{"id":156901,"date":"2024-08-11T04:29:27","date_gmt":"2024-08-11T12:29:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=156901"},"modified":"2024-08-11T04:29:27","modified_gmt":"2024-08-11T12:29:27","slug":"zombie-anti-zionism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=156901","title":{"rendered":"Zombie Anti-Zionism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Izabella Tabarovsky writes for Tabletmag July 30, 2024<\/a>: <\/p>\n

Herbert Aptheker, a senior member of the American Communist Party (CPUSA) and influential scholar of Marxism, argued for framing the Arab-Israeli conflict in terms of \u201cimperialism and colonialism versus national liberation and social progress,\u201d as well as through the lens of racial oppression. Contrary to Israeli rulers\u2019 claims, he declared, the greatest threat facing Israel came not from Arabs but from Israel\u2019s own extremist right-wing government, which had turned Israel into the \u201chandmaiden of imperialism and colonialist expansionism.\u201d He equated Israel with Nazi Germany by referring to the recent Six-Day War as a blitzkrieg, a quintessentially Soviet propaganda term meant to evoke Hitler\u2019s invasion of the USSR. Today, said Aptheker, it was Jews who were \u201cacting out the roles of occupiers and tormentors\u201d of the oppressed. He called on the audience to work tirelessly to unmask \u201cthe horror of the June war and its aftermath.\u201d So closely did Aptheker\u2019s speech follow the anti-Israel logic and idiom of Soviet propaganda that it may well have been written for him in Moscow.<\/p>\n

The two documents the conference unanimously adopted\u2014the \u201cAppeal to the Conscience of the World\u201d (reportedly signed by 100 members of the Indian parliament) and a \u201cDeclaration\u201d\u2014conveyed similar messages with even more bombast. Evoking classic antisemitic tropes, they accused Israel of having cynically violated all \u201cstandards of human decency,\u201d and declared that it had made \u201ca mockery of all human moral values.\u201d They dubbed Palestinian terrorism\u2014aka \u201cresistance\u201d\u2014as \u201crighteous and justified.\u201d In an attempt to make the Middle Eastern conflict more relatable, they equated it with the central cause animating the Western left at the time: the war in Vietnam. They called for all the people on the planet to resist \u201cimperialist-Zionist propaganda\u201d and expressed appreciation for the \u201cprogressive and peace-loving\u201d Soviet Union and other socialist states and Non-Aligned countries that \u201csupported the Arab cause.\u201d<\/p>\n

The message echoed throughout the global leftist universe. The CPUSA, which was almost wholly subsidized by the Soviet Union, published Aptheker\u2019s speech and both statements in full in its theoretical journal Political Affairs. The African Communist, the Soviet-financed quarterly organ of the South African Communist Party (SACP), which was deeply intertwined with the African National Congress (ANC), ran a piece titled \u201cZionism and the Future of Israel,\u201d closely reflecting the language of the New Delhi conference, complete with the word blitzkrieg. Its author, who claimed to be a South African living in Tel Aviv, accused Zionist \u201cfanatical zealots\u201d of exploiting the biblical concept of Jewish chosenness to fan the flames of Jewish supremacy (\u201cchauvinism\u201d in the language of the day), while equating Israel with apartheid South Africa.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s so interesting about this half-century-old Soviet propaganda is how precisely it mirrors the language emanating from the anti-Israel left since Oct. 7. Today\u2019s left, too, speaks of Israel as a racist, imperialist, and colonialist state; equates it with Nazi Germany and apartheid South Africa; disparages Jews for having turned into oppressors; and proclaims Palestinians\u2019 inalienable right to resist their colonial oppression by any means necessary.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Izabella Tabarovsky writes for Tabletmag July 30, 2024: Herbert Aptheker, a senior member of the American Communist Party (CPUSA) and influential scholar of Marxism, argued for framing the Arab-Israeli conflict in terms of \u201cimperialism and colonialism versus national liberation and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[605],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-156901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anti-semitism"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t