Occupied East Jerusalem, March 2, 2008

Zionist apologists and hasbara doctors have been trying of late to convince the European public opinion that opposition to Israels brutal treatment of the Palestinian people amounts, more or less, to a new form of anti-Semitism.

This week, the Israeli foreign ministry, in cooperation with Zionist circles in North America, announced the creation of the so-called International Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism.

Were witnessing a new, global, virulent and even lethal anti-Semitism without parallel or precedent since World War II, said Canadian MP Irwin Colter, one of the organizer. It is not only essential to sound the alarm, but its time to act.

However, from reading in between the lines, it becomes amply clear that the real target these Zionist supremacists have in mind is not the morbid hatred of Jews for being Jews, otherwise known as anti-Semitism. It is rather the growing global awareness of and opposition to Israeli apartheid, criminality and genocidal policies being pursued in the occupied Palestinian territories.

In fact, it is not anti-Jewish racism that these liars are really seeking to fight; it is rather anti-Palestinian Israeli racism that they are trying to defend and protect. Racists, after all, are qualified to combat racism as much as pyromaniacs are qualified to fight fires.

Today, Israel, more than any other country on earth, is the number-1 generator, inducer and encourager of anti-Semitism.

Israel calls itself the Jewish state and claims to represent the Jews of the world. And as such, Israels Nazi-like actions and behaviors are bound to boomerang in one way or the other.

In the years following its misbegotten creation, Israel sought largely successfully to induce hatred for Jews in their respective places of residence in order to get them to fulfill Zionism and emigrate to a land made unholy by decades of lies, oppression and murder.

Now, Zionism is trying intimidate Europeans, especially European states, into endorsing Israeli Nazism, or at least playing deaf and dumb and looking the other way while generations of helpless Palestinians are murdered on a daily basis as the entire future of the Palestinian people is being decapitated in full view of the entire humanity.

In so doing, Israel and its hasbara mouthpieces is actually seriously cheapening anti-Semitism and helping, knowingly or unknowingly, the true haters of Jews.

True anti-Semites used to be those who hated Jews for being Jews. Today, the rabid dogs of Zionism would want us to believe that anti-Semites are also those who speak up in defense of human rights in Palestine, people, like Christian peace activists in Hebron, who escort terrified Palestinian kids to their schools, lest they be attacked by a ghoulish breed of Zionist Jews called hilltop settlers.

Well, who do these depraved Zionists think they are any way? Do they think they have a license from the Almighty to murder, lie, and steal, and when people speak up against these evils, all they have to do to stop them is to shout anti-Semitism! Anti-Semitism!

It is therefore imperative that all men and women of conscience, including thousands of honest Jews whose devotion to justice and morality always comes first, make clear to Israel and her tribal supporters that anti-Semitism will no longer be allowed to be used to justify genocide and ethnic cleansing in Palestine.

In the final analysis, we should be living in a moral universe, and if rejecting Israeli crimes in Palestine is anti-Semitism, which of course isnt , then this proverbial anti-Semitism should itself become a moral obligation of the highest order upon all conscientious men and women around the world.

It may well be true that there are those who utilize legitimate criticisms of Israel to promote real anti-Semitism. But who is to blame for this outcome? The Palestinians, the victims of Zionist racism, or the child-killers in Gaza and the West Bank who want the world to atone for one holocaust by allowing and enabling Israel to obliterate an entire people, the Palestinians, just as the Nazis had wanted to obliterate another entire people, the Jews, more than six decades ago.

But, likewise, is it not also true that anti-Semitism is often utilized to the fullest by many Zionist Jews to silence legitimate criticisms of this evil state that murders, lies and steals and then claims to be the only true democracy in the Middle East and a light upon the nations.

Some Zionist propagandists, who lie as often as they breathe, are also trying to make analogies between classical European anti-Semitism and the so-called Islamic anti-Semitism.

This is a cardinal lie as many honest Jews would readily admit. Muslims dont hate Jews for being Jews. And Judaism enjoys a clear historical and religious legitimacy in Islam.

In fact, the Quran, Islams holy book, challenges Jews to live up to the sublime teachings of justice and morality that the Israelite prophets preached.

In recent history however, Zionism nearly succeeded in alienating hundreds of millions of Muslims around the world who share with Jews many fundamental beliefs, including the belief in the oneness of God and the centrality of justice and morality to human behavior.

Moreover, many Zionists Jews these days, especially in North America, are making strange bed-fellow with Pseudo-Christian lunatics who claim that Muslims have no souls and ought to be wiped off from the face of earth.

So, how does Zionism expect Muslims to react to this venomous enmity? Can Muslims, or indeed the rest of decent human beings, give Israel the benefit of the doubt under these circumstances?

To be sure, real anti-Semitism, along with Islamophobia and other forms of racism, should be rejected and fought relentlessly.

However, Israel and Zionism cant create and consolidate the cause and then complain vociferously about the effect.

Besides, the time when Zionism could easily manipulate and blackmail the collective conscience of humanity is over for good.

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March 2, 2008 By Khalid Amayreh in Occupied East Jerusalem