Frances Macron leads the way as western leaders malevolently confuse
anti-Zionism with antisemitism
Jonathan Cook on February 27, 2019
French President Emmanuel Macron speaks during the 34th annual dinner of the
Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF - Conseil
Representatif des Institutions juives de France) on February 20, 2019.
(Photo: LUDOVIC MARIN/AFP/Getty Images)
How far the international communitys approach towards Israel has reversed
trajectory over the past half century can be gauged simply by studying the
fate of one word: Zionism.
In 1975 much of the world broke ranks with the United States and Europe at
the United Nations general assembly to declare that Zionism, Israels
founding ideology, is a form of racism and racial discrimination.
Western publics were generally shocked. Zionism, they had been told, was a
necessary liberation movement for the Jewish people after centuries of
oppression and pogroms. Its creation, Israel, was simply the righting of
terrible wrongs that had culminated in the horrors of the Holocaust.
But Zionism looked very different to those countries around the globe that
had been exposed to centuries of European colonialism and the more recent
advent of US imperialism.
The long history of crimes against Jews that led to Israels establishment
took place mostly in Europe. And yet it was Europe and the US that had
sponsored and aided the arrival of Jews in another peoples homeland, far
from their own shores.
To the global south, the great purges of native Palestinians carried out by
European Jews in 1948 and 1967 looked all too reminiscent of white Europeans
cleansing indigenous peoples in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and
South Africa.
A colonial anachronism
By 1975, the time of the UN vote, it was clear that Israel had no intention
either of handing back to the Palestinians the occupied territories it had
seized eight years earlier. Rather, Israel was entrenching the occupation by
illegally transferring its own civilian population into the Palestinian
territories.
Across much of the globe, these Jewish settlers looked like an anachronism,
a reminder of the white pioneers heading westwards across the supposedly
empty lands of the US; the white farmers who seized vast tracts of South
Africa and Rhodesia as their personal homesteads; and the white newcomers
who herded the remnants of Australias Aboriginal peoples into reservations
or turned them into a sideshow at its tourist sites.
The UNs Zionism is racism resolution lasted 16 years until the fall of
the Soviet Union and the emergence of the US as the worlds sole superpower.
After a lot of diplomatic arm-twisting by Washington, including promises
that Israel would engage in a peace process with the Palestinians,
Resolution 3379 was finally scrapped in 1991.
Decades later, the pendulum has swung decisively the other way.
US and European elites have moved on from their once-defensive posture that
Zionism is not racism. Now, they are on the attack. Their presumption is
that anti-Zionism the position of much the international community 44
years ago is synonymous with racism.
Or more specifically, it is increasingly being accepted that anti-Zionism
and antisemitism are two sides of the same coin.
Apartheid-style system
That trend was consolidated last week when Emmanuel Macron, the centrist
French president, went further than simply reiterating his repeated
conflation of anti-Zionism and antisemitism. This time he threatened to
outlaw anti-Zionism.
Macrons confusion of anti-Zionism with antisemitism is patently
nonsensical.
Antisemitism refers to the hatred of Jews. It is bigotry, plain and simple.
Anti-Zionism, on the other hand, is opposition to the political ideology of
Zionism, a movement that has insisted in all its political guises on
prioritising the rights of Jews to a homeland over those, the Palestinians,
who were already living there.
Anti-Zionism is not racism against Jews; it is opposition to racism by
Zionist Jews.
Of course, an anti-Zionist may also be antisemitic, but it is more likely
that an anti-Zionist holds his or her position for entirely rational and
ethical reasons.
That was made only clearer last summer when the Israeli parliament passed a
basic law defining Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people (PDF).
The law asserts that all Jews, even those with no connection to Israel,
enjoy a right to self-determination there that all Palestinians are deprived
of, including the fifth of Israels population who are Palestinian and
formally citizens.
In other words, the law creates two statuses in Israel and implicitly in
the occupied territories too based on an imposed ethno-religious
classification system that entitles all Jews to superior rights over all
Palestinians.
In constitutional terms, Israel is explicitly operating an apartheid-style
legal and political system, one even more encompassing than South Africas.
After all, the apartheid rulers of South Africa never claimed that theirs
was the homeland of all white people.
Criminalizing BDS
Macrons threat to outlaw anti-Zionism is the logical extension of existing
moves across Europe and the US to penalise those who support BDS, the
growing international solidarity movement with Palestinians that calls for
boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel.
Many members of the BDS movement, though not all, are anti-Zionists. A
proportion are anti-Zionist Jews.
The movement not only leapfrogs western policy elites decades of complicity
in Israels oppression of the Palestinians but highlights the extent of that
complicity. That is one reason it is so reviled by those elites.
