{"id":2473,"date":"2020-12-16T08:51:38","date_gmt":"2020-12-16T08:51:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=139886"},"modified":"2020-12-16T08:51:38","modified_gmt":"2020-12-16T08:51:38","slug":"antisemitism-claims-mask-a-reign-of-political-and-cultural-terror-across-europe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2020\/12\/16\/antisemitism-claims-mask-a-reign-of-political-and-cultural-terror-across-europe\/","title":{"rendered":"Antisemitism Claims Mask a Reign of Political and Cultural Terror Across Europe"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photograph Source: Kate Ausburn \u2013 CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz has run a fascinating long report<\/a> this week offering a disturbing snapshot of the political climate rapidly emerging across Europe on the issue of antisemitism. The article documents a kind of cultural, political and intellectual reign of terror in Germany since the parliament passed a resolution last year equating support for non-violent boycotts of Israel \u2013 in solidarity with Palestinians oppressed by Israel \u2013 with antisemitism.<\/p>\n

The article concerns Germany but anyone reading it will see very strong parallels with what is happening in other European countries, especially the UK and France.<\/p>\n

The same European leaders who a few years ago marched in Paris shouting \u201cJe suis Charlie\u201d \u2013 upholding the inalienable free speech rights of white Europeans to offend<\/a> Muslims by insulting and ridiculing their Prophet \u2013 are now queuing up to outlaw free speech when it is directed against Israel, a state that refuses to end its belligerent occupation of Palestinian land. European leaders have repeatedly shown they are all too ready to crush the free speech of Palestinians, and those in solidarity with them, to avoid offending sections of the Jewish community.<\/p>\n

The situation reduces to this: European Muslims have no right to take offence at insults about a religion they identify with, but European Jews have every right to take offence at criticism of an aggressive Middle Eastern state they identify with. Seen another way, the perverse secular priorities of European mainstream culture now place the sanctity of a militarised state, Israel, above the sanctity of a religion with a billion followers.<\/p>\n

Guilt by association<\/strong><\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t even a double standard. I can\u2019t find a word in the dictionary that conveys the scale and degree of hypocrisy and bad faith involved.<\/p>\n

If the American Jewish scholar Norman Finkelstein wrote a follow-up to his impassioned book The Holocaust Industry<\/a> \u2013 on the cynical use of the Holocaust to enrich and empower a Jewish organisational establishment at the expense of the Holocaust\u2019s actual survivors \u2013 he might be tempted to title it The Antisemitism Industry.<\/p>\n

In the current climate in Europe, one that rejects any critical thinking in relation to broad areas of public life, that observation alone would enough to have one denounced as an antisemite. Which is why the Haaretz article \u2013 far braver than anything you will read in a UK or US newspaper \u2013 makes no bones about what is happening in Germany. It calls it a \u201cwitch-hunt\u201d. That is Haaretz\u2019s way of saying that antisemitism has been politicised and weaponised \u2013 a self-evident conclusion that will currently get you expelled from the British Labour party, even if you are Jewish.<\/p>\n

The Haaretz story highlights two important developments in the way antisemitism has been, in the words of intellectuals and cultural leaders cited by the newspaper, \u201cinstrumentalised\u201d in Germany.<\/p>\n

Jewish organisations and their allies in Germany, as Haaretz reports, are openly weaponising antisemitism not only to damage the reputation of Israel\u2019s harsher critics, but also to force out of the public and cultural domain \u2013 through a kind of \u201cantisemitism guilt by association\u201d \u2013 anyone who dares to entertain criticism of Israel.<\/p>\n

Cultural associations, festivals, universities, Jewish research centres, political think-tanks, museums and libraries are being forced to scrutinise the past of those they wish to invite in case some minor transgression against Israel can be exploited by local Jewish organisations. That has created a toxic, politically paranoid atmosphere that inevitably kills trust and creativity.<\/p>\n

But the psychosis runs deeper still. Israel, and anything related to it, has become such a combustible subject \u2013 one that can ruin careers in an instant \u2013 that most political, academic and cultural figures in Germany now choose to avoid it entirely. Israel, as its supporters intended, is rapidly becoming untouchable.<\/p>\n

