DoD
2006-10-12 16:45:51 UTC
[Many thanks to Lisa for the original pointer to this exceptional article
that unfortunately encapsules what we see on these forums WRT Israel. This
artcle puts together many of my thoughts over the past few years very well]
Anti-zionism as an Expression of Anti-Semitism in Recent Years
Robert Wistrich
This is a translation of a lecture held on 10 December , 1984 at Study
Circle on World Jewry in the home of the President of Israel
I have set out to trace some of the links between anti-Zionism and classical
anti-Semitism as they have found expression in recent times. This task is
all the more urgent as it has become increasingly apparent since the early
1970s that there has been an orchestrated campaign against the Jewish State,
Zionism and the Jewish people as a whole, a campaign whose impact
constitutes a serious threat to our status in the world and ultimately to
our very existence. This campaign has now acquired such a global dimension
and resonance that I believe it can be compared to the threat posed to Jews
by Nazism in the period of its upsurge - before it assumed governmental
power; this in spite of the very considerable differences in the status of
the Jews and attitudes towards them in the non-Jewish world which existed
then and which obtain now. In spite of all the positive changes which
occurred in the wake of the Holocaust, the last decade with its cumulative
anti-Zionism has led to a dangerous regression which calls into question the
over-optimistic assumptions of the 1950s and 1960s. Then it was still
believed that Israel would constitute a completely new beginning and by its
very existence lead to the gradual disappearance of anti-Semitism in the
gentile world. In fact, the opposite has happened. Not only have
anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, historically distinct and even antithetical
ideologies, become interrelated: Israel itself is today the prime cause and
pretext of a partly novel form of anti-Semitism, as puzzling as it is
disturbing.
I will focus on two aspects only, of this phenomenon, both of which are
interconnected and which have assumed particular importance in the last four
or five years: the attempt to stigmatize Israel as a "Nazi" state, and the
parallel campaign by some anti-Zionist circle to rewrite the history of the
Holocaust as a Zionist conspiracy or as a collaboration between Nazis and
Zionists to murder the Jewish masses in Europe. The very extremism of such
claims makes it tempting to dismiss them as the sick product of a lunatic
fringe which no sane person could possibly take seriously and which could
never hope to influence public opinion. Unfortunately, this is not quite the
case and bitter experience has taught us that such paranoid distortions of
reality can reach a wide audience and exercise a fateful impact on the
future. Moreover, it is precisely the equation of Zionism with Nazism which
is in my opinion the most characteristic mode of the new anti-Semitic
anti-Zionism in the early 1980s, one which inverts all our assumptions and
therefore deserves special attention and consideration.
This is not an easy subject to discuss for emotional reasons on which I do
not need to elaborate in this forum. But there are also methodological and
intellectual difficulties. How can we be sure that anti-Zionism, even of the
more extreme kind that I shall be discussing, is not perhaps the case that
even the most vehement anti-Zionism is not really inspired by hatred of
Jews? We all know that in the 19th century Jews themselves were among the
leading opponents of Zionism and to this day ultra-Orthodox Judaism sharply
denounces the Zionist "heresy" and the State of Israel. Many left-wing and
liberal Jews in the Diaspora who oppose Zionism would forcefully deny that
they are anti-Semitic and yet some of these Jews openly compare Zionism with
Nazism. This fact has provided an effective smokescreen for Soviet, Arab and
neo-Nazi antisemites to claim that they are "only" against Israel even as
they openly discriminate against, threaten or attack Diaspora Jews.
Anti-Zionism has undoubtedly provided a wonderful alibi for anti-Semitism in
deeds to cover itself with a theoretical halo of virginal purity and good
intentions. It has also permitted anti-Semitic stereotypes to enter areas of
the world, particularly in Asia and Africa, where there was previously no
tradition or cultural substructure of Judeophobia. While at the same time in
the post-war Western democracies anti-Zionism has provided a vehicle for the
re-emergence of anti-Jewish attitudes which were for some twenty to
twenty-five years partially submerged. This does not appear to me to be an
accidental connection or mere coincidence of events. On the other hand, our
analytic understanding is complicated by the fact that today nobody wishes
to declare himself openly as an anti-Semite. Even neo-Nazis in the West are
careful to wrap their racist mania in the appropriate "anti-Zionist"
terminology, while on the Left those who shout loudes against "Nazi" Israel
are usually self-proclaimed militant anti-racist.
So today we are seemingly confronted by an anti-Semitism which springs to
the defense of all victims of racial oppression except the Jews - the
paradigmatic example of such victims - who are now transformed into
perpetrators and prototypes of racism! The Zionism is Nazism libel has built
on this inversion of images which goes much deeper than is often realized
here in Israel. Perhaps only people like myself, who have lived most of
their lives in the Diaspora and witnessed the transformation that occurred
in the 1970s (in my own case in England), can really grasp the full
significance of this change. This does not mean that we should therefore
stick the label of anti-Semitism on all forms of anti-Zionism, let alone on
all criticisms of the Sate of Israel and its policies. We have enemies
enough without unnecessarily extending their number by unwarranted
accusations. Moreover, even if it were not anti-Jewish, the contemporary
forms of anti-Zionism would be dangerous enough in their own right to demand
a searching analysis and effort to develop an antidote.
But it appears to me that there is a basic continuity between classical
anti-Semitism and contemporary anti-Zionism which can and should guide us in
our search. Both ideologies seek in practice to deprive the Jew of his right
to an equal place in the world; to limit his activity and freedom of
movement; his human civic and political rights, and even his very right to
exist - at least in the more radical formulation. Both anti-Semitism and
anti-Zionism imply that the Jews have no claim to be a free independent
people like other peoples, to define themselves according to universally
acceptable criteria of self-determination, to enjoy the fruits of individual
or collective emancipation. Thus both ideologies are built on the negation
of Jewish rights and seek to drive the Jews back into a ghetto - whether it
is physical or symbolic. The Je4ws must be confined to the status of a
pariah nation. In a word, they do not belong.
For the European antisemites of the 19th century, Jews did not belong to
European Christian culture. They were "Semites" or "Asiatics", Eternally
alien to Christian, "Aryan", society. For contemporary anti-Zionist, in
particular for most of our Arab neighbors, Israel is ironically enough an
alien Western implant in the Middle East, without roots in the region or any
right to a legitimate, equal and autonomous presence as a sovereign state.
The goal of Arab anti-Zionism is ultimately to reduce Israel (or the Jews as
a collectivity) to their age-old humiliated status under Islam, as dhimmis
"protected" by Moslem "tolerance" and living on grace rather than by right
in its midst. This type of anti-Zionism seeks to de-emancipate the Jews as
an independent nation just as modern secular European anti-Semitism
insistently sought to de-emancipate the Jews as free and equal individuals
in civil society and as an integral part of the body politic of the
nation-state. Anti-Zionsim continues the discriminatory theory and practice
of classical anti-Semitism, transferring it to an international plane. It
wishes to re-ghettoize the Jewish nation, just as post-emancipation
antisemites sought to return the Jewish community to the pre-modern ghetto.