France has gone furthest so far in this direction, criminalizing BDS as a
form of economic discrimination. It thereby conflates a state, Israel, with
an ethnic group, Jews precisely as antisemites do.
Such legislation makes as much sense as France outlawing a boycott of
apartheid South Africa back in the 1980s on the grounds that it
discriminated against whites.
Israel lobbyists in action
France, however, is simply at the head of the curve. In the US some 26
states have enacted laws to punish or sanction individuals and organisations
that support a boycott. Similar legislation is pending in a further 13
states.
None seem concerned that they are violating Americans much-cherished First
Amendment rights, and making an exception to the right to free speech in one
case only that of Israel.
This month the US Senate joined the fray by passing a bill to encourage
states to inflict economic punishments on those who support a boycott of
Israel.
These victories against the non-violent BDS movement are the result of
vigorous and malevolent efforts behind the scenes by Israel lobbyists to
confuse anti-Zionism with antisemitism.
As Israels standing among western publics has plummeted with the advent of
social media, endless videos of violence by the Israeli army and settlers
caught on phone cameras, and Israels starvation of Gaza, Israels lobbyists
have moved to make it ever harder to speak out.
Redefinition of antisemitism
Their coup was the recent widespread acceptance in the west of a
redefinition of antisemitism that intentionally confuses it with
anti-Zionism.
Israels fingerprints are all over the work of the International Holocaust
Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). It is therefore hardly surprising that the
lengthy and vague definition of antisemitism devised by the IHRA has been
supplemented by 11 examples, seven of which refer to Israel.
One example, stating that Israel is a racist endeavour, suggests that the
72 UN member states that voted for 1975s Zionism is racism resolution, as
well as the 32 that abstained, were themselves espousing, or turning a blind
eye to, antisemitism.
Western governments, local authorities, political parties and public bodies
are now racing to adopt the IHRA definition.
The result has been a growing fear among western publics about what can be
said any longer about Israel without eliciting accusations of antisemitism.
That is the goal. If people become afraid that others will think them
antisemitic for criticising Israel, then they will keep quiet, giving Israel
greater leeway to commit crimes against Palestinians.
Self-hating Jew trope
Were Macron and the IHRA right that anti-Zionism and antisemitism are all
but indistinguishable then we would have to accept some very uncomfortable
conclusions.
One would be that Palestinians should be uniformly damned as antisemites for
demanding their own right to self-determination. Or put another way, it
would be impossible for Palestinians to demand the same rights as Jews in
their homeland without that being declared as racist. Welcome to Alice
Through the Looking Glass.
Another conclusion would be that a significant proportion of Jews around the
world, those who oppose Israels self-definition as a Jewish state, are also
antisemites, infected with an irrational hatred of their fellow Jews. This
is the self-hating Jew trope Israel has long relied on to discredit
criticism from Jews.
On this view, those Jews who want Palestinians to enjoy the same rights as
Jews claim for themselves in the Middle East are racist and not only that,
but racist against themselves.
And if Macrons efforts to criminalise anti-Zionism prove fruitful, it would
mean that Palestinians and Jews could be punished maybe even jailed for
demanding equality between Palestinians and Jews in Israel.
Preposterous as this reasoning sounds when laid out so bluntly, similar
approaches to dealing with antisemitism are being readily accepted by actors
across Europe and the US.
The extent of this insanity was evident in the decision of Germanys Bank
für Sozialwirtschaft, or Bank for Social Economy, to shut the account of a
Jewish anti-Zionist group, Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East,
over its support for a boycott of Israel. It was the first time a German
bank had closed down a Jewish organizations account since the Nazis were in
power.
The bank took the action after complaints that Jewish Voice was antisemitic
by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a group that masks its fervent support for
Israel behind campaigning for Jewish rights.
Eliding the left and far-right
Macrons antipathy to anti-Zionism shared by many others seeking to
confuse it with antisemitism has an explicit cause as well as a more
veiled one. Both are related to the political crisis he faces. After two
years in power, he is the most unpopular president in the republics
history.
According to Macron, the rise of anti-Zionism, or more broadly growing
opposition to Israel, is swelling the ranks of those who want to harm Jews
in France, whether through attacks, the scrawling of swastikas on Jewish
graves or the polluting of public discourse, especially on social media.
Two groups that he and French Jewish lobby groups have identified as at the
core of the problem are French Muslims, often recent immigrants who are seen
as importing with them supposed racist Middle Eastern attitudes to Jews, and
secular leftists who have taken the lead in supporting BDS.
Although a small number of French Muslims have adopted extremist positions,
most feel hostility towards Israel because of its role in displacing and
oppressing Palestinians. That sentiment dominates among BDS activists too.
