The French L'Expresse about "Boycott of “Zionist” personalities"

 On June 4, 2024, the French Newspaper L'Expresse wrote about the trend in the U.S. of singling out Jewish personalities in the arts by publishing lists of Jewish authors and their supporters, as well as musicians and others supporters of Israel so they "understand that there are consequences to their choices."

https://www.lexpress.fr/idees-et-debats/boycott-de-personnalites-sionistes-les-dessous-glacants-de-ces-listes-devenues-virales-GWTIJAWBSJF33NLYESQRCHULFU/

Below is an imperfect Google translation of the article:

Boycott of “Zionist” personalities: the chilling underside of these lists that

have gone viral 

By Alix L’Hospital

 Conflict in the Middle East. Since the start of the war in Gaza, lists of names of celebrities to boycott have been circulating on social networks. The nomination criteria reveal the meaning given to “Zionism” by their detractors…

 Tell me what a “Zionist” is, I’ll tell you what becomes of “anti-Zionism”… In the 2010s, “lists” designating “Zionists” were teeming above all on a few conspiracy blogs with anti-Semitic tendencies. This was the case of Panamza, a blog obsessed with Israel and the Jews, or of Egalité & Réconciliation, the site of the far-right essayist Alain Soral, who published in 2019 a “Diagram of the Left” mapping in particular alleged heavyweights of “Zionism”. A reader struck by catalepsy a few years ago and awakened at the start of the war in Gaza would probably be stunned: in 2024, there is nothing confidential or subversive about these lists. They are available in portrait galleries on trendy Instagram accounts (a publication, a name, a Studio Harcourt-style photo) and in TikTok videos with an educational approach. Everything is “argued”, “sourced”, with a view to “informing” and, ultimately, boycotting.

 On Instagram, Zionists in Music now has nearly 16,000 subscribers, just two months after its first publication. By its own admission, the account acknowledges in an introductory post that the evolving list is “mainly composed of Jewish individuals”. But here, we promise, we do not condone anti-Semitism. The idea being "to enlighten musicians about their position within this industry and for them to recognize the impact of their choices", by targeting those who have "publicly supported Zionism". By this, Zionists in music means, for example, the fact of being subscribed to “Zionist accounts” on social networks, such as Jewish lives matter, Jewish Life Now, or even certain personalities committed against anti-Semitism such as Shai Davidai, professor Israeli of Jewish faith at Columbia Business School.

 This account is far from an isolated case. In second place, we find Zionists in films, more recent and on the verge of reaching 10,500 subscribers. Same concept, same visual identity. In the "tools" made available by the account there is also a call to "create more pages" of this kind, that is to say targeting "Zionists" in other sectors of activity such as government, mainstream media (MSM), academia, the army, banks, publishing, justice, medicine... Because according to Zionists in films, "to defeat Zionism, more Zionists need are unmasked and stigmatized. At the end of May, a new account dedicated to “Zionists in sport” appeared on Instagram.

 “Accomplices” Jew

 "Even if they are not overtly targeted because they are Jewish, highlighting the names of Jews who are not particularly politically engaged, but have, for example, simply shown empathy for Israelis after the jihadist massacre of October 7, called for peace, or have links with Jewish people committed to Israel betrays a reconstruction of the anti-Jewish imagination, analyzes Pierre-André Taguieff, philosopher, historian of ideas and honorary research director at the CNRS. Behind this process, we read the trial of bad Jews, "accomplices" Jews, having not given proof of their friendliness by not denying Israel, or by not supporting strongly enough, to the liking of the small prosecutors who establish these lists, the Palestinian cause. The cleverness lies in the fact that these lists also include 'non-Jews'. Very practical..." 

These accounts are only the emerging part of the phenomenon. On social networks, lists in the form of directories circulate using an URL link to a table that can be consulted by everyone. More discreet, but terribly effective. At the beginning of May, a document entitled "is your favorite author a zionist?" ("Is your favorite author a Zionist?"), listing nearly 200 names, for example went viral on Twitter. As we write these lines, several Internet users are still consulting it, according to real-time data from the shared document.

 Everything is neatly stored there. In blue: authors considered “pro-Palestine/ anti-Zionist”. In red, “pro-Israel/Zionist”. Significantly, most of those targeted are authors of young adult fiction. Here again, the reasons for the boycott are puzzling. The simple fact of having posted a message in support of the Israelis the day after the October 7 attack is enough, for example, to make Monica Murphy or Nicholas Sparks authors to be boycotted.

