Anti-Israel = Racist

June 10, 2010 by
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Jacob Kalich (second left) in Mezrach und Maarev, 1921

Israel is still the only country in the world against which there is a written document to the effect that it must disappear. –Menachem Begin

Why is it that the world continues to hate Israel?  Since its founding in 1948, Israel has been portrayed as Goliath against a puny, Palestinian David.  However, if you look at the big map, Israel is clearly out numbered.

In the entire world, there are less than twenty million Jews.  Of that, over 25% live in Israel.  Some estimates say that there are as few as 12 million Jews in the world, putting nearly half in Israel.  In comparison, there are 1.57 billion Muslims.  That is 25% of the population of the world.  For every 1 Jew, there are 78.5 Muslims.  Who is Goliath?

No one goes out demanding the destruction of Saudi Arabia.  I have never heard a call for the death of all Arabs in the United Arab Emirates.  No country has tried to wipe out the population of Azerbijan, which is 98% Muslim.

So, why the Jews?  This is a question that has existed for as many centuries as the Jewish people have existed.  A recent study suggests that Jews are tied by more than common religion, we have the same genetics.

While even some Jews have fought the notion that there is a Jewish race, it is something I am happy to embrace.  I am no scientist or geneticist, but it is clearly obvious through recent research that we do, in fact, have a common genetic link.  This has been discussed in a second article as well.

While it is complex research, the data speaks for itself.  Alan Dershowtiz has said it.  Martin Luther King Jr. has said it.  And I have said it again and again.  If you hate Jews, you do not hate a set of beliefs.  You do not hate a country.  You are a racist.  Period.

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Eric

Eric is the founder and editor of IsraelSituation.com. He has been to Israel many times including a semester at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the former president of the Israel advocacy group at the University of Colorado and teaches about Israel and the Media at a local religious school.

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  • Steven

    @Eric:
    This simply shows a misunderstanding of the term “race”, and of the Jewish people. Firstly, people can convert to Judaism (such as our matriarch Ruth). People can not convert to a different genetic racial group. Secondly, race in terms of human racial groupings is a social construct in the first place. The genetic differences between all the so-called racial groups are too small for us to constitute distinct races. We are all genetically mongrel’s. That is why there is no universal agreement on the name, number, or precise qualities that define each supposed race. Race is a “fuzzy category”, trying to categories people – even though it has no clear boundaries. For example, take the categories YOUNG and OLD. Is a 37-year-old man in the category YOUNG or in the category OLD? There is no clear answer because, although people gradually lose membership in the first category and gain it in the second as they age, there is no point at which they make a clean jump between YOUNG and OLD. The different human “racial groups” blend smoothly together. The concept of different races is a social construct, and human beings make these categories of people in our minds.

    Jews are not a race, they are an ethnic group.
    “An ethnic group is a group of people whose members identify with each other, through a common heritage that is real or assumed. This shared heritage may be based upon putative common ancestry, history, kinship, religion, language, shared territory, nationality or physical appearance. Members of an ethnic group are conscious of belonging to an ethnic group; moreover ethnic identity is further marked by the recognition from others of a group’s distinctiveness.”

    • http://www.israelsituation.com/ Eric

      Thanks for chiming in there Steven. Finding flaws in my arguements… as usual.

      However, do take time to read through both of the articles linked at Discover Magazine. The research is pretty facinating. What do you think of them?

      It looks like ethnic group is a better definition than race, but I don’t think calling someone an ethnicist has the same ring as racist.

      • Steven

        Dear Eric,

        It is far easier to be a critic than to write a piece, so I just want to say that I applaud your efforts and ability to express yourself so well.

        Those articles are interesting, and it is true that some Jews maintain commonalities that are worthy of study. This is especially true for the Cohanim who have to have direct blood ties. Geneticists confirm that lots of Jews have a common heritage:
        http://www.newsweek.com/2010/06/03/the-dna-of-abraham-s-children.html

        However the fact remains that anyone on this planet can be a Jew. It is simply not the case that converts need alter their genes before they are counted as part of the Jewish nation.

