The New Anti-Semitism
An investigation by the Jewish Chronicle has revealed 
that many of the figures behind the movement for an academic boycott of Israel in the UK are Jews or Israelis, who “justify their stance as part of the struggle for Palestinian rights and ending Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories.”
Now, either there’s a mass epidemic of of Jewish self-hatery going on, or the boycott is a serious effort to oppose the Israeli occupation, and all the allegations of anti-Semitism that have been flying around (see this advert, right, put out recently by the Anti-Defamation League [sic]) recently are total bullshit.
A tricky one, to be sure…
Speaking of persecuted Jews, see this from David Peterson about the hounding of Prof. Norman Finkelstein, and go here for photos of the DePaul sit-in currently underway to protest the violation of academic freedom Finkelstein’s rejection undoubtedly represented. Here (audio) is a short interview with Prof. Finkelstein about his tenure battle.
Filed under: Israeli / Palestinian, News and politics, UK, US | 35 Comments
Tags: anti-Semitism, boycott, Free Speech, Norman Finkelstein
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Ah, Jews, the ultimate irony. Once the forebearers of socialism, have now turned into the perpetuators of the loathsome nationalism they were the victims of in Europe. Disliking Israel, a state more interested in military might than human rights, should be a natural reaction for anyone with a brain and a pair of eyes.
Considering it is geographically surrounded by its enemies, I find it hard to believe that Israel would still be in existence today had it not been for its military prowess. I promise you, Jews are not the warmongers you paint them as. Also, the countries you seem to be defending are far from good examples when it comes to human rights.
If you’re talking to me, then I assure you that I in no way intended to portray “Jews” as “warmongers” and neither did I attempt to “defend” any country’s human rights record.
Malno, how come Israel is surrounded by enemies? What on earth did they do to deserve it..?
‘Israel would still be in existence today had it not been for its military prowess.’
Or is that the $5 Billion it receives from the US each year? Not that it did much good in last year’s Lebanon debacle…
Cluster bombing a few more arab villages will certainly help Israel’s public relations problem but then according to Dershewitz this is all the result of rampant anti-semitism anyway.
All you have to do is read some of the comments posted above mine to see the anti-semitism… only Israel has no right to defend itself.
johnd: if you’re referring to Lebanon, then it had nothing to do with “self-defence”. Read HRW and Amnesty International, both of whom put out extensive reports on Israel’s, quote, “war crimes” in Lebanon, including the “deliberate” and extensive targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure.
The stranglehold of Israeli propaganda is loosening. This ad evidences desperation.
A point of view on this issue (unless I’m mistaken). It’s Vintage MondoWeiss!
This is a funny blog. Legitimizing Hamas? LOL Grinning from ear to ear.
John D, right on. You can tell it is anti-semitism when you visit a blog and see how bad Israel is, yet next to nothing if anything on Saudi Arabia or Darfur.
Israel started out like almost any nation on this planet. Not everyone was happy. Name a place where everyone was? It was non sovereign land until 1948 and the West Bank and Gaza are still not sovereign .
There is a reason why the Palestinians are occupied, and it there own doing. If you want to blame anyone else, blame the surrounding Arab nations too.
Blaming Israel for defending itself is beyond ludicrous.
Either you can’t be thinking straight, you have to be very stupid, and/or an anti-semite to fault Israel the way this blog does.
I was just in a meeting with two Palestinian peace activists, one from Gaza and another from East Jerusalem.
I asked to comment about the economic issues and boycotts. The guy from Gaza laughed and said that if they boycotted Israeli products they would have nothing to eat or wear. The other guy said that what was needed was not a boycott of Israeli products, but a GIRLcott of Palestinian products.
Thanks for the info, joe. However, it seems hard to square that with the fact that the major Palestinian trade unions (around 50 of them, at last count) are explicitly calling for boycott, divestment and sanctions. See here, for example.
Interesting comments here, particularly from Sari Nusseibeh from Al Quds university.
The claim that criticism of Israel equals prima facie anti-Jewish sentiment is revealing in a number of ways, including the fact that it equates Israel with a completely Jewish identity. So, if the ADL is in favor of Israel taking over the West Bank completely, it would seem that by their premise (Israel = Jews) what must follow is a total ethnic cleansing of the Arabs in the region until one can equate the political entity Israel with Jews once again.
Right – it’s ironic that the very people who accuse legitimate critics of Israel of anti-Semitism are themselves employing the anti-Semitic trope of conflating Israel with Jews generally.
