Theme Week: Jewish National Identity, Israel and Why You Just Got Called an Anti-Semite

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

"Why can't I criticize Israel without being called an anti-Semite?"

I've heard this question a lot over the years and even in this relatively young forum. It is not a question, in my opinion, with an easy answer or history. To be entirely fair to people asking the question, I'd like to offer the most satisfying answer first. Why do you get called an anti-semite for simply criticizing Israel?

Because some Israelis and some American advocates of Israel are unfair and not scrupulous. The failure of the Western Allies to act to stop the Holocaust, mitigate its effects or even take in Jewish refugees seeking to flee slaughter under the Nazis has been a powerful guilt trip to deflect criticism of Israel, at least from a governmental level, and Israel has well organized friends in American political circles who operate on that assumption.

I'm perfectly willing to admit that this happens, and almost at a reflexive level for some people. Dear friends of mine within the Jewish community are none too happy to hear my own criticism of Israeli policies -- they absolutely will not hear it from non-Jews. It is unfair and unproductive as no state is above criticism and Israel, as a nation still engaged in an occupation of stateless people, is not served by fellow Jews being unwilling to listen to conscientious and just criticism.

So, is that all there is to it? Is the charge of anti-Semitism aimed at critics of Israel simply a matter of dishonest argumentation?



This is going to be long and I am sure that a number of you reading this will be offended. I'm apologizing up front.

I'd also like to front load this with what I think it means to be a Jew in the modern world. The reason is that I often find a great number of Israel's critics on the left either do not understand or dismiss some critical elements of Jewish identity when defensiveness about Israel is explained to them.

First off, myself: I was raised in a largely secular but very Jewish family. The Jewish ritual calendar was important to us, but even moreso was the shared culture and history with other Jews. I spent 10 years attending Hebrew School after my pubic school day was over -- we learned language, history, ethics and morals, culture and religious practice.

One very large part of that was the existence of Israel as an actual state in our times. My first grade teacher was Geveret Steinberg, a survivor of Auschwitz. Our classes began with singing Hatikva, Israel's national anthem. And while all of my teachers were not as fervent as she was, they all agreed that Israel was important to the world's Jews.

But even if Israel had never existed in modern times, Jewish identity would be deeply connected to a sense of nationhood. Judaism is a complex identity embodied in a shared religious, ethical, linguistic, ethnic, cultural AND political history. A tendency I have noted among many Americans is to solely identify Judaism with its religious components, as if it were simply a matter of ritual preference. But that's not the case -- and it is explained from ancient times forward.

When the Babylonian Empire finally crushed the ancient Israelite state and took its people into exile, by the standards of the ancient Near East, that should have been the end of the Hebrew people. In Babylonian terms, Marduk had destroyed the Israelite god and that was that. But Hebrew Scriptures contained the story of the Covenant and the promise to make Abraham into a "great nation" -- and Israel's prophets interpreted that to mean that G-d had used the Babylonians as punishment for transgressions against the Covenant. Simply put, it meant that the ancient Israelites were able to maintain their identity as a distinct people living in exile.

With the second exile during Roman times, the same principle applied but was able to survive even more so because Jewish ritual life was more centered on rabbinic rather than priestly teachings and the work of rabbinic Oral Law (Talmud) allowed Jewish Written Law (Torah) to adapt with the times and to survive without a Temple.

Why so much time on this topic on a post about Israel? Because I believe it explains to a large degree why modern Jews across the world react to either some or all criticism of Israel with personal defensiveness -- because even Jews who are critical of Israel's policies share an affinity for each other as a people in a complex identity made up of religion, culture, national and familial characterisitcs.

It also explains why I identify myself as a Zionist. Because although there is actually a wide range of Zionist thought, from militant, expansionist and anti-Arab to entirely secular and political, Zionism at its heart is the belief that the Jewish people are a nation. It is the modern political expression of a concept, Aliyah, that has been central to Jewishness since ancient times. And Jewish return to Israel is not the sole creation of the modern Zionist movement. Aliyah happened after the Babylonian exile. It happened with migration from the Babylonian community to Israel during the late Roman period. It happened in the 11th century with migration from Persia to form the Jewish quarter in Jerusalem. It happened in numerous waves between 1200 and the modern Zionist movement as a result of expulsions from European countries and anti-Jewis riots where they did not kick us out.

