Contemporary Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism: Perspectives from the South African Experience

(Author: David Saks, Vol. 68, No. 2, Rosh Hashanah 2013)

Up until the end of the last century, it was still not uncommon for the view to be expressed by acknowledged experts in the field that antisemitism was largely a spent force, still present at some level but at worst of no more than nuisance value. As the thinking went, the sobering lessons of the Holocaust had demonstrated all too starkly what baseless hatred of Jews, or of any other group, could lead to. The airing of antisemitic views was now beyond the pale in civilized society, as were any form of official anti-Jewish discrimination. Significantly, in the post-war era the mainstream Christian churches largely distanced themselves from traditional anti-Judaic sentiments within their respective theologies.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, resulting in the emigration of the majority of its Jewish inhabitants and the restoration of religious and cultural freedoms for those who remained, another major force for global antisemitism passed into history. Only in Muslim majority countries were antisemitic ideologies still accepted within the mainstream political, religious and intellectual establishment, but the mass enforced exodus of most Jews living under such regimes in the decades following Israel’s establishment meant that very few Jews were directly affected. The launch in 1993 of the Oslo peace process, through which the Palestine Liberation Organisation finally recognized the legitimacy of the Jewish state, held out the prospect of a final resolution to a conflict between Israel and its neighbours that was considered to be at the heart of the upsurge of antisemitism in the Islamic world.

At the end of the millennium, perhaps for the first time since the Roman exile and even before that, the great majority of Jews were living under regimes where they enjoyed equal rights and where discrimination on the basis of race, religion and ethnicity, amongst other grounds, was prohibited. Of the approximately 14 million Jews in the world, over 80% lived either in Israel or the United States, with most of the remainder living in the UK, France, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Hungary, Argentina, Germany and South Africa. All of these countries (albeit only partly in the cases of Hungary and Argentina) are free and democratic, and opposed to all forms of institutional discrimination.1Even in non- or semi-democratic countries like Russia and Ukraine, where there remains a fairly substantial Jewish presence, antisemitism at the official level no longer exists, albeit that it may still occur de facto.

All of the above led many to conclude that antisemitism as an ideology capable of inflicting serious harm on Jews had had its day and was destined to remain, at worst, a fringe phenomenon. Nor was this conclusion an unreasonable one in light of most observable trends. Why then, a dozen years into the new millennium, do such optimistic viewpoints now look so quaint, irrelevant and even downright naïve in light of the emerging realities facing world Jewry?

No-one seriously engaged in the monitoring of antisemitism around the world today will deny that levels of anti-Jewish hostility, measured both in discourse and actions taken, have risen consistently from year to year, even in liberal democratic Western societies where most Diaspora Jews live. The crude, in-your-face anti-Jewish prejudice of bygone times is now rarely seen in polite society, yet antisemitism itself has not disappeared. Rather it has mutated to take a socially acceptable form. For want of a better term, this has been termed the “New Antisemitism”,2 and its central target is not the Jew as an individual but the Jewish State of Israel. Under the guise of anti-Zionism, moreover, classic anti-Jewish modes of thinking are re-emerging, this time within the supposedly anti-racist discourse of the politically correct liberal-left. One way in which this manifests is that while antisemitism will routinely be condemned when it emanates from white right-wingers, it is down-played or ignored altogether when expressed in an anti-Zionist context.

Writing in February 2009 Irwin Cotler, former Canadian Minister of Justice and a world-renowned human rights campaigner and theoretician, addressed the growing menace of what he described as “a new sophisticated, globalizing, virulent and even lethal antisemitism reminiscent of the atmospherics of the 1930s, and without parallel or precedent since the end of World War II”. 3 The new anti-Jewishness overlapped with classical antisemitism but was distinguishable from it. Cotler subsequently described this ‘new antisemitism’ in the following terms:

…classical or traditional antisemitism is the discrimination against, denial of or assault upon the rights of Jews to live as equal members of whatever host society they inhabit. The new antisemitism involves the discrimination against the right of the Jewish people to live as an equal member of the family of nations – the denial of and assault upon the Jewish people’s right even to live – with Israel as the “collective Jew among the nations”.4

Former Swedish deputy prime minister Per Ahlmark has likewise noted that the new manifestation of antisemitism attacks primarily the collective Jew – the State of Israel: “In the past, the most dangerous antisemites were those who wanted to make the world Judenrein, ‘free of Jews.’ Today, the most dangerous antisemites might be those who want to make the world Judenstaatrein, ‘free of a Jewish state.’”5 What was more, he said, such attacks invariably also triggered off a chain reaction of assaults on Jewish individuals and institutions.

