The Courage to call Anti-Zionism what it is: Antisemitism

http://fiammanirenstein.com/articoli.asp?Categoria=3&Id=2510 by Fiamma Nirenstein; translated by Pieter Uys

Il Giornale, 24 gennaio 2011

http://www.ilgiornale.it/cultura/il_coraggio_dire_che_lantisionismo_e_antisemitismo/24-01-2011/articolo-id=501436-page=0-comments=1

The new book by Pierluigi Battista, titled Lettera a un amico antisionista (Letter to
an AntiZionist Friend) (Rizzoli) is quite extraordinary. European and American
élites are being contaminated by a demented bias against Israel which is devoid of
any logic or historical fact. This narrative, overwrought with studies, statistics and
words, promotes the idea that it would be better if the State of Israel did not exist.
That it ought not to exist tomorrow. That it will be destroyed. Battista in turn destroys
this intellectual-political perversion of antizionist hatred in five blistering chapters
and reveals antizionism for what it really is: Anti-Semitism.

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This is what makes Battista’s book so special: there are very few non-Jewish
intellectuals that have so neatly identified the hatred of Israel that is infesting the
world. He points out how the United Nations and the European Union operate in a
miasma of lies; how they protect the violators of human rights; how they ignore
human rights abuses in e.g. China and Sudan. How they condemn Israeli checkpoints
that deter terrorist attacks with the pornographic adjective “nazi”.

Besides Christian supporters of Israel, we may take note also of brave intellectuals
like Robin Shepherd and his book A State Beyond the Pale,

Bruce Bawer, who confronts the issue in While Europe Slept,

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Neill Lochery with Why Blame Israel?, and amongst Italians Angelo Pezzana and
Magdi Allam. And there are great names in politics such as the noteworthy José
Maria Aznar and Giuliano Ferrara.

Recently a great demonstration took place in Rome under the title “Per la verità, per
Israele” (For Life, For Israel), in which I participated as did many intellectuals and
politicians; it shows that change is in the air. There are those who refuse to submit to
the dangerous perversion of the European mindset.

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But few are the members of the élite that have undertaken a work comparable to that
of Battista. In general, opinion makers in newspapers, books, on TV, in the
universities and the world of cinema have contributed to fostering a public opinion
based upon silent agreement: a climate that delegitimizes Israel’s existence, accuses it
of being an apartheid state and of being guilty of war crimes and defines it as «that
shitty little country» in the words of a previous French ambassador to London. This
mindset indulges in double standards that absolve the worst dictators while denying
Israel’s right to exist.

Battista attacks on two fronts, by identifying anti-Semitism with antizionism and by

highlighting the maniacal obsession – that exaggeration, that fever that Robert
Wistrich calls the «lethal obsession» in his recent book on anti-Semitism. It’s quite
clear that the obsession derives from anti-Semitism as Battista demonstrates so
convincingly.

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There is, however, more to it than that. Battista explains that Israel is judged by an
ideological system that emerged during the Cold War, in which poor people are
automatically good whilst westerners are automatically “evil imperialists.” This
system of judgment has a logical flaw at its core: the double standard. There are
millions of displaced persons around the world but their plight is ignored. Just
consider the Uighurs, Chechens, Darfur, Tibet and Kirghizstan.

Battista denounces these attitudes in a series of debates with famous figures like
Sergio Romano, Barbara Spinelli, Tom Segev and the late Edward Said, pillars of the
élite who have shaped public opinion in the west. They are the sources of the masked
anti-Semitism. He explains it clearly by analogy. Particular governments are
criticized but one seldom hears criticism of for example France or Italy as a whole,
neither is their right to exist ever questioned. This is the basic theme of the book: that
the abominable criticism of Israel’s right to life derives from the mental virus of anti-
Semitism.

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