Anti-Semitism vs. Anti-Zionism in France – Consortiumnews

By Lawrence Davidson 
TothePointAnalysis.com

We are at a new stage of the fight to realize Palestinian rights and free both Palestinians and Jews from the consequences of Zionist racism. There was a time when very few in the West understood the racist nature of the Israeli state. For a long time, the Zionists controlled the public relations message and most people took as fact the fictional account of Israel’s founding—such as the one given in Leon Uris’s book “Exodus.”

After the 1967 war, and Israel’s decision to keep even more conquered Palestinian territory, things began to change. Of course, Israel had always been a racist place designed for one group alone. But now the contradictions created by post-war occupation made, and continue to make, that fact harder to hide, and the mythical picture of Israel as a grand democratic experiment has eroded. Increasingly the real, illiberal Israel has become apparent to Western audiences, and particularly to an increasing number of Jews. As a result, Israel has largely lost the public relations battle at the popular level of Western society.

Orthodex Jews in London’s pro-Palestine protests on Al Quds day, June 10, 2018. (Allsdare Hickson via Flickr)

Orthodex Jews in London’s pro-Palestine protests on Al Quds day, June 10, 2018. (Allsdare Hickson via Flickr)

However, the winning of this battle is not to be equated with the winning of the fight mentioned above. The Zionists are still able to maintain Western financial and military support of Israel at obscene levels despite Israel’s revealed apartheid nature.

Tactical Shift

To combat the popular criticism to which Israel is now subject, the Zionists have shifted tactics. They have abandoned popular debate and now use their influence with the West’s ruling elites to simply criminalize any rhetoric that points out the real discriminatory nature of the Zionist state. The gambit here is to have such criticism legally equated with anti-Semitism.

Last month, on Feb. 20, Emmanuel Macron, the president of the French Republic, addressed the Conseil Representatif des Institutions Juives de France (CRIF)—the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions. Macron’s topic was the country’s “resurgence of anti-Semitism.”

Indeed, there has been a…

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