Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By simmons on April 8, 2017

The real problem is the tone of Ken Livingstone when giving this interpretation. Photograph: Lauren Hurley/PA

So Ken A lot of people predominantly the good people, of course, of the British left have been tweeting to tell me that Ken just stated a fact. Here is the problem with what Livingstone said. Because Ken Livingstone did not state a fact.

The statement Hitler supported Zionism is not a fact. Its an interpretation. An interpretation of a particular historical moment, in the 1930s, when the forced emigration of Jews from Germany was pushed further along by various Nazi economic incentives allowing those who fled to Palestine to get some of their stolen assets back.

That is not Adolf Hitler supporting the idea of a Jewish state (even writing that sentence looks ridiculous). It is the Nazis taking advantage of the terror and despair of fleeing refugees to get more of them to leave the country. It is just the thin edge of the wedge of Nazi horror.

The real problem, in a way, is the tone of Livingstone when giving this interpretation. Theres no sympathy. No compassion no sense of the tragedy behind this. Its just complacently presented as a deal that Hitler made with German Zionists, and therefore and this, of course, is the point, the banal, shit point a way of confirming that Zionism is bad. Through an association with the top bad thing, Hitler.

Whats weird here is I am not, as some of you may know, a Zionist. Im an atheist and I dont hold with religion being the basis for statehood. And obviously as all Jews have to say now when talking about this subject I do not support the appalling actions of the present Israeli government.

Mainly, though, I dont care that much about Israel. I think, in fact, that it is antisemitic to assume that I have to care, or think about, or have a position on Israel a country that, in the words of Morrissey, says nothing to me about my life. I dont even think its a very Jewish place. In my film The Infidel, a character describing various types of Jews says: And then Israelis Jews without angst, without guilt so not really Jews at all.

But: I do care about antisemitism. And the problem is that an awful lot of antisemites often unconsciously do conflate anti-Zionism with antisemitism. Indeed, they often just conflate Israelis with Jews. Yesterday on Twitter, a chap called Kenard told me: Ken is an irrelevance with little influence, unlike a large number of Israelis [sic] who dominate the media and have done for decades.

It seems clear what Kenard really wants to say: Jews. But because he has a vague awareness that isnt allowed any more, he just substitutes the word Israelis. Or Israelis, because he doesnt understand grammar as well as racism.

So thats the problem with Livingstones statement. The interchangeability of Zionist with the word Jew means that in saying Zionism is bad, which is what Livingstone wants to do, he emboldens Kenard, and all those like him. And, of course, he also as I have said many times reveals that sense that runs deep in the left, that the Jews dont quite fit into the category of The Oppressed, and so therefore dont deserve the same protections and sympathy as other minorities in the face of racism against them. Livingstone himself has said this in the creepingly insinuating comment that antisemitism and racism are not exactly the same thing.

Ill leave with the words of Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf, before he went mad, according to Livingstone. So exactly in that period when he was, as we know, supporting Zionism. I may have as much of a tin ear for meaning as Livingstone has for antisemitism, but I cant, for the life of me, make this out to be as pro the idea of the creation of a Jewish state as Livingstone insists it is: While the Zionists try to make the rest of the World believe that the national consciousness of the Jew finds its satisfaction in the creation of a Palestinian state, the Jews again slyly dupe the dumb Goyim. It doesnt even enter their heads to build up a Jewish state in Palestine for the purpose of living there; all they want is a central organisation for their international world swindler, endowed with its own sovereign rights and removed from the intervention of other states: a haven for convicted scoundrels and a university for budding crooks.

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Link:
Why Ken Livingstone has it so wrong over Hitler and Zionism - The Guardian

Category: Zionism
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