Events on the ground have borne out Ahlmark’s words of warning. Today, most Diaspora communities keep detailed records of antisemitic activities in their respective countries, and what this data has unambiguously revealed is that since the turn of the century, there has been a pronounced and consistent rise in antisemitism levels worldwide as measured by hostile acts committed against Jewish individuals and institutions. This upsurge commenced directly in the wake of the collapse of the Oslo peace process and ensuing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian territories commencing in September 2000. The greater proportion of anti-Jewish attacks in contemporary times has in some way been motivated by events in the Middle East.

Antisemitism today – a Global Overview

A report on antisemitic trends in 2012 prepared by Israel’s Ministry of Information and Diaspora noted “an alarming rise in the number of terrorist attacks and attempted attacks against Jewish targets and an escalation in violent incidents against Jews throughout the world.” There had been a rise in the number of terrorist acts and attempted attacks, primarily by groups which identify with radical Islam and the extreme right. It was further noted that there had been an increase in the number of street attacks and incidents of verbal and physical violence in Europe as well as in Canada and Australia. The following country-by-country summary bears out this analysis:

•  France: In a report to the government, France’s SPCJ Jewish security watchdog said the number of antisemitic incidents was up 58% last year, with 177 violent acts and 437 threats. They included the murder of four people at a Jewish school in Toulouse and the explosion at the kosher shop, reportedly caused by a grenade. Muslim extremists were responsible for both attacks.6
• United Kingdom: There were 640 documented antisemitic incidents in 2012, a 5% increase from the 608 in 2011 and the third-highest annual total since records started being kept in 1984. The most common single type of incident involved verbal abuse randomly directed at visibly Jewish people in public. 11% were categorized as “violent antisemitic assaults”, less than the 16% recorded in 2011, but still well above the figures noted in previous years.7
• Australia: There were 543 documented incidents of “racist violence” against Jewish Australians in the period September 2011-August 2012, a 5% rise over the previous 12-month period. These included physical assaults, vandalism and harassment, such as synagogue windows being smashed, physical assaults of Jewish students and people being pelted with eggs and other objects while walking to synagogue.8
• Canada: According to B’nai Brith Canada’s annual audit, released at the end of April 2012, there were 1,297 anti-Jewish occurrences in 2011, only slightly under the previous year’s all-time high. 916 were cases of harassment, 362 involved vandalism and there were 19 cases of violence.9

How does the situation in South Africa compare with this? According to figures compiled by the SA Jewish Board and Deputies and Community Security Organisation, there was also a rise in antisemitism levels in the country in 2012 compared with the previous year, amounting to about 15%. Whereas in 2011, there were 42 incidents classified as having been antisemitically motivated, in 2012 there were 50. In other words, South Africa’s annual totals of documented antisemitic acts over an extended period have in fact consistently amounted to what other major Diaspora communities record in a single month. Only once in the past twenty years has the number of antisemitic incidents reached the hundred mark (in 2009). When one further takes into account that of the fifty incidents logged in 2012, more than one-third were cases of hate mail disseminated by just two individuals (against one of whom the SAJBD has since instituted court proceedings; the other perpetrator’s identity is unknown), the relative paucity of actual acts of hostility towards Jews and Jewish institutions in this country is all the more striking.

Likewise in the United States, despite being home to over five million Jews, antisemitism manifests at an encouragingly low level. However, none of this should blind one to the fact that for much of Diaspora Jewry, including smaller communities in the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Italy, the situation is becoming increasingly uncomfortable. There may no longer be any officially sanctioned anti-Jewish policies in operation, but on the ground, the situation is rapidly deteriorating.

