What the Marc Lamont Hill Affair Really Tells us About Zionist Goals
By Lawrence Davidson
December 12, 2018 "Information Clearing House" - The Attack on Marc Lamont Hill
There are many things wrong with ideologues. Here I mean those who see the world through a narrow dogma. It is as if they wear figurative blinders, like those real ones placed on draft horses, so as to prevent their gaze from wondering away from a designated path. As a consequence ideologues can sometimes be embarrassing—making gross general pronouncements based on the narrowest sets of beliefs and expecting the world to go along. Often they are just boring. However, give them a modicum of power and they can become downright dangerous.
For instance, take the recent dustup at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It started when Marc Lamont Hill, a tenured professor holding an endowed chair in the School of Media and Communications, gave a speech at the United Nations. The occasion was the U.N.’s International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. Hill, who is a longstanding critic of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, summarized the official discrimination practiced by Israel against the Palestinians—that is he laid out examples of Zionist Israel’s racist nature and practice—and then “endorsed a free Palestine from the river to the sea.”
It was at this point that local supporters of Israel, specifically the ideologues who see things through the lens of the dogma of Zionism, went on the attack. Their claim was that Hill was “calling for the end of Israel.” Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, claimed Hill’s endorsement of a “free Palestine” amounted to the “violent genocide of Jews in Israel.” Leonard Barrack, “a major donor to the university,” accused Hill of calling for “the destruction of the State of Israel” and said “I think it [Hill’s speech] was anti-Semitic.” And then Patrick O’Connor, the chairman of Temple University’s board of trustees, called Hill’s remarks “hate speech” and “disgusting.” He went on to claim that “no one at Temple is happy with his comments.” By the way, Temple has a student enrollment of over 30,000, so how can the chairman be sure? O’Connor has instructed the university’s lawyers to explore ways to punish Hill. In the meantime CNN, obviously responding to Zionist pressure, immediately fired Lamont Hill from his position as an on-air commentator.
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Part II—Clarifying Points
Here are some clarifying, non-dogmatic points
relevant to this situation:
—The phrase “a free Palestine from the river to
the sea” has long been understood by supporters
of Palestinian rights to be a call for
democracy. That is, a call for a state that
represents and treats all its people as equals.
It is not proposal to purge all the Israeli
Jews. However, it is undeniably anti-Zionist.
Why? Because Zionism ultimately insists on a
state with full rights for only one people
(Jews), and this essentially denies full rights
to 20 percent of its population (Palestinians).
Both in theory and practice, it is present-day
Israel, and not a proposed “free Palestine,”
that is demonstrably racist.
—There is a clear difference between Israel and
the Jewish people. Israel is a recently created
(1948) political state that falsely claims to
represent the entire—that is worldwide—Jewish
people. By doing so, the Zionists set up the
false relationship that allows them to equate
anti-Zionism with
anti-Semitism. Yet the claim is not sustainable,
for there have always been Jewish opponents of
Zionism. Today this tradition of opposition
continues, and a large segment of those,
worldwide, opposing Israel and its racist
practices, are Jewish. However, the Zionists,
having been indoctrinated with the belief that
Israel and the Jews are one, cannot face this
truth. It may be the case that their fear and
dislike for the numerous anti-Zionist Jews (the
so-called self-hating Jews) is as great, or
greater than, that for Palestinians.
—Zionist consciousness requires a denial and
distortion of history. The reality of the
Zionist movement’s link to British imperialism;
the subsequent fact that the Zionist intrusion
into Palestine constitutes a history of a
European settlement project in a non-European
land; the Zionist complicity with at least some
of the forced displacement of Jews from Arab
lands; the reality of the Nakba—all have to be
denied or reinterpreted. As is the case with
most dubious moral behavior, rationalizations
and denials become key to the perpetrators’ own
self-image.
—It is on the basis of this reinterpretation of
history and their indoctrinated belief in it
that Patrick O’Connor, Morton Klein, and Leonard
Barrack act out as they do. Essentially, they
are projecting onto the Palestinians and their
supporters, such as Marc Lamont Hill, Zionism’s
own racist motives. They are drawn to do so,
perhaps subconsciously, because it is the
Zionists, and not their opponents, who have a
goal of ethnic cleansing. Thus, Zionism is a
dogma that, all too obviously, calls for the
removal of as many Palestinians as possible
“from the river to the sea.”
Part III—What Really Is At Stake?
The dustup over Marc Lamont Hill’s speech is not
an isolated occurrence. Dozens of similar
calculated over-reactions, episodes of
intimidation, and attention-getting acts of
slander, have occurred over the last few years.
Most of these have been directed by Zionists at
academics critical of Israel and its evolving
apartheid practices. The reaction to these
attacks usually focuses on the threat to
academic freedom and free speech. This has been
the case in the pushback against the Zionist
assault on Lamont Hill.
However, these issues, while very important
indeed, by no means cover the extent of the
Zionist threat. What else is threatened? Well,
let’s think this through in logical steps:
— Lamont Hill’s speech at the U.N. addressed
Israel’s racist nature and practice. His
criticism was not arbitrary, but rather fact
based.
—The Zionist response was that Hill’s speech was
anti-Semitic hate speech. That is, they assert
that criticism of Israeli racism is itself
racist.
—Such an accusation makes no sense in a world
that has standards of international law against
which the alleged racist practice of a state, a
government, or a powerful dogma can be tested.
When such standards are applied to Israel, the
state’s racist nature is revealed and becomes a
basis for criticism.
—Therefore, the Zionist campaign to identify
anti-Semitism with criticism of Israel’s racist
nature and practice is, ipso facto, an effort to
overturn those standards. Put another way, we
can say that Israel as it currently exists, and
the evolutionary direction it has laid out for
itself in terms of its apartheid local laws and
practices, constitute an open challenge to
international law and the present concepts of
human rights enshrined in it.
—The Zionists are driven to mount this challenge
because Israel’s claim to be a legitimate
nation-state, and particularly its claim to be a
“Western” nation both in political and cultural
form, is insupportable in a world where
international law criminalizes the racist
consequences of its guiding ideology.
—For the Zionists, it is an us-versus-them,
zero-sum game. Either they become an ever more
isolated “rogue” state, or the international
laws and values that challenge their practices
must be destroyed.
Part IV—Conclusion
The Zionists are not trying to create something
new here. They are, in effect, trying to go
backward in time—trying to turn the clock back
to a time when international law was only about
trade relations and the wartime treatment of
prisoners of war. It was not until after World
War II that international law, in reaction to
the racially motivated crimes of the Nazis
(significantly impacting the Jewish people),
started to set up legal standards supporting
human rights (for instance, declaring apartheid
as a crime against humanity). It is a supreme
irony that it is just these aspects of
international law that the Zionists seek to
destroy.
So, destruction is the Zionists’ strategic goal and the attack on Marc Lamont Hill and others like him is dictated by the tactics they have chosen to use toward that end. That is really what is going on, and it is important that as many people as possible become aware of just what is at stake here. In terms of human rights we all should start thinking of ourselves as potential Palestinians.
Lawrence Davidson is a retired professor of history from West Chester University in West Chester PA. His academic research focused on the history of American foreign relations with the Middle East. He taught courses in Middle East history, the history of science and modern European intellectual history. http://www.tothepointanalyses.com/
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