Being anti-Zionist is not anti-Semitic

Gordon Brown last week announced that there would be a fresh cash injection for Holocaust education. All good, but the chosen venue for releasing this news was his speech to the annual Labour Friends of Israel lunch. It further underlines the complete blurring of the lines between the distinct issues of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust and that of Israel and Zionism.

I was asked to speak recently at a fringe meeting at the NUS conference. Delegates there were busy preparing for a motion to the effect that anti-Zionism was anti-Semitism, effectively adopting the EU definition. It shows how far things have come since 1975 when the UN said Zionism was racism - not only is it not any more apparently, but it's racist to say it is.

Now either the usual platitudes from pro-Israelis reassuring us that criticism of Israel is entirely legitimate are bogus, or some people are seriously confused. Take Mark Gardner of the Community Security Trust speaking of campus anti-Semitism on CiF recently:

Interestingly, much of the somewhat limited media coverage of the government response to the inquiry concentrated upon Islamist groups on campus. This acknowledges that campus is a microcosm of the situation vis-a-vis Jews and anti-semitism in Britain today. The many parallels include the escalation in physical and political attacks; the open and "silent" boycotts; the blatant embrace of double standards and bias; the promotion of terrorism; the radicalising impact of "my enemy's enemy is my friend"; the dividing of Jews into good and bad depending upon their willingness to publicly condemn Israel; and the deepening sense of isolation felt by Jews.

So reprehensible "physical" attacks are lumped in casually alongside "political" attacks.

But who are these Islamist groups Gardner speaks of?

The critical factor now, however, appears to be the impact of Islamist ideology upon the situation, and its toleration by many on the left who are seduced by its radicalism, potential numbers of voters and marchers, and Islamist hatred of capitalism, imperialism and western globalisation. University authorities are also unwilling to act, nervous about interfering in student unions that have traditionally been allowed to get away with whatever they wish. These are very shortsighted policies which empower the most extreme Islamist voices, and can be disastrous in their isolating impact against more moderate, more constructive - and vastly more representative - Muslim opinions and activists.

Where the Nazis said "the Jews are our misfortune", today's student and street activists might as well declare "the Zionists are our misfortune". This is not simply the preserve of radical Islamist groups on campus, it is also the attitude of far left groups such as Respect and the Socialist Workers party. Nevertheless, it is the Islamist groups on campus that are now under the microscope. Their politics are part of a still poorly understood and ill-defined dynamic that, at its absolute extreme fringe, ends up with suicide bombings on the tube, and challenges the very cohesion of our society by casting suspicion and hatred upon the entire British Muslim community.

So the Islamist groups are effectively those who joined with the antiwar movement. Evidence of anti-Jewish racism there is zilch, but opposition to Israel is plenty, therefore anti-Semitic. Not only that, but this legitimate political expression ends up in suicide bombing on the tube according to Gardner. Oh and it's their fault that there's Islamophobia (wonder if he'd extend this kind of logic with regards to a community's political engagement with regard to anti-Semitism).

Exhibit B for the purposes of this discussion is another recent CiF article this time by Jewish Chronicle editor David Rowan. He's lays out the case that criticism of Tony Blair's fundraiser Lord Levy is anti-Semitic:

Make no mistake: Levy's Judaism is just too tempting a stick with which he can be beaten, and his enemies' unashamedly anti-semitic rhetoric threatens us all. Levy, you will recall, was one of Tam Dalyell MP's "cabal of Jewish advisers" driving foreign policy, whose personal influence on the prime minister "led to what I see as this awful war and the sack of Baghdad". Levy, according to David Tredinnick MP, raised cash for Blair on the "tacit understanding that Labour would never again, while Blair was leader, be anti-Israel". Levy, wrote Richard Ingrams in the Independent, is "an active Zionist well known in Israel" whose malign influence has ensured that "this country is so craven in its support of Israel and the USA". As one JC reader pointed out to us this week, newspaper profiles have been keen to inform readers "that Levy's middle name is Abraham, the fact that his parents were devout Jews, that he first met the prime minister at a party thrown by the Israel Embassy, when we hear nothing about Ruth Turner's or Jonathan Powell's middle names or of their religious affiliations"

