On the Definition of Anti-Semitism and its Relation to the Criticism of Israel
It is the case that a distinction exists between the criticism of Israel and anti-semitism. It’s also the case that in a lot of cases this distinction doesn’t hold true, that certain forms of criticism of Israel is in fact anti-semitism in disguise. Given these two statements, we must find a way to define anti-semitism which captures the anti-semitic criticisms of Israel and excludes non-discriminatory criticism. What differentiates antisemitic criticism of Israel from legitimate criticism is that the former aims to delegitimise Israel’s existence while the latter aims to (radically) reform Israel’s institutions and policies.
The International Holocaust Remembrance Association (IHRA) has proposed a definition and associated examples with the aim of respecting people’s free speech to criticise Israel as well as capturing odious antisemitic criticisms of Israel. The IHRA definition asserts that it is anti-semitic to criticise Israel to a different standard than you would other states, to blames the actions of the state of Israel on Jews, to assert that the endeavour for the existence of a state of Israel is racist, to using symbols associated with antisemitism to refer to Israel or Israelis and drawing comparisons of Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
The first point simply means that you hold Israel accountable to the same standard as any other state. When Israel commits crimes it should be met with the appropriate level of criticism that would be levelled against another state committing those same crimes. The Nation State Law is racist. As long as you would criticise a similar law enacted by the Palestinians there is nothing antisemitic about asserting it about Israel. Even more extreme, suppose you assert that Israel is an apartheid state. Given that the South African state was never abolished, yet the apartheid institutions were, it would be to apply a different standard towards Israel to call for it to be abolished unlike South Africa. In other words, asserting that Israel is an apartheid state shouldn’t delegitimise the existence of Israel. Accusing Israel of being an apartheid state is to criticise specific institutions relating to the Israeli state or its policies towards the occupied West Bank, it shouldn’t be a rejection of the notion of Jewish self-determination or a call to see Israel abolished which would certainly see millions of Jews fleeing the region as refugees.
It should be obvious why it is anti-semitic to blame Jews for the actions of the Israeli state. Jews are not responsible for the policies of Israel. Many Jews inside and outside of Israel criticise Israeli policy. Israeli officials and the Israeli government are responsible. Blaming Jews for what Israel does is a clear attempt to use the state of Israel to engage in classical antisemitism. Israel becomes a useful tool to express hatred towards Jews as a whole. Israel is the safe haven of Jews, not the mouthpiece of Jews. What Israel does isn’t a reflection on what the global Jewish community thinks is right.
Is Zionism inherently racist? If the answer is yes, then we can assert that Jewish self-determination is inherently racist and consequently the mere existence of a Israel is racist. The existence of a state of Israel does not require the racial suppression of another people to exist. It’s entirely possible for Israel to be a liberal and secular nation dedicated to preserving equal rights for all, while ensuring the state has a specific mandate to act as safe-haven for Jews if required. If the current state of Israel doesn’t match that ideal, it is the result of Israeli policy, or a variant of Zionism, not the ideology of Zionism.
Zionism is in fact a family of ideologies in which aspects of them fundamentally differ. Religious Zionism differs fundamentally to secular Zionism. Some Zionists are capitalists and others are socialists. Zionists can have difference images of what an ideal Zion would look like. They can have different justifications for the state of Israel existing. Some of these images of Zion may well be fundamentally racist, however that is not the same as saying Zionism as a family of ideologies is inherently racist. For Zionism, the family of ideologies, to be inherently racist Jewish self-determination must also be inherently racist.
Why should Jewish self-determination be inherently racist but not Scottish, or Catalonian, self-determination? The Jewish identity is not defined purely by race. The current state of Israel doesn’t even require you to be an ethnic Jew to qualify as being a Jew on ancestral grounds. You can also qualify as a Jew by converting to Judaism. Where is the racism in Israel’s definition of what a Jew is?
The assertion that Jews must be a majority in Israel to ensure their political rights aren’t infringed is troublesome for those who argue that Israel isn’t inherently racist. We could use such reasons to justify the existence of policies that discriminate against other peoples in a Jewish state, perhaps Arabs should be allowed to only have a certain number of children while Jews are free to have as many children as they like. That sort of policy would systematically discriminate against a certain people while favouring another.
Jews need to be a majority within Israel to ensure they don’t end up being a minority within the political entity that is dedicated to their self-determination. This is based on the fact they have faced millennia of persecution while being a minority. Even in liberal democracies the rights of minorities aren’t guaranteed. The US systematically discriminated against African Americans in the South through the Jim Crow laws. LGBT people who have had sex with the same gender are not allowed to donate blood in the UK, which is a law based on the prejudicial notion that homosexuals are more likely to get STD’s than heterosexuals.
Essentially Israel is the most ambitious realisation of positive discrimination in human history, fitting given the levels of persecution Jews have faced. The necessity of a Palestinian state becomes apparent though, otherwise the act of positive discrimination becomes discriminatory in the unjustified sense. Palestinians need their right to self-determination realised if Jews are required to be a majority in their promised land. The Palestinians do have a legitimate claim to the Holy Land themselves, just like Jews do.
The fact Palestinians don’t have their state doesn’t delegitimise Israel, rather it highlights the plight of Palestinians and gives us ground to legitimately criticise Israeli politicians that seek to undermine the establishment of a Palestinian state, such as Benjamin Netanyahu.
