Opinion

To bandy about the serious accusation of anti-Semitism in unserious ways is dangerous

Irish artists such as Sally Rooney, Lankum, Bambie Thug, comedian Tadhg Hickey and Irish-American Macklemore have, in different ways, offered Europeans real alternatives in cultural spaces

Lankum performing at Gig For Gaza at the 3Arena in Dublin last year. Photograph: Tom Honan

Daniel Levy
Thu May 16 2024 - 06:00

Rarely these days is there a big event in which Israel participates without tension crackling just below (and frequently above) the surface given the horrors Israel is imposing on the Palestinian civilian population of Gaza.

Despite the European Broadcasting Union going to extraordinary and authoritarian lengths, Eurovision was not normal, and this summer’s Paris Olympics are unlikely to pass quietly.

Daniel Levy is the president of the US/Middle East Project and a former Israeli negotiator

Often the largest and most vociferous displays of protest occur where official governmental complicity in Israel’s crimes is most pronounced and transparent.

As Israel has been reducing Gaza to rubble, killing tens of thousands and laying crucial infrastructure to waste, the West has maintained normal relations. The fact that Israel is in violation of International Court of Justice emergency measures – issued to prevent irreparable harm to the Palestinians – under a Genocide Convention breaches case brought by South Africa changes nothing.

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The appalling crimes committed against Israelis on October 7th cannot justify this aggression, just as the structural violence of Israeli occupation and apartheid before October 7th cannot excuse the events of that day.

Campus has been an epicentre of mobilisation in the United States and elsewhere. Students are traditionally less cosy in the bystander role, especially with “scholasticide” joining the vernacular of Israel’s crimes – the devastation visited upon all institutions of Palestinian education in Gaza (and on students themselves).

The impression often conveyed in the mainstream media is that US campus life is in the throes of an anti-Jewish hate fest.

The scourge of anti-Semitism remains all too real, and opposition to Israel can, on occasion, manifest itself as animosity to Jews. The current anti-war movement is no exception in having a fringe prone to hateful hyperbole. But make no mistake, this phenomenon is marginal.

This illegitimate and unjustified smear campaign is against mostly young people, feeling their way in politics while on the most unforgiving of learning curves. Attempts to criminalise the protesters come as no surprise – Israel and its backers have a lot at stake (as do the weapons manufacturers). Israel is experiencing a reputational, moral and legal tsunami. Fighting on the terrain of anti-Semitism is seen as the last best hope for stemming that tide.

Large establishment Jewish communal groups in many countries are deeply immersed in pro-Israel advocacy – providing an uncomfortable canvas on which to sketch out debate in the West. The more visible and fierce contestation among Jews can add to that discomfort. All of which makes a little context and background very necessary.

Whether it’s Jonathan Glazer in his Oscar acceptance speech, or Naomi Klein noting that Jews have fallen prey to worshipping the “false idol of Zionism,” the Overton window is shifting

Jews are surely not the only people to pride ourselves on the robustness of our internal struggles and disputes, even over what it is to be Jewish (“two Jews, three opinions” as one pithy saying goes).

Attempts in recent decades to impose a consensus around loyalty to Zionism are as historically un-Jewish as they are awkward and nonsensical. Some ultraorthodox Jewish communities oppose Zionism on theological-liturgical grounds; other Jews of a more ethical-universalist orientation, oppose actually existing Zionism for its endless violations of Palestinian rights; and more Jews today are questioning Zionism on the pragmatic basis of efficacy – are Israel’s actions delivering a safer world for Jews, including Israeli Jews? Many Jews at the centre of ceasefire protests simply consider opposition to these war crimes and genocide as the most Jewish position to take.

Whether it’s Jonathan Glazer in his Oscar acceptance speech, or Naomi Klein noting that Jews have fallen prey to worshipping the “false idol of Zionism,” the Overton window is shifting.

The intense multi-decade campaign to conflate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism is anything but coincidental – an effort to distract, distort and police the terms of debate as it became clear Israel was intent on permanently preventing the realisation of Palestinian rights and freedoms. With Irish-American rapper Macklemore telling us (in his remarkable Hind’s Hall track) “We see the lies in ‘em/ Claimin’ it’s anti-Semitic to be anti-Zionist,” it’s game on and many Jews are nodding (or possibly rapping) along.

The debate around definitions is no intellectual abstraction. The 2016 International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition and examples of anti-Semitism was all about codifying and imposing a frame of reference centred on Israel.

Three years ago, unnerved by this trend, by rising anti-Semitism and the criminalisation of Palestinian speech, some of the most respected Jewish scholars in the field of history, anti-Semitism, Holocaust and Middle East Studies, launched a very different approach, the Jerusalem Declaration on anti-Semitism (JDA).

The JDA explains that comparing Israel with historical cases, including settler colonialism and apartheid; calls for boycott, divestment and sanctions; opposing Zionism and supporting various constitutional arrangements for Jews and Palestinians in the Holy Land, are not on the face of it anti-Semitic. In other words, the JDA offers a most useful tool for navigating today’s debates.

To bandy about the serious accusation of anti-Semitism in unserious ways is dangerous. To transparently misuse and abuse the term is to cheapen and trivialise it. Likewise, the endless inaccurate deployment of Holocaust analogies, which border on Holocaust revisionism.

Especially for younger American Jews, who overwhelmingly identify as liberal or progressive, when the Zionist imperative is to side with the cops arresting Greta Thunberg, rather than with a generational environmental icon, something has snapped.

Jewish-American writer, Peter Beinart, author of The Crisis of Zionism, has called this “the greatest transformation in American Jewish politics in half a century”.

Israel has become a kind of secular religion and ballast of identity for many Jews. Current events can therefore be discombobulating, even wrenching. More bridges are needed for such people to cross from confusion to questioning to repositioning. Outlining a secure Jewish-Israeli future outside the existing structures of dominance and supremacy can serve to undercut the status quo.

[ A politics of fairness: Transformation in how we live must come, one way or another ]

It is for Palestinians to redefine the contours and strategies of their struggle for liberation (the existing Palestinian Authority is hopelessly co-opted and discredited). Palestinians are being forced to do so in the most dire of circumstances, somehow exacerbated by a Europe that has collectively abandoned any shame. Germany has led the way in abandoning norms, values, international law and even the fig leaf of decency in its complicity with Israel’s actions. Recognition of Palestine by some other European states would be an insufficient counter-position.

Irish artists such as Sally Rooney, Lankum, Bambie Thug at Eurovision and comedian Tadhg Hickey have, in different ways, offered Europeans real alternatives in cultural spaces. Can Ireland’s politicians do something similar (if perhaps less colourful and gauche) in the diplomatic arena?

Daniel Levy is the president of the US/Middle East Project and a former Israeli negotiator with the Palestinians at Taba under prime minister Ehud Barak and at Oslo B under prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.

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