<\/p>\n
The Israeli military says it\u2019s preparing a ground offensive in Lebanon<\/a><\/span> as it continues to hammer<\/span><\/a> its neighbor to the north with bombs. Which of course means we\u2019ll be hearing a lot of anxious hand-wringing from the western political-media class about \u201cantisemitism\u201d in the coming weeks.<\/span><\/p>\n We know we\u2019ll be hearing a lot more about antisemitism because that\u2019s what always happens whenever Israel does something profoundly evil. People start objecting to its atrocities and demanding that their government stop facilitating them, and the imperial spinmeisters start framing these objections as a frightening rise in anti-Jewish bigotry in order to delegitimise and silence them.<\/span><\/p>\n The very first time you get accused of hating Jews for voicing legitimate criticisms of Israel\u2019s actions, you immediately understand that the whole narrative about an epidemic of \u201cantisemitism\u201d in our society is a complete lie.<\/span><\/p>\n You\u2019re like \u201cIt\u2019s bad to murder children by the thousands\u201d and someone tells you \u201cAh so you hate Jewish people then,\u201d and you say \u201cNo I definitely do not,\u201d and they say \u201cYes, yes you most definitely have very strong negative opinions about the members of a small Abrahamic religion.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n And you obviously know they\u2019re making a false claim, because you\u2019re you; you are the world\u2019s foremost authority on what you feel and what opinions you have. You know with absolute 100 percent certainty that you have never at any time harbored any negative feelings toward this religious group you see around in your society whose members look and act pretty much the same as all the other pale-skinned people you run into.<\/span><\/p>\n You know Jewish people. You grew up routinely interacting with them, without their Jewishness ever entering into your head as a matter of significance. It\u2019s not something you ever thought much about or cared about in your day to day living. And then here\u2019s this person trying to tell you that you actually have a seething, obsessive hatred against Jews because you denounced the extensively documented abuses of a small middle eastern state which are being actively supported by your own government.<\/span><\/p>\n And so then you immediately go, Oh, so THIS is what people are talking about when they say there\u2019s an \u201cantisemitism crisis\u201d? This is the \u201cantisemitism\u201d they\u2019re talking about? People like me, who have never at any time had the slightest twinge of ill will toward the Jewish people ever appear inside them? We\u2019re the \u201cantisemites\u201d that the entire western political-media class has been shrieking about all year in the midst of an active genocide? Well, that\u2019s pretty ridiculous!<\/span><\/p>\n And from then on you know it\u2019s a lie. Not only do you know it\u2019s a lie, you know the people hurling the accusation know it\u2019s a lie too, because you know from your own experience that it\u2019s a smear tactic which is being cynically used as a bludgeon to protect the information interests of a warmongering apartheid state.<\/span><\/p>\n But you keep seeing it used, day after day after day after day by liars and manipulators, most of whom are not Jewish. Most of the people employing this cynical, manipulative smear tactic are gentile supporters of the US-centralized empire and the status quo world order it enforces. They support not only Israel but all the other warmongering projects of the empire against all its other targets throughout the world, in places like China, Russia, and South America.<\/span><\/p>\n So while you\u2019re being dishonestly smeared with accusations of anti-semitism it still doesn\u2019t make you feel any ill will toward Jewish people, because you can see that all this violence, dishonesty and manipulation isn\u2019t being caused by Jews and isn\u2019t ultimately about Judaism. This is about a giant globe-spanning power structure loosely centralized around Washington, whose managers around the world belong to every sort of faith and ethnicity.<\/span><\/p>\n When you define antisemitism as \u201cany and all criticism of the state of Israel,\u201d and then the state of Israel massacres thousands of children, you will naturally see a rise in \u201cantisemitism\u201d as you have defined it.<\/span><\/p>\n And make no mistake, that\u2019s exactly what\u2019s been happening. The Anti-Defamation League has admitted<\/a><\/span> that last year it began including pro-Palestinian activism in its records of \u201cantisemitic incidents\u201d, and acknowledged that the majority of the supposed antisemitism in its recorded incidents could be \u201cdirectly related to the Israel-Hamas war.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n So when you hear about \u201csoaring antisemitism\u201d and a crisis of anti-Jewish bigotry in our society, that\u2019s what people are talking about. They\u2019re talking about entirely valid and responsible public outcry against the actions of an apartheid state that is materially supported by the most powerful empire that has ever existed.<\/span><\/p>\n Obviously real antisemitism exists and is bad, but its scale, influence and threat in today\u2019s world has been inflated by orders of magnitude by this freakish perception management operation, to the point that it is now treated as a more urgent and important concern than actual war and genocide.<\/span><\/p>\n The thing about smear campaigns is that once they are seen and understood, they always make the smearer look worse than the one being smeared. Keep calling this bullshit out for what it is, and help everyone understand that this is a slimy, disgusting manipulation that\u2019s being used to defend some of the most evil things happening in our world today.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\nAs Israel Gets More Murderous, We’ll Be Hearing Even More About “Antisemitism”<\/span><\/a> | <\/span><\/span>Caitlin Johnstone<\/span><\/span><\/h1>\n