THOUGH I HAVE little respect for him as a man and I disagree with him about much, I certainly agree with Thomas Jefferson that governments, states obtain their only legitimacy from receiving the just consent to be governed by those who are to be governed by it. They can lose their legitimacy through the loss of that consent, which is why we must have elections and don't have kings and dictators in legitimate governance. No matter what the corrupt Roberts Court and the corporate media is trying to impose one through Trumpian con jobs.
In a perfect world, that would be on the basis of consensus but that is not generally practical in even a small Quaker meeting and certainly not on the basis of a nation state of millions and hundreds of millions. So the minimum measure of legitimacy in governance must be had through the majority choice governing such decisions BUT ONLY WITH A GUARANTEE OF EQUAL RIGHTS FOR MINORITIES.
It is one of the greatest ironies of the American founding that the group of aristocrats who framed the Constitution were constantly, obsessively worried about the "tyranny of the majority" by which they certainly meant the empowered common People while they tyrannized over Black People held in slavery and workers and disenfranchised Women and slaves and even white males who were not property owners, the details of that left to the various states. It is one of the ironies of the fabled Jacksonian democratic revolution of the early to mid-decades of the 19th century that with the gradual elimination of property requirements and then tax requirements on the enfranchisement of white males, a number of the states which had allowed Black Men to vote abridged that right - an early warning about just such liberal democracies in which an enfranchisement of a majority without guarantees of equality can lead to the apartheidization of a country.
I would go so far as to say the hoarding of the vote to one class or a limited number of classes who are to be governed under such a rigged "democracy" delegitimatizes the alleged democracy and the actions of it and the very things voted for under such an apartheid regime. I don't think much of anything the United States Government or most of the states have done throughout our history has any real "right" to the status of legitimacy due to the outrageous restrictions on Women, Black People, other People of Color and, in a number of the states, the restriction of the vote to Protestant males including the adoption of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights or anything else, as good and wise as some of those, especially later, things were adopted as law. I don't think the United States has or had any strong measure of legitimacy until the adoption and implementation of first Women's suffrage and then the Voting Rights Act I hold the same is true for any country anywhere in the world. If you are going to claim to believe in those two basic principles of legitimacy, just consent of those governed and the practical necessity of the majoritarian principle WITH THE PROTECTION OF THE RIGHTS OF MINORITIES, then there is no other logical means of determining the legitimacy of any government or its actions.
From that it is clear that the artificial entities that states are derive their legitimate existence, not on the basis of rights, which inhere only to naturally living beings, but, indeed from the permission they give to those very living beings to staff and structure and determine, directly or indirectly, the course of government that they agree to follow. Instead of nation states having rights, they have no legitimacy without their existence being the product of the exercise of rights on the basis of equality. There is no such a thing as the "right" of a nation to exist or to do anything anymore than there is such a thing as "corporate person hood" which was the invention of the non, even anti-democratic branch of the American government, the Surpreme Court exercising its illegitimate powers it granted itself under the Marbury v Madison decision and on the basis of longstanding habits to shamefully accept that. The very same Court which has been dismantling the last achievement in forcing legitimacy on the United States and the states within it, the Voting Rights Act under the neo-segretationist Rehnquist and Roberts Courts. John Roberts' name should be as infamous as Roger Taney's now, as he sits on that Court. I have no great wonderment at his turning out to be such, a Republican who was in on the effort to ratfuck the 2000 election to put George W. Bush into the presidency even though he lost the election, a Virginia aristocrat who knows how to talk nice as he issues rulings that would have warmed the heart of the infamous segregationists and vote suppressors and, yes, Klansmen of seventy years ago.
If you have taken my advice and listened to the erudite Rabbi Yakkov Shapiro you would know that the Israeli government claims to represent Jews world-wide, those who have never set foot in Israel, those who never intend to, those who reject such an assertion and those who oppose the existence of the Israeli government on that basis or others. I had not been aware of just how outrageously dishonest that claim was until I heard the details of his arguments against that. There are so many but I will give you a few.
Israeli law and Supreme Court rulings reject the idea that Israel is fully the state, the country of all of its citizens but is the country of only the Jews who live there. There are many ways in which Israeli laws, which may allow other citizens a vote - apparently so long as they can never become a majority of voters in the country - relegate others to second-class or lower status. A more genteely expressed apartheid is still apartheid. (See the Roberts Court for proof positive of that.)
The basis of who is a Jew for purposes of such things as the "law of return" which allows any Jew to relocate to Israel and become a citizen, is on the theory that Jewishness is a nationality, also the basis that Israel represents and speaks for all Jews no matter where they live. It's an odd kind of nationality though, because you can become Jewish through being converted by an Orthodox Rabbi, as Ivanka Trump has been, but not a Masorti or Reform Rabbi. And you can retain your Jewish identity even if you reject the Jewish religion so long as you become an atheist but not if you become a Christian. Even though Christians accept the Jewish Scriptures, follow a Jewish prophet (and more than a prophet), and accept the validity of the Jewish religion. Until I heard Rabbi Shaprio, I had been unaware of the Court case that rejected the right of return to a Polish man who was Jewish, who converted to Christianity, who helped other Jews escape the Nazis at great risk to his own life and who, after the establishment of Israel wanted to move there, so I would guess he could have even been a zionist.
If you listen to the three-way discussion among Rabbi Shapiro and two other Jewish anti-zionists posted above, you will hear discussion of the claim by the American historian Deborah Lipstadt that anti-zionism is anti-semitism and how, when asked, 'What about the Orthodox who are anti-zionist' her answer was the jury was out on that. I would guess that means the self-empaneled jury that she was a member of who dictate such "official definitions." I have had great respect for Lipstadt for her exposure of the crypto-Nazism of the fraudulent historian David Irving and for her part in his exposure and discrediting in the infamous libel case that Irving brought against her. I have respect for a lot of her work and I spoke out against Republicans blocking her appointment by President Biden.
But I have been very critical of the IHRA project of coming up with an official definition of "antisemitism" which, to a discrediting extent, was a transparent attempt to define any criticism of Israel as antisemitism so as to shield Israel from even the most morally required criticism or condemnation or the cessation of military or financial aid to that government as it carried out criminal acts, even genocide. That effort was and is a campaign of blackmail of gentiles AND JEWS with the fear of being tarred with the accusation of antisemtism, which under our racist country is as or even more potent accusation than that of racism and far more potent than accusations of misogyny or hatred of LGBTQ+, etc. It depends on those who hear the accusation never fact checking it to see if it is actually justifiable. What else can someone saying that Orthodox Jews might be antisemetic boil down to? It's an accusation that is frequently made against other religious and secular Jews who are critics of the Israeli government and the state of Israel. Here's only one academic paper which points out even one of the People who was on that committee that came up with the definition has said that's how it's being used.
Many observers attribute such sleights of hand to pro-Israel advocates seeking to clamp down on people who criticise the conduct of the Israeli government (see for example: Winstanley 2020; Stern-Weiner and Maddison 2019; Stern-Weiner 2021b). One of the original drafters of the IHRA definition, Kenneth Stern, accused right-wing Jews of weaponising it. According to Stern’s testimony, these advocates have been enormously persistent in their quest to close down free speech on Israel in the USA: ‘The Zionist Organisation of America (ZOA) and other groups will hunt political speech with which they disagree and threaten to bring legal cases’ (Stern 2019). Further on in this article, we show in greater depth how the IHRA definition has been instrumentalised to shield the Israeli government from criticism as well as to falsely frame pro-Palestinian activists as antisemitic.
I am certain that there are many Israeli citizens, Jews, secular and religious, who are, by that definition, "antisemites." Who the hell gave IHRA or Deborah Lipstadt the right to label them like that? And if they don't, I am not going to worry about any random liar who calls me one, though I know that even the college-credentialed seldom to never actually fact-check such accusations so casually made with such blatant dishonesty.
I had known there were religious Jews who were opposed to the existence of the state of Israel because they believe that Jews are not to have a country until the Messiah comes and establishes morality and justice throughout the world. I've known about them since I first read about the Satmar Rebbe (see Rabbi Shapiro's exposure of the fake "quote" attributed to him in support of equating antizionism with antisemitism.) I had not known how large the number of such religious Jews were nor how much they had opposed zionism before the establishment of Israel in 1948. I had, of course, known of Jewish critics of Israel such as Noam Chomsky, Norman Finklestein, Jacobo Timerman, etc, who were regularly called "antisemites" as well as others who were certainly not antisemites.
I had not known, until starting to look into Jewish anti-zionism, how zionism, from the start, included what would more legitimately be considered antisemitic hatred of the Jewish religion and what they claimed to be the character of Jews. Rabbi Shaprio points out, with complete justification, that the language used by some of the most widely known and influential zionists sounds exactly like the worst of gentile antisemitism, the ideological idol of Benjamin Netanyahu, Ze'ev Jabotinsky, using exactly the same language that the Nazis and our contemporary fascists and neo-Nazis have used to describe Jews, saying that hating Jews was justified on the basis of that stereotype.
