Jewish Forum for Justice and Human Rights

Brian Klug

Hostility towards Jews, and antisemitism in particular, is a reality that confronts Jews today, even if we do not come face to face with it in person.

We have just heard some examples from Andrew. Only last week I came across an instance at Oxford. Last December, the Holocaust Memorial Day Observance Committee approached several student groups, including the Oxford University Russian Society, to advertise and participate in the event they were organising for National Holocaust Memorial Day on 27 January. They received a reply from a former President of the society as follows: ìThank you for the invitation to help you mark the Holocaust Memorial Day. On behalf of the OU Russian Society, I regret to decline it. I am sure you will understand that, as some members of the Russian Society may have strong anti-semitic views, it will be inappropriate for our society as a body to promote or participate in organizing this memorial day. Yours sincerelyÖî

At least he was sincere. Sometimes antisemites are not so sincere or candid and conceal their bigotry or disguise it as something else.

This can make it difficult to know when we are dealing with real antisemitism and when we are merely imagining it. Nothing gives rise to this difficulty more than the conflict in the Middle East between Israelis and Palestinians. Since the collapse of the Oslo peace talks and the start of the second Intifada in September 2000, Israel has been under fierce verbal attack, not only in the Middle East but around the world. At the same time, hostility towards Jews, sometimes expressed violently in attacks on individuals and institutions, appears to have been on the rise in various European countries.

How much of this hostility towards Jews and Israel is antisemitic? How much of it is caused by other factors, such as opposition to Israelís presence in the Occupied Territories? Or is the latter either a form of antisemitism in itself or antisemitism in disguise?

In a recent interview (Europolitix.com, November 2003?), Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was asked the following question:

Q: Mr prime minister, in Europe there is an attempt to distinguish between an anti-Semitism that should be condemned and a legitimate criticism toward Israelís policies. Furthermore there are those who think that Israel utilises anti-Semitism as a shield from criticism directed at her.

A: Today there is no separation. We are talking about collective anti-Semitism. The state of Israel is the Jewish state and the attitude towards Israel runs accordingly. Ö You cannot separate here; Israel is treated as a Jewish state.

Most of us, I think, would say that you can separate here; that antisemitism is one thing, and legitimate criticism of Israelís policies another. But our antennae start to twitch when that criticism becomes harsh or sustained; when it seems unfair or one-sided; or when it goes to the question of Israelís very right to exist as a Jewish state. In other words, when we encounter anti-Zionism, in one or more senses of that word, many of us are liable to cry ëantisemiteí. The question is, When are we crying wolf?

Let me say, first of all, that there is good reason why our antennae start to twitch. For one thing, there is a long and ignoble history of ëZionistí being used as a code word for ëJewí, as when Communist Poland carried out ëanti-Zionistí purges in 1968, expelling thousands of Jews from the country, or when the far right today use the acronym ZOG (Zionist Occupation Government) to refer to the US administration. Besides, what is Zionism if not a reaction to the persecution of Jews? And what was responsible for this persecution if not antisemitism? So, since anti-Zionism is the opposite of Zionism, and since Zionism is a form of opposition to antisemitism, it seems to follow that an anti-Zionist must be an antisemite.

Nonetheless, the inference is invalid. Anti-Zionism is a political view, a view about the goal of creating a Jewish state, or about the ideology of Jewish nationalism, or about the State of Israel as an expression of that ideology, or about Israelís policies and the way it behaves. There are a variety of views that can be called ëanti-Zionistí but all of them are legitimate political positions that anyone ñ non-Jewish or Jewish ñ might take for legitimate reasons.

Antisemitism is not legitimate, nor is it fundamentally a political position (although it can, of course, be expressed politically). Antisemitism is a prejudicial view of Jews, a specific prejudice in which Jews are seen in a particular light. Although the word only goes back to 1879, antisemitism is an old European fantasy about Jews. The Rev. Dr. Giles Fraser, in a piece in Saturdayís Guardian (7 February 2004, p. 21), gives a short but clear account of how European antisemitism grew out of the Gospels, or rather a particular way of reading the Gospels that became dominant in popular Christian culture. Jews ñ collectively ñ were portrayed as having murdered God Himself in the person of Jesus, and therefore as the enemy of humankind. The underlying idea ñ of the Jew as the enemy ñ was transmitted from generation to generation Thus in the nineteenth century we hear a clear echo in the words of the German composer Richard Wagner who said (in one of his many discordant moments): ìI hold the Jewish race to be the born enemy of pure humanity and everything noble in it.î

Wagner referred to the Jewish race. But down the centuries, antisemitic discourse has been more or less the same whether Jews are seen as comprising a race, a nation, a people, a faith, a culture, or whatever. An antisemite sees Jews this way: they are an alien presence, a parasite that preys on humanity and seeks to dominate the world. Across the globe, their hidden hand controls the banks, the markets and the media. Even governments are under their sway. And when revolutions occur or nations go to war, it is the Jews ñ clever, ruthless and cohesive ñ who invariably pull the strings and reap the rewards.