Nullifidian & JamieSW – Israel is a Jewish State. Whilst criticising Israeli policies in themselves is not anti-Semitic, singling out Israel unfairly whilst ignoring/defending its enemies and tyrants elsewhere, smells dubious to say the least. The British boycotts for example. Your last two posts on Hamas could be construed by the particularly sceptical as another example.
John Pilger and Robert Fisk I note are in your links list. These two are not exactly known for their balanced perspectives regarding Israel and the Jews. Yes, the Jews. There are countries far, far worse than the democratic Israel yet these offenders are hardly mentioned by many on the Left.
As for that poster, I fully concur with it.
To all appearances, Joe has been making the rounds of the blogs trying to embarrass himself with his impression of an apologist for apartheid.
On a more serious note, of course, you are spot on Jamie outing the ADL, BoD, AJC Zionists for the hypocritical antisemites that they are. My take on the AJC’s advert here: http://bureauofcounterpropaganda.blogspot.com/2007/06/good-for-gander.html
And the spoof here: http://bureauofcounterpropaganda.blogspot.com/2007/06/israels-leaders-speak.html
Analysis of Dershowitz and Julius, showing that their exception for counterboycotts is actually an argument in favour of the UCU resolution and their ‘rewrite’ of the definition of antisemitism is blatantly antisemitic, in the same way as the ADL poster: http://bureauofcounterpropaganda.blogspot.com/2007/06/dershowitz-farts.html
Beaman needs to understand that what passes for balance in the media is actually just not contrasting with the status quo background. Even if there really were such a thing as balance in reporting, that’s all it would amount to. Pilger and Fisk are much more honest than their colleagues who adopt a dispassionate tone to camouflage their one sided support for the strong.
As for unfairly singling Israel out for criticism, it may be possible for the Beamans of this world to be fully aware of everything in the world that merits ctriticism and to make all their criticisms in the same breath. We mere mortals tend to talk about one or two things at a time. Apart from that, only small children think that somebody else doing something they regard as as bad or worse actually exculpates a wrongdoer. Finally, in case it had escaped their notice, but Israel, unlike Syria, claims to be acting on my behalf. So I have a particular interest in contradicting that claim.
BTW, in case you haven’t seen it, here’s a link to my take on Haifa University’s argument in favour of the academic boycott: http://bureauofcounterpropaganda.blogspot.com/2007/06/universitys-role.html
Thanks, Ernie – am in complete agreement with you. When you say,
‘Finally, in case it had escaped their notice, but Israel, unlike Syria, claims to be acting on my behalf. So I have a particular interest in contradicting that claim’,
I would also add that, as citizens of the US or UK, we are complicit in Israel’s atrocities to a greater extent than we are in Syria’s, and so have a greater responsibility to speak out against them.
However, I think the basic point is as you say: most individuals are, well, individuals and so are limited in the scope of what issues we can read and write about simultaneously. I’m not Amnesty International and I’m not Human Rights Watch. I happen to be interested in, among other things, the Israel/Palestine conflict and so I write quite a bit about it. To jump from that to accusations of “anti-Semitism” is just absurd and, again, does the anti-Semitic thing of conflating Israel with Jewry more generally. If anything, the accusation should be that I’m “anti-Israel” – equally wrong, of course, but less racist.
You really must think that I’m fresh off the turnip truck to be swayed by such obvious nonsense. Please, have a little bit of respect for our intelligence.
Nullifidian & JamieSW – Israel is a Jewish State.
No, Israel is an apartheid state. It would be a historical absurdity equivalent to calling South Africa an Afrikaans state to justify calling it a “Jewish State”. Calling it a Jewish state erases the Arabs and their suffering under colonialization by omission. Either there are Arabs in Israel, or Israel has no business sending its troops into Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. You can’t have it both ways.
Whilst criticising Israeli policies in themselves is not anti-Semitic, singling out Israel unfairly whilst ignoring/defending its enemies and tyrants elsewhere, smells dubious to say the least.
It is not the responsibility of people to name other offending regimes when the subject is Israel. All you are trying to do by this tactic is excuse Israel’s appalling human rights record by swamping it in a sea of other names so that the critic seems unfocused and the hearer can discount the flood of verbiage.
The British boycotts for example. Your last two posts on Hamas could be construed by the particularly sceptical as another example.
“Particularly sceptical” is hardly how I’d describe the supporters of political zionism. In fact, they have a manifest ability to strain at gnats and swallow camels. A case in point is claiming that criticism of political zionism is ‘anti-semitic’ when the traditions of Jewish theology ever since the ‘Babylonian captivity’ have clearly indicated that the establishment of the state of Israel is to come when G-d sees fit to send the messiah, not before, which is why there are numerous religiously orthodox anti-zionist Jews.