The following were amongst the more serious instances of antisemitic activity in South Africa during the past twelve months:

• January-October: An elderly lady in Johannesburg received eight extremely abusive, antisemitic and threatening letters in the course of the year, possibly from a disgruntled ex-employee. Abusive statements included: “Hitler should have used some gas on you to make the world a better place. I hope you die soon”.
• March:Bloemfontein’s historic Memoriam cemetery vandalised, with 78 tombstones toppled and obscene graffiti daubed on the walls of the adjoining Ohel. The graffiti included legend “F*** the Jews” and images of money bags and diamonds, as well as of Magen Davids. Other slogans read “Jews rulle” [sic] and “Jews have the power”.
• June: A highly inflammatory statement issued by COSATU in response to a march for Israel held in Pretoria by mainly black Christian Zionists. Inter alia, the SAZF was described as having hands “dripping with blood”, Israel was said to be “a legalisation of Jewish supremacy to further dehumanise everyone outside their scope of Zionist purity” and Zionism itself was said to refer “to those that believe in a state exclusively for the ruling supremacists at the expense of the indigenous Palestinian people because they view themselves as ordained by God to do all it takes to defend their privileged position”.
• A Lyndhurst Jewish resident had his car window shattered by a pellet fired by his neighbour as he was pulling out into the street. This followed a heated argument, in which he had twice been called a [expletive] Jew. The culprit was arrested and charged soon afterwards.

Actions taken by the SAJBD

Legal proceedings were instituted in the Equality Court against serial distributor of antisemitic literature Snowy Smith. The papers were drawn up by the Board’s Cape Town legal team. The complaint was forwarded by the Equality Court to Smith, and the matter is being pursued.

From 11-14 December, Broadcasting Complaints and Compliance Committee of ICASA convened a full hearing into the SAJBD’s complaint of antisemitic hate speech by Radio 786, a Muslim community radio station in Cape Town. The SAJBD’s lead witnesses were Dr David Hirsh (Goldsmiths College, London), Rabbi Yossy Goldman, Professor Milton Shain and Holocaust survivor Eva Schloss. Radio 786 has now conceded that the things said on the programme were untrue and sometimes antisemitic but still claims it fell within the parameters of freedom of expression. The hearing will resume in 2014.

In the course of the year, the Board provided the SA Human Rights Commission with documentation and other information that it required in preparing its case against COSATU International Relations Spokesperson Bongani Masuku. The SAHRC decided to institute proceedings against Masuku in the Equality Court after he declined to comply with its ruling that he apologise to the SAJBD for antisemitic hate speech in 2009.

A more detailed account of the SAJBD’s responses to antisemitic incidents can be read on the Board’s website (www.jewishsa.co.za).

Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism: Themes, principles and working definitions

Jewish civil rights organisations around the world, including the SAJBD, Anti-Defamation League (USA), the Community Security Trust (UK), Bnai B’rith – Canada and the Executive Council for Australian Jewry, must in the course of their work define and distinguish between different kinds of anti-Jewish hostility. The following guidelines, which are hereby reproduced in edited form, were compiled by this author in the course of monitoring and documenting antisemitism in South Africa as part of his work with the SAJBD.

Broadly defined, an antisemitic act can be said to be: “Any hostile, and usually illegal, act carried out with the intention of inflicting some form of harm against Jewish persons (individually or collectively) or Jewish institutions specifically because they are Jewish”.

• Examples of attacks on individuals would include physical assault, threats and intimidation, verbal abuse, hate mail, graffiti on a Jewish home or business and any discriminatory treatment based on religion and/or ethnicity.
• Examples of attacks on Jews collectively would include hate mail sent to institutions, the mass distribution of offensive literature, anti-Jewish boycott campaigns and statements made by public representatives in the public domain.
• Examples of attacks on institutions include acts of vandalism of Jewish installations (cemeteries etc.), graffiti daubed on Jewish communal buildings and hacking into and posting offensive literature on Jewish communal websites.

Antisemitic sentiment includes negative views about Jews and Judaism (whether in the media, literature, political realm and arts, academia and the larger social or cultural environment) that can reasonably be deemed to be motivated by anti-Jewish prejudice, such as by the type of hostile, denigrating language used and/or by their being based on clearly false premises. Taken as a whole, it would fall into the broad category of ‘Antisemitic Discourse’, as opposed to actual harmful acts of the type outlined above. In this regard, the situation in South Africa is no better than in other parts of the world.

