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Olympia Food Co-op joins history of hatred toward Israel: Edward Alexander

Posted By Ruth King on July 29th, 2010

http://www.thenewstribune.com/2010/07/27/1278676/olympia-food-co-op-joins-long.html?story_link=email_msg
Olympia Food Co-op joins long, tragic history of hatred toward Israel
Olympia’s Food Co-op has grandly announced its intention to boycott Israeli products unless that country disbands itself as a Jewish state.

EDWARD ALEXANDER
Published: 07/27/1012:05 am
Olympia’s Food Co-op has grandly announced its intention to boycott Israeli products unless that country disbands itself as a Jewish state.
To earn a place for its products on co-op shelves, Israel must forfeit its right to defend itself by tearing down its security fence and must bring back the Arab refugees who, in an entirely self-inflicted calamity, fled in 1947-48 rather than accept the U.N.’s two-state solution.

This is a policy of politicide: Israel may not exist as a Jewish state.

The co-op does not require the numerous Islamic regimes or Christian states to justify a place for their products on the sacrosanct shelves of Olympia. No, there is only one country whose “right to exist” – though recognized by the League of Nations nearly a century ago and confirmed by the United Nations in 1948 – is considered a legitimate subject of debate.

Instructing Israel on the most suitable method (one-state solution, no-state solution, final solution) of ceasing to exist is nowadays a ticket of admission to “progressive” circles. The instructors’ motto resurrects the Reign of Terror slogan: “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity – or Death.”

Listen to Noam Chomsky: “Unless those who call themselves ‘supporters of Israel’ are willing to face … moral and geopolitical realities, they may in reality be supporters of Israel’s moral degeneration and ultimate destruction.”

If one dare suggest that singling Israel out for destruction if it does not dance to your tune is anti-Semitic, Chomsky has a ready reply: “Anti-Semitism is no longer a problem … It’s raised … because privileged people want to make sure they have total control, not just 98 percent control; that’s why anti-Semitism is becoming an issue . . .”

Beautiful and touching words, by no means unusual in the parlance of those who deem Israel uniquely evil and, with help from its “supporters,” responsible for every misery on the planet with the (possible) exception of global warming.

(I add “possible” because Clare Short, a prominent member of Tony Blair’s cabinet until 2003, charged that Israel is “much worse than the original apartheid state” because it “undermines the international community’s reaction to global warming.”)

Chomsky is (mistakenly) identified as “a critic of Israeli policy.” Nor is he the only beneficiary of the euphemistic redefinition of “criticism” where Israel is its object. A Vassar professor refers to Intifada II, during which Palestinian Arab suicide bombers, pogromists and lynch mobs slaughtered almost a thousand people and wounded thousands more, as “a critique of Zionism.”

A writer in the Chronicle of Higher Education assures readers that “calls to destroy Israel, or to throw it into the Mediterranean Sea … are not evidence of hatred of Jews,” but merely “reflect a quarrel” with Israel.

When Harvard and Columbia University were censured in 2003 for honoring and hosting the Oxford poetaster and blood libel subscriber Tom Paulin after he had urged that Jews living in Judea and Samaria “should be shot dead,” his apologists defended his right “to criticize Israeli policy.”

But surely criticism means trying to see an object as it really is, not destroying that object. Indeed, a critic need not be an enemy at all.

The “critics of Israel” who deny its “right to exist” and threaten it with boycotts and even destruction if it does not disband itself may be dishonest and despicable, but let us not begrudge them their triumph.

In the war of ideas they have beaten us at every turn; and by “us” I mean those Christians and Jews for whom the foundation of Israel was one of the (few) redeeming acts of a blood-soaked and shameful century.

A 2007 BBC poll of 28,000 people in 27 countries showed Israel as the “least-liked” country in the world, and, among Europeans, most disliked in Germany.

Yes, in the very country where the Jews’ “right to live” was once a popular topic and “Kauf nicht beim Juden” (“Don’t Buy from Jews”) a popular slogan long before it reached Olympia, Israel-haters outpolled Israel-admirers by 77 percent to 10 percent.

Still greater triumphs in the contest for public opinion may await these “critics.”

Their threats are not idle. On their own, they cannot visit upon Israel the terrible fate they think it deserves as the devil’s experiment station, but they know they have a powerful ally named Ahmadinejad, bent on translating politicide into genocide.

The Iranian president daily promises to “remove Israel from the map” with nuclear weapons and watches with glee as the international noose tightens around Israel’s throat and the umbrellas go up in Europe and Washington.

Edward Alexander is a University of Washington professor emeritus.

Read more: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2010/07/27/1278676/olympia-food-co-op-joins-long.html?story_link=email_msg#ixzz0v7ByKW00

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