THE NEW ANTI-SEMITISM?
The European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia shelved a report on anti-Semitism fearing that its conclusions - blaming 'young Muslims' for attacks on Jewish targets were too inflammatory. Speaking in Toronto, former CIA director James Woolsey saw in European anti- Semitism 'the first breath of totalitarianism'. German MP Martin Hohmann caused outrage when he likened the Holocaust with the massacres conducted by Jewish communists in the USSR in 1917; British MP Tam Dalyell blamed a 'Jewish Cabal' for determining US policy in the Middle East; veteran Greek nationalist and composer Mikis Theodorakis referred to Israel as the 'root of evil'. In Britain both the BBC and the Guardian have come under pressure for 'anti-Semitic' reporting of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Fears of resurgent anti-Semitism are underlined by an arson attack on a Paris school and the bombing of the Beth Israel synagogue in Istanbul.
These incidents confirm the beliefs of the authorities in Israel that Europe is endemically anti- Semitic (and consequently that the Israeli state is justified as a refuge). Eager to regain the moral high ground, Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon warned that 'EU governments are not doing enough to tackle anti-Semitism'. Sharon's minister Natan Sharansky went further, alleging that 'anti-Semitism has become politically correct in Europe'. Of course the Israeli leaders are past masters at guilt-tripping Europeans over anti-Semitism. Their aim is to use the attacks to silence European criticism of the Israeli state, at a time when Europe's policies towards the Middle East are diverging from those of the US - especially over support for Israel. American Congressmen like Robert Wexler are also using the suppression of the Centre's report to pressure the EU over its policies in the Middle East. But though Sharon and his supporters are keen to play the victim card, his conclusions would be welcomed by many on the xenophobic right of European politics: 'an ever-stronger Muslim presence in Europe is certainly endangering the life of Jewish people,' Sharon warns. Furthermore, Israel itself provides no solution to anti-Semitism; in fact Israel depends upon anti-Semitism for its raison d'être, providing institutional form to the separation of Jews and Gentiles.
The fact that America and Israel use the issue of anti-Semitism to compromise European policies and governments does not mean that anti-Semitism does not exist. But Ariel Sharon is wrong when he says 'what we are facing in Europe is an anti-Semitism that has always existed and it really is not a new phenomenon'. Expressions of anti-Semitic feelings today are different from those in the past. In the first instance anti-Jewish prejudices among some Muslims are a sign of the degeneration of the Arab nationalist movement, not its success. As Arab nationalists retreated from direct confrontation with the Western powers that dominated the Middle East, they came instead to fixate exclusively on the West's local policeman Israel. With the ascendance of Islamic fundamentalism over Arab nationalism the target switched from the Israeli military occupation to Jewish civilians inside and outside Israel. Attacking synagogues and cemeteries is a sign of a movement that has degenerated from political liberation to ethnic hostility. Seeking out Jews for attack is a sublimated hostility to the West, which, shorn of any political programme, is merely nihilistic.
But ultimately more important than the sentiments amongst Muslims, who, after all, have precious little power in Europe, or for that matter in the Middle East, are the attitudes of the European and North American intelligentsia. It particularly pains the Israeli establishment that it has lost the sympathy of the educated classes in Western Europe and, to a lesser extent, in the USA. Where once these constituencies readily identified with the plucky Kibbutzim in Israel, today they are just as likely to champion the cause of the Palestinians. Characteristic of the sympathies of today's professional classes are the family of Tom Hurndall, the British observer with the International Solidarity Movement shot by Israeli forces while ushering children out of gunfire in Rafah. Hurndall's parents have continued to pressure the Israeli authorities over their failure to account for the 21-year old's death.
Since Zionists identify Jews with the Israeli state they cannot see these changing Western attitudes as anything but old-fashioned anti-Semitism. But while declining support for the barbaric Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza may be welcome in itself, the new sympathy for the Palestinians does not arise in the context of a positive turn in the course of European or Middle Eastern politics; it does not arise from a positive endorsement of a liberation struggle, so much as a (spurious) identification with the victim. On top of that sentiment, the European intelligentsia has shifted towards a romantic anti-modernism in which America stands for everything negative. And, with the huge dependence of the Israeli state on American largesse and the militant expansionism of American settlers in the West Bank, the Jewish State appears to Europeans to be America¹s 'little brother¹. European endorsement of the Palestinian Authority does not aim for a Palestinian solution to the conflict, so much as to sustain the Arab grievance as a standing reprimand to American policy in the Middle East. European leaders see the Middle East conflict as a means to embarrass the USA, just as many Americans sees Europe's record of persecution of the Jews as a means to embarrass them.
Isolated from any democratic struggle, there is no reason to suppose that European sympathies for the Palestinians will not give rise to anti-Semitic sentiments. The Jews are an easy foil for anti- Americanism in Europe as much they are in the Middle East. The growing belief that US policy is a consequence a 'Jewish lobby' stands reality on its head, making Americans hostage to Jewish manipulation. Europe's evaporating sympathies for the Israelis could turn into their opposite, a resentful hostility. This new anti-Semitism is quite unlike the popular movements of the middle classes mobilised against the working class in the inter-war years. Rather it has its roots in a reaction against social progress that assumes an anti-American character. And this anti- Americanism is more acceptable in its ersatz form, as anti-Israeli agitation.
-- James Heartfield