Netanyahu’s Identification of All Jews with the State of Israel | Beastrabban\’s Weblog

Last Updated: May 3, 2016By

Another important piece, posted in its entirety again (sorry, Beast).

Mike last week put up on his blog a piece about a very good article by the Jewish Socialist Group tackling the issue of Israel and accusations of anti-Semitism. They pointed out that Jewish identity or heritage was not identical with the state of Israel, and that many of the pieces that were the targets of such accusations, actually weren’t anti-Semitic but poorly worded criticisms of Israel. There was also the problem that while those making the accusations of anti-Semitism criticised the people they accused of not distinguishing between Jews and Israel, they were also guilty of doing exactly the same.

In fact Netanyahu made a speech in which he expressly made that identification, in order to denounce criticism of Israel as automatically anti-Semitic. He stated that Jews everywhere constituted Israel, and Israel was Jews. This would have shocked and dismayed Edwin Montagu, the Jewish cabinet minister in Balfour’s government, who opposed the Declaration of British support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Montagu was afraid that by doing so, this would automatically make Jews foreigners in their British homeland. It also wouldn’t impress Dr Jonathan Miller. Miller’s ancestry is Lithuanian Jewish, yet when someone once introduced him as a Jew on television, Miller replied, ‘I’m a Jewish. I have no interest in being a minority.’ Netanyahu’s remarks about this identity of the state of Israel with the Jewish people have been repeated on Right-wing and Zionist sites around the world. It was, for example, repeated on the extreme Right-wing Canadian Conservative website, Five Feet of Fury when he said it several years ago.

So be aware. When the Conservatives and Blairites accuse critics of Israel of being anti-Semitic, some of them may be consciously using Netanyahu’s semantic sleight of hand in order to put such criticisms off-limit, whatever they say to the contrary. This needs to be strongly resisted. No country, not Israel, not America and not Britain, should be above criticism simply on account of its people’s ethnicity, and it is disgraceful that such accusations have been against what are perfectly reasonable criticisms of Israel.

Source: Netanyahu’s Identification of All Jews with the State of Israel | Beastrabban\’s Weblog

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5 Comments

  1. lanzalaco May 3, 2016 at 11:02 pm - Reply

    bullshit. I am half jewish and not many of my jewish relatives identify with the state of israel. Maybe European history for most identifies both their genes and their identity. Most European jews are genetically and culturally European. Sure some do the israel thing and go get sucked into all that biblical nonsense.. but its like a split within the jewish community over whether Israel is Valid. Netanyahu is just a smart ass trying to take ownership of all jews to control everything well that was obvious of course. Life is too short to be in a backwards tribe with pathological needs for control. They need to get with it and into the 21st century.. i.e. not just the technology.. but to forget all that ancient tribalism and so called shared destiny.

  2. jeffrey davies May 4, 2016 at 5:55 am - Reply

    the state of Israel, culling the west bank and gazza strip they now have becoming just like whot they fought against but then bbc newspapers tell the truth better listen to rt news atleast then you can read between the lines

  3. lanzalaco May 4, 2016 at 11:43 am - Reply

    the whole israel setup is crazy.. it demands its entitled to break more human rights than any other nation, but rather than say.. ok perhaps we need to change our ways its position is never to take blame for anything. it then sets out to reach into other nations, silence their population by law so it cannot protest or boycott and alter its democratic setup to its own ends. Whats next, make it illegal for us to refuse provision of military backup for the next lot of trouble, alter the entire concept of what is reasonable behavior to suit their needs ?

  4. NMac May 4, 2016 at 2:10 pm - Reply

    I utterly condemn the ‘Balfour Declaration’ and its right to give away someone else’s country, without consulting the people of that country, to a rabid group of right-wing fanatics (incidentally, at the time of the Balfour Declaration, Britain did not even have control of Palestine). I am not, however, prejudiced against Jewish people generally.

  5. mrmarcpc May 5, 2016 at 2:51 pm - Reply

    Netanyahu comes across as a very arrogant, pompous, odious, vile, little tin pot Napoleon who, if could get away without receiving international condemnation for it, he’d eliminate every Palestinian in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and not feel a thing about it and he won’t be the only Israeli to think it either!

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