So would you similarly defend a tweet that said “Al-Queada: transforming ‘Islamaphobia’ from something horrible into something honorable since 1988”? It’s defenders also claim, I believe, that their sort of militancy is coterminous with Islam.

I agree with you, I think (still reading through the issue), that Salaita’s firing is wrong on academic freedom grounds. And I agree with you that Israel’s actions (e.g. in Gaza) are horrific. But I don’t think that tweet makes any sense unless you basically don’t care about *actual* anti-semitism — which, however lesser it is in comparison to what Isreal’s doing in Gaza, is still a real and genuine problem, if reporting from Europe is to be believed.

(Since it’s relevant here, I also rather disagree with your comment, in an earlier post, that this tone is “part of the medium” of twitter. (paraphrasing from memory). Lots and lots of people tweet without saying casually awful things. This sort of defense is like saying that being a right-wing blowhard is just part of the medium of talk radio. Well, it doesn’t have to be.)

Perhaps it’s not a good thing to talk about in the wake of the man’s getting fired for expressing his views. But I’m still having trouble reading *that tweet* as anything but odious.

Yeah, a blogpost can include nuance that a tweet can’t. But it seems like if the only way to express yourself in 140 characters is to say something horrible, then the decent thing to do is to find another medium for your point.

I see here a pattern in the critics of Corey Robin’s opinion about this whole issue. It is almost as if some people, among them you, (and please correct me if I’m wrong)are saying that because anti-semitism exists, we cannot and must not critizice, at this time, zionism and/or anything related to the jewish question and by definition Israel. So my question would be: When is the right time? Do we wait until there is no genuine anti-semite around, no events happening in, say, France or anywhere for that matter ? Is it only that we can have a “civilised” exchange of opinions, and possible some real political action? When would that be, please?

The joke was in poor taste, but to me that’s about the worst of it. The conversations about what is and isn’t okay to joke about is a long and complex one. I tend more towards the “in the right context nearly anything is funny,” Lenny Bruce style crowd. I certainly don’t think it warrants rescinding a job offer, but people are scared of anything that isn’t politically correct.

On a side note, it is interesting how ideologically no one wants to own up to their prejudices anymore. I don’t know if you saw the video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPVUeQtQQ_o) , but a black man upstate took a cell phone video of this white woman yelling all of these horrendous racist things at him. Almost immediately afterwards she was in the media claiming “I’m not a racist.” It’s gotten so absurd that one could imagine sitting at a Klan meeting where they went around the room complementing each other on how tolerant and completely non-racist they were.

The moral philosopher Michael Neumann, a passionate anti-Zionist, wrote a great article about anti-Semitism against, well, people like you.

Every once in a while, some left-wing Jewish writer will take a deep breath, open up his (or her) great big heart, and tell us that criticism of Israel or Zionism is not antisemitism. Silently they congratulate themselves on their courage…I take a different view. I think we should almost never take antisemitism seriously, and maybe we should have some fun with it. I think it is particularly unimportant to the Israel-Palestine conflict, except perhaps as a diversion from the real issues. I will argue for the truth of these claims; I also defend their propriety. I don’t think making them is on a par with pulling the wings off flies.

I think Neumann’s analysis is completely convincing, though his anti-Israel accusations are over the top.

The article is at .

Hmmm, yeah, the sequence convinces me too.

I disagree with Corey Robin on almost everything, but he’s likely right that Salaita shouldn’t have been unhired. But rather than blaming it on “Zionists,” blame it on the culture of political correctness at universities promoted by the left. Anyone who made comments similarly vituperative and offensive to most blacks or Hispanics or women or gays (even if misunderstood and taken out of context) would unceremoniously be unhired, with the approval of most progressives. The university chose not to distinguish Jews from other groups whose feelings need protection. Is there a reason it should?

Is it the consensus that that tweet is Salaita’s most offensive? I consider his wish for the kidnapping of all West Bank settlers (in the aftermath of the Israeli teens’ kidnapping) to be in a league of its own:
https://twitter.com/stevesalaita/status/479805591401922561
I regard a call for violence against ~350,000 civilians as beyond the pale of appropriate discourse, but according to many Salaita supporters, “the content of Salaita’s tweets were in fact consistent with the sentiments of leading experts on the Israel-Palestine conflict.”
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/academic-heavyweights-slam-univ-illinois-firing-steven-salaita-palestine-views

So you think wishing for specific living journalist to be stabbed is similar to calling for a generic king to be deposed and executed?

I was unable to reply to Prof. Robin’s comment below, but I have seen no plausible benign interpretations of Salaita’s wish that all the West Bank settlers “go missing.” Given the context, wording, and the fact that he himself acknowledged he was being “unrefined,” the most reasonable interpretation is that Salaita was wishing for the kidnapping of all West Bank settlers. In fact, as the teens had been missing for a week at the time Salaita wrote his tweet, many already suspected by that time that the teens were likely dead, so an even darker interpretation is possible.

Here’s what I mean in my earlier comment on the “double standard.” If a Progressive for whatever reason was allied politically with a group that contained many racists, he or she would go out of his way to condemn the associated racism, assuming he didn’t think it so contaminated the movement that he had to leave it.

We know that anti-Zionism is associated with a large degree of anti-Semitism, even if many anti-Zionists are not anti-Semitic. We also know that there has been a huge upsurge in global anti-Semitism, especially in Europe, during the current Gaza fighting.

Here’s all the posts Corey Robin has made condemning the anti-Semitism (crickets chirping).

So anti-Jewish racism isn’t treated the same way as any other racism.

