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January 16, 2004
The spectrum of Jew-hatred
Anti-Zionism can, and often does, resemble traditional anti-Semitism.
PAT JOHNSON SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN
Last week's Bulletin reported an anti-Semitic article
that ran in a local Muslim newspaper. The publication is now part
of an investigation by the B.C. Hate Crimes Team to determine whether
charges are warranted under provisions of legislation regulating
hate speech. The following essay is an effort to put this and other
recent examples of anti-Semitism in an historical and ideological
context.
Condemnations from all sides have been levelled at the Delta-based
newspaper the Miracle after the Bulletin broke the
story of an article by an Idaho white supremacist that listed more
than 80 mythical accusations against Jews. The article, titled "It
wasn't the Arabs," accused "the Jews" of destroying
livelihoods, killing children, purveying pornography, stealing money,
stifling legitimate free expression, controlling the world economy,
indoctrinating unsuspect- ing viewers through the control of Hollywood
and the news media, exploiting the Holocaust for political advantage,
causing economic upheavals, instigating international conflicts
for their own sinister purposes and, of course, killing Christ.
These defamations recap centuries of typically anti-Jewish accusations.
Among the most resilient and repugnant anti-Semitic canards is the
"blood libel," the assertion that Jews kill gentile children
at Passover and use their blood to make matzah. Though the article
in December's Miracle did not introduce the matzah myth,
it builds on the same attitudes, which is that Jews are inclined
toward infanticide, among a litany of other imaginary crimes.
There is little that is new in Steele's screed, yet its appearance
in a Canadian newspaper introduces a new wrinkle in the discussion.
Rising anti-Semitic rhetoric and actions have been witnessed in
Canada, the United States, Europe and elsewhere since the beginning
of the intifada more than three years ago. Israeli policies have
been the hook onto which centuries-old anti-Jewish attitudes are
now being hung. In the Arab world, such anti-Semitic rhetoric has
never lost its cachet, but its prevalence in the West has been the
subject of recent alarms in the European community and from Jewish
leaders in North America.
While a small segment of the population in Canada has always subscribed
to some attitudes that could be considered anti-Semitic, a new trend
has been observed over the past couple of years, which some say
replaces "Jews" with "Israel" but ascribes to
the Jewish state many of the same ill intentions and racist caricatures
that were once aimed at Jews themselves. Most alarming to many is
the fact that, in the guise of criticism of Israel, many of these
blatantly prejudiced libels are accepted as fair comment when the
recipient is Israel.
In reaction to this growing sense that anti-Israel criticism is
crossing a line into anti-Semitism, detractors of Israeli government
policies have made particular efforts to note – correctly –
that anti-Israel attitudes are not necessarily anti-Semitic. However,
even this argument has lost its nuance. A leaflet distributed by
anti-Israel activists at the recent Daniel Pipes lecture at the
University of British Columbia declared that anti-Zionism is not
anti-Semitism. By dropping the word "necessarily," or
some other qualifier, critics imply that anti-Zionism is never
anti-Semitic, which is a different argument entirely.
Many well-intentioned critics of Israel, including many Jews, accept
too readily that anti-Zionism is not influenced by anti-Semitism.
Even if a vast majority of Israel's critics are not influenced by
prejudice, it is naive in the extreme to imply that such prejudice
does not exist, yet that is the implication of the blanket assumption
that anti-Israel comments do not reflect anti-Semitism.
Moreover, what critics rarely acknowledge is the centrality of Zionism
in the Jewish identity. Though exceptions exist, most Jews are Zionists,
to varying degrees. The ingathering of the exiles to the land of
Israel is a concept at the heart of Jewish religion, but it is also
central to secular Jewish culture and identity. In fact, until after
the Second World War, Zionism as a political movement was primarily
secular and socialist in orientation.
But what alarms many Canadian and other Diaspora Jews is not even
the content, but the style, of Israel's critics. The burning anger,
violent imagery and visceral enthusiasm seen at innumerable anti-Israel
rallies in Canada and elsewhere suggests to many who have lived
through this sort of hatred in the past that "anti-Zionism"
shares too many characteristics with traditional anti-Semitism.
The emphasis of Israel's critics, who depict the tiny state of Israel
as the world's greatest threat to peace, is remarkably similar to
traditional anti-Semitism, which has always depicted the tiny Jewish
community as holding massively outweighted influence in the world.
This attitude was expressed most recently by former Malaysian prime
minister Mahatir Muhammad. Raising not a hackle from the leaders
of almost every leader of largely Muslim countries, the Malaysian
leader depicted Israel as a force that subjugates Muslim people
worldwide, despite Israel's population being outnumbered 200-to-one
by the population of the Islamic world.
