Jewish Forum for Justice and Human Rights

By Dr. Varda Shiffer, Senior Associate Member, St. Antonyís College, Oxford

The question that I would like to address is not, whether anti-Semitism exists or whether it is on the rise ñ the answer to those two questions is yes. Incidents of Anti-Semitism are indeed occurring more often and are moving upwards on the scale of violence ñ from words to acts. We, all of us who are concerned about human rights, justice and decency should be fighting against these phenomena.  What worries me is the nature of the campaign against anti-Semitism, and the political direction this campaign has taken, a direction which, through the guidance of the Israeli authorities, attempts to silence any serious discussion about the social and moral transformations which Israel is undergoing; about the connection between those transformations and the Palestinian ñ Israeli conflict, and racism and Anti-Semitism. It is about these societal trends and the use of Anti-Semitism as a tool to prevent any criticism or even serious discussion of them, I wish to elaborate tonight. My objective goes beyond this evening. I strive to convince you that you, as Jews who care about Israel, have a role to play, which is perhaps different from the role traditionally taken by the established Jewish institutions.

This is how I see the changes that Israel has been undergoing in the past decades since becoming occupiers ñ admittedly, a view from the eyes of a human rights and social change activist:

During the late 1970s and the early 1980s, as coordinator of an Amnesty group in Jerusalem and later as chair of the section, I used to receive piles of materials from the London Amnesty International secretariat, designed to inform Amnesty membersí activities. I used to sit in my kitchen in Jerusalem, usually on Fridays at the beginning of the week-end and read these materials. Every week I would find myself crying over the stories of Iranian women being tortured, or of young Argentinean women and men simply disappearing or of Moslems under Shariya law being stoned or permanently mutilated as punishment for acts that to me did not always look as if they were crimes at all. I used to think how lucky I was, living in a democratic state, being protected from such deliberate brutality. These days, I sit, again in my kitchen in Jerusalem, usually again on Fridays, reading Gideon Leviís weekly accounts of our, of MY cruelty against innocent Palestinians ñ children, women and old people. When he Gideon Levi) told the first story about a woman giving birth on the ground near a road block, which stopped her from getting in time to a hospital ñ and yes, losing her baby, I thought to myself ñ this is horrible, absolutely horrible, but the army authorities will surely refresh their orders so that such an incident will not happen again. But then, two months later, the same story, only now, baby twins lost their lives. My tears, when I read these accounts, and the militaryís official reactions, (usually first denying that the incident has ever occurred, and then faintly apologizing), and the evidence about soldiersí routine behaviour next to these road blocks, [my tears] are not just tears of pain and sorrow, these are tears of rage and frustration. Frustration that we are no longer able to draw the line between legitimate acts of self defense and illegitimate acts of  cruelty and sometimes blatant racism.

It is this, in my opinion, this observable phenomenon of the distortion of our sensibilities, our sliding into a kind of state that none of us is going to be proud of, and more so, a state that its ability and moral standing in the fight against Anti-Semitism is seriously jeopardized that I wish to address. I shall do this by highlighting a few points:

