JOURNALfor the STUDYof ANTISEMITISM

Transcription

jsa3-2_cv_jsa3-2_cv 4/10/2012 11:17 AM Page 2
Volume 3 Issue #2
JOURNAL for the
STUDY of
ANTISEMITISM
JOURNAL for the STUDY of ANTISEMITISM
Volume 3 Issue #2 2011
2011
JOURNAL for the
STUDY of
ANTISEMITISM
Volume 3, Issue #2, 2011
Campus Antisemitism
Guest Editor, Kenneth L. Marcus
http://jewishresearch.org/Gary_Tobin_Video.html
Gary A. Tobin
(1949-2009)
Gary A. Tobin was one of the first to see the dangers of the
new antisemitism on American college campuses and
one of the strongest voices in resisting it.
Journal for the Study of Antisemitism (JSA)
Steven K. Baum and Neal E. Rosenberg, Editors, Marlton, NJ
Steven L. Jacobs, Associate Editor; Judaic Studies, University of Alabama
Lesley Klaff, Associate Editor/Law, Sheffield Hallam University, UK
Florette Cohen, Associate Editor/Research, College of Staten Island
Kenneth L. Marcus, Associate Editor/Academia, IJCR & Louis D. Brandeis Center, DC
Shimon Samuels, Chair, Simon Wiesenthal Centre, Paris
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, AHA Foundation, AEI, Washington, DC
Paul Bartrop, Historian, Bialik College, Melbourne, Australia
Hadassa Ben-Itto, Author/Judge (Ret.), Tel Aviv
Michael Berenbaum, Sigi Ziering Institute, Los Angeles
Andrew Bostom, Brown University, Providence, RI
Jonathan Boyd, Jewish Policy Research, London
Israel W. Charny, Encyclopedia of Genocide, Jerusalem
Richard L Cravatts, Education, Boston University
Bernie Farber, Canadian Jewish Congress, Toronto
Robert Fine, Sociology, University of Warwick, UK
Manfred Gerstenfeld, JCPA, Jerusalem
Sander Gilman, Humanities, Emory University, Atlanta
Ari Goldberg, AIPAC, Washington, DC
Clemens Heni, Political Science—MEF Funded, Berlin
Jim Heller, Gadfly/Blogger, Victoria, BC
Douglas Hoffman, Grant Writer, New Mexico State University
Paul Iganski, Sociology, Lancaster University, UK
Dennis L. Jackson, Statistics, University of Windsor
Andras Kovacs, Sociology, Central European University, Budapest
Neil J. Kressel, Psychology, William Paterson University, Wayne, NJ
Richard Landes, Department of History, Boston University
Walter Laqueur, Professor Emeritus, Georgetown University, Washington, DC
Kenneth Lasson, Law, University of Baltimore
Marcia Littell, Holocaust Studies, Richard Stockton College of NJ
Judith Bosker Liwerant, Political Science, UNAM, Mexico City
Hubert G. Locke, University of Washington, Seattle
David Matas, Hon Counsel-Bnai Brith Canada, Winnipeg
Joanna B. Michlic, HBI, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA
Fiamma Nirenstein, Italian Chamber of Deputies, Rome
Andre Oboler, Global Forum to Combat Antisemitism, Melbourne
Darren O’Brien, Australian Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Sydney
Andrei Oisteanu, Institute History of Religions, Bucharest
John Pawlikowski, Catholic Theological Union, Chicago
Winston Pickett, Communications, Brighton, UK
Daniel Pipes, Middle East Forum, Philadelphia
Dina Porat, Stephen Roth Institute, Tel Aviv University
Lars Rensmann, Political Science, University of Michigan
Paul Lawrence Rose, European History and Jewish Studies, Pennsylvania State University
Richard L. Rubenstein, President Emeritus, University of Bridgeport
Frederick Schweitzer, Manhattan College, NYC
Milton Shain, History, University of Cape Town, South Africa
Marc I. Sherman, Index/Bibliography, Jerusalem
Marcia Sokolowski, Baycrest Hospital, University of Toronto
Philip J. Spencer, Helen Bamber Center, Kingston University, UK
Pierre-Andre Taguieff, CNRS (Sciences Po), Paris
Diana Siegel Vann, American Jewish Committee, Washington, DC
Sue Vice, English Literature, University of Sheffield, UK
James E. Waller, Cohen Chair, Keene State College, NH
Shalva Weil, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Robert Wistrich, Sassoon Center/SICSA Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Bat Ye’or, Independent Scholar, Switzerland
JSA Submission Guidelines
The Journal for the Study of Antisemitism (JSA) is the peer-reviewed work
of a select group of independent scholars who examine antisemitism in
traditional and emerging forms. This group is not affiliated with any
institution or financially dependent on a single source of funding. We have
in common an understanding of antisemitism as a social pathology that
must be eradicated. We are an educationally based concern. E-mail
submissions should be original, either on hard copy or an electronic copy in
MS Word format. Citations should be in Chicago Manual of Style format.
Send submissions and questions to the editors of the JSA via mail,
telephone, or e-mail.
Mailing address: Editors, JSA
P.O. Box 726 Marlboro, NJ 08053 Ph (856) 983-3247
Electronic journal submissions: jsantisemitism@gmail.com
Electronic book reviews: c/o Book Review Editor:
jsantisemitism@gmail.com.
The ideas represented in the JSA are those of the contributing authors, and
not reflective of the JSA, its board members, or the author’s institution. The
JSA welcomes unsolicited manuscripts.
Executive Committee
Jeffrey Diamond
Simon Firer
Philip Kirschner
John Nettleton
Joan Levy Rosenberg
Leon Rosenberg
Neal Howard Rosenberg
Arnold Staloff
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Volume 3
Number 2
Special Issue:
Campus Antisemitism . . . . . . . . . . . Guest Editor: Kenneth L. Marcus 321
From the Editors: The Year in Hate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Steven K. Baum 325
and Neal E. Rosenberg
Antisemitic Incidents from Around the World:
July–December 2011 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Editors 333
Articles
In an Academic Voice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kenneth Lasson 349
Antisemitism and the Campus Left . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Richard Cravatts 407
Antisemitism at the University of California . . . . . . . Leila Beckwith 443
On Whiteness and the Jews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Linda Maizels 463
Holocaust Envy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gabriel N. Brahm Jr. 489
Of Scientific Note
Mental Models of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict . . . Wilhelm Kempf 507
Resentment Reloaded . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lars Rensmann 543
Essays
Operation Mural and Morocco’s Jewish Children . . . . David Littman 575
Jerusalem or Al-Quds? The EU’s Choice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bat Ye’or 581
Conspiracy, N’est-ce Pas? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hadassa Ben-Itto 597
What Happened to Pakistan’s Jews? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Shalva Weil 603
Remembrance of Warwick Days. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Smadar Bakovic 607
Die Linke and The Left . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sebastian Voigt 611
What My Daughter’s Friend and
Ambassador Gutman Need to Know . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Richard Landes 623
Antisemitism and the Dutch Soccer Fields . . . . Manfred Gerstenfeld 629
Was Cesare Lombroso Antisemitic? . . . . . . . . . . . . Gabriel Cavaglion 647
Jews in Afghan Eyes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mark Silinsky 667
“Saint” Chesterton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Simon Mayers 683
Nicholas Kristof, Israel, and Double Standards . . . Jeffrey Grossman 689
The CST: A Vital Partnership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Michael Whine 695
Economic Crisis and Blaming You Know Who . . . . Karin Stoegner 711
The Inane Politics of Tony Cliff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Camila Bassi 729
Sayeeda Warsi: A Trifle Confused . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Melanie Phillips 739
Captain Basto, the Portuguese Dreyfus . . . . . . . Isabel Ferreira Lopes 743
Last Week, They Defaced My Temple . . . . . . . . . . . . . Barbara Silver 745
Reviews
Marcus’s Jewish Identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lesley Klaff 747
Gilbert’s In Ishmael’s House . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stephen Riley 759
Jacobson’s The Finkler Question . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sue Vice 767
Herman’s An Unfortunate Coincidence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . David Fraser 771
O’Brien’s Pinnacle of Hatred . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Anthony Bale 781
Pollack’s Antisemitism on the Campus . . . . . . . . . . . Richard Cravatts 785
Livak’s The Jewish Persona in the
European Imagination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Harriet Murav 791
Rensmann and Schoeps’s
Politics and Resentment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Steven K. Baum 797
Sacks’s The Great Partnership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Steven L. Jacobs 801
Achcar’s The Arabs and the Holocaust . . . . . . . . . . Matthias Küntzel 805
and Colin Meade
Colón’s Rasputin and the Jews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Israel Drazin 821
The Debt, Sarah’s Key, Unmasked . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Joanne Intrator 823
and Scott Rose
Shamir’s Defamation: A Film . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Nathan Abrams 833
Antisemitica . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
837
In America, Jews feel very comfortable,
but there are islands of antisemitism:
the American college campus.
—Natan Sharansky
Introduction: Special Issue on
Campus Antisemitism
Kenneth L. Marcus1
The present is an especially appropriate time to dedicate a special
Campus Antisemitism issue of this journal to the memory of my late colleague and friend, Dr. Gary A. Tobin. Tobin was one of the first to see, and
among the most stalwart to fight, the resurgence of antisemitism in American educational systems. His last and most passionate contributions to
social science were landmark volumes on antisemitism in higher education
(The Uncivil University) and in American textbooks (The Trouble with
Textbooks). Two years after his premature passing, Tobin’s Institute for
Jewish & Community Research (IJCR) is issuing another sobering report on
the state of antisemitism in academia.2
As editors Steven Baum and Neal Rosenberg report, the IJCR’s new
poll of U.S. students reveals that over 40 percent of Jewish American college students—more than two in five—have experienced or witnessed
antisemitic incidents on their campus.3 This is a sobering figure in light of
common perceptions that the last few years have marked a “golden age” for
Jewish students in post-secondary education. The situation is even more
disturbing when one drills deeper into the IJCR’s new data. First, most nonJewish students appear to be entirely oblivious or insensitive to the challenges facing their Jewish classmates. According to the IJCR study, barely
one in 10 non-Jewish college students say that they have witnessed
antisemitism around them. This is 75 percent less than the figure for the
Jewish students. For this reason, the IJCR’s Aryeh Weinberg has entitled
the new study “Alone on the Campus,” as non-Jewish students either don’t
see or don’t understand or don’t care about what is going on around them.
Second, Jewish students are not being overly sensitive. If anything,
they seem to significantly underreport bias incidents directed against Jews.
The 40 percent figure may sound high until one sees that even higher percentages of Jewish students answer affirmatively when asked more specifically about antisemitic incidents. For example, when Jewish college
1. The author acknowledges Dorothy Tananbaum for her thoughts and support
in preparing this introduction.
2. This author succeeded Tobin as director of The Anti-Semitism Initiative at
IJCR.
3. Aryeh Weinberg, Alone on the Quad: Understanding Jewish Student Isolation on Campus (San Francisco: Institute for Jewish & Community Research,
2011).
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students are specifically asked whether they have heard derogatory remarks
leveled against Jews on their campus, more than half answer affirmatively.
This is roughly 25 percent higher than the number who answer affirmatively to the more general question about antisemitic incidents.
Paradoxically, the figures are even higher when the questions get more
specific, although they should be lower (since the general encompasses the
specific). For example, nearly two thirds of Jewish college students have
heard people on their campus specifically berating Jews for being “greedy.”
In other words, Jewish students are if anything reluctant to characterize
campus conduct as antisemitic unless they are questioned very specifically.
There may be good reason for this; they likely are aware, as the data
demonstrate, that so many of their non-Jewish classmates are largely indifferent, oblivious, or uncaring about what they are facing.
Given this data, it is important to understand exactly what is going on
in American higher education and why. These are the questions to which
this special issue of JSA is dedicated. By way of context, it is important to
emphasize that the level of antisemitism in American higher education
declined steadily and dramatically from the end of the Second World War
until the turn of the new century. Institutional antisemitism, such as quotas
on students or faculty, has long since been eliminated. Most of today’s Jewish college students enjoy opportunities of which their grandparents could
not have dreamed. Moreover, aggregate faculty attitudes toward Jewish students are quite favorable compared to virtually any other group. Most Jewish American college students will witness little or no antisemitism, other
than perhaps a passing remark or inappropriate joke or fleeting insult. Nevertheless, it is increasingly clear that the long steady progress against this
old hate has stalled if not reversed, and there are pockets of academe within
which rather severe incidents are now reported. Thus, it is important to
understand the nature of the old-new bigotry that is arising again.
In these pages, Kenneth Lasson and Richard Cravatts provide comprehensive and detailed presentations of the state of antisemitism in American
academe; Leila Beckwith focuses more intensively on the situation on California campuses; while Gabriel Noah Brahm Jr. and Linda Maizels assess
some of the reasons for this troubling phenomenon. At the University of
California, Beckwith reports, “Jewish students have been subjected to: acts
of physical aggression; intimidation; swastikas; speakers, films, and exhibits that use antisemitic imagery and discourse; speakers that praise and
encourage support for terrorist organizations; the organized disruption of
events that Jewish student groups had sponsored; and the promotion of student resolutions for divestment from Israel that demonize and delegitimize
the Jewish State.” Lasson, similarly, argues from the East Coast that “Jewish and pro-Israel students across the country are patronized, mocked,
2011]INTRODUCTION:
SPECIAL ISSUE ON CAMPUS ANTISEMITISM
323
intimidated, and sometimes physically attacked. . . .” Cravatts points to an
intensifying campus “war against Israel” and argues that “derision of Zionism and the denunciation of Israel have become a convenient way for
antisemites to mask their true prejudice against Jews by claiming that their
problem is only with the policies of Israel, not with Jews themselves.”
Since the name of Marx appears prominently, if rather unsympathetically, in these pages (at least in Lasson’s and Cravatts’ analyses), it is worth
observing in Marxian terms that the ultimate goal of this exercise is not to
understand this world but to change it. This issue describes quite a number
of potential avenues for combating the problems that it describes. Lasson
cautions, wisely enough, against the long-term dangers of university actions
that could be perceived as censoring constitutionally protected speech. At
the same time, there are many ways of addressing campus incidents while
fully protecting freedom of speech. For example, Beckwith describes how
700 University of California students signed a petition expressing outrage at
the climate toward Jewish students on their campuses and demanding
change. She also describes letter-writing campaigns and urges university
administrators to use their discretion to specifically condemn antisemitic
incidents. Such approaches are both commendable and impressive, but
Beckwith, Cravatts, and Lasson all concede that legal measures, consistent
with the freedom of speech and doctrine of academic freedom, may also be
required. Indeed, all three authors describe the use of lawsuits and federal
investigations to redress extreme hostile environments against Jewish students—a topic not unknown to readers of this journal.4
The question of legal action brings several thoughts to mind. Many
people, even within the Jewish community, are reluctant to introduce such
powerful methods into the university context. This caution is appropriate
enough. Whenever it is feasible, and where applicable statutory limitations
periods permit, non-legal approaches should be tried first. There are times,
however, when no other approach will suffice. Even in higher education, it
is now universally acknowledged that basic civil rights would not have been
extended to African-American students across large swaths of the United
States absent the forceful use of legal means. For black students in the
South, many years of patient, forceful efforts were required to achieve ultimate victory. For Jewish students on some campuses, similar efforts will be
required. There are some who fear now, as others feared then, that strenuous civil rights efforts will provoke resentment or backlash. There are not
frivolous concerns. It is prudent to craft strategies that will minimize these
risks. At the same time, those who take a long view of this old hate will
4. See Kenneth L. Marcus, “The New OCR Anti-Semitism Policy,” Journal
for the Study of Antisemitism 2 (2011): 479.
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[ VOL. 3:321
observe that the timid have too often stayed the hand of justice when the
time for action had come. The portrait that emerges from the studies
presented in this issue, together with the data newly released by IJCR, reinforces the need for serious and deliberate response, up to and including the
judicious use of legal action.5
5. Appropriately enough, the next issue of this journal will be devoted to law.
A Note from the Editors: The Year in Hate
Natan Sharansky almost had it right when he made the statement in
2006 that an island of antisemitism exists on the American campus. He
could have never predicted that anti-Zionist–based antisemitism would pop
up on colleges campuses in Berlin, Buenos Aires, Capetown, Madrid,
Manchester, Mexico City, Paris, Sydney, and Toronto as well—nor could
he have predicted a time when to be Israeli would be the new prejudice. Just
ask Smadar Bakovic, an Israeli graduate student at Warwick University.
Bakovic had to fight for a year so her doctoral dissertation—initially
rejected by an anti-Zionist professor—would finally be deemed acceptable.
“I am sure that had I been gay or black and Professor Pratt were to sign
petitions to boycott all gays and/or blacks, Warwick would have kicked her
out a long time ago,” Bakovic stated in a recent interview. But in the current pro-Palestinian British culture—where all things Israeli are evil—an
anti-Zionist professor had thwarted Bakovic from obtaining her doctoral
degree based on nothing more than anti-Zionist politics. Her story appears
in this issue.
Anti-Zionist politics seems to dominate campus life, and segue quickly
into generic antisemitism. This issue of the JSA is dedicated to understanding how it happens. We are proud to announce that the issue, which marks a
milestone in JSA scholarship, has been edited by an expert in law and campus antisemitism, Kenneth L. Marcus (Jewish Identity and Civil Rights in
America, Cambridge University, 2010). We are also proud that almost half
the essays are written by Israeli Jews—those very same people from a
country that annual BBC polls report is among the most disliked nations,
even though their rank scores also consistently place them among the least
corrupt (http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2011/) and most generous nations
(http://www.cafamerica.org/dnn/). Israeli Jews, in sixty-three years of the
country’s existence, have produced more Nobel laureates than Spain or all
Muslim nations combined. Yet, the “evil Israelis,” who despite Arab Spring
continue as the only democracy in the Middle East, are subject to extreme
criticism.1 In balanced reporting of the Middle East, reasonable people
would be thinking of Israel as democratic, generous, least corrupt, and with
the most advancements in medicine and the sciences—and asking what are
1. Since Israel’s birth in 1948, the death tolls of Arabs (7,900) and Israeli Jews
(1,500) receives daily news coverage. Contrast this against the dramatic absence in
the scrutiny of Assad’s killing of 5,000 Syrians from March to December 2011,
Jordan’s killing of several thousand Palestinians in the 1970 Black September
uprising, Algeria’s killing of 100,000 mainstream Muslims, and Sudan’s killing of
400,000 non-Muslims.
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they doing right? Instead, public opinion is busy pointing out everything
Israeli as wrong. Influenced by Arab propaganda, a naive news media, and
the Church, the image of Israelis (Jews) killing innocents becomes quickly
accepted—accompanied, of course, by the time-honored solution: Israel/
Jews must be contained, killed, or expelled from the social body. Below are
public statements of the past year, collected by the Simon Wiesenthal
Center, that reflect what’s on the public’s mind:
• “Not all the Jews in the world are evil . . . the ratio is 60-40. Sixty
percent are evil”—Tawfig Okasha, presidential candidate, Egypt.
• “I love Hitler . . . People like you would be dead. Your mothers,
your forefathers, would all be fucking gassed”—John Galliano,
designer, Dior.
• “I am very much for Jews. No, not too much, because Israel is a
pain in the ass . . . I’m very much for Speer. Albert Speer . . . He
was also maybe one of God’s best children . . . I’m a Nazi”—Lars
Von Trier, film director.
• “Everything that happens today in the world has to do with the
Zionists . . . American Jews are behind the world economic crisis
that has hit Greece also”—Mikis Theodorakis, composer of the
score for the film Zorba the Greek.
• “The source that finances and incites all these international organizations . . . especially in the Arab world . . . are led by a single, evil
organization, known as Zionism. It is behind all these movements,
all these civil wars, and all these evils . . . Jesus Christ healed the
sick among the Jews . . . and resurrected their dead. [How did they
repay him?] “They strived to crucify him until he died . . .”—
George Saliba, bishop of the Syriac Orthodox Church in Lebanon.
• “Oppose the moral blackmail of the so-called Holocaust!”—Hermann Dierkes, Die Linke (The Left Party), Germany.
• “The state of Israel is an illegal, genocidal place . . .”—Rev. Jeremiah Wright, speech in Baltimore.
But anti-Israeli opinion does not only extend to public statements in
the press. In the past year, such tropes infuse antisemitic sentiment as well,
as shown in several surveys done in 2011. Below are the results of these
surveys.
2011]
A NOTE FROM THE EDITORS
327
• In an Institute for Jewish and Community Research poll of 1,400
U.S students, 41% of Jewish students report hearing anti-Israeli
remarks in the classroom, and about the same confirm antisemitism
on their campuses as normalized and underreported. A breakdown
of the rhetoric appears in the graph above.
• A National Jewish Students survey finds 42% of UK college
respondents experiencing an antisemitic incident since the beginning of the academic year, but only two in 10 say they were concerned about campus antisemitism.
• A CST report shows 427 antisemitic attacks in 57 countries
between 1968-2010. France had the highest number of attacks (51),
followed by the United States (34), Italy (33), Argentina and Germany (29), and the UK (28).
• An Argentina survey revealed that 82% of the respondents thought
that the main interest of the Jews is to make money. The same poll,
conducted by the Gino Germani Institute of the University of Buenos Aires, found that 45% of those polled “would never marry a
Jew” and that 30% “would not live in a neighborhood with a large
presence of Jews.”
• According to the Centro di Documentazione Ebraica Contemporanea (CDEC) (Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation) and the Institute for Social and Political Opinion Research
(ISPO), one in three Italians considers Jews “not very nice” and
44% declare that they feel no sympathy toward Jews. Fifteen percent of antisemites base their attitude on what they think they know
about Jews.
• A German study found that almost half (47.7%) of Germans accept
the notion that “Israel is conducting a war of extermination against
the Palestinians.”
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• An Australian study lists a record 517 attacks, 38% above the average of the previous two decades.
• A Jerusalem survey finds that only one in three Palestinians (34%)
accepts a two-state-for-two-people solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
• Fifty-two percent of Spanish students declared that they would not
like to have a Jewish classmate sitting next to them, and 58% of
adults thought that Jews have too much power and that they are all
too rich, according to a poll presented at Madrid’s Fourth International Seminar on Antisemitism.
• A November 2011 poll by Andras Kovacs notes the number of
Hungarians who find Jews repugnant (24%) had significantly
increased prior to the election years, a fact indicating that political
endeavors augment anti-Jewish sentiment—namely, the “Jewish
Question.”
There were still other survey findings, which afford additional insights.
Sweden reported a record high of 161 antisemitic hate crimes in the past
year. A German report recorded that 20% of the population holds strongly
antisemitic views (the percentage in most democratic nations, though Holland is the lowest and Spain, Eastern Europe, and Russia the highest); the
ADL-USA reports findings of approximately 1,200+ antisemitic incidents.
This is one of the lowest in the past decade, but offset by annual antisemitic
incidents everywhere else that are at record highs—Germany (1,520 incidents) and Canada (1,306 incidents) have the dubious honor of topping the
annual list again, most of the perpetrators being young, male, and rightwing Muslim.
But it is not only angry, authoritarian, young male Muslims who are
making the surveys. An April 2011 study by lead author Andreas Zick at
Germany’s University of Beilefeld, titled “Intolerance, Prejudice and Discrimination,” www.uni-bielefeld.de/ikg/zick/ZicketalGFEengl.pdf, surveyed by phone approximately 1,000 people in eight European nations. The
findings revealed that nearly 50% of Germans believe that “Jews try to take
advantage of having been victims of the Nazi era.” As cited earlier, almost
half believe that Israel is conducting an all-out war to exterminate Palestinians, while a third (35%) agree with this statement: “Considering Israel’s
policy, I can understand why people do not like Jews.”
Whether it is the mainstream news media’s influence. as Richard
Landes’ essay in this issue suggests, the political left’s influence, or both
remains uncertain. According to German sociologist Samuel Salzborn, “The
pattern is always the same: ostensibly it is couched as criticism of Israel,
but the arguments reveal themselves as antisemitic to the core.”
2011]
329
So this issue on campus antisemitism could not have come at a better
time, as campuses continue to send the message throughout the world that if
Israel would disappear, Jihad would go away.
If you are Lars Rensmann, you focus on popular culture’s underlying
resentment of Jews as the major cause of antisemitism. His examination of
envy and acrimony is backed by evidence in several nations to fortify his
position. The statistics of social scientist Wilhelm Kempf echo Andreas
Zick’s findings that anger at the Israelis vis-à-vis the Palestinian conflict is
stirring up a hornet’s nest. Yet if you are Richard Landes, you’ll have none
of this. Landes makes a brilliant case for the mainstream media machine’s
promoting the Arab position on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Sebastian
Voigt and Jeffrey Grossman similarly point out how you are what you read,
and invariably those reading the statements of Die Linke or articles in The
New York Times will soon hate Israel as well.
Middle East politics never take a holiday. Melanie Phillips is quick to
point out how UK politicians like Sayeeda Warsi have much to say but that
little of it holds up to any kind of scrutiny. Unfortunately, Warsi is not an
isolated case. Earlier this year, Baroness Tonge was told to step down for
her “Israeli organ harvesting” comments. Then, of course, there are the
year’s apologies. British MEP Sir Robert Atkins apologized for suggesting
that British Jews are pressuring Israel to stop the Palestinian conflict; MP
Paul Flynn apologized for questioning if there are dual loyalties of Britain’s
first Jewish ambassador to Israel; then there was the Conservative MP who
hosted a Nazi party, later apologized, and got sacked; and so on.
Not to be undone, some Israeli Jews got into the act, such as British
jazz musician Gilad Atzmon, author of The Wandering Who? (http://
youtu.be/BFjejrGxFY4). The book’s theme of an insider’s look at the “Jewish (and Israeli) problem” received immediate endorsements from British
journalist Alan Hart, renowned anti-Zionist professors Richard Falk and
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John Mearsheimer, a litany of pro-Palestinians, and eventually U.S. presidential candidate Ron Paul.
Hadassa Ben-Itto notes that the refrain sounds oddly familiar in her reexamination of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Along these lines is
Camila Bassi’s expose of Israeli Tony Cliff and Gabriel Cavaglion’s indictment of Cesare Lombroso. It makes traditional antisemites like G. K. Chesterton, as rendered by Simon Mayers, pale by comparison.
There is a history of anti-Zionist–based antisemitism, but none Gilad
Atzmon wants to remember. David Littman recalls that it was not so long
ago that Mossad asked him to help rescue Jewish children in Morocco as
part of Operation Mural—and without any training, he did. His wife, Bat
Ye’or, reminds us that same could occur again globally and challenges the
European Union to pay attention to the Al-Qud factor. The same year David
Littman was rescuing Jewish children—1961—Isabel Lopes’ grandfather
(Captain Autur Barros Basto) died. Captain Basto, who had been given a
dishonorable discharge from the Portuguese army, died in shame. In March
2012, Lopes will petition the Portuguese Parliament to exonerate her grandfather and clear his name from the crime of being “too Jewish in fascist
Portugal”; see http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/pardon-Capt-Barros-Basto/.
Manfred Gerstenfeld’s essay asks us to pay more attention to the
antisemitism inherent in sports in general and the soccer fields in particular,
while Mark Silinksy points up how the same hate readily transfers to Third
World Afghanistan or, as Karin Stoegner observes, travels to the modern
nation state of Austria. Barbara Silver focuses on the inevitable consequence of all such hate as she copes with her temple’s defacement in the
middle of Canada. What is the answer? No one is quite certain, but Shalva
Weil knows some inevitable consequences as she documents the demise of
Pakistan’s Jewish community. Michael Whine makes the case for organizations, such as the British CST, monitoring hate groups and continuing their
mission to help Jews when the need arises. The need seems to always arise.
