In the wake of the much-publicised burning of Jewish Community ambulances in North London Richard Kuper dissects the myths perpetrated by the Israeli government
Many believe it is misguided in the extreme to suggest that Israel could possibly “cause” antisemitism. That would be to blame the victim, to blame Jews for hostility against them, no different to saying Blacks are responsible for anti-Black racism.
But it’s not as simple as that.
The general term “antisemitism” flattens and distorts, conflating two very different sources of hostility towards Jews. I argue here that Israel’s actions – and those of Jewish communal bodies that give Israel their uncritical support – facilitate and indeed encourage the slippage from legitimate criticism of what Israel does into what Jews are. Or, to put it in the words of the IHRA working definition of antisemitism, it fosters the antisemitic view that “Jews are collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel”.
Two kinds of “antisemitism”
Traditional antisemitism is the phenomenon in which Jews are constructed as “Jews”, embodying stereotypical images of the “deceitful”, “crooked”, “manipulative”, “cliquey”, “rootless”, “wealthy”, “powerful”, “conspiratorial” individual, which are then projected onto Jews in general. The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism’s definition captures this well: “Antisemitism is discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews (or Jewish institutions as Jewish).”
What we also have in recent decades is a galloping antipathy towards Israel because its war on the Palestinians, conducted by the Jewish state, is perceived as unjust. This hatred had nothing to do with historical stereotypes and everything to do with realities: the cruelty of the occupation, the killing of the peace process; the violations of the 4th Geneva Convention and international law more generally; Israel’s apartheid structures and its genocidal war on Gaza; and Israel’s impunity. Israelis are increasingly resented for what Israel was doing, not because they were Jewish. And governments that should hold Israel to account are turning a blind eye, fostering that sense of impunity and therefore the resentment it induces.
It is this growing hatred that Israel, Zionism generally, and Jewish communal organisations have deemed to be the “new antisemitism”, that the IHRA Working Definition of antisemitism specifically targets.
It isn’t antisemitism as such, but there is a danger that two very different sources of hatred can begin to overlap. Ezra Klein, in the New York Times, is clear: “Acres of evidence attest to a reality all Jews know: Anger at Israel becomes anger at Jews everywhere.”
Israel willingly and deliberately implicates all Jews worldwide in its actions. And many communal Jewish organisations go along with this in their uncritical support for Israel, asserting unambiguously that to be a Jew is to be a Zionist, to be in wholehearted support of what the state of Israel is doing, in our name and for us.
The result, in Jewish commentator MJ Rosenberg’s words: “You cannot spend decades insisting that Israel represents all Jews and then be surprised when others, including dangerous and hateful people, take that claim at face value.”
There has been some dissent among leading Jewish supporters of Israel speaking out to say that what Israel is doing is fueling antisemitism worldwide, is not good for Jews. Their dissent has been ruthlessly suppressed.
What Israeli forces have done in Gaza and the wider region is unconscionable. And they have done it as “Jews”. Openly, proudly affirming their right to lord it over the land which they say their god has given them. They make no distinction between Jew, Israeli and Zionist.
And they feign surprise when more and more people believe them. People become less bothered about treading on the eggshells of Jewish sensitivity when Israel’s Jewish supporters can’t be bothered to maintain even the fiction of a distinction between Jews and Zionists.
A danger to the solidarity movement
This development is dangerous for the solidarity movement. We also see it creeping into our social media. “The Zionists” are to blame for everything. As Zionists insist on affirming, they are the real Jews, so why not blame “the Jews”? We are lucky not to see more of it. It is as though Israel’s supporters are trying to will it into being. That then justifies Israel’s existence and everything it does as the only possible way to survive the “eternal hatred” that antisemitism is.
Except it isn’t. This hatred we witness today is caused by what Israel does. It can be stopped only by Israel being forced to desist.
If Jewish communal bodies were serious about undercutting the processes that fuel the rise in anti-Jewish sentiment today, they would be tackling it at the source, calling vociferously for the immediate end to the occupation and equal rights for all between the river and the sea. It wouldn’t end antisemitism as an irrational hatred of Jews as Jews, but it would drain the swamps in which anti-Jewish sentiment can fester.
As they continue to fail us, it is up to Jews in the multiplicity of organisations that make up the Jewish Bloc, now visible on all the pro-Palestinian marches, to do so for them.