasons, cannot possibly do so, and under any other circumstance would distance themselves from such destructive anti-human religious extremists -- outside of this convenient use of their religiosity for cover and excuse.
In fact, I think a very good argument could be made that those who parade the NK as an alibi are providing a very good display of the hatred they are trying to hide within themselves, the dishonesty of their arguments, and showing the overlap of anti-S and anti-Z quite well indeed.