Friday, February 17, 2012

Diaspora Zionists plot to co-opt and politically exploit U.S. racial minorities the same way they've used and exploited evangelicals

From:
Pro-Israel handbook explains how to attack professors and ‘co-opt’ students of color

(Mondoweiss) -- by Phan Nguyen --

Last week, the David Project released its “white paper” on Israel advocacy in US colleges and universities, titled A Burning Campus? Rethinking Israel Advocacy at America’s Universities and Colleges.

The David Project is perhaps best known for its smear campaign against Columbia professor Joseph Massad in 2004–05, and more recently, for creating the most boring and uninspiring “Shit People Say” video.

Unlike previous hasbara handbooks, A Burning Campus? dispenses with the usual talking points and approaches Israel advocacy on college campuses more strategically.

As I demonstrate below, the report is surprisingly frank about how the anti-Semitism charge is used as a weapon, what is the best way to attack college professors, and which minority groups are best to, in their words, “co-opt.”

The anti-Semitism charge as a tactic

The report is candid about how the anti-Semitism charge is used as a tactic. What it determines however, is that the tactic is ultimately ineffective and that other tactics should be employed.

Throughout the report, the authors assert that anti-Semitism is not a pervasive problem on college campuses:
Most American campuses are not hostile environments for most Jewish students....The chief concern therefore is not the welfare of Jewish students but that a pervasively negative atmosphere will affect the long-term thinking of current college students, negatively affecting strong bipartisan support for Israel.

[...]

Racial antisemitism of the kind most associated with the Nazis is not likely a serious problem on any American college campus. Swastikas appearing on a dorm room door or other similar manifestations are often dealt with quickly and seriously.

[...]

Campus is largely not a hostile environment for Jewish students. There has probably never been a richer array of ways for students to engage in meaningful Jewish activities today than there has ever been, including at schools where anti-Israelism is widespread.
Because anti-Semitism is not pervasive, such accusations are ineffective:
Pro-Israel organizations have often cast the challenge on campus as an assault on Jewish students rather than as a spreading pervasive negativity toward Israel. Casting the issue in these terms does not jive with the lived experience of many Jewish students, who know they can identify as Jews and largely not suffer repercussions...

[D]epicting campus as hostile to Jews has not to date proven to be an effective strategy for decreasing anti-Israelism on campus...
Therefore other tactics must be utilized.

How to attack professors

Instead of accusing your professors of anti-Semitism, accuse them of abusing their positions. This will produce higher returns:
[A]ccusing faculty members who propagandize against Israel of “academic malpractice” is likely to be a much more effective strategy than challenging specific allegations or invoking anti-Jewish bigotry. Rightly or wrongly, the current campus atmosphere is much more sympathetic to charges that teachers are not satisfactorily teaching their subject than to complaints of anti-Jewish bias and Israel supporters will likely have a greater practical impact by framing their concerns in this manner.
Apparently the David Project has come a long way since the days when founder Charles Jacobs labeled Jewish Columbia professors who disagreed with him as “the Marranos of Morningside Heights”—essentially Jew traitors.

Targeting specific racial groups

The report calls for pro-Israel students to build alliances with other groups on campus, notably with students of color:
Campus Israel advocates often overlook the importance of emerging groups with great potential to shape the campus conversation.

Many of these groups also have the potential to be co-opted into the anti-Israel coalition on campus. Preventing them from allying themselves with the anti-Israel effort or even co-opting them into pro-Israel efforts is an opportunity for a significant “win” by Israel advocates on many campuses.
Translation: If left unchecked, students of color might be “co-opted” into believing that Palestinians are subjected to racist oppression. We need to co-opt them first...MORE...LINK

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Playing racial, ethnic, religious and regional groups against one another is more of a Jewish trait than a Zionist trait alone, and Phil Weiss puts the trait on display often.

A good example is Weiss' constant comparison of Israel to Jim Crow, when, in fact, segregation was nowhere near as extreme as Israel's actions. Weiss was once called on his comparisons, and stated something to the effect that it doesn't matter if the comparison isn't exact, because segregation is something that Americans are familiar with. This is the same person who views comparing Israel's actions to those of Nazi Germany's as out of bounds. I guess Weiss believes that few Americans know about the Nazis.

The point isn't to defend Jim Crow, but to point out that people like Weiss love to keep the racial, ethnic and regional grievance pot simmering, as long as his group is the perceived winner. Weiss is playing the same game that many Jews played during the civil rights movement while fighting segregation in the U.S. and supporting attempted genocide and ethnic cleansing in Palestine at the same time. Weiss' act is cynical and duplicitous, and he is supposedly an anti-Zionist.

Are Zionists really an anomaly among Jews? Are Zionists really the only Jews who like to triangulate and keep Jewish issues in the forefront at all costs?

I don't mean to come across as overly picky or aggressive, but I don't believe that the Zionist is some sort of new Jew.

Chris Moore said...

"...I don't believe that the Zionist is some sort of new Jew."

I don't either, which is why I define Zionism as Jewish supremacism, and see no grand distinction between Israeli Zionism and Diaspora Zionism.

Jewish supremacism is a mellenia-old agenda and enterprise going back well before the establishment of Israel.

Weiss exists in a fantasy world where the Jews of his imagination and false conciousness are the "real" Jews, and the Zionists are the counterfeits.

This fantasy simply does not comport to the reality of Jewish doctrine, dogma, and historiography.

I have a soft spot for Weiss because I greatly appreciate his journalistic insights into the treachury of Zionism, and his ability to effectively communicate that treachury.

In some ways, I feel sorry for Jews like Weiss because they want so much for the Jews to be something that they are not. In many ways, self-deceiving secular Jews like Weiss who buy into the Jewish liberal mythology (Jewry was never truly liberal; this was a self-serving pose adopted by Zionists to gain Diaspora power) are merely the flip side of self-decieving religious Jews who buy into all of the biblical mythology, and take the Old Testament at face value as an accurate historic record.

The ability to self-deceive and construct a vast false conciousness may be one of the most resonant characteristics of Jewry.

This is why they have endured, but also what makes them so dangerous, and often lethal. Many of them actually believe all of the self-serving lies they tell themselves, and can use this "talent" to rationalize nearly anything.

Anonymous said...

I've always wondered how you could have a soft spot for Weiss after the way that he treated you, and I still don't get it.

Soft spot aside, I think that Weiss is more dangerous than a foaming-at-the-mouth Zionist or honest Jewish supremacist. In the end, people like Weiss will probably alienate most of his non-Jewish followers. But, in the meantime, his non-Jewish followers waste a lot of time sorting through his BS to figure out that he is has no interest in them, and is most likely a Jewish supremacist, a phony leftist and soft-Zionist himself.

With people like Weiss there is always the chance of mistaking them for a humanist or a universalist, when they are nothing of the sort, and that is potentially much more dangerous than dealing with an honest Zionist or Jewish supremacist alone.