 Anti-Zionism recoded into humanism

 But there is more surprising: among the authors to be boycotted is also Rebecca Yarros, queen of “romantasy”. Among the wrongs of the author of the Fourth Wing phenomenon saga : being “married to a soldier”. As for SF specialist Pierce Brown, he has certainly written about apartheid, but he reads "Henry Kissinger, which doesn't help his case." Having fled Nazi persecution with his family in the late 1930s, the former Secretary of State was a controversial figure in American diplomacy during the Cold War, notably known for his role as mediator between Israel and the Arab countries after the Yom Kippur War. For its part, the Anti-Zionism recoded into humanism.

 Better: for being moved by the "horrible massacre of innocent civilians, first in Israel and now, in a catastrophically disproportionate manner, in Gaza", Laini Taylor, a novelist specializing in fantasy, is also given the same treatment. In reality, not "understanding" Hamas is already suspect. This is what earned science fiction author Michael Grant an “unclear” badge (a sort of “awaiting judgment”). Too bad if the latter was very critical of the “racist and extremist” government of “the crook Netanyahu”.

 Fantasy novelist Sarah J. Maas is accused of bringing to life characters expressing "colonialist ideologies without specifying that it is morally reprehensible". JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter saga ? A “Terf” (acronym designating a radical feminist excluding trans people), “so the discussion stops here”.

 "For the vast majority of Jews, 'Zionism' symbolizes emancipation and self determination. But the notion has been the subject of an operation of demonization similar to that which anti-Judaism has exercised against Jews. Jews for centuries.

"Zionism is thus on its way to becoming a synonym for everything that civilized people rightly abhor: racism, colonialism, warmongering, oppression," explains Rudy Reichstadt, political scientist, director of Conspiracy Watch and co-director of a Political History of Anti-Semitism in France If, historically, radical anti-Zionism was motivated by anti-Semitism, today, Rudy Reichstadt . describes an anti-Zionism "recoded into humanism which guides a whole part of the youth on the path of an anti-Semitism all the more dangerous as it advances sure of its right and freed from any bad conscience".

 “Zionists are demons”

 “I am on this list because I am Jewish, because I was born and raised in Israel,” novelist Talia Carner, labeled in red (“Zionist”), explains to L’Express. The author has had time to think about why she been pinned: her name has been circulating on various lists since December. "My latest book, The boy with the star tattoo, has been widely cited by 'antiZionists' who are calling for a boycott of me," she explains. "This book deals with Israeli issues, but all the events I describe in it are take place in France, first in 1946 (it is a story about orphans after the Second World War), then in 1969. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is never mentioned… As a Jew born in Israel , my detractors criticize me for not having written about the Palestinians – or insist that I shouldn't have written this book at all."

 On Goodreads, a platform listing reader reviews, the author suffered waves of denigration following her appearance on anti-Zionist lists. Among the comments regarding her latest book, we can read: "Zionist propaganda that practically ignores the nakba", "we do not support Zionist propaganda", "Zionists are demons"... Today, Talia Carner is forced to remain discreet where she travels, including during events open to the public.

 Do not trust the Englishness of most of these lists: France is far from being spared by the phenomenon. On TikTok, some very influential Frenchspeaking accounts invested in the concept very early on. Like Venomglazed, a young girl who loves literature. In a video published on October 19 intended for its nearly 50,000 subscribers, it offered in music a list of authors who “support [the] ethnic cleansing [of the Palestinian community]”, “proof” to support it. There we find Sarah J. Maas, “who claims to have left Israel with great joy, nostalgia and pride”. The proof is a screenshot: an article clearly mentioning the writer's Jewish origins and her relationship to Judaism. Likewise, LJ Shen, New Adult romance author whose “husband was enlisted in the Israeli armies and who proudly posts her husband’s profession”, is singled out. Too bad if the screenshot put forward to prove these statements dates from nine years ago. No matter, the issue is not here.

 --AL

 

Israel, That Pesky Little Country

 

           

(This article was published in Digital Journal in 2011. Sadly, it is still true today. The title was borrowed from a dismissive UK official's comment at a dinner-table talk.) 

