President Emmanuel Macron made a scene in occupied East Jerusalem on Wednesday when he angrily told Israeli security officers to get out of the Church of Saint Anne, which is traditionally under France’s control:

Video of the incident circulated quickly and drew comparisons with a strikingly similar confrontation when Jacques Chirac, one of Macron’s predecessors, visited the city in 1996.

Many observers suggested that Macron deliberately laid on a thicker French accent when speaking in English in order to imitate Chirac.

Macron thinks “rules” are important, but apparently not when it comes to putting an end to Israel’s endless violations of international law.

Cynical exploitation of Holocaust

The French president is in the region to attend an event hosted by Israel marking the 75th anniversary of the Soviet liberation of Auschwitz, the death camp in Poland where the German government murdered more than one million people during the European Christian genocide of European Jews.

Israel is cynically exploiting the solemn occasion not to promote respect for human rights, but as an opportunity to further its own criminality.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is using the gathering to lobby world leaders against the International Criminal Court, which is investigating allegations of war crimes by Israel.

Founders of the ICC saw its genesis and legitimacy as rooted in the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders after World War II.

Though far from perfect – given its so far singular focus on prosecuting Africans – the ICC is part of the architecture of international justice and accountability that aims to learn the lessons of past atrocities and prevent their repetition.

But for Israel, the court is a nuisance that stands in the way of its freedom to commit atrocities against Palestinians with impunity.

Promoting annexation

Netanyahu also may use the Holocaust forum to lobby world leaders to support another major war crime: Israel’s planned annexation of large swaths of the occupied West Bank.

Rather than pushing back against any of this, Macron has already used his visit to endorse Israel’s racist policies against Palestinians.

While meeting Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin, Macron asserted once again that “anti-Zionism is not different from anti-Semitism.”

In December, the French parliament passed a resolution conflating anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism – although most lawmakers did not take part in the vote.

While this view is being pushed by Israel and its lobby across Europe, it is a perverse distortion of reality.

Anti-Semitism, which must be condemned like any other form of racism, can straightforwardly be defined as prejudice or hatred of Jews just for being Jews.

Anti-Zionism, by contrast, is opposition to Israel’s state ideology.

Macron supports Israel’s racism

As I’ve explained previously, Zionism is racist.

Zionists believe that Jews should have a state of their own in historic Palestine. And Israel’s policy is that Jews must secure this “right” at any price and by virtually any means necessary.

However since Palestine’s indigenous Muslim and Christian population was – and still is when Palestinian refugees living in forced exile are taken into account – overwhelmingly non-Jewish, Zionism is inherently discriminatory.

Zionist militias could only establish Israel as a Jewish state in 1948 by perpetrating the Nakba, the expulsion of some 800,000 Palestinians and the destruction of hundreds of cities, towns and villages.

Up to the present day, Israel has only been able to maintain its Jewish majority – originally created by ethnic cleansing – by preventing the return of Palestinian refugees, in violation of international law, solely because they are not Jews.

Israel relentlessly pursues the Zionist goal of a Jewish-majority state through blatantly racist policies ranging from apartheid laws discriminating against Palestinians to habitual massacres in the Gaza Strip.

Israeli leaders regularly contemplate mass expulsion or attempt to push Palestinians into another mass exodus in order to secure a Jewish majority.

But even official Israeli bodies appear to concede that in all of historic Palestine, Israeli Jews are already a minority ruling over a Palestinian majority deprived of its most fundamental rights.

Opposition to Zionism is, therefore, a fundamentally anti-racist position. Palestinians of all political backgrounds have made it abundantly clear that they have no quarrel with Jews as Jews, but with Israel and its violent racist policies.

As Israel’s decades-long record demonstrates, Zionism is incompatible with respect for international law, universal human rights and equality.

Yet by claiming that anti-Zionism is the same as anti-Semitism, Macron is effectively saying that it is racist to oppose Israeli racism.