A case study noted by Haaretz is Peter Sch\u00e4fer, a respected professor of ancient Judaism and Christianity studies who was forced to resign as director of Berlin\u2019s Jewish Museum last year. Sch\u00e4fer\u2019s crime, in the eyes of Germany\u2019s Jewish establishment, was that he staged an exhibition on Jerusalem that recognised the city\u2019s three religious traditions, including a Muslim one.<\/p>\n

He was immediately accused of promoting \u201chistorical distortions\u201d and denounced as \u201canti-Israel\u201d. A reporter for Israel\u2019s rightwing Jerusalem Post, which has been actively colluding<\/a> with the Israeli government to smear critics of Israel, contacted Sch\u00e4fer with a series of inciteful emails. The questions included \u201cDid you learn the wrong lesson from the Holocaust?\u201d and \u201cIsraeli experts told me you disseminate antisemitism \u2013 is that true?\u201d<\/p>\n

Sch\u00e4fer observes:<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe accusation of antisemitism is a club that allows one to deal a death blow, and political elements who have an interest in this are using it, without a doubt\u2026 The museum staff gradually entered a state of panic. Then of course we also started to do background checks. Increasingly it poisoned the atmosphere and our work.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Another prominent victim of these Jewish organisations tells Haaretz:<\/p>\n

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\u201cSometimes one thinks, \u2018To go to that conference?\u2019 \u2018To invite this colleague?\u2019 Afterward it means that for three weeks, I\u2019ll have to cope with a shitstorm, whereas I need the time for other things that I get paid for as a lecturer. There is a type of \u2018anticipatory obedience\u2019 or \u2018prior self-censorship.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Ringing off the hook<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is nothing unusual about what is happening in Germany. Jewish organisations are stirring up these \u201cshitstorms\u201d \u2013 designed to paralyse political and cultural life for anyone who engages in even the mildest criticism of Israel \u2013 at the highest levels of government. Don\u2019t believe me? Here is Barack Obama explaining in his recent autobiography his efforts as US president to curb Israel\u2019s expansion of its illegal settlements. Early on, he was warned<\/a> to back off or face the wrath of the Israel lobby:<\/p>\n

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\u201cMembers of both parties worried about crossing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Those who criticized Israeli policy too loudly risked being tagged as \u2018anti-Israel\u2019 (and possibly anti-Semitic) and confronted with a well-funded opponent in the next election.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

When Obama went ahead anyway in 2009 and proposed a modest freeze on Israel\u2019s illegal settlements:<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe White House phones started ringing off the hook, as members of my national security team fielded calls from reporters, leaders of American Jewish organizations, prominent supporters, and members of Congress, all wondering why we were picking on Israel \u2026 this sort of pressure continued for much of 2009.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

He observes further:<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe noise orchestrated by Netanyahu had the intended effect of gobbling up our time, putting us on the defensive, and reminding me that normal policy differences with an Israeli prime minister \u2013 even one who presided over a fragile coalition government \u2013 exacted a political cost that didn\u2019t exist when I dealt with the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, Canada, or any of our other closest allies.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Doubtless, Obama dare not put down in writing his full thoughts about Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu or the US lobbyists who worked on his behalf. But Obama\u2019s remarks do show that, even a US president, supposedly the single most powerful person on the planet, ended up blanching in the face of this kind of relentless assault. For lesser mortals, the price is likely to be far graver.<\/p>\n

No free speech on Israel<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was this same mobilisation of Jewish organisational pressure \u2013 orchestrated, as Obama notes, by Israel and its partisans in the US and Europe \u2013 that ended up dominating Jeremy Corbyn\u2019s five years as the leader of Britain\u2019s leftwing Labour party, recasting a well-known anti-racism activist almost overnight as an antisemite.<\/p>\n

It is the reason why his successor, Sir Keir Starmer, has outsourced part of Labour\u2019s organisational oversight on Jewish and Israel-related matters to the very conservative Board of Deputies of British Jews, as given expression in Starmer\u2019s signing up to the Board\u2019s \u201c10 Pledges\u201d.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It is part of the reason why Starmer recently suspended Corbyn from the party, and then defied<\/a> the membership\u2019s demands that he be properly reinstated, after Corbyn expressed concerns about the way antisemitism allegations had been \u201coverstated for political reasons\u201d to damage him and Labour. (The rightwing Starmer, it should be noted, was also happy to use antisemitism as a pretext to eradicate the socialist agenda Corbyn had tried to revive in Labour.) It is why Starmer has imposed a blanket ban<\/a> on constituency parties discussing Corbyn\u2019s suspension. And it is why Labour\u2019s shadow education secretary has joined the ruling Conservative party in threatening to strip universities of their funding if they allow free speech about Israel on campus.<\/p>\n

