I finally got hold of Yosef Grodzinsky’s book In the Shadow of the Holocaust and have started reading it. I have since added two categories to my post critical of Israel: “Non-Judaism” and “Non-Jewishness”.

I’ll say that you are in very good company indeed.

Ten reasons you’re an anti-Semite:

1) You’re a “progressive.” Isn’t that enough? But for form’s sake:

2) You’ve been critical recently of the collective punishment of the Gazans. At least I think it was you. Doesn’t matter. Look, buddy: you can weep and wail about Dresden, and only the vets who seized the National War Museum are gonna have issues with that. That was a million years ago. But you know damn well that every Gazan, right down to the goddam toddler level, is behind those home-made rocket thingies fired in the general direction of Israel. (Dumb Arabs. Couldn’t build a fucking slingshot.) Collective guilt? Collective punishment. That’s how it works. This isn’t a fricken tea-party. But there you are, holding Israel to a higher standard. Res ipsa loquitur.

3) Someone who looked very much like you was seen outside a building looking very much like a synagogue, holding something that looked a hell of a lot like a spray-paint can. I can just guess what was going up on the wall: “F*ck the…” Well, obviously.

4) You’ve expressed contempt for Shlemazl. He’s Jewish. Yeah, pretend you didn’t know that. What’s next, the blood libel? Gas chambers? Nazi!

5) You’ve been outspokenly critical of the US government, an important ally of Israel.

6) You’ve been attacking Ezra Levant. You know damn well it’s because he’s Jewish. First they come for Ezra Levant, and you just sit there. It’s a slo-mo Kristallnacht, and you’re doing nothing. You’re just watching it happen, you liberal fascist, in your blood-caked jackboots. You’re just sitting there, you Jew-hater, a slow smile playing over your full lips. Bastard!

7) You’ve been outspokenly critical of the Canadian government, an important ally of Israel.

8) You’ve set up a thread here to mock Shlemazl. He’s Jewish. Why not publish some anti-Semitic cartoons while you’re at it? And you’ll excuse that because Ezra Levant published some cartoons mocking the Muslim prophet. Moral equivalence? I think not. Typical lefty. This place is looking more and more like Der Stuermer every minute.

9) You haven’t said so much as a word about the pogrom going on in Venezuela right now as we speak. Your pal Hugo Chavez says he wants to deport every Venezuelan Jew to Florida. I saw that someplace. Daimnation, I think. Or maybe not. Doesn’t matter. It’s going on under your nose, but you lefties are all alike. You’ll excuse anything if it’s Hugo Chavez. Or Fidel Castro. Or the Alberta Human Rights Commission. It’s the banality of evil.

10) Prove you aren’t an anti-Semite. Yeah, thought so.

Well, there we are. Nine, nine reasons. I didn’t expect the Spanish Inquisition. Shlemazl was way ahead of me.

Well, no, make that ten after all. If you supported Levant, it was obviously just to set down an alibi about not being anti-Semitic. You know, like those US Christians who love Israel until the Rapture.

Hold on, scratch that. They’re our friends. You’re the enemy. Shlemazl wouldn’t lie. Don’t you go giving me an eleventh reason, now.

And, it seems, about as effective:

More than 30 rockets slammed into southern Israel on Thursday, causing some damage but no casualties, the army said. Hamas claimed responsibility for firing a barrage against the hard-hit town of Sderot.

The home-made projectiles are notoriously inaccurate and rarely cause casualties, but leave Israelis living near the Gaza border in a permanent state of fear.

Of course it’s not OK. I knew Shlem would be back with that nonsense. No attacks on civilians are OK.

But the point I made earlier has sailed right over his head. One of the reasons that most people are appalled by Dresden is that civilians were punished en masse for the actions of a dictatorial regime in which they had no part. The collective punishment of all Gazans for the actions of a few presupposes that every Gazan is implicated in these stupid rocket attacks that do little material damage but invite massive retaliation. Clearly that’s not the case; equally clearly, there’s an underlying notion that a community is homogenous.