But the implication of Macron and the lobby is that these two anti-Zionist
groups are actually closely aligned with the antisemitic far-right and
neo-Nazi groups, whatever their obvious respective differences in ideology
and attitude towards violence.
The blurring by Macron of anti-Zionism and antisemitism is meant to sow
doubt about what should be obvious distinctions between these three very
different ideological constituencies.
Macrons sleight of hand
Macrons sleight of hand has a related and more specifically self-serving
agenda, however, as has become clear in the wider misuse or weaponisation
of antisemitism slurs in Europe and the US.
Macron is faced with a popular revolt known as the Yellow Vests, or Gilets
Jaunes, that has taken over high streets for many months. The protests are
rocking his government.
Like other recent grassroots insurrections, such as the Occupy movement, the
Yellow Vests is leaderless and its demands difficult to decipher. It
represents more a mood, a spreading dissatisfaction with an out-of-touch
political system that, since the financial meltdown a decade ago, has looked
chronically broken and unreformable.
The Yellow Vests embody a grievance desperately searching to hitch its wagon
to a new political star, a different and fairer vision of how our societies
could be organised.
The movements very inarticulateness has been its power and its threat.
Those frustrated with austerity policies, those angry at an arrogant,
unresponsive political and financial elite, those craving a return to a
clearer sense of Frenchness can all seek shelter under its banner.
But equally it has also allowed Macron and the French elite to project on to
the Yellow Vests any kind of malevolent motive that best serves their
efforts to demonize the movement. A charge spokespeople for the movement
deny.
And given the rising tide of nativist, far-right movements across Europe,
casting the Yellow Vests as antisemitic has proved difficult to resist for
the embattled French president.
Just as Macron has presented leftwing and anti-racism activists supporting
BDS as in cahoots with neo-Nazis, he has lumped together the Yellow Vests
with far-right white nationalists. Much of the French media have happily
recycled this mischief.
Centrists love of authority
For those who assume that centrist leaders like Macron are acting not out of
naked political self-interest but from a concern to eradicate prejudice and
protect a vulnerable community, it is worth pausing to consider recent
research on global political attitudes.
Last year the New York Times published a commentary by David Adler showing
that, contrary to popular wisdom, centrists were on average significantly
less invested in democracy than the far left and far right. They were least
supportive of civil rights and free and fair elections.
These trends were particularly pronounced in the US, Britain, France,
Australia and New Zealand, but noticeable in many other western liberal
democracies.
Additionally, in most western countries, including France, support for a
strongman and for authoritarianism was much stronger among centrists than on
the far-left. British and US centrists also outpolled the far-right in their
love of authority figures.
Adler concluded: Support for free and fair elections drops at the center
for every single country in the sample. The size of the centrist gap is
striking. In the case of the United States, fewer than half of people in the
political center view elections as essential.
Centrists
seem to prefer
strong and efficient government over messy democratic politics.
Lobbyists stranglehold
It is therefore perhaps not surprising that centrist leaders like Macron are
among the most ready to disengage from fair and open debate, smear opponents
and readily blur the ideological distinctions between those to their left
and their right.
And similarly, supporters of centrism are most likely to lap up unfounded
accusations of antisemitism in the service of maintaining a status quo they
perceive as benefiting them.
That process has been starkly on show in Britain and the US of late.
For decades the centrists in Washington have dominated politics on both
sides of a supposed political divide. And one issue that has enjoyed
especially strong bipartisan support in the US is backing for Israel.
The reason for a narrow Washington consensus on a whole range of issues,
including Israel, has been the stranglehold on the US political process of
corporate money and paid lobbyists.
Lobbies prefer to operate in the dark, wielding influence out of public
view. In the case of Israel, however, the lobby has become ever more visible
to outsiders and its defences of Israel ever harder to sustain as abuses of
Palestinians are readily displayed on social media.
That, in turn, has spurred the growth of the BDS movement and a new, if
still small, wave of insurgency politicians.
Ilhan Omar attacked
Muslim Congresswoman Ilhan Omar showed how the established system seeks to
tame wayward freshmen after she tweeted an obvious point that the pro-Israel
lobby group AIPAC like other lobbyists uses its money to enforce
political orthodoxy in Washington in its chosen field. Or as she expressed
it, Its all about the Benjamins slang for $100 bills, which feature an
image of Benjamin Franklin.
She was quickly submerged in an avalanche of claims that her comment was
evidence of antisemitism. They came from across the so-called political
spectrum, from the grandees of her own Democratic party to President Trump.
Weighed down with the criticism, she apologized.
Omar justified her decision, saying it was up to Jews to decide what is
antisemitic. In an age of rampant identity politics, this sounds
superficially plausible. But it actually makes no sense at all.
Even if a clear majority of Jews do in fact think criticism of Israel or its
lobbyists is antisemitic a highly questionable assumption they dont
enjoy some special or exclusive right to make that determination.