We have books and films to help us feel less alone in the world and to
advance our understanding of our uncertain environment. There are Nathan
Abrams’ analysis of the off-beat film Defamation and Joanne Intrator and
Scott Rose’s informed reviews of the films The Debt, Sarah’s Key, and
Unmasked. Also included are Sue Vice’s review of Howard Jacobson’s
novel The Finkler Question, as well as reviews of good solid books on
campus antisemitism, such as Lesley Klaff on Jewish Identity by Kenneth
Marcus, this issue’s guest editor; Richard Cravatts on Eunice Pollack’s
Antisemitism on the Campus; and Stephen Riley’s account of Martin Gilbert’s In Ishmael’s House. There are Matthias Küntzel and Colin Meade’s
incisive indictment of Arab politics in Gilbert Achcar’s The Arabs and the
Holocaust; British law professor David Fraser analyzing Didi Herman’s An
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Unfortunate Coincidence; and Anthony Bale on the blood libels described
in Darren O’Brien’s Pinnacle of Hatred. Steven Baum reviews the empirically based Politics of Resentment, edited by Lars Rensmann and Julius
Schoeps, and Rabbi Steven L. Jacobs reviews chief rabbi Lord Jonathan
Sacks’ The Great Partnership. Finally, we have Israel Drazin’s review of
Rasputin and the Jews by Rasputin’s great-granddaughter Delin Colón.
We look forward to our fourth year in 2012, with special issues in law
(guest editor, Kenneth Lasson) and Eastern European antisemitism (guest
editor, Andras Kovacs). Thanks and deep appreciation go to our sponsors:
the Jewish Community Foundation and the New Mexico and Texas law
firm of Jeff Diamond; to all our contributors and reviewers; to our associate
editors, Florette Cohen, Steven L. Jacobs, Lesley Klaff, and Kenneth Marcus; to our chair, Shimon T. Samuels; and particularly to our readers, who
continue to make this journal a success. The next year promises to be both
challenging and fulfilling as the JSA continues its mission to document
antisemitism in all its poisonous forms and search for antidotes.
Steven K. Baum and Neal E. Rosenberg, Editors
In Loving Memory of our Father
Norman Diamond WWII Veteran 1924–2011
–Jeff and Connie Diamond
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JSA BEST AWARDS
The Journal for the Study of Antisemitism is pleased to announce the
following recipients of JSA’s Best Awards for 2011:
BEST BOOK
Lars Rensmann and Julius Schoeps’s Politics and Resentment, Brill (Best
Book, Academic)
Howard Jacobson’s The Finkler Question, Bloomsbury (Best Book,
Fiction)
Bat Ye’or’s Europe, Globalization and the Coming Universal Caliphate
Farleigh Dickinson University Press
(Best Book, Israeli-Arab Conflict)
Didi Herman’s An Unfortunate Coincidence, Oxford University Press
(Best Book, Law)
Honorable Mention Robert Michael’s A History of Catholic Antisemitism,
Palgrave Macmillan
BEST ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Models of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Wilhelm Kempf
Mexico in a Region of Change, Judit Bokser Liwerant
BEST ESSAY
Antisemitism and the Dutch Soccer Fields, Manfred Gerstenfeld
What My Daughter’s Friend and Ambassador Gutman Need to Know,
Richard Landes
BEST BOOK/FILM REVIEW
Gilbert Achcar’s The Arabs and the Holocaust, Matthias Küntzel and
Colin Meade
Martin Gilbert’s In Ishmael’s House, Stephen Riley
Kenneth L. Marcus’s Jewish Identity and Civil Rights, Lesley Klaff
The Debt, Sarah’s Key, Unmasked, Joanne Intrator and Scott Rose
Antisemitic Incidents from Around the World—
A Partial List
July–December 2011
JULY
Toronto, July 4: Aurora’s Abbotsford Animal Hospital, on Yonge Street,
was the target of antisemitic vandalism. The vet’s office was littered with
several Nazi symbols and antisemitic graffiti, and rocks had been thrown
through windows at the clinic. “I never experienced something like this,”
said veterinarian Jory Bocknek, who is Jewish. “The first thing I thought
was I didn’t want my kids to see it. I’m very disappointed.”
Las Vegas, July 6: Gravestones in Montefiore Cemetery became the latest
monuments to be vandalized at this historic burial ground on the northwestern edge of the city. Although one local man thinks the incident was an
antisemitic attack, the local police chief and the cemetery’s caretaker
believe the vandalism, involving several knocked-down and broken grave
markers, was an indiscriminate act. The cemetery, named for the British
Jewish philanthropist Moses Montefiore, was established in 1881 on land
that originally was part of the adjoining Masonic Cemetery. Today, it has
80 to 90 graves.
London, July 10: Baroness Tonge, a Liberal Democrat frontbencher, has
been sacked after calling for an inquiry into allegations that Israeli soldiers
supporting the relief effort in Haiti had been involved in organ-trafficking.
New York, July 10: The Anti-Defamation League has called on the United
Nations human rights chief to publicly condemn Richard Falk, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, for posting an
antisemitic cartoon on his personal blog. The cartoon depicted the United
States as a vicious dog wearing a skullcap, urinating on what is meant to be
Lady Justice while feasting on a pile of blood and bones.
Jerusalem, July 12: The Simon Wiesenthal Center strongly criticized the
Lithuanian government for trying to hide or minimize the highly significant
role of local Nazi collaborators in Holocaust crimes and attributed the desecration of the memorial at Ponar, the site of the mass murder of 70,000
Jews during the Holocaust, to the falsification of World War II history by
local historians with governmental sponsorship and support.
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Jerusalem, July 15: Only one in three Palestinians accepts two states for two
peoples as the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to an
intensive, face-to-face survey in Arabic of 1,010 Palestinian adults in the
West Bank and the Gaza Strip completed this week by American pollster
Stanley Greenberg. Respondents were asked about U.S. president Barack
Obama’s statement that “There should be two states: Palestine as the homeland for the Palestinian people and Israel as the homeland for the Jewish
people.” Just 34% said they accepted that concept, while 61% rejected it.
Sixty-six percent said the Palestinians’ real goal should be to start with a
two-state solution but then move to one Palestinian state. Asked about the
fate of Jerusalem, 92% said it should be the capital of Palestine, 1% said the
capital of Israel, 3% the capital of both, and 4% a neutral international city.
Seventy-two percent backed denying the thousands of years of Jewish history in Jerusalem, 62% supported kidnapping IDF soldiers and holding
them hostage, and 53% were in favor or teaching songs about hating Jews
in Palestinian schools. When given a quote from the Hamas Charter about
the need for battalions from the Arab and Islamic world to defeat the Jews,
80% agreed. Seventy-three percent agreed with a quote from the charter
(and a hadith, or tradition ascribed to the prophet Muhammad) about the
need to kill Jews hiding behind stones and trees.
Budapest, July 18: Hungarian war-crimes suspect Sandor Kepiro was found
not guilty by the Buda District Court. He had been charged with complicity
in the Novi Sad massacre of January 1942 in northern Serbia, in which as
many as 1,250 Jews, Serbs, and Roma were murdered, and with direct
responsibility for the death of 36 people.
Budapest, July 25: Hungary’s new media law, which went into effect on
July 1, carries a distinctly unpleasant whiff of the country’s fascist and
communist past. Under its provisions, all media outlets are required to register with a body called the Media Council. The council is empowered to
impose fines of nearly $1 million upon those publications and broadcasters
deemed to have “insulted” a particular group, along with an amorphous
entity defined as “the majority.” In another case, by contrast, reader comments on an article in the pro-government newspaper Magyar Hirlap were
riddled with antisemitic slurs of jaw-dropping foulness, yet not a peep has
been heard from the Media Council. The Magyar Hirlap article reported on
an opinion piece by Karl Pfeifer, the veteran Austrian Jewish journalist, in
the Vienna daily Die Presse. In that piece, Pfeifer relayed the contents of an
article by Zsolt Bayer, a Hungarian rabble-rouser with close ties to the ruling Fidesz party who passes himself off as a journalist. Bayer’s style mirrors the screeching, obscene rants of Julius Streicher, the editor of the Nazi
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rag Der Stürmer. His rambling tirade included a reference to “a stinking
excrement called something like Cohen,” followed by an expression of
regret that “they”—meaning the Jews—“were not all buried up to their
necks in the forest of Orgovany,” the site of a pogrom during the Hungarian
White Terror of 1919-20.
Kuala Lumpur, July 28: The Chelsea football club has made an official
complaint following what it describes as antisemitic abuse directed at
Israeli player Yossi Benayoun at a match where he helped Chelsea beat
Malaysian XI. The Israeli became the first footballer from the Jewish state
to play in a match in Malaysia in many years; Israelis Tal Ben Haim and
Avram Grant were denied visas to enter the Muslim-majority country for
matches in recent years. But despite being allowed to play, things did not go
smoothly for Benayoun. Instead, many in the 85,000-strong crowd jeered
and booed him when he came in contact with the ball, and he was substituted at halftime.
Little Rock, AK, July 29: In a letter to the FBI, obtained by The Associated
Press under a Freedom of Information Act request, Abdulhakim Muhammad said he fired 10 rounds at the home of Rabbi Eugene Levy days before
he fatally shot Pvt. William Andrew Long and wounded Pvt. Quinton
Ezeagwula in June 2009. A judge sentenced Muhammad to life in prison
without parole this week after prosecutors accepted his plea agreement during his capital murder trial for killing Long and hurting Ezeagwula. In the
letter, dated November 24, 2009, Muhammad said he targeted Levy’s house
after researching Jewish leaders in Little Rock, Nashville, Tenn., and his
hometown of Memphis, where he was born with the name Carlos Bledsoe.
He changed his name after converting to Islam in college. “Figured the FBI
wasn’t watching me anymore,” he wrote. “I started my Plans to Attack,
recruitment centers, Jewish organizations, across America . . .”
London, July 30: The Community Security Trust, a Jewish charity based in
Great Britain, released a new report entitled “Terrorist Incidents against
Jewish Communities and Israeli Citizens abroad 1968-2010.” The report
indicates that between 1968 and 2010, 427 attacks have occurred in 57
countries. France had the highest number of attacks (51), followed by the
United States (34), Italy (33), Argentina and Germany (29 each), and the
United Kingdom (28).
AUGUST
Dublin, August 1: During a church sermon, Fr. Eddie Conway described
Alan Shatter, the minister of justice, as a non-practicing Jew who has used
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the recent child sex abuse scandal to specifically target the church. Several
mass goers walked out in response to his comments.
Budapest, August 5: Anti-government protests broke out following the government’s announcement to abolish early retirement. While the protest was
predominantly composed of public service employees, several members
from two right-wing extremist groups also participated. Hungarian public
television reported that a white cloth with a Star of David was burned during the protest.
Prague, August 5: Despite calls from government officials and NGOs to
remove Ladislav Batora from the Ministry of Education, Czech education
minister Josef Dobes insists that Batora is a “dutiful person, a patriot, and a
conservative Roman Catholic.” He also insists that “there is no evidence
proving that Batora is a racist.” Batora has been accused of having connections to racist and antisemitic organizations.
Toronto, August 5: A swastika and the words “Islam Will Rule” were found
drawn on a wall of a Jewish school, and two other swastikas were found on
a nearby Korean-language church; details regarding a third incident are not
available. Toronto and Canadian Jewish communities have condemned the
incidents.
Paris, August 12: A fashion icon whose name has become shorthand for
timeless French chic, a shrewd businesswoman who overcame a childhood
of poverty to build a luxury supernova and . . . a Nazi spy? . . . Coco
Chanel: The Legend and the Life, by Justine Picardie, alleges that in 1940,
Chanel was recruited into the Abwehr—her nom de guerre borrowed from
another of her lovers, the Duke of Westminster. A year later, the book says,
she traveled to Spain on a spy mission—on condition that the Nazis release
her nephew from a military internment camp—and later went to Berlin on
the orders of a top SS general. Picardie suggests that Chanel’s alleged
antisemitism pushed her to try to capitalize on laws allowing for the expropriation of Jewish property to wrest control of the Chanel perfume lines
from the Wertheimer brothers, a Jewish family who’d helped make her
Chanel No. 5 a worldwide bestseller.
Berlin, Aug 22: Vandals struck Weissensee Cemetery in the former East
Berlin, Europe’s largest Jewish cemetery, after damaging 16 gravesites and
stealing 47 items from Weissensee, and Jewish leaders are asking area
metal dealers to check for wrought-iron objects that might have been stolen
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from the cemetery. According to the community, renovations on some of
the tombs had been completed as recently as last April.
London, August 21: “It is time, Brothers and Sisters, for Al Quds to be
liberated. For Islam and people of the world who wish to pray there to the
one God. And we say here today to you, Israel, we see your crimes and we
loathe your crimes. And to us your nation does not exist, because it is a
criminal injustice against humanity. We want to see Lebanon, Jordan and
Egypt go to the borders and stop this now. Liberate Al Quds! March to Al
Quds!” These were the words spoken by Lauren Booth (Tony Blair’s halfsister-in-law) at the Al Quds Day terror rally organized by the Islamic
Human Rights Commission in Trafalgar Square. Placards (see above) that
read “Israel Your Days Are Numbered,” “Death to Israel,” “Down Down
Israel,” For World Peace Israel Must Be Destroyed,” “The World Stopped
Nazism, The World Must Stop Zionism,” and “We Are All Hizbollah” were
displayed.
Fife, Scotland, August 23: Student Paul Donnachie, 19, put his hands down
his trousers, then rubbed them on a flag of Israel belonging to Jewish student Chanan Reitblat; Donnachie also accused Reitblat of being a terrorist
during the incident at the residence halls in March. The case against his coaccused Samuel Colchester, 20, was found not proven. Donnachie has been
expelled from St. Andrews and Colchester has been suspended for one year.
Cupar’s Sheriff Court had earlier heard evidence from Reitblat, a chemistry
student on a one-term exchange from the Jewish Yeshiva University in New
York, who said he felt “violated and devastated” by the incident.
Ramallah, August 28: Issa Qaraqi, the Palestinian minister of detainees and
ex-detainees, accused Israel of harvesting parts from the bodies of dead
Palestinian martyrs without the consent of their families. Qaraqi spoke during the national day of the Palestinian campaign to retrieve martyrs’ bodies.
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“Israel is the major harvesting and trading centre in the world,” he claimed.
Israel holds the remains of Palestinian martyrs “to conceal the crimes it
committed against the martyrs’ bodies and to punish their families, Qaraqi
said. “Holding of the martyrs’ remains for many years casts doubts and
[causes] accusations that Israel assassinated them after detention or harvested their organs,” the minister said, adding that “Israel is holding the
remains of 338 Arab and Palestinian fighters in the secret Israeli cemeteries
known as the Cemeteries of Numbers.”
Toronto, August 28: The traditional rally marking Al-Quds Day was held at
Queen’s Park in front of the parliament of Ontario. The rally was attended
by hundreds of people, and extreme anti-Israel speeches were heard. Zafar
Bangash, president of the Islamic Society of York Region, attacked the
United States and Israel, and expressed his belief that Palestine will soon be
liberated from the current “Jewish-Zionist regime.”
SEPTEMBER
Bialystock, Poland, September 2: Vandals destroyed a monument to victims
of a World War II pogrom against Jews in Poland, covering it with racist
inscriptions and swastikas in green paint, police said. It was the latest in a
recent series of racist and xenophobic acts of vandalism targeting the small
Jewish and Muslim communities in eastern Poland as well as the tiny Lithuanian minority.
Bialystock, Poland, September 5: Polish media report that hundreds of people are marching in to protest racist and antisemitic attacks in the area, but a
small group chanting nationalist slogans is trying to disturb the Sunday
demonstration; the PAP news agency says Bialystok mayor Tadeusz Truskolaski and lawmakers of the ruling Civic Platform party are leading the
protest march in downtown Bialystok. A monument to hundreds of Jews
burned alive by their Polish neighbors in Jedwabne village during World
War II was desecrated. Other recent attacks have targeted a synagogue in
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the village of Orla, a Muslim center in Bialystok, and the Lithuanian minority in the Punsk region.
Cairo, September 10: Three were killed and 1,049 were injured in clashes
outside the Israeli embassy late Friday and early Saturday, the health ministry said. The Israeli ambassador, his family, and working staff left Cairo
early Saturday on an Israeli military plane as protesters who stormed into
the embassy were still clashing with the Egyptian police and military forces
in Giza. Egyptian commandos had entered the embassy building as it came
under attack to escort six Israeli citizens to safety, the AFP reported. Only
one Israeli diplomat stayed in Egypt to handle embassy affairs, an Israeli
official told Reuters. Meanwhile, the Egyptian prime minister Essam Sharaf
called a cabinet crisis meeting. Hundreds of protesters converged on the
embassy throughout the afternoon and into the evening, tearing down a
large graffiti-covered security wall outside the 21-story building that houses
the embassy. The wall was erected on a bridge that runs along the street on
which the building is located; it was built following ongoing protests
against the killing of five Egyptian soldiers on the Sinai border last month.
The police made no attempt to intervene as protesters were tearing down
the wall with sledgehammers and their bare hands.
New York, September 12: The sports network ESPN has removed fantasy
leagues with antisemitic names from its Web site after the Simon
Wiesenthal Center pointed them out. The Jewish human rights organization
praised the sports network for its quick response to the complaint, which
noted offensive names that included “Jews Are Immoral” and “Jews Are
Terrible.” Network spokesman Josh Krulewitz said that while ESPN has
systems in place to protect against inappropriate team and league names,
“clearly, with millions of users and deceptive ways around the safeguards,
we can never completely eliminate [these incidents].” Rabbi Abraham
Cooper of the Wiesenthal Center said that ESPN responded in good faith to
its concerns.
Washington, DC, September 13: According to the 13th annual State Department Report on International Religious Freedom, antisemitism can be found
in nearly every corner of the globe, and it is on the rise. “Trends include
increases in the traditional anti-Semitic actions and accusations that have
plagued the world for millennia—including desecration of cemeteries, graffiti, and blood libel accusations—as well as Holocaust denial, revisionism,
and glorification,” the report found; some of this increase in antisemitism is
part of the campaign to delegitimize and demonize Israel. The State Department is required to report regularly to Congress by the International Relig-
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ious Freedom Act of 1998; this edition covers the last half of 2010. It found
“spikes in anti-Semitic expressions” in private as well as official media—
notably cartoons—in several countries, including Poland, Spain, Egypt,
Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela.
Cairo, September 15: “While walking in the street someone pushed me
from behind with such force that I nearly fell over. Turning around, I found
myself surrounded by five men, one of whom tried to punch me in the face.
I stopped the attack by pointing out how shameful it was for a Muslim to
assault a guest in his country, especially during Ramadan. Relieved that a
seemingly random assault was over, I was appalled by the apology offered
by one of my assailants. ‘Sorry,’ he said contritely, offering his hand, ‘we
thought you were a Jew.’ ” —BBC Cairo Correspondent Thomas Dinham.
London, September 15: The British government confirmed on Thursday
that the UK will not take part in the UN-sponsored Durban III anti-racism
conference on September 22. Foreign secretary William Hague said the
original Durban conference 10 years ago had been an ugly affair. “The conference, and the anti-Semitic atmosphere in which it was held, was a particularly unpleasant and divisive chapter in the UN’s history. It is not an event
that should be celebrated,” he said. “The British government remains fully
committed to tackling all forms of racism, both domestically and internationally, something recognized by the recent report of the UN Committee
on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination,” Hague said. “The UN is the
right place to discuss these important issues, in a serious way that delivers
genuine progress. The UK continues our work with the UN to implement
many of the commitments from the 2001 World Conference Against
Racism.” Ten of the UN’s 193 member nations have now joined Israel in
pulling out of Durban III: the UK, Germany, the United States, Canada,
Italy, Austria, Australia, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, and the Netherlands.
Edmonton, September 17: A giant swastika carved into the side of a hill in
Castle Downs Park in Edmonton, Alberta, seems to reflect a larger trend of
antisemitic incidents and racism across Canada. The swastika was found by
a park worker, who said he witnessed a group of young men carving the
image into the hill. John Reilly, a spokesperson for Racism Free Edmonton,
says such incidents are “a disturbing consistent presence within our communities.” According to B’nai B’rith Canada’s annual Audit of AntiSemitic Incidents, there has been a fivefold increase in harassment and violence against Jews in Canada in the past 10 years. More than 1,300 incidents were recorded in 2010—the highest in almost 30 years, with the
majority occurring in Ontario and Quebec. The incidents include harass-
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ment, stereotyping, discrimination, threats, violence, and vandalism involving “crimes of messaging”—offensive graffiti that contain racial slurs or
swastikas. The identity of the perpetrators is largely unknown because the
crimes are frequently anonymous, but the audit reported 97 cases where the
perpetrator self-identified as being of Arab origin, followed by seven
blacks, three Chinese, and one German. Reilly says there are known white
supremacist and neo-Nazi groups that are often the perpetrators of
antisemitic attacks, but in a survey of Jewish Canadians commissioned by
B’nai B’rith, the greatest single concern among Jewish communities was
about extremist Islamic organizations and dictatorships, not neo-Nazis or
other sources. The audit also reported that social media and the Internet
were increasingly being used for spreading hate or for assembling groups to
participate in anti-Jewish events.
OCTOBER
New York, October 4: Following a consistent trend over the last several
years, the Anti-Defamation League Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents found
that the number of antisemitic incidents increased slightly in 2010, to a total
of 1,239 incidents of assault, vandalism, and harassment, compared to 1,211
incidents reported in 2009. It is the first increase reported by the ADL since
the numbers hit a record high in 2004, when the United States experienced
1,821 incidents of antisemitism. Since 2004, the total number of anti-Jewish
incidents had declined incrementally each year.
Buenos Aires, October 6: Two reports that reveal the extent of antisemitism
in Argentina were released by DAIA, the Jewish umbrella organization. An
opinion poll conducted by the Gino Germani Institute of the University of
Buenos Aires found that 45 percent of those polled “would never marry a
Jew” and that 30 percent “would not live in a neighborhood with a large
presence of Jews.” The poll also showed that four out of 10 respondents
have a negative opinion of “Jews being involved in politics” and five out of
10 think that Jews talk too much about the Holocaust. Some 54 percent of
those polled agreed that Jews “are the first ones to turn their backs on the
needy.” DAIA called the results of the poll “disturbing and alarming.” The
survey was commissioned by DAIA and the Anti-Defamation League,
which interviewed more than 1,500 people from across the country.
According to Nestor Cohen, lead investigator from the University of Buenos Aires, “Jews are perceived as powerful, not supportive, and not loyal to
Argentina.” He added that in this case, “discrimination has more to do with
an anti-Jewish and not an anti-Israeli feeling; it is not related to Israel’s
political decisions.” Meanwhile, the Annual Report on Anti-Semitism in
Argentina showed that in 2010, anti-Jewish expressions appeared in public
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spaces, including graffiti with Nazi symbols, and there was a large increase
over previous years in digital and virtual antisemitism. Approximately 300
antisemitic incidents are reported in the country every year.
London, ON, Canada, October 16: Huron University College (the University of Western Ontario) announced the appointment of Ingrid Mattson, a
professor at Hartford Seminary in Connecticut and former president of the
Islamic Society of North America, as the first London and Windsor Community Chair in Islamic Studies at its Faculty of Theology. The move validates widespread concern, by Canadian journalist Barbara Kay, that the
support of several Islamist groups in funding the chair would lead to the
appointment of a radical Islamist as the first holder.
Rome, October 17: The Committee for the Inquiry into Anti-Semitism,
chaired by MP Fiamma Nirenstein, has presented its Final Report to the
public in the prestigious Hall of the Presidency of the Italian Chamber of
Deputies, called “Sala della Lupa.” The report was unanimously approved
by all members of the committee, formed by 30 MPs from the Constitutional Affairs and Foreign Affairs committees. The hearings and the initiatives that have accompanied the Committee works have been proceeding
for the last two years. “We have been attempting to understand the new
aspects of this phenomenon, which is as aggressive and genocidal as it
always was, but it is presently hiding itself by assuming new forms,” MP
Nirenstein explained. The work of the inquiry has brought up alarming
data: 44% of the Italians declare that they do not feel any sympathy toward
the Jews; there is an exponential proliferation of antisemitic Web sites and
social networks; and the level of hatred against the State of Israel passes the
limits of legitimate criticism and aims to destroy the Jews.
New York, October 19: The Republican National Committee attacked
Democrats for staying silent about “extreme antisemitic, anti-Israel comments” reported at the Occupy Wall Street protests. RNC communications
director Sean Spicer blasted top Democrats for voicing their support for the
demonstrations, even as some of the protesters make “antisemitic, antiIsrael comments,” according to a memo first reported in Morning Score.
NOVEMBER
London, November 1: The National Jewish Student Survey, conducted by
the London-based Institute for Jewish Policy Research, found that more
than four out of every 10 Jewish students at British universities reported
witnessing or experiencing antisemitic incidents between October 2010 and
this March, but that only two in 10 said they were concerned about campus
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antisemitism. Released in September, the survey also showed that respondents were generally comfortable with their religious identity, and relatively
unconcerned about antisemitism and anti-Israel activity on campus. The
survey is the first-ever study examining Jewish campus life in Britain. It
was commissioned by the Pears Foundation and the Union of Jewish Students, the umbrella group that oversees Jewish societies at more than 100
British universities—essentially the British equivalent of Hillel Houses in
the United States. See http://www.jpr.org.uk/downloads/NJSS_report%20
final.pdf.
Oxford, UK, November 8: Four members of the Oxford University Conservative Association have resigned over antisemitism and snobbery. The
four senior members said they were quitting the association after members
sang a song with a Nazi theme during an evening meeting billed as “port
and policy,” the Telegraph reported. The members reportedly sang a song
that begins with the line “Dashing through the Reich . . . killing lots of
kike.” Student members of the club are facing disciplinary action by the
university and the Conservative Party. Both have launched investigations
into the incident, according to the newspaper. Two prime ministers and 13
cabinet ministers are among the club’s alumni. The club has faced accusations of racism in the past. In 2000, four members were expelled for making
Nazi salutes.
Brooklyn, November 11: Three cars were torched and antisemitic graffiti
was spray-painted at the predominantly Jewish neighborhood of Midwood.
Residents were awakened early by fire engines and were horrified to find
three vehicles that were parked on Ocean Parkway—a BMW, a Jaguar. and
an Audi—burnt to a crisp. Swastikas, references to the SS and the KKK,
and the slogan “F— the Jews” were daubed on nearby vehicles, benches.
and the sidewalk.
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Windsor, ON, Canada, November 12: Members of Congregation Beth El, a
Conservative synagogue on Mark Avenue in South Windsor, discovered
antisemitic graffiti on their building earlier this month. The exterior rear
and west walls of the synagogue were spray painted with blue and red swastikas; in addition to the swastikas, the words “Free Palestine” were written
on one wall. “It’s obviously upsetting,” said Hillery Guttman, president of
the congregation. There are members of the congregation who had family in
the Holocaust, he said. He did not think that the incident, which he called
“isolated,” is reflective of the broader community; he considers it the work
of “a tiny group of delinquents.” Guttman said he stumbled on the graffiti
when he arrived at the synagogue on Sunday morning to set up for an event.
Malmö, Sweden, November 17: Police in Sweden’s third-largest city are
reporting a significant rise in the number of reported antisemitic hate crimes
this year. Recent statistics from Sweden’s National Council on Crime Prevention (Brottsförebyggande rådet) revealed that nationwide in 2010, there
were 161 reported antisemitic hate crimes. “We reluctantly are issuing this
advisory because religious Jews and other members of the Jewish community there have been subject to antisemitic taunts and harassment. There
have been dozens of incidents reported to the authorities but have not
resulted in arrests or convictions for hate crimes,” the center said in a statement. The upswing in antisemitic violence in Sweden is being attributed to
two key factors: the exponential increase in the number of Muslim immigrants in the country, thanks to some of the most liberal immigration laws
in Europe; and to those left-wing politicians who never miss an opportunity
to publicly demonize Israel. Muslims are now estimated to comprise
between 20 and 25 percent of Malmö’s total population of around 300,000;
much of the increase in anti-Jewish violence in recent years is being attributed to idle Muslim immigrant youth.
Sydney, November 28: Jews in Australia faced 517 incidents of harassment
or intimidation in the year to September 30, a 31 percent rise from the year
before, according to the Jewish community’s annual report on antisemitism.
“Put bluntly, in Australia this year, 10 times a week, every week, Jewish
Australians were attacked or threatened,” report author Jeremy Jones said. It
is the 22nd year that Jones, community affairs director for the Australia/
Israel and Jewish Affairs Council, has produced the report, which showed a
38 percent increase over the average of the previous 21 years but an 80
percent drop on the record tally (2009).
