Al Jazeera has now pulled the article which I posted on here, and which so many others found completely objectionable. One of the thrusts of the argument was to forge links between Nazism and Zionism, and somehow frame the Holocaust around these. Although I don’t feel I have fully processed it yet, I’ll quote part of an essay by Marc Ellis, published on Mondoweiss, which engages with Massad:
“The rehabilitation of Nazism’s victims as white people” – that is, Jews. Massad doesn’t say this directly but the implication is clear: Jews becoming white, well, is there much or any difference today between Jews and the Nazis who persecuted them?
Becoming white and being accepted as such, “visiting horrors on non-white people around the world” becomes routine. Massad believes this has become the acceptable, even normative Jewishness.
Or is this a specific European- American Jewishness seen from the perspective of the non-Jewish non-white world and the non-white Jewish world?
Harsh thoughts with so many implications it requires much more analysis. Is Massad overreaching? Perhaps. Is Massad wrong? Even if he is partially right, the Jewish condition is dire.
…
Well, with Massad we’ve come a long inverted way. He sees the Jewishness that most Jews celebrate as colonial and – criminal.
Massad stops short – I think – of a Euro-American Jewish Zionist conspiracy to dominate the world.
Understanding Jewishness at war with the world and with Jewishness itself. It’s a tough sell.
An essay which began with a criticism of failures to acknowledge the Nakba – a point which seemed well within reasonable debating parameters – shifts, inspired by Massad’s piece, to something which is surely not mere ‘anti-zionism’. As ‘hophmi’ comments below Ellis’s piece:
“Massad stops short – I think – of a Euro-American Jewish Zionist conspiracy to dominate the world.”
And you say he “Understand[s] Jewishness [as being] at war with the world”
You’re not sure if he’s a believer in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, but you think he’s a great guy.
But anti-Zionism and antisemitism have nothing to do with one another.
Returning to Al Jazeera’s decision to pull Massad’s piece – the Electronic Intifada’s Ali Abunimah has described this as a response to ‘Zionist extremists’, an ‘act of pro-Israel censorship’. I think this word is being misused here, just as it was when the Observer took down Julie Burchill’s transphobic rant. And – just as with Burchill’s piece – there are various sites on which you can still read Massad, should you wish to – Veterans Today and Stormfront (I assume the attack on Zionism is seen by them as an acceptable quid pro quo for the critique of Nazism) for example, as well as the Electronic Intifada itself.
I’m not sure exactly why Al Jazeera decided to pull Massad’s post (Abunimah has some ideas) but, if they decided on reflection that it wasn’t something they wanted to be associated with – good for them.
