Hatred of Jews is coupled with hatred of the freedoms that characterise modernity and secular democracies
The horrific terrorist attacks in Copenhagen over the weekend, following those in Paris last month, reveal the deep hatred of liberal modernity that lies at the heart of antisemitism.
In both cities, the murders of Jews followed violent assaults on free speech. In Paris, cartoonists were killed for having dared to depict Muhammad as they depict countless other people. In Copenhagen, simply the act of discussing the right to depict Muhammad in that way was sufficient to attract the terrorists’ bullets.
There is little value in trying to find a rational explanation for this murderous irrationality. Instead, true explanations lie in an understanding of irrational ideologies and their use of antisemitism.
As Martin Kramer wrote about a different terrorist atrocity against Diaspora Jews over twenty years ago, ‘only someone persuaded of the existence of a world Jewish conspiracy against Islam’ could imagine that killing Jews in the Diaspora will benefit Palestinians.
Similarly, only someone who sees a Jewish plot behind every perceived ill that befalls Muslims and Islam could move so smoothly from killing cartoonists to killing Jews.
There has been much debate over whether Europe is the arena for a ‘new antisemitism’, different from the old fascist or ultra-nationalist versions that arose in Europe from the late 19th century and gripped much of the continent during the 20th. In this theory, the new antisemitism emanates from minority communities rather than indigenous elites and is focused on Israel rather than individual Jews.
In fact, the jihadist murders in Paris and Copenhagen show that the new antisemitism is not so different from the old. Hatred of Jews is coupled with hatred of the freedoms that characterise modernity and secular democracies, all wrapped together by conspiracy theories.
Cambridge historian (and official historian of MI5) Christopher Andrew warned, correctly, that:
“We cannot understand what al-Qaeda think they are fighting against and what they mean by ‘Jews and Crusaders’ unless we explore their conspiracy theories.”
Andrew suggested a decade ago that intelligence agencies should appoint an ‘Officer for Fanaticism and Conspiracy Theory’.
We cannot understand jihadist murders of Jews unless we appreciate that antisemitism is an ideology, not a grievance.
It is easy to call the publication of Muhammad cartoons ‘provocative’, as Hugh Muir did for the Guardian, or to ascribe the murder of European Jews to anger over Palestine, as Seamus Milne did in the same paper after Paris.
Easy, and perhaps comforting, but also wrong.
This is ‘slaughter as political protest’, Muir tells us. The idea that jihadist terrorism is simply an overheated, misguided expression of a legitimate or understandable ‘protest’ is too superficial an explanation for mass murder.
For sure, anger over Palestine is deeply held, but most who hold it do not attack Jews as a result. Similarly, many Muslims dislike depictions of their Prophet but few kill as a result.
Muir’s admonishment not to be ‘provocative’ by publishing cartoons of Muhammad is even more troubling. For by this logic, continuing to be Jewish in Europe, to visit synagogues or kosher shops, is also ‘provocative’. When faced with jihadist murderers bent on killing Jews, everyday Jewish life becomes ‘provocative’.
Better to recognise that jihadists have assaulted Europe’s core values and also highlighted the reluctance of some to stand by those values. “With rights to free speech come responsibilities”, Muir writes. Sometimes one of those responsibilities is the responsibility to defend the right of free speech against those who would remove it through the barrel of a gun.
Jews are often described as the ‘canary in the coal mine’ of Europe: the early warning of toxins circulating in society that will bring disaster for all. This is not a particularly edifying analogy. The miners’ canaries, after all, were supposed to die first in order to save the lives that really mattered.
There is a deeper truth to the analogy, though. Secular liberal democracy has proven itself to be the best guarantor of religious freedoms and the most hospitable type of society for minorities of all kinds. Jews have enough experience of all the various political systems in Europe’s history to know this fact better than most.
Free speech, with all the risk of offence that it brings, is essential for the protection of minority rights. It is part of the price we pay for our freedom. The best way to ensure that Jews have a future in Europe is to ensure that secular, liberal, democratic Europe has a future of its own.