Israel victimises Palestinians, as has been endlessly documented. No one has
the right to claim the moral high ground as a victim of racism when they are
using that same high ground to obstruct scrutiny of Israels crimes against
Palestinians. To think otherwise would be to prioritise the defense of Jews
from a possible racism over the vast evidence of concrete racism by Israel
against Palestinians.
But more to the point, Omars apology assumes that those Jews with the
loudest voices that is, those with the biggest platforms and the most
money represent all Jews. It makes organised American Jewry, whose
vigorous support for Israel has proved unshakeable even as Israeli prime
minster Benjamin Netanyahu has driven the country to the far right, the
arbiter of what all Jews think.
In fact, it does more. It makes the Israel lobby itself the one to determine
whether there is an Israel lobby. It gives the lobby permission to shield
itself entirely from view, allowing its influence to become even more
entrenched and opaque.
Omar is far from alone. Other prominent critics of Israel, often black, have
found themselves singled out for accusations of antisemitism over the
criticism of Israel, including recently Marc Lamont Hill and Angela Davis.
Through a drip-drip of accusations that Omar is expressing antisemitic
tropes when she speaks out, the aim is to make sure she starts to
self-censor, becomes as moderate as her fellow politicians, and joins the
bipartisan consensus on leaving Israel to get on with abusing Palestinians.
If she doesnt, it is assumed, she will be finished politically, kicked out
either by her own party bureaucracy or by voters.
Corbyn on the back foot
That process is much further advanced in Britain with a concerted and
long-running campaign to stigmatise Jeremy Corbyn with claims of
antisemitism since he became leader of the Labour party more than three
years ago.
Corbyn is both a throwback to a socialist tradition in Britain that was
killed by Margaret Thatcher in the early 1980s and a staunch supporter of
the Palestinian cause. In fact, he is a major anomaly: a European politician
in sight of power who prioritises the right of Palestinians to justice over
Israels policy of oppressing Palestinians.
The Israel lobby has a great deal to fear from him in changing the political
climate in Europe towards Israel.
In the UK, the ruling Conservative party has moved relentlessly to the right
in recent decades, leaving the Labour party in parliament to occupy the
centrist ground carved out for it during Tony Blairs leadership in the
1990s.
Although enjoying huge support among Labour members that propelled him into
the leadership, Corbyn is at war with most of his MPs. The centrists there
have happily weaponised antisemitism to damage Corbyn and the hundreds of
thousands of members behind him, just as Macron has against his own
political opponents.
Corbyns own MPs have publicly accused him of indulging an institutional
antisemitism in Labour, or even of being antisemitic himself.
They have done so even though all evidence suggests that there is very
little antisemitism among Labour members and less than in the ruling
Conservative party.] Labour members, however, have felt liberated by Corbyn
to be much more outspoken in criticizing Israel.
Appeasement fails
This month a group of eight Labour MPs split from the party to set up a new
faction, the Independent Group, citing Labours supposed antisemitism
problem as one of the main reasons. Highlighting their centrist agenda,
three moderate Conservative MPs joined them, opposed to prime minister
Theresa Mays hardline on exiting the European Union, known as Brexit. More
MPs from both sides may follow.
In response, Corbyns deputy, Tom Watson, another centrist, backed the
defectors and scorned his own party members, reiterating claims of an
antisemitism crisis in the party and saying it was time to root it out.
Corbyn has repeatedly tried to appease the centrists, as well as pro-Israel
lobby groups in the UK both those inside his party like Labour Friends of
Israel and the Jewish Labour Movement, and those outside like the Board of
Deputies, BICOM and the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism.
Over apparent opposition from members, the Labour party has even accepted
the IHRA definition of antisemitism, including the examples meant to shield
Israel from criticism all to no effect.
In fact, the more Corbyn has conceded to critics, the more his critics have
trumpeted a supposed antisemitism problem in Labour.
Corbyn is slowly learning, as others are in the US and Europe, that this is
not a good-faith disagreement and that there is no middle ground.
The smear industry doesnt want safeguards on antisemitism, they want a
return to a political culture in which their power was left unchallenged and
unscrutinised.
For the Israel lobby, that means the revival of a political climate that
existed before the discrediting of the Oslo process, in which criticism of
Israel was publicly shunned and the Palestinians were treated chiefly as
terrorists.
For the centrists, it requires the entrenchment of a managerial, neoliberal
politics in which major corporations and the financial industries have the
freedom to dictate economic and social policies and their failures are
unquestioningly bailed out by the public through austerity programmes.
It is an unholy pact, and one in which Jews are being used to oil the wheels
of a failed, impotent and increasingly authoritarian politics of the center.
