The Left and Islamophobia: Remarks About Michael Walzer’s Essay in Dissent Magazine | Al Akhbar English
▻http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/left-and-islamophobia-remarks-about-michael-walzer%E2%80%99s-essa
Ironically, Walzer writes for Dissent magazine, a publication that has long embodied the contradictions of the American Zionist left. Here is a magazine that endorsed wholesale the policies and wars of the right-wing Israeli government (and of the left, to be sure) and never wavered in its support for Zionism. It also served for years as a tool of the global, right-wing US-dominated anti-communist movement.
Walzer’s main claim is that the left in the US (and elsewhere) has been intimidated from criticizing radical Islam due to the stinging accusation of Islamophobia. Ironically, Dissent magazine and other Zionist publications have themselves perfected the power of intimidation by casually throwing the label of anti-Semitism. Walzer’s book “Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustration” is a catalog of rationalizations of Israeli wars of aggression. Here is the author who considers the “radical devaluing” of the Jews of Israel the essence of terrorism in the Middle East , nevermind that the people who were expelled from their lands and whose homes were stolen, and who have been subjected to an unrelenting war of terror from the Zionist forces and later from the state of Israel are the Palestinian people themselves.
Most importantly, for Walzer to succeed in maintaining that the accusation of Islamophobia intimidates the left in the US, he has to prove that Islamophobia has power, or that it is a real stigma. One can simply measure the power of that stigma by comparing it to the stigma of anti-Semitism in the US, or in any other European country. It is, certainly, exceptional for someone to lose a job, be forced to resign from a job, or be denied tenure or get asked to offer a public apology for making an Islamophobic statement. There is no power whatsoever to the stigma of Islamophobia in the US. Far from it: in many electoral districts in the US, and in many churches and synagogues across the country, whipping up Islamophobia is a sure tool for the attainment of power.