Types of Anti-Jewish Prejudice

•  Conspiracy theories, where Jews are depicted as exercising a malign, covert or at least disproportionate influence in society thereby promoting their own selfish agendas.
• Related to the above, the view that Jews are by nature an untrustworthy, under-handed and scheming people.
• Depictions of Jews as exclusivist and considering themselves superior to non-Jews.
• Portraying Jews and the greater Jewish tradition as being inherently anti-gentile.
• Denial of the Holocaust, whether this takes the form of outright denial, claims that its extent has been exaggerated or minimizing it by misleading comparisons with other, lesser forms of oppression (the last need not be intentionally antisemitic). Accusing Israel of Nazism, amongst other things, thus constitutes a form of Holocaust denial.
• Denial of Jewish history in generally, specific examples being claims that Jews of today have no link, historical, genetic or otherwise, with those of the Bible and denial, explicitly or by pointed omission, the Jewish connection with Israel.
• Malicious representations of Judaism, frequently through incorrect, uncontextualised and often fabricated references to Talmudic and other post-Biblical literature.
• Propagation of negative stereotypes, typically depicting Jews as being stingy, avaricious, etc.

Additionally, there may arise cases of negative sentiment being propagated against Jews unintentionally. For example, when gratuitous reference is made to someone being Jewish when reporting on criminal or other immoral behavior by such an individual, it may be deemed to be antisemitic in effect, if not necessarily in intent.

When Anti-Zionism becomes a form of Antisemitism

Israel is being subjected to a world-wide campaign of denigration and delegitimisation.

Because it is the world’s sole Jewish majority state, and because Jews are so identified with the land through Biblical teachings in Christian countries, it is not just likely but inevitable that this will both influence and be influenced by traditional antisemitic theories.

Regardless of whether or not the specific accusations are true, anti-Israel propaganda crosses the line into antisemitism when:

i. Jews are held to be collectively responsible for Israel’s actions.

Direct cases of this include the proposed march organized by the Muslim Judicial Council on the SAJBD’s offices in 2005 in protest against alleged plots to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque: Daubing of anti-Israel graffiti on Jewish communal buildings, such as synagogues; threats to attack Jews or Jewish installations, as occurred during the 2006 Lebanon war and the 2009 Gaza campaign; boycott campaigns against Jewish-headed businesses; unsolicited anti-Israel literature sent to Jewish recipients.

Of particular concern are comments made in public forums suggesting that Israel’s actions make Jews everywhere legitimate targets. Examples were common on local Muslim radio stations during the 2009 Gaza incursion, such as “let the Jews take note that if this incessant killing carries on you will be fair game in SA and everywhere in the world”; and “it’s time for action…the Muslim is justified worldwide to go out and kill every Jew”.

Less clear-cut but still identifiable cases would include public calls on South African Jews to denounce Israel’s actions, when other faith or ethnic communities are never similarly called upon to apologise for their co-religionists/ethnic group’s actions in other parts of the world. This is both discriminatory and could be regarded as a form of intimidation.

ii. Jewish organisations are denigrated, threatened, boycotted and/or excluded from participating in public events because of their support for Israel

This holds mainstream Jewry to be so tainted by its views on Israel as to justify treating it as a pariah community, including being excluded from participating even in public events that have nothing to do with the Middle East. Direct cases include SAUJS being expelled from the Swaziland Democracy Campaign (2009); calls by the Muslim Judicial Council for Chief Rabbi Goldstein to be expelled from the National Religious Leaders Forum for his opinions on Israel-Gaza (2009); the COSATU-led protest march on the SAZF and SAJBD offices, along with threats and abuse by its spokesperson Bongani Masuku (2009) and COSATU’s letter-statement charging that the SAZF was an organization whose hands were “dripping with blood” (2012).

iii. Israel’s actions, as well as the Zionist ideology, are depicted as being reflective of the intrinsically racist, inhumane and anti-gentile nature of the Jewish people and culture.

This kind of abuse ranges from the kind of open hatred broadcast on Islamic radio and extreme right-wing websites to more subtle (and consequently more insidious) forms of left-wing antisemitism, such as a suggestion by Guardian columnist Deborah Orr that Israel’s trading of a thousand Palestinian prisoners for Gilad Shalit’s release was indicative of how Jewish lives were regarded as superior to Palestinian ones (October, 2011). The above-noted 2012 COSATU letter falls somewhere in between. It ostensibly attacks Israel and Zionism, but the evocation of traditional antisemitic tropes is unmistakable (“Their occupation and the theft of the land and natural resources of the indigenous people is nothing but a legalisation of Jewish supremacy to further dehumanise everyone outside their scope of Zionist purity”).