In both cases, we witness a conscious effort to delegitimize Jewish
self-definition and to undermine the dominant mode of Jewish group
existence. In the Middle Ages the main thrust of this delegitimization was
anti-Judaism - directed by the Christian church against the religion by
which Jews as a whole defined themselves; in the era of emancipation, it
took the secular "scientific" form of anti-Semitism - Jews are an inferior
race and therefore don not deserve civil equality or else they are dangerous
parasites and must be excluded from human society.
In the post-war era of the Jewish State, delegitimization is no longer
primarily racial or religious but ideological and political. There are
several reasons for this change. In the first place, racial delegitimization
in the post-1945 world, which has been decolonized and where "racism" is
officially considered by the Third World as the original sin of humanity, is
an ineffective weapon. Religious bigotry is also widely considered as a
reactionary phenomenon - especially in the West - though much less so in the
Islamic world where it continues to play a very significant role in Arab
anti-Zionism. On the other hand, ideological opposition, particularly when
it employs the fashionable "progressive" terminology of anti-Imperialism, is
generally acceptable.
The second major reason is that Israel has become the main embodiment in
Jewish and non-Jewish eyes of the modern Jewish group identity and is
therefore the obvious target for anti-Semitic invective. Delegitimization of
Israel and its ideological basis - Zionism- is the most direct way in our
time to damage Jewish interests and prepare the way for the destruction of
Jewish identity. This is clear enough to the Soviet Union, the Arab and
Moslem states and the Jews-baiters all over the world. It is not apparently
clear to many Jews and non-Jewish liberals who still lend their hand, often
unconsciously and without always understanding the logical consequences, to
the enemies of Israel.
The Soviet Union has played a special role in the world-wide campaign of
delegitimization of Zionism, Judaism and Israel since the late 1960s. It has
taken over in practice the heritage of Nazi anti-Semitism and already in
Stalin's last years, the paranoid theory of the world Jewish conspiracy in
Marxist-Leninist disguise, acquired an "anti-Zionist". tinge. In the past 15
years, it has also been the Soviet Union which has stood in the forefront of
the global campaign to equate Zionism with Nazism, just as it orchestrated
the infamous Zionism is Racism resolution at the U.N. in November 1975 in
conjunction with the Arab states. The slander that Israel is a "Nazi" state
should be seen as an escalation of the earlier campaign, one which in the
early 1980s has moreover achieved some resonance in the West, especially
after the violence and destruction in Lebanon. The Arab role in the
propagation of the Zionist-Nazi equation is today no less significant, but
in the past it was not so evident- possibly for the reason that many Arab
nationalists in the early post-war period still identified with Hitler and
Nazism. Their only regret was that the Germans had failed to truly complete
the "Final Solution" and as a result the State of Israel had emerged.
For the Arabs and above all the Palestinian leadership, the Holocaust was
never really absorbed in its horrific dimensions of inhumanity, and the real
collaboration of certain Arab leaders (beginning with Grand Mufti of
Jerusalem with the Nazis was repressed. Instead the Nazi Holocaust was
perceived mainly as a political tool in the hands of Zionist. To counteract
this weapon, the Palestinian tragedy had to be inflated into a new and even
more horrific Holocaust instigated by Israel itself. Zionism was allegedly
responsible for this terrible and unique crime; hence Ahmed Shukeiry (the
first leader of the PLO) could declare in a U.N. speech of 4 December 1961:
"Zionism was nastier than Fascism, uglier than Nazism, more hateful than
imperialism, more dangerous than imperialism. Zionism was a combination of
all these traits."
In the late 1960s the PLO began to grasp the utility of projecting the Nazi
horror directly onto Israel and utilizing the prestige of the European
anti-Nazi resistance for their own cause. For Western consumption, PLO
propaganda now stressed the similarities between the Palestinians' condition
in the Middle East (as a result of Israeli "oppression") and that of the
Jews of Europe under Hitler's rule. Were not they, too (that is, the
Palestine Arabs), a homeless, persecuted people evicted from their lands,
defenseless, stateless, refugees deprived of independence and basic human
dignity? One can recognize the factual elements in this presentation without
necessarily sharing the extremely one-sided and demonological view of
Zionism as the sole or even main culprit, responsible for this state of
affairs.
What is more important for our purpose tonight is the real impact of this
inversion of traditional images of persecutors and victims on Western public
opinion since 1967. It was a major propaganda coup for the PLO that it
partly succeeded in adapting "Zionist" terminology for its won purposes -
turning the symbolism of the "return " of an exiled people to its homeland
against Israel itself. This campaign is implicitly anti-Jewish in a subtle
and insidious sense, deliberately playing on the guilt feelings and
sensibilities of Europeans regarding the Holocaust. By destroying or driving
the Jew out of Europe, it is argued, Zionism led to an even greater
"crime" - the expulsion of Palestinian Arabs by Israeli Jews. Therefore it
is the moral responsibility of the West to unconditionally support the
Palestinians. How often one has heard this Arab argument repeated by
European statesmen and intellectuals in the past fifteen years pro-Arab
policies generally adopted for quite different and very cynical reasons of
self-interest.
At the same time, Arab propaganda has deliberately sought to strip the Nazi
Holocaust of its unique and Jewish content- that is, when Arab money is not
actually financing the publication of so-called "revisionist" literature,
which denies that the murder of six million Jews ever took place! These
efforts did not achieve much resonance in the West until the Lebanon war.
Suddenly a significant section of the Western press - by no means
"anti-Zionist" in an ideological sense - began to draw startling parallels
between Lebanon and Lidice, Israelis and Nazis, the Star of David and the
Swastika, the Palestinians and the embattled Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto. Was
this anti-Semitism, latent or manifest, old or new, or simply media
sensationalism and the desire to package a great human tragedy in black and
white terms, with the Israelis as the natural villains?
Perhaps anti-Semitism is not quite the right word, though as the former
editor of the London Observer, Conor Cruise O'Brien, pointed out in that
newspaper, June 1982. For the people in question, to quote this astute
observer, were even extravagantly philo-Semitic these days, in their
feelings for the Arabic-speaking branch of the Semitic linguistic family".
Obrien suggested a new term, "anti-Jewism" - "it's an ugly word, so it fits
nicely". He proposed "a pragmatic test, for possible "anti-Jewism" in
discussion of Israel" - namely "if your interlocutor can't keep Hitler out
of the conversation, if he is. feverishly turning Jews into Nazis and Arabs
intro Jews - why then I think you may be talking to a anti-Jewist."
