While the aims of many pro-Palestinian campaigners are admirable, the left must look at the wider context of Israel and Palestine today
While the aims of many pro-Palestinian campaigners are admirable, the left must look at the wider context of Israel and Palestine today
Peace negotiations have failed and violence on the Gaza strip has resumed once again. As this happens the left and the wider pro-Palestinian movement needs to think hard about how the next intensification of campaigning can avoid contributing to a rise in anti-semitic sentiment.
Many will read that paragraph and immediately react with hostility. A recurrent feature of the last few weeks has been the forceful claims by the pro-Palestinian left that it is not anti-semitic to criticise Israel’s actions in Gaza. Some commentators have also been conscientious in combining their critique of Israel with strong condemnations of those who have used the situation to make overtly anti-semitic attacks.
However, to believe that such arguments and qualifications means the left is now excused of any culpability is to engage in a denial for which the left itself regularly criticises others.
Left-leaning thinkers and movements have argued for many years that racism and sexism need not be overt to exist. Racist and sexist values are so deeply ingrained into much of our thinking and behaviour that it is quite possible for someone to unintentionally exclude or denigrate black people or women even while actively proclaiming themselves an anti-racist or feminist.
Unfortunately the left is at risk of becoming the bastion of unintentional anti-semitism just as individuals and organisations across the political spectrum purvey unintentional racism and sexism.
The way many rushed to the defence of the cultural venues which took decisions leading to the cancellation of events with Israeli links is a case in point. I have no doubt that the trustees and staff of those venues along with their supporters are deeply hostile to anti-semitism and are as troubled as anyone by the recent upsurge in anti-Semitic activity. It is also to the credit of one of those venues that they have now rescinded the decision to require the organisers of the event to cut their links with Israel.
However, to support an organisation that makes such demands and then claim you are not acting in a way that will leave many Jews feeling deeply uncomfortable is to reveal an ignorance of how central Israel is to the identity, culture and religion of the Jewish people.
Imagine if a venue decided it would not allow a Catholic cultural event to go ahead unless the organisers cut their links to the Vatican because of the poor record of the church on challenging paedophilia within its ranks. No doubt many would feel an immediate pang of sympathy with the venue. After all the history of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church is truly shocking and has created enormous misery.
But we would soon recognise that such a demand is impossible for a Catholic organisation to meet given the absolutely central role the Vatican plays in Catholic identity and practice. If the theatre’s boycott were to catch on, we would be in a situation where a well-meaning protest against sexual abuse had rapidly turned in to an effective exclusion of Catholic people and organisations from the cultural life of the country. No-one will have deliberately set out to be anti-Catholic but that will have been the outcome.
The situation is no different for Jews yet demands for a much wider boycott of Israel and Israeli goods is now a staple of the pro-Palestinian movement. Whether intentional or not, the idea that Jews and Jewish organisations could be excluded from the economic, cultural and wider public life of the country because of their inevitably close links to Israel should cause grave concern to anyone who knows the long and violent history of anti-Jewish prejudice which regularly used boycotts as a tool of oppression.
And as recent events have shown, those demanding a boycott could well end up preventing Jews having access to the products (as well as wider cultural and religious institutions in Israel) which are central to the practice of their culture and faith.
Similar concerns should also extend to the political goals of pro-Palestinian campaigners. The ultimate aim of much of the movement and its left-wing supporters is admirable: a long-term negotiated settlement leading to peaceful two-state co-existence. However, under current political circumstances that would require the Israeli Government, its citizens and the Jewish people around the world to accept negotiations with Hamas: an organisation whose founding document quotes the notorious anti-Semitic forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, as though it were genuine, claims Jews run a secret global conspiracy to control the world through organisations such as the Freemasons and blames the Jewish people for instigating both world wars for their own material gain.
Hamas spokespeople have distanced themselves from the Charter since its publication in 1988 but frankly this is not good enough. Any right-thinking person would expect an organisation to make every effort to formally reject such a pernicious document if it were really serious about avoiding anti-semitism. Because Hamas has taken no such action, Israel is being asked to seek friendly relations with a body which is founded upon and promotes ideas which only seventy years ago led directly to the murder of six million Jewish men, women and children.
To dismiss or ignore such concerns, as many in the pro-Palestinian movement do, is again to fail to think through the implications of their own demands for the justifiable fears of Jewish people. If the Hamas Charter had included numerous references to the inferiority of black people, one cannot help but wonder if the left would be quite so willing to close their ears to the complaints.
Claims of unintentional racism and sexism have been used in the past to silence debate and have, on occasion, reached absurd levels leading to accusations of racist or sexist behavior where none exists. No reasonable person would want a situation where awareness of unintentional anti-semitism made it impossible to criticise Israel because it undoubtedly does need criticising. However, it is very important for the pro-Palestinian movement and its supporters on the left to be clear that just because you distance yourself from those using the Gaza conflict to make overt attacks on Jews, you are not excused from thinking far more deeply about the consequences of your actions and demands for the well-being and liberty of the Jewish people.
Adam Lent is on Twitter here
81 Responses to “The Left must confront its unintentional anti-Semitism”
John Cross
I have no problem protesting Israeli policies and it is absurd to confuse such a thing with antisemitism (unless, of course, it IS antisemitism). But I will be damned if I will come within a million miles of supporting a racist organization like Hamas in any form whatsoever. Especially when their only strategy is the pathetic one of deliberately inciting Israel to drop bombs on its own people. When the Palestinian people of Gaza wake up and kick this cabal of cutthroat pirates out of their territory then they will get my respect and not a second before.
Leon Wolfeson
I think you’re being a bit harsh. Hamas have absolutely no qualms about using terror tactics to maintain control of Gaza, which they seized by force – apparently this week they’ve started summary executions of people accused of collaboration with Israel.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-28896346
Kryten2k35
Utter bullshit. Not content with taking keeping your crap to the other article, you want to bring it here too? You see what you want to see, and you’re also simply proving me right.
You just took one bit of criticism of Israel as Anti-Semitic, and, you’re apparently Jewish. Is that not what I just said?
If the phenomenon was limited to just Israelis, I would’ve said so. If it was only Zionists, I would’ve said Zionists. Instead, from my experience, it’s not limited to those groups. People who are professedly not Zionists, nor live in Israel, but are Jewish, pull the antisemite card… And you just did it.
It’s pathetic and wrong. Criticism of Israel is not Anti-Semitic.
Oh, and fuck you. You don’t have to have a bleeding heart to be liberal/left thinking.
Leon Wolfeson
Except you’re for bleeding Jews, which isn’t the same thing at all.
You said Jews, you meant Jews. You meant your New Anti-Semitism.
You are trying to deny your views, which means you use a load of personal abuse rather than talk openly and have a debate. I am Zionist, of course, a Labour Zionist, and you are simply a New Anti-Semite, trying to disguise your views behind blaming “Israel”.
There’s no two ways about it. And by your “country” logic, ATOS supporters like you…are not left wing.
(I remind everyone that he said that theists outside the UK should have no rights, and he was fine with them dying…)
Gary Scott
Leon, you have misread my post. But I do see your point on the IRA. I’m not saying that the British Government acted in a perfectly correct manner in this case, however, if it had dealt with things in the same way it would have aimed missiles and dropped bombs on the residential areas of East Belfast. My point is that when something is wrong, its wrong. Many countries get it wrong but Israel has made a habit of killing large numbers of civilians. If you are at war there may be ‘collateral damage’ and there may be errors. Israel tends to kill many more civilians than ‘combatants’. This is not disputed. This seems to be a matter of policy. I’m not sure why this could be considered acceptable or proportionate.