John Pilger and Robert Fisk I note are in your links list. These two are not exactly known for their balanced perspectives regarding Israel and the Jews. Yes, the Jews. There are countries far, far worse than the democratic Israel yet these offenders are hardly mentioned by many on the Left.
This sort of moral calculus is the most appalling thing about the apologists for the current state of the world, be it the Iraq War, the British and American assault on civil liberties, the human rights abuses of the state of Israel, etc. It shows a willingness to accept any violations of human dignity as long as they don’t surpass a baseline established by the very worst offenders in the history of the world. In other words, we can all join in for a race to the bottom, as long as we never cross the “finish line” of being the worst human rights violator.
As for that poster, I fully concur with it.
Oh, I’m sure you do. However if you want something more than an echo chamber, perhaps you would do well to understand the criticisms of political zionism and respond to them, rather than throwing out these trite excuses we’ve all heard a hundred times before.
While I agree with some of your points, Nullifidian, particularly the race to the bottom, I have to take issue with a couple of things.
What made South Africa an apartheid state was that it was indeed a white state. Not, BTW, an ‘Afrikaans’, or Boer state – the English speaking whites were also very much part of the problem. The whole idea of the Bantustans was to strip the blacks of political rights in white South Africa. Indeed, the creation of a Palestinian state will actually ENHANCE Israel’s resemblance to apartheid South Africa. Anyway, in the same way, Israeli is in fact a Jewish state in the very real sense that even though there are non Jews there, Jews enjoy a privileged position.
I think you are very imprudent to take a position on questions that Jewish religious scholars disagree about. The thing about Judaism, like any religion, is that it is fundamentally irrational. People steep themselves in the sacred texts and come to conflicting interpretations. Since any argument is necessarily based on irrational assumtions, there is no point in getting involved. From the perspective of an outsider, one interpretation is as preposterous or as sensible as the other. In any case, the argument against Zionism is NOT that it is based on an erroneous interpretation of scripture. It is that it is a racist, colonialist project. http://bureauofcounterpropaganda.blogspot.com/2007/06/how-many-states.html
The whole idea of the Bantustans was to strip the blacks of political rights in white South Africa. Indeed, the creation of a Palestinian state will actually ENHANCE Israel’s resemblance to apartheid South Africa.
That may depend on the nature of the state. Certainly any state which would be countenanced by Israel, as the one suggested at the Camp David talks, would be that way. However, a legitimate Palestinian state with its own guaranteed infrastructure and indepence would not necessarily mean that Israel would look like an apartheid state, instead it would look like a state in which the indigenous population has seceded from the colonizers. Secession wasn’t a possibility in the Black townships of South Africa.
I’m not a supporter of the two-state solution anyway, so it’s moot as far as I’m concerned.
Anyway, in the same way, Israeli is in fact a Jewish state in the very real sense that even though there are non Jews there, Jews enjoy a privileged position.
Obviously. Saying that Israel is a Jewish state, however, at least in the sense the zionists do, is a way of obscuring the nature of this by denying that Arabs exist in Israel at all (which is problematic when the zionist definition of Israel encompasses the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem). Alternatively, it can be used as a way of excusing these abuses, e.g. “It’s a Jewish state: our state, our rules.”
I think you are very imprudent to take a position on questions that Jewish religious scholars disagree about.
Only as imprudent as Jewish religious scholars, since obviously they’re taking positions in order to disagree with other. *grin*
Anyway, I’m not taking a stand on the rightness of wrongness of religious zionism, but merely pointing out that it and political zionism do not link up from any reasonable view of the Jewish tradition since the composition and collation of the Babylonian Talmud. Gabi Piterberg has a soon-to-be released book about this from Verso, which will probably be worth a look. However, in brief, political zionism, the one we’re all arguing against, originated out of certain hard-right protestant strains of Christianity in England, and represented a departure from the rabbincal tradition of the time and even afterwards, as the largely secular early 20th century zionists prided themselves on their break from the rabbinic traditions. The concept of “forcing god’s hand” to bring on the end times, which was repellent to the rabbincal tradition, is familiar to anyone who watches these same hard-right strains in modern Christianity, like the people who think that breeding a red heifer and sending it to Israel to be sacrificed will bring on the final showdown.
In any case, the argument against Zionism is NOT that it is based on an erroneous interpretation of scripture. It is that it is a racist, colonialist project.
