Rev. Stephen Sizer is no novice in terms of racism.
Engage 2006: The Church is Moral; The People in the Shadows Are Not
My coverage, going back years.
The CST on Sizer.
Betsy Childs’ excellent The Master of Apologies.
Alibi Antisemitism
Norm Argues Antisemitism As Epiphenomenal
Nowadays, there are few intellectuals that are really accessible, clear and forthright about their opinions but Norman Geras is.
Norm recently attended a conference in New York on Jews and the Left delivering a speech, this is a draft extract:
“3. Anti-Semitism as epiphenomenal
A first form of the Israel alibi for contemporary anti-Semitism is the impulse to treat such of the anti-Semitism as there is acknowledged (by whomever) to be – in Europe, in the Arab world – as a pure epiphenomenon of the Israel-Palestine conflict. One instance of this was the statement by film director Ken Loach in March 2009 that if there was a rise of anti-Semitism in Europe this was not surprising: ‘it is perfectly understandable‘ (my emphasis), he was reported as saying, ‘because Israel feeds feelings of anti-Semitism’. The key word here is ‘understandable’. This might just mean ‘capable of being understood’; but since more or less everything is capable of being understood, it would be pointless to use the word in that sense about the specific phenomenon of a rise in anti-Semitism in Europe. ‘Understandable’ also means something along the lines of ‘excusable’ or, at any rate, not an issue to get excited about. To see plainly the way in which Israel acts as an exonerating alibi in this case, one need only imagine Loach, or anyone else on the left, delivering themselves of the opinion that a growth of hostility towards, say, black people, or towards immigrants from South Asia, or from Mexico, was understandable.
Another instance of this first form of the Israel alibi is provided by a thesis of Gilbert Achcar’s concerning Holocaust-denial in the Arab world. Achcar is a professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and longtime leftist; he is editor of a volume of essays on The Legacy of Ernest Mandel. Holocaust-denial – as I shall merely assert and not argue here – is a prominent trope of contemporary anti-Semitism; it is indeed continuous with a practice of the Nazi period itself, when camp guards and the like would mock their Jewish victims by telling them that not only were they doomed to die, but also all knowledge of what had happened to them would be erased. They would be forgotten; the world would never know. Achcar accepts that Western Holocaust-denial is an expression of anti-Semitism. Much Arab Holocaust-denial, on the other hand, he puts down to such factors as impatience in the Arab world with Western favouritism towards Israel, a suspicion that the Holocaust has been ‘amplified’ for pro-Zionist purposes, and exasperation with the cruelty of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.
Whether or not these explanations are valid, a racist belief does not cease to be one on account of its having context-specific causes. No one on the left would dream of suggesting that a belief that black people were lazy, feckless or simple-minded, was less racist for being held by a certain group of white people on account of motives which eased their way towards that belief. But the Israel alibi is currently exceptional in its legitimating power in this respect.”
The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research’s YouTube channel will have video of the conference in a few days, the video data is currently being processed.
Soupy One 