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DECEMBER
Cardiff, December 2: A Welsh MP has been accused of antisemitism after
questioning whether a Jew ought to be Britain’s ambassador to Israel.
Paul Flynn, who represents Newport West, made the remarks while questioning Sir Gus O’Donnell during an inquiry by the Public Administration
Select Committee into the role of the head of the civil service. The present
civil service chief was being questioned about his investigation into Adam
Werritty, the controversial friend of former defense secretary Liam Fox.
Flynn questioned the appointment of ambassador Matthew Gould, who took
up the post in Israel last year. Conspiracy theorists have alleged that Gould,
Fox, and Werritty all met with Mossad, the Israeli secret service, in order to
discuss a possible strike on Iran. “I do not normally fall for conspiracy
theories, but the ambassador has proclaimed himself to be a Zionist and he
has previously served in Iran, in the service,” Flynn said.
Winnipeg, December 6: Police confirmed that a 15-year-old boy had been
charged with assault with a weapon for allegedly using a lighter to burn the
hair of a Jewish classmate while uttering antisemitic remarks in the halls of
Oak Park High School. But while police said it was still being determined
whether the boy will be charged with hate crimes, the boy had a message of
his own—a picture of himself on his Facebook page wearing a shirt with a
slogan relating that he loves “haters.” And he’s being lauded by others
online for the alleged attack. The case shows the “durability of antisemitism,” said David Matas, a prominent Winnipeg lawyer who is senior honorary counsel for B’nai B’rith. “The fact that it should arise in somebody so
young shows that it’s going to be projected into the future,” Matas said. “It
just seems never to end.”
London, December 22: A 19-year-old man has been questioned by police
on suspicion of throwing eggs at Jews in two “drive-by” attacks in Hendon
and Golders Green, in northwest London. In the first incident, four Jewish
girls in their early 20s had eggs thrown at them as they walked along
Golders Green Road. A similar attack took place when two Jews, a 29-yearold man and a 20-year-old woman, were egged and subjected to racial
taunts.
Hackensack, NJ, December 23: The Conservative Temple Beth El was vandalized on the first night of Hanukkah, according to reports by NBC and
CBS news. Swastikas were scrawled on the front door and west side of the
synagogue, along with four marks of white supremacy. In addition, the
phrase, “Jews did 9/11” was sprayed on the sidewalk leading to the building, NBC reported.
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San Francisco, December 26: A lawsuit by two Jewish students accusing
UC Berkeley of turning a blind eye to alleged intimidation by Arab students
and fostering a climate of antisemitism has been dismissed by a federal
judge, Richard Seeborg, who said school officials have no duty to intervene
in campus political disputes. The plaintiffs, a current student and a recent
graduate, said they and other Jews have been harassed during Apartheid
Week, held by Muslim student groups each year to protest Israeli policies.
They said organizers set up checkpoints where demonstrators in military
attire brandished fake weapons and asked passing students whether they
were Jewish. When plaintiff Jessica Felber walked by with a sign reading
“Israel wants peace” at the March 2010 protest, a leader of Students for
Justice in Palestine rammed her with a shopping cart, the suit alleged. The
suit said demonstrators at other UC Berkeley events in the past decade have
spat at Jewish students, disrupted pro-Israeli speakers, and compared
Israel’s government to Nazi Germany.
Warsaw, December 29: The city published a calendar that includes a poster
depicting Jews as rats. The glossy publication, produced in conjunction
with leading Polish artists and arts organizations, contains a foreword from
Warsaw’s mayor Hanna Gronkiewicz-Walc, who describes the calendar as
“a beautiful showcase for the masterpieces of Polish graphic art.” She adds:
“We can feel the atmosphere of bygone days.” Council spokesman Bartosz
Milczarczyk admitted that he had looked at all the illustrations carefully,
2011]
347
with deputy mayor Wlodzimierz Paszynski, and decided it contained nothing inappropriate.
New York, December 30: Fox Latin America ran a poll on its Facebook
page asking people to choose between Pontius Pilate, the high priests, and
the Jewish people. The poll was placed to promote a National Geographic
Christmas special. Fox spokeswoman Guadalupe Lucero said that the network had put measures in place to prevent a repeat of the incident. In a
letter to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, she said the poll contradicted the
mission and spirit of National Geographic worldwide. “We sincerely apologize for the publication of a poll that might have unintentionally given place
to interpretations, opinions or expressions of intolerance affecting the Jewish community,” she said. “We deeply regret the incident.” The suggestion
that Jews were responsible for the “deicide”—the killing of Jesus—has
been something that has damaged Jewish-Christian relations for centuries,
but even the Vatican disowned the idea more than four decades ago. Dr.
Shimon Samuels, the Wiesenthal Center’s director for international relations, said it was an outrage to see repeated a slur that “resulted in persecution and murder of Jews for two millennia.”
In an Academic Voice:
Antisemitism and Academy Bias
Kenneth Lasson*
Current events and the recent literature strongly suggest that antisemitism
and anti-Zionism are often conflated and can no longer be viewed as
distinct phenomena. The following paper provides an overview of contemporary media and scholarship concerning antisemitic/anti-Zionist
events and rhetoric on college campuses. This analysis leads to the conclusion that those who are naive about campus antisemitism should exercise greater vigilance and be more aggressive in confronting the problem.
Key Words: Antisemitism, Higher Education, Israel, American Jews
In America, Jews feel very comfortable, but there are islands of antiSemitism: the American college campus.
—Natan Sharansky1
While universities like to nurture the perception that they are protectors of reasoned discourse, and indeed often perceive themselves as sacrosanct places of culture in a chaotic world, the modern campus is, of course,
not quite so wonderful. The romanticized vision of life in the Ivory
Tower—a peaceful haven where learned professors ponder higher thoughts
and where students roam orderly quadrangles in quest of truth and other
pleasures—has long been relegated to yesteryear.
In fact, the academic enterprise in America was besmirched by racism
early in its history: until the latter part of the twentieth century, segregation
and ethnic quotas were the norm, not the exception. But what was once
accepted prejudicial policy has now given way to an aberrational form of
political correctness, which still vividly illustrates failures of scholarly
rigor—the abandonment of reliance on facts, common sense, and logic in
the pursuit of narrow political agendas—and which are all too often
1. Natan Sharansky came to prominence as a prisoner in the former Soviet
Union. From 2003 to 2005 he served as Israel’s minister for diaspora affairs, and is
currently chairman of the Jewish Agency. He made these remarks in the documentary film Columbia Unbecoming. See “Campus Anti-Semitism: A Briefing Before
the United States Commission on Civil Rights Held in Washington, D.C., November 18, 2005,” http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/081506campusantibrief07.pdf.
349
350
[ VOL. 3:349
presented in the academic voice. Instead of a community of scholars thirsting for knowledge in sylvan tranquility, what we frequently encounter (particularly in England and Europe, but in elite American universities as well)
are hotbeds of radical turmoil.
Among the abuses of intellectual honesty that have been taking place
in American universities, particularly over the past decade, is the loud and
strident opposition to Israel. Frequently camouflaged as righteous protests
against the “apartheid” policies of an “oppressive” regime, vehement protests against the Jewish State are held on a growing number of campuses.
While the number of overt antisemitic incidents has declined in the
United States over the past few years, there has been a significant increase
in anti-Zionist rhetoric and activity on campuses around the country.
Though the two concepts are not always identical, in today’s world they
almost completely overlap. Indeed, modern anti-Zionism and antisemitism
are virtually confluent—and ultimately impossible to distinguish in any
way but semantically.
Thus has anti-Zionism—which in its narrowest dimension is an argument directed against the political realization of the State of Israel, but in its
latter-day context has provided those who dislike Jews a convenient cloak
behind which to hide—morphed into antisemitism.
Many such sentiments are expressed by individual professors. The
most notorious recent example is the book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt.2
Words matter. They can cause damage. They have consequences.3
Moreover, articulate academic anti-Zionists use well-crafted rhetoric to diffuse critics.4 While the First Amendment broadly protects freedom of
speech, even for libertarians, the Constitution has limits. Defamation is pun2. See notes 172ff. and accompanying text [unless otherwise noted, all references to notes in these footnotes are to other footnotes in this same list]; see also
Rupert Cornwell, Out of America, www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/
rupert-cornwell-out-of-america-464069.html.
3. See Victor Sharpe, “Words Have Consequences,” The Jerusalem Connection Report, July 14, 2011, http://www.thejerusalemconnection.us/blog/2011/07/14/
words-have-consequences.html; and Mary Elizabeth Williams, “The New High
Price of Mouthing Off,” Salon, http://www.salon.com/2011/06/21/megan_fox_john
_galliano_anti_semitism/.
4. See, e.g., comments to Alex Katz, “Antisemitism Thrives in Academia,”
Stanford Review, January 18, 2011, http://stanfordreview.org/article/anti-semitismthrives-in-academia; see also comments to Eric T. Justin, “Protocols of the Elders
of Crazy,” Harvard Crimson, October 3, 2011, http://www.thecrimson.com/article/
2011/10/3/arab-world-antisemitism-jews/. For a broader discussion of this phenomenon, see note 55ff. and accompanying text.
2011]
IN AN ACADEMIC VOICE
351
ishable, for example, as is speech that incites to violence. But the problem
with regulating hate speech is where to draw the line. While an academic
institution should not allow itself to become a forum for bigotry, neither
should its freedom of expression be limited. It is better to err on the side of
liberty; an excess of tolerance is still preferable to censorship.5
Students today increasingly find themselves confronted by curricula
manipulated by scholarly extremists. Principles of academic freedom and
the universality of science should have prevented such noxious campaigns,
but they have not.
The much-ballyhooed quest for “balance” raises problems of its own.
Must Holocaust studies be balanced by Holocaust denial? To what extent
can evolution be balanced by “intelligent design”? Does the obligation
toward balance cover every point taught in a course, or only major disputes? Who is to enforce the norm?
Antisemitism is not just name-calling, but something much more corrosive and damaging.
Responses to hate speech or disruptive behavior must be firm, immediate, and consequential. To the extent that those who spout antisemitic rhetoric are in our faces, we must be in theirs.
Ironically, perhaps the most pernicious effects of academic antisemitism can be illustrated by looking at what happened to the short-lived Yale
Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism (YIISA).6
This article examines how the relationship between antisemitic and
anti-Zionist speech and conduct both play out on contemporary university
campuses—and suggests ways in which such rhetoric and conduct can be
confronted without doing harm to First Amendment principles.7
5. See Assaf Sagiv, “A Study in Hate,” Azure (Spring 2010):14.
6. See section in this article entitled “The Yale Initiative.”
7. I have addressed most of the issues treated herein in other forums. See, e.g.,
Kenneth Lasson, “Antisemitism in the Academic Voice” (chapters in two books:
Antisemitism on Campus: Past and Present, Eunice Pollack, ed. [Brighton, MA:
Academic Studies Press, 2011], and Global Antisemitism: A Crisis of Modernity,
Charles Small, ed. [Brill Academic Publishers, 2012]; see also Kenneth Lasson,
“Defending Truth: Legal and Psychological Aspects of Holocaust Denial,” Current
Psychology (November 2007); and “Scientific and Scholarly Boycotts of Israel:
Abusing the Academic Enterprise,” Touro Law Review 21 (2006):989.
352
THE BACKDROP: FROM MARX
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BIG LIES
Religion is the . . . opium of the people. Marxism is the opium of the
intellectuals.
—Karl Marx and Edmund Wilson
Antisemitism in the academy is not a new phenomenon. Much of it can
be traced to Karl Marx, whose 1844 essay “On the Jewish Question” was an
early reflection of modern leftist thought. “What is the profane basis of
Judaism?” asked Marx. “Practical need, self-interest,” he answered. “What
is the worldly cult of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly god?
Money. Very well: then in emancipating itself from huckstering and money,
and thus from real and practical Judaism, our age would emancipate itself
. . . the emancipation of the Jew is the emancipation of mankind from
Judaism.”8
Marx was a classic antisemite, not unlike those fabricators of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, who viewed civilization as having been captured and destroyed by Jewish values, practices, and conspiracies. Let the
world be rid of the Jews was (and is) the message, and all will be well.9
Some historians offer a psychological explanation for Marx’s hatred of
Jews. No matter what he did in his life, he could not shed being branded a
Jew—although he did not consider himself one. In fact, when he was born,
in 1818, his father, who had changed his name from Herschel Levi to
Heinrich Marx, had already converted to Christianity and had his own six
living children baptized.10
Marxism was not the only early antecedent to modern Jewish leftists
hostile to Jews in general and Israel in particular. Jewish members of the
Communist Party had good reason to draw a line between themselves and
8. Sally F. Zerker, quoting Karl Marx, “On the Jewish Question,” in “AntiZionist Jewish Leftists Are Part of a Line Stretching Back to Marx,” Canadian
Jewish News, November 26, 2009. Ms. Zerker is a professor emeritus at York University in Canada. Marx also famously said (in 1843, in his Contribution to Critique of Hegel’s “Philosophy of Right”) that “religion is the opiate of the masses,”
to which Edmund Wilson responded over a century later: “Marxism is the opiate of
the intellectuals (conservativeforum.org, http://www.conservativeforum.org/auth
quot.asp?ID=958). The quote is originally attributed to Raymond Aron, L’Opiom
des intellectuals (1955).
9. Zerker, “Anti-Zionist Jewish Leftists.”
10. Karl Marx was six years old when he was converted to Christianity. Zerker,
“Anti-Zionist Jewish Leftists.”
2011]
353
the Jewish community at large—even though they had to form their own
branch of the party, which at the time was blatantly antisemitic.11
Academic antisemites in Germany may not have participated in
pogroms, but their “scholarship” during the Third Reich served to legitimize anti-Jewish policies. Much about them is surveyed by Alan Steinweis
in his book, Studying the Jew: Scholarly Antisemitism in Nazi Germany,
which reveals how willingly some scholars were to endorse the Nazis’
world view prevailing at that time. Moreover, they continued their academic antisemitism after the war. Alan Steinweis effectively illustrates
what is at stake when scholarship is placed at the service of politics.12
Through it all, ample usage has been made of the Big Lie—a classic
modern-day manifestation of the truth-twisting tactic made notorious by
Nazi propagandists during World War II.13
Israel has long stood accused of conducting a harsh military occupation of Arab lands inhabited by an indigenous, peace-seeking Arab population—despite overwhelming evidence that such charges have no basis in
fact.
The misnamed “occupation” allegedly began after Israel’s 1967 victory in the Six-Day war, when Jews began to settle in the disputed biblical
areas known as Judea and Samaria. Initially, Arab reactions were positive:
11. Zerker, “Anti-Zionist Jewish Leftists.”
12. Alan E. Steinweis, Studying the Jew: Scholarly Antisemitism in Nazi Germany (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006). See also Mikael Tossavainen, review of Studying the Jew: Scholarly Antisemitism in Nazi Germany,
Canadian Journal of History, December 22, 2006.
13. The Big Lie as a tool of propaganda was introduced by Adolf Hitler in his
1925 autobiography Mein Kampf. To be effective, he wrote, it “must be so colossal
that no one would believe that someone could have the impudence to distort the
truth so infamously.” He went on to suggest that “in the big lie there is always a
certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more
easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or
voluntarily.” The Big Lie was used by Joseph Goebbels, Nazi minister of propaganda, who understood that not only must the false claim be colossal, but it also
must contain at least a kernel of truth, and be repeated with great frequency. In the
Middle East today, the necessary kernel of truth is that in fact Israel does occupy
Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem—but in the same way it occupies Tel Aviv and
Haifa. So too does the United States occupy Miami and Los Angeles, with their
minority Latino populations, as does Canada occupy Quebec, with its minority
French population. See Zelig Fried, “Occupation—The Big Lie,” Arutz Sheva
(Israel National News), December 27, 2007, http://www.israelnationalnews.com/
Articles/Article.aspx/7656. See also Israel Frederick Krantz, “On Campus: Defending the University Means Winning the Ideoloical War,” Israfax, August 23, 2009,
266.
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Jews would regularly visit Arab towns and villages, and employ and provide assistance to local townspeople; the Arab standard of living improved
significantly as per-capita income increased and modern infrastructures—
roads, water supplies, electricity, medical care, and telephone communications—were developed. Tourism flourished. Arabs and Jews worked and
shopped together in Haifa, Ramallah, and Bethlehem. Roadblocks were virtually unknown.14
Following Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s groundbreaking visit to
Jerusalem in 1977 and the Camp David peace accords, Israel withdrew from
the Sinai Peninsula and has been at peace with Egypt ever since.
These pacific relationships were dramatically altered in 1993 with the
signing of the Oslo Accords, which ceded administrative control of the
West Bank to the Palestinian National Authority (formerly the PLO).
Emboldened by the promise of an independent Palestinian state in Judea,
Samaria, and Gaza, Arab leaders urged their constituents to demand the
removal of all Jewish communities in their midst, which they now claimed
as exclusively their own. In 1994, Israel granted the Palestinian Authority
autonomous control of the major Arab cities and towns in these territories.15
For its part, the PA agreed to end propaganda attacks that called for
Israel’s destruction—a promise it never fulfilled. Instead, a new rallying
call was introduced: “End the Occupation.” The modern rebirth of Israel
began in the nineteenth century, with the reclamation of largely vacant land
by pioneering Zionists, who soon became a Jewish majority. Few thought it
odd that, although throughout their 2000-year exile there was a continuous
Jewish presence in the Holy Land, they were now accused of occupying it.
Few questioned the historical incongruity that, having been sovereign in
Judea, Samaria, and the lands west of the Jordan River for a thousand years,
they would be branded occupiers. Judea, after all, had been named after its
Jewish residents.16
14. Fried, “Occupation.” “Occupation” is a hyperbolic term when used in this
context—similar in nature to Nakhba (Arabic for “catastrophe,” the word used by
Palestinians to describe Israel’s independence in 1948).
15. Fried, “Occupation.” In 1995, Jordan signed a peace treaty with Egypt.
16. It was not until the late 19th and early 20th centuries that the majority of
Arabs living west of the Jordan River migrated to the area. During that period, the
land was ruled by the Ottoman Empire, and, subsequent to that, until the founding
of the state of Israel, it was under the control of the British Empire. Fried, “Occupation.” Following Israel’s War of Independence, in 1948, Egypt occupied Gaza, Jordan—the West Bank, and Syria—the Golan Heights. None were there to help the
Palestinians create their own homeland.
2011]
355
Moreover, Jerusalem had been known since the dawn of history as a
Jewish city: it is mentioned in the Old Testament no fewer than 600 times—
but not once in the Koran.
Nowhere has the Big Lie been more popular than in the universities,
where to this day scores of anti-Zionist professors seek to denigrate Israel at
every opportunity. The “occupation” mantra has assumed such magnitude
that it has spawned a host of related myths, particularly that Israel’s military
has met Arab resistance with cruelty and insensitivity by setting up purposefully “humiliating” checkpoints to harass innocent Arabs. This too flies
in the face of ample evidence to the contrary. No army besides Israel’s has
had to deal with more suicide bombers, deadly ambushes, drive-by shootings, kidnappings, and rock throwing interspersed with rifle fire, on a daily
basis and for so extended a period. The Israel Defense Forces are widely
viewed by other democratic nations as models of humane behavior, thoroughly trained to respect the sanctity of life and to demonstrate an individual and collective morality greatly exceeding that of other military
regimes.17
In the best tradition of the Big Lie, propaganda is promulgated as fact.
Thus, there have been repeated assertions that Israel: (a) is the primary
stumbling block to achieving a “Two-State Solution”; (b) is a nuclear power
that presents the greatest threat to peace and stability in the Middle East;
and (c) is an apartheid state deserving of international boycotts, divestment
campaigns, and sanctions; (d) plans to “Judaize” Jerusalem by building
thousands of new homes in the eastern part of the Holy City; (e) adopts
policies that, besides endangering U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, are
the root cause of worldwide antisemitism; and (f) is primarily responsible
for a “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza, against whose citizens it committed war crimes.
Trumpeting these claims loudly and often enough has allowed them to
take on the character of unassailable truths. Were they subjected to the same
objective scrutiny that academic historians and political scientists traditionally require of their disciplines, many if not all of them would prove without merit.
Today’s Muslims and Palestinians draw on the earlier experiences of
radical black students. The Nation of Islam, Malcolm X, Amiri Baraka, and
17. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZW5VaxxBhCw; see also http://
www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Society_&_Culture/IDF_ethics.html.
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Stokely Carmichael pioneered the demonizing of Jews and Israel in the
universities.18
The Pavlovian responses of university administrators—a combination
of fear and condescension—have set the bar of incitement from today’s
protected groups so high that only physical violence is treated as offlimits.19
CANARDS ON CONTEMPORARY CAMPUSES:
ANTISEMITISM VS. ANTI-ZIONISM
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.
—Abba Eban20
In the first decade of this century, antisemitism and anti-Zionism were
systemic in the United States and elsewhere. Jewish and pro-Israel students
across the country are patronized, mocked, intimidated, and sometimes
physically attacked, while anti-Israel professors exercise bully pulpits,
expressing the dominant narrative that the Palestinians are cruelly
oppressed, and that Arabs are suffering needlessly at the hands of racist,
apartheid, and genocidal Israeli occupiers.21
18. See Eunice Pollack, “African Americans and the Legitimization of
Antisemitism on the Campus,” in Antisemitism on the Campus: Past and Present,
Eunice Pollack, ed. (Brighton, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2011).
19. Alex Joffe, “Jewish Ideas Daily: Anti-Semitism 101,” Jerusalem Post, April
8, 2011.
20. In his career, Abba Eban (1915-2002) was the Israeli foreign affairs minister, education minister, deputy prime minister, and ambassador to the United States
and to the United Nations. He was also vice president of the United Nations General Assembly and president of the Weizmann Institute of Science. After leaving
government service, in 1980, he devoted the rest of his life to writing and teaching,
including serving as a visiting academic at Princeton, Columbia, and George Washington universities.
21. Joffe, “Jewish Ideas Daily” (note 19). Notable recent books on academic
antisemitism include Manuel Gerstenfeld, ed., Academics Against Israel and the
Jews (Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, 2007); Kenneth Marcus, Jewish Identity
and Civil Rights in America (Cambridge University Press, 2010), which addresses
legal issues related to Jews as an ethnic group; Jerome Karabel’s study, The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and
Princeton (Houghton Mifflin, 2005), which is on the history of admissions policies
at elite institutions that discriminated against Jews on account of their “character”;
the new collection by Eunice Pollack, Anti-Semitism on the Campus: Past and
Present (Brighton, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2011); and Gary Tobin et al.,
2011]
357
In this century’s second decade—although there has been neither a
broad-based resurgence of antisemitic attitudes on college campuses nor a
widespread rejection of Israel in favor of the Palestinian cause—a hard-core
minority of anti-Israel and antisemitic academics have gained disproportionate influence in university life.22
STATISTICS
AND
NARRATIVES
According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), since 2002 there
have been close to 100 major antisemitic incidents per year occurring on
American university campuses.23 The most overt acts have come in the
form of harassment and intimidation; they range from minor physical contact (such as spitting) to more extreme violence involving lethal weapons.24
A pattern of antisemitism, usually camouflaged as anti-Zionism, has
emerged at elite universities in California and the Ivy League. At the University of California Irvine, for example, with a student population of about
24,000—a thousand of whom are Jewish—there have been numerous incidents of property destruction, physical threats, and actual violence.25
In 2002, an article appeared in a UCI student publication claiming that
Jews are a genetically different and inferior race. Posters began appearing
Uncivil University: Politics and Propaganda in American Education (San Francisco: Institute for Jewish and Community Research, 2005).
22. Kenneth Marcus, “Fighting Back Against Campus Antisemitism,” Jewish
Ideas Daily, March 28, 2011.
23. This number represents only those incidents that have been reported and
documented. It is likely that many such acts go unreported because of fear, intimidation, or embarrassment. The exact number of incidents per year are: 2002: 106;
2003: 68; 2004: 74; 2005: 98, 2006: 88; 2007: 94; 2008: 85. For current statistics,
see “2010 Audit of Antisemitic Incidents,” Anti-Defamation League, http://www.
adl.org/main_Anti_Semitism_Domestic/2010_Audit.
24. Such a trend can be traced back at least fifteen years. In March 1995, for
example, at the University of Pennsylvania, two Jewish students were walking near
campus when they heard derogatory epithets shouted at them by two other students.
One of the harassers went into a nearby house and returned with a threatening
shotgun. Police and university officials questioned the perpetrators and confiscated
their weapons. Ultimately, the harassed students decided not to press charges; one
of the perpetrators was “voluntarily separated” from the university. See Jeffrey
Ross and the ADL, Schooled in Hate: Antisemitism on Campus (1997), http://
www.adl.org/sih/SIH-print.asp (hereinafter Schooled in Hate).
25. Susan B. Tuchman, “Statement Submitted to the U.S. Commission on Civil
Rights Briefing on Campus Antisemitism,” Briefing Report on Campus Antisemitism, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, July 2006, 13, 14. For a discussion of
antisemitism as anti-Zionism, see notes 36-63 and accompanying text.
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on campus depicting the Star of David (the traditional Jewish symbol) dripping with blood, and equating it with the swastika.26 In 2003, a Holocaust
memorial on the campus was destroyed almost immediately after it was set
up. Jewish students commemorating the Nazi horrors found a swastika
carved into a table near where they had gathered.27 In 2004, a confrontation
between Jewish and Arab students became a campus cause célèbre. The
Jewish student, wearing a skullcap and a pin captioned “United We Stand”
and framed by American and Israeli flags, was walking inside an academic
building. He was soon surrounded and threatened by Arab students, one of
whom shouted “Ee Bakh al Yahud!” (“Slaughter the Jews!”).28
UCI, of course, does not stand alone as a focal point for such intimidation and harassment.29
In May 2002, at San Francisco State University, four hundred Jewish
students held an Israeli-Palestinian “Sit-in for Peace in the Middle East”—
an attempt to engage in a civilized dialogue with their counterparts. The
Jewish students spoke of their support for Israel, and their hope that a
peaceful settlement could be achieved. When the event concluded, about
thirty of the Jewish students were surrounded by a group of pro-Palestinian
students, who shouted, “Hitler didn’t finish the job,” “F— the Jews,” and
“Die, racist pigs.” University and city police were quick to react, forming a
barrier between the Jewish and pro-Palestinian students and eventually
leading the Jewish students out of the plaza. A freelance reporter wrote that
she was “convinced that if the police had not been present there would have
been violence.”30
26. Kenneth L. Marcus, “The Resurgence of Antisemitism on American College
Campuses,” Current Psychology, 26(3-4, 2007):206, 210; and “Anti-Zionism as
Racism: Campus Anti-Semitism and the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” William and
Mary Bill of Rights Journal (2007):837.
27. U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Briefing Report on Campus Antisemitism
(2005), 14.
28. Soon thereafter, the Jewish student left the university to study somewhere
else. At least one other student has also left UCI because of the hostile environment
on campus. Briefing Report on Campus Antisemitism (2005), 14. For recent
responses to the UCI incidents noted, see notes 212ff. and accompanying text.
29. In April 2002, a Jewish student at Illinois State University was solicited to
sign a petition in support of Palestinians; when he asked whether the petition
addressed the issue of suicide bombings, an organizer of the group told him it
addressed how to blow off the Jewish student’s head. antisemitism/Anti-Israel
Events on Campus (May 14, 2002), http://www.adl.org/CAMPUS/campus_
incidents.asp.
30. Karen Alexander, “San Francisco Dispatch,” The New Republic (June 24,
2002):17. See also Briefing Report on Campus Antisemitism, U.S. Commission on
Civil Rights, July 2006, 24.