Zionism is moreover rejected by a significant number of Jews. While many secular Jews oppose it on political grounds – motivating them to join such anti-Zionist organizations as Jewish Voice for Peace – large numbers of religious Jews reject Zionism on theological grounds.

Any effort to equate Jews and Judaism, on the one hand, with Israel and Zionism, on the other, is inherently anti-Semitic.

Ironically, it is anti-Semites and Israel’s most fervent supporters who insist on this equation.

It follows then that Macron’s policy, like that of most other Western leaders, is fervently pro-Israel while being anti-Jewish and anti-Palestinian.

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Comments

Macron

Permalink Pat Mc Ginley replied on Fri, 01/24/2020 - 10:49

While Macron's protests are commendable, the Crusades were driven and funded by religious hatred and intolerance in which the slaughter of men, women and children was the accepted norm. Religious hatred and intolerance can still be used by ruling elites to divide and rule. Tragic for humanity.

75 years of charade

Permalink Haifa replied on Fri, 01/24/2020 - 18:33

It was nauseating to watch the so called world leader trip over each other over the holocaust , the Europeans ate each other alive fighting for dominance ! 35 million people perished during those brutal wars! Let’s not forget, the moment our parents & grandparents were expelled from west jerusalem, french jews moved in to well furnished villas of their victims. Macron speaks from both sides of his mouth, so does Putin! This theatrical meeting of 40/198 countries are gathered to pledge alliagance to the most evil deal of the century! They are drunk with blood , power & arrogance.

The world is watching. Where

Permalink Cotter Light replied on Sat, 01/25/2020 - 21:47

The world is watching. Where all war damages all, where subtle deception is subtle bad faith, where we all wait for honest collaboration to allow the acceptance of common ground, where meanness and hatred only breed more of the same, the world waits.

All preparedness for war damages the environment and the climate we all share, maybe setting forth a wave that multiplies that damage.

We unravel each others deceptions and positionality, usually to find the voices of the financially established at fear of loss, though peace need not include loss. Peace only requires the protection of all yet in a world unwilling to invest in such terms, intelligence and maturity must merely wait, left irrelevant to the hegemony of profit.

All the world watches and waits while the uncontrolled proponents of hatred are harming us all.

Macron

Permalink F replied on Sun, 01/26/2020 - 09:39

Macron is out of his depth. Judaism is a religion. Religious freedom is a fundamental human right. To be Jewish is to adhere to Judaism or to follow Jewish ethnic culture. Hatred of either Judaism or Jewish ethnic culture is vile. Hatred of Jews as Jews is vile. Zionism is neither a religious creed nor an ethnic cultural feature. It is a political doctrine. In democracies, all political doctrines are open to criticism.
Israel has long been anxious about being seen as an apartheid State. That was a significant part of the motivation for "disengagement" (a misnomer if ever there as one). Demography is against the Zionists. So is the climate. Israel is a parched country. It will die of thirst without water from the West Bank's aquifers. Disrupting a water supply is not too difficult: a little science, a bit more technology, some basic tools, cunning and a lot of courage. It's a better way to fight back than throwing stones at soldiers with automatic weapons and no conscience.
Macron's factitious anger is the acting-out of the typical politician. It looks like a willingness to stand firm against bullying, in fact, given his intellectual confusion over Judaism/Zionism/Israel it's nothing but a bit of super-star petulance for the cameras. The Zionist lobby has our political leaders in a funk because they are intellectually confused and cowardly. Witness the 4 candidates for the UK Labour leadership endorsing the 10 B o D pledges which are tantamount to a takeover of the Party by an outside body. Gladly, 2 of the candidates for Deputy have had the wit and courage to refuse. The pledges would have pleased Stalin. They breach Party rules, establish guilt by association, hand anti-racist education to a racist body, threaten critics of Israel or Zionism with suspension or expulsion and silence Jewish groups or individuals who refuse Zionism. With so little to hope for from our political leaders, it is up to us to lead the fight. We few, we happy few...

Break up.

Permalink Chúo replied on Sun, 02/02/2020 - 17:33

All the countries must break up with Tel-Aviv. No more abuses!