{"id":306601,"date":"2017-05-04T11:12:40","date_gmt":"2017-05-04T10:12:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/government-smearing-of-israels-critics\/"},"modified":"2017-05-04T11:12:40","modified_gmt":"2017-05-04T10:12:40","slug":"government-smearing-of-israels-critics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/government-smearing-of-israels-critics\/","title":{"rendered":"Government Smearing of Israel\u2019s Critics"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Israel\u2019s pressure to conflate criticism of its treatment of Palestinians with the evils of anti-Semitism has stifled a needed debate in Western societies, as Lawrence Davidson explains.<\/p>\n<p>By Lawrence Davidson<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBack in the day,\u201d which in this case was Feb. 8, 2007, the <a href=\"https:\/\/2001-2009.state.gov\/g\/drl\/rls\/56589.htm\">U.S. State Department\u2019s Office to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism adopted <\/a>a \u201cworking definition\u201d of anti-Semitism which included the following point: It is anti-Semitic to \u201cdeny the Jewish people their right to self-determination (e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor).\u201d<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_9128\" style=\"width: 203px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/benjaminnetanyahu-twitter.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/lazy-load\/images\/1x1.trans.gif\" data-lazy-src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/benjaminnetanyahu-twitter.jpg\" class=\"size-full wp-image-9128\" alt=\"\" width=\"193\" height=\"186\"\/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-9128\" src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/benjaminnetanyahu-twitter.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"193\" height=\"186\"\/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>The whole definition, including the quoted sentence, was not original with the State Department. It was originally \u201cwritten collaboratively by a small group of non-governmental organizations\u201d which remained unnamed.<\/p>\n<p>This \u201cworking definition\u201d has proved to have staying power. Thus, the U.S. Congress has used the State Department document in devising its <a href=\"https:\/\/www.congress.gov\/bill\/114th-congress\/senate-bill\/10\/text\">Anti-Semitism Awareness Act of 2016,<\/a> and in December of 2016, the British government adopted an almost identical \u201cworking definition,\u201d which listed the same alleged act of denial \u2013 the one that links the Jewish people\u2019s \u201cright of self-determination\u201d with the \u201cclaim that the existence of Israel is a racist endeavor\u201d as an example of \u201ccontemporary anti-Semitism.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There is something not quite right about this aspect of the \u201cworking definition.\u201d The two parts of the quoted sentence don\u2019t really go together logically. Thus, labeling Israel as it presently exists as a \u201cracist endeavor\u201d does not \u201cdeny the Jewish people their right of self-determination.\u201d It only asserts that self-determination carried forth in a racist manner, by Jews or anyone else, is illegitimate.<\/p>\n<p>Although neither the State Department\u2019s nor the U.K. government\u2019s taking up of this \u201cworking definition\u201d are not legally binding on non-governmental individuals or organizations (a fact not widely publicized), it has allowed both U.S. and British Zionists to label critics of Israel as anti-Semites in what appears to be a semi-official way, and this has opened the&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2017\/05\/03\/government-smearing-of-israeli-critics\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Israel\u2019s pressure to conflate criticism of its treatment of Palestinians with the evils of anti-Semitism has stifled a needed debate in Western societies, as Lawrence Davidson explains. By Lawrence Davidson \u201cBack in the day,\u201d which in this case was Feb. 8, 2007, the U.S. State Department\u2019s Office to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism adopted a \u201cworking [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2524,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-306601","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2524"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306601\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}