Memo to a Useful Idiot - @MidEastTruth

Memo to a Useful Idiot

By Gil Troy
Canadian Jewish News
February 1, 2007

Dear Shulamit Aloni,

In early January, you supported former U.S. president Jimmy Carter’s inaccurate, inflammatory accusation that Israel is guilty of practising “apartheid.” You must be pleased with yourself. Your article has been widely posted around the Internet. Googling “Shulamit Aloni” and “apartheid” generates 70,000 hits.

I am, however, appalled. Not only did you fail to make the case, but I challenge you to see how your article is being used. I do not believe that all critics of Israel are anti-Semites. Nor do all critics call for Israel’s destruction. But I wonder how many anti-Semites – how many people devoted to destroying Israel – will post your article and lovingly quote your words before you take responsibility for fanning the flames of hatred against your people and the country you served as education minister.

You repeated the term apartheid nine times in your nearly 1,100-word article, yet only one paragraph discusses the term. Citing international law, you define apartheid “as an international crime that, among other things, includes using different legal instruments to rule over different racial groups, thus depriving people of their human rights.” Having shown that Israeli soldiers disrupt Palestinian travel you ask: “Isn’t freedom of travel one of these rights?”

That’s the wrong question. The relevant question is whether the Israeli-Palestinian clash is a racial conflict and whether the State of Israel has imposed a systematic, racist South-African-type regime. You contradict your title when you say that “we, too, used very violent terror against foreign rule because we wanted our own state.” If Palestinians are fighting “foreign rulers” then how is the apartheid label relevant? Apartheid, with its network of laws separating black citizens from whites, institutionalized white supremacy. Neither you nor Carter have justified that charge.

Unfortunately, this is more than a legalistic debate. By supporting Carter’s term, you are advancing a growing worldwide campaign to delegitimize Zionism and expel Israel from among the community of nations, which is the correct punishment for an “apartheid” state. Your article – and your career – demonstrate many other eloquent ways to condemn Israeli policies without using an incorrect, destructive analogy.

If you doubt how the apartheid accusation is being used against Israel, I invite you to surf the web and meet your new allies.

When I appeared on the left-leaning American radio and television network Democracy Now to condemn Carter’s use of the term, I received a wave of abusive anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic e-mails. Most critics blamed Israel exclusively for the entire Mideast mess, putting Israel’s actions and “the Jews” at the centre of all the world’s troubles.

I was told that the Jewish state should be in southern Germany, not on Palestinian land, that we Jews thought we were better than everyone, and that as a “Jewish New Yorker” I spoke “Yinglish” not English. Most critics triumphantly referenced your article or other similar articles from Israelis “proving” that Israel practises apartheid – as if it’s impossible for an Israeli to be wrong, too.

You are, of course, free to believe what you wish and write what you wish. That’s your right. You live in a free county. But had you lived under South Africa’s apartheid regime, you would have had to write such attacks from outside the country or from inside a jail cell.

My question then, is, what is your responsibility? When your words, consistently, are used by others to smear Israel, to delegitimize the state, to rationalize terrorism, and to peddle anti-Semitism, at what point do those actions implicate you?

The time has come for you to stand up and say, “Yes, my anger about the situation in the territories remains but, no, don’t delegimitize my state, don’t libel my people, and don’t use my heartfelt words to advance your despicable agenda.” You and many of your comrades on the Israeli left seem to have forgotten that in the Internet age, your words resonate, making you foot soldiers in the “electronic intifadah” that seeks Israel’s destruction. I challenge you and your buddies to take responsibility for the anti-Semitic effects of some of your rhetoric. You cannot deny your impact.

The old saw falsely attributed to Lenin still holds – you don’t have to recognize that you’re a “useful idiot” to be one.

Gil Troy is Professor of History at McGill University and the author of “Why I Am a Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity and the Challenges of Today.”

Source: http://www.cjnews.com/viewarticle.asp?id=11090