If a green-eyed Martian landed at the United Nation building, he would report back to Mars about the wonderful countries populating Planet Earth. Specifically, his account might describe the block of fifty-six Muslim nations entrusted in making this planet a peaceful habitat for all humans: Lebanon is on the Security Council, Libya on the Human Rights Council, Sudan on the Commission of Human Rights, Egypt and Pakistan on Economic and Social Council, Tunisia and Indonesia on Population Council, and Iran appointed to the Commission on the Status of Women.
            But then, he would report about that little pesky country that causes so much trouble. Although humans on Planet Earth are grouped into hundreds of countries, half of all the United Nation’s resolutions have been condemning that pesky Israel, yet she would not be humbled. Among all its neighbors, she is the only one that permits her citizens to sue their government, her press is free to criticize her, and women are equal under the law. In fact, she is the only country where “honor killing”—the neighbors’ family values—is outlawed. 

            Anti-Israel winds have been blowing and gathering force around the globe to the point that it is politically correct to spread misinformation and outright lies. From the academia, to polite society, Liberal circles and the press, it is politically correct to demonize Israel and to apply a multitude of double standards when setting her apart from either civilized nations or her supposed victims, the Palestinians. It is politically correct to replace facts with hate-filled narrative.
            How do you know when criticism of Israel is anti-Semitism? Nathan Sharansky offers the simple 3D test: Double Standards, Demonization, Delegitimization.   

            Double standard: Over 30 hot spots of human misery can be found around the globe. Yet those with bleeding hearts for human suffering focus on one that is very low on this list while ignoring the heinous trafficking of children in Southeast Asia, the mass rape of women in Africa, the murders of civilians under military regimes in South America, and the targeted persecution, expulsion and killing of Christians in Muslim countries.
            Most important, they also ignore the root causes of the Palestinians’ suffering:

• The Arab League nations refused to accept the partition plan of 1947 and instead declared a war on the nascent Israeli state, creating the Arab refugee problem.
• After World War II, over ten million European refugees and 750,000 Jews from Arab countries have been settled. Arab nations have steadfastly refused to help or absorb Palestinian refugees, then also numbering 750,000.  
• Today, Lebanon still denies Palestinians any basic rights, from owning real estate to holding over fifty types of jobs, including profession such as doctors and lawyers. Children of Palestinian refugees are denied public education.
• Egypt expels them from its midst.  
• King Hussein of Jordan, whose constituency’s majority is Palestinian, massacred 10,000 of them in Black September—by far more killed than Israel has ever been accountable for, which was in response to attacks on her citizens.
• For decades, more Palestinians kill one another each year than in any Israeli military action. Their Fatah and the Hamas are arch enemies, and their disputes are being resolved weekly with blood shed.
• Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip were entitled to Israeli citizenship if they married an Israeli citizen, or reunited with their families inside the country. (Israel had to halt this practice when it was proven that many suicide bombers gained an Israeli ID card under the auspice of family reunification.) Not so in Arab countries; most impose severe travel restrictions on Palestinians—often denying them entry under any circumstances.
• Billions of Euros donated by European countries for Palestinian territories’ development show up either as mansions right in the heart of Gaza or in Swiss banks of the Palestinian elite.
• The Palestinian Authority has full and exclusive rule over the populated areas of the West Bank, including security. Israeli military is not present inside Palestinian towns.
• In a Democratic election supervised by former US president Jimmy Carter, citizens of Gaza elected Hamas, a group listed in US-terror list, that now brutally suppresses them.
• Hamas uses civilians as "human shields,” placing women and children in harm's way—especially in those areas from which they launch rockets into Israel—thus deliberately creating civilian Palestinian casualties.   