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On the same campus, antisemitic activities are often the focus of proPalestinian rallies. In 2002, an anti-Israel rally staged by Arab and Muslim
students featured posters with pictures of soup cans reading “Made in
Israel” on the label: under the “contents,” the words “Palestinian Children
Meat” was found, and a photo of a baby with its stomach sliced open and
the words “according to Jewish Rites under American license” were pictured on the bottom of the can.31
Psychological intimidation may be the most prevalent form of harassment, often experienced through acts of vandalism to public and private
property. In February 2006, at the University of California, Berkeley, the
word “kike” was painted on the front porch of a Jewish fraternity house.32
Similar incidents were reported in October and December of the same year
in other American universities.33
A more extreme example of intimidation and violence occurred in
2008 near the Brown University campus in Providence, Rhode Island. In
March of that year Yossi Knafo, an emissary from the Jewish Agency of
Israel, was in his kitchen when firebombs were thrown at his building,
burning the outside.34 Although Knafo was unharmed, the incident had a
profound effect on students on campus—the Hillel house was locked down,
and a police officer had to be stationed outside. Students told administrators
that they felt unsafe and vulnerable.35
Stanford University, the august “Harvard of the West,” has been similarly tainted by antisemitic incidents and rhetoric. In late 2009, a sukkah
(the temporary hut constructed in celebration of the festival of Tabernacles)
in front of Stanford’s Hillel building was vandalized with graffiti; Stanford
professor Joel Beinin is well known for his vitriolic anti-Israel lectures.36
31. Alexander, “San Francisco Dispatch.”
32. “Antisemitic Incidents in U.S. Decline in 2006, Despite Year Marked By
Violent Attacks” (2006), http://www.antisemitism.org.il/eng/adl.
33. “Antisemitic Incidents in U.S. Decline.” At the University of Northern Colorado, the words “F—ing Jews” was written on a Jewish student’s dormitory room
door. At Ramapo College, in New Jersey, a professor found swastikas and the
words “Die, Jew Bitch” written on her whiteboard. At the State University of New
York, Albany, students found swastikas and “KKK” painted on the walls near a
lecture center.
34. Jayakrishna Nandini, “Hillel Staffer Moving On After Attack, Brown Daily
Herald (April 9, 2008), http://www.browndailyherald.com/2.12235/hillel-staffermoving-on-after-attack-1.1670469.
35. Nandini, “Hillel Staffer.”
36. Alex Katz, “Antisemitism Thrives in Academia,” Stanford Review, January
18, 2011, http://stanfordreview.org/article/anti-semitism-thrives-in-academia.
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In recent years, it has become increasingly difficult to separate statements critical of Israel from those that are motivated by antisemitism. The
former are often thinly veiled versions of the latter.37
Anti-Zionist incidents tend to increase in frequency with the changing
intensity of perceptions about the State of Israel. During the intifada of the
1980s, for example, there was a sharp rise in anti-Zionism, reflecting the
perceived evils perpetrated by the Israeli army against the Palestinian people. In the 1988-89 academic year, the University of Michigan’s student
newspaper published a good number of anti-Israel rhetoric, including several editorials censuring a Jewish student group that sought to call attention
to Arab terrorism.38
Although the mood changed somewhat after the 1991 Gulf War and
the subsequent election of the Labor government in 1992, and there was a
similar period of relative tranquility following the assassination of Israeli
prime minister Yitzhak Rabin (in November 1995), anti-Zionist rhetoric
began to increase shortly thereafter. California State (Fresno) University’s
Daily Collegian carried a particularly anti-Jewish article: one student was
quoted as saying that “When they [the Jews] disobeyed G-d, they broke the
covenant; from that point on it’s no longer their land.”39
In the early part of the 21st century, with the start of the second
intifada and Yasser Arafat’s refusal to accept the Oslo Accords, anti-Zionist
and antisemitic incidents began to increase. At the University of California
Irvine, a registered student group initiated annual weeklong events entitled
“Anti-Zionist Week,” “Zionist Awareness Week,” and “Israel Awareness
Week.” The message was always the same: the Jews control the U.S. government and use the media to brainwash others; in turn, Jews need to be
“rehabilitated” from the “psychosis” that exists in the Jewish community.40
Such strident propaganda leaves many Jewish students feeling alienated and marginalized, afraid to identify themselves as Jewish or as supporters of a Jewish state.41
37. This sentiment is hardly unique to the author. See, e.g., Caroline Glick, “See
No Evil,” Jerusalem Post, July 29, 2010.
38. Ross and the ADL, Schooled in Hate (note 24).
39. Ross and the ADL, Schooled in Hate.
40. U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Briefing Notes (note 25).
41. In 2002, a female graduate student wrote a letter to the UCI chancellor,
explaining:
Not only do I feel scared to walk around proudly as a Jewish person on
the UC Irvine campus, am terrified for anyone to find out. Today I felt
threatened that if students knew that I am Jewish and that I support a
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In 2002, a construction site for new dormitories at UC Santa Barbara
was defaced with anti-Israel/antisemitic graffiti, including the phrases “Anti
Zion/Nuke Israel,” “G-d Hates Jews,” and “Burn the Torah.” At the University of Colorado Boulder, antisemitic messages, including the phrase “Your
Tax Dollars Are Paying to Kill Palestinian Children,” appeared on sidewalks throughout the campus on the first day of the planned observance of
Holocaust Awareness Week. The next day at UC Berkeley, 79 pro-Palestinian protesters were arrested after storming into a classroom in an attempt to
disrupt a Holocaust Remembrance Day commemoration. At San Francisco
State University, following a pro-Israel rally, Jewish students, faculty, and
campus visitors were verbally assaulted and threatened. A group of proPalestinian counter-demonstrators hurled epithets at the crowd, including,
“Go back to Russia” and “Hitler did not finish the job.”
In 2008, of the 85 antisemitic incidents reported on college and university campuses (compared to an annual average of 88 incidents each year
since 2002),42 many of them were of an anti-Zionist nature and, as before,
many such demonstrations occurred in California. In September of that
year, for example, a pro-Israel poster displayed at a bus stop at UC Berkeley was defaced with antisemitic graffiti, including swastikas, and a proIsrael poster was defaced with antisemitic graffiti, also including swastikas.43 In May 2009, a large “Apartheid Wall” display was erected at UC
Irvine showing inflammatory photographs and accusing Israel of deliberately killing Palestinian children.44 At UC Santa Cruz, a building was vanJewish state, I would be attacked physically. It is my right to walk
around this campus and not fear other students and hear condemnation
from them. It is my right for my government to protect me from harm
from others. It is my right as a citizen who pays tuition and taxes to be
protected from such harm . . . YOU may claim the first amendment. I
claim the right to be safe and secure. You cannot use the first amendment as an argument against my safety. MY SAFETY SUPERCEDES
FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS (emphasis in original).
Notably, the chancellor never responded. An administrator who did respond suggested that the student visit the Counseling Center to help her “work on her feelings.” U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Briefing Notes.
42. “Campus Incidents by Year, as Compiled by the Anti-Defamation League”:
2008: 85; 2007: 94; 2006: 88; 2005: 98; 2004: 74; 2003: 68; 2002: 106. For current
statistics, see “2010 Audit of Antisemitic Incidents,” Anti-Defamation League,
http://www.adl.org/main_Anti_Semitism_Domestic/2010_Audit.
43. Emily Friedman, assistant director, Washington, DC, Anti-Defamation
League, e-mail message to author, November 16, 2009.
44. Photos of Anne Frank were used to compare her fate at the hands of the
Nazis with what is happening to Palestinians today. See “Creating Hate at UC
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dalized with antisemitic graffiti alleging that Jews were behind the 9/11
attacks.45
Other campuses around the country experienced similar incidents in
2008, including Anna Maria College (swastikas and “white power” drawn
on hallway walls); Baylor University (swastikas near dorm room of student
who had recently converted to Judaism); Colorado University at Boulder
(Jewish student subjected to antisemitic harassment by her roommate); Illinois State University (KKK fliers distributed on campus); Middlesex
County (N.J.) College (antisemitic graffiti); Rowan University (dormitory
painted with swastikas and the phrase “Hitler is awesome”); Rutgers University (antisemitic graffiti in stairwell); Saint Xavier University (neo-Nazi
group demonstrating outside the building at which Holocaust survivor Elie
Wiesel was presenting a lecture); Seton Hall University (numerous
antisemitic and racial slurs drawn on the walls of the men’s restroom);
Temple University (two individuals physically assaulted and subjected to
antisemitic taunts); the University of North Carolina (Jewish student
harassed by new roommate, who claimed that Jews control world’s banking
and entertainment industries); the University of North Dakota (student
harassed by others with antisemitic slurs, then shot at with pellet gun); and
the University of Oregon (Holocaust denier David Irving addressed students
at an event sponsored by Pacifica Forum).46
In January 2009, at San Francisco State University, reacting to an antiHamas, anti-terror petition, members of a group called the General Union of
Palestinian Students (GUPS) assaulted students of the SFSU College
Republicans, who had set up the petition.47 The GUPS accused the Republicans of “acts of incivility,” “intimidation,” and the creation of a “hostile
environment” on campus—despite the fact that the GUPS routinely sponsors radical speakers who demonize Jews, Zionists, Israel, Republicans, and
America.”48
Irvine,” May 13, 2009, http://www.standwithus.com/app/iNews/view_n.asp?ID=
1033.
45. “Creating Hate at UC Irvine.”
46. “Creating Hate at UC Irvine.”
47. The Republicans allowed students to throw a shoe at a Hamas flag, which
was similar to their 2007 anti-terrorism rally, where they invited students to stomp
on the flags of Hezbollah and Hamas. Richard L. Cravatts, “Hate Speech at San
Francisco State University,” American Thinker, http://www.americanthinker.com/
2009/o2/hate_speech_at_san-francisco_s.html.
48. Cravatts, “Hate Speech.” The Supreme Court has repeatedly declared that
burning, defacing, or desecrating flags is protected speech under the First Amendment. See Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 (1989), and U.S. v. Eichman, 496 U.S.
310 (1990).
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Unfortunately, the above cases are merely illustrative of many other
antisemitic incidents that have been reported on American campuses. Similar situations occur at universities around the world.
In April 2010, two pro-Israel students at Carleton University in Ottawa
were physically and verbally assaulted off-campus by ten men, who
accused them in Arabic for being Zionists, hit one of them in the back of
the head, calling him a “f—ing Jew,” and came at them with a machete.49
During “Israeli Apartheid Week” at Carleton, the campus safety department
discovered and reported to the police antisemitic graffiti in a bathroom—
“Kill a Jew slow + painfully,” “Nuke Israel,” and “White Power.”50
A spokesman for the university responded to these incidents by stating
that “certain kinds of behavior are not acceptable,”51 but pointedly refused
to address the issue of antisemitism on campus, stating that its role is to
provide a forum for debates and discussions regarding the Middle East.52
Echoing that view, a member of the Faculty for Palestine group, which
supports the student group that organizes “Israeli Apartheid Week” at
Carleton, believes that the controversy is “healthy” and that there is “nothing wrong with heated debate.”53
York University in Toronto has likewise been the scene of overt
antisemitism in recent years. In April 2008, York’s Hillel brought thenKnesset member Natan Sharansky to the campus for a speaking engagement. Members of the Palestinian Students Association and Students
Against Israeli Apartheid@York (SAIA) shouted down Sharansky, yelling
49. Dave Rogers, “Machete Used in Antisemitic Attack in Gatineau, Carlton
Students Say,” The Ottawa Citizen, April 6, 2010, http://www.vancouversun.com/
Machete+used+anti+Semitic+attack+Carleton+students/2766537/story.html; Adam
Daifallah, “The Bitter Campus Divide,” National Post, April 8, 2010, http://net
work.nationalpost.com/NP/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2010/04/08/adam-daifallahadding-a-machete-to-the-bitter-campus-divide.aspx.
50. Matthew Pearson, “Hate Crimes Unit Probes Antisemitic Graffiti on Campus,” The Ottawa Citizen, April 7, 2010, http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Hate
+crimes+unit+probes+anti+Semitic+graffiti+campus/2770759/story.html.
51. Rogers, “Machete Used” (note 49).
52. Pearson, “Hate Crimes Unit Probes” (note 50).
53. Pearson, “Hate Crimes Unit Probes.” In reaction to the incidents at Carleton
University, Adam Daifallah, a Canadian journalist of Palestinian descent, noted the
degree to which student governments have become involved. Like Arab-Israeli
journalist Khaled Abu Toameh, Daifallah agrees that one can be both pro-Israel and
pro-Palestine: “To be truly pro-Palestinian is to oppose the murderous kleptocrats
running the Palestinian Authority and to oppose the use of violent intimidation in
the campus debate.” Unfortunately, says Daifallah, most Palestinian activists, especially the younger and more radical, do not share this view. Daifallah, “The Bitter
Campus Divide (note 49).”
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“Get off our campus, you genocidal racist,” and “[Y]ou are bringing a second Holocaust upon yourselves.”54 In February 2009, police had to usher
Jewish students to safety after 100 Palestinian sympathizers barricaded the
Jewish students in the campus Hillel offices.55
(The question has been asked why in Canada, where multiculturism is
valued and criticism of protected minorities has been criminalized as hate
speech, are radical students allowed to get away with targeting one group
[Jewish students] with speech and actions that are specifically forbidden
against any others.”56 The same question can certainly be asked about what
regularly occurs on American campuses, where university officials declare
their firm commitment to the constitutional principle of freedom of speech,
yet appear to enable certain groups to defame Israel and Jews under the
pretense that they are fostering intellectual debate and constructive political
discourse. Can this fairly be called “scholarship”—or is it merely antisemitism in the academic voice?)
Although anti-Israel activity may not necessarily constitute antisemitism, when individuals or groups accuse Israel of committing war crimes by
responding forcefully to terrorist bombardments of its citizens—as happened most recently in the incursion into Gaza known as Operation Cast
Lead—the sentiment becomes clear. As Abraham Foxman, national director
of the Anti-Defamation League, puts it: “Sixty years after the Holocaust, we
are watching one layer after another of the constraints against antisemitism,
which arose as a result of the murder of six million, being peeled away. The
world is losing its shame about antisemitism. As a result, antisemitism is
becoming more acceptable in wider circles.”57
As noted earlier, articulate academics can use words effectively to diffuse criticism that their anti-Zionism is in fact a form of antisemitism.58 For
example, an article in The Stanford Review, entitled “Antisemitism Thrives
in Academia,” elicited various comments to the effect that there is no
antisemitism at Stanford.59 “Being against the practices of Israel’s government,” said one, “isn’t any more antisemitic than being against the practices
54. Pearson, “Hate Crimes Unit Probes.”
55. Richard L. Cravatts, “Is Assaulting Jewish Students on Canadian Campuses
Now Legitimate Criticism of Israel?,” Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, February 10, 2010, http://spme.net/cgi-bin/articles.cgi?ID=6480.
56. Cravatts, “Is Assaulting Jewish Students.” See also Barbara Kay, “Toxic
Classrooms,” National Post, November 30, 2009.
57. Abraham H. Foxman, speech in Indianapolis, November 23, 2009, http://
www.adl.org/main_Anti_Semitism_Domestic/Indiana_Achievement_Address.htm.
58. See notes 3-4 and accompanying text.
59. Alex Katz, “Antisemitism Thrives in Academia,” The Stanford Review,
XLV, 7 (2011).
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of America’s government is anti-American or being against the practices of
Iran’s government is anti-Islam. Many people who critique Israeli militarism also critique American militarism and human rights practices in China
and Saudi Arabia.”60 If only that were so. In fact, Israel is frequently singled out for criticism (especially human-rights abuses) that would be—but
all too often is not—much more accurately leveled at other countries.
Similarly, an article in the Harvard Crimson entitled “Protocols of the
Elders of Crazy” generated a slew of well-stated anti-Zionist comments.61
In response to the statement that “Jews have a right to national homeland,”
a reader posted the following:
A right granted by whom exactly? Do left-handed people have a right to a
left-handed homeland? Do the people whose families lived in Palestine
for centuries have a right to continue to live there, or does the “right” of a
political movement (Zionism) claiming falsely to represent all the
world’s Jews trump that right? Does Israel have a “right” to seize territory in violation of international law and to settle it, again in violation of
international law, with rabidly bigoted religious extremist settlers?62
The author of this posting thus ignores the full scope of both history
and law, not only minimizing an early Jewish presence in the Holy Land,
but also failing to recognize the virulent antisemitism in Arab and Islamic
countries (much like that in Christian lands) that far predated modern Zionism. Likewise ignored is the fact that today’s Palestinians seek a homeland
that is completely free of Jews.63
On the other hand, words (especially when coupled with action/initiative) can have a positive effect as well.64
60. Katz, “Antisemitism Thrives.” A more intelligent comment to the same article, also in Katz: “Let’s concede the fact Israel is threatened daily with a call for
complete extermination and by terrorist acts from groups like Hamas who have
sworn to continue their ‘jihad-like movement until the liberation of Jerusalem.’
Let’s also concede that there are many, many Palestinians who just want to live in
peace. Acknowledging both the positive and negative actions taken on all sides is
absolutely essential to finding a solution.”
61. Eric T. Justin, “Protocols of the Elders of Crazy,” Harvard Crimson,
October 3, 2011, http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/10/3/arab-world-anti
semitism-jews/.
62. Justin, “Protocols.”
63. See, e.g., “66% of Palestinians Want Israel Destroyed,” The Student Room,
August 3, 2011, http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/show/thread.php?t=1727117;
http://www.thejc.com/print/56021.
64. For example, Kasim Halfeez, an Arab schooled in hatred of Israel, changed
his views after reading a book by Alan Dershowitz entitled The Case for Israel.
Halfeez explains: “As I read Dershowitz’s systematic deconstruction of the lies I
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All too often, antisemitism in the academy goes beyond the student
body and emanates from faculty. From behind their lecterns or under the
cover of published scholarship, statements that in other venues would be
considered unacceptable bigotry are viewed in the Ivory Tower as part of
honest debate in a respectable “marketplace of ideas.”65
Leonard Jeffries, former head of the Black Studies Department at the
City College of New York (CCNY), began teaching in 1972, but did not
come to national attention until several decades later, when it was reported
he was telling his students that the “rich Jews who financed the development of Europe also financed the slave trade.”66 More notoriety ensued in
1991, following a speech Jeffries gave at the Empire State Black Arts and
Cultural Festival in Albany, where he reiterated his claim that wealthy Jews
enabled the slave trade, adding that they also control the film industry,
which paints blacks in a brutally negative stereotype.67 He also attacked
Diane Ravitch, then the assistant U.S. secretary of education and a white
Jewish member of the task force—formed to combat racism in the public
school curriculum and upon which he also sat—calling her as a “sophisticated Texas Jew,” “a debonair racist,” and “Miss Daisy.”68 In October
1995, Jeffries was a featured speaker at the Black Holocaust Nationhood
had been told, I felt a real crisis of conscience. I couldn’t disprove his arguments or
find facts to respond to them with. I didn’t know what to believe. I’d blindly followed for so long, yet here I was questioning whether I had been wrong?” Halfeez
decided to visit Israel “to find the truth.” He found himself “confronted by synagogues, mosques and churches, by Jews and Arabs living together, by minorities
playing huge parts in all areas of Israeli life, from the military to the judiciary. It
was shocking and eye-opening. This wasn’t the evil Zionist Israel that I had been
told about” (Kasim Halfeez, “From Antisemite to Zionist,” The Jewish Chronicle,
October 7, 2011). His conclusion: to let Israel’s history speak for itself. “Instead of
meekly trying to avoid coming across as too pro-Israeli or too Zionist, it is time to
make the facts known, to defend Israel against delegitimisation. It is time to stem
the tide of Israel bashing before it becomes even more mainstream and consumes
even more people like me” (Halfeez, “From Antisemite”).
65. Natan Sharansky (see note 1) has astutely pointed out that “in the academic
world, it is the faculty who remain active for decades, disseminating their warped
perspective on Israel and the Middle East conflict, while students come and go
every few years.” See also Ross and the ADL, Schooled in Hate (note 24).
66. The comment was reported in The New York Times.
67. Lionel Jeffries, “Our Sacred Mission,” speech given at the Empire State
Black Arts and Cultural Festival in Albany, New York, July 20, 1991, http://www.
archive.org/details/OurSacredMission.
68. Jeffries, “Our Sacred Mission.”
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Conference held in Washington D.C., a group that is commonly recognized
as both anti-white and antisemitic. Jeffries still teaches at CCNY as a tenured professor, and still speaks at colleges and universities.69
At the elite all-women Wellesley College in Massachusetts, a strict
quota on the number of Jews admitted was in place through the 1960s.
Requests by Jewish students to postpone examinations on Yom Kippur
were routinely denied, as were bids for tenure by religiously observant Jewish faculty.
Before he retired in 2007, Anthony Martin was a tenured professor in
the African Studies Department of Wellesley College. He came to national
prominence in 1993, when it became known that he required students to
purchase the Nation of Islam book, The Secret Relationship Between Blacks
and Jews, for one of his courses. An anonymously written conspiracy theory, the book described an overwhelming Jewish domination of the Atlantic
slave trade—contradicting the weight of historical evidence, which indicates that Jews played a very minor role.70
In response to the controversy that ensued, Martin gave two speeches
to the Wellesley College Academic Council in March of 1993, where he
again asserted Jewish control over the Atlantic slave trade and made numerous new accusations: that Jews controlled the civil rights movement to the
detriment of African-Americans; that Jewish-owned publishing companies
conspired with Jewish academics to control African-American scholarship
69. Jeffries’ newfound notoriety was uncomfortable for City College, which
reduced his term as head of the African-American Studies from three years to one
and sought to remove him from the department. Jeffries sued the school. A federal
jury found that his First Amendment rights had been violated, and he was restored
as chairman and awarded $400,000 in damages. On appeal, the federal appeals
court upheld the verdict, but removed the damages. One month later, however, the
U.S. Supreme Court ruled in another case, Waters v. Churchill, that a government
agency may punish an employee for speech if the agency shows “reasonable predictions of disruption.” 114 S.Ct. 1878, 511 U.S. 661 (1994). Using this new decision, the New York State attorney general, G. Oliver Koppell, appealed Jeffries’
case to the Supreme Court. In November 1994, the high court ordered the court of
appeals to reconsider its findings; it did so in April 1995, when it reversed its
earlier decision, upholding the dismissal. See also Jeffries v. Harleston, F.3d 9 (2nd
Cir. 1995) and Richard Bernstein, “Judge Reinstates Jeffries as Head of Black
Studies for City College,” The New York Times, May 12, 1993, http://www.nytimes
.com/1993/08/05/nyregion/judge-reinstates-jeffries-as-head-of-black-studies-forcity-college.html.
70. See Jerrold Auerbach, “Wellesley College: Antisemitism with White
Gloves,” in the ADL Report, “Eminent Scholars on ‘The Secret Relationship,’ ” in
Pollack, Antisemitism on the Campus: Past and Present (note 7).
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and culture; and that Jews were presently engaged in a racist offensive
against black progress.71
In a self-published book (The Jewish Onslaught: Dispatches from the
Wellesley Battlefront), Martin describes a conspiracy against him by the
school, three Jewish students who attended his class, and the ADL. The
president of Wellesley College, Diane Chapman Walsh, wrote to alumni
and parents to denounce Martin’s book for its application of racial and
religious stereotypes. More than half of the faculty signed a similar statement of repudiation.72
Perhaps it is a perverse but inevitable irony that Israel itself has its
share of anti-Zionist academics. Antisemitism in the academy surprisingly
comes also from Jewish scholars and intellectuals, sending an equally
strong message to Jewish students, especially those on historically Jewish
campuses.
In recent years, the late Hebrew University professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz called his country a “Judeo-Nazi state.”73 Moshe Zimmerman, director of the Minerva Center for German History at the Hebrew University
echoed that sentiment, claiming that an “entire sector in the Jewish public”
can be equated to “German Nazis,” and that Hitler did not intend to kill the
Jews, but to “raise the question of the Jews.”74 Yitzhak Laor, an Israeli
poet, author, and journalist, wrote a play, Ephraim Returns to the Army,
which drew parallels between the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and
the Nazi occupation of Europe.75
One of the most outspoken critics of Israel has been Ilan Pappe, formerly a senior lecturer in political science at the University of Haifa (19842007), and chair of the Emil Touma Institute for Palestinian and Israeli
Studies in Haifa (2000-2008). Before he left Israel in 2008, he had been
formally censured by the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.76
71. The first speech was called “An Answer to My Jewish Critics”; the second
speech was called “Broadside No. 1.” Auerbach, “Wellesley College.”
72. Although the college did not officially censure Martin and his tenure
remained unaffected, in the summer of 1994 he was denied a merit raise because of
his writings, and the history department dropped his courses from its catalogue.
Auerbach, “Wellesley College.”
73. Seth J. Frantzman, “Terra Incognita: Israel’s Democracy Wars,” Jerusalem
Post, May 4, 2010, http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=
174680. See also Steven Plaut, “Israel’s Tenured Extremists,” The Middle East
Quarterly, Fall 2011.
74. Frantzman, “Terra Incognita.”
75. Frantzman, “Terra Incognita.”
76. Pappe’s scholarship has also come under attack. See “Ilan Pappe, Check
Your Sources,” CAMERA, November 4, 2011, http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x
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CLASSROOM
Outside the classroom, anti-Zionist groups often hold rallies and
screen films that portray Israel in the harshest of terms, and disrupt proIsrael events. Jewish students increasingly find it challenging, if not frightening, to show their support for Israel.77
In November 1993, Khalid Abdul Muhammad, a spokesman for Louis
Farrakahn’s Nation of Islam, gave a lengthy speech at Kean College in New
Jersey in which he demonized Jews, declaring that they were to blame for
the Holocaust because they took over Germany’s financial infrastructure,
and were still “sucking our blood on a daily and consistent basis.”78
At the same event, Muhammad also sought to justify the Holocaust:
[E]verybody always talk about Hitler exterminating 6 million Jews. . . .
But don’t nobody ever asked what did they do to Hitler? What did they
do to them folks? They went in there, in Germany, the way they do everywhere they go, and they supplanted, they usurped, they turned around
and a German, in his own country, would almost have to go to a Jew to
get money. They had undermined the very fabric of the society.79
Muhammad proceeded to instruct all whites to leave South Africa with
24 hours, or risk being killed.80
Kean College’s response was both weak and belated. Eleven days after
the speech, its president, Elsa Gomez, issued a statement that did not mention Muhammad by name, nor address antisemitism. Instead, she reiterated
the school’s firm support of free speech and freedom of dissent.81
_context=8&x_nameinnews=122&x_article=2145. Called Israel’s most contentious
“new historian,” Pappe left his job as senior lecturer in political science at the
University of Haifa after he endorsed the international academic boycott of Israeli
institutions, provoking the university president to call for his resignation. See
Tamar Traubman, “Haifa University President Calls on Dissident Academic to
Resign,” Ha’aretz, April 6, 2005.
77. Charles Jacobs, “Rampant Anti-Semitism on American Campuses,” The
Jewish Advocate, February 28, 2011.
78. “Who is it sucking our blood in the Black community? A white imposter
Arab and a white imposter Jew.” Muhammad was brought to campus by a black
student organization; he was paid by student activity funds. See generally Khalid
Abdul Muhammad, Jewish Virtual Library, http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/
jsource/anti-semitism/Khalid.html.
79. Muhammad, Jewish Virtual Library.
80. Muhammad, Jewish Virtual LIbrary.
81. Vern E. Smith and Sarah Van Boven, “The Itinerant Incendiary,” Newsweek, September 14, 1998, http://www.newsweek.com/id/113381.
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Muhammad went on to give similar talks at Howard University, where
he called Jews “no-good, dirty, low-down bastards” and declared that he
was not impressed by the “pile of shoes” at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial
Museum; and at San Francisco State University, where he denied the Holocaust, and claimed that Jews control the U.S. government.82
On occasion, there is more antipathy toward Israel on American campuses than within the Palestinian territories themselves. This appeared to be
the case in March 2009, when an Arab-Israeli journalist named Khaled Abu
Toameh toured the United States in an effort to promote peaceful dialogue
about the Middle East conflict. He was often confronted by hostile audiences, who told him that Israel has no right to exist, that its “apartheid
system” is worse than the one that existed in South Africa, and that Operation Cast Lead was launched not in response to four years of incessant
rocket fire launched at Israeli communities like Sderot, but because Hamas
was beginning to show signs that it was interested in making peace.
Toameh was further informed that all the reports of financial corruption in
the Palestinian Authority was “Zionist propaganda,” and that Yasser Arafat
had done wonderful things for his people, including the establishment of
schools, hospitals, and universities.83
Toameh concluded that what is happening on U.S. campuses is less
about supporting the Palestinians as much as it is about promoting hatred
for the Jewish state—that it is not about ending the “occupation” but about
ending the existence of Israel.84
82. “ADL Alerts Nation’s Academic Leadership About Virus of Bigotry Being
Spread by Kahlid Abdul Muhammad,” July 1, 1997, http://www.adl.org/PresRele/
ASUS_12/3005_12.asp.
