Abusing 'Anti-Semitism' by Ran HaCohen

From: "Raja Mattar"
Abusing 'Anti-Semitism' by Ran HaCohen

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.

Abusing 'Anti-Semitism'

by Ran HaCohen

September 29, 2003

http://www.antiwar.com/hacohen/h092903.html

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 on 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 - enough to mention the Armenian genocide by Turks
(which preceded and inspired the Holocaust) or 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 a 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 it as Realpolitik. The institutionalised
pro-Israel lobby has compromised its integrity to such an extent, that I won't
be surprised if, say, the Anti-Defamation League, which cries anti-semitic wolf
on a daily basis, now hails the fascist apologist Berlusconi as a distinguished
statesman; Actually, precisely this world-record of hypocricy has taken place
this very week. Much more disturbing is the intensive resorting to
"anti-semitism" claims by Jewish individuals and institutions who do 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:
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 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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