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Anti-Semitism & Open Publishing
To address this problem of anti-Semitism within the left we need to be having a dialog real dialog. Many people who equate Zionism with Nazism think they are being more radical because of the reaction they get.
June 06, 2002
The issue of anti-Semitism on indymedia sites has come up a number of times. A friend just asked me what I thought about it and this kind of came out. It's definitely rant quality. Things have gotten to the point where indymedia is being used to advance anti-Jewish racism. I don't use the word Semite because both Arabs and Jews are Semitic people to say it's anti-Semitism would be a little non-sensesical.
After talking a little explaining the two groups of anti-Semitic posters on indymedia and a digression in to the general israel/palestine conflict I talk about how the future of open publishing can create a new space for political.
Regarding the racist posts on indymedia, I see them coming in two categories. One are the true racists who are probably right wing anyway. They are attempting to use indymedia and the oppression of Palestinians both as a way of attracting members of the white left in to joining and advance their insane conspiracy theories about Jewish control over the world and how the Holocaust never happened. These folks are the ones who talk about the elders of Zion or keep spreading around the baseless rumor that 4000 Jews didn't show up to work at the WTC on 9.11. In theory our editorial policy of removing racist and hate speech should be enough to have these posts removed. The problem is that there are way to many posts. A few sites like the Israel and Palestine indymedia sites put a lot of work in to removing them but most do not. People simply don't have the time to go through and filter things as it's currently setup. Beyond time there is a bigger problem. That of making political judgments as 'indymedia'. Getting in to fights over the quality of questionable posting is a draining process and eventually people shy away from it.
The second problem with anti-Jewish racism in indymedia is more difficult. These are from people who are genuine leftists who generally uphold egalitarian anti-racist views. They are reacting to the tremendous oppression which has come down on the Palestinians. When they look around for who is at fault they see the state of Israel. Israel does have populations Muslim and Christian citizens but it was founded as an explicitly Jewish state. The ethno-religious origins of the Jewish state make it really easy for people to confuse Jewish people with the state of Israel. When people are looking for a bad guy to explain what is happening in the occupied territories they see the state of Israel and by extension all Jews. This is not simply a vision created by the pro-Palestinian side. Sharon and the right wing Jews are actively blurring the line between the state of Israel and the Jewish diaspora. They do it to consolidate power. If you are a Jew and you don't support Israel then you are opposing the whole of the Jewish people as Hitler did. The Palestinians are an exploited minority make the obvious jump to equating the actions of the Israeli government with Nazism which so devastated the Jews 60 years ago. As soon as you say Israel = Nazism you get a huge reaction. It divides people and consolidates the power behind the groups which are unable to achieve peace because their power comes for the protected conflict.
Anyway I£¡ìm not saying anything new, dozens of more articulate and well read leftist intellectuals have been advancing this critique for years. The only hope I see is if people start looking at the struggle in South Africa as a model for how two communities can come to live together. Unlike in Israel/Palestine the ANC never dreamed of having an all black South Africa. I personally think the best way out is to try and take religion out of the equation and start treating this as a second appartide.
Ok, regarding the newswire. These second group of people who are leftists but who have fallen in to the good guy bad guy trap are the ones who are difficult to deal with. Just as during the Gulf and Kosovo Wars we had to say that both the US AND evil dictator of the moment were to be denounced. We need to try and encourage people to take a stand for a just and egalitarian peace. I personally think that both the Israelis and Palestinians would be much better off without a state at all. The history of post colonial states has proved they've been a dismal failure. Consolidating power under a post-colonial administration hasn't worked. What we need is open federated communitarian movements. In some ways despite it's hard line Muslim ideology and advocacy for the self-defeating tactic of suicide bombings Hamas is a model. Instead of becoming a new Palestinian Authority like the PLO, Hamas has build schools, clinics, and provided other vital social services. It would be interesting to see what they would achieve if they could continue this model of stateless community based governance of society. But I digress... Back to open publishing and indymedia. To address this problem of anti-Semitism within the left we need to be having a dialog real dialog. Many people who equate Zionism with Nazism think they are being more radical because of the reaction they get. To simply shut down the views of people in that mindset doesn't work. If people just started hiding those articles then everybody would become entrenched in their perspectives and fight about what should or shouldn't be on the sites.