83. Khaled Abu Toameh, “On Campus: The Pro-Palestinians’ Real Agenda,”
Hudson Institute/New York, March 25, 2009, http://www.hudsonny.org/2009/03/
on-campus-the-pro-palestinians-real-agenda.php.
84. Toameh said that he regarded his hecklers as “hard-line activists/thugs” who
would intimidate anyone who dared say something with which they disagreed:
If these folks really cared about the Palestinians, they would be
campaigning for good government and for the promotion of values of
democracy and freedom in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Their hatred
for Israel and what it stands for has blinded them to a point where they
no longer care about the real interests of the Palestinians, namely the
need to end the anarchy and lawlessness, and to dismantle all the armed
gangs that are responsible for the death of hundreds of innocent Palestinians over the past few years. The majority of these activists openly
admit that they have never visited Israel or the Palestinian territories.
They don’t know—and don’t want to know—that Jews and Arabs here
are still doing business together and studying together and meeting with
each other on a daily basis because they are destined to live together in
2011]
371
Similarly, Noam Bedein, an Israeli photojournalist who regularly tours
American campuses, reported that he had been subjected to a barrage of
insulting signs and posters, as well as a by a large group of anti-Israel
protesters. “The shock came after they uploaded a video of my speech and
the protests against me to YouTube. They edited the video to make me look
like a demon. . . . [T]his is the first time I have ever experienced antiSemitism, of a particularly nasty, medieval sort, in which Jews are identified with demons and Satan.” Bedein added his view that there are so many
anti-Zionist activities on campus today that supporters of Israel are worn
down, “afraid to present even the most basic humanitarian facts about our
side of the story.”85
A large part of the anti-Israel lobbying taking place on American campuses is funded by an Iranian front organization, the Alavi Foundation,
which makes ample use of pro-Iranian anti-Zionist professors. For example,
hundreds of thousands of dollars have been donated to the Middle East and
Persian Studies programs at Columbia University and Rutgers, for courses
taught by academics who openly express sympathy for the terrorist groups
Hezbollah and Hamas. The Alavi Foundation donated $100,000 to Columbia University in 2007 after that institution agreed to host Iranian president
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who frequently denies the Holocaust and questions Israel’s legitimacy as a state.86
The Center for Intelligence and Security Studies at Britain’s Brunel
University reported that up to 48 British universities have been infiltrated
by Muslim fundamentalists, all heavily financed by major Muslim groups,
at a cost of more than one quarter billion Sterling.87
A recent report by the Reut Institute, a Tel Aviv-based national security and socioeconomic policy think tank, describes a new battlefield it calls
“Hubs of Delegitmization,” in which Israel finds the legitimacy of its existence attacked by a wide array of organizations and individuals—many of
this part of the world. They don’t want to hear that despite all the
problems life continues and that ordinary Arab and Jewish parents who
wake up in the morning just want to send their children to school and
go to work before returning home safely and happily.” (Khaled Abu
Toameh, “On Campus”)
85. Samuel L. Blumenfeld, “Anti-Semitism on American Campuses,” The New
American, November 18, 2010.
86. Some $650 million of the Alavi Foundation was seized by U.S. federal law
enforcement. Malkah Fleisher, “US Colleges Teach Anti-Israel, Pro-Iran Courses
Thanks to Alavi,” Israel National News, November 24, 2009, www.IsraelNational
News.com /News/News.aspx/134601 (quoting news reports by the New York Post
and New York Times).
87. Fleisher, “US Colleges Teach.”
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them academic—in London, Toronto, Brussels, Madrid, and Berkeley. The
new front focuses its attack on Israel’s political legitimacy, painting it as a
pariah state and mobilizing its Arab minority to engage in the struggle.88
Reut’s report distinguishes between “soft critics” of Israel and “hardcore delegitimizers,” the latter consisting of anti-Zionists, antisemites, and
radical Islamists, whose goal is to blur any distinction between intellectually honest criticism of Israeli policy and the Jewish State’s basic
legitimacy.89
The report suggests that Israel’s traditional enemies have increasingly
been joined in battle by widespread networks of anti-Zionist groups, including hostile human-rights organizations and homegrown radical Islamists,
who, in the process of demonizing Israel, employ cultural, academic, legal,
and financial weapons against it. The groups support an “all-or-nothing”
dynamic, in which boycotts are presented as the only option.90
In March 2010, Jessica Felber, a Jewish undergraduate at the University of California Berkeley, was holding a placard bearing the words “Israel
Wants Peace” when she was physically attacked by a leader of Students for
Justice in Palestine (SJP). What made this case different is that Felber
fought back, charging in a federal lawsuit that “physical intimidation and
violence were frequently employed as a tactic by SJP and other campus
groups in an effort to silence students on campus who support Israel,” and
that the administration of UC Berkeley possessed substantial evidence of
anti-Jewish animus and should be held liable for the injuries she suffered.91
At the University of California Santa Cruz, lecturer Tammi RossmanBenjamin made a similar case against her own employer. For several years,
she had spoken out against antisemitism and anti-Zionism on her campus,
describing an atmosphere at Santa Cruz in which taxpayer-supported, university-sponsored discourse “demonizes Israel, compares contemporary
Israeli policy to that of the Nazis, calls for the dismantling of the Jewish
State, and holds Israel to an impossible double standard.” Like Felber,
Rossman-Benjamin also filed a civil rights action with the U.S. Department
of Education’s powerful Office for Civil Rights, arguing that UCSC had
created a hostile environment for Jewish students.92
88. Amir Mizroch, “Study Surveys ‘Hubs of Delegitimization’ Where Israel Is
Under Heaviest Attack,” Jerusalem Post, December 25, 2009.
89. Mizroch, “Study Surveys ‘Hubs.’ ”
90. Mizroch, “Study Surveys ‘Hubs.’ ”
91. Kenneth L. Marcus, “Fighting Back Against Campus Antisemitism,” Jewish
Ideas Daily, March 8, 2011.
92. Marcus, “Fighting Back.” (“OCR sent a powerful signal to academia when
it informed Rossman-Benjamin that it is formally opening an investigation of her
2011]
373
Antisemitic activity on campuses continued in 2010 and 2011. In April
2010, at Carleton University, a (non-Jewish) supporter of Israel and his
Israeli roommate were attacked by an Arab-speaking mob, one of whom
wielded a machete.93
At Amherst in the fall semester of 2010, a pro-Israel female student
was repeatedly harassed by masked individuals calling them “baby killers,”
“genocide lovers,” “apartheid supporters,” and “racist.” After receiving an
e-mail that read “Make the world a better place and die slow,” she moved
off the campus. She is still afraid to disclose her identity.94
At Indiana University in November 2010, five incidents of anti-Jewish
vandalism were reported in one week, including rocks thrown at Chabad
and Hillel; sacred Jewish texts were placed in restrooms and defiled, and a
Jewish Studies bulletin board was vandalized.95
In January 2011, Rutgers University hosted an event that likened
Palestinians to victims of the Holocaust. The program had been advertised
as free and open to the public; Palestinian supporters were let in without
charge. The university, however, required a group of pro-Israel students and
Holocaust survivors to pay an entrance fee.96
One might reasonably ask, what would have happened on campus, in
the media, or in the community if these incidents had been directed at African American, Hispanic, or Muslim students? The answer might be suggested by actual events. In October 2009, a noose was found at the
University of California San Diego library. Students occupied the chancellor’s office. The governor, the chancellor, and student leaders condemned
the incident. The university established a task force on minority faculty
recruitment and a commission to address declining African-American
enrollment, and vowed to find space for an African-American resource
center.97
claims.”) See also Manfred Gerstenfeld, “Academics Against Israel,” Ynet News,
September 14, 2011, http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/11691.
93. See students-attacked-with-machete-at-carleton-university/.
94. “Monumental Jewish Failure: Ceding the Campus and Abandoning Our Students,” Talking Tachlis, February 25, 2011, http://talkingtachlis.blogspot.com/
2011/02/monumental-jewish-failure-ceding-campus.html.
95. “Campus, Community Respond to Recent Antisemitic Incidents,” The College Magazine, Fall 2010, http://college.indiana.edu/magazine/fall2010/incidents.
shtml.
96. Alyssa Farrah, “Rutgers Bars Jews from Anti-Zionist Gathering,” WorldNet
Daily, January 29, 2011.
97. A few weeks later it was discovered that the noose had been planted by a
minority student. Jacobs, “Rampant Anti-Semitism” (note 77).
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ACADEMIC BOYCOTTS
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ISRAEL
The idea of an academic boycott against Israel was born in Great Britain, whose largest faculty association has voted several times in the past
five years to encourage a boycott of Israeli universities and professors over
what it views as Israel’s “apartheid” policies toward Palestinians—advocating that union members refuse to cooperate with Israeli academics who do
not “disassociate themselves from such policies.”98
These boycotts likewise have antecedents in Nazi Germany. During
Hitler’s rise to power, some of his staunchest supporters were university
professors—many of whom were drawn into the higher echelons of the
Nazi party and participated in its more gruesome excesses. Mussolini also
had a large following of intellectuals, and not all of them Italian. So did
Stalin, as well as such postwar dictators as Castro, Nasser, and Mao tzetung.99
The current campaign against Israeli scholars began in Great Britain a
little more than eight years ago. Its specific goals were to inhibit Israeli
scholars from obtaining grants; to persuade other academic institutions to
sever relations with Israeli universities and faculty; to convince academics
not to visit Israel while simultaneously not inviting Israelis to international
conferences; to prevent the publication of articles from Israeli scholars and
to refuse to review their work; to deny recommendations to students who
wish to study in Israel; to promote divestment of Israeli securities or those
of American suppliers of weapons to Israel by university foundations; and
to expel Jewish organizations from campus.100
Well over 700 academics ultimately signed the boycott petition—most
of them British, but a considerable number of scholars hailed from a host of
other European countries as well.101
In 2009, following Israel’s military campaign into Gaza to stop Hamas
rocket fire that had barraged the country for six years, a group of American
98. “Israel Apartheid Weeks” have been celebrated worldwide every year since
2005. See http://apartheidweek.org/en/history; on occasion, politicians state their
opposition to independent pro-Israel activists do not form the sole source of opposition to the “Israeli Apartheid Week” movement. On February 25, 2010, Members
of Provincial Parliament (MPPs) of varying political ideologies in Ontario collectively and unanimously condemned “Israeli Apartheid Week.”
99. See, e.g., A. James Gregor, Mussolini’s Intellectuals (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2004).
100. Douglas Davis, “Fears Voiced that Academic Boycott of Israel Could
Endanger Lives,” Jerusalem Post, December 15, 2002.
101. Bill L. Turpen, “Reflections on the Academic Boycott Against Israel,”
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, March 1, 2003, 58.
2011]
375
professors joined the call for an academic boycott. The group recommended
divestment initiatives modeled on those used against apartheid South
Africa. “As educators of conscience, we have been unable to stand by and
watch in silence Israel’s indiscriminate assault on the Gaza Strip and its
educational institutions,” declared the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and
Cultural Boycott of Israel. According to David Lloyd, a professor of
English at the University of Southern California, the initiative was
“impelled by Israel’s latest brutal assault on Gaza and by our determination
to say enough is enough.” The statement was a response to what it called
the “censorship and silencing of the Palestine question in U.S. universities,
as well as U.S. society at large,” he added. “The response has been remarkable, given the extraordinary hold that lobbying organizations like AIPAC
exert over U.S. politics and over the U.S. media, and in particular given the
campaign of intimidation that has been leveled at academics who dare to
criticize Israel’s policies.”102
Can it be true that anti-Zionist professors tremble in fear when they
criticize Israel? “Not likely,” says Alan Dershowitz of Harvard, “if you
have any sense of what’s going on on college campuses today, where Israelbashing is rampant among hard left faculty and students.” At Columbia
University, a group of professors sought to rebuke Columbia’s president,
Lee C. Bollinger, for expressing his personal views about the Iranian dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. They also want to muzzle students and alumni
who have legitimate complaints about the Middle East Studies Department,
which broadly reflects the political views of radical Islam.103
Ahmadinejad’s comment is reminiscent of that made long ago by the
anti-Zionist historian Arnold Toynbee, who declared that the displacement
of the Arabs was an atrocity greater than any committed by the Nazis.104
The formula is clear: if you’re against Israel, you should have complete freedom to speak your mind; if you’re not, you should be stifled. Even
at Harvard and Columbia, the First Amendment means “free speech for me,
but not for thee!”105
To be sure, there have been swift condemnations of the academic and
scientific boycotts against Israel—most notably by the former president of
102. Raphael Ahren, “For First Time, U.S. Professors Call for Academic and
Cultural Boycott of Israel,” Ha’aretz, January 29, 2009. See also Mission Statement, “U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel,” http://
www.usacbi.org/mission-statement/.
103. See Alan Dershowitz, “Free Speech for Me, But Not for Thee!,” Huffington
Post, November 27, 2007.
104. See Eric Hoffer, “Israel’s Peculiar Position,” Los Angeles Times, May 26,
1968, http://www.factsandlogic.org/outstanding_hoffer.html
105. Dershowitz, “Free Speech.”
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Harvard, Lawrence Summers; by Judith Rodin, president of the University
of Pennsylvania; and by Lee Bollinger, president of Columbia University.
All of them pointed out that many countries involved in the current Middle
East disputes have been aggressors, and calls for divestment against them
have been notably absent.106
But no presidential statements have been able to quash anti-Israel faculties, protected as they are by academic freedom and tenure. On some campuses, the driving force behind the academic boycotts are Arabist professors
who seek to prosecute the war against Israel as a way of diverting attention
away from corrupt regimes. In the academic world, the radical agenda is
supported by faculties in mid-Eastern and Islamic studies. Antisemitic statements emanate from prominent academics.
Columbia University has had its share of problems in this regard.
There have been numerous reports of intimidation and hostility by faculty
members in the Department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures—at least part of whose funding comes from the United Arab Emirates. In one incident, Professor Joseph Massad demanded of an Israeli
student, “How many Palestinians have you killed?”107 He told a class that
“the Palestinian is the new Jew, and the Jew is the new Nazi.”108 According
to another account, he repeated twenty-four times in one half-hour period
that “Israel is a racist Jewish apartheid oppressive state,” and he allegedly
yelled at a Jewish student, “I will not have anybody here deny Israeli atrocities.”109 More than one-third of Columbia’s Middle East Department signed
a petition for the university to divest its holdings in companies doing business with Israel. The chairman of the department, Hamid Dabashi, openly
talks about Israel’s “brutal massacres” of innocent Palestinians.110
In 2005, the academic boycotts were pressed anew in Great Britain and
elsewhere. Despite the fact that Great Britain’s Chief Rabbi, Jonathan
106. Lawrence H. Summers, “Address at Morning Prayers,” http:// www.ajc.org,
September 17, 2002, 22. See also Edward Alexander, “Pushing Divestment on
American Campuses,” Jerusalem Post, May 12, 2004, 13. In November 2002, seventy U.S. medical professors, of whom twelve were from Harvard, held an international conference in Jerusalem to protest the divestment campaign and other antiIsrael activities on American campuses. Judy Siegel-Itzkovich, “70 Medical
Professors Coming to Protest Divestment,”Jerusalem Post, November 18, 2002.
107. Editorial, New York Sun, December 10, 2004, 14.
108. Eric J. Greenberg, “Jewish Students Accuse Columbia University of Bias,”
The Jewish Daily Forward, October 29. 2004.
109. Uriel Heilman, “Columbia to Review Antisemitism Charges,” Jerusalem
Post, December 8, 2004.
110. See “A Not So Academic Debate,” Notebook, The New Republic, January
24, 2005, 8.
2011]
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Sacks, had been told privately (in 2002) by Prime Minister Tony Blair that
the British government would not tolerate a boycott of Israel, the university
establishment there and here has plodded on in that direction.111
Meanwhile, a “silent boycott” is already well in place. In 2006, for
example, Bar-Ilan University made public a letter in which a British professor refused to write for an Israeli academic journal because of what he
called the “brutal and illegal expansionism and the slow-motion ethnic
cleansing” of the Israeli government.112
Could it be possible that the true motivation behind the boycott campaigns against Israel is anti-Zionism, which—as many point out—is a
razor-thin line away from antisemitism?
ISRAEL
AS AN
“APARTHEID STATE”
As noted earlier, “Israel Apartheid Weeks” have been celebrated every
year since 2006, and in growing numbers.113 The aim of such events,
according to their organizers, is “to contribute to this chorus of international
opposition to Israeli apartheid . . . [and] an end to the occupation and colonization of all Arab lands—including the Golan Heights, the Occupied
West Bank with East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip—and dismantling the
Wall and protecting Palestinian refugees’ right to return to their homes and
properties.”114
Academics worldwide are quick to join such demonstrations, which
often end up demonizing what they call the “Jewish apartheid” state, likening Israel to segregated South Africa during the latter part of the twentieth
century. The truth is that Israel is a democratic state; its 20% Arab minority
enjoys all the political, economic, and religious rights and freedoms of citizenship—including electing members of their choice to the Knesset. In
stark contradistinction to apartheid South Africa, both Israeli Arabs and
Palestinians have standing before Israel’s Supreme Court. (In contrast, no
Jew may own property in Jordan, and neither Christian nor Jew can visit
Islam’s holiest sites in Saudi Arabia.)115
111. Francis Elliott and Catherine Milner, “Blair Vows to End Dons’ Boycott of
Israeli Scholars,” The Daily Telegraph, November 17, 2002.
112. See Phyllis Chesler, “Ivory Tower Fascists,” National Review, May 30,
2006, http://www.phyllis-chesler.com/176/ivory-tower-fascists.
113. See note 98 and accompanying text.
115. See “2010 Top Ten Anti-Israel Lies,” Simon Wiesenthal Center,
www.wiesenthal.com/toptenlies. See also Richard Goldstone, “Israel and the
Apartheid Slander,” The New York Times, October 31, 2001.
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Even those who regularly criticize Israel, like Michael Ignatieff (the
intellectual leader of Canada’s Liberal Party), are uneasy with such events.
“The activities planned for this week will single out Jewish and Israeli students. They will be made to feel ostracized and even physically threatened
in the very place where freedom should be paramount—on a university
campus.”116
What can one say about the comparisons made between modern Israel
and the apartheid South Africa of the late twentieth century? The fundamental differences between the two are clear and factual, and should go
without saying, but many distortions of Israeli-Arab realities are promulgated by the Palestinians and perpetuated in the media. Although academic
boycotts were virtually unknown before the days of apartheid in South
Africa—where they were used largely at the behest of that country’s own
scholars as a pressure tactic against the minority white government—there
was never an attempt to cut off all South African academics from international discourse with their peers.
In the process of the campaign to compare Israel with apartheid South
Africa, short shrift is given to certain incontrovertible facts:
• Israel’s Declaration of Independence (1948) declared that the state
“will ensure equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex.”117
• Israeli Arabs attend and lecture in every Israeli university. Moreover, an overwhelming majority of Israeli Arabs consistently state
that they’d prefer to remain in Israel rather than join a future Palestinian state.
• Israeli Arabs serve in the Knesset (currently eleven in all, including
two in the dominant Likud party), and can serve in the army if they
wish. An Arab justice (Salim Joubran) holds a seat on Israel’s
Supreme Court. Israel even opens diplomatic positions to Israeli
Arabs, who have held posts in the United States, South America,
Finland, and elsewhere.118
Needless to say, no such exercises in democracy occurred in apartheid
South Africa. Yet, Israel is singled out, while there is no call for a boycott
against academics in China, Russia, Sudan, Congo, Zimbabwe, and North
116. Israel Resource Review, May 2, 2010, http://www.israelbehindthenews.
com/bin/content.cgi?ID=3972&q=1.
117. The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, May 14, 1948.
118. “Distorting Israeli Arab Reality,” HonestReporting, May 18, 2005, http://
www.honestreporting.com/SSI / main / send2friend.asp?site = www.honestreporting.
com&title=distorting%20Israeli%20Arab%20Reality&url=distorting_Israeli_Arab
_Reality.asp.
2011]
379
Korea—all of which oppress academics far more than Israel ever has. Why
are there no boycotts of Muslim countries, where academic freedom either
doesn’t exist or is under constant attack, such as Syria, Egypt, Iran, and
Saudi Arabia? Is the answer that the boycotters’ true goal is the elimination
of Israel, which they condemn as a “colonial apartheid state, more insidious
than South Africa”?119
No one has proposed that Chinese scholars be boycotted over what
their government does to the Tibetans, or Russian scholars for their actions
against Chechnya, or Indonesians for their treatment of civilians in East
Timor. Indeed, a number of other countries today—including China, Russia, Turkey, Iraq, Spain, even France—control disputed land and rule over
people who seek independence. Those pushing for academic boycotts
against Israel might be asked why, since 1948, the United Nations has
passed many hundreds of resolutions censuring Israel—but not a single one
condemning known terrorist organizations or states.120
Other countries, in fact, have treated Arabs more harshly: Jordan killed
more Palestinians in one single month (an estimated four thousand, in September 1970) than Israel ever has; Kuwait expelled 300,000 Palestinians
during the Persian Gulf War.121
Today in Mauritania, some 90,000 slaves serve the ruling class. In
Sudan, Arab northerners raid southern villages, killing the men and taking
the women and children to be auctioned off and sold into slavery. These are
verifiable facts, yet there was no academic outcry against slavery in 2007.
Nor have there been any academic protestations of note against blatant
apartheid in Saudi Arabia—our erstwhile ally—which severely limits the
rights of women, Christians, Jews, and Hindus. On the other hand, diversity
on campus remains an illusory concept. In practice, intellectual contention
is often drowned out in a sea of false emotion; members of designated victim groups respond to a serious argument with “pain” and “shock” and
119. “British Professors Ban Israeli Universities,” Israel Insider, April 25, 2005,
http://web.israelinsider.com/Articles/AntiSemi/5375.htm. See also Goldstone,
“Israel and” (note 115).
120. One glaring example is UN General Assembly Resolution 3379, urging the
elimination of Zionism, declaring it “a form of racism and racial discrimination.”
UN General Assembly Resolution A/RES/3379, November 10, 1975.
121. On the other hand, no Arab country has contributed to the Palestinians’
humanitarian needs nearly as much as have their primary benefactors, the United
States and Israel. See “Thirty Trucks Loaded with Food Enter the Gaza Strip,”
Infopod, Global News Wire, March 12, 2003. In addition, three truckloads of
medicine and medical supplies entered the West Bank; eighteen permits for the
purpose of improving medical service in Israel and the Palestinian territories were
issued.
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accusations of “hate,” and university administrators make a show of pretending to care—the very kind of emotional frenzy that is inimical to the
spirit of rational inquiry universities are supposed to encourage.122
In April 2010, Brandeis University (the only Jewish-sponsored, nonsectarian university in America) announced that it had invited Israeli
ambassador Michael Oren to deliver the forthcoming commencement
address. Critics called him an “inappropriate choice for keynote speaker,”
arguing that Oren’s presence would transform the commencement ceremonies into a “politically polarizing event.” A student group demanded that
Oren be disinvited, claiming that his presence would suggest that Brandeis
is affiliating itself with “a rogue state apologist, a defender of—among
other things—the war crimes and human rights abuses of the war on
Gaza.”123
Few if any academics defended Oren primarily on First Amendment
grounds—i.e., that repressing pro-Israel advocates is wrong if only because
doing so is an assault on freedom of speech—although some students did
take that position.124
DIVESTMENT CAMPAIGNS
A newer incarnation of the anti-Israel boycott is the university divestment campaign—similar to the one directed at the apartheid regime in
South Africa during the late twentieth century—demanding that universities
divest from companies that do business with Israel.
Here again the Big Lie comes into play.
Each of the various arguments put forth to justify divestment—that
Israel is responsible for the “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza, that it is
“Judaizing” the Holy City of Jerusalem, that its policies endanger U.S.
troops in Afghanistan and Iraq—are but preludes to others—that the only
hope for peace in the Middle East is a single, binational state, and that Israel
122. James Taranto, “The Diversity Sham,” The Wall Street Journal, November
18, 2009.
123. Brandeis sociology professor Gordon Fellman contended that “[h]is role
obligates him to defend Israeli policies.” Josh Nathan-Kazis, “Oren Speaking at
Brandeis Creates a Commencement Controversy,” The Jewish Daily Forward, May
7, 2010, http://www.forward.com/articles/127613/.
124. A blogger using the name “Rabbi Tony Jutner” claimed that a student referendum would soon formally call on Brandeis to bar all faculty from collaborating
with Israeli scholars, and that Brandeis will “play a key role in the US-Iranian
rapprochement by inviting high-ranking officials of the Iranian Revolutionary
Guard to campus.” The rabbi also contends that the majority of Brandeis students
find the concept of a Jewish state offensive. Nathan-Kazis, “Oren, Speaking.”
2011]
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itself is the root cause of worldwide antisemitism. All these arguments are
easily refuted by reference to history and facts on the ground.125
A University of California Berkeley group calling itself “Students for
Justice in Palestine” was the first to launch an organized divestment campaign. Since then, many campuses have followed suit. At least two major
universities—California and Michigan—have hosted divestment conferences. The faculties at Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology
launched an ongoing divestment campaign in the spring of 2002.126
In early 2010, the student government at UC Berkeley passed several
anti-Israel resolutions. The first, in February, voiced opposition to academic
sanctions against students who disrupted Israeli ambassador Michael Oren’s
speech on its campus.127 The second, in March, would have required the
school to divest from corporations deemed supportive of the Israeli military,
the West Bank separation barrier, and settlement building—namely, General Electric and United Technologies—“because of their military support
of the occupation of the Palestinian territories.”128
That same month, at the Oxford (England) Student Union, Israeli deputy foreign minister Danny Ayalon’s speech was interrupted by a group of
demonstrators carrying Palestinian flags, and chanting “war criminal” and
“Slaughter the Jews!”129
126. See “Report of the Third North American Conference of the Palestine Solidarity Movement,” Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, October 1012, 2003, http://www.divestmentconference.com. See also Richard Lacayo, “A
Campus War over Israel,” Time, October 7, 2002, 63.
127. Josh Nathan-Kazis, “At Berkeley, Divestment Vote Divides Students,
Draws Veto,” The Jewish Daily Forward, March 25, 2010, http://www.forward
.com/articles/126902/. Angered by the resolution, some Jewish students made
speeches before the student legislative council, each concluding with the question:
“When will this student government stand up for me?” Nathan-Kazis, “At
Berkeley.”
128. The resolution passed 16-4. The president of the student government vetoed
the latter resolution, arguing that the comparison of the Israel/Palestine conflict
with that of South African apartheid in the 1980s “is highly contested.” The veto
was narrowly upheld in late April 2010. Similar legislation was introduced at UC
San Diego. See http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/57942/divestiture-saga-rollson-in-berkeley-and-now-san-diego/.
129. Jonny Paul, “At Oxford, Student Shouts ‘Kill the Jews’ at Ayalon,” http://
www.jpowt.com/International/Article.aspx?id=A68275. This was hardly the first
time that a pro-Israel speaker was hounded off a campus podium. Before he
became president of Harvard, Laurence Summers was prevented from making a
speech to the University of California Board of Regents. Israel’s former prime minister Ehud Barak was prevented from speaking at Concordia University in Canada
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As has been observed concerning the divestment campaign at Berkeley, the exercise puts all other Jews on notice: either stand with the guilty
party—i.e., Israel—or with all right-thinking people. Speaking out in opposition, pointing to the explicit double standards and implicit antisemitism of
the attackers, is routinely denounced as “censorship.”130
American universities are not yet so poisoned as are their counterparts
in Great Britain and elsewhere, just as the American people are nowhere
near as antisemitic or as anti-Israel as are Europeans and others. But the gap
is decreasing.131
Although some university presidents, faculty, and students have spoken out strongly against such divestment campaigns, it is clear that criticism
of Israeli policies in mainstream academia—which one observer has called
a “bacchanal of invective”—has become much more acceptable.132 Moreover, faculty members who support divestment and academic/scientific boycotts often chafe under the criticism that they are antisemitic.133 Jewish
professors who condemn Israel, although relatively few in number, are an
especially troubling breed. Some draw “politically correct” inferences from
the Holocaust—and concluding that, whatever happens in world events,
Jews should always conduct themselves as humane, progressive, and peaceloving—in other words, beyond reproach.134
When viewed this way, however, they become acceptable only as
victims.
by a hard-left anti-Israel crowd of violent censors. See Dershowitz, “Free Speech”
(note 103).