The O'Brien litmus test is certainly a useful guide for identifying a major
component of contemporary anti-Semitic anti-Zionism in both Eat and Wet. In
the Communist world, this type of "anti-Jewish" dates back at least 30 years
to the period of the Slansky trial in Czechoslovakia and the so called
"Doctors' Plot" orchestrated by the dying Stalin. But it only attained full
force after the massive Arab defeat in June 1967, when the USSR, to revive
its own damaged prestige, embarked on a systematic campaign to totally
discredit Israel, Zionism and Judaism, One of its most widely used weapons
was the remorseless repetition of the legend that the Zionist had already
sought in the 1930s to create a "pro-Nazi" state in the Middle East, that
they had actively participated with the Germans in the mass destruction of
European Jewry, that they had sabotaged Jewish resistance in the ghettos and
served as a "fifth column" for the Wehrmacht in the conquered territories of
Europe. Both Nazis and Zionist supposedly signed secret agreements which
condemned the Jews of Europe the gas chambers in return for German support
for Jewish "fascist" aims in Palestine!
The interesting fact is that in recent years these grotesque Soviet
blood-libels have been taken up by a part of the radical Left - especially
the Trotskyists - in Western Europe and America. This trend is most striking
in Great Britain, of which I have the greatest first-hand experience - a
country which in the last decade has proved increasingly receptive to the
most varied kinds of anti-Zionist rhetoric. The willingness of supposedly
anti-Soviet radical leftists to swallow these made in Russia fabrications,
provides food for thought. Are they in fact nothing but puppets of His
Master's Voice in Moscow or bought lackeys of Arab petro-dollars? Perhaps in
some cases, this is indeed the reason. But the truth, I think, is more
disturbing than that. Anti-Zionism has in the past fifteen to twenty years,
gradually become an integral part of the cultural code of many Leftist and
some liberal circles - an enemy on a par with Imperialism, racism and
militarism - and invariably identified with these evils.
Precisely because it sees itself as "anti-fascist", this Western radical
culture is militantly anti-Zionist and can very easily slide into the
ultimate step of equating Nazism with Zionism, the Third Reich with Israel,
the Wehrmacht with Zahal. Unlike the radical Right, it does not desire the
rehabilitation of Nazism, it does not deny the Holocaust and at least in
theory it believes that anti-Semitism is a reactionary, racist doctrine to
be fought no less strongly than Zionism itself. Nevertheless, I would claim
that the falsifiers of the anti-Israeli Left who now rewrite the history of
the Holocaust as a story of Nazi-Zionist "collaboration" are no less
dangerous than the neo-Nazi "revisionists" and possible more effective.
Unlike their Soviet models, they may actually believe the libels they
propagate and this gives them a certain credibility - especially when they
are Jews. Their emergence was made possible by the general climate of
anti-Zionist opinion in the West, greatly stimulated by the turn to the
Right in Israel after 1977 and the Lebanon war, which provided the
opportunity and the opening. Recent works by Lenni Brenner, such Zionism in
the Age of the Dictators, or Tony Greenstein, Zionism - Antisemitism's
Twin in Jewish Garb - both written by Jewish Leftists (one American, the
other British) - are increasingly symptomatic of the times we live in.
Much more disturbing was the way that the Lebanon war provoked an orgy of
media denunciation directed at Israel's so-called "genocide", a fantastic
legend briefly given credence even in the so-called quality press in the
West. Suddenly, ideological opinions on the "fascist" or "Nazi" nature of
Zionism which had belonged to the margins of Western society, were taken
seriously and acquired a new respectability. Yitzhak Shamir's past as an
underground terrorist was, for example, scrutinized with extraordinary
intensity when he became Prime Minister in 1983 and his alleged contacts
with the Nazis were inflated into wild accusations about the historically
rooted "fascist" character of Zionism. It was not only the radical
Trotskyist fringe of the Labor and Left-wing press in Britain and other
Western countries that indulged in such analogies. They could also draw
sustenance; it should be pointed out, from irresponsible voices in Israel
itself who are frequently quoted in anti-Zionist literature abroad to
provide cover against charges of anti-Semitic bias and prejudice.
The anti-Zionist mood intensified across the political spectrum in the West
and thus a revision of the past and present with regard to Zionism began to
take place, for the first time reflecting motifs long familiar from Soviet
propaganda. For example, it was now alleged that Zionism had always allied
itself with reactionary forces and rabid antisemites in order to achieve its
"criminal" goals. It was not only detrimental to Diaspora Jewish interests,
but it had deliberately and callously abandoned the Jews during the
Holocaust to their fate. It was, moreover, a cruel racist doctrine of
chosenness, which had inevitably and logically led to the "genocidal"
policies of Israel in Lebanon. In the radical Leftist and neo-Nazi press,
and also in writings by ultra-Orthodox Jewish fanatics, Hitler and the Nazi
mass murder seemed to pale into insignificance alongside the new Israeli
"fascism" in the Middle East -depicted as a threat to humanity as a whole.
Wild rhetoric on this scale was fairly novel in the West, but in Soviet
Russia it had been official Orwellian Newspeak since June 1967 when Soviet
Ambassador Fedorenko denounced the Israeli "war criminals" in the UN for
pursuing Hitlerite policies in the Wet Bank, while the war was still in
progress. Brezhnev himself at that time gave the signal to the Soviet media
by stating that the Israeli "invaders" were seeking to imitate the actions
of the Hitlerites. The Soviets did not wait for the advent of Mr. Begin or
Mr. Sharon to brand Israel's leaders as fascist executioners. The late Moshe
Dayan and Golda Meir, leaders of the Israeli Labor government, were favorite
targets in the Soviet disinformation effort of the early 1970s, accused of
ruthlessly pursuing the Nazi derma of Lebensraum, of ruling hapless Arabs in
the spirit of a masterace (Herrenvolk), of establishing concentration camps
and even of sterilizing the local population.
At that time, however, there were few people in the West ready to credit
such obvious falsehoods. The Nazi-Zionist equation only gradually
infiltrated the Western world, partly through the channel o the communist
parties and the growing influence of Arab money and diplomacy after the oil
crisis of 1973 In addition, there were local causes, at least in Western
Europe, which helped prepare the ground. Rising anti-Americanism (and the
perception of Israel as an American stooge) was one factor; neutralist
tendencies and the growing strength of the peace movements, the policy of
appeasement (towards Russian and the Arabs) and the Third Worldism of many
European politicians and intellectuals, exacerbated the process.