What I hope to do achieve a solution to this is redefine space in which this conflict takes place. The current form of indymedia is to have this really narrow channel in which the content flows. Either an article is visible or hidden. Some new sites have categories which nicely add depth to the same channel. The problem is that all of these things still have a flat one way vision for what is or isn't included. Our medium is the web and we need to look at how we can use a discursive networked model for organizing the information. The examples are already out there it's just a matter of pulling them together. First we take the concept from eBay about reputation and credibility. With eBay you buy and sell stuff with random people over the internet. Trust is very important so they include easy measures to judge and rate other people. If you think somebody's articles are racist or brilliant then you need to be able to say so. Other people should be able to find out that kind of information. The second place where I hope to draw ideas is from the Amazon lists function. In Amazon people are able to create lists of books around a specific topic. When you see a book you also see that it is on five different lists people have put together. From those lists you can find more information. Obviously due to the volume of articles on indymedia we'd want to be able to create the ability for groups of people to collaborate on a list. The third innovation which we need to draw from in the evolution of indymedia in to being a truly powerful sustained open publishing political news medium is the blog. Weblogs (blogs for short), are a way of individuals to be empowered to be their own media by writing about issues and commenting on other websites. Blogs use links extensively and seem to be one of the more powerful new forms of journalism which has developed on the net. The fourth inspiration is that of kuro5hin.org, it's a web news community where the users vote on the articles and editorial decisions about the site. We need to get away from having the potentially cabal like powers of an elite and toward a model where we can actualize popular democratic participation in both news production and editorial decisions.
By combining those I hope that we'll be able to evolve indymedia in to something where you can get quality news of political issues which can address the long term problems like anti-Semitism in the movement from a bottom up perspective. Indymedia started out and is still best at covering breaking news such as major protests. For us to be effective in the long term in other environment we need to evolve. The process is slow but we are moving that direction. Part of the evolution is the switch so that on the global indymedia site the right hand column is no longer open publishing but has links to the featured stories from local imc's.
Posted by rabble at 07:45 AM
The issue of anti-Semitism on indymedia sites has come up a number of times. A friend just asked me what I thought about it and this kind of came out. It's definitely rant quality. Things have gotten to the point where indymedia is being used to advance anti-Jewish racism. I don't use the word Semite because both Arabs and Jews are Semitic people to say it's anti-Semitism would be a little non-sensesical.
After talking a little explaining the two groups of anti-Semitic posters on indymedia and a digression in to the general israel/palestine conflict I talk about how the future of open publishing can create a new space for political.
Regarding the racist posts on indymedia, I see them coming in two categories. One are the true racists who are probably right wing anyway. They are attempting to use indymedia and the oppression of Palestinians both as a way of attracting members of the white left in to joining and advance their insane conspiracy theories about Jewish control over the world and how the Holocaust never happened. These folks are the ones who talk about the elders of Zion or keep spreading around the baseless rumor that 4000 Jews didn't show up to work at the WTC on 9.11. In theory our editorial policy of removing racist and hate speech should be enough to have these posts removed. The problem is that there are way to many posts. A few sites like the Israel and Palestine indymedia sites put a lot of work in to removing them but most do not. People simply don't have the time to go through and filter things as it's currently setup. Beyond time there is a bigger problem. That of making political judgments as 'indymedia'. Getting in to fights over the quality of questionable posting is a draining process and eventually people shy away from it.
The second problem with anti-Jewish racism in indymedia is more difficult. These are from people who are genuine leftists who generally uphold egalitarian anti-racist views. They are reacting to the tremendous oppression which has come down on the Palestinians. When they look around for who is at fault they see the state of Israel. Israel does have populations Muslim and Christian citizens but it was founded as an explicitly Jewish state. The ethno-religious origins of the Jewish state make it really easy for people to confuse Jewish people with the state of Israel. When people are looking for a bad guy to explain what is happening in the occupied territories they see the state of Israel and by extension all Jews. This is not simply a vision created by the pro-Palestinian side. Sharon and the right wing Jews are actively blurring the line between the state of Israel and the Jewish diaspora. They do it to consolidate power. If you are a Jew and you don't support Israel then you are opposing the whole of the Jewish people as Hitler did. The Palestinians are an exploited minority make the obvious jump to equating the actions of the Israeli government with Nazism which so devastated the Jews 60 years ago. As soon as you say Israel = Nazism you get a huge reaction. It divides people and consolidates the power behind the groups which are unable to achieve peace because their power comes for the protected conflict.
