Charging Anti-Semitism To Silence Dissent

Charging Anti-Semitism To Silence Dissent

By Ida Audeh

07 August, 2007
Countercurrents.org

The charge of anti-Semitism is used by supporters of Israel to silence and discredit voices that conflict with Zionist orthodoxy. Two recent examples illustrate this point: The publication of Jimmy Carter's book Palestine Peace not Apartheid triggered a well-orchestrated campaign of vilification and character assassination of a former president whose "crime" was to characterize Israeli policies in the occupied territories as apartheid. (South African anti-apartheid activists say it is much worse.) The March 2006 publication of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's essay "The Israel Lobby" in the London Review of Books was accompanied by the familiar charge of anti-Semitism directed at two university professors who simply analyzed the disproportionate power of the Israel lobby AIPAC in shaping US Middle East policy. To anyone who follows the US Middle East policy, their conclusions were not news, but the publication of their article unleashed a flood of abuse on two establishment academics.

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Ida Audeh is a Palestinian-American who lives in Boulder, Colorado. Her interviews with Palestinians who have lost land and their livelihoods to Israel's wall have been published on the Electronic Intifada (www.electronicintifada.net), an alternative source of information about "the question of Palestine, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the economic, political, legal, and human dimensions of Israel's 40-year occupation of Palestinian territories." She can be reached at idaaudeh@yahoo.com