Dave Rich is deputy director of communications at the Community Security Trust (CST)
31 Responses to “Comment: Antisemitism is an ideology, not a grievance”
damon
I’ve never been a big fan of the CST from what I’ve read about them, but it can not be denied that Jews across Europe are now in the front line of danger form some pretty sick people.
This young man involved in the Danish attacks was of Palestinian origin I believe.
He used to be a gang member and go driving around with his mates smoking weed and getting into fights.
I’ve seen some young men like this in Copenhagen myself, and they look to be a total pain in the arse to everyone who has to cross their path.
You’d have to wonder if you can have it all ways with the multicultural society.
It’s very left wing to think that everyone can fit in together in harmony in ways that they can’t outside Western countries. Did no one think that Palestinian asylum seekers (or refugees or whatever they were originally to create communities like that in Denmark and Sweden) might not end up causing problems for those country’s Jewish populations?
It’s hardly a revelation that antisemitism is rife in the weed smoking gang culture that the likes of this killer from Denmark was part of.
sebbysteiny
By what possibly measure? Do you even know how many innocent civilians died?
So tell Mr ‘too many civilians’, how many dead innocent civilians would you have been happy and comfortable with?
damon
I’ve said this before elsewhere …. but how about a quarter? Something like that.
Since only four people on the Israeli side were killed by the Hamas rockets, they obviously weren’t that huge a danger to civilian life in Israel.
So for example, in one of the cases where a bomb exploded at the gates of a UN safe school refuge, killing and maiming several, the reason given was that the Israelis had spotted a couple of Hamas guys going past on a motorcycle, so they fired a rocket at them, and it landed right on top of them and killed them.
That it also caused carnage at the gates of the refuge was said just to be unfortunate collateral damage.
If those two Hamas guys hadn’t been fired at, it probably wouldn’t have made much difference to protecting Israel from danger, but the innocent civilians at the gate would have been spared.
You understand my point? You don’t shoot ”through” innocents to get at the bad guys.
Particularly when the danger you face is not acute.
sebbysteiny
Why a quarter? Why not half or double? Did you make up this number out of thin air?
The exact number of civilians killed are also not yet known, so how is it you can legitimately criticise Israel for killing n civilians when you have no idea what number n is?
Israel takes every effort to protect it’s civilians so simply counting the number of dead at the end of the day is a completely immediate way of determing the level of the threat. Have you done any actual research about what it is like being the victim of these bombardments are like? Have you looked into whether it was Israel’s military operation that was the primary cause of so few Israeli casualties? Is your legitimate criticism simply that Israelis were morally wrong because they refused to sit back and wait to die like good little Jews should?
Re UN attack, how do you know that if Israel had not fired at the Hamas fighters, israeli soldiers would not have died? Do you know anything about the military circumstances of the incident in question?
Stormbringer
“It is easy to call the publication of Muhammad cartoons ‘provocative’, as Hugh Muir did for the Guardian, or to ascribe the murder of European Jews to anger over Palestine, as Seamus Milne did in the same paper after Paris”
That’s Al Q’uardian alright.
Hugh Muir was rightfully slaughtered BTL for his shameful stupidity and his truly cretinous attempt to compare like (the murder of Cartoonists by backward Dark Age loons) with completely unlike (the so-called “provocation” of someone exercising their non-negotiable right of free speech to draw a picture of anyone’s precious prophet).
Serial Milne is little more than a widespread laughing stock, a rabid revisionist and a holier-than-thou hypocrite who will argue that the treatment of Jews everywhere is the fault of Israel but in the very same breath would insist that it’s “Islamophobic” to blame Muslims for IS.
Most of the writers for Al Q’uardian are an appallingly bad joke that few readers take remotely seriously as demonstrated by the comments their Aunt Sally articles regularly receive. And outside of Al Q’uardian’s readership, no one remotely cares.
If they can’t even convince those who are sympathetic to enough to actually read it then what possible hope do they have to influence others? Thankfully, none at all – no wonder no one buys it.