[Peace-discuss] Why anti-Zionism cannot be equated with anti-Semitism and Neo-Nazis love Zionist treatment of Muslims

[Stephen Francis]

>From Wikipedia:
Antony Loewenstein is an atheist Jewish-Australian political activist, freelance journalist, author and blogger who is based in Sydney.
Loewenstein has written for The Guardian, Haaretz, The Washington Post, Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, Sydney's Sun-Herald, The Bulletin, ZNet, The Big Issue, Crikey,CounterPunch and the online magazine newmatilda.com among others. He appears regularly on radio, in public and at universities discussing current affairs and politics.[1][2]
Loewenstein contributed a chapter to Not Happy, John (2004), a book on the controversy over the awarding of the Sydney Peace Prize to Hanan Ashrawi that was a bestseller in Australia. His book on the Israel-Palestine conflict, My Israel Question, (2006 and in new editions in 2007 and 2009) was described by Ilan Pappé as "one of the best treatises which presents in the most lucid way possible why anti-Zionism can not be equated with anti-Semitism".[3] The Weekend Australian wrote that it "deserves a strong readership ... because it makes us uncomfortable".[4] It was short-listed for a 2007 New South Wales Premier's Literary Award. The book was criticized in a review in Australian Jewish News.[5]His next book, The Blogging Revolution (2008), is about the impact of the internet in countries with repressive regimes. It was updated in 2011 after the Arab Spring. Both My Israel Question and The Blogging Revolution are available in
 translation.
He contributed to the Verso Books release, A Time to Speak Out (2008), on the rise of global Jewish dissent.
He is the co-editor with Ahmed Moor of the 2012 book After Zionism: One State for Israel and Palestine which includes essays by Omar Barghouti, John Mearsheimer, Ilan Pappé,Sara Roy, and Jonathan Cook, among others.[6] In 2012 he also published Left Turn about failures of capitalism.[7]
He is currently working on a film and book on vulture capitalism, Profits of Doom, to be released in 2013 and a book on religion, faith and politics, For God's Sake, in the same year.
Loewenstein is the co-founder of Independent Australian Jewish Voices (IAJV).

