From Josh Marshall of TPM

In case you missed it, I want to commend to your attention Jeffrey Goldberg’s article in the Sunday Times: “Israel’s ‘American Problem“. The premise will be a familiar one to anyone who’s thought seriously and sanely about Israel’s future and America’s relationship with Israel. The breadth of acceptable opinion about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is vastly greater in Israel than it is in the United States. Indeed, as Goldberg suggests, if Prime Minister Olmert and Defense Minister Barak were running for president in the US, they might not be deemed sufficiently pro-Israel to be acceptable in the American mainstream.

Much of this is due to the neocon / extreme Zionist alliance as practiced by Bush et al. One quibble: the American mainstream doesn’t really understand the situation there, and gets little if any, actual information about  the settlements, the plight of Palestinians, or how they were forced from their land. This is due to the until now quite successful lobbying by extremist Zionists in the US to muddy the waters.

Josh Marshall, who named his son partly after the commander of an elite commando unit of the Haganah and who thus knows the territory well, concludes.

By conflating being pro-Israel with supporting the continued colonization of the West Bank, many of Israel’s ‘friends’ in the US are placing Israel in great danger and doing no favor to the United States either.

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An anti-Zionist speaker who is also clearly anti-Semitic has been forced to cancel a speech in Britain after pressure from Left groups.

From Another Green World

Criticism of Israel is one thing, anti-semitism is quite another.

So I am glad to see that Gilad Atzmon who seems to have anti-semitic views is not going to be airing them in Brighton.

Socialist Unity has more, including a, ah, lively comments section and links to this excellent piece from local newspaper, the Brighton Argus.

Those who campaign for the rights of Palestinians are rightly incensed by the frequency with which they are falsely accused of “anti-semitism”. They point out that criticism of the actions of the Israeli government and the Zionists who sustain and support it is not anti-semitic.

However, the fact that false allegations of anti-Semitism are often made against those who criticise the Israeli state does not mean that anti-Zionists are not also sometimes anti-semitic. Or that those who oppose Zionism can cease to be vigilant about the allies they choose to stand alongside.

Well put indeed.

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