Focusing on Israel’s “oppression” as the cause for the suffering of the Palestinians rather than on the Arab countries that actually created the refugee problem and have exploited it ever since—along with the brutal rule of the Palestinians’ own elected ruling party—is nothing more than demagoguery, bigotry and cynicism. Israel merely controls its own borders.  She has only blocked Palestinians’ free entrance since 2001 rise of the intifada violence and subsequent thousands of terror acts against her population. Even today, each year over 180,000 Palestinians are treated in Israeli hospitals. Israel has never blocked the supply of electricity, water, phone services or the movement of food and medical supply trucks into Gaza.
            The moment that the shower of thousands of Hamas rocket attacks upon Israeli towns ceases, Israel will reopen the borders and will share her knowledge and progress with the Palestinians—as she did before.  Prior to the 2001 intifada, the International Monetary Fund reported that per capita income in Gaza and the West Bank was the highest in the Arab world because Palestinian workers were employed in Israel and enjoyed minimum legal pay and other benefits guaranteed by law.
            It is important to note that the Palestinians’ misery is not total and complete. There is no humanitarian crisis as anti-Israel propaganda claims. Photographs shown in the media omit Gaza’s new shopping mall, modern office buildings, markets filled with produce, neighborhoods of villas, and beaches crowded with vacationing families.  

            Demonization: From cartoons to U.N. resolutions, it is the ultimate anti-Semitism to continually compare Israel to Nazism. Zionism means the right of Jewish people for their homeland in the land of Zion. It is anti-Semitism to disparage the word or to use the name Zionist to mean evil.

·         No Israeli military campaign has ever deliberately targeted civilians.

·         Israeli soldiers do not rape Palestinian women.

·         In Haiti after the earthquake, Israel was the first country to set up operating rooms whose goals was not the harvesting of organs.

·         Israel cannot send sharks to the beaches of Egypt as the Egyptian government claimed.

·         Israel is the only country in modern times that has never bombed enemy capitols in retaliation for bombs dropped upon her own civilians.

·         It is demonization to compare Palestinian refugee camps and Auschwitz.

·         Israel constitutes less than 1 per cent of the land mass of the Middle East, and it is demonization to position her as the cause of all the region’s myriad problems.

·         It is demonization to call Israel an “apartheid” country.

o   Israel has an Arab population of one million (twenty per cent of the population) that are full citizens and do not live as Palestinians under the Palestinian Authority.

o   As citizens of the State of Israel, they are the only Arabs in the Middle East living in democracy with representation in the parliament.

o   Due to medical care and social benefits, these Israeli-Arabs’ life expectancy is the highest and infant mortality the lowest in the Arab world.

o   Arabic is one of two official languages of Israel.

o   Arabs serve in the Knesset, representing their people, are professors in Israel’s universities, and work in the professional fields, especially as doctors and pharmacists.

            Perpetuating lies about the Israel is nothing more than demonizing a democratic country that has shown respect to its citizens of all nationalities and reverence for their religious institutions.

• 
              With such double standard and demonizing, the route to delegitimization of Israel is short:
              In November 2010, the UN's cultural body, UNESCO, recognized two ancient Jewish sites, Rachel’s Tomb and the Tomb of the Patriarchs—Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—as “Palestinian,” thus severing Jewish history from its people. This farce is a delegitimization of not just Israel as a state, but more so of the Jews and their history. A nation which negotiates away her cradle of history is giving away her future.
              Yet, there are people who consider themselves fair-minded while willing to erase a nation’s history and replace it with myths.
              When the Ottoman Empire came to an end in 1918, forty countries were formed in its collapse. Only one of them, Israel— mandated by The League of Nations as a “homeland for the Jews” and since then truncated to a fraction of its originally mandated size—is being put again into question. On the other hand, Palestinian nationalism was not even a contender in 1918—or any time before 1967. Now, those who call themselves Palestinians—a name that used to indicate the Jews in the land—claim to have lived there all along.  

      Is it really so?
In 1867, Mark Twain described the land he visited as "…dismal scenery …It is a hopeless, dreary, heart-broken land… Palestine is desolate and unlovely…."

• Muhammad never set foot in Jerusalem or in the Land of Israel.
• Jerusalem was never a capital of any Arab entity.
• Jerusalem was not mentioned in the 1964 PLO's Covenant.
• The “liberation of Palestine” only became a cause after the 1967 war, during which Israel displaced Amman's rule in the West Bank and Cairo's in Gaza.
• Arabs never established a Palestinian state or advocated one prior to the Six-Day War in 1967.  

And Jerusalem?