130. Alex Joffe, “Anti-Semitism 101,” Jewish Ideas Daily, May 6, 2011.
131. Joffe, “Anti-Semitism 101.” The academic groups endorsing the Israel
Divestment Campaign (http://israeldivestmentcampiagn.org/content/endorsements/
organizational.htm) is illustrative.
132. See note 3.
133. A Harvard professor, for example, told a reporter that he didn’t consider
himself antisemitic at all, but that he was definitely hostile to “the aggressive eyefor-an-eye, tooth-for-a-tooth policies of the current Israeli leadership.” Patrick
Healy, “Summers Hits ‘Antisemitic’ Actions,’ ” Boston Globe, September 20,
2002, A1 (quoting Peter Ashton, a research professor of forestry).
134. Rebecca Spence, “Controversial Professor Loses Battle for Tenure,” The
Jewish Daily Forward, June 15, 2007, http://www.forward.com/articles/10947/.
Finkelstein’s 2005 book, Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Antisemitism and the
Abuse of History, purports to pick apart Professor Alan Dershowitz’s pro-Israel
book, The Case for Israel (2003); see Healy, “Summers Hits” (note 133).
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COUNTERING OTHER CANARDS
Thus it is all the more important to confront those who would single
out Israel for condemnation, and to illustrate how they are betrayed by both
their rhetoric and actions. The Big Lies must be countered by a recitation of
the facts, to wit:
From the Inquisition to the pogroms to the Holocaust, history has
shown that antisemitism existed long before creation of the State of
Israel.135
The building of Jewish homes in East Jerusalem does not mean a takeover of the city. Jerusalem is a holy place to three major faiths; its diverse
population includes a Jewish majority and Muslim and Christian minorities.
When Israel took over in 1967, full freedom of religion was granted to
everyone—for the first time in modern history.136
The claim that Israel endangers American troops in Iraq or Afghanistan is a contemporary version of the blood libel promulgated by The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and reiterated by renowned antisemitic figures
such as Henry Ford and Father Charles Coughlin.137
So is the claim that Israel is responsible for the “humanitarian crisis”
in Gaza. On this issue facts are harder to come by, but there are certainly
two sides to be heard. According to Palestinian supporters, Gaza is an
impoverished and overcrowded coastal strip of scrub desert, its people the
desperate victims of decades of war and suffering under an Israeli economic
blockade that began after Hamas took over in 2005. The UN and various
international aid agencies assert that the blockade has led to worsening poverty, rising unemployment. and deteriorating public services that threaten
basic health care, water treatment, and sanitation.138
The Israeli government tends to dismiss those claims by asserting that
it permits the import of humanitarian goods but reserves the right to ban
products that can have a military use. To Israel, the Palestinian-controlled
area of sand dunes and refugee camps squeezed between southern Israel and
135. See “2010 Top Ten Anti-Israel Lies,” Wiesenthal Center (note 115).
136. Muslim and Christian religious organizations control their own holy sites.
Wiesenthal Center, “2010 Top Ten.”
137. Holocaust Encyclopedia, Holocaust Memorial Museum, http://www.ushmm
.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005516. Successive U.S. administrations have
recognized Israel as a major strategic asset. Wiesenthal Center, “Top Ten.”
138. UN officials have called the blockade “a collective punishment” that
amounts to a war crime. Amnesty International says it harms the most vulnerable,
such as children, who make up more than half Gaza’s population, the elderly, the
sick, and impoverished refugees. See Peter Goodspeed, “Policy Under Siege,”
National Post, June 4, 2010.
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the sea is a terror state funded by the Iranians. The fact that Gaza may be
economically crippled is regarded as the self-inflicted byproduct of a corrupt regime that constantly attacks Israel with rockets and refuses to recognize its right to exist.139
According to a report issued in 2010 by the Israel ministry of foreign
affairs, well over a million tons of humanitarian supplies entered Gaza from
Israel over the last 18 months—“equaling nearly a ton of aid for every man,
woman and child in Gaza.” In 2009 alone, more than 738,000 tons of food
and supplies entered Gaza, the report says. Indeed, photographs in Palestinian newspapers show local markets filled with fruit, vegetables, cheese,
spices, bread, and meat. This humanitarian conduit is used by internationally recognized organizations, including the United Nations and the Red
Cross.140
Yet in June 2010, when Israel prevented a flotilla of ships ostensibly
carrying humanitarian supplies from breaking the Mediterranean blockade
it had set up, it was roundly condemned by the international community.141
Academics added vociferously to the chorus of condemnation. “The martyrs of the ships are heroes,” wrote Mark LeVine, professor of history at the
University of California Irvine. “They are warriors every bit as deserving of
our tears and support as the soldiers of American wars past and present.”142
Ignoring the overwhelming video and documentary evidence that terrorist activists had initiated the hostilities, various other professors of Middle East studies lined up to denounce the Jewish State. “Those ships were
just bringing aid to impoverished Palestinians,” said New York University
professor Zachary Lockman.143
Amid the cacophony of recriminations against Israel following the flotilla incident, the silence from the academic community was once again
deafening. While their colleagues in the humanitarian community loudly
bemoaned the dire situation of the Palestinians, few bothered to point out
139. Goodspeed, “Policy.”
140. Goodspeed, “Policy”; see also Kenneth Lasson, “What Else Is New?,” Baltimore Jewish Times, June 25, 2010.
141. See, e.g., Tobias Buck, “Israel Condemned after Flotilla Attack,” Financial
Times, June 1, 2010.
142. See Brendan Goldman, “Middle East Studies Profs Usurp New Roles to
Censure Israel over Gaza Flotilla,” American Thinker, July 20, 2010, http://www.
americanthinker.com/2010/06/middle_east_studies_profs_usur.html.
143. Professor Lockman added that “It’s not [the Palestinians’] fault they are
under Hamas rule.” Could he have forgotten that Hamas was democratically chosen
by the Palestinians to lead them in January 2006? Goldman, “Middle East Studies.”
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385
that—as the Palestinian leadership sops up Western aid dollars—Palestinian markets are full and bustling.144
There are, of course, other canards-camouflaged-as-fact that somehow
emerge as objective reports—such as that Israel traffics in human body
parts, or poisons Arab children, or massacres civilians, or, for that matter,
whose very existence endangers American troops in Iraq or Afghanistan.
HOLOCAUST DENIAL
IN THE
ACADEMY
Holocaust denial as a form of antisemitism has received much media
notoriety in the United States, especially as it targets university students.145
Campus newspapers (articles, op-eds, and advertising), videotapes, DVDs,
and the Internet inflame the “debate” over whether the Holocaust happened.
Under the guise of academic scholarship, and often in an attempt to gain
personal notoriety, some self-styled intellectuals are able to disseminate
their message of hatred of the Jews, presenting their work as legitimate
inquiry and exposition.
They have found fertile ground among student editors eager to demonstrate their commitment to free speech and the airing of controversial ideas.
Such inexpensive methodology allows deniers to reach the minds of
impressionable young students, often with little knowledge of the Holocaust, who are in the process of forming their own perceptions of world
history.146
Holocaust deniers claim to be legitimate historical revisionists, seeking
to uncover the truth behind what they term as the largest hoax of the twentieth century. They need not convince students that the Holocaust is a myth;
they score propaganda points merely by convincing them that the Holocaust
is debatable.
Holocaust revisionism first emerged as an organized movement in
1979, when Willis Carto’s Liberty Lobby, the nation’s largest antisemitic
organization, established the California-based Institute for Historical
Review. Together with its publishing arm, Noontide Press, the IHR has put
144. Perhaps the professors could be excused because of a paucity of research
opportunities: It was rarely reported that—despite alleged shortages in building
materials and crippling poverty—new malls and upscale restaurants in Gaza were
doing a booming business in the summer of 2010. See Tom Gross, “A Nice New
Shopping Mall Opened Today in Gaza: Will the Media Report on It?,” Mideast
Dispatch Archives, http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/
001127.html.
145. See Kenneth Lasson, “Holocaust Denial and the First Amendment: The
Quest for Truth in a Free Society,” George Mason Law Review, 6, no.1 (1997).
146. Lasson, “Holocaust Denial.”
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out a number of books on white racialism, including Francis Parker Yockey
and David Hoggan’s The Myth of the Six Million, two of the first books to
deny the Holocaust.147 For the most part, the authors are would-be scholars
with limited credentials in history, writers without academic certification,
and other antisemites engaged in Holocaust denial.148
The Institute for Historical Review has been able to make its biggest
impact on college campuses under its “media projects director,” Bradley
Smith, who leads what he bills as the Committee for Open Debate on the
Holocaust. In 1991, Smith bought a full-page advertisement in The Daily
Northwestern, the student publication of Northwestern University. The ad
had the appearance of a newspaper article, appearing under the headline,
“The Holocaust Story: How Much Is False? The Case for Open Debate.” In
it, Smith argued that the “Holocaust lobby” prevents scholars from thoroughly examining the “orthodox Holocaust story.” He alleged a lack of
proof that Jews were gassed at Auschwitz, and that the photographs of the
piles of corpses at Bergen-Belsen were a result of disease and starvation
and not the result of the Nazi plan to murder Jews. Smith’s arguments were
made in the academic voice—he used no blatantly antisemitic terms, but
employed a seemingly thoughtful, rational discourse intended to provoke
serious academic consideration.149
Smith’s “article” in The Daily Northwestern sparked a flurry of op-ed
pieces, letters to the editor, and on-campus lectures and forums—which in
turn created even wider media coverage in the Chicago area. Emboldened,
Smith subsequently submitted his ad/essays to other university newspapers
around the country, beginning with the University of Michigan. Within a
year, his handiwork had appeared in more than a third of the 60 student
newspapers to which it had been submitted.150
During the 1993-94 school year, Smith launched another campaign,
this one challenging the authenticity of the newly opened U.S. Holocaust
Memorial Museum. He also attacked the scholarship of Professor Deborah
Lipstadt in her book Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth
and Memory. Smith charged that Lipstadt and those like her strive to suppress revisionist research, and called for an end to their “fascist
behavior.”151
147. Willis A. Carto, “Fabricating History,” Anti-Defamation League, 2009,
http://www.adl.org/Holocaust/carto.asp.
148. See Marcus, “The Resurgence” and “Anti-Zionism as Racism” (note 26).
149. Marcus, “The Resurgence” and “Anti-Zionism as Racism.” See also Kenneth Lasson, “Defending Truth: Legal and Psychological Aspects of Holocaust
Denial,” Current Psychology (November 2007).
150. Ross and the ADL, Schooled in Hate (note 24).
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387
By the end of that academic year, Smith’s ad had been published in 32
more campus newspapers—among them was The Justice, the student publication of predominantly Jewish Brandeis University. The ad, which cost
$130, created a propaganda bonanza: it was featured in major media outlets,
including The New York Times, the Washington Post, and Time.152
Toward the end of the 1995 spring semester, Smith launched yet
another campaign, using the same advertisement he’d sent out the year
before. The submission was timed to appear on or around Holocaust
Remembrance Day (“Yom Hashoah”). Although only 17 school newspapers printed the advertisement, given the timing an effective response was
almost impossible to achieve.153
Bradley Smith and the IHR have been equally active over the last decade. In September 2009, the Harvard Crimson published an IHR essay that
raised questions about General Dwight Eisenhower’s account of World War
II and the existence of Nazi gas chambers.154
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent declarations that
“Israel must be wiped off the map” and that the Holocaust was a “fabricated
legend” are but more candid statements of what academics the world over
have been saying for years.155
Former DePaul University professor Norman Finkelstein, for example,
has argued that Israel “inappropriately invokes the Holocaust as a moral
defense for mistreating Palestinians.”156 Thus, another Big Lie is promul152. Brandeis never cashed the check for the ad, donating it instead to the U.S.
Holocaust Memorial Museum—which itself declined to cash it. Ross and the ADL,
Schooled in Hate.
154. The ad was quickly criticized, and the student editor issued an apology.
Evan Buxbaum, “Harvard Crimson Says Holocaust Denial Ad Published by Accident,” CNN.com (September 10, 2009), http://edition.cnn.com/2009/US/09/09/
massachusetts.harvard.Holocaust/index.html.
155. See, e.g., “Ahmadinejad Says Holocaust a Lie, Israel Has No Future,”
Reuters, September 18, 2009, http://www.reuters.com/assets/print?aid=USTRE58
H17S20090918. Ahmadinejad’s statements have been widely quoted. See, e.g.,
Tamer El-Ghobashy and Bill Hutchinson, “Grinning Madman Ahmadinejad
Squirms at Columbia,” New York Daily News, September 25, 2007, http://nydaily
news.com/news/2007/09/25/2007-9-25_grinning_madman_ahmadinejad_squirms_
at_c.html.
156. See Norman Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the
Exploitation of Jewish Suffering (New York: Verso, 2000). In June 2010, Finkelstein was deported from Israel and banned from returning for ten years, after accusing Israel of using the genocidal Nazi campaign against Jews to justify its actions
against the Palestinians. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel said the deportation of Finkelstein was an assault on free speech. “The decision to prevent someone
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gated and allowed to fester without being challenged. Academics could, but
largely don’t, refer their students to the evidence: that Israel existed as a
thriving country three thousand years before the Holocaust. Its kings and
prophets walked the streets of Jerusalem (which, as noted earlier, is mentioned in the Hebrew scriptures 600 times). Throughout the 2,000-year exile
of the Jewish people, there was a continuous Jewish presence in the Holy
Land. The modern rebirth of Israel began in the 1800s, with reclamation of
the largely vacant land by pioneering Zionists, blossoming into a Jewish
majority long before the coming of the Nazis.157
LOUD AMERICAN VOICES
Antisemitic or anti-Zionist academics are not always naysayers like
Finkelstein, who remain relatively obscure except for their notoriety as individuals who would deny or diminish the Holocaust.
Famed MIT professor Noam Chomsky has strongly criticized the
United States’ support of the Israeli government and Israel’s treatment of
the Palestinians—arguing that “ ‘supporters of Israel’ are in reality supporters of its moral degeneration and probable ultimate destruction,” and that
“Israel’s very clear choice of expansion over security may well lead to that
consequence.” Chomsky disagreed with the founding of Israel as a Jewish
state (“I don’t think a Jewish or Christian or Islamic state is a proper concept. I would object to the United States as a Christian state.”).158
In May 2006, Chomsky began an eight-day visit to Lebanon, where he
met with leaders of the terrorist organization Hezbollah. Chomsky received
a hero’s welcome. During his trip, he endorsed and repeated much of
Hezbollah’s rhetoric on Lebanese television, including on its own Al Manar
from voicing their opinions by arresting and deporting them is typical of a totalitarian regime,” said the association’s lawyer, Oded Peler. “A democratic state, where
freedom of expression is the highest principle, does not shut out criticism or ideas
just because they are uncomfortable for its authorities to hear. It confronts those
ideas in public debate.” Toni O’Loughlin, “US Academic Deported and Banned for
Criticizing Israel,” The Guardian, June 6, 2010.
157. “2010 Top Ten,” Wiesenthal Center (note 115).
158. Deborah Solomon, “Questions for Noam Chomsky: The Professorial Provocateur,” The New York Times Magazine, November 2, 2003, http://www.ny
times.com/2003/11/02/magazine/way-we-live-now-11-02-03-questions-for-noamchomsky-professorial-provocateur.html.
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TV,159 and expressed support for the arming of Hezbollah (in direct contradiction to UN Security Council Resolution 1559).160
Chomsky embraced Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, who
refers to Jews as the “grandsons of apes and pigs,”161 and whose ideology is
rooted in the group’s fundamentalist and antisemitic interpretation of Islam,
which has been described as the “direct ideological heir of the Nazis.”162
Chomsky declared that “Hezbollah’s insistence on keeping its arms is justified. . . . I think [Nasrallah] has a reasoned . . . and . . . persuasive argument
that they [the arms] should be in the hands of Hezbollah as a deterrent to
potential aggression.”163
Chomsky’s statements and actions typify what has been called “the
unholy alliance between Islamic extremists and secular radicals in the
West.”164 Indeed, he describes the United States as “one of the leading terrorist states,” and claims that the attacks of September 11, 2001, pale in
comparison to the terror that he suggests America perpetrated during the
1973 Allende coup in Chile.165
These statements are nothing new for Chomsky, who has spent
decades promoting virulent anti-American and anti-Israeli propaganda.
Although they are sometimes dismissed by his supporters as simple “eccentricity,” in fact they represent something far more damaging.166 Chomsky
has used his influence as a prominent linguist to support militant organiza159. See Tzvi Fleisher, “The Far Left and Radical Islamic International Alliance,” The Australian, June 8, 2006, 11.
160. The resolution declares the Security Council’s support of free, fair Lebanese
presidential elections and calls for the withdrawal of foreign troops from Lebanon.
161. Zachary Hughes, “Noam Chomsky’s Support for Hezbollah,” CAMERA,
July 20, 2006, http://www.CAMERA.org/index.asp?x_content=7&x_issue=11&x_
article=1551.
162. See Jeffrey Goldberg, “In the Party of God: Are Terrorists in Lebanon Preparing for a Larger War?,” The New Yorker, October 14, 2002, 180.
163. “Chomsky, Militants Meet,” The Jewish Daily Forward, May 19, 2006, 7.
Shortly after Chomsky left Lebanon, Hezbollah used its arms to launch an unprovoked attack on Israel. The attack seriously destabilized the already tense relationship among Israel, Lebanon, and Syria. See “Noam Chomsky’s Support for
Hezbollah,” CAMERA, June 20, 2006, http://www.CAMERA.org/index.asp?x_
context=7&x_issue=11&x_article=1151.
164. David Horowitz and Jacob Laksin, “Noam Chomsky’s Love Affair with
Nazis,” FrontPageMagazine.com, May 15, 2006, http://97.74.65.51/readArticle
.aspx?ARTID=4437.
165. Alan Taylor, “Noam Chomsky . . . Still Furious at 76,” The Sunday Herald,
March 20, 2005, 4.
166. Zachary Hughes, “Noam Chomsky’s Support for Hezbollah,” CAMERA,
July 7, 2006.
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tions and murderous dictatorships, including not only Hezbollah and
Hamas, but also the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and Slobodan Milosevic in
Serbia.167 His advocacy for these groups serves to minimize the atrocities
they have committed. While whitewashing them, he implicates those he
perpetually paints as the guilty parties—the United States and Israel.168
Although one might conclude that Chomsky’s selective use of history
and frequent use of the Big Lie to advance the agenda of terrorist groups
like Hezbollah and Hamas is intellectually shameful and incendiary,169 it is
of course necessary to recognize that he is entitled to his say. (As he himself
has pointed out, “If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people
we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.”)170
It is equally necessary, however, to challenge him forcefully on the
facts.
The Israel Lobby is a book that has been especially damaging to both
Israel and the concept of honest scholarship. It was written by Professors
Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer (the former from Harvard, the latter
167. Hughes, “Support for Hezbollah.”
168. On May 16, 2010, Israeli authorities detained Chomsky and refused to allow
his entry into the West Bank, where he was scheduled to lecture at the Institute for
Palestinian Studies in Ramallah. Amira Hass, “After Denied Entry to West Bank,
Chomsky Likens Israel to ‘Stalinist Regime,’ ” Haaretz, May 17, 2010. Reporting
on the story, The New York Times’ Jerusalem correspondent noted that Chomsky
“has objected to Israel’s foundation as a Jewish state, but he has supported a twostate solution and has not condemned Israel’s existence.” Ethan Bronner, “Israel
Roiled After Chomsky Barred from West Bank,” The New York Times, May 17,
2010. See also Robert Mackey, “An Al Jazeera Interview with Noam Chomsky,”
The New York Times, May 16, 2010; Ed Pilkington, “Noam Chomsky Barred by
Israelis from Lecturing in Palestinian West Bank,” Manchester Guardian, May 16,
2010, guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/16/israel-noam-chomsky-palestinian-westbank.
169. See Mark Lewis, Nonfiction Chronicle, The New York Times, November 20,
2005, 24 (commenting on critique of Chomsky by Alan Dershowitz).
170. Noam Chomsky. BrainyQuote.com, Xplore Inc, 2010, http://www.brainy
quote.com/quotes/quotes/n/noamchomsk108350.html, accessed June 29, 2010.
Alan Dershowitz, among other true civil libertarians, has long defended the free
speech rights of those whose views he despises—such as Professor James D. Watson, whose theories of racial inferiority resulted in the cancellation of his speech at
Rockefeller University; the right of Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois; and the right
of Tom Paulin, who advocated the murder of Israelis, to state his views. He also
opposed Harvard’s attempt to prevent students from flying the Palestinian flag to
commemorate the death of mass murderer Yasser Arafat. See “A Conversation
with Alan Dershowitz,” http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-130083
.html.
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391
from the University of Chicago)—two respected scholars. In today’s world,
unfortunately, that characterization does not do them justice.
The book presents a wholly conspiratorial view of history in which the
so-called “Israel lobby” has a “stranglehold” on American foreign policy,
the American media, think tanks, and academia. Three of its major weaknesses were identified and analyzed by Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz: quotations are wrenched out of context, important facts are
misstated or omitted, and embarrassingly poor logic is displayed. In sum,
Professor Dershowitz asks why these professors would have chosen to publish a paper that does not meet their usual scholarly standards, especially
given the risk—which should have been obvious to the authors—that their
imprimatur as prominent academics would be trumpeted on extremist Web
sites.171
Among the assertions made by The Israel Lobby is that the United
States has a terrorism problem in good part because it is so closely allied
with Israel. “There is no question, for example, that many Al Qaeda leaders,
including Bin Laden, are motivated by Israel’s presence in Jerusalem and
the plight of the Palestinians.”172
In fact, the historical evidence strongly suggests that Bin Laden was
primarily motivated by the presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia,
which had asked the United States to defend the Arabian peninsula against
Iraqi aggression prior to the first Gulf War. Thus, it was America’s ties to
and defense of an Arab state (from which 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers
originated)—and not the Jewish state—that most clearly precipitated September 11. Prior to that event, Israel was barely on Bin Laden’s radar. Nor
does Israel’s supposed domination of American public life explain terrorist
massacres in Bali, Madrid, London, and elsewhere. Europe, after all, is
praised for being more immune to the lobby’s manipulation tactics.173
Mearsheimer and Walt claim that “contrary to popular belief, the Zionists had larger, better-equipped, and better-led forces during the 1947-49
War of Independence.”174 Here, the authors purport to persuade their read171. Alan Dershowitz, “Debunking the Newest—and Oldest—Jewish Conspiracy: A Reply to the Mearsheimer-Walt ‘Working Paper,’ ” Harvard Law School,
April 2006, 5. See also Nicholas Rostow, “Wall of Reason: Alan Dershowitz v. the
International Court of Justice,” 71 Alb. L. Rev., 71 (2008):953, 953ff.; Alex Safian,
“Study Decrying Israel Lobby Marred by Numerous Errors,” CAMERA, March 20,
2006, http://www.CAMERA.org/index.asp?x_context=7&x_issue=35&x_article=
1099; Eli Lake, “David Duke Claims to Be Vindicated by a Harvard Dean,” New
York Sun, March 20, 2006, 1.
172. Safian, “Study Decrying ‘Israel Lobby.’ ”
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ers that, despite the Arab world’s several attempts to eliminate the Jewish
state and exterminate its inhabitants, Israel has never been in serious danger. To the contrary, however, the invading Arab armies—trained professional military forces—possessed armor and a steep manpower advantage,
whereas Israel “had few heavy weapons and no artillery, armored vehicles,
or planes.”175 Accounts of the number of soldiers and armament in the 1948
war vary considerably. One estimate shows the Arab armies with ten times
more aircraft than the Israelis, and one could easily observe the great
disparity.176
Anti-Zionists often claim that Jews have no historical right to the land
of Israel. To do so, one must deny Jewish history, which is precisely what
University of Michigan professor Juan Cole does—most recently in an article published by Salon online magazine in which Cole asserted that Jerusalem was neither built by “the likely then non-existent ‘Jewish people’ ” in
1000 BCE nor even inhabited at that point in history. Instead, “Jerusalem
appears to have been abandoned between 1000 BCE and 900 BCE, the
traditional dates for the united kingdom under David and Solomon.”177
Yet, as anyone who has actually been in Jerusalem can attest, it is all
but impossible to be physically present in the oldest areas of the city and
not encounter relics dating from between 1000 and 900 BCE. In revising
history, Cole’s motivation is like that of the openly genocidal antisemitic
Muslim world, as well as that of many liberals who claim to oppose bigotry.
As one astute observer pointed out, “For these people, pretending away
their prejudice is the key to their continued claim to enlightenment.”178
Why do so many left-leaning Jewish academics support regimes and
ideologies that seek to annihilate Israel? During the summer of 2006 and in
the following years, while Hezbollah was raining rockets on northern Israel
and Hamas was doing the same in the south, leftist professors rushed to
condemn the Jewish State for going into Lebanon and Gaza to try to stem
the fire. A thousand of them signed a petition denouncing Israel for its “brutal bombing and invasion of Gaza” and its “acts of Israeli state terrorism” in
Lebanon. There was no denunciation of Hamas or Hezbollah—only a call
for the immediate release of jailed terrorists (whom the petition described as
“Palestinian and Lebanese political prisoners”) and a condemnation of
“Israel’s destructive and expansionist policies,” which, the petition said,
175.
176.
177.
Salon,
178.
Dershowitz, The Case for Israel, 30 (note 134).
Dershowitz, The Case for Israel.
Juan Cole, “Ten Reasons Why East Jerusalem Does Not Belong to Israel,”
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/feature/2010/03/23/jerusalem_israel.
Caroline Glick, “See No Evil,” Jerusalem Post, July 29, 2010.
2011]
393
were “primarily to blame for the seemingly perpetual ‘Middle East
crisis.’ ”179
Three of the most prominent signatories of the petition were Chomsky,
Finkelstein, and Stanford’s Joel Beinin (all of them Jewish).180
Such attitudes, of course, are not limited to the Ivory Tower. Former
president Jimmy Carter is not an academic, but his bestselling book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, is likewise replete with twisted history. Mirroring the views of many anti-Israel professors, a considerable number of the
facts upon which his book’s premise rests are demonstrably false.181
While honest academicians should have been quick to criticize the
inaccuracies of Carter’s book, this time it was the media that were in the
forefront of taking the former president to task. The Providence Journal
called the book “a scathingly anti-Israel polemic,” which “absurdly
[charges] that Israel engages in ‘worse instances of apartness, or apartheid,
than we witnessed even in South Africa.’ ” It questions how a former president can stoop to such journalistic lows, without any sense of balance.
“Carter blames minuscule Israel, bordered by enemies who desire its annihilation, for the failure of peace with the Palestinians, while skimming over
the latter’s terrorist attacks and their refusal to recognize even Israel’s right
to exist.”182
The Atlanta Journal Constitution listed a number of former Carter loyalists who, because of the book, felt the need publicly to distance themselves from their erstwhile mentor. When such people feel “so betrayed by
179. Jamie Glazov, “Leftist Jews Who Worship at Altar of Anti-Semitism,”
WorldNetDaily, March 4, 2009, http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/6996.
180. In 2004, Beinin wrote an article entitled “The New McCarthyism: Policing
Thought about the Middle East,” in which he denounced the Ford Foundation’s
decision to withdraw funding from any university grantee that finances the promotion of “violence, terrorism, or bigotry or the destruction of any state.” What worried Beinin was that such restrictions could potentially hurt a “Palestinian student
group [that] called for the replacement of the state of Israel with a secular, democratic state,” meaning one seeking the extermination of Israel. Steven Plaut, “Joel
Beinin Whines about Israeli Airport’s ‘Harassment,’ ” FrontPage, December 1,
2009, http://frontpagemag.com/2009/12/01/joel-beinin-whines-about-israeli-airports-harassment-by-steven-plaut/.
181. See http://zionism-israel.com/israel_news/2007/02/everything-you-wantedto-know-about.html. Mearsheimer and Walt seem to adopt Carter’s views; see
Richard Baehr and Ed Lasky, “Stephen Walt’s War with Israel,” American
Thinker, http://www.americanthinker.com/2006/03/stephen_walts_war_with_
israel.html.
182. “Carter Versus Israel,” Editorial, Providence Journal, January 2, 2007,
http://www.projo.com/opinion/editorials/content/ED_jimmy2_01-02-07_0H3K9A
B.204ccd9.html.
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the assertions in his latest book that they divorce themselves from his legacy work, the rest of us should surely take notice.”183
Former American diplomat Dennis Ross pointed out essential flaws in
Carter’s book in a New York Times article: “Mr. Carter’s presentation badly
misrepresents the Middle East proposals advanced by President Bill Clinton
in 2000, and in so doing undermines, in a small but important way, efforts
to bring peace to the region. The reader is left to conclude that the Clinton
proposals must have been so ambiguous and unfair that Yasser Arafat, the
Palestinian leader, was justified in rejecting them. But that is simply
untrue.”184
The Times’ own Middle East correspondent, Ethan Bronner, was
equally critical, calling Carter’s work
a strange little book about the Arab-Israeli conflict from a major public
figure. It is premised on the notion that Americans too often get only one
side of the story, one uncritically sympathetic to Israel, so someone with
authority and knowledge needs to offer a fuller picture. Fine idea. The
problem is that in this book Jimmy Carter does not do so. Instead, he
simply offers a narrative that is largely unsympathetic to Israel. Israeli
bad faith fills the pages. Hollow statements by Israel’s enemies are
presented without comment. Broader regional developments go largely
unexamined. In other words, whether or not Carter is right that most
Americans have a distorted view of the conflict, his contribution is to
offer a distortion of his own.185
A reviewer for the Washington Post said that Carter “blames Israel
almost entirely for perpetuating the hundred-year war between Arab and
Jew,” and “manufactures sins to hang around the necks of Jews when no
sins have actually been committed.”186
THE YALE INITIATIVE
Ironically, perhaps the most pernicious effects of academic antisemitism can be illustrated by looking at what happened to the short-lived Yale
Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism (YIISA).
183. “Carter Aside, Israel Deserves Total Support,” Editorial, Atlanta JournalConstitution, January 14, 2007, C6.
184. Dennis Ross, “Don’t Play with Maps,” The New York Times, January 9,
2007.
185. Ethan Bronner, “Jews, Arabs and Jimmy Carter,” The New York Times, January 7, 2007.
186. See Jeffrey Goldberg, “What Would Jimmy Do?,” Washington Post,
December 10, 2006.
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395
In 2005, Professor Charles Small founded the Institute for the Study of
Global Anti-Semitism and Policy as an independent research organization
to study global antisemitism and other forms of racism. In 2006, the center
became part of Yale University’s Institution for Social and Policy Studies,
as YIISA. At the time, it was the fourth university center for antisemitism to
be established, following similar centers at Berlin’s Technical University,
the Hebrew University, and Tel Aviv University.
In August 2010, YIISA sponsored an international conference entitled
“Global Antisemitism: A Crisis of Modernity,”187 which featured scholars
from a wide variety of backgrounds;188 some of these scholars highlighted
instances of antisemitism in the Arab-Muslim world.
Almost immediately, the U.S. representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization accused Yale of hosting a conference catering to rightwing extremists.189 Various other Arab individuals and groups followed
suit, expressing dismay at what they perceived as Yale’s endorsement of
“bigotry and bias.”190
Whether Yale capitulated to the charges of bias, and if so for what
reasons, is open to question—but its actions are not. In early June 2011, the
university announced that it would be closing YIISA because it “had not
met its academic expectations.” That decision sparked widespread criticism
from the American Jewish community.191 David Harris, executive director
187. The conference was cosponsored by the Isaac and Jessie Kaplan Centre for
Jewish Studies and Research (University of Cape Town); The Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (Hebrew University, Jerusalem); the
Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism
(Tel Aviv University), the Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism
(Indiana University), the Rabin Chair Forum (George Washington University), and
the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism (Birbeck College, University of
London).
188. Among the keynote and plenary speakers were Irwin Cotler (McGill University, Canada), Jeffrey Herf (University of Maryland), Richard Landes (Boston
University), Deborah Lipstadt (Emory University), Meir Litvak (Tel Aviv University), Menahem Milson (Hebrew University), Dina Porat (Tel Aviv University),
Milton Shain (University of Cape Town), Bassam Tibi (University of Goettingen,
Germany), and Ruth Wisse (Harvard University).
189. Nora Caplan-Bricker, “Palestinian Representative Calls Yale Conference
‘Anti-Arab,’ ” Yale Daily News, September 2, 2010.
190. See, e,g., Yaman Salahi, “Anti-Semitism but Not Anti-Hatred,” Yale Daily
News, September 1, 2010, and Adam Horowitz, “Yale Anti-Semitism Conference
Continues to Make Waves,” Mondoweiss, September 8, 2010, http://mondoweiss.
net/2010/09/yale-anti-semitism-conference-continues-to-make-waves.html.
191. Jordana Horn, “Jews Decry Yale Closing Anti-Semitism Study Center,”
Jerusalem Post, July 9, 2011.
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of the American Jewish Committee, said the initiative’s termination would
“create a very regrettable void.” Abraham Foxman, the national director of
the Anti-Defamation League, stated, “Especially at a time when anti-Semitism continues to be virulent and anti-Israel parties treat any effort to
address issues relating to anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism as illegitimate,
Yale’s decision is particularly unfortunate and dismaying.”192
Others charged that Yale’s decision to close YIISA was primarily
political in nature, due to its focus on Muslim antisemitism, because it
“refused to ignore the most virulent, genocidal and common form of Jewhatred today: Muslim anti-Semitism.”193 Walter Reich, a member of the
board of advisors of YIISA and a former director of the U.S. Holocaust
Memorial Museum, wrote that the closure had come from a “firestorm” that
had ensued after the conference YIISA hosted in August 2010, entitled
“Global Antisemitism: A Crisis of Modernity.”194
Within a month after Yale said YIISA would be closed, the university
announced the creation of a new center for the study of antisemitism, to be
called “Yale Program for the Study of Anti-Semitism” (YPSA).195 The new
program is supposed to focus primarily on the study of historical antisemitism, as opposed to what goes on in the twenty-first century. But doing that
192. Ron Kampeas, “Shuttering of Yale Program on Anti-Semitism Raises
Hackles,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, June 10, 2011. See also Tovia Smith, “Yale
Shuts Down Anti-Semitism Program,” National Public Radio, http://www.npr.org/
2011/06/17/137241373/yale-shuts-down-anti-semitism-program.
193. See, e.g., Abby Wisse Schachter, “Yale’s Latest Gift to Anti-Semitism,”
New York Post, June 6, 2011; and Caroline Glick, “Yale, Jews and Double Standards,” Jerusalem Post, June 9, 2011.
194. Walter Reich, “Saving the Yale Anti-Semitism Institute,” Washington Post,
June 13, 2011. Conversely, Antony Lerman, a British scholar, argued that YIISA
had become politicized and that its demise should be welcomed by those who “genuinely support the principle of the objective, dispassionate study of contemporary
antisemitism.” Daniel Treiman, “Lipstadt on Yale Anti-Semitism Initiative: Advocacy Sometimes Trumped Scholarship, JTA. June 16, 2011. Robert Wistrich, the
director of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism at
Hebrew University, agreed with the decision to close the the center, saying that
there was “no way that Yale could have come to a different decision” given the
program’s perceived lack of academic rigor. Raphael Ahren, “Jerusalem Anti-Semitism Scholar Backs Yale’s Move to Ax Program,” Ha’aretz, July 15, 2011.
195. “Yale to Launch New Anti-Semitism Program,” The Jewish Daily Forward,
June 20, 2011. See also Jessica Shepherd, “Yale University Caught in New
Antisemitism Controversy,” The Guardian, June 22, 2011.
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397
serves to gloss over issues that scholars must address today, especially in
view of the real threat of contemporary radical Islamist antisemitism.196
PRACTICAL
AND
LEGISLATIVE REMEDIES
University leadership should set a moral example by denouncing antiSemitic and other hate speech . . .
—U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Regarding Campus Anti-Semitism
Although freedom of speech is guaranteed by the First Amendment,
and should protect both the individual as well as the idea of academic freedom on university campuses, constitutional remedies are nevertheless available to address the problems of antisemitism. Principal among them is the
right (if not the obligation) to recognize antisemitism when it occurs, to
present the facts clearly and accurately, and to condemn it vociferously.
Failure to speak out, on the other hand, sends a message that such
hatred is tolerable and acceptable. Indeed, the American Association of
University Professors (AAUP) specifically endorses the condemnation of
hateful and bigoted speech and conduct by college and university faculty
and administrators.197
Moreover, although words themselves can have injurious effects, antiIsrael and antisemitic activists consistently go beyond mere rhetoric and use
violence to coerce adherence to their point of view. The First Amendment
does not protect either words or actions that are directed toward incitement
of immediate lawlessness—and certainly neither words nor actions that are
intended to place Jews and other pro-Israel students in fear of immediate
bodily harm.198
It has long been established, of course, that there can be Constitutional
limits on speech: defamation, fighting words, conspiracies, misleading
advertisements, threats, or exhortations that create a risk of imminent vio196. Jordana Horn, “Yale University Launches New Program on Anti-Semitism,” Jerusalem Post, June 22, 2011 (quoting Charles Small, the former executive
director of YIISA). See also Michael Rubin, “A Challenge to Yale University on
Anti-Semitism,” Commentary, July 1, 2011; Ron Rosenbaum, “Yale’s Newest Jewish Quota,” Slate, July 1, 2011; and Adam Brodsky, “Yale’s Anti-Semitism Whitewash,” New York Post, July 6, 2011.
197. The AAUP is an organization, founded in 1915, comprising faculty librarians and academic professionals at two- and four- year accredited public and private
colleges and universities. Its mission is “developing the standards and procedures
that maintain quality in education and academic freedom in this country’s colleges
and universities.”
198. See Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969); Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire 315 U.S. 568 (1942).
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lence. Comparing the harms to the speaker and the victim of hate speech
suggests that limiting the latter may be cost effective.199
In recent years, there has been increasing debate over the question of
whether it is permissible for the government to curb “hate speech,” understood to mean that which demeans or expresses hostility or contempt
toward target groups based on their race, religion, ethnic background, sexual orientation, or other identifying characteristics. The Supreme Court has
never specifically adjudicated the constitutionality of a campus hate speech
code, but several lower courts have struck down such codes as unconstitutional restrictions on freedom of speech.200
Every Western democracy except the United States regulates hate
speech. Many particularly prohibit and punish Holocaust denial.201 A popular academic exercise often admiringly analyzes other countries’ legislation
limiting hate speech.202 But comparing the American approach to others is
inherently problematic. Our system has served us well.
Universities must also ensure that they have continual systems and
programs in place to monitor the climate on their campuses. In the course of
promoting the values of respect, tolerance, diversity, and inclusiveness, they
must also allow and encourage vigorous debate and academic freedom.
One way to handle hecklers seeking to disrupt speakers at university
forums is as follows:
When controversial speakers appear on campus, in advance of the
event, clearly announce to and notify students that they will have an opportunity to question or challenge or make comments—but that interruptions
will not be tolerated. Moreover, students who engage in disruptive speech
or behavior will be firmly sanctioned, either with suspensions or expulsions. If such a policy were strictly enforced, it would go far to deter both
bully pulpits and hostile audiences.
Other remedies that have been proposed range from simply lodging a
complaint with the authorities to imposing boycotts of alumni funding pro199. See Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, “Four Observations about Hate
Speech,” Wake Forest L. Rev., 44 (2009):353.
200. Thomas A. Schweitzer, “Hate Speech on Campus and the First Amendment:
Can They Be Reconciled?,” Conn. L. Rev., 27 (1995):493.
201. See Kenneth Lasson, “Holocaust Denial and the First Amendment: The
Quest for Truth in a Free Society,” Geo. Mason L. Rev., 6 (1997):35.
202. To a number of scholars, German hate-speech regulation is particularly
attractive. Given the fundamental differences between the two approaches to free
speech, however, and consequently to hate-speech regulation, we should not be so
quick to adopt the German approach. Claudia E. Haupt, “Regulating Hate
Speech—Damned If You Do and Damned If You Don’t: Lessons Learned from
Comparing the German and U.S. Approaches,” 23 B.U. Int’l L.J., 23 (2005):299.
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399
grams. The problem with the former is that it is difficult to draw a line
between censuring intimidation and restricting free speech or academic
freedom. Moreover, one does not wish to feed a “culture of complaint.”203
Boycotts, on the other hand, cut both ways, and can cause more harm than
good.204
Direct confrontation thus remains the best remedy.
Academics should denounce antisemitism with the same rational
resolve as people like Pilar Rahola, a Spanish politician, journalist, activist,
and member of the far left:
I am not Jewish. Ideologically I am left and by profession a journalist.
Why am I not anti-Israeli like my colleagues? Because as a non-Jew I
have the historical responsibility to fight against Jewish hatred and currently against the hatred for their historic homeland, Israel. To fight
against anti-Semitism is not the duty of the Jews, it is the duty of the nonJews. As a journalist it is my duty to search for the truth beyond
prejudice, lies and manipulations. The truth about Israel is not told. As a
person from the left who loves progress, I am obligated to defend liberty,
culture, civic education for children, coexistence and the laws that the
Tablets of the Covenant made into universal principles. Principles that
Islamic fundamentalism systematically destroys. That is to say that as a
non-Jew, journalist and lefty, I have a triple moral duty with Israel,
because if Israel is destroyed, liberty, modernity and culture will be
destroyed too.205
To be sure, there are a few hopeful signs on the horizon.
One is Scholars for Peace in the Middle East. Governed and directed
by academics, SPME envisions “a world in which Israel exists as a sovereign Jewish state within secure borders and her neighbors achieve their
legitimate peaceful aspirations.” However, as its mission statement
observes:
[A]cademic discourse is increasingly influenced by ideological distortions, politically biased scholarship, and agenda-driven speakers who
demonize Israel and Zionism as bearing full responsibility for the Middle-East conflict. Such indoctrination violates academic traditions of
scholarly integrity and degrades the academic enterprise. It poisons
debate about the Middle East, inflames hatred of Israel, spreads anti203. For example, students at Columbia University filed a complaint against Professor Joseph Massad for intimidating students with anti-Zionist diatribes. See
Sagiv, “A Study in Hate,” 14 (note 5).
204. Sagiv, “A Study in Hate.”
205. Pilar Rahola, “A Leftist Speaks Out,” Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, March
24, 2010, 50.
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Semitism, incites anti-Israeli militancy, and serves to excuse or tolerate
terrorist attacks and genocidal threats against Israel. Anti-Israel slanders
exacerbate conflict and undermine prospects for peace.206
Some student groups, such as the Union of Jewish Students, have also
become increasingly active.207
On occasion, politicians have been unusually forthright in stating their
opposition to events like “Israeli Apartheid Weeks” on campus. In February
2010, for example, Members of Provincial Parliament (MPPs) of varying
political ideologies in Ontario collectively and unanimously condemned
Israeli Apartheid Week, which one MP contended was “about as close to
hate speech as one can get without getting arrested, and I’m not certain it
doesn’t actually cross over that line,”208 specifically noting that the name
itself is offensive to the millions of black South Africans who experienced
oppression under a racist white regime until the early 1990s. Addressing
Canada’s worldwide notoriety as a pro-Israel country, Peter Shurman further argued, “[If] you’re going to label Israel as apartheid, then you are also
calling Canada apartheid and you are attacking Canadian values.” The parliamentarians encourage constructive, respectful debate about the Middle
East, but the use of inflammatory words—like “apartheid”—do not provide
any benefit to the discourse. The minister of training, colleges and universities, John Milloy, believes that “campuses are places for debate and discussion—they often get into areas that can offend people . . . the goal has to be
. . . to make sure that there’s not hatred on campus—nothing that would
make a student feel threatened.” Actions like that of the Ontario legislature
illustrate the potential for change, and marks a small, yet noteworthy, step
206. Mission Statement, Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, http://spme.net/.
207. The UJS today enjoys relatively better funding and organization than it did
in the past, but if it and other student groups are to take an effective stand against
antisemitism on campus they will need considerably more support and resources
from those with positions of power and influence. Jan Shure, “We Could Have
Dealt with Campus Hate Long Ago,” The Jewish Chronicle Online, February 12,
2009, http://www.thejc.com/comment/comment/we-could-have-dealt-campus-hatelong-ago.
208. Peter Shurman, remarks in support of condemnation of Israeli Apartheid
Week. Dan Verbin, “Ontario Legislature Denounces Israel Apartheid Week,”
ShalomLife, February 26, 2010, http://www.shalomlife.com/eng/6838/Ontario_
Legislature_Denounces_Israel_Apartheid_Week/. See also Robert Benzie, “MPPs
Decry Linking Israel to ‘Apartheid,’ ” Thestar.com, February 26, 2010, http://
www.thestar.com/news/Ontario/article/77161—mpps-decry-linking-israel-toapartheid; Goldstone, “Israel and the Apartheid Slander” (note 115).
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401
toward widespread condemnation of hateful, antisemitic speech in the academic voice.209
There are some legislative remedies available as well. Title VI, 42
U.S.C. §2000d et seq., of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964, requires
recipients of federal funding to ensure that their programs are free from
harassment, intimidation, and discrimination on the basis of race, color, and
national origin. In order to receive federal funding from the U.S. Department of Education, colleges and universities must comply with Title VI; the
Office for Civil Rights (OCR) in the Department of Education is charged
with the responsibility of ensuring that colleges and universities are in compliance. Historically, the OCR’s interpretation of Title VI did not protect
against antisemitism, on the grounds that the law did not cover religious
discrimination. This policy was changed in 2004, when the OCR confirmed
that Jewish students are protected under Title VI. This decision was made
based on the idea that being “Jewish” is not simply a religious characteristic; it is also a racial and ethnic characteristic, describing a people who
share not only a religion, but also a common ancestry, history, heritage, and
culture. The decision to incorporate Jews under Title VI is in line with the
U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Shaare Tefila Congregation v. Cobb,
where the civil-rights protections under the Civil Rights Act of 1866 were
extended.210
But legislative remedies have to be initiated by individuals and groups,
and actively pursued.
In October 2004, the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) filed a
complaint with the OCR under Title VI on behalf of Jewish students at the
University of California Irvine (UCI), arguing that the university had long
been aware of a hostile and intimidating environment for Jewish students,
but that it did not take adequate steps to protect the students. Despite an
abundance of data provided by the ZOA, the OCR found “insufficient evidence to support the complainant’s allegation that the University failed to
respond promptly and effectively to complaints by Jewish students that they
were harassed and subjected to a hostile environment.”211
209. See references in note 208.
210. 481 U.S. 615 (1987).
211. The ZOA has indicated that it will continue to fight for the students at UCI
and across American campuses through an appeal of the OCR decision. Title VI is
usually used to fight discriminatory practices during admission, and not for a student’s protection against racial discrimination or bias. Its use in this manner could
depend largely on ZOA’s appeal of the UCI decision. Morton Klein, “ZOA Condemns Office for Civil Rights’ Decision Not to Protect Jewish Students from
Antisemitic Harassment,” Zionist Organization of America, December 19, 2007,
http://www.zoa.org/sitedocuments/pressrelease_view.asp?pressreleaseID=264.
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In March 2010, a number of Jewish-American associations joined in a
letter to Arne Duncan, secretary of the U.S. Department of Education,
addressing the very issue of Title VI and its application to Jewish students.
In their letter, the associations explained how the OCR has retreated from
its 2004 position, and urged Secretary Duncan to ensure that the OCR once
again interprets Title VI to protect Jewish students from antisemitic harassment. They point out that the Hon. Russlyn Ali, assistant secretary of education for civil rights, wrote, in a July 2009 letter to California congressman
Ben Sherman, that Title VI does not cover antisemitic harassment, intimidation, and discrimination. This statement from Assistant Secretary Ali indicates that the OCR has effectively concluded that it will discontinue its
enforcement of Title VI in cases where a Jewish student asserts racial or
ethnic discrimination based on his or her status as a Jewish individual. This
sends an official government message to campus perpetrators, the associations contended, that they can continue their antisemitic behavior because
colleges and universities no longer have a legal obligation to report hateful
conduct, and campus administrations are therefore free to simply not
respond to antisemitism on their campuses, even when their Jewish students
feel threatened and intimidated.212
In contrast, see what happens when students and faculty do fight back,
as is beginning to occur in California. The Felber and Rossman-Benjamin
cases represent an important departure for a community that has often been
divided between accommodationist and defensive positions.213
Professor Rossman-Benjamin’s case is notable because it brings
accountability to both the university and the federal government. She filed
her case with the OCR, arguing that Santa Cruz violated Title VI of the
Civil Rights Act of 1964—the same statute that bars racial segregation in
the public schools, but that is applied more broadly to racial and ethnic
discrimination in federally-funded programs. It is important to understand
that this approach does not require (or even permit) universities to censor or
regulate speech, which is protected under the First Amendment. There are,
however, numerous actions the university could take, such as issuing formal
statements condemning the discriminatory conduct, developing educational
resources to demonstrate the irrationality of the biased statements, and providing counseling for students who are adversely affected.214
212. Russlyn Ali, letter to education secretary re: Antisemitic Intimidation on
Campus, Anti-Defamation League, http://www.adl.org/Civil_Rights/letter_associa
tionjlj_2010.asp.
213. See Marcus references, note 26.
214. See Marcus references, note 26. In 2011, the OCR informed Rossman-Benjamin that it is formally opening an investigation of her claims.
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403
In July 2010, the Congressional Taskforce Against Anti-Semitism sent
a letter to secretary of education Arne Duncan, expressing concern that various complaints about antisemitic incidents at UC Irvine had never been
properly addressed by the OCR. The letter noted the rising number of such
incidents on college campuses, which it called “significant and disturbing”—especially in view of the fact that racism is generally decreasing
in the United States. In addition, the letter suggested that even more such
incidents go unreported because of discriminatory harassment and
intimidation.215
“College campuses in the United States are meant to be positive, safe
and open forums for intellectual expression, conducive to learning,” wrote
Congressman Ron Klein, a Florida Democrat and member of the task force.
“We believe that enforcing Title VI to protect Jewish students who, in rare
but highly significant situations, face harassment, intimidation or discrimination based on their ancestral or ethnic characteristics—including when it
is manifested as anti-Israel or anti-Zionist sentiment that crosses the line
into anti-Semitism—would help ensure that we’re preserving the integrity
of our higher education system by affording the same protection to all ethnic and racial groups on our college campuses.”216
Another letter about antisemitism on UC campuses, written by twelve
pro-Israel groups, was sent to UC president Mark Yudof. The letter was
supported by some 700 UC students, who signed an online position asserting that the university’s response to recent antisemitic incidents on campus
has caused many students to feel as if they are in an “environment of harassment and intimidation.” Yudof, who is Jewish, responded, urging that
the groups support UC’s newly formed Advisory Council on Campus Climate, Culture, and Inclusion. The council had been created in response to
215. The complaint had argued that the OCR did not exercise jurisdiction following its 2007 investigation of the ZOA’s 2004 complaint with the OCR, alleging that
failed to promptly and adequately respond to Jewish students’ complaints that they
experienced severe and persistent antisemitic intimidation and harassment on campus. It said that UCI should be subject to investigation/penalties under Title VI of
the Civil Rights Act of 1964; that the incidents were based on the students’ ancestry or ethnic characteristics, rather than their religious identity, and thus fell within
the scope of the OCR’s jurisdiction under Title VI; and that the OCR’s ruling was
“inconsistent with its own policy statements for enforcing Title VI as expressed in
recent years.
216. The task force sought clarification of the OCR’s investigation and enforcement authority to remedy instances of harassment/discrimination/intimidation
against Jewish students, requesting that it hear from the OCR before the start of the
new school year. The letter was signed by 36 members of Congress. See http://
www.zoa.org/media/user/images/Congressional-Taskforce-Against%20Anti-Semi
tism-Letter-to-Secretary-Duncan.pdf.
404
[ VOL. 3:349
numerous incidents of harassment on campus, including spray-painting
swastikas on the UC Davis campus.217
The council held its first meeting this summer. The students who wrote
the letter argued that UC’s response to the antisemitic acts has been too
weak. Yudof said he will “do everything in [his] power to protect Jewish
and all other students from threats or actions of intolerance,” but he also
criticized the letter as “a dishearteningly ill-informed rush to judgment
against our ongoing responses to troubling incidents that have taken place
on some of our campuses.” He added that “the Jewish groups may have
based their concerns on an unreliable sampling of student opinion and
that most Jewish UC students’ perspectives ‘are more mixed than you
suggest.’ ”218
Meanwhile, in response to the incident in which Israeli ambassador
Michael Oren was hounded off the rostrum at UC Irvine by anti-Israel demonstrators, administrators embarked on a four-month-long investigation,
and announced in June its unprecedented recommendation to suspend the
Muslim Student Union, a registered campus organization, for its involvement in disrupting the ambassador’s speech. Eleven students were arrested,
and may face criminal charges as well as university disciplinary action. The
decision came after several months of intense pressure by a number of offcampus Zionist organizations. In February, the ZOA called upon Jewish
donors to withhold donations from UC Irvine and urged Jewish students not
to enroll there. The Muslim Student Union is appealing the decision.219
CONCLUSION
In sum, there are a variety of ways to confront and condemn antisemitism in the academic voice and remain in harmony with First Amendment
values.
One recommendation is to exercise a bit of self-restraint. Instead of
crying “Nazi” every time the Israeli Defense Force does something with
which an academic disagrees, or urging a boycott of Israeli academics, or
signing petitions encouraging soldiers to desert their units or calling on
217. See http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/07/uc-president-mark-yudof-c
_n_637311.html.
218. “UC President in Unusual Public Dispute with Several American Jewish
Groups,” Los Angeles Times blog, July 6, 2010.
219. Omar Kurdi, “UC Irvine’s Message: Criticize Israel, Get Suspended,”
LATimes.com, June 22, 2010, http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/laoew-0622-kurdi-uci-muslim-20100622,0,1942963.story.
2011]
405
European powers to immediately intervene to “save” the Palestinians from
a “genocide,” hold your tongue.220
Another is to assist Israel’s defenders in driving a wedge between the
Jewish State’s soft- and hard-core critics—between, for example, humanrights groups like Oxfam, which take issue with Israeli policy, and radical
Islamists who deny the state’s very legitimacy.221
It is the obligation of all academics either to recognize or refute claims
that have no basis in fact or logic—not to ignore them.
Not only can offensive speech and conduct be constitutionally confronted and condemned, but responsible administrators, faculty, and students have a moral imperative to do so.
Not only are the principles of academic freedom and the universality
of science at stake, but ultimately so are democratic values in a free society.
Not only should scholars shoulder their responsibility to be informed
and aware, but they also should recognize their obligation to respond when
they see logic and common sense gone awry and objective fact and documented history either ignored or denied.
Academics everywhere should likewise not allow history and logic to
be rendered meaningless by twisted rhetoric—whether it emanates from the
candid rant of the president of Iran, or a former president of the United
States who receives substantial sums of money from Arab governments, or
a somewhat more subtle but equally antisemitic university professor speaking in an academic voice.
*Kenneth Lasson is a professor of law at the University of Baltimore. He is
Regents Scholar, University System of Maryland, and director of the Haifa Summer Law Institute. Professor Lasson is the author of Trembling in the Ivory Tower
(Bancroft, 2003), and has written book chapters in Eunice Pollack’s (ed.)
Antisemitism on the Campus (Academic Studies, 2011) and in Steven K. Baum,
Florette Cohen, and Steven L. Jacobs’ (eds.) North American Antisemitism, Vol. 15
(Brill, in preparation).
220. [W]hen children don’t behave correctly, it is the parents’ responsibility to
correct this, not scream hysterically that the children are “little Nazis” and leave the
house. . . . The Israeli academy is like a parent to the citizenry of the state, but the
behavior of some of its members has come to resemble that of spoiled children.
