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‘The trouble with the Jews’ dropped from UK paper after apology

Opinion writer in The Independent states that he would condemn and combat anti-Semitism but uses an anti-Semitic trope that has now been removed by the paper. 

By World Israel News Staff 

The British Independent newspaper has republished an op-ed article on Thursday after it was “amended” apparently due to an anti-Semitic trope used by the author.

The article in question is titled: “There is no conflict between the struggle against anti-Semitism and the struggle against Israeli occupation.”  It is written by Slavoj Žižek, a frequent contributor to the Voices column in the British paper.

The argument he makes includes his opposition to using “the accusation of anti-Semitism… to discredit a totally justified critique of Israeli politics.”

He decries that “more and more, mere sympathy for the Palestinian resistance is condemned as anti-Semitic.”

If you read the version published Thursday, Žižek writes that “the trouble with the settlement project today is that it is now trying to get roots in a place which was for thousands of years inhabited by other people.”

Apparently, however, that sentence had earlier been published as “the trouble with the Jews.”

At the top of the later version published, the Independent writes that the “article was amended on 5 December 2019. We acknowledge that an earlier version of this piece did not meet our own editorial standards.”

“I find obscene a recent claim by Ayelet Shaked, the former Israeli justice minister: ‘The Jewish People have the legal and moral right to live in their ancient homeland.’ What about the rights of Palestinians?” writes Žižek in the article.

“When protests against the Israel Defense Forces’ activities in the West Bank are denounced as an expression of anti-Semitism… when the shadow of the Holocaust is permanently evoked in order to neutralize any criticism of Israeli military and political operations – it is not enough to insist on the difference between anti-Semitism and the critique of particular measures of the State of Israel.

“One should go a step further and claim that it is the State of Israel that, in this case, is desecrating the memory of Holocaust victims, ruthlessly using them as an instrument to legitimize present political measures,” the article continues.

“If Jews are in any way threatened in the U.K., I unconditionally and unequivocally condemn it and support all legal measures to combat it,” writes Žižek in his op-ed republished by the Independent after his anti-Semitic trope was removed.