Anyway I£¡ìm not saying anything new, dozens of more articulate and well read leftist intellectuals have been advancing this critique for years. The only hope I see is if people start looking at the struggle in South Africa as a model for how two communities can come to live together. Unlike in Israel/Palestine the ANC never dreamed of having an all black South Africa. I personally think the best way out is to try and take religion out of the equation and start treating this as a second appartide.
Ok, regarding the newswire. These second group of people who are leftists but who have fallen in to the good guy bad guy trap are the ones who are difficult to deal with. Just as during the Gulf and Kosovo Wars we had to say that both the US AND evil dictator of the moment were to be denounced. We need to try and encourage people to take a stand for a just and egalitarian peace. I personally think that both the Israelis and Palestinians would be much better off without a state at all. The history of post colonial states has proved they've been a dismal failure. Consolidating power under a post-colonial administration hasn't worked. What we need is open federated communitarian movements. In some ways despite it's hard line Muslim ideology and advocacy for the self-defeating tactic of suicide bombings Hamas is a model. Instead of becoming a new Palestinian Authority like the PLO, Hamas has build schools, clinics, and provided other vital social services. It would be interesting to see what they would achieve if they could continue this model of stateless community based governance of society. But I digress... Back to open publishing and indymedia. To address this problem of anti-Semitism within the left we need to be having a dialog real dialog. Many people who equate Zionism with Nazism think they are being more radical because of the reaction they get. To simply shut down the views of people in that mindset doesn't work. If people just started hiding those articles then everybody would become entrenched in their perspectives and fight about what should or shouldn't be on the sites.
What I hope to do achieve a solution to this is redefine space in which this conflict takes place. The current form of indymedia is to have this really narrow channel in which the content flows. Either an article is visible or hidden. Some new sites have categories which nicely add depth to the same channel. The problem is that all of these things still have a flat one way vision for what is or isn't included. Our medium is the web and we need to look at how we can use a discursive networked model for organizing the information. The examples are already out there it's just a matter of pulling them together. First we take the concept from eBay about reputation and credibility. With eBay you buy and sell stuff with random people over the internet. Trust is very important so they include easy measures to judge and rate other people. If you think somebody's articles are racist or brilliant then you need to be able to say so. Other people should be able to find out that kind of information. The second place where I hope to draw ideas is from the Amazon lists function. In Amazon people are able to create lists of books around a specific topic. When you see a book you also see that it is on five different lists people have put together. From those lists you can find more information. Obviously due to the volume of articles on indymedia we'd want to be able to create the ability for groups of people to collaborate on a list. The third innovation which we need to draw from in the evolution of indymedia in to being a truly powerful sustained open publishing political news medium is the blog. Weblogs (blogs for short), are a way of individuals to be empowered to be their own media by writing about issues and commenting on other websites. Blogs use links extensively and seem to be one of the more powerful new forms of journalism which has developed on the net. The fourth inspiration is that of kuro5hin.org, it's a web news community where the users vote on the articles and editorial decisions about the site. We need to get away from having the potentially cabal like powers of an elite and toward a model where we can actualize popular democratic participation in both news production and editorial decisions.
By combining those I hope that we'll be able to evolve indymedia in to something where you can get quality news of political issues which can address the long term problems like anti-Semitism in the movement from a bottom up perspective. Indymedia started out and is still best at covering breaking news such as major protests. For us to be effective in the long term in other environment we need to evolve. The process is slow but we are moving that direction. Part of the evolution is the switch so that on the global indymedia site the right hand column is no longer open publishing but has links to the featured stories from local imc's.
