ALLAN C. BROWNFEL
Emmanuel Macron told Benjamin Netanyahu he would stand up to anti-Zionist sentiment (Reuters)
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, March/April 2021, pp. 28-29
Israel and Judaism
By Allan C. Brownfeld
IN RECENT MONTHS, the campaign to redefine anti-Semitism has achieved notable success. In 2017, French President Emmanuel Macron condemned anti-Zionism as a form of anti-Semitism at a commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the Winter Stadium, or Velodrome d’Hiver, when French police detained 13,000 Jews for deportation to Nazi death camps in Eastern Europe. The French president declared, “We will never surrender to the expressions of hatred. We will not surrender to anti-Zionism because it is a re-invention of anti-Semitism.”
Just a month before, in June 2017, the European Parliament had voted to adopt a resolution calling on member states and their institutions to apply the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of anti-Semitism. In addition to defining anti-Semitism as “Rhetorical and physical manifestations…directed toward Jewish individuals…toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities,” it adopted the following declaration, “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g. by claiming the existence of the State of Israel is a racist endeavor.”
At a Hanukkah party in the White House in 2019, President Donald Trump issued an executive order that, in effect, redefined Judaism as a nationality or race, rather than a religion. He did this so that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which does not protect against religious discrimination, could be applied to Jews.
What the president was seeking to do was limit criticism of Israel at universities by defining it as “anti-Semitism” and placing this in the category of prohibited discrimination. The New York Times editorially called this executive order an assault on the First Amendment and freedom of speech.
Elan Carr, the Trump administration’s anti-Semitism envoy, equated anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism and considered support for Israel a key tenet of Judaism. On a visit to Jerusalem in November 2020, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, appearing with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, compared the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement to cancer and said that opposition to Zionism, by its very nature, is anti-Semitic. Advocates of the BDS movement, which includes large numbers of Jews, call for a peaceful boycott of Israeli goods; and divestment from Israel until it makes concessions to Palestinians and compare the movement to a similar campaign against apartheid South Africa.
Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun, argues that the organized American Jewish community constantly tries to blur the distinction between legitimate criticism of Israel and anti-Semitism, cautioning that it is a “slippery slope.”
It is not a new phenomenon. Professor Noam Chomsky points out that former Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban, “equated anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism in an effort to exploit anti-racist sentiment for political ends,” citing a statement by Eban in 1973: “One of the chief tasks of any dialogue with the Gentile world is to prove that the distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is not a distinction at all.” In 2002, Chomsky wrote that the conflation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism was being extended to Israeli policies, not just criticism of Zionism. He concluded, “That is a convenient stand. It cuts off a mere 100 percent of critical comment.” Recently, controversy has grown in Germany over what academics, writers and others believe is a limitation on free speech, as criticism of Israel and Zionism is categorized as “anti-Semitism,” which has led to self-censorship and the stifling of artistic expression.
The New York Times, on Dec. 11, 2020, reported: “In May, a prominent Cameroonian philosopher was disinvited from addressing a high-profile arts festival in Germany for drawing parallels between the situation of the Palestinians and apartheid in South Africa in his writing. The striking of Achille Mbembe from the program of the Ruhrtriennale in May led to months-long public debate in which the relationship of genocide and colonialism to the Holocaust and Germany’s special relationship to Israel came into question. It also sparked the cultural leaders’ decision to go public with their fears that the discussion was taking an unwelcome turn.”
In May 2019, the German Parliament designated the BDS campaign as anti-Semitic. The advisory declaration called on all of Germany’s states and municipalities to deny public funding to any institution that “actively supports the movement or questions the right of Israel to exist.”
Critics in Germany charge that instead of stifling anti-Semitism, the resolution has stifled the open exchange of ideas in the public sphere and freedom of expression in the arts, both of which are guaranteed by Germany’s constitution. In an open letter, one of the signatories, Johannes Ebert, the secretary general of the Goethe Institute, an organization that promotes German culture abroad, noted that, “Cultural exchange does not work by deciding who we are allowed to talk about, and who we aren’t, especially in international cultural exchange. You have to listen closely. You have to be willing to speak to people whose positions you don’t share.”
The directors of the Berliner Festspiele, the Humboldt Forum, and the Federal Cultural Foundation along with the leaders of theaters, museums, and institutes for Jewish Cultural studies from across the country are among those who signed the appeal. Months after the 2019 resolution was passed, the director of Berlin’s Jewish Museum, Peter Schafer, quit his post amid criticism that he had become too politically involved with the battle over the BDS movement. Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger, director of the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study, an interdisciplinary research institute, said the resolution limited the mandates of organizations like hers, which encourage the free exchange of ideas among scholars. She declared that “if we were to take this resolution literally, then we could not invite many Jewish and Palestinian Israeli intellectuals who oppose the human rights violations of their own government.”
