URL: http://www.antiwar.com/hacohen/h-col.html
September 29, 2003
The Abuse of "Anti-Semitism"
by Ran HaCohen
The eve of the Jewish New Year is an excellent occasion for what
Jewish tradition calls Kheshbon Nefesh, or soul-searching on so-called
"anti-semitism", which has now become the single most important
element of Jewish identity. Jews may believe in God or not, eat pork
or not, live in Israel or not, but they are all united by their
unlimited belief in anti-semitism.
When a Palestinian kills innocent Israeli civilians, it's
anti-semitism. When Palestinians attack soldiers of Israel's
occupation army in their own village, it's anti-semitism. When the UN
General Assembly votes 133 to 4 condemning Israel's decision to murder
the elected Palestinian leader, it means that except for the US,
Micronesia and Marshal Islands, all other countries on the globe are
anti-semitic. Even when a pregnant Palestinian woman is stopped at an
Israeli check-point and gives birth in open field, the only lesson to
be learnt is that Ha'aretz journalist Gideon Levy -- who reported two
such cases in the past two weeks, one in which the baby died -- is an
anti-semite.
Anti-semitism is an all-encompassing explanation. Anything unpleasant
to anti-Palestinian ears is just another instance of anti-semitism.
Jewish consciousness focused on anti-semitism has taken the shape of
anti-semitic conspiracy theories, like that of The Protocols of the
Learned Elders of Zion: whereas the anti-semitic classic relates every
calamity to Jewish conspiracy, Jews relate to anti-semitic conspiracy
every criticism of Israel. As we shall see, this is not the only
similarity between anti-Palestinianism and anti-semitism.
It is high time to say it out loud: in the entire course of Jewish
history, since the Babylonian Exile in the 6th century BC, there has
never been an era blessed with less anti-semitism than ours. There has
never been a better time for Jews to live in than our own.
Up to just two generations ago, anti-semitism was a legitimate
political and cultural attitude in most of the world's leading powers.
Anti-semitism was something you could express openly, even be proud
of. Disliking Jews was as natural then as detesting cockroaches is
today. Nowadays, anti-semitism is a taboo and a criminal offence in
every developed country on earth. Even truly anti-semitic groups deny
their anti-semitic character, knowing it is politically unacceptable.
Unlike earlier centuries, where anti-semitism stood in direct
proportion to the number of Jews in the pertinent country and thus
constituted a real threat to them, the countries where anti-semitism
is still thriving today mostly poor Muslim countries are virtually
empty of Jews, so that the actual danger to Jews there is minimal;
representatives of Muslim communities in the West have to give up
their anti-semitism as a precondition for entering the political
system.
Just a few generations ago -- the Holocaust aside for now -- Jews were
treated as second-class citizens in all major Jewish concentrations.
They were denied civic and religious rights almost universally. There
were limits on access of Jews to universities and many professions, to
public service and to any position of power; sometimes even marrying
and making children was dependent on quotas and licences. Such
institutionalised discrimination and oppression is not only totally
extinct today: it is utterly unimaginable. With one revealing
exception (Israel, where non-orthodox religious Jews are discriminated
against), Jews enjoy full religious freedom wherever they are. They
have full citizenship wherever they live, with full political, civic
and human rights like every other citizen. This may sound trivial, but
it was not so just a few generations ago and throughout the entire
first and second millennia. Repressive regimes have either collapsed,
or their Jewish population has left them.
Nowadays, an orthodox Jew can run for the most powerful office on
earth, the president of the United States. (I personally hope he
doesn't win.) A Jew can be the mayor of Amsterdam in "anti-semitic"
Holland, a minister in "anti-semitic" Britain, a leading intellectual
in "anti-semitic" France, a president of "anti-semitic" Switzerland,
editor-in-chief of a major daily in "anti-semitic" Denmark, or an
industrial tycoon in "anti-semitic" Russia. None of this was
imaginable a century ago. Jews have free and unlimited access to every
institution in every country they live in. Ironically, a converted Jew
is even mentioned as a possible successor to the Holy See. At the same
time, "anti-semitic" Germany (home to the world's fastest-growing
Jewish community) gives Israel three military submarines for free,
"anti-semitic" France has proliferated to Israel the nuclear
technology for its weapons of mass destruction, and "anti-semitic"
Europe has welcomed Israel as a single non-European country to
everything from football and basketball leagues to the Eurovision Song
Contest, and has granted Israeli universities a special status for
scientific fund-raising.
The Holocaust has been the greatest catastrophe in Jewish history and
among the greatest crimes in human history but the very fact that
these words sound so obvious is a great victory against anti-semitism.
The term genocide, coined by a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust (R.
