The fine line between criticizing Israel and anti-Semitism
ceux qui critiquent Israël et ne sont pas juifs, sont des antisémites ; et même parmi les juifs qui critiquent Israël il y a beaucoup d’antisémites !
By Anshel Pfeffer | Oct. 31, 2013
Haaretz
▻http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-features/.premium-1.555468
Einat Wilf arrived in London last week, preparing for what she called on her Facebook page “The war of ideas, words and images waged against Israel.” She was not to be disappointed.
Wilf, a media-savvy former Knesset member (who left Labor together with Ehud Barak in January 2011 and was left without a party earlier this year when Barak retired from public life) eager to be involved in Israeli politics again, has made it her duty in recent months, while being employed as a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI) in Jerusalem, to be a one-woman hasbara machine. She will soon be releasing a paper on how the European left has recycled old anti-Semitic tropes and is now using them against Israel. And London was to provide her with additional research material.
There are no transcripts yet from the Global Diplomatic Forum round-table event at the House of Commons where Wilf spoke, but what was said by one of the participants, Jack Straw, a Labor member of parliament and former foreign secretary, is not disputed. Straw spoke of what in his opinion are the obstacles to the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians: Israel’s construction of West Bank settlements, which are illegal according to official British policy (Straw branded them as “theft” of Palestinian land); the fact that the European Union has failed in the past to formulate a joint position regarding the occupation, partly due to Germany’s reluctance to pressure Israel (according to Wilf, he used the term “Germany’s obsession with Israel”); and the influence of the pro-Israel lobby over U.S. foreign policy due to American laws that allow lobby groups to use large sums to back political candidates that support their goals.