The obsession some Muslim, Arab and other critics of Israel have
with six million Israelis is so counterintuitive that observers
cannot be blamed for seeking explanations beyond the rational. Though
plain old anti-Semitism still exists, as Steele's article reminds
us, the energy and vitriol that was once expended on Jews is now
directed toward the Jewish state, leading many to conclude that
"Israel is the new Jew."
Beyond this is the massive discrepancy between world opinion toward
Israel and world opinion toward the Palestinians. The hypocrisy
with which Israel's detractors condemn Israel's leaders while allying
with Arab terrorists convinces many observers that a deeply prejudiced
interpretation of events is at play.
Critics of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon revel in depicting
the former Israel Defence Forces commander and minister of defence
as a "war criminal," but rarely express similar views
of Yasser Arafat, the terrorist leader behind the murders at the
1972 Munich Olympics, the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise
ship during which an American citizen was murdered and thrown overboard,
airline hijackings and worldwide violence, to say nothing of the
thousands of Palestinian and Israeli deaths that have taken place
since Arafat walked away from peace negotiations in 2000.
Critics of Israel, particularly on the political left in Europe
and North America, have attempted to isolate Sharon and Israel,
depicting the prime minister as an autocrat and the state as inherently
racist, despite the free and fair elections that put Sharon in office
and the legal equalities guaranteed religious and ethnic minorities
in Israel. Meanwhile, Arafat is depicted as the freely elected and
rightful representative of the Palestinian people, despite his election
– once, seven years ago this month – in elections that
would not stand the scrutiny of Canadian (or even Floridian) observers.
Arafat's admirers in the West also ignore the myriad human rights
abuses, arbitrary killings and human shields employed by the Palestinian
Authority.
And, while activists demand a "right of return" for millions
of Arabs who fled Israel in 1948 and 1967, a migration that would
effectively end the Jewish majority in Israel, they apparently see
no ethical issues or racism inherent in the demand that Jewish "settlers"
be evicted from the West Bank, effectively creating an Arab-majority
Israel but a Jew-free Palestine.
Here in Canada, as well as in the United States and Europe, anti-Israel
activism has been enflamed in part by a number of foreign students,
who have formed the backbone of the pro-Palestinian movement. A
growing number of individuals from Arab countries, many of them
on student visas, were raised in countries where the most vicious
and violence-inciting anti-Jewish attitudes are part of school curricula.
Their inflammatory language and absolutist ideology have been met
with a marked lack of criticism from mainstream activists, who see
the pitch of anger and hatred not as something anti-Semitic, but
as justifiable rage, the blame for which always falls back on the
actions of Israel. Just as Israel is seen as having brought terrorism
upon itself, some Canadians are quick to defend the most hostile
anti-Israel expressions by activists here as legitimate emotions
caused by Israeli "oppression."
Contrary to any reasonable or balanced interpretation of historical
fact, most critics of Israel lay all the blame for the plight of
Palestinians at the feet of the Jewish state. This refusal to share
"blame" ignores the reality that 56 years of intransigence
by Arab states and a decade of bad-faith negotiations by Arafat
is at the root of the failure to create a Palestinian state. Anwar
Sadat and Menachem Begin proved at Camp David that, given a partner
with a genuine interest in coexistence, Israel is willing to accede
to almost every demand made of it. Despite this, and despite that
Israel opened negotiations with the Palestinians by offering
almost everything the Palestinians have traditionally demanded,
worldwide critics still insist that Israel is the intransigent partner.
The incongruity of this position should raise more questions than
it does about the motivations of Israel's critics.
More notable still is the emphasis on the legitimacy of Palestinian
nationalism and the negation of Jewish nationalism. While the struggle
for a Palestinian state is international issue No. 1 for a large
clutch of Canadian activists, Jewish nationalism – Zionism
– is depicted as a wholly evil force. More than ever, critics
are demanding the abolition of Israel, either explicitly (rare)
or implicitly (through the demand for a "one-state" solution
which would eradicate the Jewish majority in the one place in the
world where it exists.)
None of the foregoing is to suggest that Israel bears no blame for
the situation nor that its treatment of Palestinians is always fair
or justified. (It bears noting that such caveats almost never accompany
criticisms of Israel. Anti-Israel activists rarely if ever feel
compelled to qualify their statements by expressing divergence with
the policies of Arafat, yet Zionists and their allies almost always
qualify their defences with a variation of "While I don't agree
with everything Israel, or Sharon, does....") Nor is the traditional
anti-Semitism of Steele's screed directly comparable to legitimate
criticism of Israel. But it is incumbent upon Israel's critics to
acknowledge that, very often, these blanket condemnations of Israel
exist along with Steele's views on a spectrum of anti-Semitism,
not separate from it, as some of Israel's enemies like to pretend.
Pat Johnson is a native Vancouverite, a journalist and
commentator.
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