It never rains but it pours

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'Le Monde' acquitted of 'racially' defaming Israel
Lara Marlowe in Paris
Thursday, July 13, 2006

Citing the right to freedom of expression and the European Convention on Human Rights, the French Cour de Cassation or Supreme Court yesterday struck down an earlier appeals court judgment which convicted Le Monde newspaper and three prominent intellectuals of "defamation on racial grounds" for a 2002 article criticising Israel. Sami Naïr, a professor of political science and former member of the European Parliament, said he and co-authors Edgar Morin and Danielle Sallenave would celebrate their definitive legal victory last night. All three received insulting letters over the four years since they published "Israel-Palestine: the Cancer" on the opinion page of Le Monde on June 4th, 2002, in response to the Israeli assault on the West Bank town of Jenin. Ms Sallenave was accused of "sleeping with Arabs" and Mr Morin, who is 85, was physically threatened. Letters were sent to the home of one of the judges, saying that "criticising Israel is the new anti-Semitism".

The lawsuit against Le Monde and the three intellectuals is part of a pattern. Mr Goldnadel is appealing the last of three failed lawsuits against Daniel Mermet, a popular radio journalist who has reported sympathetically on the fate of the Palestinians. Morin, Naïr and Sallenave quoted Victor Hugo: "The oppressed of yesterday are tomorrow's oppressors." Then prime minister Ariel Sharon compromised Israel's chances of survival "by believing he can ensure Israeli security through terror," they wrote. The Holocaust was used to justify colonisation, apartheid and confining Palestinians to ghettos. The authors condemned the collective punishment of Palestinian civilians as "state terrorism" and pointed out the disproportion in military might and casualties between Israelis and Palestinians.

Some things never change. These words are half a decade old. What 'offended' was...

La Monde in 2002 "It is difficult to imagine that a nation of fugitives, born of the longest persecuted people in the history of mankind . . . should be capable of transforming itself in two generations into a 'dominating, overconfident people' and, with the exception of an admirable minority, into a contemptuous people who derive satisfaction from humiliating," the authors wrote. ("Dominating, overconfident people" was Gen Charles de Gaulle's description of Israel.) Five paragraphs later, Morin, Naïr and Sallenave wrote: "The Jews of Israel, descendants of the victims of a form of apartheid known as the ghetto, have 'ghettoised the Palestinians . . ."

Irish Times "Judges must analyse the incriminated text in its context," the Supreme Court verdict said. By isolating two paragraphs from a much longer article expressing the authors' opinions on a highly polemical subject, the Versailles court had violated article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, as well as French law. "The text in reality targeted the policy of the government of Israel against Palestinians, and not individuals or groups of individuals because of their national or ethnic origin, their race or religion . . ." the Supreme Court concluded.

"Israel-Palestine: the Cancer"

TG for old Europe.

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Israel-Palestine: The Cancer

La Monde It is horrible to kill civilians according to a principle of collective guilt, as suicide attacks do, but this is a principle applied by Israel, from the time of Sabra and Shatila and of south Lebanon, until today and, alas, probably tomorrow, in striking civilians, women and children, and in destroying the houses and crops of the family's of bombers. Palestinian civilian victims are currently between 15 and 20 times more numerous than Israeli victims. Must pity be exclusively reserved for some and not for others? Israel sees its State terrorism against Palestinian civilians as self-defense and sees only terrorism in Palestinian resistance. Unilateralism blames Arafat alone for the failure of the last negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority: it obscures the fact that, since the Oslo accords, colonization has been constantly pursued in the occupied territories and views a restricted and parceled restitution of the occupied territories, including maintaining the colonies and the Israeli control of the Jordan valley as a "generous offer."

The diabolic circle in which any gain for the worst of one party is a gain for the worst on the other has lent power to the nationalist-fundamentalist clain in Israel, placed officers from the colonies at the head of the IDF, transformed elements of this army of reoccupation into army rabble plundering and killing sometimes to point of massacre (Jenin). It has enlarged the influence and establishment of fanatic religious movements among the Palestinian youth.

The false symmetry hides the obvious fact that law and justice are on the side of the oppressed.

One is hard pressed to imagine that a nation of fugitives, descended of the people persecuted longest in the history of humanity, having been subjected to the worst humiliations and the deepest contempt, should be able to transform itself in two generations into a "dominating and self-assured people" and, with the exception of an admirable minority, a contemptuous people taking satisfaction in humiliating others. The media do not properly portray the multiple and incessant signs of contempt, the multiple and incessant humiliations undergone at the checkpoints, in houses and streets. This logic of contempt and humiliation is not unique to Israelis, its belongs to all occupations in which the conqueror sees himself as superior in the face of a sub-human people. And, at the first sign of movement or rebellion, the dominator proves pitiless. In the latest re-conquering of the West Bank, the IDF gave itself over plunder, gratuitous destruction, homicides, executions in which the chosen people behave as a superior race. It is understandable that this degrading situation should endlessly give rise to new resisters, including new human bombs. He who sees only the tanks and cannons, but does not see the contempt and humiliation, has only a one-dimensional view of the Palestinian tragedy. The word "terrorism" was sullied by all occupiers, conquerors, colonialists, to describe national resistances. Some among them, as in the time of the Nazi occupation of Europe, have surely included a terrorist component, that is to say, in principally striking civilians. But it is not right to reduce a national resistance to its terrorist component, however great it may be. And, above all, there is no common measure between a clandestine terrorism and a State terrorism with massive weaponry. Just as there is a disproportion of arms, there is a disproportion of terrors. Must the horror and indignation felt before the civilian victims massacred by a human bomb disappear when the victims are Palestinian and massacred by inhuman bombs? One must not fear contemplating these young men and women who have become human bombs. Of course, despair has spurred them on but this component is not enough. There is also a very strong desire for revenge

And here is the incredible paradox.