At the same time, a subtle revision of the Hitler era took place in popular
works, films and even books by serious historians which perhaps indirectly
lent itself to the irresponsible comparisons that have been drawn in the
early 1980s between Nazism and more current phenomena. The result of all
these trends which were to culminate ingrossly disproportionate Western
reactions t the Lebanon war, was the definitive end of the brief era of
European "philosemitism" and pro-Israel ism, which under the impact of the
Holocaust had in fact sentimentalized the Jews as model victims. In their
place came new victims, above all the Palestinians - themselves sacrificed,
so it was suggested by the anti-Zionists, to make way for the creation of a
Jewish State in which they were fated to be objects of racist
discrimination.
These symbolic post-1967 reversals of image had their origins in the
subculture of the new Left in the late 1960s, which peaked just when the
Six-Day War had sent shock waves through the world and had transformed the
European and Western perception of Israel and the Jews. Though the New Left
quickly faded as a political force, its influence penetrated intro new and
more lasting trends such as the "Green" (Ecological) and Peace movements,
Feminism, a new immigrant and ethnic militancy, the impact of Arab and Third
World elements and causes at Western universities, etc. The anti-Israel and
anti-Zionist ideological bias of the radical Left was considerably
strengthened by these developments and it also spread onto the media -
especially television- where it began to exert amass influence. By no means
all of this anti-Israelism was anti-Semitic in intent and much of the
reporting of Israel and the Middle East was no doubt motivated by sympathy
for Palestinians more than by hatred of Jews. Nevertheless, the overall,
cumulative effect was to create a very negative picture of the Jewish State.
It is this background along with a significant generation change which has
ultimately made possible the current fashion of drawing the Zionist-Nazi
parallel even in the Western democracies, The political , cultural and moral
damage to Israel and the Jewish people of this process of delegitimization
has been considerable, though it is not necessarily irreversible.
Images are notoriously volatile and Western public reaction to the Middle
East in the long term is difficult to predict. One cannot say that the Arab
cause has made tremendous gains in Western opinion, but the erosion of
Israel's standing and good name over the past decade is certainly palpable.
Many gentiles in the West and the Third World who in former times were
sympathetic to the Jewish State clearly feel let down and disappointed.
Sometimes this disappointment can lead to hatred. On the other hand, there
are also many influential people in Western politics and cultural life who
have not allowed themselves to be swept along by the anti-Israel hysteria.
Moreover, in the United States, where the situation is fundamentally
different in many ways from Europe, the image of Israel and Zionism, while
somewhat dented, still remains largely positive.
But if the picture is not entirely black , there are many troubling points
of concern. It must be realized that there is a new generation in the West
which has now entered politics and is also acquiring influence in cultural
life. Many of the new generation have been nourished on extremely negative
ideas concerning Israel and Zionism. The image of the ugly Israeli, which
they have acquired through various channels, has undoubtedly shaped their
outlook on international politics. In place of the money-grubbing Jew or the
subversive Jewish revolutionary of anti-Semitic mythology, they have been
exposed to new and more up-to -date stereotypes - those of the militarist,
racist and now even the "Nazi" Jews seeking to dominate the world by force.
An image of lust for power and reckless militarism can already be added to
the rich armory of anti-Semitic type-casting nourished over generations by
Christian, Moslem, Marxist and right-wing demonology. A reflex anti-Zionism
which may not always have been anti-Jewish in origin and intention, today
all too easily falls into the established groove of an endemic antisemitism
that has been an central feature of civilization for more than two
millennia. This development is particularly dangerous for the future of
Israel and the Jewish people because through anti-Zionism, a revival of all
the latent murderous potential of antisemitism is in fact already taking
place. Those responsible for decision-making in Israel have in my opinion.
Been too slow to appreciate this fact and its negative political
significance.
The Jews of Israel have perhaps tended in the past to dismiss the
seriousness of the ideological and political enmity that has built up in the
outside world towards them. Unfortunately, as recent development have shown,
what the gentiles think and say can be as important as what the Jews
actually do - words do have political consequences! The power of
propaganda, of the media and images can often be as decisive as winning
wars -a fact that was once very well understood by the Zionist leadership,
but has tended to be forgotten in more recent years. The negative
consequences of anti-Zionism have been most palpable and obvious for Israel
in the international sphere - in its standing in the United Nations and its
diplomatic isolation.
But the internal dangers should also not be forgotten - for example, the
growth of isolationist and extreme nationalist currents in Israel and even
the seeds of an Arabophobic tendency which in the past was much less
significant. These trends need to be uprooted while they are still only
potential dangers, if the anti-Zionist propaganda offensive from without is
not one day to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Israeli society is still
far from corresponding to the diabolic fantasy-image constructed by those
who seek to destroy it. But it is also no more immunized than any other
democracy from disintegrative trends, from extremism, racism and intolerance
which may tear it apart from within.
There is no less serious danger contained in the anti-Zionist drive of
recent years when we come to consider Diaspora Jews. In my opinion, one of
the objectives of the anti-Israel campaign has been to drive a wedge between
the Jewish State and its exposed Diaspora hinterland. The more wicked and
diabolical the State of Israel seems in the eyes of gentile public opinion,
the less likely Diaspora Jews are to support such a State - this is surely
the calculation of our enemies. How could World Jewry back a "Nazi" State
after what happened during the Holocaust? How can it support and subsidize
racial discrimination in Israel? There has, in fact, been a growing chorus
of gentile voices even in the West in recent years suggesting that the
Diaspora Jewry dissociate from this so-called "racist" aggressive Israel or
else it can expect to pay the price in terms of a justified (?) revival of
antisemitism. For, as accomplices in Israeli "crimes" through their
financial and political support, Diaspora Jews are ultimately no less
guilty. Clearly this type of moral and political blackmail may have its
impact on Jews outside Israel and the long-term consequences are
unpredictable.
It may, of course, well be that if anti-Zionism continues to assume an
extremist and antisemitic character, then Diaspora Jews will be obliged to
organize themselves, and to strengthen their ties with Israel and Zionism.
To some extent, the Zionism is Racism campaign did eventually have this
effect. On the other hand, an opposite result is no less likely. For it is,
after all, easier for the Diaspora Jew to lower his profile in
Israeli-related affairs when the temperature of anti-Zionism rises or even
to join in the anti-Israel consensus, than it is to swim against the
current. Only time can tell whether Diaspora Jewry will wilt under the
pressures of a hostile non-Jewish environment.
