Anti-Semitism vs. Anti-Zionism -
A Practical Manual
By Uri Avnery
Counterpunch
21 January, 2004
A
Hungarian Joke: During the June 1967 war, a Hungarian meets his friend.
"Why do you look so happy?" he asks. "I heard that the
Israelis shot down six Soviet-made MiGs today," his friend replies.
The next day, the
friend looks even more jubilant. "The Israelis downed another eight
MiGs," he announces.
On the third day,
the friend is crestfallen. "What happened? Didn't the Israelis
down any MiGs today?" the man asks. "They did," the friend
answers, "But today someone told me that the Israelis are Jews!"
This is the whole
story in a nutshell.
The Anti-Semite
hates the Jews because they are Jews, irrespective of their actions.
Jews may be hated because they are rich and ostentatious or because
they are poor and live in squalor. Because they played a major role
in the Bolshevik revolution or because some of them became incredibly
rich after the collapse of the Communist regime. Because they crucified
Jesus or because they infected Western culture with the "Christian
morality of compassion". Because they have no fatherland or because
they created the State of Israel.
That is in the nature
of all kinds of racism and chauvinism: One hates someone for being a
Jew, Arab, woman, black, Indian, Muslim, Hindu. His or her personal
attributes, actions, achievements are unimportant. If he or she belongs
to the abhorred race, religion or gender, they will be hated.
The answers to all
questions relating to anti-Semitism follow from this basic fact. For
example:
Is everybody who
criticizes Israel an anti-Semite?
Absolutely not.
Somebody who criticizes Israel for certain of our actions cannot be
accused of anti-Semitism for that. But somebody who hates Israel because
it is a Jewish state, like the Hungarian in the joke, is an anti-Semite.
It is not always easy to distinguish between the two kinds, because
shrewd anti-Semites pose as bona fide critics of Israel's actions. But
presenting all critics of Israel as anti-Semites is wrong and counter-productive,
it damages the fight against anti-Semitism.
Many deeply moral
persons, the cream of humanity, criticize our behavior in the occupied
territories. It is stupid to accuse them of anti-Semitism.
Can a person be
an anti-Zionist without being an anti-Semite?
Absolutely yes.
Zionism is a political creed and must be treated like any other. One
can be anti-Communist without being anti-Chinese, anti-Capitalist without
being anti-American, anti-Globalist, anti-Anything. Yet, again, it is
not always easy to draw the line, because real anti-Semites often pretend
just to be "anti-Zionists". They should not be helped by erasing
the distinction.
Can a person be
an anti-Semite and a Zionist?
Indeed, yes. The
founder of modern Zionism, Theodor Herzl, already tried to enlist the
support of notorious Russian anti-Semites, promising them to take the
Jews off their hands. Before World War II, the Zionist underground organization
IZL established military training camps in Poland under the auspices
of the anti-Semitic generals, who also wanted to get rid of the Jews.
Nowadays, the Zionist extreme Right receives and welcomes massive support
from the American fundamentalist evangelists, whom the majority of American
Jews, according to a poll published this week, consider profoundly anti-Semitic.
Their theology prophesies that on the eve of the second coming of Christ,
all Jews must convert to Christianity or be exterminated.
Can a Jew be anti-Semitic?
That sounds like
an oxymoron. But history has known some instances of Jews who became
ferocious Jew-haters. The Spanish Grand Inquisitor, Torquemada, was
of Jewish descent. Karl Marx wrote some very nasty things about the
Jews, as did Otto Weininger, an important Jewish writer in fin-de-siecle
Vienna. Herzl, his contemporary and fellow-Viennese, wrote in his diaries
some very uncomplimentary remarks about the Jews.
If a person criticizes
Israel more than other countries which do the same, is he an anti-Semite?
Not necessarily.
True, there should be one and the same moral standard for all countries
and all human beings. Russian actions in Chechnya are not better than
ours in Nablus, and may be worse. The trouble is that the Jews are pictured
and picture themselves (and indeed were) a "nation of victims".
