Judeapedia
Deir Yassin, 3 D’s of Antisemitism, and Double Standards: D Is For… (Part 3)
February 28, 2024

Deir Yassin, 3 D’s of Antisemitism, and Double Standards: D Is For… (Part 3)

The Judeapedia: The A to Z’s of the current moment, from Antisemitism to Zionism. D is for Dalet to Dual Loyalty, with some controversial stops along the way. Sources & further reading inside.

This is part of a series on antisemitism, Israel, Zionism, and current events in 2023-2024 (5784).

The intent of this series is to educate, dispel antisemitism and bigotry, and combat propaganda that endangers both Jews AND Palestinians. The misinformation around Israel and Jews is vast and ancient, well-designed, and widespread, and contributes directly to perpetuating the conflict and elevating violence above a peace process.

Deir Yassin

Depending on whom you ask, Deir Yassin is either the biggest gauge of Israel’s guilt, and therefore illegitimacy, or a complete misunderstanding and fluke. Historian Benny Morris, revered for being a straight-shooter and honest about Israel’s missteps, said:

“For them [the Arabs], Deir Yassin epitomizes Jewish evil.”

A reading of what occurred at Deir Yassin is at once horrific and also illuminating. Today it’s painted as if the Jewish forces—Haganah—committed mass atrocities against unarmed civilians as part of a coordinated, preplanned ethnic cleansing. This is a lie (see Plan Dalet). Faced with atrocities against Jewish soldiers and civilians alike, and per Plan Dalet, taking logistical locations first for defensive strategy and then preemptively, to prevent a 2nd Holocaust, was the only means of survival not just politically, but literally.

Through the fog of history and disinformation, it’s easy to look at today’s Israel and IDF and assume that 1948 Israel was as powerful and a foregone conclusion; it was not. Israel barely survived its first few months, and 3 years after the ending of the first Holocaust, a 2nd nearly occurred. It would have swept up Holocaust survivors and Mizrahi Jews alike (see Expulsion).

So what happened on April 9, 1948, at Deir Yassin?

The accounts are very conflicting. (Continued)

  • The objective at Deir Yassin was to break the siege of Jerusalem where 100k Jews were trapped and starving; if Jerusalem fell to the invading Arab armies, Israel may not exist
  • Arab views and exaggerations around Deir Yessin played part in thousands of Arabs fleeing their homes, and becoming refugees; there was a real fear the Israelis would kill any Arab civilians, which was not the case
  • Approx. 107 Arabs were killed in the battle of Deir Yassin. The number was debated for many years, and exaggerated
  • The Israeli government condemned the slaughter of civilians. It was not a part of a larger plan. It was not a genocide.
  • Historians, soldiers, and witnesses have corroborated and supported different variations of the same story. According to Benny Morris, a warning was given for civilians to evacuate – and they may not have heard it

Anti-Israelis accuse Israel of a deliberate, premeditated genocide at Deir Yassin; they paint the entire Nakba with this brush. It was a defensive war that Israel did not choose; Israel didn’t think it could win. The Israelis would have faced a genocide themselves had they not taken strategic positions. Mistakes were made; it was a war. But Israel is a legitimate state, and Deir Yassin is quoted as a means to delegitimize Israel and to justify atrocities against Jews, which began long before 1948.

The 3 D’s of Antisemitism: Delegitimization, Demonization, Double Standards

The 3 D’s of Antisemitism, coined by Natan Sharansky, are Delegitimization, Demonization, and Double Standards.

A few creators / educators have done excellent posts on this very recently, so I’ll include that here with credit:

@telavivinstitute @rootsmetals @thesnarkysemite

All are excellent resources as always.

Let’s dive into these antisemitic practices and how they shape dialogue and the current Palestinian movement.

Delegitimization

One of the 3 D’s of Antisemitism, the Palestinian movement hinges on the delegitimization of not just Israel, but also of Judaism as a practice and the Jews as autonomous peoples deserving of safety and self-determination.

When people say things like “Israel has no right to exist or to defend itself“, what they mean through thousands of years of ingrained biases: “Jews have no right to exist or defend themselves. It’s OK to kill them.”

