On antisemitism, p.1
On Antisemitism, page 1
On Antisemitism
Solidarity and the Struggle for Justice
Jewish Voice for Peace
Foreword by Judith Butler
Chicago, Illinois
© 2017 Jewish Voice for Peace
Published in 2017 by
Haymarket Books
P.O. Box 180165
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ISBN: 978-1-60846-762-4
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This book was published with the generous support of Lannan Foundation
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Table of Contents
Foreword
Judith Butler
A Note about the Spelling of “Antisemitism”
Introduction
Rebecca Vilkomerson
Part I: Histories and Theories of Antisemitism
Antisemitism Redefined: Israel’s Imagined National Narrative of Endless External Threat
Antony Lerman
Palestinian Activism and Christian Antisemitism in the Church
Walt Davis
Black and Palestinian Lives Matter: Black and Jewish America in the Twenty-First Century
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
Intersections of Antisemitism, Racism, and Nationalism: A Sephardi/Mizrahi Perspective
Ilise Benshushan Cohen
On Antisemitism and Its Uses
Shaul Magid
Antisemitism, Palestine, and the Mizrahi Question
Tallie Ben Daniel
Part II: Confronting Antisemitism and Islamophobia
Trump, the Alt-right, Antisemitism, and Zionism
Arthur Goldwag
“Our Liberation Is Intertwined”
An Interview with Linda Sarsour
Centering Our Work on Challenging Islamophobia
Donna Nevel
Who Am I to Speak?
Aurora Levins Morales
Captured Narratives
Rev. Graylan Hagler
“We’re Here Because You Were There”: Refugee Rights Advocacy and Antisemitism
Rachel Ida Buff
European Antisemitism: Is It “Happening Again”?
Rabbi Brant Rosen
Part III: Fighting False Charges of Antisemitism
Two Degrees of Separation: Israel, Its Palestinian Victims, and the Fraudulent Use of Antisemitism
Omar Barghouti
A Double-Edged Sword: Palestine Activism and Antisemitism on College Campuses
Kelsey Waxman
This Campus Will Divest! The Specter of Antisemitism and the Stifling of Dissent on College Campuses
Ben Lorber
Antisemitism on the American College Campus in the Age of Corporate Education, Identity Politics, and Power-Blindness
Orian Zakai
Chilling and Censoring of Palestine Advocacy in the United States
Dima Khalidi
Conclusion
Let the Semites End the World! On Decolonial Resistance, Solidarity, and Pluriversal Struggle
Alexander Abbasi
Building toward the Next World
Rabbi Alissa Wise
Appendix I: JVP Statements on Antisemitism
Appendix II: Discussion Guide and Additional Readings
Contributors
Notes
Foreword
Judith Butler
There are many ways to approach antisemitism. A study might be dedicated to understanding what antisemitism is, what forms it now takes, and how best to oppose it. Another might ask why there are conflicts about how best to identify antisemitism, and to try to situate and understand those conflicts in light of their underlying political aims. Still another might set forward the proposition that any analysis of antisemitism ought to be conceptually—and politically—linked to other forms of racism. And yet another might ask about how the demography and history of the Jewish people are represented in contemporary arguments about antisemitism, or how the history of antisemitism has changed in various times and places. Still another might ask about the conditions under which the charge of antisemitism is made, who makes it, for what purpose, against whom is it leveled and why, and how best to judge whether the charge is justified.
As one seeks to open up these important intellectual questions, one is invariably asked to respond to the urgent ethical and political questions: Is antisemitism wrong? And should it be opposed in all its forms? The simple and clear answer is: yes. While it is certainly true to say that everyone in this volume agrees that antisemitism is wrong and must be opposed, it is not at all clear whether there is more generally a single understanding of what constitutes antisemitism (which acts, practices, forms of speech, institutions) or how best to conceptualize its workings. Barring a common understanding of what antisemitism is, it is not at all clear what is being claimed when one explicitly opposes antisemitism. If we could arrive at a single or, at least, a minimal definition of antisemitism, then we would not only be able to explain what we mean when we say that we oppose it, but we would also be able to bring that definition to bear on particular cases in order to distinguish, for instance, between charges that are justified and those that are not.