You see that right here at home: the “Muslim community” should reign in its hotheads, the “Jamaican community” should do something about its young criminals. Funny talk considering the usual conservative sources, but in this case racism trumps anti-collectivism.

Members of specific communities on the local level aren’t accountable for the actions of a few in their midst. There are no formal accountability mechanisms. Indeed, what we call a “community” is an imposed construct. The only thing uniting Gazans in that huge open-air prison of theirs is geography and language. Some Gazan kid playing in the street isn’t responsible or accountable for what some unbright rocketeer does across town.

That’s why collective punishment is outlawed by international convention. It’s wrong.

I think we have our threads reversed. Here in “Anti Semite Stageleft” we have an interesting discussion on the morality of collective punishment: in the “Morality of Collective Punishment” thread, we’re back to that nasty Anti-Semite Stageleft stuff.

One problem is the tendency of propagandists and rhetoricians to push these discussion to extremes.

International sanctions against South Africa, and their resulting impact on the economy of that country, undoubtedly had a negative impact on the health and well being of the poorest South Africans, who were no doubt intended to be the long-term beneficiaries of the sanctions. The intent was at least in part to increase the pressure for domestic political reform. Collective punishment for the actions of a government? Perhaps.

On the other hand, the state-sanctioned murder of many, many thousand Mayans in Guatemala (supported by the rights wing Guatemalan government and the US) to discourage support for communist insurgents was an atrocity that goes far beyond Lidice. Collective punishment? Unquestionably.

The action of Israel in this case is not comparable in scope or scale with those atrocities. But the folks who deny that it represents “collective punishment” have to say, with a straight face, that every Gazan pressured or harmed by this action is guilty of attacking Israel. To argue they deserve punishment because their opposition to Hamas is inadequate is to use precisely the same justification employed by the Guatemalans to murder Mayans.

“You appear to have misread the title of that other post.”

Really? The title that says “The Collective Punishment Continues”? You’ll forgive, I hope, for suggesting that that suggests Stageleft’s post is about Collective Punishment. Which, of course, it is.

‘No one is stating that. Whether it is “collective punishment” or not depends on how you define the term. If you define it as you appear to, then clearly Apertheid boycott was collective punishment.”

Yes, that’s my point - as were sanctions against Iraq.

“ANY action taken by an attacked country in self-defence short of doing nothing is your “collective punishment”.

Nonsense. Israel’s policy of targeted assassinations isn’t collective punishment - nor is military action. There’s a difference between death of civilians as a consequence of military action, and actions which deliberately target civilians to put pressure on their government.

“I am not sufficiently familiar with details of “the state-sanctioned murder of many, many thousand Mayans” and I have major doubts that the US would have supported the intentional targeting of civilians.”

You are in error, as a review of the history of US support for the military governments of El Salvador and Guatemala during the Reagan era will show.

He keeps us ever Gentile on his mind…

Occasionally I am anti-gentile. Like when I fall out with my wife. Even then I don’t accuse her of breaking the Geneva Convention.

Shrug. Stageleft defended Levant’s right not be forced to respond to an HRC investigator, and prior to that, his right to publish the Mohammad cartoons. So did I. The guy’s a self-promoting asshole, but he’s got a right to be a self-promoting asshole. Caveot Emptor Ezra.

Sorry, the second-last para. was part of the quote.

God, you’re dishonest, Shlem.

Gaza and Israel are not in a declared state of war. Here is the view of a far-left publication on the strangulation of Gaza:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e87312d2-cae8-11dc-a960-000077b07658.html

People are flooding into Egypt to get basic necessities, such as medicines. “Beggars belief,” eh? Punishing children, the sick and the elderly? Must be OK if Israel does it. Wouldn’t want to hold them to a higher standard or anything.

Shlemazl is, quite frankly, an apologist for civilian targeting. That’s evil, if it’s directed against Israelis. But it’s just fine if the sub-human Palestinians are the target. Drugged cockroaches in a bottle, eh?

I won’t debate further with Shlemazl. I’ll talk to decent people across the political spectrum anytime, but not with apologists for collective punishment against civilians.