And because of all of this, I stongly support a Palestinian state. I am angry that Arab states declined to form that state after the first war. I am deeply angry and disappointed that Israel did not form a Palestinian state on Gaza and the West Bank after 1967. I consider the ongoing policy of occupation and attempts to demographically change those territories to be foolish. And I consider the policy of collectively punishing Palestinians for the actions of militants to be a serious violation of human rights.

So, back to the original question -- why DID you get called an anti-Semite for criticizing Israel?

First off, I hope you didn't if your criticism was fair and conscientious. Like I said, all states are subject to criticism and Israel deserves some doozies.

I do think there are several categories of criticism that get that accusation -- many of them unfairly and some with more merit. I'd like to detail a few of them here:

Unfair and Unbalanced Criticism of Israeli Policy and Actions. A lot of people respond very defensively to these, but I don't think that means the critic is an anti-semite. I am inclined to think it is more from the "Big Guy/Little Guy" paradigm and to a degree, I am in agreement. After all, Israel is a wealthy nation with a top rated military. More importantly, in the large scale war between Jew and Arab, Israel has won. No Arab state is going to try to "push the Jews into the sea" anymore, and with victory comes responsibility -- responsbility that Israel has not shown.

That does not mean that there aren't questions that I have about some of the criticism and how it appears to give Palestinian militants a complete pass on either targetting Israeli civilians or using Palestinian civilians as cover, but such imbalance is not anti-semitic, nor should it be labeled as such.

Hysterical Criticism of Israel as a Whole. This is a little difficult to quantify and it is probably in the eye of the beholder. But I'd regard criticism of Israel that compares it to either Nazi or Apartheid states to be in this category. I respectfully disagree -- Israel is not genocidal. And Israel proper is not an apartheid state. The occupation has its own very serious problems and human rights violations that deserve criticism. Israel within its own borders is a state with a great deal to proud of, and I know that I get personally defensive when faced with criticisms that blur the distinction.

However, they are not anti-semitic. Out of proportion is not the same thing as emnity.

Over-Simplifications of Israel's Creation. A lot of these arguments bother me because they don't look at the entire picture. As I mentioned before, Aliyah to Palestine had been going on since before the fall of Rome, so it is a big mistake to act as if the waves of Zionist immigration from 1882 forward were entirely unprecedented.

Further, many of these arguments see Jews as "usurpers" when the history is again much more complicated. The Arab Palestinians were not a people with a state, themselves; many of them were ancient inhabitants and many were also fairly recent arrivals brought in to work land for absentee Ottoman landlords. In fact, no fully autonomous state had existed on that land since the time of the Maccabean Revolt.

Also, I frequently hear criticisms about Zionist terrorism, and it is true that the Haganah, Irgun and Stern Gang were militants who engaged in terrorist acts against both the British and Arabs. It is also true that those groups were formed AFTER there had already been significant Arab violence against Jewish settlers -- violence the British commanders often turned a blind eye to because they associated Zionists with Bolshevism. There was also an armed Arab revolt from 1936-1938. These issues are rarely included in those critiques.

Are these arguments anti-semitic? Not as such, but they do represent either a significant enmity against Zionism without a similarly critical eye at Palestinian nationalism or a desire for a greatly oversimplified narrative.

Arguments Against Israel's Existence. That's tricky, not because there aren't arguments to made against the Partitition Plan of 1947, but because, for the reasons I discussed previously, myself and many many of my fellow Jews will hear these arguments as being against a deeply important part of Jewish identity.

That's not to say there are not principled and reasonable arguments to be made. For example, this statement...

"While I understand that being a people and making Aliyah are central to Jewish identity and while I recognize that Europe has repeatedly and systematically oppressed Jews, the creation of a politically Jewish state on the British Mandate was a poor idea. The land was demographically Arab and given the growing Arab nationalist movement and the population centers, there was no way to make a viable Jewish state that did not displace many Arabs. Further, the tensions that existed by then guaranteed decades of bloody conflict."

...is both reasonable and conscientious. I do not agree with the totality of its conclusions, but I cannot dismiss it as anti-Jewish.