Which is not to say that Robin supports anti-Semitism, or, in fact, doesn’t make perfunctory comments condemning it. But if his political activism was highly associated with some other form of racism, he would undoubtedly be bending over backwards to write specific posts condemning it.

Instead, we get tepid statements in posts about other issues, like this one at Crooked Timber: “Personally, I disagree with the notion that anti-Semitism can be explained, justified, or understood in light of Israel’s actions.”

Can you even imagine Robin beginning a sentence with “Personally, I disagree with the notion that anti-black racism can be explained, justified or understood in light of [whatever]”, and then citing someone who does, without criticism?

First of all, even assuming that all the settlements were established illegally, none of the settlers are lawbreakers by virtue of their being settlers. None. Zero. It is not illegal for a person to live in an illegally established settlement. The only lawbreaker, under the Geneva convention, would be the state of Israel. So please don’t call these people lawbreakers.

Second, the tweet was in the context of the kidnapping of the three teenagers. That’s what “go missing” referred to. It wasn’t an explicit wish for violence, but violence was implicit in its link to the kidnapping.

Finally, your righteous anger at those 350,000 seems somewhat unfocused, considering that tens of thousands of them are “persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand.” Whatever you think is a reasonable solution to the problem, those tens of thousands of human beings, or however many there are, have done absolutely nothing to deserve their “going missing.”

I’m not a “Corey Robin scholar,” but I know you also blog at Crooked Timber. Andt while you’ve had a lot of “anti-Zionist” posts there (and now here, too), if you’ve called out any of your anti-Zionist allies for anti-Semitism, I’ve missed it. For example, when you eulogized Alexander Cockburn, it was left to one of your readers in the comments to point out that Counterpunch published explicit, unvarnished anti-Semites like Gilad Atzmon. Can you honestly say that if a Progressive journalist you otherwise admired had published work by overt racists (or sexists, or anti-gays) that you would not so much have mentioned it when discussing his legacy?
I’m sure you are very much against anti-Semitism. I just wonder whether you are complicit in allowing it to fester within anti-Zionist circles. Exactly why you might do that I can’t say for sure, but my best speculation would be that you feel that acknowledging and condemning anti-Semitism within anti-Zionist circles would weaken anti-Zionism, and you feel that cause is more important. Or, more charitably, perhaps you feel there are many other people doing that, so you need to focus on what you see in the greater need, advancing anti-Zionism. Or maybe you feel that the current path that Israel is on is so destructive that concerns about anti-Semitism must take a back seat. That’s all just speculation. But I honestly think it’s quixotic, at least in the abstract, that a Progressive Jew who is active in the Jewish community doesn’t find a moment amongst his many writing endeavors to condemn those who abuse or hide behind anti-Zionism for anti-Semitic purposes, when it’s hard to imagine similar complacency about racism directed at other groups.

Wait, this post was supposed to be critical of anti-Semitism, instead of Zionism? “Just as I believe that it’s critical to distinguish Zionism from Judaism, so I do believe that it’s critical to distinguish anti-Zionism from anti-Semitism. But this article makes an important point to those defenders of Israel who do their damndest to conflate Israel and Judaism and to those of us who insist on distinguishing these things: “Is it really so hard to understand why — after Jews have spent decades telling every Jewish child that they are owed a free trip to Israel, citizenship in Israel, life and land in Israel purely by virtue of being Jewish — the world is slow to distinguish between Jews and Israel?….You can’t applaud Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he goes around calling himself “the leader of the Jewish people,” and then get all huffy when Arabic-speakers use a single word to denote ‘Zionists’ and ‘Israelis’ and ‘Jews.’”

My GOD, you are really, really trying hard to find anti-semitism. In your world view, there is apparently no true anti-zionist critic. Everybody is just, if you “scratch’ hard enough, an anti-semite. In practical terms, judging from all your comments here, almost everybody here condones one way or another ant-semitism. So who/where is that “perfect” person who positively and truly is not an anti-semite when she/he critizices Israel an/or Zionism? Let me know, please, I want to read that person’s comments,know about their live, etc…

“By eagerly conflating Jewishness and Israel, Zionists are partly responsible when people say anti-Semitic shit in response to Israeli terror.”

This isn’t an excuse for SOME contemporary anti-semitism — but it is definitely an explanation of it.

I find it incredible that Aaron Gross says Jewish settlers are innocent of breaking any laws or any wrongdoing — Israel’s settlement program is a basic fundamental longstanding violation of international law. Jewish settlers on occupied land most certainly are not innocent.

That is, I admit, an extreme example, but sometimes the charge is merited, and some times not. I find the constant “I am not an anti-semite” stuff annoying, it’s a red herring. Not being an anti-semite doesn’t make what you say true, just as being an anti-semite wouldn’t make what you say false.

Incidentally, I don’t think the accusation get’s leveled frivolously or instrumentally. Bigotry is worthy of criticism. What motivates critics of Israel sheds no light on who’s right and who’s wrong, but now that you mention it….yes there are some rank bigots on the left.

Jenny Tonge accused an Israeli charity working in Hati of harvesting organs from hurricane victims. She had absolutely no evidence for this extraordinary charge, leading one to suppose that she believes Israeli Jews never do anything charitable, but must have a vile and sinister motive. Is Jenny Tonge a bigot? You decide.

Yes, anti-semitism makes people more hostile to Israel than they otherwise would be, deal with it.

I assumed he meant the anti-semitism directed at the palistenians. I didn’t realize it exclusively referred to the jews. Thanks for clearing that up buddy!