The 1900 census listed the city’s population at 46,500; 28,200 Jews, 8,760 Christians, 8,600 Muslims. Muslims were never a majority in Jerusalem, and Jerusalem was never a Muslim holy site. Demanding it as a capital is a late 20^th century invention designed to both delegitimize Israel and to anchor Palestinian claim to all of Israel.  
            And finally, the argument of occupation: Israel, so goes popular anti-Israel fallacy, should withdraw from land it occupies illegally. Leaving aside the issue of wars launched by the Arab countries which they lost, thus losing the land to Israel, their “illegal” assertion quotes a distorted U.N. resolution 242.  
       Passed in 1967,  UN Resolution 242 calls for Israel to return "territories" captured during its defensive war of 1967. The words "all" and "the" were proposed by those who advocated a complete return, but the U.S. and Great Britain, which opposed that view, prevailed. More importantly, even partial return of captured territories is conditioned in resolution 242 on "termination of all claims of belligerency" and "acknowledgment of the sovereignty… of every state in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force."  
            Resolution 242 does not mention the rights of non-states, such as the Palestinian Authority, Hamas or Hezbollah, the latter two of which do not accept the conditions of the resolution. It is unequivocally wrong for the Security Council retroactively to rewrite Resolution 242, which is the foundation for a two-state solution—Israel and Palestine—forty-four years after it was enacted.
            Being pro-Palestinian does not mean to be anti-Israel. Israel has never objected to the creation of a Palestinian state. It agreed to it in 1947, 56, 73, 93 and in every talk in between and since. Being pro-Palestinian means supporting a free, democratic Palestinian state that does not teach its children to hate and would never use its most vulnerable citizens as human shields.   
            However, rather of accepting the two-state solution, the Palestinian charter that called for the destruction of Israel was never reversed, even after the agreed-upon 1993 Oslo Accord. Instead, several Palestinian terror groups, including Hamas, are forging conceptual and tactical bonds with al-Qaeda.  
            What government around the globe is expected to passively render its population vulnerable to mass-slaughter? Would we, in the United States, sit quietly by as rockets rained down upon American cities from terrorist sanctuaries outside our southern borders?  
            International law is not a suicide pact. Yet that is what the calls for boycott and divestiture are, which makes them anti-Semitic to the core. Interestingly, self-servingly, the people and institutions demanding to punish Israel for defending herself by boycotting her products do not divest themselves from their own computers, cell phones or voice mail that run on Israeli chips. They would not give up on using banking systems that run on Israeli communication technologies, nor do they stop treating their families to medical care for cancer, Alzheimer, or multiple sclerosis due to research done by Israeli scientists and doctors.
            After learning the facts, the green-eyed Martian will report to Mars that as a democracy, Israel thrives on criticism. She has the tools and institutions that permit and support critique and incorporate the lessons into her life—she has one of the strongest supreme court in the world with an impeccable record of remedying social, political, economic and even military ills.

            Criticism of Israel should be comparable, contextual, constructive. It should also give credence to the Israel’s extraordinary progress these past 63 years, (now 75 years) starting from ground zero, being inundated by wars and the subject of scorn by a world tolerant of the murder of Jews—and ready to blame them for their own demise.

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Talia Carner's updated note: A year ago, in September 2022, I travelled to the area around Gaza, and looked over Gaza City. It is not the "open jail" or "concentration camp" that is pushed by propaganda. Here is a photo of city filled with high rises, office buildings, residential neighborhood, and lots of villas. (It is spread far to the right and left of this photo.) It is not as crowded as some other cities, especially in the Arab world, where some cities (like half of Amman in Jordan) don't even have running water.

Gaza City along the Mediterenean

 

Author Talia Carner’s next novel, THE BOY WITH THE STAR TATTOO will be published by HarperCollins in February 2024. www.TaliaCarner.com

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The above article was culled from various sources, among them:
Myths and Facts: http://mythsandfacts.org/
Middle East Forum: http://www.meforum.org/
The Israel Project: http://www.theisraelproject.org
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs: http://www.jcpa.org
Jewish Virtual Library- Modern History: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/jewhist1.html
Honest Reporting: http://honestreporting.com/
World Jewish Congress: http://worldjewishcongress.org/
CAMERA: http://www.camera.org/
Canadian Institute for Jewish Research: http://www.isranet.org/ 
Zionist Organization of America: http://www.zoa.org/ 
Stand With Us: http://standwithus.com/
Anti-Defamation League: http://www.adl.org
American Jewish Committee: http://www.ajc.org/
Middle East and Terrorism: http://israelagainstterror.blogspot.com/