Harry Potter actress Emma Watson was smeared on Monday by a racist Israeli official. Extra on this later.
However first, it is vital to notice that the Israeli authorities has all the time fabricated anti-Semitism smears in opposition to its enemies.
This goes proper again to the muse of the State of Israel itself in 1948, upon the mass graves of Palestinians.
The primary to be smeared on this method have been the Palestinian folks themselves. False allegations of anti-Semitism concocted by Israel and the Israel foyer in opposition to the Palestine solidarity motion are thus in actual fact an extension of the Zionist settler-colonial venture’s disinformation marketing campaign in opposition to the Palestinians themselves.
Israeli diplomats and propagandists have lengthy maintained that the Palestinian folks’s opposition to their dispossession from their very own land was not motivated by any sense of injustice, however merely by anti-Jewish racism. That is deemed, in the usual European-imperialist Orientalist framework, to be mysteriously endemic in Muslim and Arab societies.
That is, after all, a nonsense. Greater than a nonsense, it’s a toxic and racist lie.
READ: Harry Potter star slammed by Israel officials after pro-Palestine post
Palestinians oppose the Zionist motion – and its creation, Israel – as a result of it has meant and continues to imply expulsion, massacres, apartheid, army dictatorship and dispossession for them and their kids and their kids’s kids.
The truth that Israel lessons itself as a “Jewish state” is irrelevant. Palestinians would oppose any political and/or non secular venture that expelled them from their very own lands in the identical or related method.
It’s exactly as a result of Israel’s injustices have develop into increasingly clear for increasingly those that the Zionist motion and the Israel foyer have come to more and more depend on fabrications of anti-Semitism.
Israel’s propagandists know that they can’t win the arguments in open debate. So as an alternative of making an attempt to beat the activists by defeating their arguments, they as an alternative attempt to shut them down, cancel them, ban them and – in Palestine particularly – jail them.
However the maliciously false allegations of anti-Semitism in opposition to Israel’s enemies have develop into so egregious that most individuals not imagine them.
Weaponised anti-Semitism – a instrument within the Israeli arsenal virtually as highly effective, in its personal method, because the undeclared nuclear weapons it has – is starting to lose its efficiency.
All of which brings us again to Emma Watson.
The Israeli authorities is now overtly and unambiguously saying that any type of solidarity with Palestinians makes you an “anti-Semite”. #ItWasAScam https://t.co/iQKcAxsaQ6
— Asa Winstanley (@AsaWinstanley) January 4, 2022
On Monday, she posted a really bland assertion of solidarity with the Palestinian folks on Instagram. In opposition to a background picture of solidarity protesters holding Palestinian flags, Watson posted the caption: “Solidarity is a verb.”
It was hardly a controversial assertion. However the very acknowledgement of the existence of Palestinians and their supporters raised the anger and hatred of Israel and its foyer.
Danny Danon, former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations and present chairman of the worldwide wing of the official Israeli opposition occasion Likud, attacked Watson’s post on Twitter, claiming it confirmed she was an “anti-Semite”.
After all, as typical, there was completely no proof introduced of this supposed “anti-Semitism”.
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However Danon’s response was a very egregious one. There was no pretence to “nuance” – it was an open, unambiguous declare that making even probably the most anodyne assertion of solidarity with the Palestinians means you might be ipso facto an anti-Semite.
What many commenters missed have been two vital details: it’s Danny Danon himself that’s the actual racist, and Danon’s publish additionally confirmed that he, like all Zionists, is the true anti-Semite.
Missed in the entire mainstream protection about Watson’s publish and its reception (The Guardian’s headline writers misleadingly claimed it had led to an “anti-Semitism row”) is precisely who Danon is.
He’s a infamous anti-Palestinian bigot.
This could have been reported, nevertheless it was largely not. As my colleague at The Digital Intifada Nora Barrows-Friedman wrote: “Danon is a far-right politician who has referred to as for Palestinian ‘nationwide suicide’ and has a prolonged historical past of racist incitement in opposition to Arabs and Africans.”
Equating help for Palestinians to antisemitism presumes that repression of the Palestinian folks is an inherently Jewish high quality, which is the actual antisemitic sentiment right here.
— Jonathan Kennedy (@getradified) January 3, 2022
And as Twitter user Jonathan Kennedy put it well, Danon: “Equating help for Palestinians to anti-Semitism presumes that repression of the Palestinian folks is an inherently Jewish high quality, which is the actual anti-Semitic sentiment right here.”
Some liberal Zionists fretted that Danon’s smear in opposition to Watson was too “crass” and thus would not be believed.
They have been proper to be afraid. The backlash in opposition to Danon was immense and big, and he was ridiculed and denounced for his appalling smears.
However opposite to the concerns of the liberal Zionists relating to the declining efficiency of their weaponised anti-Semitism, this downfall is far to be welcomed, and is lengthy overdue.
The views expressed on this article belong to the writer and don’t essentially mirror the editorial coverage of Center East Monitor.
