[Peace-discuss] Review of Last Night's Program in anti-Semitism

[Stuart Levy]

On Wed, Jan 10, 2007 at 07:16:51AM -0800, David Green wrote:
> This unattributed review has been disseminated:
>   
> The PBS TV show, "Anti-Semitism in the 21st Century," that just aired
> tonight in the United States, was a very sohpisticated piece of 
> pro-Israel > (hence anti-working class) propaganda. There were a lot
> of talking heads. One was Tony Judt, who wrote an article in the
> New York Review of Books a few years ago
> that _advocated_ (http://www.nybooks. com/articles/ 16671), for the 
> first (and virtually only) time in the 21st century establishment press,
> a one-state solution to the Palestine conflict. But, revealingly,
> the idea that it is _wrong_ (http://newdemocracyworld.org/state.htm)
> for there to be a Jewish state in Palestine did not see the light
> of day in this documentary. If Tony Judt, in his taped interview,
> expressed his one-state solution belief, it was edited out.

[...]

So this anonymous reviewer is actually saying (here and elsewhere
in the review) that (s)he thinks Israel shouldn't have been
established as a state, that there should be no Jewish state where
Israel is today, even within the pre-1967 borders -- is that right?
The front page of the newdemocracyworld.org site seems to confirm that
they think so too.

Given the UN's long-since acceptance of Israel's existence, that seems
a strange thing to suggest at this point.  And the reviewer doesn't
even suggest why Israel's existence should be considered wrong,
as if in some moral sense.  Why would he expect a documentary
on antisemitism to bring this up?

Do you (David or anybody) understand where this person might be coming from?
How is this review being disseminated (besides on this list)?

I certainly want Israel's government to act rightly,
and to be bound by UN resolutions and by the agreements it's made,
which it is not doing.  But calling for it to cease to exist
is foolish, and much worse, it promotes the idea that Israel
really needs to fear for its national life -- which it does not.
It's this kind of language that served as a cover for Israel's
bombardment of Lebanon last summer, and is liable to serve so
again in promoting an attack on Iran.

    Stuart