One thing should, however, be clear from this necessarily brief overview of
the current situation. Anti-Zionism of the type I have tried to describe is
a poisonous flower which has deliberately encouraged a process of alienation
between Israel and the nations, between Israel and the Diaspora, as well as
a sense of self-alienation within Israeli society itself. It has thereby
created the danger of irrational reactions on all sides in order to overcome
concrete political and moral problems by violent means. Hence the urgent
necessity to analyze and struggle against this phenomenon.
http://sicsa.huji.ac.il/Antizionism.htm
that unfortunately encapsules what we see on these forums WRT Israel. This
artcle puts together many of my thoughts over the past few years very well]
Anti-zionism as an Expression of Anti-Semitism in Recent Years
Robert Wistrich
This is a translation of a lecture held on 10 December , 1984 at Study
Circle on World Jewry in the home of the President of Israel
I have set out to trace some of the links between anti-Zionism and classical
anti-Semitism as they have found expression in recent times. This task is
all the more urgent as it has become increasingly apparent since the early
1970s that there has been an orchestrated campaign against the Jewish State,
Zionism and the Jewish people as a whole, a campaign whose impact
constitutes a serious threat to our status in the world and ultimately to
our very existence. This campaign has now acquired such a global dimension
and resonance that I believe it can be compared to the threat posed to Jews
by Nazism in the period of its upsurge - before it assumed governmental
power; this in spite of the very considerable differences in the status of
the Jews and attitudes towards them in the non-Jewish world which existed
then and which obtain now. In spite of all the positive changes which
occurred in the wake of the Holocaust, the last decade with its cumulative
anti-Zionism has led to a dangerous regression which calls into question the
over-optimistic assumptions of the 1950s and 1960s. Then it was still
believed that Israel would constitute a completely new beginning and by its
very existence lead to the gradual disappearance of anti-Semitism in the
gentile world. In fact, the opposite has happened. Not only have
anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, historically distinct and even antithetical
ideologies, become interrelated: Israel itself is today the prime cause and
pretext of a partly novel form of anti-Semitism, as puzzling as it is
disturbing.
I will focus on two aspects only, of this phenomenon, both of which are
interconnected and which have assumed particular importance in the last four
or five years: the attempt to stigmatize Israel as a "Nazi" state, and the
parallel campaign by some anti-Zionist circle to rewrite the history of the
Holocaust as a Zionist conspiracy or as a collaboration between Nazis and
Zionists to murder the Jewish masses in Europe. The very extremism of such
claims makes it tempting to dismiss them as the sick product of a lunatic
fringe which no sane person could possibly take seriously and which could
never hope to influence public opinion. Unfortunately, this is not quite the
case and bitter experience has taught us that such paranoid distortions of
reality can reach a wide audience and exercise a fateful impact on the
future. Moreover, it is precisely the equation of Zionism with Nazism which
is in my opinion the most characteristic mode of the new anti-Semitic
anti-Zionism in the early 1980s, one which inverts all our assumptions and
therefore deserves special attention and consideration.
This is not an easy subject to discuss for emotional reasons on which I do
not need to elaborate in this forum. But there are also methodological and
intellectual difficulties. How can we be sure that anti-Zionism, even of the
more extreme kind that I shall be discussing, is not perhaps the case that
even the most vehement anti-Zionism is not really inspired by hatred of
Jews? We all know that in the 19th century Jews themselves were among the
leading opponents of Zionism and to this day ultra-Orthodox Judaism sharply
denounces the Zionist "heresy" and the State of Israel. Many left-wing and
liberal Jews in the Diaspora who oppose Zionism would forcefully deny that
they are anti-Semitic and yet some of these Jews openly compare Zionism with
Nazism. This fact has provided an effective smokescreen for Soviet, Arab and
neo-Nazi antisemites to claim that they are "only" against Israel even as
they openly discriminate against, threaten or attack Diaspora Jews.
Anti-Zionism has undoubtedly provided a wonderful alibi for anti-Semitism in
deeds to cover itself with a theoretical halo of virginal purity and good
intentions. It has also permitted anti-Semitic stereotypes to enter areas of
the world, particularly in Asia and Africa, where there was previously no
tradition or cultural substructure of Judeophobia. While at the same time in
the post-war Western democracies anti-Zionism has provided a vehicle for the
re-emergence of anti-Jewish attitudes which were for some twenty to
twenty-five years partially submerged. This does not appear to me to be an
accidental connection or mere coincidence of events. On the other hand, our
analytic understanding is complicated by the fact that today nobody wishes
to declare himself openly as an anti-Semite. Even neo-Nazis in the West are
careful to wrap their racist mania in the appropriate "anti-Zionist"
terminology, while on the Left those who shout loudes against "Nazi" Israel
are usually self-proclaimed militant anti-racist.
So today we are seemingly confronted by an anti-Semitism which springs to
the defense of all victims of racial oppression except the Jews - the
paradigmatic example of such victims - who are now transformed into
perpetrators and prototypes of racism! The Zionism is Nazism libel has built
on this inversion of images which goes much deeper than is often realized
here in Israel. Perhaps only people like myself, who have lived most of
their lives in the Diaspora and witnessed the transformation that occurred
in the 1970s (in my own case in England), can really grasp the full
significance of this change. This does not mean that we should therefore
stick the label of anti-Semitism on all forms of anti-Zionism, let alone on
all criticisms of the Sate of Israel and its policies. We have enemies
enough without unnecessarily extending their number by unwarranted
accusations. Moreover, even if it were not anti-Jewish, the contemporary
forms of anti-Zionism would be dangerous enough in their own right to demand
a searching analysis and effort to develop an antidote.
But it appears to me that there is a basic continuity between classical
anti-Semitism and contemporary anti-Zionism which can and should guide us in
our search. Both ideologies seek in practice to deprive the Jew of his right
to an equal place in the world; to limit his activity and freedom of
movement; his human civic and political rights, and even his very right to
exist - at least in the more radical formulation. Both anti-Semitism and
anti-Zionism imply that the Jews have no claim to be a free independent
people like other peoples, to define themselves according to universally
acceptable criteria of self-determination, to enjoy the fruits of individual
or collective emancipation. Thus both ideologies are built on the negation
of Jewish rights and seek to drive the Jews back into a ghetto - whether it
is physical or symbolic. The Je4ws must be confined to the status of a
pariah nation. In a word, they do not belong.
For the European antisemites of the 19th century, Jews did not belong to
European Christian culture. They were "Semites" or "Asiatics", Eternally
alien to Christian, "Aryan", society. For contemporary anti-Zionist, in
particular for most of our Arab neighbors, Israel is ironically enough an
alien Western implant in the Middle East, without roots in the region or any
right to a legitimate, equal and autonomous presence as a sovereign state.
The goal of Arab anti-Zionism is ultimately to reduce Israel (or the Jews as
a collectivity) to their age-old humiliated status under Islam, as dhimmis
"protected" by Moslem "tolerance" and living on grace rather than by right
in its midst. This type of anti-Zionism seeks to de-emancipate the Jews as
an independent nation just as modern secular European anti-Semitism
insistently sought to de-emancipate the Jews as free and equal individuals
in civil society and as an integral part of the body politic of the
nation-state. Anti-Zionsim continues the discriminatory theory and practice
of classical anti-Semitism, transferring it to an international plane. It
wishes to re-ghettoize the Jewish nation, just as post-emancipation
antisemites sought to return the Jewish community to the pre-modern ghetto.