When this fantasy is projected on to Israel because it is a Jewish state, or projected on to Jews collectively in association with Israel, then anti-Zionism is antisemitic. Take, for example, Mahathir Mohamadís address to the 10^th Session of the Islamic Summit Conference last October. This was an example of classical antisemitic discourse, with its peculiar combination of animus and admiration. Calling Jews ìthe enemy,î he warned: ìWe are up against a people who think.î He went on to credit Jews with having ìinventedî, amongst other things, human rights and democracy. ìWith these,î he explained, ìthey have now gained control of the most powerful countries and they, this tiny community, have become a world power.î Mahathir was singing from the same antisemitic hymn book as Richard Wagner, in the grip of the same antisemitic fantasy.

But Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip is no fantasy. Nor is the spread of Jewish settlements in these territories. Nor the unequal treatment of Jewish colonisers and Palestinian inhabitants. Nor the institutionalised discrimination against Israeli Arab citizens in various spheres of life. These are realities. It is one thing to oppose Israel or Zionism on the basis of an antisemitic fantasy; quite another to do so on the basis of reality. The latter is not antisemitism.

ìBut,î someone might say, ìWhat about the attacks on Jews in various European countries in the last three years; Jews who are not themselves Israeli citizens and who might not even feel any tie to the Jewish state? How can these attacks be construed as anything other than antisemitic?î

Well, itís necessary to look at cases. Take, for example, the violence against Jews in France in 2002. As I understand it, almost all of the perpetrators were young Muslim immigrants. According to the Israeli foreign Ministry itself, most of the incidents were a protest against the inequities in the Occupied Territories. So, on the face of it, these were expressions of political outrage rather than bigotry.

ìNonetheless,î the same person might object, ìthe young Muslim immigrants who carried out these attacks are antisemites. For itís not the Jews of France who are occupying the territories, itís the State of Israel. If the motive for these incidents was purely political, why didnít the protestors attack the Israeli embassy? Why attack individual Jews and Jewish institutions? This is a clear case of lumping all Jews together and holding them collectively responsible. This is what makes these incidents antisemitic.î

The objection, however, is misconceived, and the misconception goes to the heart of the complex situation in which Jews find themselves in the world today in relation to the Middle East conflict. Recall Prime Minister Sharonís words in the interview I quoted earlier. He spoke of ìcollective anti-Semitismî. This is one side of the coin. The other side is his view that Israel is ìthe Jewish collectiveî, a phrase he used in a speech he gave last November. Or as Mortimer Zuckerman put it in an article in U.S. News and world Report last November, Israel is ìthe collective expression of the Jewish peopleî. But itís not just Sharon and Zuckerman. This is how Israel views itself. It does not regard itself merely as a state that happens to be Jewish (like the medieval kingdom of the Khazars). It sees itself as ëthe state of the Jewsí, i.e. of the Jewish nation, where the nation comprises all Jews ñ and only Jews ñ everywhere.

To what extent this view is reciprocated by Jews worldwide is hard to say. Many have no sense of belonging to a Jewish nation (as distinct from the traditional concept of the Jewish people), feel no particular connection to the state or strongly oppose its policies and its actions. On the other hand, in spring 2002, at the height of Operation Defensive Shield, Jews as Jews gathered in large numbers in numerous cities to demonstrate their solidarity with Israel. Many Jewish community leaders, religious and secular, publicly reinforce this identification with the state. All of which is liable to give the unreflective onlooker the impression that Jews are, as it were, lumping themselves together; that Israel is indeed ëthe Jewish collectiveí.

Not that this justifies, not for one moment, a single incident where Jews are attacked for being Jewish; such attacks are inexcusable. Nor does it diminish the injury suffered by the victims. But it does provide a context within which to make sense of these attacks without seeing them as part of what Phyllis Chesler in her book The New Anti-Semitism calls a global ìwar against the Jews.î There is no such global war. It is as much a figment of the imagination as its mirror image: a Jewish conspiracy against the world. Jews have good reason to be concerned about growing hostility towards them in connection with the Middle East conflict. But while this does include the revival of hardcore antisemitism, I believe it is closer to the truth to say that anti-Zionism today takes the form of antisemitism rather than the other way round.

As Akiva Eldar observed recently in Haíaretz, ìIt is much easier to claim the entire world is against us than to admit that the State of Israel, which rose as a refuge and a source of pride for Jews,Öhas become a genuine source of danger and a source of shameful embarrassment to Jews who choose to live outside its borders.î

So, when are we crying wolf? When, without further ado, we equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism. Or when, as happened recently, the National Director of the Anti-Defamation League says that opposition to Israelís ësecurity wallí is proof that antisemitism is rampant. When we make such charges, we ourselves are devaluing the word that names the very hostility towards us that gave rise to Zionism in the first place. But itís worse than that. We are actually validating that hostility. For if people believe they have good grounds for being opposed to Israel, and if they are labeled antisemites for their legitimate political views, there will come a time when they start to wear that label with pride. Every time we cry wolf, we foolishly hasten that time.