On Andrew Winkler, the Rebel Media Group and Ziopedia

Update February 17, 2007: Those coming to the site from searches deriving from the incident in San Fransisco when Eric Hunt accosted Elie Wiesel in a hotel in San Francisco may wish to check out my interview with Winkler here and the latest update on Hunt's attack on Wiesel here.

Eric Hunt's posting on Ziopedia taking credit for the incident is (here). The two posts linked above have considerable information on Eric Hunt, including links to his blog, his other postings on the Internet and a letter to the editor he wrote to the New York Times five years ago.

There seems to be some confusion about this blog's stance towards the Rebel Media Group, the Ziopedia website and Andrew Winkler that I really ought to clear up. First of all, if you Google search on these three proper nouns, you find me accusing Ziopedia of anti-Semitism. In light of some changes at Ziopedia, that needs some clarification.

Winkler is a street-fighting anti-Zionist who does not hold back and spare blows. He is as up-front and uncompromising as any anti-Zionist. He doesn't mince words or even, apparently, watch them very much. He's obviously not running for office or trying to win a popularity contest.

To those of us in the anti-Zionist trenches who are aware, awake and not totally blinded, it is clear that anti-Zionism often clearly bleeds over into anti-Semitism. Sometimes, sadly, the former is a mask for the latter.

After a while, you figure it kind of goes with the territory. A number of my progressive anti-Zionist friends and colleagues drift into anti-Semitism from time to time. I don't necessarily hold it against them. It's not usually personal anti-Semitism, and I don't think that their views hurt Jews much, if at all.

A Google search on this blog and various Jewish subjects will reveal a lot of controversial matter stemming from my own keyboard. That search will also reveal that this blog has been repeatedly accused of anti-Semitism.

In fact, that seems to be a dominant opinion about this blog. Many blogs refuse to link to us as a result, in order to not give us traffic, and we seem to have been the victims of an Jewish or pro-Jewish advertiser boycott recently, apparently as a reaction to a supposedly anti-Semitic article, Wikipedia, Ziopedia or Judeopedia.

Furthermore, some of the guest authors on this blog have also been accused of anti-Semitism, most prominently Wendy Campbell, Simon Jones and Stojgniev O'Donnell. Since I get accused of anti-Semitism so often (I don't agree with the charge), I really ought to be cautious about labeling others with that ugly sticker. Nevertheless, anti-Semitism clearly exists, and a spade should be called a spade.

I assume that in their rage at Israel, Zionism, Jewish chauvinism - supremacy, and Jewish cultural and economic domination of some Western societies, a lot of folks are getting pretty angry. That's a normal reaction. The behavior of militant ethnocentric Jews, not to mention belligerent Jewish colonists in Palestine, is pretty outrageous. It makes a lot of normal, decent, average people mad.

It is a truism that Jewish behaviors, especially belligerent ethnocentrism, a desire to wage ethnic warfare on other ethnic groups and a tendency to dominate non-Jews in various ways, are some of the primary instigators of anti-Semitism.

As a counterexample to Jewish complaints that anti-Semitism is merely the hatred of the "different", let us examine the case of Amish, or Pennsylvania Dutch, in the US. One could hardly find a group more different from mainstream Americans. Yet their behavior is kind, peaceful, law-abiding, honest, and inoffensive. They go out of their way to keep to themselves and bend over backwards to not piss outsiders off.

As a result, racism and bigotry towards the Amish is virtually zero. One could make a similar case about Sikhs, Buddhists, Hindus, Hmong, Lao, Vietnamese, Koreans, Japanese and Chinese in the US. Some of these groups have formed large communities in US cities. There is little or no serious racism towards any of these groups, in contrast to Jews.

Yet most of the above groups are far more different to US White Gentiles than Jews are. The obvious conclusion, presently and historically, is that Jews piss a lot of people off. That angry reaction is not necessarily totally illogical, or just because they are different, or a symptom of psychological illness and moral decay. Often, it is simply normative human behavior.

Given that Jews have a tendency to piss people off, often for good reason, we need to examine the phenomenon. The upshot of Gentile reaction has been repeated instances of brutal Gentile racism, in which the counter-reactions of the Gentiles far exceeded the provocations of the Jews.