Of playwright Caryl Churchill’s now notorious 2009 play ‘Seven Jewish Children’, in which Israeli Jews are depicted as revelling in the wanton slaughter of Palestinian infants, the UK novelist Howard Jacobson comments, “…once you venture on to ‘chosen people’ territory – feeding all the ancient prejudice against that miscomprehended phrase – once you repeat in another form the medieval blood-libel of Jews rejoicing in the murder of little children, you have crossed over. This is the old stuff. Jew-hating pure and simple”.10

iv. The Holocaust and the history of Jewish persecution in general is misused, often deliberately, in such a way as to cause deep hurt and embarrassment to all Jews.

The Ottawa Protocol on Combating Antisemitism, adopted at the 2011 Inter-Parliamentary Conference for Combating Antisemitism, listed the following amongst the classic anti-Jewish libels in ascendance: The double entendre of denying the Holocaust – accusing the Jews of fabricating the Holocaust as a hoax – and the nazification of the Jew and the Jewish people.11

Of this semi-disguised form of Jew-baiting, Howard Jacobson commented (re the Gaza conflict being likened to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising):

Given the number of besieged and battered cities there have been in however many thousands of years of pitiless warfare there is only one explanation for this invocation of Warsaw before any of those – it is to wound Jews in their recent and most anguished history and to punish them with their own grief. Its aim is a sort of retrospective retribution, cancelling out all debts of guilt and sorrow. It is as though, by a reversal of the usual laws of cause and effect, Jewish actions of today prove that Jews had it coming to them yesterday. Berating Jews with their own history, disinheriting them of pity, as though pity is negotiable or has a sell-by date, is the latest species of Holocaust denial…12

In South Africa, an especially crude instance of this surfaced during the 2006 Lebanon war, when Mohau Pheko and Mariama Williams wrote (Cape Times, 31/8), “If there is anything good to come out of the recent carnage in Lebanon, it is one simple fact – the Jewish people and the state of Israel have been shown to be who they really are – not special, not chosen by God, not especially victimised, not the most persecuted people on earth…human beings who have the capacity and intention to carry out brutalities and barbarities in all forms”.

Likening Israel to a Nazi state is antisemitic in effect, and usually in intent as well, because:

• The sensitivity of Jewish people regarding the Holocaust is well known. ‘Rubbing their noses’ in it by such wanton comparisons is a cruel taunt, and is intended as such.
• The comparison itself is a blatant untruth, falsely charging the Jewish state with grotesquely inflated crimes that bear no relation to objective realities.
• As noted above, it constitutes a form of Holocaust denial since it has the effect of minimizing the extent of Nazi atrocities.
• It could imply either that Palestinians are completely innocent of any wrongdoing, as the persecuted Jews of the past were, or conversely that the latter were likewise guilty of what the Palestinians are doing and therefore somehow brought their own persecution upon themselves.
• Holocaust allusions sometimes entail accusing Jews of trying to profit from it, i.e. using it as a form of moral blackmail to silence justified criticism of Israel (see ‘v’).

v. Jews are accused of dishonesty when raising the issue of antisemitism in the context of discussing Israel/Palestine.

David Hirsh has constructed what he calls “The Livingstone Formulation” (after the far-leftist antisemitic former London mayor Ken Livingstone)13 to encapsulate this phenomenon:

The Livingstone Formulation …. is a rhetorical device which enables the user to refuse to think about antisemitism… It sends back a charge of dishonest Jewish conspiracy in answer to a concern about antisemitism…. Firstly, it denies that there is a distinction between criticism of Israel and demonization of Israel…. Secondly, [it] does not simply accuse anyone who raises the issue of contemporary antisemitism of being wrong, but it also accuses them of bad faith …. [of] a secret, common plan to try to de-legitimize criticism with an instrumental use of the charge of antisemitism. Crying wolf. Playing the antisemitism card.14

vi. Employing double standards against the Jewish state effectively holds Jews to different, higher standards of behaviour, and portrays them as being uniquely guilty of what numerous other nation states are culpable of, often to a much greater degree.

The Ottawa Protocol on Combating Antisemitism (2011) states the following:

Let it be clear: Criticism of Israel is not antisemitic, and saying so is wrong. But singling Israel out for selective condemnation and opprobrium – let alone denying its right to exist or seeking its destruction – is discriminatory and hateful, and not saying so is dishonest.

Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz succinctly summed up this kind of Jew-baiting when he said, “A good working definition of antisemitism is taking a trait or action that is widespread, if not universal, and blaming only the Jews for it”.15

vii. The ‘Dual Loyalty’ Canard

Saying/implying of Jews that their first loyalty is not to their country of residence but to Israel is usually antisemitic because:

• Lobbyists for other international political causes are seldom, if ever, so accused.
• It ties in with the above-mentioned negative perceptions of Jews as being concerned only for their own well-being and not of the wider society and of undermining the greater good for their own selfish aims.
• Jews are suspected of having ulterior motives, rather than held to be arguing in good faith for what they believe in.
• In South Africa, an egregious recent instance of this form of antisemitism was the response by Deputy Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Marius Fransman to criticism by the SAJBD over his alleging that Jews were unfairly benefiting at the expense of Muslims in Cape Town because of the policies of the Democratic Alliance. Fransman accused the Board of being ‘unpatriotic’ and of working to further the agenda of a foreign power (Israel).16 The SAJBD has since lodged a complaint against Fransman with the SA Human Rights Commission.

viii. Jewish history is denied, either explicitly or by implication, in order to portray Israel as a fundamentally illegitimate, colonialist enterprise and the Palestinians as the land’s true owners who have been dispossessed by Jewish interlopers

Politically or ideologically-motivated denials of well-established facts concerning Jewish history are a form of antisemitism, the best-known example of which is Holocaust Denial.

Explicit denials of Jewish history relating to the Land of Israel, which often go along with the fabrication of a parallel Palestinian historic tradition, fall into the same category. It can take the following forms:

• Claiming that the Jews of today are unrelated to those of Biblical and immediate post-Biblical times, but emerged later (e.g. the Khazar theory)
• Minimising the extent to which there was a Jewish presence in the land, autonomous or otherwise, prior to the exile.
• Attributing central events, institutions and personalities in pre-exile Israel to a fictitious Palestinian history that has been suppressed (e.g. Jesus was a Palestinian nationalist, the Western Wall was part of a Muslim shrine etc.)

ix. The Good Jew-Bad Jew Argument

Making pointed distinctions between ‘Good Jews’ (who come out against Israel) and ‘Bad Jews’ (the rest) is at least bordering on the antisemitic. It seeks to legitimate denigrating most Jews for their beliefs through invoking the examples of a minority of radical dissidents who endorse extreme anti-Israel positions, as if only these kinds of Jewish views can be considered authentic.

In this regard, David Hirsh comments: “Nazism was an unusual form of antisemitism….it allowed no exceptions; it allowed no escape for Jews. Most forms of antisemitism haven’t been like that. Christian antisemitism allowed people to convert to Christianity and therefore make themselves clean; also political antisemitism allows Jews to put themselves on the right side of history”.17

An example: A member of the Muslim community posted the following response on the blog. It’s Almost Supernatural in February 2009: “You posed the question, on your blog, as to if the time is right to leave Non Racist RSA? Well, let me answer that for you…… YES and the sooner the better!!! And like you mentioned: ‘“70 000 minus the 310’ !!!!” (The 310 refers to SA Jews who had signed a petition condemning Israeli for the Gaza incursion).

ix. When Israel’s right to exist is called into question.

This line of attack can entail claiming that Israel’s very establishment was illegitimate and unjust, that it has forfeited its right to exist because of its illegal and criminal actions or a combination of the two. It would seem that only in Israel’s case is its right to exist somehow made conditional on its good behaviour – there are no calls for other countries, no matter how rights-delinquent they are, to be abolished. Regarding Israel’s supposedly illegal origins, there is no question of the passage of time legitimizing its existence, as is the case with other countries that have certainly come into existence as a direct result of colonial conquest.

x. Anti-Zionist Conspiracy Theories

When Israeli agencies, e.g. Mossad, are held accountable for global catastrophes (natural or man-made), this is traditional antisemitism masquerading as anti-Israelism. Examples are the introduction and spreading of the HIV/AIDS virus and plotting the 9/11 terrorist attacks. There is no essential difference between these kind of malign conspiracy theories against ‘Zionists’ and those that attribute to Jews as a whole a diabolical behind-the-scenes influence in world events. Other noteworthy examples include charges of Israeli trafficking in human organs taken from Palestinians, which veers very close to outright Blood Libel theory.