Therefore, the world is shocked that yesterday's victims are today's
victimizers. A higher moral standard is required from us than from other
peoples. And rightly so.
Has Europe become
anti-Semitic again?
Not really. The
number of anti-Semites in Europe has not grown, perhaps it has even
fallen. What has increased is the volume of criticism of Israel's behavior
towards the Palestinians, who appear as "the victims of the victims".
The situation in
some suburbs of Paris, which is often cited as an example of the rise
of anti-Semitism, is a quite different affair. When North African Muslims
clash with North African Jews, they are transferring the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict to European soil. It is also a continuation of the feud between
Arabs and Jews that started in Algeria when the Jews supported the French
regime and Muslims considered them collaborators of the hated colonialists.
Then why did most
Europeans state in a recent poll that Israel endangers world peace more
than any other country?
That has a simple
explanation: Europeans see on television every day what our soldiers
are doing in the occupied Palestinian territories. This confrontation
is covered more than any other conflict on earth (with the possible
exception of Iraq, for the time being), because Israel is more "interesting",
considering the long history of the Jews in Europe and because Israel
is closer to the Western media than Muslim or African countries. The
Palestinian resistance, which Israelis call "terrorism", seems
to many Europeans very much like the French resistance to the German
occupation.
What about the anti-Semitic
manifestations in the Arab world?
No doubt, typically
anti-Semitic indications have crept lately into Arab discourse. Suffice
it to mention that the infamous "Protocols of the Elders of Zion"
have been published in Arabic. That is a typically European import.
The Protocols were invented by the secret police of Czarist Russia.
Whatever inanities
may be voiced by certain "experts", there never was any widespread
Muslim anti-Semitism, such as existed in Christian Europe. In the course
of his fight for power, the prophet Muhammad fought against neighboring
Jewish tribes, and therefore there are some negative passages about
the Jews in the Kor'an. But they cannot be compared to the anti-Jewish
passages in the New Testament story about the crucifixion of Christ
that have poisoned the Christian world and caused endless suffering.
Muslim Spain was a paradise for the Jews, and there has never been a
Jewish Holocaust in the Muslim world. Even pogroms were extremely rare.
Muhammad decreed
that the "Peoples of the Book" (Jews and Christians) be treated
tolerantly, subject to conditions that were incomparably more liberal
than those in contemporary Europe. The Muslims never imposed their religion
by force on Jews and Christians, as shown by the fact that almost all
the Jews expelled from Catholic Spain settled in the Muslim countries
and flourished there. After centuries of Muslim rule, Greeks and Serbs
remained thoroughly Christian.
When peace is established
between Israel and the Arab world, the poisonous fruits of anti-Semitism
will most probably disappear from the Arab world (as will the poisonous
fruits of Arab-hating in our society.)
Aren't the utterances
of the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir bin Muhammad, about the
Jews controlling the world, anti-Semitic?
Yes and no. They
certainly illustrate the difficulty of pinning anti-Semitism down. From
a factual point of view, the man was right when he asserted that the
Jews have a far bigger influence than their percentage of the world's
population alone would warrant. It is true that the Jews have a large
influence on the policy of the United States, the only super-power,
as well as on the American and international media. One does not need
the phony "Protocols" in order to face this fact and analyse
its causes. But the sounds make the music, and Mahathir's music does
indeed sound anti-Semitic.
So should we ignore
anti-Semitism?
Definitely not.
Racism is a kind of virus that exists in every nation and in every human
being. Jean-Paul Sartre said that we are all racists, the difference
being that some of us realize this and fight against it, while others
succumb to the evil. In ordinary times, there is a small minority of
blatant racists in every country, but in times of crisis their number
can multiply rapidly. This is a perpetual danger, and every people must
fight against the racists in their midst.
We Israelis are
like all other peoples. Each of us can find a small racist within himself,
if he searches hard enough. We have in our country fanatical Arab-haters,
and the historic confrontation that dominates our lives increases their
power and influence. It is our duty to fight them, and leave it to the
Europeans and Arabs to deal with their own racists.
Uri Avnery is an
Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom.