http://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/author/d54c36da-0fc1-4c25-a6ea-9577a9bc01f
Anti-Zionism is only
anti-Semitism if Judaism is equated unproblematically with Zionism
and Israel; but this is far from unproblematic and raises serious
issues.
Zionists are sincere
when they accuse anti-Zionists of being anti-Semitic.
This is especially
the case when Zionists equate the idea of anti-Zionism with
anti-Semitism. If the world, represented by the United Nations
General Assembly, judged that "Zionism is racism" in 1975, Zionists
and their friends insist that the opposite is true: anti-Zionism is
racism. How is this to be explained?
Whereas it is true
that Zionists and the State of Israel always use the charge of
anti-Semitism for propaganda purposes to shield Israel from
criticism and condemnation, they are sincere in their apprehension
that critics of Israel are anti-Semites.
This is so because
they argue that Zionism is a "Jewish trait" - it is something which
is a part of every Jew. They insist that the quest to "return" to
Palestine, to "Zion", is something that all Jews share and have
shared through the ages.
What this means is
that Zionism is portrayed to be, in fact, a key facet of Jewishness,
if not of Judaism itself.
They insist that the
quest to 'return' to Palestine, to 'Zion', is something that all
Jews share and have shared through the ages.
Based
on this ideological construct, it is a sincere act to conclude that
those who oppose Zionism must be anti-Semites.
In
fact, this claim is the only thing that Zionism and Israel have been
able to come up with to define what constitutes a Jew.
The
struggle to define who is a "Jew" legally in Israel has been ongoing
since the founding of the settler colony; there is no resolution in
sight.
Still, the only thing that all Zionists agree on is that Zionism is
part of what constitutes Jewishness, especially in the case of those
who are said to want to resist their Jewish identity by resisting
Zionism.
It is
in this vein that such Zionism-resisting Jews are labelled "self-hating",
as though they hate the Zionist part of their Jewishness.
Circular logic
Following this logic, colonising Palestine, driving the Palestinians
out to make room for Jewish colonists, enacting laws to guarantee
the racist nature of the Jewish settler colony, invading
neighbouring territories, bombing and killing thousands of civilians,
instituting an apartheid system, all are presented by Zionism as "Jewish"
acts - which means that opposing them most clearly constitutes
anti-Semitism.
Zionists balk when Palestinians respond insistently that Israeli
crimes are not Jewish crimes, but not at the Palestinians' assertion
that they are anti-colonialists, not racists. Rather, Zionists
object to the Palestinians'
failure to undrstand that not considering Israeli acts as "Jewish"
acts is what makes Palestinians anti-Semites in the eyes of Zionists.
What
this means is that when most Palestinians condemn Israel and not
Jews, they are judged as anti-Semitic, and when some of them buy
into the Zionist line and condemn Israel as a true representative of
Jewishness, they are also condemned as anti-Semites.
There
is clearly no way out of this Zionist logic; whatever reaction
Palestinians and their supporters muster towards Zionism and its
crimes - save endorsing them - they are condemned as anti-Semites.
This
Zionist axiom is not the same as the depiction in Woody Allen's
Annie Hall of the protagonist Alvy Singer (played by Allen) who
thinks everyone is seeing him and addressing him as a Jew (and that
when gentiles look at him they visualise him in Hassidic garb), nor
is this a variation on the Seinfeld episode about Jerry's
pathologically paranoid Jewish uncle, Leo, who thinks everyone is an
anti-Semite. It is something else entirely.
Unlike Allen's Alvy Singer and Seinfeld's Uncle Leo, most of
Israel's critics and enemies do actually oppose Israel because of
its crimes - historical and ongoing - and they do so with a passion.
Zionism's and Israel's reaction is therefore not pathological, not
paranoid, but an objective assessment of reality. The question is,
do people buy into the contention that Zionism is part of the Jewish
identity of all Jews?
Last
week an Israeli politician, Yair Lapid, declared in line with this
logic, without apology, that "European Jewry must understand that
there is just one place for Jews, and that is the State of Israel".
As
Ali Abunimah <http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israel-moves-quickly-explo>
has shown in a recent article, if French politicians uttered these
words, they would immediately be condemned as anti-Semitic. But when
uttered by an Israeli politician, it is just Zionism qua Jewishness.
"European Jewry must understand that there is just one place for
Jews, and that is the State of Israel." - Yair Lapid
For
Palestinians who live and endure the reality of Zionism as
colonialism, racism and oppression, Zionist logic is similar to
Christian anti-Semites claiming that their feelings and acts of
hatred towards Jews are a part of what it is to be Christian, and
that opposing this Christian trait is nothing short of
anti-Christianism, of hatred towards all Christians.
Or it
could be compared more relevantly to the Spanish Conquistadores
claiming that they had no choice but to kill the heathen Native
Americans who refused to convert to Christianity since converting
heathens was part of their very "Christianness".
Any
attempt to condemn such actions would then be seen as racist.
Native American resistance to Spanish colonialism, from this
perspective, was nothing short of racist anti-Christianism and
anti-Spanishism. It was, therefore, correctly not tolerated by the
Conquistadores - just as the Zionists refuse to tolerate Palestinian
resistance to their colonial project, which they insist is pure
anti-Semitism.
The
power of nonsense
Arabs
and Palestinians need not be convinced of this, as most of them
understand Zionist logic perfectly well. It is Western public
opinion that is subjected to these ideological acrobatics and often
fails to see through them.
It is
the acceptance of these absurdities in Europe and its
colonial-settler extensions that most Arabs and Palestinians find
intolerable. That any serious Western intellectual, scholar or
pundit would traffic in these Zionist claims - as many often do -
stretches even the patience of Job.
It is
in this vein that Israel, the US and all members of the European
Union have requested a UN meeting on 22 January to discuss the
"growth of anti-Semitism" worldwide, which of course includes mainly
hostility to Israel and its colonial project.
Israel's UN ambassador declared that "we have a great deal of work
to do to move this issue from the headlines to the history books".
While most Arabs and Palestinians understand why American and
European politicians parrot this nonsense, what they constantly
marvel at is the poverty of discourse among Western intellectuals
and in the wider public.