Unfortunately, I do not often encounter such arguments. What I do encounter are arguments that solely focus on Jews as usurpers without careful consideration of how there could have been a Palestinian state in 1948 and how the other Arab states kept Palestinians stateless after the initial war. It is not the concern about the creation of Israel that worries me here -- it is the sole focus on Jews as bad actors.

And other argument that truly worries me and often devolves quickly is this one: "I don't hate Jews. I hate Zionists".

Zionism is a many faceted movement, and yes, there are even Jews who do not agree with its goals, especially Orthodox who believe in Israel only after Messiah and liberal Jews who do not emphasize Aliyah. And yes, any movement ought to be subject to criticism.

However, if at its heart, Zionism is an expression of a widely held Jewish identity and if in the long history of the Diaspora, Jews have always been making Aliyah, the special hostility reserved for Zionism and Zionists runs a great risk of becoming actually anti-Jewish.

First, these criticisms are, frequently, dismissive of Jewish identity. Many times I've tried to explain why so many Jews have such a strong connection to Israel only to be dismissed with I can only explain as arrogant atheism -- and a strong refusal to see Jewish claims to identity as anything other than religious in nature. It is necessarily troubling to see liberal critics -- who are eager to affirm almost any other group's self identification -- willing to simply dismiss Judaism's identity.

Being critical of some of Zionism's outcomes does not necessitate callously dismissing what it means to be a Jew.

Second, many anti-Zionist arguments necessarily rely upon the notion that Zionism is nearly conspiratorial, controlling world governments and outcomes. I can agree that Israel currently has a well-organized lobby and many powerful friends. But it goes very far beyond that when I read criticisms of Zionists that echo the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and attribute to it nearly any conflict in the Middle East. Further, I've read too many times that Zionism is "racist". But if Jewish nationalism is racist then those same critics should be equally hostile to Palestinian nationalism -- and mostly they aren't, and use a long litany of alleged quotes from Talmud to justify accusations that Judaism is supremicist.

I am willing to say that these arguments and positions are often, at a minimum, hostile to Jewish identity. And they often cross the line in anti-semitism -- by denying Jews the right to define ourselves, by engaging in conspiratorial arguments against Zionism, by laying upon Jewish ideologies false claims about our perspective on others.

If you've read this far, well, you have a lot of patience and stamina. I honestly cannot say how much I will reply in this -- the truth is that I am personally very tired of these arguments. I am tired of fellow Jews who are too knee-jerk in their defense of Israel treating my belief in Palestinian claims as anti-Jewish. And I am beyond tired of liberal critics of Israel refusing to acknowledge important aspects of Jewish identity, and attributing ideas to the Jewish people that we do not hold.

Comments

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Great post and a good point in saying that the automatic accusation in antisemitism is mostly due to disingenuousness on the part of the former allies. One confirmation is the fact that in my country, someone criticizing the policies of Israel in most cases would not be called antisemite, the way they wouldn't be called racist if they criticize the policies, of, say, Nigeria. I may give this fact due to the general ethnic tolerance in my society, plus one specific historic fact: the Bulgarian authorities, despite being on the side of Hitler in WW2, resisted his demands to hand over the Bulgarian Jews, and saved all of them. Not one Bulgarian Jew went to the concentration camps. Unfortunately, this isn't valid for those Jews who lived in the neighboring countries where the BG military carried out operations - those were rounded up and handed to Germany. Whether that could be averted or the situation prevented the BG authorities from avoiding this act, or whether they did not care about those Jews, I cannot say. But the undeniable fact is that all BG Jews were saved, with no exception. And that's a fact that all Jews and Israel as a state continues to acknowledge and commemorate to this very day. This historic moment stays deep in the psyche of the BG culture ever since, and it could be one of the reasons why antisemitism is not only almost absent here, but people feel the freedom to hold Israel morally accountable for whatever policies they disagree with, without fear of being labeled as antisemite.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I would also add that a bit of an ironic twist comes in that Bulgaria did this when the US people and government both washed their hands of the issue by hiding behind the 1924 Immigration Laws. And the UK did much the same by shipping German Jews who'd fled the Concentration Camps to internment in Canada, and of course the USSR had the Doctor's Plot following WWWII......

And not only Bulgaria here, Denmark (another country that to put it bluntly did everything Hitler asked without even thinking twice for most of the war) also shipped most of its Jews out of harm's way......

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005451

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

A very good post about a very controversial topic.

