The New Anti-Semitism
Let it not be said that the US is alone when it comes to equating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. According to AFP, a report on racism in France released on Tuesday recommended criminalising "unfounded" "anti-Israel stances".
The report singles out anti-Semitism and calls for a law "to punish those who might level unfounded racism allegations against groups, institutions or states, and use against them unjustified comparisons with apartheid or Nazism." I find criminalising comparisons to apartheid especially warming. It would be amusing to have speakers who struggled against apartheid in South Africa and now see the same thing in Israel (such as Desmond Tutu) indicted for racism. (In fact, there is no need to compare Israeli policies with apartheid, since they are apartheid.)
The report also finds that the perpetrators of "the new anti-Semitism" are "more heterogeneous" than those of traditional anti-Semitism. Without having read the report, I venture the guess that this means, translated into English, that the people who criticise the Israeli government are not the people who are guilty of anti-Semitic incidents. This reminds me of the first version of the study by the European Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC), which defined pretty much any "pro-Palestinian" act as "anti-Semitic", and then made the surprising discovery that Palestinians are often behind anti-Semitic incidents. (After defining "anti-Semitism" sensibly for the final version, EUMC found that perpetrators of anti-Semitic acts are mostly the usual suspects, white right-wing extremists.)
On Israeli public radio, the Israeli ambassador to France called the report "exceptional ... because it establishes a direct link between anti-Semitism and the anti-Zionist and hostile positions in Israel." I find this quite irresponsible. When representatives of Israel and Jewish organisations chant that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism, they also contribute to the sad delusion that anti-Semitism would somehow be anti-Zionism, and thus to the rise of anti-Jewish racism.
The thinking behind such statements is that there is nothing in Zionist ideology or Israeli policy towards Palestinians (and other Arabs) that would provide grounds for criticism, so all criticism must have some hidden reason, given as Jew-hate. But there is indeed a new and sweeping form of anti-Semitism: these statements, which embody the idea that there is nothing to criticise in the dispossession, starvation and killing of Palestinians, who are a Semitic people.
The report singles out anti-Semitism and calls for a law "to punish those who might level unfounded racism allegations against groups, institutions or states, and use against them unjustified comparisons with apartheid or Nazism." I find criminalising comparisons to apartheid especially warming. It would be amusing to have speakers who struggled against apartheid in South Africa and now see the same thing in Israel (such as Desmond Tutu) indicted for racism. (In fact, there is no need to compare Israeli policies with apartheid, since they are apartheid.)
The report also finds that the perpetrators of "the new anti-Semitism" are "more heterogeneous" than those of traditional anti-Semitism. Without having read the report, I venture the guess that this means, translated into English, that the people who criticise the Israeli government are not the people who are guilty of anti-Semitic incidents. This reminds me of the first version of the study by the European Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC), which defined pretty much any "pro-Palestinian" act as "anti-Semitic", and then made the surprising discovery that Palestinians are often behind anti-Semitic incidents. (After defining "anti-Semitism" sensibly for the final version, EUMC found that perpetrators of anti-Semitic acts are mostly the usual suspects, white right-wing extremists.)
On Israeli public radio, the Israeli ambassador to France called the report "exceptional ... because it establishes a direct link between anti-Semitism and the anti-Zionist and hostile positions in Israel." I find this quite irresponsible. When representatives of Israel and Jewish organisations chant that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism, they also contribute to the sad delusion that anti-Semitism would somehow be anti-Zionism, and thus to the rise of anti-Jewish racism.
The thinking behind such statements is that there is nothing in Zionist ideology or Israeli policy towards Palestinians (and other Arabs) that would provide grounds for criticism, so all criticism must have some hidden reason, given as Jew-hate. But there is indeed a new and sweeping form of anti-Semitism: these statements, which embody the idea that there is nothing to criticise in the dispossession, starvation and killing of Palestinians, who are a Semitic people.
posted by Syksy at 22:02
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