Of course you won’t be able to. The idee fixee of the Jew-hater who cloaks himself in Israel-hatred plays out just as you have described. Being an idee fixee it is not amenable to objective proof or clarification in either direction. Reasoned and reasoning people will not be able to engage with this extreme enactment of “I have made up my mind so don’t confuse me with facts.” The facts will simply be ignored unless they tie in with the hatred and distorted views.

This hatred of Israel is so visceral, so deeply entrenched and impervious to reasoned argument, that it surely has to fall into the same category as the mindless, blood and bone Jew-hatred which resulted in the Holocaust.

And we don’t even have to prove its existence. It uses the same tropes and accusations and the same imagery about Israel as did the Nazis about the Jews.

You need treatment.

But, for the comic relief, we get how David claims he was followed around a half hour by a Moroccan Berber who said he’d give David’s wife some of his manhood. Really!

Let me say one thing, these stories are great for looking like you are really world travellers, because they are almost all false, or maybe they are done so that you can feel important. Never been to a dinner party next to someone who hadn’t had “an offer of ten camels to marry me” and all that bullcrap? I hear them all the time, mainly from really unattractive women a little past midlife. Anyone who hasn’t heard one of these stories, raise your hand.

Keep it coming David T! You are a funny MC

Go back to masturbating in the bathroom, useless asshole.

Now, the basic flaw in his argument is as follows. His definition of anti-Semitism is (or so it appears) a wish to inflict actual harm or discrimination on individual Jews because they are Jews. This essentially fits with classical Right-wing anti-Semitism, which has reached its extreme expression in the Holocaust. This definition is clearly much too restrictive and falls dramatically short of the standard in modern approach to racism and racial discrimination. In particular, it does not consider as anti-Semitic the wish to discriminate against Jews as a collective because they are a Jewish collective. I don’t know what are Martin Shaw’s views on Holocaust-denial, but if he is consistent he probably doesn’t see it as anti-Semitic.

Does he? It’s been a while since I read the debate, and maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t remember him putting this across and it would have surprised me had he placed much emphasis on what motivates boycotters.

All the same, you are correct that Syd Walker would only be relevant to this debate were he what Shaw would regard as an important enough player. Francis Clark-Lowes certainly was, but I’m sure Shaw would satisfy himself that as he’s no longer head of the PSC, he too can be discounted. I agree, from reading Shaw’s arguments, it’s hard to imagine what kind of evidential standard would satisfy him. The use of antisemitic tropes; singling out of Jews for punishment (though not as the unintended consequence of the implementation of some universal policy); support for explicitly antisemitic organisations by many of the key players/bodies in the boycott movement; and a Holocaust denier as head of one of the main pro-boycott organisations.

Maybe Shaw’s looking for some metaphysical quality of antisemitism, to be found in the souls of boycotters. Maybe the “antisemitic gene”?

The point is, though, that anti-semitism only seems to be recognised when it appears in “traditional” forms: i.e. wearing pointy hats or red and black armbands. If it comes from somebody who appears to be left wing, progressive, or otherwise ‘non traditional’, it isn’t recognised at all.

I would immediately recognise as racist, theories which postulate Israeli control of America, the press, complicity in 9/11 and so on.

It is pretty clear to me that – even when people move on from ranting about “Zionists”, to wibblling about “Jewish Power” – they’re regarded, not as racist loons, but as “just a different point of view”.

These perspectives are present at every level, including the highest, of the BDS movement: and frankly pretty much nobody seems to be bothered by it. Martin Shaw, as we’ve seen, simply denies that they’re present, or ‘count’ as racism.

There are major flaws in his argument, but we must engage with what he is saying (and with these flaws).

“NO MORE ARRESTS FOR POLITICAL OR HISTORICAL OPINIONS – *INCLUDING* OPINIONS DISLIKED BY THE ZIONIST LOBBY!

End apartheid in Palestine NOW!

Liberty, Equality, Fratenity!”

Martin Shaw would find it hugely difficult to determine whether or not this was racism.