Yehudit Yinhar, a Jewish Israeli student at the Weissensee Art Academy in Berlin, learned how the resolution could be interpreted when she found herself, along with the other members of a project she jointly organized called “School for Unlearning Zionism,” facing accusations of anti-Semitism. “We want to do our own homework, teaching ourselves about power and privilege,” she said of the events, which consisted of 12 online lectures and public discussions with titles such as “Zionism as Settler Colonialism.” After accusations of the project’s links to the BDS movement appeared in the Israeli and German media, their academy-hosted website was taken offline. “No taxpayer money should be used to delegitimize Israel,” declared the American Jewish Committee’s Berlin office.
In December 2020, a statement and set of principles was signed by more than 100 Palestinian and Arab academics, journalists and intellectuals regarding the definition of anti-Semitism by the IHRA and the way this definition has been applied. They state that, “the fight against anti-Semitism should not be turned into a stratagem to delegitimize the fight against the oppression of the Palestinians, the denial of their rights and the continued occupation of their land…Anti-Semitism must be debunked and combated. Regardless of pretense, no expression of hatred for Jews as Jews should be tolerated anywhere in the world. We also believe the lessons of the Holocaust, as well as those of other genocides of modern times must be part of the education of new generations against all forms of racial prejudice and hatred…It should be part and parcel of the fight against all forms of racism and xenophobia, including Islamophobia and hostility to Arabs and Palestinians…”
“I believe it is because the Zionist lobby knows it cannot win based on facts.”
Many Jews from around the world embraced this declaration, including Dror Feiler of European Jews for a Just Peace, Sweden; Donna Nevel, Jews Say No, U.S.; Sheryl Nestel, Independent Jewish Voices, Canada; David Comedi, International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, Argentina; Marilyn Garson, Alternative Jewish Voices, New Zealand, and Vivienne Porzsolt, Jews Against the Occupation, Australia.
The effort to silence criticism of Israel as “anti-Semitic” has a long history, and no one is immune. In 2007, for example, South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Prize winner for his fight against apartheid, was disinvited from speaking at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota because of complaints from the local Jewish community. He was attacked because of statements he made criticizing Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, which critics said were “anti-Semitic.” The university rescinded the ban after a strong backlash led by Jewish Voice for Peace.
Marv Davidov, an adjunct professor with the Justice and Peace Studies program at the University of St. Thomas said: “As a Jew who experienced real anti-Semitism as a child, I’m deeply disturbed that a man like Tutu could be labeled anti-Semitic and silenced like this. I deeply resent the Israeli lobby trying to silence any criticism of its policy. It does a great disservice to Israel and to all Jews.”
Dr. Joel Beinin, professor of history at Stanford University, writes: “Why discredit, defame and silence those with opposing viewpoints? I believe it is because the Zionist lobby knows it cannot win based on facts. An honest discussion can only lead to one conclusion: the status quo in which Israel declares it alone has rights and intends to impose its will on the weaker Palestinians, stripping them permanently of their land, resources and rights, cannot lead to a lasting peace. We need an open debate and the freedom to discuss uncomfortable facts and explore the full range of policy options. Only then can we adopt a foreign policy that serves American interests and one that could actually bring a just peace to Palestinians and Israelis.”
The effort to redefine criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism has been going on for many years. One of the leading practitioners for the effort to silence criticism of Israel by calling it “anti-Semitic” has been Norman Podhoretz, editor of Commentary, which was originally published by the American Jewish Committee. In an article titled, “J’Accuse,” published in September 1982, Podhoretz accused America’s leading journalists, many of them Jewish, and leading news organization with “anti-Semitism” because of their reporting of the war in Lebanon and their criticism of Israel’s conduct.
Since those early days of redefining anti-Semitism to include criticism of Israel and opposition to Zionism, the movement has grown and gained official sanction in an increasing number of countries. It completely ignores the long history of Jewish opposition to Zionism and it is evident that the sole purpose in promoting this definition is simple and transparent: to silence criticism of Israel and its policies. But in this they are failing, and this failure is most dramatic among Jews, who are increasingly outspoken in their dismay over those who violate Judaism’s humane values in their name. Sadly, we have seen examples of real anti-Semitism in recent days. Any comparison of real anti-Semitism with the criticism of Israel and its policies, shows us how irrational and ahistorical such claims really are and dangerous in their potential to disguise actual anti-Semitism.
Allan C. Brownfeld is a syndicated columnist and associate editor of the Lincoln Review, a journal published by the Lincoln Institute for Research and Education, and editor of Issues, the quarterly journal of the American Council for Judaism.
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