Posted by rabble at 07:45 AM
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zionism doesn't = nazism
strongly criticizing the israeli government's policies doesn't = anti-semitism
strongly criticizing zionism as some kind of "godly" basis for settlements and the unjustified occupation of palestine doesn't = anti-semitism
attacking jewish people as an entire ethnic group on the basis of the state of israel's occupation of palestine DOES = anti-semitism
some more thoughts, stuff from the above post in quotes
"I don't use the word Semite because both Arabs and Jews are Semitic people to say it's anti-Semitism would be a little non-sensesical."
This is part of the zionist conspiracy theory, not really a theory, it's true. Arabs and Jews ARE BOTH SEMITES. Zionists push the term anti-semitism in a way that confuses the issue and makes people think that only jews are semites, giving them an easy term to push around for their cause and making people feel uneasy about challenging zionism, for fear of being anti-jewish. I believe that people, especially jews, need to be aware of this and speak against it. When you hear somebody use the term "anti-semitism," if they are using it to mean "anti-jewish," correct them and let them know that by perpetuating the zionist mythology around the term anti-semitism, they are actually promoting racism.
On a similar note, the term "middle east" is european supremacist, use "arabia" instead.
"The only hope I see is if people start looking at the struggle in South Africa as a model for how two communities can come to live together. Unlike in Israel/Palestine the ANC never dreamed of having an all black South Africa. I personally think the best way out is to try and take religion out of the equation and start treating this as a second appartide."
Exactly. One state, not two. This is not a religious conflict, it is a nationalist one. Religiously this conflict is actually between christians and jews, moslems are a tool of the christians, but im not gonna go there now. A two state solution, similar to what native americans essentialy fought for, would leave the palestinians with the worst land and in the position of second class citizens, as native americans have become.
A one state solution, similar to what african americans fought for, would challenge the racism of the israeli state and eventually, hopefully, would lead to "two communuities living together." This is the only way for there ever to peace for both peoples.
"In some ways despite it's hard line Muslim ideology and advocacy for the self-defeating tactic of suicide bombings Hamas is a model. Instead of becoming a new Palestinian Authority like the PLO, Hamas has build schools, clinics, and provided other vital social services."
The thing for me with Hamas is that they more than anybody are bringing the situation closer to a peaceful resolution for both sides than anybody else through the use of suicide bombings.
I believe ultimately that non violence is the only way to finally achieve a lasting peace, but i also recognize the right of an occupied people to resist "by any means necessary." The palestinians are an occupied people and therefore have the right morally and under international law, whether or not it be the most effecitve choice, to blow up the people that are illegaly occupying them as a form of resistance. In this case it is the israelis, and in the case of the settlements, it is israeli civilians who are performing the occupation. Israeli settlers, technically, who are carrying out the military function of occupation, should not be considered civilians, they are actually military. It is sick that the israeli state would put their people in this position, use them in this way.
The suicide bombings, especially when they are often, cause the israelis to clamp down, taking away palestinian liberties. This is brutal and humiliating for the palestinian people to endure, but if it makes the israelis insecure it is helping. The Israeli state can never be allowed to feel so secure that it would allow the creation of an independent palestinian state. I think that both israelis and jews teeter on this issue for different reasons. For palestinians, i believe that it is best for the people to have one state. It is the corrupt, ruling palestians such as arafat who desire a separate state for their own purposes, not the purposes of the people.
So that was somewhat of an organized rant, im not sure how to reach the final goal, but im pretty sure its one state, not two, and this is how i see it.
INGNORANCE is STRENGTH
WAR is PEACE
Some people are pretty good at NEWSPEAK
already, like:
leftists are nazis
jews are nazis
feminists are nazis
greens are nazis
etc, etc....
fascism is the corperate control of the state which
only serves in the intrests of the elite. These are the
true nazis.
I guess I should turn myself into the ministry of Love
for thought crimes I have commited or may commit.
If you're gonna keep trying to redefine the term, then you are just one of the rant writers.
Keep in mind that there is another way to look at the conflict: Israel is a tiny country in the middle of Arabia (yeah that is a better term than ME, you're right there!), and the leaders of the nations of Arabia have joined forces to attack and eliminate this tiny country, by waging war against it half a dozen times, and more recently, by indoctrinating and paying the Muslims in the West Bank and Gaza to make suicide attacks on Israelis. When there are so many nonviolent solutions to this conflict, that are there for the taking, why do so many people embrace only violent solutions? A compelling historical argument can be made that Israel is just the reestablisment of a Jewish-centric state in the land that had been a Jewish state for thousands of years. By emphasizing this I do not mean to deny the suffering that the Arab Palestinians have suffered in the Infatida.
n.