Again, the same tactic of taking an incident that can legitimately be called anti-Semitic, and placing it alongside criticism of Levy's clear bias towards Israel, which can't. Rowan shouldn't be too cut up about Levy's treatment - if he'd been Muslim he'd have been ousted ages ago. People get all sorts of angst from Muslims being simple Parliamentary aides, never mind the money man to the most powerful man in the country.

And what of Islamophobia? Denis MacShane made this stingy attempt to speak out against it on CiF the other day, laying out his view on what Islam should be and what it shouldn't be, with no middle ground:

Europe's Muslims also suffer from a branding of their religion which insults those for whom mosques - like the churches of Christianity or the synagogues of Judaism - are places of prayer and of being closer to their god. The ideological aspects of Islamism - the denial of women's rights, the homophobia, the tacit acceptance of stoning women to death, or the awful throat cutting in Turkey this week of Christian activists - contradict democracy and human rights, but the right of Muslims to follow their faith under law in Europe must be defended.

MacShane has recently carved out a niche for himself in Parliament, with his recent report now being upgraded in status. As Tony Greenstein wrote:

The committee itself had no status when it drew up the report. It was self-selecting, and not one of the 14 members of the inquiry voted against the war in Iraq on March 18 2003. In other words, they came to the question of anti-semitism from a rightwing political perspective.

Yet the report on anti-semitism, which the government has accepted by upgrading the committee's status to that of a select committee (Jewish Chronicle, March 30 2007: "Police told to focus on hate crime"), is deeply disturbing in its cavalier approach to the definition of anti-semitism, which it conflates throughout with anti-Zionism.

Well worth reading his whole article, here's another good bit:

It is argued that "drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis" is in itself anti-semitic. Now, it might arguably be offensive, but why anti-semitic? In her book The War Against the Jews, Lucy Dawidowicz reports that it was the position of the SS that "the Zionists adhere to a strict racial position, and by emigrating to Palestine they are helping to build their own Jewish state". Is it anti-semitic to point out that "ethnic cleansing" and the transfer or forced migration of civilian populations was also Nazi policy; or that only in Israel and Nazi Germany were Jews barred from marrying non-Jews?

And it is supporters of the Israeli state itself who have regularly made comparisons between the Palestinians and the Nazis. Who can forget when in 1982 the Israeli premier Menachem Begin compared Arafat in the siege of Beirut to Hitler in his bunker? How many times has the Holocaust been used to justify the Israeli state?

The report defines anti-semitism as "holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel". Agreed. But is it any wonder that there are some misguided people who criticise the Board of Deputies of British Jews when it holds rallies in the name of the Jewish community in support of Israel's bombing of Lebanon?

 

Comments

[Shavez]

MacShane is an idiot. By his rationale on anti-Zionism being anti-Semitic, being anti-Al-Qaeda is Islamophobic.

[Sunny]

So, not very different then to Muslim groups who label any criticism against them or extremist groups as 'Islamophobic'.

[Osama]

Not entirely Sunny, as you'll find most Muslims if they encounter someone who disagrees with them politically e.g. being pro-war, will engage in the argument rather than resort to accusations of racism.

[Yakoub Islam]

Its not a case of any criticism of Muslims, though, its relentless criticism and misrepresentation that's the issue. "...the media as an instrument of public ideology demonizes Islam, portraying it as a threat to Western interests, thus reproducing, producing and sustaining the ideology necessary to subjugate Muslims both internationally and domestically" Elizabeth Poole (2002) 'Reporting Islam' (London: I B Tauris) p.17

[George Carty]

How would you respond to a Zionist on Umar Lee's weblog who claimed that "If Israel were to cease to exist, then the Jews would be assimilated out of existence within a century"?

