The notion that the Democratic Party has a problem with antisemitism sounds so Orwellian, when it was Donald Trump’s campaign, whose collusion with the Alt-Right has made antisemitism fashionable again. Yet, that is the script Trump’s using while insisting he loves Israel.1
Last week Trump renewed his attack which begun last March after Ilhan Omar, the young progressive Democratic, Muslim Congresswoman, out of central casting, mentioned the role of money and AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby, in American politics.
Her provocative reference to the so-called “Israel Lobby” sparked a public debate. On the other hand, the idea that talking about it somehow makes a politician, even a Jewish one, like Bernie Sanders, antisemitic shows how absurd American political discourse has become.
Antisemitism as Magical Incantation
The right-wing script of using antisemitism as a weapon to attack the left originates in Britain and the Labour Party, where the BDS movement was germinated. Right-leaning academics as well as Israel’s secretive “Ministry of Strategic Affairs,” coined the term “new antisemitism,” to block the burgeoning movement of holding Israel responsible for its apartheid policies in the occupied territories.
The term was not created to describe the resurgence of Jew hatred among the far-right, whom from Bibi’s perspective aren’t the people who needed to be discredited in order to manipulate mass opinion in favor of Israeli policy.
Until recently, liberal media outlets like the New York Times, New Republic and Atlantic reported more on pro-Palestinian college students than the budding on-line Alt-Right communities, which is historically rooted with the main source of antisemitism in the Western world.
Nevertheless, two other significant currents also need to be addressed: firstly, the anti-capitalist left (and hard right) that despises the power of finance, which incidentally has a long historical connection with Jewish banking; growing economic inequality and outrage at banksters, along with Israeli policies is channeling left-wing antisemitism; secondly, Muslim antisemitism, which is a more recent phenomenon, because it’s a cultural import from Europe, especially during the Nazi period and the aftermath of WWII. 2
A strange constellation of variables have come together to bring this about; namely, the rise of right-wing populism in which Israel exists as a major hub in the new network of ethno-nationalists. Bibi’s alliance with Europe’s Alt-Right, who incidentally are using antisemitic memes in their political rhetoric, is happening while Europe’s leftist parties are being attacked for criticizing Israel, whose fascists now dominate the state.
To defend Israel from legitimate criticism, Likud and right-wingers use antisemitism as a rhetorical cudgel. The hypocrisy at the heart of all this doesn’t bode well for the future of the taboo, whose efficacy depends upon having the moral high-ground. Indeed, real antisemitic incidents, like Muslims attacking Jews in Berlin, Polish Judas rituals taken right out of Borat, or Synagogue shooting in San Diego seem to be on the rise. However, the underlying causes of antisemitism are hardly examined in the liberal media.3
On the one hand, Netanyahu isn’t bothered by antisemitism when it comes from his allies, who demonize liberals, like George Soros, while embracing European ethno-nationalists, like Victor Orban, or Ukrainian neo-Nazis. On the other hand, when a political cartoon appears to be making fun of Trump and Bibi, people scream bloody murder, which receives more attention by so-called moderate columnists than real life tragedies.
Political Correctness
The political cartoon featured above is actually a brilliant caricature. Trump is wearing a Jewish skull cap and holding a leash, because he’s blind, and Bibi, the Israeli premier, is guiding him – a perfect characterization of the situation. And yet the New York Times announced it will no longer publish any political cartoons. The point is the paper has clearly favored political correctness over freedom of expression. Cartoons exaggerate and use stereotypes to represent different nations and politicians. Apparently, every nationality maybe depicted stereotypically except Israelis and, of course, Mohamed.
It’s really amazing how public figures, especially politicians, and institutions are terrified of being called antisemitic, even by the likes of Don Jr. You can be a white nationalist today, but not an anti-Semite, which is akin to being labeled a pedophile or rapist. Just listen to the way in which CNN Jake Tapper talked about this vile and hideous cartoon.
New-Antisemitism?
The so-called “New-Antisemitism” comes mainly from the United Kingdom, where a higher percentage of vocal Muslims live in comparison with the United States. According to The Economist,
British Jews—particularly those who support Israel—are being marginalized in the Labour Party. There are 3m Muslims in Britain compared with about 284,000 Jews, and they are concerned in areas vital for Labour’s future, such as Birmingham and Manchester. The philo-Semitic tradition in the Labour Party, exemplified by Harold Wilson and James Callaghan, is dying.
Another factor that contributed to the New Antisemitism coinage was the rise of Jeremy Corbyn, a champion of Palestinian civil rights and an outspoken critic of Israel. Claims that Ken Livingstone and Jeremy Corbyn are an existential threat to British Jews and that Labour under Corbyn has become “institutionally anti-Semitic” are not only absurd, it looks like a devious plot to keep leftists out of power. Moreover, because Corbyn’s policies have wide popular appeal, they are rarely attacked. It seems the British Establishment would rather have a right-wing populist, like Boris Johnson running the government.
But, in my opinion, the British rabbi, Jonathan Sacks has, more than anyone, re-defined antisemitism, which I summarize below.
Antisemitism always takes a new form. Because it’s socially unacceptable, it can only survive by mutating. In the past, Jews were hated for their religion. In post Enlightenment Europe, you weren’t allowed to hate anyone for their religion. So they were hated for their race. Today, you cannot hate anyone for their race, so instead you hate them for their nation-state. And that is why anti-Zionism is the new antisemitism. Sachs – to be fair – says criticism of Israel is legitimate, but questioning its right to exist is antisemitism.
This kind of no-win communication puts critics of Israel into a kind of double-bind. According to historian Ilan Papper, Israel is effectively saying that Zionism is not open to debate as a concept. So, in practice, the New Antisemitism tends to conflate criticism of Israel, or more broadly Anti-Zionism, with antisemitism. For example, if you question Israel’s right to be a Jewish state, you are Antisemitic. Because most Jews relate to Israel as an important part of their identity, you aren’t permitted to criticize Israel. Of course, one is free, like George Galloway, to reject these premises.
Interestingly, while antisemitism is being redefined, Israel enshrined its contentious new law on July 20, 2018, which stipulates that “Israel is the historic homeland of the Jewish people and they have an exclusive right to national self-determination in it.” However, critics say the “Nation State Law” marginalizes the state’s non Jews.
Naturally, the question arises: who are the Jewish people? Are Jewish people a race, an ethnic group, or a religious group? Currently, these elements of “identity are becoming increasingly blurry.”
Self-identifying as Jewish does not confer status within the religious community. So, how is Jewishness officially defined by Israel’s Rabbinate? Does it exist in the blood?
In the past, confirming Jewishness involved “tracking genealogical records back to prove religious continuity along the matrilineal line.” But, in the absence of documentation, Israeli rabbinical judges are turning to DNA testing. It turns out that “differences in genetic ancestry do correlate to many of today’s racial constructs.”
While defining ethnicity racially has been taboo since WWII, ironically, it’s being applied in Israel. In any case, at the moment, proving Jewishness in Israel is still limited to religious life, not citizenship. Yet, Shlomo Sand, an Israeli historian is “worried that people” in the future “will start to use this genetic testing to build this political national identity.”
Anti-antisemitism
Due to new definitions and laws, criticism of Israel in parts of Europe may one day be considered antisemitic and hence Volksverhetzung. The irony is that most liberal critiques of Israel come from Zionist papers, like the Haaretz, which has become one of the most informative papers during the Trump presidency.4
After Trump’s racist and xenophobic tweets against the women of color who are collectively called the Squad, things have become very clear. Trump, essentially, told them to go back to their shit hole countries and then called Omar unAmerican for criticizing the governments of Israel and the United States.
Like most right-wingers today, Trump admires Israel and calls leftists antisemitic. There is a clear rhetorical pattern. Ivan Kalmar calls it the “anti-anti-Semitism defense,” which aims to “deflect charges from other forms of racism, too. . . . Evidently, declaring one’s admiration for ‘the Jews’ and Israel is the coin that right-wing nationalists believe can purchase the right to use both anti-Semitic and other racist appeals to their supporters.”
Like peas in a pod, the new antisemitism and anti-anti-Semitism share similar interests.
* Featured image is from Portuguese cartoonist António Moreira Antunes, whose cartoon was originally published in the Lisbon paper Expresso.
1 During his first televised foreign policy speech in 2016 at AIPAC, Trump criticized Obama’s horrible Iran deal and promised that he’d “move the American embassy to the eternal capital of the Jewish people, Jerusalem.” Indeed, he kept his campaign promise when he recognized Jerusalem in 2017 as the capital and unleashed a wave of Arab protests in Europe. And as a symbolic gesture, Netanyahu named a new settlement on the Golan, “Trump Heights,” which sounds like a joke, but smells like fascism.
2 Until recently, antisemitism has notoriously been nastier in the Islamic world, but things have changed in the West since the financial crisis and the so-called Arab Spring, as an unprecedented number of Muslims flowed into Europe, with all of their prejudices. So, for example, when Trump officially recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, thousands of Muslims loudly protested in the streets of Germany, openly making antisemitic comments and burning Israeli flags, thus violating one of Germany’s biggest taboos. Ironically, even the multicultural, do-gooders, and ever tolerant politicians had to grudgingly admit their Muslim migrants have an antisemitic problem. At the same time, all of this has sparked a nationalist backlash and a revival of fascist political parties, who see Netanyahu and Trump as leaders, whose policies are making the lives of Diaspora Jews in Europe more precarious.
3 Netanyahu’s own right-wing circle simultaneously use antisemitic memes and hypocritical smear tactics of slandering individuals, who legitimately criticize Israeli policy.
4 The Haaretz has recently questioned whether the Netanyahu cartoon is really antisemitic and criticized Germany’s new anti-BDS law. Indeed, no German journalist could ever express what Gideon Levy has written here, “From now on, Germany cannot boast of its freedom of speech. It has become an agent of Israeli colonialism.” But Germany’s Spiegel has, at least, reported on the questionable methods which lobbyists employed to influence the anti-BDS resolution inside the Bundestag.
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