Just What is AntiSemitic?

Fran Eaton is trying to tar Obama’s pastor with antisemitism after her attempts to paint the church as black supremacist were met with the appropriate, “What the hell are you talking about?”

The Israelis have illegally occupied Palestinian territories for almost 40 years now. It took a divestment campaign to wake the business community up concerning the South Africa issue. Divestment has now hit the table again as a strategy to wake the business community up and to wake Americans up concerning the injustice and the racism under which the Palestinians have lived because of Zionism.

The Divestment issue will hit the floor during this month’s General Synod. Divesting dollars from businesses and banks that do business with Israel is the new strategy being proposed to wake the world up concerning the racism of Zionism. That Divestment issue won’t make the press either, however.

What’s unclear is what is antisemitic. It’s not antisemitic to criticize the Israeli state. Antisemitism is when someone is bigoted against Jews in general–like saying Jews are cheap or Jews are conniving. Not that the state of Israel is illegally occupying territory.

I happen to think Wright is oversimplifying the situation in Israel as the Palestineans have had pretty clear paths to peace, but rejected them. That said, Israel’s treatment of Palestine has been far from perfect. Calling for political action to reverse Israel’s actions in Palestine is hardly bigoted, however. Essentially, he is calling for Israel to live up to the partition in 1948. George Bush has too. They just get there in different ways.

Of course, one can guess that the real problem she has with Wright is that he thinks George Bush is a jackass.

Eaton is a bit clueless when throwing words around like Black Supremacist or Antisemitic apparently because it doesn’t matter to her whether the charges are true. In the case of the Black Supremacy charge, the documents on the church’s website provide an important context for the discussion of race in the Black Values System right here. If one actually reads the context of the 12 precepts it boils down to the fact that Christians in the church have a special responsibility to their community and to viewing those around them as equal before the eyes of God. It’s kind of like pulling yourself up by your bootstraps as a community. That’s not Black Supremacy, it’s Christianity in the context of a particular community which faces a number of challenges specific to that community.

While some think it is silly to pay attention to a bunch of wingnuts on one site, this Trinity ‘story’ continues to get national attention regardless of how stupid the story is.

All from a site that labels a State Senator a slut, says a State Rep is backing genocide, and continues to have authors lie about the madrassa story.

There is nothing wingnuts can say that  marginalizes them.