Wednesday, August 14, 2024

We're all antisemites now

Maybe you weren’t paying attention when Canada adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism in 2019. That’s when criticism of Israel officially became antisemitism. Needless to say, antisemitism has been on the uptick ever since! And it’s gone stratospheric since Israel embarked on its genocidal war on Gaza. In the beginning, we wanted to give Israel the benefit of the doubt. After all, every country has the right to defend itself. But after Bibi and Gallant announced their plans to deny food, water, and electricity to the entire Gaza population, well-meaning folks, otherwise warmly disposed to Israel, started having misgivings. After all, that smelled a lot like… genocide. Six months into this war of extermination, anti-genocide protests began to pop up on university campuses. Since it is technically impossible to criticize the genocide without implicitly criticizing the state carrying it out, all these anti-genocide protests were immediately labelled antisemitic, and the antisemitic anti-genocide protesters were dealt with ruthlessly. Never again! We are now ten months into Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Who in their right mind would not criticize Israel for its genocidal excesses? For ten months we’ve heard every school and every hospital in Gaza is a Hamas command post. Yet, after destroying every school and every hospital, Israel is further than ever from achieving its goals. Instead, it has destroyed its own credibility around the world. Many diaspora Jews are disgusted and enraged by what the Jewish supremacist cabal currently in charge is doing in their name. They protest. Everybody with a conscience is criticizing Israel. They’re all antisemites!

2 comments:

  1. I guess I was an antisemite before it was cool to be an antisemite, go figure.
    I remember the USS Liberty.

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  2. Touché! Jeremy Corbyn's opponents in the British Labour Party used the IHRA definition to bar him from running as a Labour candidate in the 2024 election. (He won his seat as an independent.) We need to stand with Neumann and condemn Israel's ongoing genocidal actions, recognizing the antisemitic charge for what it is in the current political climate.

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