Two types of Jews<\/strong><\/p>\n

But the Haaretz article raises another issue critical to understanding how Israel and the Jewish establishment in Europe are politicising antisemitism to protect Israel from criticism. The potential Achilles\u2019 heel of their campaign are Jewish dissidents, those who break with the supposed \u201cJewish community\u201d line and create a space for others \u2013 whether Palestinians or other non-Jews \u2013 to criticise Israel. These Jewish dissenters risk serving as a reminder that trenchant criticism of Israel should not result in one being tarred an antisemite.<\/p>\n

Israel and Jewish organisations, however, have made it their task to erode that idea by promoting a distinction \u2013 an antisemitic one, at that \u2013 between two types of Jews: good Jews (loyal to Israel), and bad Jews (disloyal to Israel).<\/p>\n

Haaretz reports that officials in Germany, such as Felix Klein, the country\u2019s antisemitism commissioner, and Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, are being allowed to define not only who is an antisemite, typically using support for Israel as the yardstick, but are also determining who are good Jews \u2013 those politically like them \u2013 and who are bad Jews \u2013 those who disagree with them.<\/p>\n

Despite Germany\u2019s horrific recent history of Jew hatred, the German government, local authorities, the media, universities and cultural institutions have been encouraged by figures like Klein and Schuster to hound German Jews, even Israeli Jews living and working in Germany, from the country\u2019s public and cultural space.<\/p>\n

When, for example, a group of Israeli Jewish academics in Berlin held a series of online discussions about Zionism last year on the website of their art school, an Israeli reporter soon broke the story of a \u201cscandal\u201d involving boycott supporters receiving funding from the German government. Hours later the art school had pulled down the site, while the German education ministry issued a statement clarifying that it had provided no funding. The Israeli embassy officially declared the discussions held by these Israelis as \u201cantisemitic\u201d, and a German foundation that documents antisemitism added the group to the list of antisemitic incidents it records.<\/p>\n

Described as \u2018kapos\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

So repressive has the cultural and political atmosphere grown in Germany that there has been a small backlash among cultural leaders. Some have dared to publish a letter protesting against the role of Klein, the antisemitism commissioner. Haaretz reports:<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe antisemitism czar, the letter charged, is working \u2018in synergy with the Israeli government\u2019 in an effort \u2018to discredit and silence opponents of Israel\u2019s policies\u2019 and is abetting the \u2018instrumentalization\u2019 that undermines the true struggle against antisemitism.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Figures like Klein have been so focused on tackling criticism of Israel from the left, including the Jewish left, that they have barely noted the \u201cacute danger Jews in Germany face due to the surge in far-right antisemitism\u201d, the letter argues.<\/p>\n

Again, the same picture can be seen across Europe. In the UK, the opposition Labour party, which should be a safe space for those leading the anti-racism struggle, is purging itself of Jews critical of Israel and using anti-semitism smears against prominent anti-racists, especially from other oppressed minorities.<\/p>\n

Extraordinarily, Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, one of the founders of Jewish Voice for Labour, which supports Corbyn, recently found herself suspended by Starmer\u2019s Labour. She had just appeared in a moving video in which she explained the ways antisemitism was being used by Jewish organisations to smear Jewish left-wingers like herself as \u201ctraitors\u201d and \u201ckapos\u201d \u2013 an incendiary term of abuse, as Wimborne-Idrissi points out, that refers to \u201ca Jewish inmate of a concentration camp who collaborated with the [Nazi] authorities, people who collaborated in the annihilation of their own people\u201d.<\/p>\n

In suspending her, Starmer effectively endorsed this campaign by the UK\u2019s Jewish establishment of incitement against, and vilification of, leftwing Jews.<\/p>\n

Earlier, Marc Wadsworth, a distinguished black anti-racism campaigner, found himself similarly suspended<\/a> by Labour when he exposed the efforts of Ruth Smeeth, then a Labour MP and a former Jewish official in the Israel lobby group BICOM, to recruit the media to her campaign smearing political opponents on the left as antisemites.<\/p>\n