* The Jews of Israel, descended of an apartheid named the ghetto, are ghettoizing the Palestinians.
* The Jews, who were humiliated, despised, persecuted, are humiliating, despising and persecuting the Palestinians.
* The Jews, who were the victims of a pitiless order are imposing their pitiless order on the Palestinians.
* The Jewish victims of inhumanity are displaying a terrible inhumanity.
* The Jews, scapegoats for every evil, are "scapegoating" Arafat and the Palestinian Authority, made responsibe for attacks that they prevent them from preventing.

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A distinction between anti-Semitism and criticism of Israel

Opening the Debate on Israel
by Norman Solomon

Norman Solomon is an American Jew and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy and the author of "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. "

U.S. government has been much too closely aligned with Israel - to the detriment of human rights, democracy and other principles that are supposed to constitute American values. The failure to make a distinction between anti-Semitism and criticism of Israel routinely stifles public debate. When convenient, pro-Israel groups in the United States will concede that it's possible to oppose Israeli policies without being anti-Semitic . Yet many of Israel's boosters reflexively pull out the heavy artillery of charging anti-Semitism when their position is challenged. Numerous American Jewish groups dedicated to supporting Israel are eager to equate Israel with Judaism. Sometimes they have the arrogance to depict the country and the religion as inseparable. For example, in April 2000, a full-page United Jewish Appeal ad in The New York Times proclaimed: "The seeds of Jewish life and Jewish communities everywhere begin in Israel."

If the U.S. news media were to become committed to a single standard of human rights, the shift would transform public discourse about basic Israeli policies - and jeopardize the U.S. government's support for them. It is against just such a single standard that the epithet of "anti-Semitism" is commonly wielded. From the viewpoint of Israel and its supporters, the ongoing threat of using the label helps to prevent U.S. media coverage from getting out of hand. Journalists understand critical words about Israel to be hazardous to their careers. In the real world, bigotry toward Jews and support for Israel have long been independent variables.

America's biggest anti-Semitism problem has to do with the misuse of the label as a manipulative tactic to short-circuit debate about Washington's alliance with Israel.

Opening the Debate on Israel
by Norman Solomon

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Arabs, Muslims are not behind European anti-Semitism
16 Beaver Group, New York, NY 10004, 212.480.2093

Pro-Israel groups in the US and Europe have campaigned to suggest the European Union is aflame with a "new anti-Semitism," and to thereby stifle criticism of Israel. But recently they've suffered several setbacks. A new 344-page study from the European Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) found that there has been "a noticeable rise in reported anti-Semitic incidents" in recent years. But contrary to the findings in a EUMC report produced in late 2003, the new report concluded there was no evidence that the increase could be attributed mainly to Muslims and pro-Palestinian groups.

The earlier EUMC report was never officially published because the EU concluded that its methodology was flawed. Norman Finkelstein, a history professor at DePaul University and author of The Holocaust Industry, examined the earlier EUMC report and pointed out that it defined almost any criticism of Israel as "anti-Semitic."

The European Jewish Congress published a commentary in the Financial Times accusing the EU leadership of "intellectual dishonesty and moral treachery" for refusing to publish the report. They accused the EU of supposedly covering up for Muslims and Arabs for "politically motivated" reasons. The vitriolic tone of the article prompted EU Commission President Romano Prodi to cancel (and later reinstate) a seminar he had planned on anti-Semitism.

[CENTER] The ADL was upset that the findings of the study were reported accurately.

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The respected Washington-based Pew Research Center's survey of global attitudes one year into the Iraq war reported: "Despite concerns about rising anti-Semitism in Europe, there are no indications that anti-Jewish sentiment has increased over the past decade. Favorable ratings of Jews are actually higher now in France, Germany and Russia than they were in 1991." Putting this in perspective, Pew observed: " As is the case with Americans, Europeans hold much more negative views of Muslims than of Jews." This hardly supports the thesis - frequently advanced by pro-Israel Jewish groups - that what drives growing criticism of Israel is an inherent, underlying and increasing hatred of Jews as Jews. Yet efforts by Israel's apologists to use accusations of anti-Semitism to silence criticism of Israel have reached ever more chilling and absurd heights.

Efforts in Europe to put an end to debate about Israel's growing repression of the Palestinians mirror those in the United States, where criticism of Israel is already far less tolerated than even in Israel itself.

Similar efforts in Europe are unlikely to succeed as effectively, however,

since Europeans are generally better informed than Americans about what is taking place on the ground in Palestinian areas.

first published in The Daily Star