In both cases, we witness a conscious effort to delegitimize Jewish
self-definition and to undermine the dominant mode of Jewish group
existence. In the Middle Ages the main thrust of this delegitimization was
anti-Judaism - directed by the Christian church against the religion by
which Jews as a whole defined themselves; in the era of emancipation, it
took the secular "scientific" form of anti-Semitism - Jews are an inferior
race and therefore don not deserve civil equality or else they are dangerous
parasites and must be excluded from human society.
In the post-war era of the Jewish State, delegitimization is no longer
primarily racial or religious but ideological and political. There are
several reasons for this change. In the first place, racial delegitimization
in the post-1945 world, which has been decolonized and where "racism" is
officially considered by the Third World as the original sin of humanity, is
an ineffective weapon. Religious bigotry is also widely considered as a
reactionary phenomenon - especially in the West - though much less so in the
Islamic world where it continues to play a very significant role in Arab
anti-Zionism. On the other hand, ideological opposition, particularly when
it employs the fashionable "progressive" terminology of anti-Imperialism, is
generally acceptable.
The second major reason is that Israel has become the main embodiment in
Jewish and non-Jewish eyes of the modern Jewish group identity and is
therefore the obvious target for anti-Semitic invective. Delegitimization of
Israel and its ideological basis - Zionism- is the most direct way in our
time to damage Jewish interests and prepare the way for the destruction of
Jewish identity. This is clear enough to the Soviet Union, the Arab and
Moslem states and the Jews-baiters all over the world. It is not apparently
clear to many Jews and non-Jewish liberals who still lend their hand, often
unconsciously and without always understanding the logical consequences, to
the enemies of Israel.
The Soviet Union has played a special role in the world-wide campaign of
delegitimization of Zionism, Judaism and Israel since the late 1960s. It has
taken over in practice the heritage of Nazi anti-Semitism and already in
Stalin's last years, the paranoid theory of the world Jewish conspiracy in
Marxist-Leninist disguise, acquired an "anti-Zionist". tinge. In the past 15
years, it has also been the Soviet Union which has stood in the forefront of
the global campaign to equate Zionism with Nazism, just as it orchestrated
the infamous Zionism is Racism resolution at the U.N. in November 1975 in
conjunction with the Arab states. The slander that Israel is a "Nazi" state
should be seen as an escalation of the earlier campaign, one which in the
early 1980s has moreover achieved some resonance in the West, especially
after the violence and destruction in Lebanon. The Arab role in the
propagation of the Zionist-Nazi equation is today no less significant, but
in the past it was not so evident- possibly for the reason that many Arab
nationalists in the early post-war period still identified with Hitler and
Nazism. Their only regret was that the Germans had failed to truly complete
the "Final Solution" and as a result the State of Israel had emerged.
For the Arabs and above all the Palestinian leadership, the Holocaust was
never really absorbed in its horrific dimensions of inhumanity, and the real
collaboration of certain Arab leaders (beginning with Grand Mufti of
Jerusalem with the Nazis was repressed. Instead the Nazi Holocaust was
perceived mainly as a political tool in the hands of Zionist. To counteract
this weapon, the Palestinian tragedy had to be inflated into a new and even
more horrific Holocaust instigated by Israel itself. Zionism was allegedly
responsible for this terrible and unique crime; hence Ahmed Shukeiry (the
first leader of the PLO) could declare in a U.N. speech of 4 December 1961:
"Zionism was nastier than Fascism, uglier than Nazism, more hateful than
imperialism, more dangerous than imperialism. Zionism was a combination of
all these traits."
In the late 1960s the PLO began to grasp the utility of projecting the Nazi
horror directly onto Israel and utilizing the prestige of the European
anti-Nazi resistance for their own cause. For Western consumption, PLO
propaganda now stressed the similarities between the Palestinians' condition
in the Middle East (as a result of Israeli "oppression") and that of the
Jews of Europe under Hitler's rule. Were not they, too (that is, the
Palestine Arabs), a homeless, persecuted people evicted from their lands,
defenseless, stateless, refugees deprived of independence and basic human
dignity? One can recognize the factual elements in this presentation without
necessarily sharing the extremely one-sided and demonological view of
Zionism as the sole or even main culprit, responsible for this state of
affairs.
What is more important for our purpose tonight is the real impact of this
inversion of traditional images of persecutors and victims on Western public
opinion since 1967. It was a major propaganda coup for the PLO that it
partly succeeded in adapting "Zionist" terminology for its won purposes -
turning the symbolism of the "return " of an exiled people to its homeland
against Israel itself. This campaign is implicitly anti-Jewish in a subtle
and insidious sense, deliberately playing on the guilt feelings and
sensibilities of Europeans regarding the Holocaust. By destroying or driving
the Jew out of Europe, it is argued, Zionism led to an even greater
"crime" - the expulsion of Palestinian Arabs by Israeli Jews. Therefore it
is the moral responsibility of the West to unconditionally support the
Palestinians. How often one has heard this Arab argument repeated by
European statesmen and intellectuals in the past fifteen years pro-Arab
policies generally adopted for quite different and very cynical reasons of
self-interest.
At the same time, Arab propaganda has deliberately sought to strip the Nazi
Holocaust of its unique and Jewish content- that is, when Arab money is not
actually financing the publication of so-called "revisionist" literature,
which denies that the murder of six million Jews ever took place! These
efforts did not achieve much resonance in the West until the Lebanon war.
Suddenly a significant section of the Western press - by no means
"anti-Zionist" in an ideological sense - began to draw startling parallels
between Lebanon and Lidice, Israelis and Nazis, the Star of David and the
Swastika, the Palestinians and the embattled Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto. Was
this anti-Semitism, latent or manifest, old or new, or simply media
sensationalism and the desire to package a great human tragedy in black and
white terms, with the Israelis as the natural villains?
Perhaps anti-Semitism is not quite the right word, though as the former
editor of the London Observer, Conor Cruise O'Brien, pointed out in that
newspaper, June 1982. For the people in question, to quote this astute
observer, were even extravagantly philo-Semitic these days, in their
feelings for the Arabic-speaking branch of the Semitic linguistic family".
Obrien suggested a new term, "anti-Jewism" - "it's an ugly word, so it fits
nicely". He proposed "a pragmatic test, for possible "anti-Jewism" in
discussion of Israel" - namely "if your interlocutor can't keep Hitler out
of the conversation, if he is. feverishly turning Jews into Nazis and Arabs
intro Jews - why then I think you may be talking to a anti-Jewist."
