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Loewentein has invented a diabolical way to prove that deaths of Israeli civilians are the fault of the "neo-Jewish" government. At Z-Word, Ben Cohen explains why and how Loewenstein and others are using stereotypical anti-Semitic demonization. That is the seeming intellectual issue posed by the Counterpunch article, but it is not the most dangerous aspect of the article. The intellectual aspects of such drivel are uninteresting and non-existent. The actual content of anti-Israel raves such as this one is usually puerile: "We are the righteous and the just; all problems in the Middle East are caused by the Jews and the Americans, who are the incarnation of evil." The content is unvarying and largely irrelevant. Counterpunch articles, like Leni Riefenstahl movies and Hitler speeches, are created to produce an effect through their form and the language they use.

The slogan is the message. Launching of new effective slogans and catch phrases, repetition and popularization of the phrases and their use in propagating the fundamental lies of the anti-Zionist ideology are the main goals of such propaganda. Mantras such as Illegal occupation, apartheid regime, Zionist-neocon controlled government, siege of Gaza, Zionism is racism... are the real weapons of Counterpunch "thought."

The most dangerous weapon in Loewenstein's article is this term: "Neo-Jewish." It means nothing apparently. Among the semi-literate, this word will have a powerful influence. "Neo" is associated with BAD ideas. Never mind that there is also neo-Freudianism. "Neo-Nazi" is a "bad word" and "Neocon" is another "bad word," so "New Jew" or "Neo Jewish" is a great way to get across the idea that Israelis are evil. As a bonus, "conservative" and "Nazi" are certainly bad words, so the phrase "neo-Jew" implies to the followers of pop-politics that "Jew" is a bad word. That is the real object of the exercise, isn't it? A stupid, almost subliminal association of "neo - X" causes that "X" to be thought of as bad. That association is what gives this phrase its terrible voodoo power. That type of association, rather than subtle intellectual arguments, is the really dangerous anti-Semitic content of Loewenthal's thesis.

In the 1930s Nazi vocabulary, "international" was a bad word, and anything associated with it could be given the aura of evil: international Bolshevism and international finance-Jewry. Sloganeering, as Reichspropagandaminister Joseph Goebbels knew, taps into an important and little understood aspect of the human psyche. Prayers, mantras, magical incantations and advertising jingles are evidence that to the human psyche, words have power far beyond their actual meaning.

This neologism, "Neo-Jew," has powerful voodoo. Like Apartheid and "Zionism is Racism." neo-Jew will become yet another mighty weapon in the propaganda arsenal of the paleo-Nazi anti-Israel forces. "Zionism" is already a bad word. No doubt, a new phrase such as "Neo-Zionist" will eventually be created. It is hard to imagine any phrase that could automatically impart a greater sense of evil than "neo-Zionist."

Ami Isseroff