Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on December 18, 2019

Author's note:This Policy Paper began life as a paper I presented on a panel about antisemitism at the Centre for Independent Studies Consilium conference held in September 2019. Joining me on the panel there were Mt Hajba, Daniel Pipes, and Julian Leeser MP. My conversations with them helped clarify my thinking on key points and I am grateful for their contributions.

I am also grateful to Henry Ergas, Tzvi Fleischer, Simon Cowan, and Jeremy Sammut who read an earlier draft of this Policy Paper. They corrected a number of factual errors and made very helpful comments about the structure of the argument. Karla Pincott edited the manuscript and designed the cover, and Ryan Acosta laid out the text for publication.

Part I

Antisemitism the hatred of Jews has long been a part of human history, and has appeared indifferent forms, with different motivations and varying intensities. Many factors are proposed as explanations for antisemitism, which long predates Christianity[1] although historically Christianity has also contributed to it.

The demonology about Jews became and remains deeply entrenched in Western culture; and provokes an eliminationist response that is an integral component of antisemitism.[2] As Jonathan Sacks has noted:

"Antisemitism exists and is dangerous whenever two contradictory factors appear in combination: the belief that Jews are so powerful that they are responsible for the evils of the world, and the knowledge that they are so powerless that they can be attacked with impunity[3]"

Working definition and spelling of antisemitism

In 2016 the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), a large, multinational intergovernmental body, adopted a Working Definition of Antisemitism that has now become the most widely accepted definition. It is the definition used in this Policy Paper:

Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.[4]

While there are different points of view about the correct spelling, this paper will adopt the spelling advocated by IHRA: antisemitism. However, where an author who uses a different form is quoted, that spelling will be retained.

New Forms of the Ancient Hatred

After World War II and the Holocaust, antisemitism seemed unthinkable and any public expression of it was certainly unacceptable. However, this does not preclude that it continued to fester in private. And there is now clear and increasing evidence that public expressions of antisemitism are on the rise again in many parts of the Western world.

Writing in the Philadelphia Inquirer in August 2019, columnist Marc Thiessen cited a recent CNN poll that found: more than a quarter of Europeans say Jews have too much influence in business and finance, while one in five said Jews have too much influence in the media and politics.[5] In a survey of Israeli Jews conducted in 2016, the Pew Research Center found 64% thought antisemitism is very common around the world; and 76% thought antisemitism is not only common but is increasing.[6]

In global terms, antisemitism has spread with the greatest intensity in Arab and Islamic countries during the post-war era. The founding of the State of Israel in 1948 contributed to this intensification but it also coincided with the rise of Arab nationalism and the emergence of anti-colonialist sentiment in Europe.

However, it is important to note at the outset that antisemitism is not a consequence of the existence of Israel or of its actions.

As Daniel Jonah Goldhagen has observed, antisemitisms tropes are age-old and precede Israels founding, its conflict with the Palestinians, and its dealings with its Arab neighbours.[7] Nor does the existence of antisemitism depend upon the actions of Jews, whether individually or collectively.[8]

Whereas public manifestation of antisemitism in Arab and Islamic countries has intensified since 1945, it was accompanied by a decline in western European countries where the open expression of race-based prejudice became and remains unacceptable.

However, over the past 40 or 50 years, a distinctive form of non-racial antisemitism has emerged as a potent force on the political left what is frequently called the postmodern left. This evolution has been charted by scholars such as the late Robert Wistrich:

Classical anti-Semitism, it should be remembered, proclaimed the Jews as a minority group to be an existential menace to a given nationa danger to its internal homogeneity, unity, religious values, and racial purity. Postwar anti-Zionism, on the other hand, sees the nation of Israel above all as a deadly threat to world peace and the international order.[.9]

This increase in left-wing antisemitism was noted in a recent report published by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion and belief, Ahmed Shaheed, which looked specifically at the issue of antisemitism[10] and noted:

Numerous reports of an increase in many countries of left-wing antisemitism, in which individuals claiming to hold anti-racist and anti- imperialist views employ antisemitic narratives or tropes in the course of expressing anger at policies or practices of the Government of Israel. [The Rapporteur] emphasizes that it is never acceptable to render Jews as proxies for the Government of Israel.[11]

Left-wing antisemitism has deep roots in 19th century political thought, but its 20th century manifestation is closely linked to the combined forces of identity politics, anti-colonialism, and anti-imperialism unleashed in the 1960s and 1970s. These forces tend to fuse in the form of anti-Zionism hostility to the state of Israel which is a signal feature of postmodern left antisemitism. Analysis of the apparent paradox of the emergence of antisemitism on the political left, therefore, yields a good understanding of how the facets of this ancient hatred have evolved and now appear in a modern guise.

