The politics of anti-Semitism
by Noel Rooney
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The Israeli occupation of Palestine, and brutal oppression of the Palestinians, is easily the most egregious sore on the modern body politic. For two generations, the Palestinians have been treated inhumanely as a matter of routine; so it can hardly be a surprise to anyone that their response has become increasingly violent, culminating in the pathetic, murderous futility of suicide bombings. This much is fact, cold, cruel and simple.
The response from the international (that much-vaunted, and plainly imaginary, political consensus) has been less simple than simplistic: Israel's right to its expanded state is superior to any right of Palestine's, period. To most spectators of geo-politics, this attitude is, sadly, not at all shocking; after all, the international community is not made up of people, but states and, despite some topical cant to the contrary, states are not benign by nature.
Altogether, this ought to be good grist for the dissident mill. So why is criticism of Israel and its policies so often mealy-mouthed or muted, given the nature of the crime? Are liberal writers and thinkers simply unable, post-Holocaust, to separate bad Israel from good Jews? Or is the whole argument being manipulated by powerful forces? This is the puzzle The Politics of anti-Semitism attempts to address.
Broadly, Cockburn and his contributors educe two main themes. First, the inflation of the term 'anti-Semitism' to cover any criticism of Israel's policies, or its Zionist supporters in the US and elsewhere. Second, the promotion of anti-Semitism into the most highly charged of all prejudices, despite the fact that the incidence of attacks on Jewish people remains tiny in comparison to attacks on black people, or Chinese people, or Muslims (especially Arabs), gay people, and any number of ethnic and religious minorities around the planet. Together, these remarkable feats of attitudinal engineering have suffocated dissent to the point where it has effectively disappeared from the mainstream, except limp tutting when the carnage becomes too much even our silence.
Some of the essays here may make uncomfortable reading, especially if your take on 'anti-Semitism' is the usual mix of what the media tells you suffused in a collective historical guilt. They include polemics against the power and influence of the Jewish lobby in US politics; sharp critiques of the Holocaust industry, and its insidious effects; eyewitness accounts of casual malice against Palestinians (yes, they do outnumber the bombers); Israeli dissidents declaring themselves proudly anti-Semitic; accusations of dual loyalty among the higher echelons of the US administration. What binds all these is a desire to disentangle a sensitive, but essentially simple truth, from a cynically muddied environment.
The truth is that anti-Semitism was a truly terrible thing; it led to one of the most shameful episodes in a century replete with cruelty and slaughter on an industrial scale. And we shall never how a baseless prejudice, fed by government lies, led Europeans to attempt - and condone - genocide.
Since then, sadly, the murderous ante has been upped again and again. Since 1945, countless millions have been slaughtered for no good reason at all. In all that time, thank goodness, anti-Semitism has remained both vestigial and peripheral; and when you consider the anger among Muslims, and the unfortunate tendency of many Islamists to equate Israel's actions with Judaism in general, the relative scarcity of anti-Jewish incidents is truly remarkable.
So why do organisations like AIPAC and ADL act as if anti-Semitism is still the most immediately dangerous of prejudices? Why are critics of Israel hounded out of politics, or jobs, pasted with the old label? The politics of anti-Semitism is not so smug as to give a one-line answer; but these writers are collectively convinced that the collusion of US Zionists (themselves among the more anti-Semitic groups, ironically) and an increasingly brutal Israeli regime is a significant factor. Given the nature of the right-wing Christian project for Israel, you'd think the Jewish organisations might recognise the irony too.