All of this is little to completely unknown in the wider world, it is certainly not mentioned and it may actually be considered suppressed. When is the last time you heard an erudite, anti-zionist Jew given any kind of hearing in the American media, never mind A FAIR HEARING. You won't hear someone like that, you will hear the crudest antisemites given full voice, you will hear those who lie about both history AND THE PRESENT in the American media, you'll hear Israeli propaganda, what most Americans believe they know about the situation, but you won't hear the most careful of citation and documentation, the clearest reason and the most just appeal to morality and fairness on the topic of Palestinians and Israel anywhere in the American media.
I don't think that's because of the old antisemtic myth that "Jews control the media" I think it's because of the blackmail of not wanting to be accused of antisemitism as the label is so casually hurled at both Jews and gentiles. And that is something that is cracking under both the genocidal and expansionist policies and practices of the Israeli government - which is indistinguishable from the Lebensraum policy of the Nazis, except it is pretended that isn't what has been happening all along. I'm hardly the only person who has decided it is immoral to let the accusation silence me in the face of the Israeli genocide and Lebansraum in Gaza which it seems to be extending into Lebanon for which they demand America's full support, such support almost always having been gotten.*
My last statement will get me labeled as an antisemite under that "official" definition of "antisemitism" even though it is the obvious truth of what the combination of the actions of the Israeli government and the fanatical "settlers" whose violence is seldom if ever even mentioned in the American media.
As for the soccer riot in Amsterdam, I have no idea who started it, I've read both those who claim it was Palestinians living in Amsterdam and the Israeli team's supporters. I have no doubt that either side might have started it but I think it's undeniable on the basis of the posted videos of Israeli supporters ripping down Palestinian flags outside of Peoples' houses and harassing Palestinians with racist, genocidal taunts and chanting, that they were not innocent as doves. If there are videos showing that the Palestinians were not as innocent of doves, give me links. I have no doubt many on both sides were not. I really have to wonder why authorities in Europe allow football matches that they know have a high potential to result in riots to be played in their countries, this is hardly the only such riot. But, then, I don't get why Americans where the supporters riot if they win and riot if they lose, let that happen either.
As for Israel and Hamas and Hezbollah, I don't have to like any of them. I don't have to choose a side EXCEPT THE SIDE OF THOSE WHO ARE VICTIMS OF ALL THREE, PALESTINIAN, LEBANESE, ISRAELI, ETC. That's who I choose, the least among any given population. I sure as hell am under no obligation to cut Israel any more slack than I do the country I, and Rabbit Shapiro, am a citizen of. As you can read all over my two decades of writing, I have no problem with holding my own country to account, I am and have never held with "America, right or wrong," and I entirely reject the blackmail that I am required to treat Israel in that way. I believe that slogan was originated by or, at least, often said by one of the most putrid of American Cardinals, Francis Spelman. I have no problem of holding the church I was born into and am still considered a member of as NOT above criticism, either.
I am under no obligation to choose the side of either national group, no artificial entity, which is what all nation states are, has a right to that and neither do those who would coerce me into declaring such a choice. There are those who have a moral right to do that but it isn't any country, not my own nor any foreign country.
I choose those who are under attack, held hostage, maimed and starved and murdered. I don't make choices among People on the basis of race, religion, gender, gender preference THOUGH I HAVE NO PROBLEM MAKING CHOICES AMONG PEOPLE ON THE BASIS OF THEIR CHOSEN IDEOLOGIES AND ALLEGIANCES. I am an antizionist, Rabbi Shaprio has converted me with his facts and his reasoning and his elucidation of morality. Just as the Chief Rabbi of Dublin converted me to veganism a number of years back. And that's called "antisemitism" under the "official definition" of it.
* I doubt the opposition to President Biden's support for Israel during its Gaza genocide campaign and, I have no doubt, seizure of at least part of Gaza is what single-handedly gave Trump the election. I think misogyny and racism are far stronger forces in the United States, but it was a contributing factor, certainly in Michigan. Jews have been one of the strongest parts of the Democratic coalition and there are enough reflexive supporters of Israel, both Jewish and gentile, to make it impossible for Democrats to sanction Israel for even the most obvious of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The espionage of Jonathan Pollard (who has told American Jews that they have an obligation to spy on America for Israel, something else I learned from Rabbi Shapiro) didn't cause much of a pause in the "Israel right or wrong" policy.
That's not viable, anymore. Too many Americans of all identities are fed up with it, the world community is increasingly fed up with it. America's protection of Israel even within the largely impotent United Nations is an abomination on par with dictatorships protecting other thug nations in the same way. It's time to treat Israel by the same rules any other country is treated by.
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