The Postmodern Lefts Convergence of Anti- Zionism and Antisemitism

The view that the State of Israel should not exist the basic form of anti-Zionism has come to form a cornerstone of postmodern left antisemitism. In its more extreme expressions, anti-Zionism denies both the very concept of Jewish peoplehood entitled to self- determination, and the right of a lawfully constituted state to safeguard the security of its borders and its people. Anti-Zionism demonizes, dehumanizes, and delegitimizes Israel in order to bring about its destruction, says British commentator Melanie Phillips.[12]

Support for the creation of the State of Israel was widespread on the political left during the 1947-48 Arab-Israeli war. However, the 1967 Six-Day War marked a specific turning point in international perceptions of Israel. After 1967, the opposition to Israel which came from the left was directed at its occupation of territory, especially the 'West Bank', its military strength, and its perceived status as a hegemonic regional power closely allied with the United States of America.[13]

Soviet criticism of Israel, in turn, fed a fervent communist anti-Zionism that promoted defamatory theories of a global conspiracy funded by Jewish money committed to wreaking political and economic havoc in western countries.[14]

When the postmodern left emerged in the 1950s and 1960s, its worldview absorbed much of this Soviet propaganda, with a key tenet remaining a commitment to anti-Zionism the view that the State of Israel is illegitimate and should not exist. Added to the anti-Zionist denial of Israels claim to an ancestral homeland was a contradictory claim that the Jews sought to maintain a racial state in Israel.[15]

In historical terms, anti-Zionism has been quite distinct from antisemitism. Whereas the racist prejudice of antisemitism was largely a phenomenon of the political right, anti-Zionism was based on what Australian scholar Philip Mendes has described as a relatively objective assessment of the prospects for success for some Jews in Israel/Palestine.[16] In recent decades, however, as anti-Zionism has developed into a rejection of the legitimacy of the State of Israel, anti-Zionism and antisemitism have converged.

The postmodern lefts anti-Zionism was certainly influenced by Soviet hostility to Israel. However, it is a phenomenon which owes even more to the determination among the post-World War II generation to oppose racism and colonialism. Israel, according to the postmodern left, is an illegitimate remnant of western colonialism in the Middle East a view increasingly endorsed by the United Nations as it added newly decolonised states to its membership.

Postmodern left anti-Zionists invariably insist their target is neither Jews nor individual Israeli citizens going about their ordinary lives. Rather, their target is the State of Israel itself, which they hold to be a political regime promulgating illegal, coercive, and dehumanizing treatment of Palestinians. It is a line of argument that attempts to defend the distinction between anti-Jewish remarks and criticism of Israeli government policy.

Part II willbe posted tomorrow.

Prof. Peter Kurti is a Senior Research Fellow, Director of the Culture, Prosperity & Civil Society program at the Centre of Independent Studies, and adjunct Associate Professor at the School of Law, University of Notre Dame, Australia. He has written extensively about issues of religion, liberty, and civil society in Australia.

Endnotes:

1.While recording the extensive political and religious conflict in which Jewish communities were caught up in the ancient world, Edward Flannery identifies Egypt in the 3rd century BCE as the place where the first clear traces of a specifically anti- Jewish sentiment appears. Edward Flannery, The Anguish of the Jews: Twenty-Three Centuries of Antisemitism, (Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1999), 11.

2.Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, The Devil that Never Dies: The Rise and Threat of Global Antisemitism, (New York: Little, Brown & Co., 2013), 81.

3.Jonathan Sacks, quoted in Bernard Harrison, The Resurgence of Anti-Semitism: Jews, Israel, and Liberal Opinion, (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), 20.

4.International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, Working Definition of Antisemitism, (26 May 2016) https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/ node/196

5.Marc Thiessen, The rise of anti-Semitism on the Left, Philadelphia Inquirer, (13 August 2019) https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/ commentary/anti-semitism-left-liberals-marc- thiessen-20190814.html

6.Israels Religiously Divided Society, Pew Research Center (March 2016), 222-223 https://www. pewforum.org/2016/03/08/anti-semitism-and- discrimination

7.Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, as above, 175.

8.See Deborah Lipstadt, as above,19.

9.Robert Wistrich, The Changing Face of Anti- Semitism, Commentary, March 2013, Vol. 135 (3), 31-34, 33.

10.Combatting Antisemitism to Eliminate Discrimination and Intolerance Based on Religion or Belief, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion and Belief (20 September 2019), https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/ Religion/A_74_47921ADV.pdf

11.Combatting Antisemitism, as above, para. 17.

12 See Melanie Phillips, https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=250284799188055

13.See Philip Mendes, Whatever happened to the political alliance of the Jews and the Left?, ABC Religion & Ethics (20 June 2018) https://www. abc.net.au/religion/whatever-happened-to-the- political-alliance-of-the-jews-and-the-/10094614

14.See Ruth R. Wisse, The Functions of Anti- Semitism, National Affairs (Number 41, Fall 2019) https://nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the- functions-of-anti-semitism

15.David Cesarani, Anti-Zionism in Britain, 1922- 2002: Continuities and Discontinuities, The Journal of Israeli History, Vol. 25, No. 1, (March 2006), 131-160, 146.

16.Philip Mendes, When does criticism of Zionism and Israel become anti-Jewish racial hatred?, in Peter Kurti (ed.), Whats New with Anti-Semitism?, (Centre for Independent Studies: St Leonards, NSW, 2012), 15.

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Toxic mutation of an ancient hatred: Left-wing Antisemitism - Arutz Sheva

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