The Middle-East conflict as a metamorphosing agent ñ I just read recently an interview Linda Grant conducted with a number of prominent Israeli authors. I think it was David Grossman who used, not for the first time, this metaphor of the ìconflict which hovers above usî. Well I think that this metaphor is grossly misleading. Hovering implies a distance between us and that which hovers, it also implies an independent movement of that which hovers ñ independent from the object underneath it. The conflict does not hover above us like some sort of a cloud, which has lingered on for a bit too long. No, it is deeply interwoven into our lives, our language, our thinking and our behaviour. First of all it causes death, and therefore deeply affects the lives of individuals and families. But this is obvious ñ what is less obvious is that it has become a defining factor ñ it guides our interpretation of almost every phenomenon ñ it is the reason why we need to cut down social benefits to the poor, but it is also the reason why we need to preserve social solidarity. It informs the civic education curriculum in Israeli schools and it is why we need to strengthen studies of ëheritageí. And what is heritage? Mainly the narrative of anti-Semitism and the disasters Jews in the Diaspora ñ Jews without a state, have suffered. In the interest of security we invented new concepts, such as ëfocused exterminationsí, a variety of closures, sterile areas, and blockades.  What these supposedly ëcleaní terms do is, that they desensitize us completely and have robbed us from the ability to recognize injustice, and abuses, especially but not only, when we inflict them. The conflict taught us, that perhaps no-one is innocent, and therefore, if the military operation happens to kill civilian by-standers, well χ ¯‡ ñ it is not so horrible, ëin the interest of security, we all have to make sacrificesí. What I wish to convey to you is the kind of numbness of sensibilities which has been creeping upon us in the almost 37 years of occupation. And it is not just numbness (which, by the way, affects us also with regard to our own dead ) it is something worse, it is the loss of standards, of clear, moral standards as to what is acceptable in war, and what cannot be justified, by any ìsecurityî justification. We constantly use one set of standards to describe and evaluate our acts and an entirely different set of standards to define the acts of others, especially those directed toward us.

This leads me to my second point ñ

Anti-Semitism as a unique, unparalleled, and uncomparable form of racism ñ  but strangely enough, at the same time – a concept, which encompasses all forms of racism. The numbness of sensibilities which I described before, does not include our sensitivity and alertness concerning anti-Semitism. In Israel the word racism is hardly ever used, and when it is used, it is strongly linked to the Zionism=racism UN resolution, and therefore it has become another form of Anti-Semitism. So you see, rather than anti-Semitism being a form of racism, racism has become a form of Anti-Semitism. One consequence is that we do not have the ability to think about ourselves as being capable of racism. We are the constant and eternal victims of racism, and therefore, what we do can never be defined as racism, and what others do to us, is always anti-Semitism, and always part of the big and eternal anti-Semitic picture. Now, though I do think that a lot of what is going on is indeed anti-Semitism, I also think that the total blur which has been created between real anti-Semitism, and legitimate criticism of Israelís political acts, is bad for Israel, and bad for the fight against anti-Semitism.

I believe that the reinstitution of clear standards as to what constitutes racism, and within that framework, what constitutes anti-Semitism, is a vital exercise. It is essential to the ability to campaign against human-rights abuses within Israel, and it is essential to the survival of Israel as a democratic state, as a state we could be proud of. The reinstitution of clear, universal standards of what constitutes anti-Semitism is also vital to the fight against it. This continued blurring of the distinctions between anti-Semitism and criticism of Israel silences exactly those, who are most sensitive, and most capable of fighting all forms of racism.  If those most knowledgeable of racism are asked to remain silent about what is happening in Israel, then the fight against anti-Semitism could be seriously upset.

And this leads me to my final point ñ

Iím somewhat puzzled, and I do not know how to express this point without sounding like a ëhuzpedicí Israeli. I meet many liberal Jews, active campaigners for human rights, who believe that it is imperative to support every act of the Israeli elected government even such acts that they themselves define as morally unacceptable. They define themselves as ìstaunch supporters of Israelî.   This is to me a mystery – if Israel is doing things that are going to change its democratic nature, completely erode international support for it, and may eventually lead her  to a catastrophe ñ how can it be, that supporting such acts, amounts to ëstaunchly supporting Israelí. To me, it sounds more as supporting the destruction of a just, decent and democratic Israel. I grew up in Amnesty International, and I believe in universal standards of human rights and of justice, and I believe in universal responsibility and in the right, in fact the duty of every person to interfere in order to protect the rights of others, especially where the state fails to do so. We will not be able to do that concerning anti-Semitism if we remain silent about the fast developing racism toward Arabs ñ Palestinian and Israeli within Israel. Blurring the distinctions between Anti-Semitism and legitimate criticism of Israel, will not only slow down the rehabilitation of Israelís moral and ethical foundation, it will eventually completely jeopardize the much needed struggle against Anti-Semitism.