This serves two nefarious purposes: To absolve guilt and responsibility of past wrongdoings, including thousands of massacres of Jews over time; and to preemptively do so for future, intended violence.

The delegitimization of Israel works in ahistorical ways; denying Jewish history and agency, including rewriting history and projecting. See: Dead Jews.

Dehumanization / Demonization

The demonization of Israel hinges on dehumanizing Jews and is rooted in ancient, antisemitic hate and tropes. By dehumanizing Jews, it’s OK to target and kill them. We saw this time after time across Europe and culminating in the horrors of the Holocaust, where Jews were compared to rats and scum.

That vitriol is now projected onto the entirety of Israel and even its supporters with statements like:

  • “Israel is the most evil country on earth”
  • “Isreal [sic] kills babies”
  • “Israhell [sic] shouldn’t exist”
  • “Israel is a terror state”
  • “Zionists are worse than Nazis / are the new Nazis”

Nothing here is true, and none of it helps Palestine.

And it’s vital to understand that the source of this propaganda is Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and today, the Iranian Regime. These nations have/had atrocious human rights records and are among the worst mass killers in history. Comparing Israel to them is horrific, and it also cheapens the evil of those nations. The Palestinian plight is nothing like Nazi Germany; Jews are not Nazis.

See also: Holocaust Inversion. USSR. Iran. Delegitimization. Double Standards. Syria. Blood libel. Antisemitism.

Double Standards

The dizzying array of double standards around Jews and Israel are all deeply enmeshed with both ancient antisemitism and more recent Soviet-era propaganda campaigns.

This manifests as an entire pandora’s box of demonization:

  • Calling for the destruction of Israel, and only Israel, as a delegitimate state
  • Calling Israel an ethnostate, while advocating for its replacement with a Palestinian ethnostate
  • Justifying terror attacks against Israeli civilians—and Jews worldwide—while insisting all Palestinians are civilians, including Hamas; or calling Hamas terrorists “freedom fighters”
  • Denying Palestinian agency by excusing, deflecting, or outright denying any and all mistakes and misdeeds by Palestinians, including their leadership, while holding Jews and Israelis collectively responsible for all the above. Examples include blaming Israel for the intifada, blaming Jews for the lack of a peace plan or a Palestinian state, and blaming Israel / Jews for all of the wars that the Arab nations started (Google is free!)
  • Calling any mention of anything good Israel does “Zionist propaganda.” If Israel, which has by far the best human rights and queer rights record in the Middle East, dares mention it: This is hasbara; Zio lies! Meanwhile, the same activists and groups never condemn Palestine for doing all of the opposite; murdering queer people, suppressing women, and torturing and killing their own people who dare to work with Israel
  • This list goes on, including when Palestinian extremists use child soldiers to commit suicidal terror acts. The world says Israel murdered a child (a common headline), usually after the child killed or tried to kill Israelis. Meanwhile, the same people insist there’s no such thing as Israeli civilians, and that all of Israel is occupied—including Tel Aviv, and all other legally purchased land that is not in dispute—and therefore, murdering Israeli children, including Arabs—is legal and justified. It fucking ain’t.

“Israel should not have be perfect for people to allow it to exist. No country is perfect. But yet, as China shoves innocent Uyghurs into concentration camps, Syria drops Sarin gas on its own people, ran oppresses women and Qatar throws gay men in prison, only the existence of Israel is up for debate.”

—Hen Mazzig, Tel Aviv Institute

These above views are no longer fringe; they’re the openly embraced tactics of an entire movement of left-wing orgs in the West, all with ties and funding from the Iranian regime, or at the very least, have ingested so much of its propaganda that they don’t even believe photos and videos of Hamas committing mass atrocities on October 7 that would make the Nazis blush.

This shit is Orwellian. Up is down; freedom is violence; the most diverse nation in the Middle East, Israel, must be violently overthrown and replaced with an Arab-only state.

See Demographics. Inversion. DARVO. BLM. Sexual Assault. Me Too, Unless…

Bobby
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