The Rt. Hon. Gerald Bernard Kaufman sits in the House of Commons of the British Parliament. He's a member of the Labour Party and a Backbencher. First and foremost, however, he is an ass.
Back in April, 2002, a few weeks after the Passover massacre at Netanya, Mr. Kaufman delivered a speech to his colleagues. In it, he described Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as a "war criminal" and a "fool," accused him of "war crimes" at Jenin and of "staining the star of David with blood." He also called on P.M. Tony Blair to put an end to Sharon's "defiance" of President Bush. (Not surprisingly, I found this speech posted here.)
But it was this opening "joke" that especially caught my attention.I became a friend of Israel when I was eight days old, and I have the scar to prove it. [Laughter.]
Really! Of all the idiotic drivel and backpedaling I've read by those trying to defend this cartoon, none comes close to equalling the offensive stupidity and cluelessness of this entry by the illustrious Mr. Kaufman.
Anti-Semitic material can easily be spotted. The front page of the New Statesman on 14 January last year was blatantly anti-Semitic. It depicted an enormous Star of David impaling Britain's Union flag with, underneath in huge, bold letters, the strap-line: "A kosher conspiracy?" Brown's cartoon, specifically based on, and attributed to, a Goya picture, contained no Star of David. Indeed, no Star of David or other Jewish symbol was to be seen anywhere in the cartoon.
There was no Star of David anywhere in the cartoon, ergo it could not possibly be anti-semitic. Anti-semites should display a big banner under their work that says, "Notice: the above item is intended to be anti-semitic! Please notice the Star of David, the tell-tale signature of any genuine anti-semite. If you don't find the Star, you're being taken in by a pseudo-anti-semitic fraud, probably created by a baby-eating Zionist to create unwarranted sympathy for the State of Israel. Don't be fooled!"
The fact is that Israel's right-wing government wants it both ways. It desires, on the one hand, to be accepted as a nation among nations, entitled, for example, to trade concessions from the European Union. On the other hand, whenever circumstances suit it, it plays the victim card – for example, dragging off visiting statesmen, such as Robin Cook when he was Foreign Secretary, to pay their respects at the moving Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem in Jerusalem in penance for having done or said anything not to the liking of Likud prime ministers.
Yes, this is the way the right-wing government of Israel "punishes" those who offend it in any way. It "drags them off" to Yad Vashem and forces them to grovel in the dirt. This is also, by the way, the way the left-wing governments of Israel have "punished" those who have offended them which, in Mr. Kaufman's alternate universe, would apparently be just about everyone. How dare Israel ask to be accepted as a nation and at the same time invite visiting dignitaries to visit Yad Vashem! What unmitigated gall!
The other card played by right-wing Israelis and their apologists to seek to justify policies that must be unacceptable to many thinking people, is the democracy card: Israel as the only democracy in the Middle East, surrounded by a rogues' gallery of Arab autocracies. That Israel is a democracy is undeniable; but even democracies cannot be awarded a free licence to carry out odious policies. The United States democracy under Lyndon B Johnson's presidency immersed America in the Vietnam morass. "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids have you killed today?" was not regarded as an unacceptably anti-Christian denunciation.
Well, of course, I see it now. An obvious analogy, don't know how I could have missed it! The U.S. is a democracy, Israel is a democracy. A U.S. President was accused of killing kids, an Israeli Prime Minister is accused of killing kids. All in a good day's work, what?
Did anyone denouncing this extremely offensive cartoon suggest even for a minute that criticism of Israel's "odious policies" was the issue? No. But this is the rock that all anti-semites, even (and perhaps especially) the Jewish ones, crawl under when they're attacked for their anti-semitism. "Baw! You won't let me criticize Israel! Every time I bring up the teeniest little atrocity, you scream anti-semitism!" Well, go ahead and "criticize" to your heart's content, moron. We can take it, really we can. And we can give it back, as well. But just because it's critical of Israel doesn't mean it isn't anti-semitism. Star of David or not, it's like Meryl says: "If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's a no-brainer."
In the meantime, I'm going to be looking for a copy of that lecture on "religion as a motivating factor in international conflict" that Mr. Kaufman delivered at the (Government sponsored) Zayed Centre for Co-ordination and Follow-up in Abu Dhabi last year. Should be interesting. Oh, look! Here's a summary.