Lemkin) and modelled on the genocide of the Jews, has found its way to
international legislation and been affirmed as a crime by almost all
the countries on earth, including eventually (with a shamefully long
delay) the US. The Holocaust has (justly!) become the prototype of
genocide, a synonym for Crime against Humanity. There were several
other genocides in the 20th century -- it is enough to mention the
Armenian genocide by Turks (which preceded and inspired the Holocaust)
and the Tutsi genocide by Hutu in Rwanda (which was even more
"efficient" than the Holocaust). However, while other genocides
are still struggling even to be acknowledged, the Holocaust is the
only genocide which is considered unquestionable to the extent that its
denial is in some countries a criminal offence. No other genocide even
comes close to the 250 memorial museums and research institutes
dedicated to the Holocaust around the world, and no other genocide
survivors have been financially compensated like the persecuted Jews.
In such a world, whoever cries "anti-semitism" twice a day has an
extremely heavy burden of proof to shoulder.
The State of Israel has always been cynically exploiting allegations
of anti-semitism, condemning purported and cooperating with actual
anti-semites at will. Last week, to quote just a minor example, when
the world was outraged by Italy's monarch Berlusconi's claim that his
fascist predecessor Mussolini "had not killed anybody but just sent
people to holidays in exile" -- which comes fairly close to Holocaust
denial -- the only official Israeli reaction was that of an unnamed
spokesman for the 2nd Minister in the Ministry of Finance, who
mumbled that "If the words have been said (!), one can not agree with
them, since History speaks for itself" (Ha'aretz 14.9, p.12 bottom).
The reason for this ear-deafening outcry is simple: Berlusconi, like
most right-wing extremists, has taken a decisive pro-Israel stand in
Europe. So let him even deny the Holocaust if he likes, Israel will
show understanding. After all, Israel was the closest ally of the most
racist regime in the post-WWII era, South Africa's Apartheid. Moral
considerations have never played any role whatsoever in Israel's
politics and diplomacy.
On a state level, some may excuse that as Realpolitik. But the
institutionalised pro-Israel lobby has compromised its integrity to
such an extent that I wouldn't be surprised if, say, the
Anti-Defamation League, which cries anti-semitic wolf on a daily basis,
were to suddenly hail the fascist apologist Berlusconi as a
distinguished statesman. And in fact precisely this world-record of
hypocrasy was broken just this very week.
But much more disturbing is the intensive resorting to "anti-semitism"
claims by Jewish individuals and institutions who actually try
to maintain a look of integrity. Such claims take many creative
forms. For example, some Jews have a morally repulsive pastime of
looking for worst cases of oppression Russian atrocities in Chechnya
(whose veterans, by the way, join the Israeli army), Chinese in Tibet
which supposedly "prove" that the media focus on Israel is
anti-semitically motivated. As if it were not outrageous enough to be
on the shortlist of evil-doers, as if only the gold medal in this
satanic competition, but not bronze or silver, is worthy of protest.
And I wonder how many of those arm-chair pro-Israel Tibet specialists
ever bothered to actually do something to free Tibet, except for
exploiting its suffering to distract from Israel's atrocities.
The abuse of alleged anti-semitism is morally despicable. It took
hundreds of years and millions of victims to turn anti-semitism --
a specific case of racism which led historically to genocide -- into
a taboo. People abusing this taboo in order to support Israel's racist
and genocidal policy towards the Palestinians do nothing less than
desecrate the memory of those Jewish victims, whose death, from a
humanistic perspective, is meaningful only inasmuch as it serves as an
eternal warning to the human kind against all kinds of discrimination,
racism, and genocide.
Moreover, portraying the victimisers as victims -- a standard
characteristic of anti-Palestinian propaganda -- is precisely what
anti-semitism has always done, whether in blood-libels which portrayed
defenceless Jewish victims as victimisers of Christian children, or in
the ultimate accusation of Christ killing, which abused the
persecution of early Christians to legitimate the persecution of Jews
once the balance of power changed. Thus, evoking Jewish victims of the
past to defend Jewish victimisers of the present remember that Israel
has one of the mightiest armies on earth is a moral fault on a par
with, and embarrassingly similar to, anti-semitism itself.
Happy New Year 5764.
- Ran HaCohen
Ran HaCohen was born in the Netherlands in 1964 and grew up in Israel.
He has a B.A. in Computer Science, an M.A. in Comparative Literature
and is currently working on his PhD thesis. He teaches in the Tel-Aviv
University's Department of Comparative Literature. He also works as a
literary translator (from German, English and Dutch), and as a
literary critic for the Israeli daily Yedioth Achronoth. Mr. HaCohen's
work has been published widely in Israel. "Letter from Israel" appears
occasionally at Antiwar.com.