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Barbara Kay: How to defeat Palestinianism

It is time to adopt 'Zionophobia' to describe what's really going on

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Whatever else happens when the dust settles on the war against Iran, one certain casualty will be the Palestinians’ delusion that Iran’s terrorist “ring of fire” would vanquish the “Zionist entity,” home to half the world’s Jews.

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Imbued with (well-earned) respect for Israel, and contemplating their post-war opportunities, realistic Gulf leaders, focused on shared interests in stability, trade routes and security, will cast off the moribund political albatross of Palestinian revanchism.

Barbara Kay: How to defeat Palestinianism Back to video

Paradoxically, the Palestinians’ zombie cause will not only live on in the West in its guise as the anti-Zionist social movement known as Palestinianism, it will surge, abetted by resident Iranian supporters of the mullocracy. They will target both Jews and Iranian dissidents with hateful words and deeds. The recent shooting-up of Toronto’s Temple Emanu-el could be the opening salvo of Palestinianism on steroids.

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Palestinianism is an ideology. Its core feature is an obsession with Zionism as the embodiment of all that is considered evil in the modern age: colonialism, racism, apartheid and genocide. These false allegations do not stand up to objective scrutiny. Palestinianism was never about a “two-state solution”; it was always about dispossessing Jews of their homeland. Recently three slogans were scrawled on a wall in McGill’s Faculty of Medicine: “Free Palestine”; “Jews out of McGill Med”; and “Kill all Jews.” The last of the three was implicit in the first.

George Orwell understood and continually reprised the axiom that corruption of language in the service of a political mission leads to corruption of thought. Palestinian propagandists are masters of language corruption. Terrorism is “resistance.” Self-determination — a beautiful ideal for all peoples but Jews — is “colonialism.” Self-defence is “genocide.” Palestianism’s pièce de resistance: “Narrative” is history.

A case in point is the recently-minted “hatred” dubbed by its progenitors as Anti-Palestinian Racism (APR). According to its proponents’ definition “Anti-Palestinian racism is a form of racism that “silences, excludes, erases, stereotypes, defames or dehumanizes Palestinians or their narratives.” Inconveniently for Jews, a primary claim of Palestinian “narratives” is that Israel has no right to exist. Thus, in expressing a belief in the right to self-determination for the Jewish people in their historical homeland (the essence of modern Zionism), Zionists are emanating racism against Palestinians.

Acceptance of this narrative flies in the face of history and internationally accepted human rights principles. But many Canadian teachers are now receiving APR training. They will teach their students that any defence of Zionism — and by extension expressed appreciation for the IDF — is a form of racism.

Ironically, it is the APR narrative that seeks to “silence, exclude, erase, stereotype, defame and dehumanize” Jews. But it must be conceded that their narrative is working. Many western Jews take pride in Israel, but distance themselves from the word “Zionism.” It is their internalized yellow star. Indeed, “Zio” is becoming for Jews what the n-word is for Blacks.

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Israeli-American computer scientist Judea Pearl, father of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter murdered in Pakistan by Islamist terrorists in 2002, has for several years been promoting the adoption of a replacement for “antisemitism,” which he considers a superannuated word that has lost its punch. He prefers “Zionophobia.”

In a 2018 newsletter, Pearl explained why. “We do not have another word that describes the moral pathology of those who deny us statehood or even peoplehood,” he wrote. Why not “anti-Zionism”? Because “it sounds like a legitimate political position.” Zionophobia, however, is an accurate description of what the BDS promotes. Moreover, it “rhymes with Islamophobia” — not a trivial coincidence, since any word featuring “phobia” exacts a pavlovian response of disgust from those in our culture who police public discourse on all matters touching “identity.”

Interestingly, when he debates “hard core Zionophobes,” Pearl says, the mere mention of the word Zionophobia creates “an immediate and drastic change of conversation, from the standard accusation against Israel’s policies to the moral core of the dispute — Jews’ right to a homeland versus the bigotry of those who deny them that right.” Jews who assert that anti-Zionism is antisemitism are instantly challenged by Palestinianists who guilelessly counter, “How can we be antisemitic? Look at all the Jews who stand with us.”

Zionophobia bypasses that red herring. Attachment to Zionism — whether or not some Jews are indifferent to it or even uncomfortable enough to side with Zionophobes — is indisputably core to Jewish identity as a people, and the essence of all our sacred texts, holy days and cultural heritage. Exchange antisemitism for Zionophobia, Pearl writes, and it will “turn this whole circus into a match amongst equals. It is a word that shames the excluder for moral depravity as severely and universally as Islamophobia.”

Pearl is right. Call me a Zio; I’ll wear the slur with pride. I’d add that “phobia” implies both hate and fear. Unlike merely hateful  antisemitism, Zionophobia points to the Israel-era model that features fear of Jewish empowerment (real power, not the crazy stuff of conspiracy theories). Israel’s military strength almost literally drives Zionophobes mad. That’s my “narrative.” It’s also the pith of Israel’s motivation for joining the U.S. in this war.

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