In keeping with the rapid erosion of critical thinking in civil society organisations designed to uphold basic freedoms, Smeeth was recently appointed director of the prestigious free speech organisation Index on Censorship. There she can now work on suppressing criticism of Israel \u2013 and attack \u201cbad Jews\u201d \u2013 under cover of fighting censorship. In the new, inverted reality, censorship refers not to the smearing and silencing of a \u201cbad Jew\u201d like Wimborne-Idrissi, but to criticism of Israel over its human rights abuses, which supposedly \u201ccensors\u201d the identification of \u201cgood Jews\u201d with Israel \u2013 now often seen as the crime of \u201ccausing offence\u201d.<\/p>\n

Boy who cried wolf<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Haaretz article helps to contextualise Europe\u2019s current antisemitism \u201cwitch-hunt\u201d, which targets anyone who criticises Israel or stands in solidarity with oppressed Palestinians, or associates with such people. It is an expansion of the earlier campaign by the Jewish establishment against \u201cthe wrong kind of Jew\u201d, as identified by Finkelstein in The Holocaust Industry. But this time Jewish organisations are playing a much higher-stakes, and more dangerous, political game.<\/p>\n

Haaretz rightly fears that the Jewish leadership in Europe is not only silencing ordinary Jews but degrading the meaning \u2013 the shock value \u2013 of antisemitism through the very act of politicising it. Jewish organisations risk alienating the European left, which has historically stood with them against Jew hatred from the right. European anti-racists suddenly find themselves equated with, and smeared as, fledgling neo-Nazis.<\/p>\n

If those who support human rights and demand an end to the oppression of Palestinians find themselves labelled antisemitic, it will become ever harder to distinguish between bogus (weaponised) \u201cantisemitism\u201d on the left and real Jew hatred from the right. The antisemitism smearers \u2013 and their fellow travellers like Keir Starmer \u2013 are likely to end up suffering their very own \u201cboy who cried wolf\u201d syndrome.<\/p>\n

Or as Haaretz notes:<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe issue that is bothering the critics of the Bundestag [German parliament] resolution is whether the extension of the concept of antisemitism to encompass criticism of Israel is not actually adversely affecting the battle against antisemitism. The argument is that the ease with which the accusation is leveled could have the effect of eroding the concept itself.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Antisemitism Industry<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is worth noting the shared features of the new Antisemitism Industry and Finkelstein\u2019s earlier discussions of the Holocaust Industry.<\/p>\n

In his book, Finkelstein identifies the \u201cwrong Jews\u201d as people like his mother, who survived a Nazi death camp as the rest of her family perished. These surviving Jews, Finkelstein argues, were valued by the Holocaust Industry only in so far as they served as a promotional tool for the Jewish establishment to accumulate more wealth and cultural and political status. Otherwise, the victims were ignored because the actual Holocaust\u2019s message \u2013 in contrast to the Jewish leadership\u2019s representation of it \u2013 was universal: that we must oppose and fight all forms of racism because they lead to persecution and genocide.<\/p>\n

Instead the Holocaust Industry promoted a particularist, self-interested lesson that the Holocaust proves Jews are uniquely oppressed and that they therefore deserve a unique solution: a state, Israel, that must be given unique leeway by western states to commit crimes in violation of international law. The Holocaust Industry \u2013 very much to be distinguished from the real events of the Holocaust \u2013 is deeply entwined in, and rationalised by, the perpetuation of the racialist, colonial project of Israel.<\/p>\n

In the case of the Antisemitism Industry, the \u201cwrong Jew\u201d surfaces again. This time the witch-hunt targets Jewish leftwingers, Jews critical of Israel, Jews opposed to the occupation, and Jews who support a boycott of the illegal settlements or of Israel itself. Again, the problem with these \u201cbad Jews\u201d is that they allude to a universal lesson, one that says Palestinians have at least as much right to self-determination, to dignity and security, in their historic homeland as Jewish immigrants who fled European persecution.<\/p>\n