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
anti-semitism
\An`ti-Sem"i*tism\, n. Opposition to, or hatred of, Semites, esp. Jews. -- An`ti-Sem\"ite, n. -- An`ti-Sem*it\"ic, a.
anti-semitism
n : the intense dislike for and prejudice against Jewish people [syn: anti-Semitism]
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Notice how he is correcting other people in most of these.
Fair enough, not all Jews support Israeli atrocities.
Now it is "don't blame the Zionists." In fact, now it's "don't say 'Zionist' " -- as though it were some bad word that people who oppose Israeli atrocities invented to describe them.
At some point, a people will have to be blamed for the atrocities the state of Israel carries out -- a state is not some abstract entity divorced from its citizens.
If we keep up this nonsense, we will keep flipping all of Israel's bills and the daily murder of Palestinians will never end (until many are killed off and the rest escape for their lives.)
On this website, all a pro-Israeli has to do is post some anti-Semitic crap and everyone is ready to condemn anyone who ever supported Palestinians' rights not to be slaughtered, tortured, abducted, and possibly even raped without any protection whatsoever -- not even the media showing what is going on.
I agree with you, totally, on the issue of revisionist zionism. My point is though, the policies you speak of can much much more easily be defeated by challenging the state apparatus *as a state apparatus* and not by challenging the philosophy upon which it rests - that is a strategic long-term goal, not a tactical short-term one. The danger of course is the white supremacist movement confusing the issue, and for now, I am proposing that it would be prudent to limit our condemnation to the state. It may be correct to be anti-zionist in some ways, but, sometimes you have to be a bit tactical about these things and say to yourself, hold on, that's a later battle, let's stick to the one we've got for now. There's no point trying to jump the last hurdle of the race before you do the first ones.
The threat of using such terminology is multifold. Primarily it alienates potential allies in the Israeli working class, who are not yet ready to accept the flaws of Zionism, but possibly may be once Palestinian dignity is restored. Second, it offers the white supremacists an opening and creates an enormous amount of confusion. Third, it is less comprehensible to the average man on the street, who is much more capable of understanding a criticism of state repression.
You've provided a theoretical justification for using the term and that's all fine and well if you plan to use it in non-public areas, in discussions amongst ourselves, but it doesn't serve our purposes well as a public message: for this you would need practical justifications of why the left ought to use the term, practical benefits to the advancement of the cause of the Palestinians. I'm open to discussion on these.
When white South Africans were slaughtering blacks, no one debated whether or not it was anti-white to condemn the white South Africans who did it AND those who remained silent.
Israel is the only case in which the main victimizers remain blameless no matter what they do. True, not all Israelis are involved. Some, in fact, oppose the atrocities. Those are decent people -- like some of the white South Africans -- who can be worked with. But to steer blame away from those committing the atrocities and those turning their heads and remaining silent is immoral on our part -- precisely because we pay for it.
Quite right, because the opposition focussed on condemning the state apparatus and policy of apartheid. They didn't go around saying "why can't I say I am anti-Afrikaaner??"
Lesson: forget about using labels on yourself, you're just buying into the authoritarian game. You're setting yourself up as a target strawman.
I am not saying I have the right to say that. What I am saying is that decent people are concentrating on anti-Semitism when people are being ethnically cleansed.
You say I want to use a label on myself. But what I am saying is I want others to stop labelling me.
A picture is worth a thousand words. That is why the Holocaust is so imprinted into all of our minds. If the media allowed all the terrible scenes of what the Israelis do to the Palestinians on a daily basis, you would have long ago given up the sensitivities you hold. But these images are suppressed and censored out of our minds so you have no idea of the reality going on there and believe that anti-Semitism (which I abhor) is somehow on a par with that.
You're making some awfully huge (and false) assumptions about my position ... do you assume everyone who has a tactical criticism is automatically pro-Israeli?