New "Anti-Semites" Week of Sept. 13 - Sept. 19 2007

WHO: Joel Kovel, "teaches at Bard College in New York, has written 10 books, ran for the Green nomination to be president of the United States and edits Capitalism Nature Socialism..."
WHY: For having the audacity to write the book "Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine" that questions the ethno-national ideology of Zionism.
FOR THE RECORD: Joel Kovel is ethnically Jewish and: "As an activist, Joel Kovel has been engaged in struggles for peace and justice since the Vietnam War era. He has worked within the antiwar and antinuclear movements, the solidarity movements in Central America and the Caribbean, the movements for democratic media, and, increasingly, for ecological transformation. He lived in Nicaragua for a period in 1986, and accompanied Pastors for Peace as they broke the US blockade on Cuba in their 1994 Friendshipment."
SOURCE: Andrew MacLeod, "Unwelcome Questions," Monday Magazine, 19 September 2007

WHO: Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA), US House of Representatives, http://moran.house.gov/
WHY: "...telling a Jewish magazine that the pro-Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, was enormously influential in pushing for war in Iraq. He also said AIPAC’s 'ties to certain newspapers and magazines and individuals in the media are substantial and intimidating.'"
FOR THE RECORD: "Jewish Americans, as a voting bloc and as an influence on American foreign policy, are overwhelmingly opposed to the war. There is no ethnic group as opposed to the war as much as Jewish Americans. But, AIPAC is the most powerful lobby and has pushed this war from the beginning. I don’t think they represent the mainstream of American Jewish thinking at all, but because they are so well organized, and their members are extraordinarily powerful—most of them are quite wealthy—they have been able to exert power." Ann El Khoury, "Rabbi Lerner and Congressman Jim Moran (D-VA) on AIPAC’s influence," Reclaiming Space, 16 September 2007
SOURCE: Josephine Hearn, "Moran Should 'retract His Remarks' About Israel Lobby, Hoyer Says," The Politico, 19 September 2007,

WHO: Deputy Cornelius Blue of the Seminole County Sheriff's Department (Florida)
WHY: For investigating parking complaints: "The situation started about 7:30 p.m. as an investigation into parking complaints in the subdivision, which is just north of the UCF campus. Several 911 calls were made reporting that numerous cars were parked illegally along the narrow streets that run through the middle-class neighborhood. Since March, deputies have responded to a dozen similar complaints at the house, which Lipskar has used to hold Saturday Sabbath services. ... Karen Wong, who lives a half-block from Lipskar, said the complaints from neighbors have nothing to do with Jewish services and everything to do with parking. 'They are blocking the sidewalks, blocking the fire hydrant, blocking driveways,' she said."
FOR THE RECORD: For interrupting the Rosh Hashanah service, the deputy and other witnesses were "called a Nazi, an anti-Semite and a racist," soon afterward "the crowd grew disorderly after one woman in the crowd stated, 'I hate the police; this is ridiculous.' ... Lemma said Blue handled the situation well, having first tried to persuade Lipskar and his followers to park at nearby Hagerty High School and walk a quarter-mile back to the neighborhood. 'The deputy could have taken action [to issue tickets and tow cars] earlier, but he chose to handle it in a more diplomatic way,' he said. 'Obviously we wish the situation would have happened differently, but the bottom line is he had the legal right to respond at the level that he did.'"
SOURCE: Robert Perez, "ACLU joins quarrel over parking at rabbi's home," Orlando Sentinel, 14 September 2007

WHO: Tim Tyler, "the US Navy's Israel desk officer during the 1973 Yom Kippur War as a young naval officer, before he joined the Pentagon's secretive Defence Security Assistance Agency, where he performed various important roles including that of chief of the Middle East South Asia Division. He then worked at Nato as a defence planner with special expertise in Pershing II and cruise-missile deployment, before returning to the Pentagon to be "deputy director plans", when he was directly involved in international sales of major weapons systems."
WHY: "In the 1980s he recommended that the Pentagon stop funding the development of Israel's own multibillion dollar Lavi jet fighter, but offer them America's own F-16s instead. His recommendation, much to the fury of the Israelis, worked its way up the Pentagon hierarchy and was eventually accepted."
FOR THE RECORD: "Through all of this I remained friends with Marvin Klemow [negotiator for the Israelis] and one holiday I was at his house for a party. It was a good party, and the only slight hiccup was the rather brusque manner of an Israeli colonel who was there - but I thought nothing of it. Then Marv pulled me aside. He said something along the lines of, 'You won't believe this, but I just got chewed out for inviting you to this party.' I asked him why, and he told me that he had just been informed that I was on the [Israeli] embassy's anti-Semite list because I didn't support the Lavi programme. We were both flabbergasted. But, sadly, I was never invited back to Marv's house."
SOURCE: Andrew Stephen, "Saying the unsayable," The New Statesman, 13 September 2007,

WHO: Wilhelmine Bennett, author of a letter to the editor to the Des Moines Register
WHY: For having the audacity to mention the Al Nakba, the thoroughly documented ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Israelis in 1948
FOR THE RECORD: The letter itself, "U.S. is party to ethnic cleansing in Palestine" is online and has nothing even vaguely anti-Jewish about it.
SOURCE: Oscar Volij and James Eaves-Johnson, "Anti-Semitic letter ignores truth and spreads hate," Des Moines Register, 18 September 2007