The tally at the end showed large numbers of Jews suffering repeated brutal persecutions, attacks, thefts, deaths, pogroms, and finally, at least one serious attempt at extermination.

Given the horrible crimes that anti-Semites have committed against essentially innocent Jews over the centuries and the continuous association of anti-Semitism with conservatism and reaction, I think progressives ought to watch the anti-Semitism. Toying with anti-Semitism is like playing with matches. Innocent Jews tend to get burned, so to speak.

The Soviet Union did not outlaw anti-Semitism for no reason. That was a staunch, brave, progressive law.

Let us examine for a moment one of the most appalling results of anti-Semitism - Zionism! Yes, Zionism is a product of anti-Semitism. Jews decided to leave their European homes and colonize Palestine, in part to escape the heat of anti-Semitism, and later genocide, in their lands. Anti-Semitism continues to be the heat the lights the fire of Zionism.

After all, Zionists and anti-Semites agree - Gentiles hate Jews, persecute them and can't live in peace with them. This anti-Semitism is eternal and immutable. The only solution, both agree, is a separation of some sort. The two opposing camps only disagree on why Jews are hated and whether or not they deserve it.

The mass movement of 800,000 Jews out of the Arab World to Israel soon after the creation of the Jewish state was a reaction to events in the Arab states that they lived in. After the birth of the Jewish state, the Arab states engaged in both deadly racist anti-Semitic pogroms and passed outrageous, ultra-racist, Nazi-like, anti-Semitic laws.

But in back of those obvious temporal causes was the memory of centuries of grueling dhimmitude under the boot of Islamic supremacism.

To this day, a visit to the home pages of the groups that represent the Arab Jews shows a very angry group of people - furious at what they see as centuries of Arab Muslim abuse and super-racism against them. In response to centuries of Muslim brutality, the Mizrachi/Sephardics feel that they are fully within their rights to help steal and occupy a slice of Arab Muslim land - Palestine - to get their pound of flesh.

Look at the equation. European anti-Semitism and/or Arab Muslim Islamic supremacism, anti-Semitism and dhimmitude = Zionism! Anti-Semitism caused Zionism and feeds it to this very day. Every time you utter an anti-Semitic thought or write an anti-Semitic sentence, you feed Zionism and the Zionist state. My advice is, don't do it!

Now, onto Andrew's sites. Andrew, I think, is a Leftist. He is certainly a product of years of Left activism. Whether or not he is falling into a trap called "confused Leftism", so prominent nowadays, is debatable. When his site, Ziopedia (Love the name!) first went up, it had some very good stuff on it. He even posted one of my articles.

However, it was also heavy on the Holocaust revisionism - Holocaust denial. Holocaust revisionism and Holocaust denial have been creeping into the anti-Zionist movement for years now. They have long been an articles of faith in the Arab and Muslim Worlds.

I cannot say, strongly enough, how much I disagree with Holocaust revisionism, not to mention Holocaust Denial. I think that both are just Nazism, no two ways about it. I advise anyone thinking of spelunking these fetid caves to keep that in mind.

Anyway, based on the heavy doses of Holocaust revisionism, I referred to Ziopedia on my comments page as an anti-Semitic (Not an adjective I like to toss around!) site.

These days, Ziopedia seems to have undergone a change of focus. Andrew is producing a nice compendium of articles on the latest Gaza - Israel - Lebanon Wars. Every day, he is running a collection of the best articles on this crisis in the Levant.

A few of the articles drift towards anti-Semitism, and there are some outright anti-Semitic pieces, but 80-90% of the articles stay away from these unnecessary obsessions, which is pretty good in these hot-headed times.

The focus seems to have moved away, in the most part, from such dangerous diversions as Holocaust denial - revisionism, often written by suspicious folks with German names (yuck) and anti-Semitism written by White racists.

At the moment, most of the articles on Ziopedia are not a anti-Semitic at all. Instead, commendably, it is one of the best compendiums of anti-Zionist and Israel-critical literature, updated daily, on the web.

I hope that clears things up a bit.