Shimon Peres, Anti-Semitism and Freedom of Speech

Is Israeli President Shimon Peres stupid, senile, arrogant or insensitive? In the Tablet interview given last week to an Israeli journalist, Israel’s President stated categorically that there is an “anti-Semitism” element involved in policymaking by the British Establishment. However, as Israel’s President should know, the term “anti-Semitic” is a non-entity, a misnomer, an expression used and abused by pathologically sensitive elements in the Israeli establishment.

Photo: Shimon Peres, Anti-Semitism and Freedom of Speech

By definition, as Shimon Peres should know, a Semite is a person who speaks a Semitic language, including Amharic, Arabic, Aramaic, Hebrew, Phoenician and Tigre. So the term “anti-Semitic” is per se, nonsense, an idiotic phrase coined by those who wish to capitalise on a feeling of collective guilt or collective blame, gaining points at the expense of history’s pogroms against the Jews.

By definition, as Shimon Peres should know, the term “anti-Semitic” would mean “one who is against speakers of Hebrew (Jews) and Arabic (Arabs), etc”. As Shimon Peres should know, the term makes as much sense as saying that a person is anti-Celtic, anti-Indigenous or anti-Russian.

What Shimon Peres meant, and was unable to express, was something entirely different, yet what Shimon Peres said, and also meant, was something sinister, foolhardy, wrong and presses the finger in the wound which fuels anti-Jewish sentiments in a growing number of communities around the world.

To begin with, the Jewish lobby has managed to hijack the term “anti-Semitism” and uses it in knee-jerk pathologically defensive stances on any statement or policy remotely antagonistic to the Zionist realpolitik.

Let us then separate the wheat from the chaff. And the chaff includes arrogant attempts at self-justification from Peres, claiming that the Israelis had to endure thousands of missiles fired into their territory by “terrorists”, while trying to be “democratic”.

While nobody civilized supports terrorist acts against civilians in any way, shape or form, while any act of violence is unjustified, this goes for Israelis as well as Palestinians. If Palestinian radical groups fire missiles into Israel, why is it? Because Israel gave them territory?

Or because Israel stole their territory in the past, and continues to steal their territory all the time today setting up illegal colonies, against each and every fibre of international law, forcing Palestinians from their homes and their lands?

The bottom line is that it is the actions of the Governments of the State of Israel which fuel most of the racist acts described as “anti-Semitism”. It matters not which party holds a majority in the Knesset, for the policies have largely been the same: maintaining the territories illegally occupied outside the original 1948 frontiers of the State of Israel, expanding the colonies in the West Bank and then claiming that the pull-out from Gaza was a wonderful exercise in international relations. What were they doing there in the first place?

This does not mean that desecration of Israeli cemeteries with Swastikas is acceptable, it does not mean that attacks on Synagogues are acceptable, it does not mean that any attack on any human being based on his race, colour or Creed is acceptable, whatever it may be. Anti-“Semitism” is no more or less than racism, which in itself is a puerile, primary reaction from people with little or no instruction, a very nasty temperament, negative values in terms of IQ and Emotional Intelligence and an extremely deficient quotient in terms of human relations and relationships. Let us remember the Negro Holocaust, Slavery, which was even more devastating than the Jewish Holocaust, having affected 70 million persons and not six. Yet who talks about it in the same terms?

It also does not mean that all Israelis (those who live in Israel, including Arabs) and Jews (those who follow Judaism, and this is not one single race) are responsible for the policies emanating from the Parliament, or Knesset and it certainly does not mean that all Israelis or Jews practise anti-Palestinian acts: many work as volunteers to uphold their rights.

These however do not find themselves in the pages of a largely anti-Israeli Press, while the puppet-masters who control it are in turn largely pro-Israeli Establishment.

The bottom line is that international law exists, and if this works for Israel and the Israelis then it works for Palestine and the Palestinians and Iran and the Iranians as well. If the AIEA is so concerned about Iran’s nuclear capacity, where is the inspection of Israel’s nuclear facilities? And if Israel can have nuclear warheads, then why cannot Iran?

If Palestinians cannot launch attacks against those who stole their territory, then why should Israelis have the right to force people off their ancestral homes, and steal them?

Claims that accusations such as these are anti-Semitism are totally and utterly unfounded, wrong, insulting, libellous and are Fascist attempts at clamping down on the basic right of Freedom of Speech. Indeed, many of those who criticise Israel’s foreign policy are upholders of peace and freedom and brotherly relations among peoples and are as much engaged in the well-being of Israelis as they are of the Palestinians.

To end with a constructive suggestion and to prove that articles such as these are not just mud-slinging, suppose Israel pulled back to the 1948 frontiers (after all this is only their obligation under international law in return for universal and unconditional recognition, also its right under the same), suppose Israel paid a rent for the lands occupied illegally until a phased pull-out was organized, suppose this money went towards strengthening the Palestinian institutions and towards networking, creating cultural bonds between the two neighbours and suppose Jerusalem were declared an international city, hosting the UN HQ where a permanent world EXPO for all nations to share their cultures, in peace, were set up?

Is this anti-“Semitic”?

Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY

PRAVDA.Ru