The Anglican Priest and Theologian Naim Ateek Said It Perfectly Seven Years Ago - With An Update On Racist Stereotyping As Promoted By Opinion Polling

Allyson Kenny:  What do you say to people who believe that Palestinian Liberation Theology is antisemitic or is anti-Jew? Do you have an answer to that?

Naim Ateek: It is not. But people use it, use [the label] "antisemitism" as a weapon to silence that discussion.  So they come to me, but many people, especially in Canada and the United States. They don't want to be called antisemitic so it silences them.  And that's exactly the objective of being called antisemitic.  But don't give them that privilege. You know.  You need to take a stand and tell them you're not gonna silence me.  I know what's happening in Palestine, in Israel.  I know the oppression, I know the violence which is done and used by the Israeli army and the Israeli settlers and I'm not going to stop talking about it because it is wrong and it's a violation of international law.  So it is that kind of courage that we are asking people to show whenever somebody is trying to silence them. 

I'd recommend listening to the entire interview of someone who lived through the Nakbar in 1948 and who experienced Israeli apartheid from then on.  Especially at the end when he tells People to inform themselves of the reality of what is going on so they know the truth and don't argue out of ignorance.   Which is what is typical of Americans, which is what makes us so vulnerable to manipulation.   

I'm pretty well fed up with the Israel lobby  exercising such out-sized influence and effects on American politics and politicians.  It has been doing what Putin and Xi have been but over decades.   I'm even more fed up with the American media carrying water for the fascist majority in Israel as they did in the story of the Maccabi soccer hooligan riot in Amsterdam.   I like what the fans did in Paris, largely boycotting the match between the Israeli and French national teams (how sick is it that a country would have a sports team!)  and the violence that the Israeli team supporters seem to generate in so many places.  I heard one point out that when international football finally got forced into a ban on South Africa during the apartheid era there.   I think a ban on Israel, certainly now that they are overtly and clearly practicing genocide in Gaza is as called for. 

As for me shutting "the fuck up,"  No, what Naim Ateek said was true, it is immoral for me to stop talking about this, I stopped talking about it way too much, already.   I won't let the word that has been used into meaninglessness (which is extremely unfortunate because it used to identify a very real and dangerous ideology) is being used against me by an ignorant ass who knows nothing about any of it.  

Update:   Simps says:

 Those people whose anti-Semitism you're trying to justify voted for Trump, you simple shithead.

The first thing to notice is the classic lie that antizionism or even opposition to Israel's systematic genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank is antisemitism, the classic lie that is addressed by Naim Ateek above and thousands of antizionists who are Jews as well as Jews who may not be antizionist but who oppose the policies of the Likud-fascist coalition which has certainly not made Jewish Israelis safer.   That is exactly the lie which Rabbi Yakkov Shapiro and many others have pointed out.   I would really like to find out if someone has traced the origin and path of that lie which is told ubiquitiously in the modern day West, certainly in the United States, a lie pushed by the media even as they lie about current events related to this subject.  A lie that even someone I respected as much as I have Deborah Lipstadt has promoted along with the IHRA in their "official definition" of antismitism, something which I posted this week a member of the committee that came up with that dishonest definition said is being used in exactly the way that Naim Ateek noted it was used seven years ago. 

Simels, as always, and as is typical of those who hold with Israel right or wrong, comes up with nothing but that lie. 

You will know that I have repeatedly rejected the opinion polling based blanket characterization and, so, blame of groups for this issue or another one.    If there is something that is akin to all such stereotyping as antismitism is made of, it is exactly that practice.   I have not seen that Pew has done what it did in 2016, broken down a poll it conducted to come up with alleged figures showing percentages of those who voted for Hillary Clinton as opposed to Trump by religious affiliation, something which I used in my argument that those calling for "Dems" to break with "Christians" over that vote were stupid because even the several lowest percentages of voters who supported Hillary Clinton among the most conservative of denominations numbered many times more voters than those who identified as atheist-agnostics.  

The place I've read and heard most often cited was Dearborn Michigan with its very large Muslim population.   I looked for the FACTS, such as those are available to me and found unofficial results from the City of Dearborn where about 36%  of voters voted  for Kamala Harris and under 43% voted for Trump.  However, about 18% voted for the Putin-Republican-fascist asset Jill Stein.  Assuming most of those who wouldn't vote for Trump but would cast a protest vote on the basis of Israel's invasion of Gaza for the phony lefty Jill Stein,  it's another case in which it's more than just a little likely that the Green Party was acting, as Stein and her surrogates encouraged, to put Trump back in office.   I will note that of those who cast a straight party ballot in Dearborn  40.43 did so for Democrats, 41.89 did for Republicans and, again,  15.45 did for the spoiler Greens. 

Assuming almost all of the Green votes were protest votes against the Biden policy of support for the Israeli government, something I think is certainly a product of the decades long campaign to protect Israel by hurling the accusation of "antisemitism" at those who refuse to practice "Israel right or wrong" even as Israel assumed its identity as an apartheid and genocidal state, demanding American aid to do that, is what led to Muslims not supporting Kamala Harris.   

I have said one of the few points of hope in this past year of first the Hamas attack on Israelis and many non-Israelis who were murdered in the October 7th attack and the Likud-fascist coalition using it as an opportunity to depopulate, level and, I have no doubt, annex Northern Gaza if not the entire area, using its typical genocide tactics is that increasingly large numbers of People, including many American Jews are standing up against the genocide and annexation by the Israeli government, they are in increasing numbers rejecting the lie that their rejection of the genocide of the Palestinian People and the Lebensraum policy of the Israeli government and, especially the "settler" gangsters who are continuing the gangsterism of Irgun, the Stern gang and other gangsters from the early days of zionism and the Israeli government.   The present coalition is led by the overt ideological and political heirs of Jabotinsky and Stern and the others, though as I've read a lot more of the actual history of Israel under the Labor governments, it is not something unknown among them, either.   A lot of those who are speaking out are Jewish Israelis and Jews from America and elsewhere, especially among younger People.   That and the fact that the Jewish population in Israel is decreasing due to both low birth rates and Israelis choosing to leave Israel will, eventually, force drastic change in the situation.   As I've said many times before, I wouldn't mind having a lot more Jews living in the United States,  excluding those who have actual criminal pasts in committing and supporting and ordering genocide and apartheid.   We took in some of the worst of South African apartheid beneficiaries, including members of the Musk family.   I don't want any more criminals of any identity coming here, we have enough of our own indigenous, fascist criminals (white supremacists) and I don't want any more of them.  I wouldn't be surprised if something like that is the denouement of zionism.  It's not looking very hopeful for a two-state solution, which Israeli supremacists reject and I suspect will never try for until it's way, way too late for that.