[Sunny]

I know most Muslims do, I'm not sure of the politically engaged crew like Islamophobia Watch and others.
According to Abdurrahman from the MCB, challenging Muslim orgs (such as HuT, as I did on CIF) "feeds into Islamophobic discourse"... you can look up his comments below my piece on HuT or the email discussion with Inayat.

So frankly, you folks are all pretty much the same. MPAC constantly accuse others of Islamophobia while keep trying to main the distinction between anti-semitism and anti-Zionism.

Frankly, for all of you, it's a losing battle since the debate has quickly moved turned into a war of slurs. Words like 'Zio-Nazi' and 'Islamofascist' are used so often, they've become a joke.

[Sohaib]

Well argued, Osama. I'm particularly interested in the 'comparison' between the concepts of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, and how these are used politically by the various sides.

But more than that, something that's been itching at me for a while, without my having seen any good analysis of it, is the apparent parallels between the distinctions made between Jews and Zionists, and the more recently developed distinction between Muslims and Islamists.

I don't think these are actually exact parallels, and I think we are justified to claim that we are not anti-Semitic while being anti-Zionist, but that the supposedly specific "anti-Islamist" discourse is in fact anti-Muslim and anti-Islam. But all this needs more semantic exploration.

[James O]

'challenging Muslim orgs (such as HuT, as I did on CIF) "feeds into Islamophobic discourse"... '

That's an over-simplification of their argument; an obsessive focus on reactionary islamism while being indifferant of, or supportive to, similar Jewish, Christian, Sikh and Hindu organisation is islamaphobic. Arguing that Muslims must combat said organisations and belief as a price of their acceptance in British society while the same demands are not made of other groups is also islamaphobic. Specifically, in the context of this article, the same demands are not made of Jews to disavow the reactionary aspects of Zionism and Fundamentalist Judaism as are made (by people including yourself) of Muslims vis-a-vis Islamism.

'Words like 'Zio-Nazi' and 'Islamofascist' are used so often, they've become a joke.'

Terms like Zio-Nazi are rarely used, although you occasionally hear them from some anti-zionist groups. Most of the Left only uses comparisons to Nazism with fully-fledged fascists, prefering the more accurate analogy with Apartheid. By contrast the notion of 'islamo-fascism; is a crucial ideological element in the neo-con / pro-war Left / Fascist justifications for war abroad and racism at home.

[Sunny]

Arguing that Muslims must combat said organisations and belief as a price of their acceptance in British society while the same demands are not made of other groups is also islamaphobic.

Challenging extremist groups should be part of building social cohesion, and should be part of any 'community organisation' that claims to be working towards that goal.
Are you saying orgs such as the BNP are not challenged? White people do most of the challenging there... as so Jews do of Israel (though hidden from wider public). This is also what the Independent Jewish Voices initiative was about.

No one is forcing anyone to confront extremists. But if people/organisations do so voluntarily it demonstrates how committed to social cohesion they are.

[James O]

Sunny, once again you've refused to answer the question put to you; It seems to be a symptomatic dishonesty.

'Are you saying orgs such as the BNP are not challenged?'

No, and there's no reading of my argument which could have led you to think this. To take one example, it is not demanded of members of the Jewish community that they disavow all support for reactionary and racist ideas as a litmus test for their inclusion into wider society. In fact most mainstream organisations which claim to represent the Jewish community - as the IJV petition pointed out - are committed on principle to support Zionism, the racist state it necessitates, and rallied to support the attack on Lebanon last year. There is no analogous political discourse which suggests as a consequence Jewish organisations are threatening 'social cohesion' or the similar claims made about the Muslim community, even less so about reactionary attitudes amonst other minority groups, and of course, the 'white' community.
In a theme extending from the far right to the pro-war Left, the demand is continually made that Muslim individuals and organisations must be responsible for policing their own communities as a price of acceptance and toleration, whereas - I repeat for your benefit - no similar demands are made of any other community. That is islamophobic.