In contrast to the \u201cbad Jews\u201d, the Antisemitism Industry demands that a particularist conclusion be drawn about Israel \u2013 just as a particularist conclusion was earlier drawn by the Holocaust Industry. It says that to deny Jews a state is to leave them defenceless against the eternal virus of antisemitism. In this conception, the Holocaust may be uniquely abhorrent but it is far from unique. Non-Jews, given the right circumstances, are only too capable of carrying out another Holocaust. Jews must therefore always be protected, always on guard, always have their weapons (or in Israel\u2019s case, its nuclear bombs) to hand.<\/p>\n

\u2018Get out of jail\u2019 card<\/strong><\/p>\n

This view, of course, seeks to ignore, or marginalise, other victims of the Holocaust \u2013 Romanies, communists, gays \u2013 and other kinds of racism. It needs to create a hierarchy of racisms, a competition between them, in which hatred of Jews is at the pinnacle. This is how we arrived at an absurdity: that anti-Zionism \u2013 misrepresented as the rejection of a refuge for Jews, rather than the reality that it rejects an ethnic, colonial state oppressing Palestinians \u2013 is the same as antisemitism.<\/p>\n

Extraordinarily, as the Haaretz article clarifies, German officials are oppressing \u201cbad Jews\u201d, at the instigation of Jewish organisations, to prevent, as they see it, the re-emergence of the far-right and neo-Nazis. The criticisms of Israel made by the \u201cbad Jew\u201d are thereby not just dismissed as ideologically unsound or delusions but become proof that these Jews are colluding with, or at least nourishing, the Jew haters.<\/p>\n

In this way, Germany, the UK and much of Europe have come to justify the exclusion of the \u201cwrong Jew\u201d \u2013 those who uphold universal principles for the benefit of all \u2013 from the public space. Which, of course, is exactly what Israel wants, because, rooted as it is in an ideology of ethnic exclusivity as a \u201cJewish state\u201d, it necessarily rejects universal ethics.<\/p>\n

What we see here is an illustration of a principle at the heart of Israel\u2019s state ideology of Zionism: Israel needs antisemitism. Israel would quite literally have to invent antisemitism if it did not exist.<\/p>\n

This is not hyperbole. The idea that the \u201cvirus of antisemitism\u201d lies semi-dormant in every non-Jew waiting for a chance to overwhelm its host is the essential rationale for Israel. If the Holocaust was an exceptional historical event, if antisemitism was an ancient racism that in its modern incarnation followed the patterns of prejudice and hatred familiar in all racisms, from anti-black bigotry to Islamophobia, Israel would be not only redundant but an abomination \u2013 because it has been set up to dispossess and abuse another group, the Palestinians.<\/p>\n

Antisemitism is Israel\u2019s \u201cget out of jail\u201d card. Antisemitism serves to absolve Israel of the racism it structurally embodies and that would be impossible to overlook were Israel deprived of the misdirection weaponised<\/em> antisemitism provides.<\/p>\n

An empty space<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Haaretz article provides a genuine service by not only reminding us that \u201cbad Jews\u201d exist but in coming to their defence \u2013 something that European media is no longer willing to do. To defend \u201cbad Jews\u201d like Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi is to be contaminated with the same taint of antisemitism that justified the ejection of these Jews from the public space.<\/p>\n

Haaretz records the effort of a few brave cultural institutions in Germany to protest, to hold the line, against this new McCarthyism. Their stand may fail. If it does, you may never become aware of it.<\/p>\n

Once, the \u201cbad Jews\u201d have been smeared into silence, as Palestinians and those who stand in solidarity with them largely have been already; when social media has de-platformed critics of Israel as Jew haters; when the media and political parties enforce this silence so absolutely they no longer need to smear anyone as an antisemite because these \u201cantisemites\u201d have been disappeared; when the Jewish \u201ccommunity\u201d speaks with one voice because its other voices have been eliminated; when the censorship is complete, you will not know it.<\/p>\n

There will be no record of what was lost. There will be simply an empty space, a blank slate, where discussions of Israel\u2019s crimes against Palestinians once existed. What you will hear instead is only what Israel and its partisans want you to hear. Your ignorance will be blissfully complete.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photograph Source: Kate Ausburn \u2013 CC BY 2.0 The Israeli newspaper Haaretz has run a fascinating\u00a0long report\u00a0this week offering a disturbing snapshot of the political climate rapidly emerging\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2473"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2473"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2474,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2473\/revisions\/2474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}