Neo-Nazis love Zionist treatment of Muslims
Who are re­ally the most stri­dent back­ers of Is­rael these days? Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ists and far-right big­ots.
More than 60 years after the Holo­caust, Nazis take com­fort in the Zion­ist state. Tragic and yet ut­terly log­i­cal. Newsweek re­ports:
To the ca­sual ob­server, the vis­it­ing Eu­ro­peans at Yad Vashem, Is­rael’s Holo­caust memo­r­ial in the hills above Jerusalem, looked like any other for­eign del­e­ga­tion. In the Gar­den of the Right­eous Among Na­tions, where Gen­tiles who pro­tected Jews are hon­ored, they laid a wreath and posed for a photo be­fore sign­ing the vis­i­tors’ book with the solemn promise: “We will want to make sure that ‘never again’ re­ally means never again.”
But these were no or­di­nary trav­el­ers with Zion­ist sym­pa­thies. Rather, on this trip to Is­rael were a Bel­gian politi­cian known for his con­tacts with SS vet­er­ans, an Aus­trian with neo-Nazi ties, and a Swede whose po­lit­i­cal party has deep roots in Swedish fas­cism—un­likely vis­i­tors to pay their re­spects at Yad Vashem, per­haps, un­less one con­sid­ers the po­lit­i­cal cur­rents in Is­rael and Eu­rope, and the adage that one’s enemy’s enemy is one’s friend.
>Only a few years ago, many of Eu­rope’s far-right politi­cians were openly anti-Se­mitic. Now some of the same pop­ulist par­ties are em­brac­ing Is­rael to unite against what they per­ceive to be a com­mon threat.
>Over the past few years, Eu­rope’s right-wing po­lit­i­cal lead­ers have tapped into ris­ing wor­ries over im­mi­gra­tion from Is­lamic coun­tries to pre­dom­i­nantly sec­u­lar and Chris­t­ian Eu­rope, where the num­ber of Mus­lims has grown from 29.6 mil­lion in 1990 to 44.1 mil­lion in 2010, or up to 10 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion in coun­tries such as France. Geert Wilders, an anti-Is­lam fire­brand whose Party for Free­dom last July gained a record 24 seats in the Nether­lands’ Par­lia­ment, likens the Quran to Hitler’s Mein Kampf and has called Muham­mad a “devil” spread­ing a “fas­cist ide­ol­ogy,” and has vowed to stop Mus­lim im­mi­gra­tion. In Switzer­land, 57 per­cent of vot­ers banned the con­struc­tion of minarets in a pop­u­lar ref­er­en­dum in late 2009. In poll after poll, large ma­jori­ties of Eu­ro­peans say they worry about the spread of Islam and that Mus­lims
 have not prop­erly in­te­grated.
>In­vited by a right-wing Is­raeli busi­ness­man named Chaim Muehlstein, the De­cem­ber vis­i­tors did not com­pose an of­fi­cial del­e­ga­tion. “Jesus Christ,” fumed a gov­ern­ment spokesman anony­mously when asked about the visit; Yad Vashem spokes­woman Estee Yaari cringed when NEWSWEEK asked her about the group. “Mil­lions come here every year, and I def­i­nitely didn’t meet these peo­ple,” she said.
>But mem­bers of the Knes­set did meet with the group, which signed a “Jerusalem De­c­la­ra­tion” guar­an­tee­ing Is­rael’s right to de­fend it­self against ter­ror. “We stand at the van­guard in the fight for the West­ern, de­mo­c­ra­tic com­mu­nity” against the “to­tal­i­tar­ian threat” of “fun­da­men­tal­ist Islam,” says the doc­u­ment, which was signed by mem­bers of the group that in­cluded Heinz-Chris­t­ian Stra­che, head of the Aus­trian Free­dom Party; Filip Dewin­ter, head of Bel­gium’s ul­tra­na­tion­al­ist Vlaams Be­lang; René Stadtke­witz, founder of the Ger­man Free­dom Party; and Kent Ekeroth, the in­ter­na­tional sec­re­tary for the Swe­den De­moc­rats, a pop­ulist anti-im­mi­gra­tion party.
>Dur­ing their trip, the Eu­ro­peans drove through Pales­tin­ian vil­lages in a bul­let­proof bus to meet Jew­ish set­tlers in the des­o­late West Bank out­post of Har Bracha, set on a windswept moun­tain bluff with views into Jor­dan. While there, they vowed that the set­tle­ments were nec­es­sary to de­fend Is­rael against its Arab en­e­mies.
As if to prove his readi­ness to de­fend the Holy Land, Stra­che donned cam­ou­flage war paint and an Is­raeli De­fense Forces com­bat jacket for a pic­ture with para­troop­ers of the 101st “Cobra” Bat­tal­ion on their base near the Gaza Strip. (The last photo of Stra­che in mil­i­tary re­galia be­came a minor scan­dal in Aus­tria when it sur­faced in 2008. The pic­ture showed him with lead­ing Aus­trian neo-Nazis and Holo­caust de­niers, and was ap­par­ently taken around 1990 when Stra­che was re­port­edly ac­tive in the Viking Youth, an il­le­gal neo-Nazi group.) The his­tory of the Swe­den De­moc­rats is equally con­tro­ver­sial. Until 1995 the party was headed by An­ders Klarström, who had pre­vi­ously be­longed to the openly fas­cist Nordic Reich Party. Con­victed in 1986 for il­le­gal pos­ses­sion of firearms and death threats against a Jew­ish actor, whom he called a “Jew pig” and
 threat­ened to burn, Klarström was one of dozens of of­fi­cials and mem­bers purged by the party in the 1990s. Still, Lena Pos­ner-Körösi, pres­i­dent of the Of­fi­cial Coun­cil of Jew­ish Com­mu­ni­ties in Swe­den, de­scribes the Swe­den De­moc­rats as a “neo-Nazi party.”
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