I'd note that Jewish identity in one way is hard to fit into modern categories because its origins lie completely outside them, even if King Omri of Shomron would probably not recognize everything that is modern Judaism.

Israeli politicians also have a habit of speaking at times for all Jews everywhere, which can sometimes bite them in the ass.

I would also note that I am no fan of Zionism, but then I detest other forms of nationalism as well, including the Anglo-American brand of it. Zionism gets no onus from me that other ones don't get also. I take no credence to any idiot in Ireland claiming to speak for Irish in the diaspora, for any whacko in Tokyo claiming to speak for all Japanese everywhere (and if certain types ever support Fujimori, to Hell wit' em) or for any German to use the BRD's right of return as a license to speak for all Germans (as I'm half-German that last one is the most relevant to me).

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

Judaism isn't supremicist but that doesn't mean that the Israeli government doesn't act in exclusionary ways because they clearly do. Not the same things at all.

I'd prefer to just address Israel's behavior not their religion, same for any other country. I know there are influences from religion but it shouldn't be a deflection from ACTIONS. Same for history.

[dzlk.livejournal.com]

Another aspect of the thing is that one could argue that a certain significant strain of political Zionism is itself anti-Semitic in effect because it'd happily throw away the whole moral, philosophical and cultural heritage of the diaspora for what amounts to a cheap 19th century European nationalism. If I had my library with me I'd go looking for the quote from one of the early secular Zionist writers that "to be a Zionist you have to be something of an anti-Semite".

Not to say that I agree or disagree, but it's a valid argument. It's complicated.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

Interesting.

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

Well, it's certainly true that the pioneers generally despise the ultra-Orthodox...

[chipuni.livejournal.com]

This post is AWESOME. You have clearly and specifically written about a difficult, complex topic.

Thank you for a balanced view on the topic, where too many people are very unbalanced.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

Seconded.

I'm actually bookmarking this post because I'm going to need it later.

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

It's good to hear these things to give a sense of proportion. But I do find some of the Israeli actions on a par with other world horrors: like the UK in Northern Ireland. Until now I have tended to overlook the Biblical stories of exile for the dating of the start of all this because of their religious nature, and the way it appears to have been redacted for political/national/religious purposes over the ages, and start with Josephus: but then again, he was I suppose as biased as anyone in the pocket of a Flavian Emperor.

It's salutary for me to read this. My Jewish chums are, almost without exception, anti-Zionist and extremely secular, and their attitudes are considerably more anti-Israel than anyone I've come across in the US. And I suppose I have a kneejerk anti-Zionism too, inasmuch as whenever I hear of Israel being beastly to the Arabs I feel indignant. One always forgets manifest destiny.

[Tips Hat somewhat wryly.]

I cannot agree with some of the actions of the Israeli state, but they are there now and, if you like, there is where we start. I don't suppose, given the information presented in this essay, that new settlements will ever stop: there will always be a significant part of Jewish thought that embraces the notion of a greater Israel. Just as there will always be Palestinian folk who regard the Israelis as interlopers, and having robbed the Palestinian peoples of their birthright.

Where can they find the compromise? The one that enables folk to live together without targeting each other? Does it need very strong people on both sides holding their extremists in check? Outside mediation has done little thus far.

Now I wonder why it hasn't blown up like Sarajevo. Though appearances sometimes deceive, neither side has descended to that yet, so there is some hope.

[anadinboy.livejournal.com]

what do you mean the uk in northern ireland? The irish republicans are total scum , the brits are just crime fighting.

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

Now that you mention it, I've not seen figures on this issue, but I bet that American Jews are far more likely to identify with Zionism than the European Jews who stayed. I wonder if part of it is survivor guilt with a twist -- American Jews didn't simply survive the Holocaust...it never touched us.

Where can they find the compromise?

People often snark it, but the land for peace formula has been very successful since 1979.

What both sides currently need to do is actually assess the stark failures of their approaches: Israeli collective punishment only hardens the Palestinians and gives support to new generations of militants. Palestinian terrorism against Israeli civilians only produces reactionary governments more inclined to crack down.

Yet both sides keep going down those same paths -- it's insane.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

[anadinboy.livejournal.com]

The problem with insulting israel is you (the insulter), by denying the right to a homeland , are seeking to return the jews to their pre-war exsistance and circumstances, i.e. living on the whims of the western nations. That high level of vulnerability has been addressed by forming of the state of israel, at least in theory. However, that posistion can be attacked by the fact that many anti-zionists are quick to offer an alternative location for a jewish homeland.Making an offer to the jews to move to a differant world location is considered just about the most offensive thing you can say to a zionist.

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

I can say that Israel's actions in Gaza and the West Bank have been, on the whole, unreasonable or unwarranted without saying that I think Israel should be dissolved.

a+++

[debergerac.livejournal.com]

citation not needed.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

Pretty good read.

I get frustrated when calling people out on their bias against Israel when they pull the "can't a person criticize Israel without being called an anti-semite" card.

If I were going to a KKK sponsored anti-Obama rally and tried saying "can't I oppose Obama without being called a racist", I'd get dragged out on the mat for it. But people do it all the time with Hamas and Hezbollah.

Conversely, getting told I support something because I hate old people, foreign people, black people, women people, etc etc gets old.

[debergerac.livejournal.com]

you also hate puppies.

And you can't criticize America...

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

... without being called a commie pinko faggot.

It's interesting that when Hertzl was stumping for Zionism in the 19th century, Europe was in the process of coming to grips with the vestiges of religious bigotry in its policies towards Jews. German Jews were being integrated into polite society despite lingering racism and religious intolerance. Some Jewish leaders saw Zionism as more of a threat than anti-Semitism to Jewish integration.

In many ways, by emulating the viciousness of Western powers, Israel has not helped the situation at all. It's like Bush suppressing terrorism by invading Iraq. Instead of accomplishing the goal, it only makes matters worse.

Re: And you can't criticize America...

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

Europe was in the process of coming to grips with the vestiges of religious bigotry in its policies towards Jews. German Jews were being integrated into polite society despite lingering racism and religious intolerance

Didn't work out too well for them, did it?

[uses4safetypins.livejournal.com]

What's weird is that people seem to think only Israelis are semetic people and not Arabs.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

If you're talking about the term "anti-semite", it's the way the term was coined. Same way "homophobia" doesn't mean you have a clinical fear of homosexuals or things that are the same.

[kardashev.livejournal.com]

There's a lot of pseudo-logic surrounding nearly any debate involving Israel and Palestine. Personally, I've seen that same pseudo-logic cut both ways.On the one had there are the people who call any critic of Israel's policies an anti-semite. But then there are those who treat Palestine like a sacred cow, as well. Say anything critical of the Palestinians and they'll automatically label you as a racist who hates swarthy people.

Personally, it seems to me that the the biggest roadblocks to peace are thrown up by irresponsible extemists within both camps. I often imagine moderates in both camps who want peace facepalming so hard they risk self-trepanation.

Admittedly, I say this as someone on the outside of the tent looking in so take it for what you think it's worth.

[uses4safetypins.livejournal.com]

John Stewart talked about that and about how the media seems to refuse to admit that the issue is complicated with no clear right or wrong.

[thies.livejournal.com]

saw too much over the top hysteria, can't take jewish special interest groups at large serious anymore

[headhouse.livejournal.com]

I'm seeing a few significant parallels between your description of jewish identity (which, by the way, is apparently a lot more complicated than I even suspected; thanks for the detailed post) and some things I've seen written about the self-identity of american blacks. A shared and in many ways insular culture, a reflexive sensitivity to criticism of some aspects of that culture (and the subsequent defense by "unfair and unscrupulous" people of calling the criticism "racist"), a different (and perhaps more flexible or varying) understanding of self-referential terminology, and a corresponding lack of complete understanding of that identity by most people who aren't part of that culture. The short-form result is a fairly large stumbling block in any meaningful conversation about either of these subjects.

That's just an observation. I'm trying to decide if I can make it useful for anything.

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

Interesting angle -- never really thought about that as a connection.

True story: I taught high school in Hawai'i. Since very few of my kids really knew Jews, I was their source for a lot of information. One time, a student made a disparaging comment about people on the mainland being messed up because they were all haoles (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/haole). I coughed and pointed at myself.

The girls thought for a second and said, "Oh, but you aren't haole -- you're JEWISH!"

I was never quite sure how to process that except that she had concluded that Jews are the white people other white people don't treat like white people.