        As humans, our genetic similarities and differences are not clear enough to constitute a distinct racial groupings. The only reason we use terms such as “race” and “racism” today is because human beings have over the generations categorised other people as different races. Races (“sub-species”) exist in society, but not in human genetics.

        In order to make the concept of race more palatable, pseudo-science was (and is) used to identify certain characteristics about each group of people. For example, IQ tests were used to compare the intelligence of black and white people. The IQ tests had clear cultural biases (I have taken them), and did not measure intelligence. What they did was provide hard “scientific” data to “prove” that the “black race” was inferior intellectually to the “white race”. It wasn’t hateful, people would argue, because all groups are simply different. The “black race” are best at manual labour after all.
        See: Gould, S.J. (1982) A nation of morons. New Scientist (6 May 1982)

        This same pseudo-science was used against Jews in world war 2 as well, and it is around to this day. It’s called Eugenics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics

        Interestingly, the term antisemitism was originally coined to scientifically enable Germans to racially dehumanise the Jewish people: http://www.zionismontheweb.org/antisemitism/anti-semitism_or_antisemitism.htm

        Only in the modern day, since the end of World War 2, has the term antisemitism become synonymous with all forms of Jew hatred, including denying the Jewish people rights affoarded to other peoples, such as the right to self-determination (see your article on “Anti-Zionism is antisemitism”).

        In short: studying genetics is useful and helpful, however the concept of racial groupings is fatally flawed – especially when applied to Jews since people can convert to Judaism, and there are Jews of almost every defined ‘racial group’ on the planet.

        That said, it’s important to add is that Jews are often defined as a racial group according to the law (such as in the UK). The reason for this is because people in the world have acted as if Jews were a different genetic racial group and persecuted them for it. That is why they are rightly protected against the Race Relations Act. This protection also presents problems for the Jewish people too, as evidenced in the JFS legal battle where it was accused of breaking race laws for refusing to allow a person entry to the Jewish school because their conversion to Judaism was not recognised by the Office of the Chief Rabbi.

        Based on this flawed reality, perhaps your argument has validity:

        > If the anti-Israel behaviour is antisemetic.
        > And if antisemisism is a form of racism.
        > The anti-Israel behaviour is racist.

        While I can see that line of reasoning, I do not agree with terms like racism being used here. I think it’s overly simplistic and doesn’t reflect the thoughts/motives of the people who are expressing anti-Jewish bigotry. There are many forms of hatred and bigotry that we are confronting, but most of it these days is based upon genetics.

        Best of wishes,

        Steven

        ps. Do you know how you changed your avatar picture?

        • Steven

          ps. I meant most of the bigotry we face these days is *not* based on genetics! :)

        • http://www.israelsituation.com/ Eric

          That response is as long as the post! Thanks for the well thought out and researched comment. I love the debate that this post has sparked.

          It is very true that to be Jewish does not mean you must come from the same genetic background. Anyone who has visited Israel has surely seen the Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Ethiopian Jewish communities that thrive in most major cities.

          I was be very general, and generalizing can often be taken many ways. I acknowledge that the Jewish may not be considered a race, but I am glad you were able to see the point I am trying to make.

          With so many detractors out there, there must be some reason the Jews are singled out. This is just one theory of why.

          • Steven

            I think antisemitism is simply at play.

            I consider double standards applied to the Jewish people or as a collective (in the form of the State of Israel) as a form of antisemitsm.

            Irrational hatred for Jews has existed for donkeys years.

            Why does antisemitism exist? Now that’s a question!

          • Steven

            Ps. Thank you for the compliment. :) And Leila tov!

    • shirley

      I agree. Please see my own comment

    • Mark

      “Race is a “fuzzy category”, trying to categories people – even though it has no clear boundaries. For example, take the categories YOUNG and OLD. Is a 37-year-old man in the category YOUNG or in the category OLD? There is no clear answer because, although people gradually lose membership in the first category and gain it in the second as they age, there is no point at which they make a clean jump between YOUNG and OLD.”