When did I say otherwise? I think you’re reading far too much into a passing comment noting that anyone who would call anti-zionists anti-semites must be calling a singularly large chunk of the rabbinic tradition “anti-semites”, which is an obvious absurdity even for those who think that anti-semitism = anti-Jewish bigotry (a formulation I reject, which is why I don’t use the term anti-semitism myself, instead breaking it by group: anti-Arab bigotry or anti-Jewish bigotry).
You are obviously much more knowledgeable than me about rabbinic scholarship, Nullifidian. But whatever the situation may have been in the past, my understanding is that the majority of modern Jewish religious scholarship has found an interpretation that supports Zionism. Furthermore, I still insist that the point is that whatever anyone thinks the Talmud supports is not part of the political argument against Zionism – it is an irrelevant distraction from that argument.
Now you have raised another issue dear to my heart. Since Wilhelm Marr coined the term in 1879, ‘antisemitism’ has never meant anything but racism against Jews. Some individuals have reject it on the grounds that it is not such an accurate description because ‘Arabs are Semites too’. This is a serious error. It relies on the existence of a ‘race’ of Semites. There is a family of Afro-Asiatic languages that includes Hebrew, Arabic, Tigrinya, Amharic, etc. known as Semitic languages. But of course there is no biological category that corresponds to the speakers of this group of languages. To say that antisemitism comprises ‘anti-Arab bigotry’ and ‘anti-Jewish bigotry’ buys into the idea that there is a Semitic race comprising Jews and Arabs (but not Ethiopeans, et al, for some reason). Since race is only an artefact of racism and there is no form of racism that groups just Arabs and Jews together, as far as I know, there is no such thing as a ‘Semite’ and we can comfortably continue to use ‘antisemitism’ in the customary way to denote racism against Jews.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Semite
Arabs are Semites, and Wilhelm Marr was a bigot.
Correct, Wilhelm Marr was decidedly a bigot. It’s the bigots who invented races. It’s a damn shame they got to the dictionary.com mob and now they’ve bought into that racist fiction, too. You ought to be more careful, Kyleb, about accepting authority and think about how racism really works for yourself.
Well, if anti-semitism relies on there being a race of semites, then anti-semitism refers to a nullity, because there are no groups which correspond tightly to any biological concept of race, and we’re back at specifying anti-Arab and anti-Jewish bigotry. The problem with identifying races is that genetic variability is far greater within a geographic area than between two different geographic areas, which biologists call “clinal variation”.
The reason I reject the term anti-semitism is precisely because Arabs are semites. That the original term “anti-semitism” was not meant to encompass them is not a relevant objection (in fact, it’s part of my reason for rejecting the term). In the present context, there is fairly widespread agreement that anti-semitism is bad. Fair enough. But when anti-semitism refers only to anti-Jewish bigotry, then we’ve come to a point where, by omission, anti-Arab bigotry is either good or at least not a serious enough subject for comment. Perhaps it is my perspective, but anti-Arab bigotry is the one I encounter most often. Anti-Jewish bigotry, despite what propagandistic groups like the ADL claim, is largely relegated to a few nutters who believe that the UN is going to take over the United States by force and similar far right-wing fantasies. So rather than fight over what the term anti-semitism means (although in any sensible formulation of the word, it would refer to all Semitic people), I just ignore it and use my own terminology which is far more descriptive.
As you quite correctly observe, there is no biological category of race. The only category of race there is is the kind that racists manufacture. This is not really a difficult concept. Since there is no known form of racism that singles out just Jews, Arabs, Ethiopians, and other speakers of Semitic languages, there is no ’semitic race’. So antisemitism can not be racism against the semitic race.
What it can be and is, is racism against Jews. Language is based on social conventions. That’s just one of them. You can take a moral position on whether antisemitism is a good word for what it denotes, but it doesn’t make any difference. I understand about not liking certain words. I, personally, hate ‘Islamophobia’, because it looks like it means ‘fear of Islam’, but I have resigned myself to it because everybody knows it means ‘hatred of Muslims’. There is certainly anti Arab racism going around, but I think it’s principally confined to Israel, Turkey, and Iran. I think in the English speaking world, and Europe more generally, most people wouldn’t bother to distinguish Pakistanis, from Persians, from Turks, from Arabs, or indeed from Indonesians, but they probably wouldn’t distinguish Arab christians and Druzes, either, so I guess it’s not strictly ‘Islamophobia’, either. But we know what they mean. They’ve created a race that they identify on the basis of a complex of markers that they don’t apply very rigorously. That kind of sloppy application of definitional principles is actually typical of racists.
Correct, Wilhelm Marr was decidedly a bigot. It’s the bigots who invented races. It’s a damn shame they got to the dictionary.com mob and now they’ve bought into that racist fiction, too. You ought to be more careful, Kyleb, about accepting authority and think about how racism really works for yourself.