In our contemporary world, there is a great deal of conflict about how to identify forms of antisemitism. First, antisemitism is sometimes cloaked as something else. It takes a fugitive form when, for instance, a discourse emerges that presumes that there is a group that owns all the banks, or that actively makes use of conspiracy theories to explain how political events take place. The word “Jew” hardly has to be mentioned to be already nefariously at work in such a discourse. The same can be said about any reference to the “blood libel”—a scurrilous rumor that has been tenaciously circulated against the Jewish people for centuries, justifying attacks on and murders of Jews in Eastern Europe. The more explicit forms of antisemitism not only subscribe to gross generalizations based on ostensible anatomical or physiological characteristics, the attribution of a “Jewish character,” concocted histories, or the projection of sexual proclivities, but also engage active forms of legal discrimination, for sequestration, expulsion, or active oppression or death. Genocide is the most extreme version of antisemitism. And boycotts against Jewish businesses, especially in the history of Germany, are also clearly part of the history of antisemitism. These are all examples of antisemitism, but they do not, taken together, give us a single definition that could serve our purposes. In fact, far more important than a single definition of antisemitism would be an account of its history and its various forms: the language, the attitudes, actions and practices, the policies. That is the only way to know what it is, and that means we cannot expect that a single definition will hold for all cases. Or rather, if we do establish a single definition, it will of necessity be so broad that we will not be able to say immediately how and when it should be applied. After all, the charge of antisemitism depends on the ability to identify antisemitism in its various instances, and here is where the matter of interpretation does come into play.
Given the contemporary framework in which the matter of antisemitism is discussed, the conflict about how to identify its forms (given that some forms are fugitive) is clearly heightened. The claim that criticisms of the State of Israel are antisemitic is the most highly contested of contemporary views. It is complex and dubious for many reasons. First: what is meant by it? Is it that the person who utters criticisms of Israel nurses antisemitic feelings and, if Jewish, then self-hating ones? That interpretation depends on a psychological insight into the inner workings of the person who expresses such criticisms. But who has access to that psychological interiority? It is an attributed motive, but there is no way to demonstrate whether that speculation is a grounded one. If the antisemitism is understood to be a consequence of the expressed criticism of the State of Israel, then we would have to be able to show in concrete terms that the criticism of the State of Israel results in discrimination against Jews. Of course, it would be a clearly antisemitic belief to say that “all Jews” share a single political position, or that “all Jews” support the State of Israel, or even that “all Jews” are the same as the State of Israel (the State either represents “all Jews” or there is no distinction between Jews and the State—it is all a blur). The latter claim rests on a gross stereotype and fails to acknowledge the various viewpoints and political affiliations of Jewish people who have very different histories, locations, and aspirations.
Distinguishing among the very different historical trajectories of Ashkenazi, Sephardic, and Mizrahi Jews breaks up monolithic understandings of what it is to be a Jew, and so deprives antisemitism of its noxious habit of vulgar generalization. It also foregrounds the demographic and racial differences among Jews, and it calls into question the way that Jewish history is so often narrated through the lens of European
But what about the fugitive forms that antisemitism takes? Could we not say that the criticism is silently fueled by antisemitic hatred? That claim is a complex one, since if we accept that antisemitism has conventionally taken fugitive forms, it is clearly possible that it could provide a motivation for some criticisms. But how would one ground that interpretation? On what basis would anyone argue that they know this interpretation to be true? Is the problem that no motivation besides hatred can be imagined for the person who criticizes the State of Israel? Or is it that only someone deeply insensitive to the historical suffering of the Jews would not “see” clearly that hatred continues, and now takes the form of the critique of the Israeli state. Whoever holds that view would have to explain whether every criticism of Israel is a sign of an antisemitic motive, or only some criticisms. What difference does it make whether what is criticized is Israeli policies, the occupation, or the structure and legitimation of the State itself? Are only those who voice the latter criticisms eligible for the charge of antisemitism, or does the charge include members of all three groups?
If modern democratic states have to bear criticism, even criticisms about the process by which a state gained legitimation, then it would be odd to claim that those who exercise those democratic rights of critical expression are governed only or predominantly by hatred and prejudice. We could just as easily imagine that someone who criticizes the Israeli state, even the conditions of its founding—coincident with the Nakba, the expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians from their homes—has a passion for justice or wishes to see a polity that embraces equality and freedom for all the people living there. In the case of Jewish Voice for Peace, Jews and their allies come together to demonstrate that Jews must reclaim a politics of social justice, a tradition that is considered to be imperiled by the Israeli state.