      Yeah but the fact that young and old blend together in some region called middle-age doesn’t mean there is no such thing as youth or old age, any more than the fact that yellow and red blend together to make orange means there is no such thing as yellow and red, or the (admittedly rarer) existence of hemaprhodites means there is no such thing as male or female.

      “The genetic differences between all the so-called racial groups are too small for us to constitute distinct races.”

      What do you mean by this? Is there some threshold of genetic difference that must be crossed before we can use the term “race?” If so, what is it?

      Steve Sailer has defined race as a meta-family, which is what it is, if you think about it. You share recent common ancestry with members of your racial group, and deeper ancestry with people outside your racial group. Of course it can be somewhat arbitrary to posit where one race ends and one race begins, but so it is with families, yet we would never say that families do not exist.

      • http://www.israelsituation.com/ Eric

        Interesting thoughts Mark. Thanks for commenting. I anticipate reading Steven’s answer to your questions as well.

      • Steven

        “Yellow and red blend together to make orange means there is no such thing as yellow and red.”

        Hi Mark. That was an excellent example. Yellow, red and orange are definable by their wavelengths. We can measure and state defined characteristics of what makes up orange. You can not do that when it comes to “youth”, or to the human “racial” groups.

        “Is there some threshold of genetic difference that must be crossed before we can use the term ‘race’? If so, what is it?”

        That is the perfect question. From a geneticists standpoint, yes… however there is no clearly defined difference between the different human racial groups. Human races don’t exist in biology because humanity is our race. We are all Homeo sapiens sapiens. Below that, every human being on the planet is “mixed race”. There is far more genetic diversity within the different socially constructed human “racial groups”, than there are differences between them. The only place “races” exist is in our societies – in our history – in our minds.

        There is a mountain of information on this around the web. Simply google the following three words: race social construct.

        You could also take a look at this wiki on the subject:
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human#Race_and_ethnicity

        Quote:
        Referring to natural species, in general, the term “race” is obsolete, particularly if a species is uniformly distributed on a territory. In its modern scientific connotation, the term is not applicable to a species as genetically homogeneous as the human one, as stated in the declaration on race (UNESCO 1950)
        http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001282/128291eo.pdf

        In conclusion, race exists in every day life – it is a reality in our world – but there is absolutely no scientific basis to define different groups of human beings as different genetic racial groups.

        Best wishes,

        Steven

  • shirley

    Please, how many times…….can you stop this tired, manipulative rubbish about critics of Israel being racist.

    As you very well know, people criticise what they do, not what they are.

    Besides, not all inhabitants of Israel are jewish ( although the government seems to be doing its best). You have made no mention of theother indigineous population of Israel, so perhaps I can accuse you of racism

    If your not careful, your going to get sued.

    Yours, happily off to join the boycott…..

    • http://www.israelsituation.com/ Eric

      Shirley, the “indigineous” people you speak of are, in fact, not indegineous at all. The Arab population makes up 20% of Israel, a significant minority. You can read a full history of Arabs in Israel, please visit this link:

      Arabs History in Israel

      The Arab majority in Israel came from an invasion. They came in mass in the 7th century. The Jewish population has been in Israel for over 3,000 years.

      It seems that you are against Israel no matter what I say, but the facts speak much more than the lies of Pallywood. The “Palestinians” never really existed as a national movement before 1967. The Jewish people, whether a religion, ethnicity, race, or national movement, have been around for millenia.

    • AbeBird

      Most of Anti Israel criticism today is due of Anti Semitism….. those people demonizing Israel the way they do not do to other nations, in same kind of cases. Only Israel can’t defend the lives of her citizens, while the criticizers kill their enemies much more in dirty ways (Turkey against Kurds, Shiites against Sunnis and vice versa, Russia against Chechens, US against Iraqis, Afghans and Yemenites and other such cases).

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  • AbeBird

    With all due respect, Judaism and Jewishness are not a race but nationhood / nationality and religion / belief in one package. Jews are Semite which is a broader family of nations.