When is criticism of Israel not antisemitic?

Criticism of specific Israeli policies, foreign or domestic, should not be automatically equated with antisemitism, even if such reproach is itself open to being contested and may well be shown to be unfounded. Some aspects to look out for include:

• Is the criticism couched in measured, non-hyperbolic terms (i.e. the extent of Israel’s wrongdoing is not obviously being exaggerated)?
• Are the policies/actions being addressed also subject to opposition from a significant proportion of the Israeli population?
• In tone and content, is the criticism more or less similar to the way other countries are held to account for their actions?
• Are the relevant facts of the matter in question correct? If the writer/spokesperson is relying largely or entirely on biased sources, it raises a question regarding his motives, although even then these may not be specifically antisemitic ones.

If the answer to the above can reasonably be adjudged to be ‘yes’, then Jewish advocacy groups need not feel compelled to become involved..

In conclusion, perhaps the most effective rejoinder to the assertion that criticism of Israel should not be likened to antisemitism is to concede the point, but then to point out that someone who is unreasonably prejudiced against Israel and Israelis is as much of a bigot as someone who is similarly prejudiced against anyone else. And at the very least, it begs the question as to why, if the accuser is not, as he claims, antisemitic, is the world’s sole Jewish majority state being singled out as an object of special antipathy?

David Saks is Associate Director of the SA Jewish Board of Deputies and editor of Jewish Affairs. His most recent book, The Great Park Synagogue: A History, 1887-2013, appeared at the beginning of this year.

NOTES

1. http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-world-2012
2. For a critique of this problematic term, see Judaken, J, ‘So what’s new? Rethinking the ‘new antisemitism’ in a global age’, in Patterns of Prejudice, Vol. 42, No’s 4-5, 2008.
3. http://www.jta.org/news/article/2009/02/19/1003117/legislators-say-never-again-to-anti-semitism
4. http://antisemitism.org.il/article/13572/defining-new-antisemitism-irwin-cotler Canada / 09-11-2010
5. http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=133685
6. http://www.timeslive.co.za/world/2013/02/20/france-see-unprecedented-rise-in-anti-semitic-attacks
7. http://www.algemeiner.com/2013/02/07/report-greater-london-area-sees-55-percent-increase-in-anti-semitic-incidents/
8. http://www.jta.org/news/article/2013/01/29/3118106/anti-semitic-incidents-rise-by-5-percent-in-australia
9. http://www.jta.org/news/article/2012/05/01/3094391/anti-semitic-incidents-negligibly-down-in-canada
10. Independent, 2/2/2009.
11. http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/inside-politics-blog/2010/11/for-the-record-the-full-text-of-the-ottawa-protocol.html
12. Independent, 2/2/2009
13. In 2006, instead of apologizing for comparing a Jewish journalist to a Nazi concentration camp guard, Livingstone inter alia wrote, ‘For far too long the accusation of antisemitism has been used against anyone who is critical of the policies of the Israeli government, as I have been.’ Thus, as Hirsh points out, Livingstone claimed that irrelevant charges of antisemitism were being made to silence criticism of Zionism when in reality he was using anti-Zionist rhetoric to prevent addressing an issue of antisemitism.
14. Hirsh, D, ‘Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism: Cosmopolitan Reflections’, Goldsmiths College, University of London. The Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism Working Paper Series, Editor Charles Small, Print ISSN: 1940-610X; Online ISSN:1940-6118; http://eprints.gold.ac.uk/2061/ (2006)
15. David Hirsh comments, “Criticism of Israeli human rights abuses is not only legitimate, it is entirely appropriate. Demonization, for example, which singles out Israel for unique loathing, or which claims that Israel is apartheid or Nazi or essentially racist, or which characterizes Israel as a child-killing state, or a state which is responsible for wars around the world, or a state which is central to global imperialism, is not the same thing as criticism of Israeli government policies”, (‘Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism: Decoding the Relationship’, http://www.z-word.com/on-zionism/antisemitism-and-anti-zionism/anti-zionism-and-antisemitism%253A-decoding-the-relationship.html, 2008).
16. See author’s opinion piece on the affair that appeared in the 19 March 2013 issue of the Cape Times: http://www.ornico.co.za/editorialstream/OwnMediaAttachments/2013_03_19_887104.pdf
17. Hirsh, ‘Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism: Cosmopolitan Reflections’, op. cit.

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