The O'Brien litmus test is certainly a useful guide for identifying a major
component of contemporary anti-Semitic anti-Zionism in both Eat and Wet. In
the Communist world, this type of "anti-Jewish" dates back at least 30 years
to the period of the Slansky trial in Czechoslovakia and the so called
"Doctors' Plot" orchestrated by the dying Stalin. But it only attained full
force after the massive Arab defeat in June 1967, when the USSR, to revive
its own damaged prestige, embarked on a systematic campaign to totally
discredit Israel, Zionism and Judaism, One of its most widely used weapons
was the remorseless repetition of the legend that the Zionist had already
sought in the 1930s to create a "pro-Nazi" state in the Middle East, that
they had actively participated with the Germans in the mass destruction of
European Jewry, that they had sabotaged Jewish resistance in the ghettos and
served as a "fifth column" for the Wehrmacht in the conquered territories of
Europe. Both Nazis and Zionist supposedly signed secret agreements which
condemned the Jews of Europe the gas chambers in return for German support
for Jewish "fascist" aims in Palestine!
The interesting fact is that in recent years these grotesque Soviet
blood-libels have been taken up by a part of the radical Left - especially
the Trotskyists - in Western Europe and America. This trend is most striking
in Great Britain, of which I have the greatest first-hand experience - a
country which in the last decade has proved increasingly receptive to the
most varied kinds of anti-Zionist rhetoric. The willingness of supposedly
anti-Soviet radical leftists to swallow these made in Russia fabrications,
provides food for thought. Are they in fact nothing but puppets of His
Master's Voice in Moscow or bought lackeys of Arab petro-dollars? Perhaps in
some cases, this is indeed the reason. But the truth, I think, is more
disturbing than that. Anti-Zionism has in the past fifteen to twenty years,
gradually become an integral part of the cultural code of many Leftist and
some liberal circles - an enemy on a par with Imperialism, racism and
militarism - and invariably identified with these evils.
Precisely because it sees itself as "anti-fascist", this Western radical
culture is militantly anti-Zionist and can very easily slide into the
ultimate step of equating Nazism with Zionism, the Third Reich with Israel,
the Wehrmacht with Zahal. Unlike the radical Right, it does not desire the
rehabilitation of Nazism, it does not deny the Holocaust and at least in
theory it believes that anti-Semitism is a reactionary, racist doctrine to
be fought no less strongly than Zionism itself. Nevertheless, I would claim
that the falsifiers of the anti-Israeli Left who now rewrite the history of
the Holocaust as a story of Nazi-Zionist "collaboration" are no less
dangerous than the neo-Nazi "revisionists" and possible more effective.
Unlike their Soviet models, they may actually believe the libels they
propagate and this gives them a certain credibility - especially when they
are Jews. Their emergence was made possible by the general climate of
anti-Zionist opinion in the West, greatly stimulated by the turn to the
Right in Israel after 1977 and the Lebanon war, which provided the
opportunity and the opening. Recent works by Lenni Brenner, such Zionism in
the Age of the Dictators, or Tony Greenstein, Zionism - Antisemitism's
Twin in Jewish Garb - both written by Jewish Leftists (one American, the
other British) - are increasingly symptomatic of the times we live in.
Much more disturbing was the way that the Lebanon war provoked an orgy of
media denunciation directed at Israel's so-called "genocide", a fantastic
legend briefly given credence even in the so-called quality press in the
West. Suddenly, ideological opinions on the "fascist" or "Nazi" nature of
Zionism which had belonged to the margins of Western society, were taken
seriously and acquired a new respectability. Yitzhak Shamir's past as an
underground terrorist was, for example, scrutinized with extraordinary
intensity when he became Prime Minister in 1983 and his alleged contacts
with the Nazis were inflated into wild accusations about the historically
rooted "fascist" character of Zionism. It was not only the radical
Trotskyist fringe of the Labor and Left-wing press in Britain and other
Western countries that indulged in such analogies. They could also draw
sustenance; it should be pointed out, from irresponsible voices in Israel
itself who are frequently quoted in anti-Zionist literature abroad to
provide cover against charges of anti-Semitic bias and prejudice.
The anti-Zionist mood intensified across the political spectrum in the West
and thus a revision of the past and present with regard to Zionism began to
take place, for the first time reflecting motifs long familiar from Soviet
propaganda. For example, it was now alleged that Zionism had always allied
itself with reactionary forces and rabid antisemites in order to achieve its
"criminal" goals. It was not only detrimental to Diaspora Jewish interests,
but it had deliberately and callously abandoned the Jews during the
Holocaust to their fate. It was, moreover, a cruel racist doctrine of
chosenness, which had inevitably and logically led to the "genocidal"
policies of Israel in Lebanon. In the radical Leftist and neo-Nazi press,
and also in writings by ultra-Orthodox Jewish fanatics, Hitler and the Nazi
mass murder seemed to pale into insignificance alongside the new Israeli
"fascism" in the Middle East -depicted as a threat to humanity as a whole.
Wild rhetoric on this scale was fairly novel in the West, but in Soviet
Russia it had been official Orwellian Newspeak since June 1967 when Soviet
Ambassador Fedorenko denounced the Israeli "war criminals" in the UN for
pursuing Hitlerite policies in the Wet Bank, while the war was still in
progress. Brezhnev himself at that time gave the signal to the Soviet media
by stating that the Israeli "invaders" were seeking to imitate the actions
of the Hitlerites. The Soviets did not wait for the advent of Mr. Begin or
Mr. Sharon to brand Israel's leaders as fascist executioners. The late Moshe
Dayan and Golda Meir, leaders of the Israeli Labor government, were favorite
targets in the Soviet disinformation effort of the early 1970s, accused of
ruthlessly pursuing the Nazi derma of Lebensraum, of ruling hapless Arabs in
the spirit of a masterace (Herrenvolk), of establishing concentration camps
and even of sterilizing the local population.
At that time, however, there were few people in the West ready to credit
such obvious falsehoods. The Nazi-Zionist equation only gradually
infiltrated the Western world, partly through the channel o the communist
parties and the growing influence of Arab money and diplomacy after the oil
crisis of 1973 In addition, there were local causes, at least in Western
Europe, which helped prepare the ground. Rising anti-Americanism (and the
perception of Israel as an American stooge) was one factor; neutralist
tendencies and the growing strength of the peace movements, the policy of
appeasement (towards Russian and the Arabs) and the Third Worldism of many
European politicians and intellectuals, exacerbated the process.
