[lbo-talk] Ran HaCohen: The Abuse of Anti-Semitism

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Sat Oct 4 23:59:19 PDT 2003


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.



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