WHO: The government of Syria
WHY: No actual reason was cited, just the bald statement by a US official that Syria holds "the most barbaric anti-Semitic views." Presumably this is because they object to the Israeli occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights, invaded and occupied by Israel in 1967.
FOR THE RECORD: There is no denying that the Syrian government is an enemy to Israel.
SOURCE: Barak Ravid and Yoav Stern, "U.S. official says Syria should be barred from regional summit," Ha'aretz, 18 September 2007

WHO: The Lithuanian government, the Lithuanian Prosecutor General's Office, and the Republika newspaper
WHY: For having the audacity to threaten to question an Israeli Holocaust researcher for possible war crimes while serving as a Soviet secret police partisan leader in Lithuania during the World War II.
FOR THE RECORD: "Lithuania has requested that the Israeli authorities facilitate the questioning of prominent historian and Holocaust researcher Yitzhak Arad regarding his partisan past during World War II and his supposed subsequent service for the Soviet NKVD security police. 'The pretrial investigation documents of this criminal case include enough data to assume that the suspect Yitzhak Arad might have committed criminal deeds in Lithuania," the Lithuanian Prosecutor General's Office said in a press release. According to the Lithuanian prosecution authorities, Arad joined a Soviet partisan squad while Lithuania was occupied by Nazi Germany and then served with the NKVD. He is suspected of involvement in executions of Lithuanian civilians and members of the anti-Soviet resistance movement, the statement says." Inter-Fax News, "Lithuania suspects prominent Israeli Holocaust researcher of war crimesduring WWII," Inter-Fax News, 11 September 2007
SOURCE: Baruch Shuv, "Lithuanian chutzpah," Ha'aretz, 18 September 2007

WHO: Apparently a significant number of Israeli teenagers
WHY: In this case they do appear to be real anti-Semites, i.e. people who hate Jews, that just happen to be Jewish enough to qualify for Israeli citizenship under the racial elements of the Israeli "Law of Return." Generally we don't really put actual Jew haters on "Who's an Anti-Semite this Week?" but the sheer irony of this has led to an exception.
FOR THE RECORD: "Neo-Nazis attacked a 70-year-old woman ... in Haifa; a family from Neveh Yosef, ... was victimized by Nazi activity; [In] the town of Migdal Haemek, .... A 17-year-old anti-Semite was caught Sunday spraying a swastika on a neighbor’s car; Nazi grafitti was found Sunday on walls in the town of Holon, near Tel Aviv; the Beit Ephraim synagogue in the northern Negev city of Dimona last Friday discovered their house of worship painted with Nazi symbols. ... Nazi and Christian slogans were scrawled on the walls of a Sephardic synagogue in the resort city of Eilat; spray-painting swastikas on tombstones in the Eilat cemetery. ... Last week eight teenage members of a neo-Nazi cell in Petach Tikva were indicted in Tel Aviv District Court... . “Nazi Eli” Buyanitov was also charged with a count of battery. ..."
SOURCE: Hana Levi Julian, "Neo-Nazi Attacks Raise Red Flags in Jewish State," Arutz Sheva Online, 18 September 2007

WHO: Roald Dahl, author of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and "James and the Giant Peach"
WHY: "There’s no explanation of what the user concerns actually were, but the New York Sun speculates that it might have been due to allegations that Roald Dahl was anti-semitic, and that the timing of the logo also coincided with Jewish holiday Rosh Hashanah which started at sundown the day before."
FOR THE RECORD: Nothing much to add.
SOURCE: Philipp Lenssen, "Google’s Roald Dahl Logo Was Pulled," Google Blogoscoped, 17 September 2007

WHO: William Shakespeare, English playwright
WHY: "But is Shakespeare's an anti-semitic text? Deep into rehearsal, I am shocked by Shylock's lines to the Court, as he damns Venetian (and of course English) society for slavery. Shakespeare allows the Jew to criticise white racism and then the Jew is punished by being stripped of his wealth and identity. Is this Shakespeare, like Marlowe, enjoying Shylock's punishment in keeping with the spirit of the time? Or is it a critique of white European supremacy?"
FOR THE RECORD: "Our quest, through the Council of Christians and Jews, is towards greater understanding between peoples. Though his Shylock is hardly more admirable than Marlowe's Barabas, Shakespeare, by his courage, honesty and insight in confronting the most vital issues of human co-existence, serves, as few others could, to show us the way." Jack Opie, "Antisemitism in English Literature: The Shakespeare Case," International Council of Christians and Jews, 2007
SOURCE: Julia Pascal, "How do you solve a problem like Shylock?," The Guardian, 17 September 2007

WHO: Prof. Norman Finkelstein, http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/
WHY: "Finkelstein is not a scholar of any sort, but rather is a full time anti-Semitic propagandist and generator of hate screeds."
FOR THE RECORD: "While Finkelstein has long been controversial off the DePaul campus, he was popular with his students and even his critics at the university acknowledged that he was an excellent teacher. The case is also frequently portrayed as one in which Finkelstein (a leftist critic of Israel) is allied against conservative supporters of Israel, but it's not so neat. Some academics who strongly disagree with Finkelstein's views have said his academic freedom was violated in the tenure review, and some academics who share Finkelstein's politics have questioned his scholarship." Scott Jaschik, "Finkelstein and DePaul Settle," Inside Higher Ed
SOURCE: Steven Plaut, "The Passion of Norman Finkelstein," FrontPage, 17 September 2007