We also need to realise that the requirement for a Jewish majority in Israel is not inherent to Zionism. The need for it is based on empirical observation about the status of minorities in the world. Such observations could change as societies become ever more progressive. One days Jews maybe able to have self-determination in Israel which has an Arab majority. Currently it is not feasible for that to occur though. Wr
Is it anti-semitic to assert that the endeavour of an Israeli state is racist? The IHRA definition is stating that those who think the essence of any state of Israel is racist are antisemitic. You can criticise the Israeli government for implementing racist policies and even criticise the direction Israel is going towards as racist. That’s different from saying the act to realise the ideals of Zionism is racist. To assert the essence of Israel is racist is to assert that Zionism is inherently racist, yet it is not difficult to conceive of a Zion in which racism plays no part in its foundation. Criticising the manifestation of Israel is different from criticising the idea of Israel. Condemning racist policies is an example of the former not the later.
We also have the issue of the formation of Israel. Critics of Israel have lambasted the ethnic cleansing, a war crime, of Palestinians when Israel was founded. Do such war crimes delegitimise Israel? Do such crimes provide evidence that Israel is a colonial endeavour stripping Palestinians of their exclusive right to the Holy Land? The answer to both questions is no. Jews also faced ethnic cleansing once Israel declared independence. The violence committed by both sides was wrong. The better organisation and military equipment of the Israelis meant they were able to win the 1948 war given them more opportunities to commit crimes which haunt the Middle East today. Yet if the tides were reserved we shouldn’t doubt that a significant number of Jews fleeing persecution from Eastern Europe would have been ethnically cleansed from Palestine as well. The narrative that Israel was founded as a colonial endeavour is wrong. It would be blatantly anti-semitic to support Palestinian self-determination because of the crimes committed against it by ‘colonists’, yet ignore that Jews fleeing persecution themselves were being ethnically cleansed as well. Applying a double standard towards Jews is clear prejudice against them.
It should be obvious why using anti-semitic imagery and symbolism, traditionally used against Jewish individuals, towards Israel is anti-semitic. Israel becomes a proxy by which to abuse the Jewish identity.
Finally, we have the issue of whether it is anti-semitic to compare Israeli policy to those conducted by the Nazis. Making such comparisons are a clear attempt to delegitimise the state of Israel. Making such comparisons also allows for Jews to criticised as hypocrites for using their persecution to justify the persecution of another people. It’s also historically inaccurate. Nazi Germany attempted to exterminate Jews and many other minority groups while utilising eugenics to perform inhumane experiments on those deemed unworthy. Even Israel’s most horrendous crimes don’t compare to the brutality of the Nazis. Such comparisons make light of the horrors committed by the Nazis and make such heavy-handed criticisms that they are the result of prejudice.
At times in this essay I have made very controversial points about what the IHRA definition allows in terms of legitimate criticism of Israel. The key notion to me is whether or not a criticism is asserted to delegitimise the existence of Israel. If it does, then there is a high likelihood that criticism is anti-semitic. If it is call for radical reform within Israel, though, then I don’t see that criticism as being anti-semitic. The IHRA definition does not assert that strong criticism of Israel can be deemed anti-semitic. Such criticism should be free from prejudice which includes one-sided accounts which portray the actions of Israel as bad while the evils of others are looked over.
Saying that Hamas are a bunch of freedom fighters legitimately firing rockets in opposition to Israeli occupation is anti-semitic. Such an analysis fails to account for the fact that Israelis, who are predominantly Jews, are not responsible for the actions of the Israeli state. It fails to acknowledge blatant anti-Semitism, even if you reject the IHRA definition, in the Hamas charter. It fails to acknowledge that Hamas goal is the military overthrow of Israel which would see millions of Jews flee the region if Hamas ever wielded the power to enact its ultimate goal.
Attempts to smear Jews as invaders taking the land of Palestinians sounds very reminiscent of the nativist language the European far-right are utilising to describe the fleeing Syrian refugees. Both Syrians and Jews were fleeing persecution from the states they were residing in. Giving how powerless Jews were at the time, the existence of the state of Israel or a Jewish homeland helped empower fleeing Jews. Yet some leftist analyses suggest that this act of empowerment was colonialism and imperialism at work. So what was the alternative? Jews trusting in Western governments, which all pretty much failed them. There narrative that Jews were essentially imposters taking the land that rightfully belonged to the Palestinians is a very biased analysis of events. Jews were emigrating to Palestine, but when did the left think that migration was akin to an invasion stealing territory from native habitants. The idea that Jews were sufficiently powerful that there was no need for a Jewish state is a preposterous reading of history. The founding of Israel was necessary to free Jews from vehement persecution. That’s liberation, not colonialism. The injustice of the 1948 war was that the Palestinians weren’t liberated with their own state, which can’t all be attributed as the fault of Israel. A partition was proposed by the UN which would have granted the existence of a Palestinian state, which the Palestinians and other Arab countries rejected outright. Egypt and Jordan could have allowed the Palestinians to form a state, which never happened.
To assert that war crimes occurred in the formation of Israel isn’t anti-semitic, unless the historical records flatly contradict such war crimes ever occurring. It only becomes anti-semitic if you try delegitimising the state of Israel. The trouble when applying the IHRA definition is knowing when people are criticising of Israel because Israel as a state is capable of perpetrating injustices and when they criticise it to delegitimise its existence when they wouldn’t do otherwise when other states commit unjust acts. This is not a problem with the definition of anti-semitism but the complexities of analysing peoples intentions when making criticisms of institutions in a highly charged political debate.
This essay is an edited version of the one published here: https://medium.com/@Gazmundo/on-the-definition-of-anti-semitism-and-its-relation-to-the-criticism-of-israel-230a0ad22be2