Eh? There is nothing racist in dictionary.com calling Semitic speaking people Semites, just as there is nothing racist in me calling myself Anglo, or my friends Latino, Nordic, Slavic and such. Such terms simply reflect cultural distinctions relegating to linguistic traits and the like. On the other hand. you were the one referencing a flagrant bigot to defend your stance.
Regarding the Norman Finkelstein – DePaul Univeristy debacle. Unfortunately, anyone who is politically incorrect these days and holding an influencial position, such as professor at university, Prime Minister’s wife (Cherie Blair when she spoke out for the Palestinians) or company chairman, runs a big risk of losing their position, their “social standing” or even their life (the UK scientist David Kelly being an example when he spoke the truth about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and then was murdered).
My friend, Professor Doug Rokke, a nuclear physicist and the one who wrote the US Army manual on the handling of DU (Depleted Uranium) contaminated equipment, is a world reknown anti-DU campaigner. He gives talks on radio and TV on the dangers to human health and to the environment from the use of DU in munitions used mainly by the US on Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. Several years ago he lost his job as Professor of Nuclear Physics at a university in Carolina (I think it was) and has been unable to get another university post ever since. There have been several attempts on his life (by the CIA), with one bullet narrowly missing his son.
Our governments are so corrupt. PROFITS ARE EVERYTHING – TRUTH AND HUMAN RIGHTS SELDOM ENTER INTO THE EQUATION, unless there is nothing to be gained by way of oil, minerals or other resources.
But keep on chiselling away at corruption for the sake of the New World. Like all good things, it takes time – a long time. You’ve got a good blog here, Heathlander. Keep it up.
Regarding the comment: “Why does Israel have so many enemies?” Why does anyone have so many enemies? Because they’ve been treating people like shit, that’s why! Do you know anyone who’s disrespectful of others and still has friends (I mean morally decent friends)? Probably not. You get what you give.
Thanks for commenting, Anabelle. We’re in agreement – security for Israel will come with an abandonment of expansionism and occupation in favour of regional integration and good faith cooperation. That’s been obvious for decades, and it remains the case today.
israel is a jewish state, but it isnt .
you think of jewish ppl as guys with beards and a black suit, but we arent.
we are just like anyone, were people.
we came to israel and made it into our land, we recieved acknowladgement from the world that its our country .
so why is everyone allways saying that the palastineans deserve israel for their own.
in the many wars we had they were the ones who tried to kill us, to drive us into the sea.
so why do they deserve the country which we built, a country thats the only thing we have as a people, as a race.
and why shouldnt we have an army, an army that most people say is an army of baby killers and murderers, but most of the army is built of 18 year old boys and girls. do you really think an 18 year old boy can kill a baby ??
what most people think of israel and its actions is part of anti israeli propoganda.
now i wont say were not corrupt, i will say something else our leaders our a bunch of idiots and we know it.
You don’t need to tell me what “jewish ppl” are and are not like. No one is under the impression that all Jews are orthodox, and anyway it’s totally irrelevant. So what if they [we] were? You say:
Well, the problem is how the Zionists “made it into [their] land”. They faced the problem of how to create an overwhelmingly Jewish state in area that was made up of primarily non-Jews. As Benny Morris writes, there were only two realistic options: the “way of South Africa” (apartheid), or the way of “transfer”. In 1948, Israel grasped its opportunity, and ethnically cleansed over 700,000 Palestinians from their homes.
That is the problem. The State of Israel was founded on a massive crime, the victims of which continue to suffer to this day.
You’re missing the point. “They” lived there, until the Zionist movement expelled them. Now, they have a right to return to their homes. It’s not so complicated. No one’s saying, by the way, that the Israeli Jews would have to leave. Rather, they would live alongside Palestinians in a single, democratic state for all its citizens.
JamieSW, the 1948 movement of 700,000 Palestinians from their homes only happened after the Palestinians & neighboring Arab states had declared and launched war against the newly-declared Jewish state. The stated intention of the war was to take all Jewish lands, and to either preferably kill or otherwise drive all Jews from the land.
Many Palestinians were perfectly happy to co-exist with their Jewish neighbors, but unfortunately the violent faction prevailed.
Anabelle:
““Why does Israel have so many enemies?” Why does anyone have so many enemies? Because they’ve been treating people like shit, that’s why! Do you know anyone who’s disrespectful of others and still has friends (I mean morally decent friends)? Probably not. You get what you give.”
So the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust must have done something to deserve it?
The African slaves deserved their mistreatment? etc.
They were both surrounded by enemies, weren’t they?