At the same time, a subtle revision of the Hitler era took place in popular
works, films and even books by serious historians which perhaps indirectly
lent itself to the irresponsible comparisons that have been drawn in the
early 1980s between Nazism and more current phenomena. The result of all
these trends which were to culminate ingrossly disproportionate Western
reactions t the Lebanon war, was the definitive end of the brief era of
European "philosemitism" and pro-Israel ism, which under the impact of the
Holocaust had in fact sentimentalized the Jews as model victims. In their
place came new victims, above all the Palestinians - themselves sacrificed,
so it was suggested by the anti-Zionists, to make way for the creation of a
Jewish State in which they were fated to be objects of racist
discrimination.
These symbolic post-1967 reversals of image had their origins in the
subculture of the new Left in the late 1960s, which peaked just when the
Six-Day War had sent shock waves through the world and had transformed the
European and Western perception of Israel and the Jews. Though the New Left
quickly faded as a political force, its influence penetrated intro new and
more lasting trends such as the "Green" (Ecological) and Peace movements,
Feminism, a new immigrant and ethnic militancy, the impact of Arab and Third
World elements and causes at Western universities, etc. The anti-Israel and
anti-Zionist ideological bias of the radical Left was considerably
strengthened by these developments and it also spread onto the media -
especially television- where it began to exert amass influence. By no means
all of this anti-Israelism was anti-Semitic in intent and much of the
reporting of Israel and the Middle East was no doubt motivated by sympathy
for Palestinians more than by hatred of Jews. Nevertheless, the overall,
cumulative effect was to create a very negative picture of the Jewish State.
It is this background along with a significant generation change which has
ultimately made possible the current fashion of drawing the Zionist-Nazi
parallel even in the Western democracies, The political , cultural and moral
damage to Israel and the Jewish people of this process of delegitimization
has been considerable, though it is not necessarily irreversible.
Images are notoriously volatile and Western public reaction to the Middle
East in the long term is difficult to predict. One cannot say that the Arab
cause has made tremendous gains in Western opinion, but the erosion of
Israel's standing and good name over the past decade is certainly palpable.
Many gentiles in the West and the Third World who in former times were
sympathetic to the Jewish State clearly feel let down and disappointed.
Sometimes this disappointment can lead to hatred. On the other hand, there
are also many influential people in Western politics and cultural life who
have not allowed themselves to be swept along by the anti-Israel hysteria.
Moreover, in the United States, where the situation is fundamentally
different in many ways from Europe, the image of Israel and Zionism, while
somewhat dented, still remains largely positive.
But if the picture is not entirely black , there are many troubling points
of concern. It must be realized that there is a new generation in the West
which has now entered politics and is also acquiring influence in cultural
life. Many of the new generation have been nourished on extremely negative
ideas concerning Israel and Zionism. The image of the ugly Israeli, which
they have acquired through various channels, has undoubtedly shaped their
outlook on international politics. In place of the money-grubbing Jew or the
subversive Jewish revolutionary of anti-Semitic mythology, they have been
exposed to new and more up-to -date stereotypes - those of the militarist,
racist and now even the "Nazi" Jews seeking to dominate the world by force.
An image of lust for power and reckless militarism can already be added to
the rich armory of anti-Semitic type-casting nourished over generations by
Christian, Moslem, Marxist and right-wing demonology. A reflex anti-Zionism
which may not always have been anti-Jewish in origin and intention, today
all too easily falls into the established groove of an endemic antisemitism
that has been an central feature of civilization for more than two
millennia. This development is particularly dangerous for the future of
Israel and the Jewish people because through anti-Zionism, a revival of all
the latent murderous potential of antisemitism is in fact already taking
place. Those responsible for decision-making in Israel have in my opinion.
Been too slow to appreciate this fact and its negative political
significance.
The Jews of Israel have perhaps tended in the past to dismiss the
seriousness of the ideological and political enmity that has built up in the
outside world towards them. Unfortunately, as recent development have shown,
what the gentiles think and say can be as important as what the Jews
actually do - words do have political consequences! The power of
propaganda, of the media and images can often be as decisive as winning
wars -a fact that was once very well understood by the Zionist leadership,
but has tended to be forgotten in more recent years. The negative
consequences of anti-Zionism have been most palpable and obvious for Israel
in the international sphere - in its standing in the United Nations and its
diplomatic isolation.
But the internal dangers should also not be forgotten - for example, the
growth of isolationist and extreme nationalist currents in Israel and even
the seeds of an Arabophobic tendency which in the past was much less
significant. These trends need to be uprooted while they are still only
potential dangers, if the anti-Zionist propaganda offensive from without is
not one day to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Israeli society is still
far from corresponding to the diabolic fantasy-image constructed by those
who seek to destroy it. But it is also no more immunized than any other
democracy from disintegrative trends, from extremism, racism and intolerance
which may tear it apart from within.
There is no less serious danger contained in the anti-Zionist drive of
recent years when we come to consider Diaspora Jews. In my opinion, one of
the objectives of the anti-Israel campaign has been to drive a wedge between
the Jewish State and its exposed Diaspora hinterland. The more wicked and
diabolical the State of Israel seems in the eyes of gentile public opinion,
the less likely Diaspora Jews are to support such a State - this is surely
the calculation of our enemies. How could World Jewry back a "Nazi" State
after what happened during the Holocaust? How can it support and subsidize
racial discrimination in Israel? There has, in fact, been a growing chorus
of gentile voices even in the West in recent years suggesting that the
Diaspora Jewry dissociate from this so-called "racist" aggressive Israel or
else it can expect to pay the price in terms of a justified (?) revival of
antisemitism. For, as accomplices in Israeli "crimes" through their
financial and political support, Diaspora Jews are ultimately no less
guilty. Clearly this type of moral and political blackmail may have its
impact on Jews outside Israel and the long-term consequences are
unpredictable.
It may, of course, well be that if anti-Zionism continues to assume an
extremist and antisemitic character, then Diaspora Jews will be obliged to
organize themselves, and to strengthen their ties with Israel and Zionism.
To some extent, the Zionism is Racism campaign did eventually have this
effect. On the other hand, an opposite result is no less likely. For it is,
after all, easier for the Diaspora Jew to lower his profile in
Israeli-related affairs when the temperature of anti-Zionism rises or even
to join in the anti-Israel consensus, than it is to swim against the
current. Only time can tell whether Diaspora Jewry will wilt under the
pressures of a hostile non-Jewish environment.
One thing should, however, be clear from this necessarily brief overview of
the current situation. Anti-Zionism of the type I have tried to describe is
a poisonous flower which has deliberately encouraged a process of alienation
between Israel and the nations, between Israel and the Diaspora, as well as
a sense of self-alienation within Israeli society itself. It has thereby
created the danger of irrational reactions on all sides in order to overcome
concrete political and moral problems by violent means. Hence the urgent
necessity to analyze and struggle against this phenomenon.
http://sicsa.huji.ac.il/Antizionism.htm