So under what conditions does a passion for justice become renamed as antisemitism? It cannot be that the only way to refute the charge of antisemitism in these debates is to embrace injustice, inequality, and dispossession. This would be a cruel bargain indeed. Similarly, when Palestinians call for an end to colonial rule, administrative detention, land confiscation, and violence done against their communities, are they not motivated by a desire for freedom, equality, economic and political justice? The shared Palestinian desire to be released from colonial rule is surely a reasonable desire, one that is broadly admired and valued in other decolonization struggles (South Africa, Algeria). For that desire to be renamed as fugitive antisemitism seems then to be part of a strategy to de-legitimate that struggle. It would be odd to assume that the main reason why Palestinians seek to be free of colonial rule is that it will fulfill their ostensibly antisemitic desires. The colonizer projects the desire to destroy colonial power onto the colonized, but renames it as the desire to destroy the Jewish people. The founding mandate of Hamas only amplifies this problem—and should be definitively rejected. Still, if the desire to throw off colonial power is renamed as the desire to destroy the Jew, then the Jew is equated with colonizing power (and the equation is made not by the colonized, but by the colonizer!). There is no reason to assume that Jews have to be colonizers, so the desire to overcome colonialism should be, in every instance and all sides of the conflict, disarticulated from antisemitism. Only then can the Palestinian struggle be grasped as motivated by a legitimately grounded desire to be free of colonial rule.
So to answer the question, why is antisemitism attributed to those who express criticisms of the Israeli state?, we have to change the terms of the question itself. We have been asking, under what conditions can we decide whether or not the charge of antisemitism is warranted? What if we ask: What does the charge of antisemitism do? If the charge operates as a form of power, what role does the charge of antisemitism assume in the political debate about
Zionism, the State of Israel, and the Palestinian struggle for freedom? If a critical position can be discounted by calling it antisemitic, then it does not exactly answer the criticism: rather, it seeks to put the criticism out of play. When the charge functions in a spurious way to censor a point of view, it seeks to delegitimate the criticism by claiming that it is a cover for antisemitic passion or motivation. If a criticism is nothing but a fugitive and persistent form of antisemitism, then that criticism has to be censored and expunged in the same way that antisemitism has to be censored and expunged. A great deal depends on this substitution: critique of Israel = antisemitism. Taken together with that other substitution, the State of Israel = the Jewish people, it can then be argued that the critique of the State of Israel is antisemitic. And yet, if neither of those substitutions holds, then the argument begins to fall apart.
When the charge of antisemitism is used to censor or quell open debate and the public exchange of critical views on the State of Israel, then it is not exactly communicating a truth, but seeking to rule out certain perspectives from being heard. So whether or not the accusation is true becomes less important than whether or not it is effective. It works in part through stigmatizing and discrediting the speaker, but also through a tactical deployment of slander. After all, the charge can be enormously painful. It does not roll easily off the back; it does not get quickly shaken off, even when one knows it is not true. For many Jews, there could hardly be anything worse than being told that you are antisemitic, allied with Nazis or right-wing fascists in Hungary, Greece, Belgium, or Germany, or with all those who believe in the poisonous Protocols of Zion. Those who deploy the charge of antisemitism to discount a point of view and discredit a person clearly fear the viewpoint they oppose and do not want it to be heard at all. It is also a tactic of shaming, seeking to silence those for whom identifying with antisemitism is loathsome.
If I am right, then those who accuse those who have criticisms of the State of Israel of antisemitism know that it will hurt Jewish critics of the State of Israel in an emotionally profound way. They know it will hurt because they also know that the Jewish critic of the State of Israel also loathes antisemitism, and so will loathe the identification with antisemitism with which they are charged. In other words, those who make use of the accusation for the purposes of suppressing criticism actually know that the person accused is not antisemitic, for otherwise the accusation could not hurt as it does. Indeed, it does not matter whether the accusation is true, because the accusation is meant to cause pain, to produce shame, and to reduce the accused to silence. So my efforts to use reason to show how it is not necessarily justified to attribute antisemitism to those with strong criticisms of the State of Israel will doubtless not persuade. The point of the charge is not to utter what is true, but to do damage to the criticism as well as the person who speaks it. In other words, the charge of antisemitism has become an act of war.