Frantzman, “Terra Incognita” (note 73).
221. See Mizroch, “Study Surveys” (note 88 and accompanying text).
Antisemitism and the Campus Left
Richard Cravatts*
The campus war against Israel and Jews is indicative of the devolution of
higher education, where scholarship has been degraded by bias on the
part of a Leftist professoriate. The professoriate’s political agenda enlists
Israel as the new villain in the name of social justice. University leaders
have been feckless in moderating this new antisemitism. Either they 1)
are unaware of fields of study that have been hijacked by academic
frauds and morally incoherent scholars, or 2) sympathize and have
become complicit in the production of pseudo-scholarship, academic
agitprop, and disingenuous learning experiences. The result has produced
a one-sided, biased approach to understanding the Israeli/Palestinian
conflict.
Key Words: Antisemitism, Anti-Israelism, Anti-Zionism, Palestinian
The university’s war against Israel has been pervasive and intensifying, promulgated by the active participation both of leftist faculty and radical Muslim student groups on campuses where the long-suffering
Palestinians have replaced South African blacks as the left’s favorite victim
group—whose behavior, however violent and politically irrational, is
excused as justifiable in a 63-year-old campaign to demand that Israel grant
the Arabs self-determination and social justice.
The other, and related, trend of anti-Israelism on campuses—and,
indeed, off campuses as well—is that derision of Zionism and the denunciation of Israel has become a convenient way for antisemites to mask their
true prejudice against Jews by claiming that their problem is only with the
policies of Israel, not with Jews themselves. While classic antisemitism is
no longer considered acceptable in most Westernized societies, especially
in the aftermath of the Holocaust, Jew-haters (and some liberal, Israel-hating Jews themselves) have found a convenient and effective way to mask
their true feelings: they single out the world’s only Jewish state for condemnation and hold it to a standard higher than they do for any other nation, not
coincidentally including those Arab states and the Palestinians themselves,
against whom Israel is perpetually and unfairly compared in action, selfdefense, and self-determination.
Thus, on campuses today Israel is regularly, though falsely, condemned for being created “illegally”—through the “theft” of Palestinian
lands and property—and therefore has no “right to exist.” The government
407
408
[ VOL. 3:407
is accused of a “brutal,” illegal “occupation” of Palestinian lands, especially
Gaza and the West Bank, of being a “colonial settler state,” a Zionist
“regime,” a land-hungry nation building an “apartheid wall” as a further
land grab, a usurper of property that was lived on and owned by a Palestinian “people” “from time immemorial.” Zionism is regularly equated with
Nazism, and the perceived offenses of Israel’s government and military are
likened to Nazi crimes against humanity; the conceit is that Israel is creating a “Holocaust on the Holy Land” through “ethnic cleansing,” ongoing
“genocide” of Arabs, and the elimination of the rights of an innocent,
“indigenous people” who merely seek self-determination and the peaceful
creation of a Palestinian homeland. The very existence of the country is
described as being the “greatest threat to world peace,” the core cause of
Muslim anger toward the West, the root of the Palestinians’ suffering; the
nation has even been referred to publicly as a “shitty little country” by the
French ambassador to Britain.
These beliefs permeate the vocabulary of Israel-hatred on campus, and
are dangerous and troubling not merely because they vilify the Middle
East’s only democracy and America’s principal ally in that region; they are
also of concern because they are based on misrepresentations of history;
exaggerate current conditions in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza; and, most
seriously, put forward a complete inversion of truth that enables Israel-haters to load cruel and destructive invective on Zionism without apology,
while in reality they are promulgating vile opprobrium that frequently
shows its true face as raw antisemitism.
In The Return of Anti-Semitism, Gabriel Schoenfeld noted how language itself has become a form of “turnspeak”; that the “. . . language in
which such accusations are leveled is extravagantly hateful, drawn from the
vocabulary of World War II and the Holocaust but grotesquely inverted,
with the Jews portrayed as Nazis and their Arab tormentors cast in the role
of helpless Jews.”1
THE NEW ACADEMIC FACE
OF THE
WORLD’S OLDEST HATRED
The unending streams of venom regularly hurled at Israel by academics, of course, are rarely positioned as anything other than simple criticism
of a particular nation for a set of particular complaints; there is never any
admission or acknowledgement on the part of Israel’s many world-wide
campus critics that anything other than a concern for the Palestinian cause
and a dislike of Israel’s current politics are at work in their relentless criti1. Gabriel Schoenfeld, The Return of Anti-Semitism (San Francisco: Encounter
Books, 2004).
2011]
ANTISEMITISM AND THE CAMPUS LEFT
409
quing of the Middle East’s only democracy. In fact, when confronted with
the suggestion that their excessive and compulsive demonization of Israel—
along with continual attempts to hobble, weaken, or dismantle the Jewish
state on behalf of social justice for Palestinians—might sometimes be seen
as antisemitic in cause or intent, the academic enemies of Israel bristle with
indignation and often make wild claims that the dreaded “Israel Lobby” has
attempted to silence them and stifle critical discussion about Israeli/Palestinian politics.
But, in fact, it has thankfully become more difficult for actual
antisemites on campus to inoculate themselves with this defense by merely
contending that they are not self-professed antisemites, but simply wish to
rant against Israel’s existence based on a higher moral calling to protect the
self-determination of Palestinians. For many actual antisemites, as well as
those who merely loathe Israel, deranged enmity toward the Jewish state
has become a covert, and surrogate, form of antisemitism itself, a fact that
was addressed in a 2005 “working definition of antisemitism” produced by
the European Union Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia
(EUMC), which itself had evolved from a comprehensive study of
antisemitism in the EU it had completed in the previous year.
The term “working definition” was significant, not only because it
affirmed the importance of guarding against the classic strains of
antisemitic sentiment, language, and action, but also because it created an
explicit equivalence between the hatred and demonization of Israel and
Zionism and a yet another stream of Jew-hatred, what is now sometimes
called the “new antisemitism.”
So while the EUMC working definition acknowledged the older manifestations of Jew-hatred such as “Rhetorical and physical manifestations of
antisemitism . . . directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or
their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities,”2 it also provided a more comprehensive view of antisemitic inclinations, deeply relevant to the current discussion, when it went on to suggest
that “such manifestations could also target the state of Israel, conceived as a
Jewish collectivity,” or “[m]aking . . . allegations about . . . the power of
Jews as collective—such as . . . the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy
or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal
institutions [as is often brought up in accusations of a Israel Lobby working
behind the scenes, for example].”3
2. The European Forum on Antisemitism, “Working Definition of Antisemitism,” 2008, http://www.european-forum-on-antisemitism.org/working-definitionof-antisemitism/english/?fontsize=0.
3. Schoenfeld, The Return.
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Even more relevant was the EUMC language, which linked anti-Israel
ideology and radicalism with antisemitism, including examples of the specific types of speech and behavior that animates the anti-Israel ideology of
academia. Specifically, that would include:
• Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by
claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
• Applying double standards by requiring of Israel a behavior not
expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
• Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism
(e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize
Israel or Israelis.
• Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the
Nazis.
• Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of
Israel.4
A look at the prevailing ideologies on campuses will reveal that these
precise tropes and biases against Israel and Jews currently define the academic left, and are manifested in virulent teaching, writing, activism, scholarship, and other academic activities, purportedly in pursuit of social justice
for the long-suffering, perennially victimized Palestinians.
Why the animus against democratic Israel in academe as the nation
defends itself from an unending campaign of aggression from Arab countries? One trend that has permeated the university—and that has had a subsequent influence on the way Israel is perceived—was the coming of two
watchwords of higher education: diversity and multiculturalism. Diversity
has seen administrations bending over backward to accommodate the sensitivities of minorities and perceived victims of the majority culture—usually
at the expense of fairness and rationality. Multiculturalism has brought with
it a type of moral relativism in which every country or victim group is
equal, regardless of what vagaries, weaknesses, or fundamental evil may
underpin its social structure.
Thus, the decades-old emphasis on bringing multiculturalism to campuses has meant that faculty as well as students have been seeped in an
ideology that refuses to demarcate any differences between a democratic
state struggling to protect itself (such as Israel) and aggressive, genocidal
foes who wish to destroy it with their unending assaults (such as Hamas and
Hezbollah). For the multiculturalist left, the moral strengths of the two parties are equivalent, even though the jihadist foes of Israel, for example, have
4. Schoenfeld, The Return.
2011]
411
waged an unending struggle with the stated aim of obliterating the Jewish
state through the murder of Jews.
Thus, this inclination to worship multiculturalism forces liberals to
make excuses for those cultures that have obvious, often irredeemable,
moral defects, such as the Islamist foes who currently threaten Israel and
the West. “The believer cannot accept the truth about Islamism or much of
Islam,” observed Jamie Glasov in his recent book, United in Hate: The
Left’s Romance with Tyranny and Terror, “because he would then have to
concede that not all cultures are equal, and that some cultures (e.g.,
America’s, with its striving for equality) are superior to others (e.g., Islam’s
structure of gender apartheid). For the believer to retain his sense of purpose and to avoid the collapse of his identity and community, such thoughts
must be suppressed at all cost.” One way these truths are “suppressed,” says
Glasov, is in those instances when liberals make their seemingly irrational
judgments about the essential worth of clearly defective culures—the construction of a curious double standard when looking at cultures other than
their own Western models.5
The visceral hatred by the left toward their favorite hobgoblins, imperialist America and its codependent oppressor, Israel, finds similar expression from other left-leaning, Israel-loathing professors, such as University
of Michigan’s Juan Cole, whose regular rants in his blog, Informed Comment, take swipes at Israeli and American defense, while simultaneously
excusing Arab complicity in violence or terror. In fact, according to Cole, it
is the militancy of the West that causes the endemic problems in the Middle
East, and marks America guilty for its moral and financial support of Israel.
“When Ariel Sharon sends American-made helicopter gunships and F-16s
to fire missiles into civilian residences or crowds in streets,” Cole wrote in
2004, “as he has done more than once, then he makes the United States
complicit in his war crimes and makes the United States hated among
friends of the Palestinians. And this aggression and disregard of Arab life
on the part of the proto-fascist Israeli right has gotten more than one American killed, including American soldiers.”6 There is, of course, no mention
in Cole’s fantasies about why American or Israeli soldiers would be
involved in military actions in the first place, affirming the view that it is
Western imperialism and oppression that disrupt and embroil the otherwise
taciturn political state of the Arab world.
5. Jamie Glasov, United in Hate: The Left’s Romance with Tyranny and Terror
(Los Angeles: WND Books, 2009).
6. Juan Cole, “Have Arabs or Muslims Always Hated Jews?” Informed Comment, December 14, 2004, http://www.juancole.com/2004/12/have-arabs-ormuslims-always-hated.html.
412
[ VOL. 3:407
Violence on the part of the oppressed is accepted by liberals because it
is deemed to be the fault of the strong nations whose subjugation of those
defenseless people is the cause of their violent resistance. In fact, when
leftist professors, such as Columbia University’s Joseph Massad, apologize
for Palestinian terror, they justify it by characterizing the very existence of
Israel as being morally defective, based, in their view, on its inherent racist
and imperialist nature—one of EUMC’s definitions of antisemitism. For
Massad in particular, nations that are racist and imperialistic cannot even
justify their own self-defense, while the victims of such oppressive regimes
are free to “resist,” based on the left’s notion of universal human rights—
but especially for the weak. “What the Palestinians ultimately insist on is
that Israel must be taught that it does not have the right to defend its racial
supremacy,” Massad wrote during the 2009 Israeli defensive incursions into
Gaza, “and that the Palestinians have the right to defend their universal
humanity against Israel’s racist oppression.”7
Academics’ charge of Israel as racist also enables liberals to excuse the
moral transgressions of the oppressed, and, as an extension of that thinking,
to single out Israel and America for particular and harsh scrutiny owing to
their perceived “institutionalized” racism and greater relative power. The
self-righteousness the left feels in pointing out Zionism’s essential defect of
being a racist ideology insulates it from having to also reflect on Arab transgressions, since, as Ruth Wisse has pointed out in If I Am Not for Myself:
The Liberal Betrayal of the Jews, liberals can excuse their own betrayal of
Israel by holding it fully responsible for the very hatreds it inspires.
“Ascribing to Israel the blame for its predicament, democratic countries can
pursue their self-interest free of any lingering moral scruple,” Wisse said.
“Israel is examined for its every moral failing to justify policies of disengagement, while the moral failings of Arab countries are considered no
one’s business but their own, so that their blatant abuses of human rights
should not get in the way of realpolitick.”8
The charge of racism against Israel, of course, has been increasingly
uttered by the Jewish state’s enemies, particularly after the 1975 United
Nations’ invidious proclamation that “Zionism is racism,” thereby branding
the very ideological existence of Israel as a racist act. “This issue [of Israel]
boils down to racism,” Julian Perez, a member of Yale University’s Students for Justice in Palestine wrote in the Yale Daily News, one of many
examples of this widely held view of Israel’s essential racist ideology. “An
7. Joseph Massad, “Israel’s Right To Defend Itself,” The Electronic Intifada,
January 20, 2009, http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10221.shtml.
8. Ruth Wisse, If I Am Not for Myself: The Liberal Betrayal of the Jews (New
York: The Free Press, 1992).
2011]
413
entire indigenous population is being denied their human rights by a colonial state that is based on religion and ethnicity,” he concluded, promulgating the myth that Palestinian Arabs were indigenous to the region that
became Israel, and that the existence of the Jewish state further denies
Arabs rights they would otherwise be enjoying had Israel not existed.9
Of the many libels from the world community against Israel, perhaps
none has gained such traction on campuses as the accusation that the Jewish
state now practices apartheid, that the checkpoints, security barrier, Israelionly roads, barricades, and other remnants of occupation are tantamount to
a racist system that victimizes the indigenous Palestinians, just as South
African apartheid oppressed and devalued indigenous blacks while stripping them of them civil rights. The same left-leaning activists from universities who carried the banner against the South African regime have now
raised that same banner—with the same accusatory language—and superimposed on Israel that it is yet another apartheid regime oppressing Third
World victims. Occasionally, the racism libel against Israel is momentarily
softened, as happened when the controversial Judge Richard Goldstone
(author of the Goldstone Report on the Gaza War, which severely rebuked
Israel’s actions in Operation Cast Lead) announced in a November 2011 oped in The New York Times that “In Israel, there is no apartheid.” But the
apartheid charge still resonates effectively on campuses and is used as a
theme for continuing to demonize Israel and call into question the Jewish
state’s moral standing in the community of nations.
This moral self-righteousness about Israeli racism from the left has
trickled down to campuses, where the same language is frequently heard as
part of student-run protests, divestment campaigns, class for boycotts, and
Israel-bashing in general. Former Bard professor Joel Kovel, the anti-Zionist who advocates dismantling Israel completely through the creation of a
single, binational state, was direct in his denunciation of Israel’s existential
sins, including the complicity of the United States in the oppression of the
Palestinians under what he too describes as an apartheid system. “The
recent efforts of activists to publicize the parallels between Israel and
apartheid South Africa, then, are an essential element in the one-state strategy,” Kovel told an interviewer. “The anti-Israeli-apartheid campaign is
energizing forces of opposition across the world to build a powerful political movement to oppose Zionism and its lobbyists in the major capitalist/
imperialist countries. This is significant, because Israel simply cannot sustain itself without the support of the capitalist/imperialist powers, the
9. Julian Perez, “Divest Now from a Racist Government,” Yale Daily News,
November 15, 2002, http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2002/nov/15/divest-now
-from-a-racist-government.
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[ VOL. 3:407
United States in particular. Its current prosperity is entirely dependent on
them.”10
This kind of language in academia helps reinforce the left’s notion that
the imperialism of Western nations is once again responsible for setting up
racist, oppressive caste systems in developing countries, systems that have
to be dismantled through protest, resistance, and divestment campaigns. It
has also formed the basis of divestment petitions that become “working
documents” in the strategic vilification of Israel. A January 2003 document
created by New Jersey Solidarity and the Rutgers University Campaign for
Divestment from Israeli Apartheid, “Acting for Human Rights, Taking a
Stand for Justice,” for instance, proclaimed that “The world, and specifically the United States, can no longer be silent about the criminal Israeli
regime. Conceived by colonial powers without the consent of the indigenous Palestinian people, the State of Israel has continued to pursue its institutionalized policies of racism, discrimination and oppression.” What’s
more, the petition claimed, the United States, in providing continuous financial support for Israel, was directly responsible for the social injustices taking place in the occupied territories. “Unlike other countries receiving
foreign aid,” the petition continued, “Israel’s aid is unencumbered with
restrictions—thus, it may be used directly to promote settlements, engage in
military incursions inside the occupied territories, and other acts in violation
of international law.”11
The much-reviled security barrier, which Israel began building around
the West Bank in 2005 as a tactic to reduce terror attacks on its citizenry
(and which has been successful in reducing the frequency of those attacks
by 90 percent), is, in the eyes of Israel’s critics, not a means of defense, but
what is indiscriminately termed the “apartheid wall,” a type of racial fence
built merely to create Palestinian “Bantustans,” which segregates Jews from
Arabs, and which is, for many, emblematic of Israel’s never-ending ambition to “steal” Arab land, disrupt Palestinian life, and expand its Zionist
dream to ever-broader borders. “Today in Palestine,” Humza Chowdhry, a
graduate student at San Jose State University, wrote in the school’s newspaper, the Spartan Daily, “an apartheid wall continues to be constructed
10. Joel Kovel, “The One-State Solution: Zionism and the Future of Israel/Palestine,” Briarpatch, July 20, 2007, http://briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/theone-state-solution-zionism-and-the-future-of-israelpalestine.
11. New Jersey Solidarity; Rutgers University Campaign for Divestment from
Israeli Apartheid. Divestment for Israeli Apartheid: Acting for Human Rights, Taking a Stand for Justice, 2003, http://www.rutgersdivest.org/whydivest.html.
2011]
415
around the region with land grabs at every corner cutting through college
campuses and dividing families.”12
Thus, the charge of apartheid is valuable to Israel’s detractors, for it
both devalues the nation by accusing it of perpetuating what is to the left
the greatest crime—racism—in the form of apartheid, which Israel enforces
with the complicity of the United States, while simultaneously absolving
Arabs of responsibility for the onslaught of terror they continue to inflict on
Israel. By pointing to the weakness of the oppressed Palestinians against the
superior military and economic might of Israel, the rationale that the wall
was built for as a security measure is made to look ridiculous, as if Israel
has nothing to fear by being surrounded by a sea of jihadist foes bent on its
destruction.
Coupled with academia’s fervent desire to make campuses socially
ideal settings where racial and cultural strife cease to exist is the other
newly popular impulse: to inculcate students with a longing for what is
called “social justice,” a nebulous term, lifted from Marxist thought, that
empowers left-leaning administrators and faculty with the false ethical
security derived from feeling that they are bringing positive moral and ethical precepts to campuses.
For the left, according to conservative commentator David Horowitz,
social justice is “the concept of a world divided into oppressors and
oppressed.”13 Those seeking social justice, therefore, do so with the intention of leveling the economic, cultural, and political playing fields; they
seek to reconstruct society in a way that disadvantages the powerful and the
elites, and overthrows them if necessary—in order that the weak and dispossessed can acquire equal standing. In other words, the left yearns for a
utopian society that does not yet exist, and is willing to reconstruct and
overturn the existing status quo—often at a terrible human cost—in the
pursuit of seeking so-called “justice” for those who, in their view, have
been passed over or abused by history.
In the mind of the academic left, coming out of years of seeking social
justice and diversity for everyone by applying low standards to all, there are
no superior national behaviors; all nations are equal in value and in the
court of world opinion.
Professor Bruce Thornton of California State Fresno saw an intellectual defect on the part of left-leaning academics who serve up these apolo12. Humza Chowdhry, “The Holocaust of Our Era,” Spartan Daily, March 18,
2008, http://spartandaily.com/2.14808/letter-to-the-editor-the-holocaust-of-our-era1.1935770.
13. David Horowitz, Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left
(Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2004).
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[ VOL. 3:407
gies for terror on behalf of the heroic self-determination of the Palestinians,
and who see homicidal attacks on Israeli civilians at cafes and on buses as
being the same rational actions as the defensive actions of the Israeli government in trying to protect its populace from attack. Leftists not only
equate the acts of violence from both sides; they also give greater credibility from the nihilistic violence of terror out of what Thornton called “the
sentimental Third-Worldism that idealizes the non-Western ‘other,’ ” and
from another troubling trend in the politics of the left, what he observed as
“the juvenile romance with revolutionary violence.”14
This rationalization that violence is an acceptable, if not welcome,
component of seeking social justice—that is, that the inherent “violence” of
imperialism, colonialism, or capitalism will be met by the same violence as
the oppressed attempt to throw off their oppressors—is exactly the style of
self-defeating rationality that has proven to be an intractable part of the
age’s war on terror. This trait, in which leftists flirt with a romanticized idea
of insurrection and violence, seems to confirm Jamie Glazov’s thesis that
the left’s current “romance with Islamism is just a logical continuation of
the long leftist tradition of worshipping America’s foes . . ., with militant
Islamism now viewed as a valiant form of ‘resistance’ against American
imperialism and oppression.” For Glasov, sympathy for jihadists is part of
an enduring ideological legacy, and “the Left clearly continues to be
inspired by its undying Marxist conviction that capitalism is evil and that
forces of revolution are rising to overthrow it—and must be supported.”15
Stanford University’s Joel Beinin, for instance, a self-avowed Marxist
and former president of the Middle Eastern Studies Association, specifically excused Palestinian violence during the first Intifada in a piece entitled “Was the Red Flag Flying There?” “Palestinian attacks on civilians
(and even armed soldiers) were widely condemned as terrorism by international opinion and media,” Beinin wrote, but terrorism was clearly the
“Palestinians’ primary weapon of resistance” given the political impediment they faced—namely, the “colonialist thrust of the Zionist project,” and
the complicity of hegemonic, imperialist powers in inspiring the terror
wrought against them.16
14. Bruce Thornton, “High Anxiety: How Modernity Feeds Arab Anti-Semitism,” VictorHanson.com, December 20, 2006, http://www.victorhanson.com/
articles/thornton122006PF.html.
15. Glasov, United in Hate.
16. David Horowitz, “Joel Beinin: Apologist for Terrorism,” FrontPage
Magazine.com, May 19, 2006, http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?
ARTID=4357.
2011]
417
When he did admit to Palestinian terrorism, Beinin wove a fabulous
tale about relatively innocent stone-throwing on the part of restless Arab
teenagers that escalated into violence and the death of civilians on both
sides only after Israel’s disproportionate and unreasonable response to protect its citizens from being murdered. “The typical pattern for the first several weeks of the intifada was that Palestinian civilians engaged in peaceful
protest marches,” Beinin wrote, attempting to make the jihadists seem Gandhi-like in their non-violent approach to social change. Beinin admits, however, that “toward the end of the protests, youths taunted and threw stones
at Israeli troops . . .,” causing the “soldiers [to fire] on stone-throwers and
non-stone-throwers alike, rapidly escalating their responses . . . .”17
Similarly, Joel Kovel has seen terrorism as the logical, and excusable,
end result of occupation—something for which, in his view, not only Israelis but all Jews must share in the blame. “Why have a substantial majority
of Jews,” he wrote in Tikkun magazine, “chosen to flaunt world opinion in
order to rally about a state that essentially has turned its occupied lands into
a huge concentration camp and driven its occupied peoples to such gruesome expedients as suicide bombing?”
Most curious has been the betrayal of Israel by some liberal Jewish
academics, who, poisoned by a pathology that enables them to deflect the
hatred of others by absorbing it themselves, have reacted by attacking the
Jewish state, the hatred of which is unavoidably tarring them as Jews, in a
prejudice they are unwilling to have directed at them. As one example, Professor Jennifer Lowenstein, director of Middle Eastern studies at the University of Wisconsin, glorified Palestinian resistance and the yearning for
Arab self-determination while describing Israel as a nation that “speaks
with a viper’s tongue over the multiple amputee of Palestine whose head
shall soon be severed from its body in the name of justice, peace and security.” Then there was the late Tony Judt, of New York University, who
claimed that Israel is “an oddity among nations,” which no one wants to
have in existence “because it is a Jewish state in which one community—
Jews—is set above others, in an age when that sort of state has no place,”
ultimately meaning that as a Jew, Judt will have to suffer the moral scolding
of the world’s antisemites on behalf of Israel’s sin of merely existing—
something he is disinclined to do.18 Echoing one of Israel-haters’ current
favorite slanders is Richard Falk, professor emeritus of international law
and policy at Princeton University and the UN’s preposterously titled “Special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories
17. Horowitz, “Joel Beinin.”
18. Tony Judt, “Israel: The Alternative,” The New York Review of Books, October 23, 2003.
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occupied since 1967,” who wondered if it was “an irresponsible overstatement to associate the treatment of Palestinians with this criminalized Nazi
record of collective atrocity?” on the part of Israel, and then quickly
answered his own question by saying, “I think not.”19
SAIDISM
AND THE
ACADEMIC ROOTS
OF
PALESTINIANISM
Were it not for Edward W. Said, the Palestinian cause may have
echoed through the halls of the United Nations, and influenced diplomacy
and statecraft in the Middle East and in the West, but never have captured
the imagination of academe. Said, a professor of comparative literature at
Columbia University, published in 1978 a provocative and highly influential book, Orientalism, that not only had a profound effect on the direction
of Middle East studies here and abroad, but eventually provided a foundation for the intellectual aspect of Palestinianism, and inspired reverence
from the left and the intellectual elite.
Orientalism gave expression to Said’s belief that the West’s perception
of the Middle East—indeed, the way the East was understood—was the
product of cultural imperialism, the tendency, in his view, of Western
scholars, artists, writers, sociologists, archeologists, and others to define the
East based on its presumed cultural, racial, intellectual, and political inferiority. Not only was this practice endemic in the West’s relations with the
East, but it represented an insidious aspect in the study and understanding
of the Orient by the Occident—that is, Orientalism was, in Said’s words, “a
Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the
Orient.” More pointedly, Said announced that no European was even capable of studying the East without superimposing his or her own cultural
biases and “intellectual imperialism,” leading Said to the breathtaking thesis
that “every European, in what he could say about the Orient, was . . . a
racist, an imperialist, and almost totally ethnocentric.”20
Here, Zionism is the “construct” superimposed on the East (and the
hapless Palestinians) by the imperialistic West, another form of aggressive
Orientalism. The act of dispossession is itself a violent, racist act, Said
asserted, based on the assumption that Western colonial settlers can create a
narrative that empowers them and deprives the Eastern “other” of his property and history. Orientialism empowered non-Westerners to believe in the
inherent racism and imperialism of Western scholarship and politics, and,
according to Martin Kramer in his insightful book, Ivory Towers on Sand:
19. Richard Falk, “Slouching Toward a Palestinian Holocaust.” Middle East,
June 29, 2007.
20. Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979).
2011]
419
The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America, is one of Said’s lasting
contributions to the intellectual climate on campuses when scholars took
sides on issues affecting the Middle East. Orientalism, according to Kramer,
“also enshrined an acceptable hierarchy of political commitments, with Palestine at the top, followed by the Arab nation and the Islamic world. They
were the long-suffering victims of Western racism, American imperialism,
and Israeli Zionism—the three legs of the orientalist [sic] stool.”21
Once the Saidian post-colonialists could neutralize the impact of the
West in its assessment of the Orient (which for Said and his disciples had
come to mean specifically the Middle East), they initiated an entire intellectual enterprise that devalued any scholarship conducted by Westerners,
called into question the justice of the imposition of Western culture on nonWestern nations, and, in the case of Israel, denounced the creation of this
European, colonial settler-state, a cultural “construct” in the midst of the
passive, less powerful Muslim world. M. Shahid Alam, for instance, a professor of history at Northeastern University, regularly rants in the virulent
online journal Counterpunch about the perfidy of Israel, echoing Said’s
delineation of the hegemonic, racist West imposing its cultural will on the
East. “This is the language of racial superiority[,] the doctrine that believes
in a hierarchy of races,” Alam wrote about Israel, “where the higher races
have rights and inferior races are destined for extinction or a marginal existence under the tutelage of higher races. Under the Zionist doctrine, the
Jews are a higher race . . . This superiority is also empirically established:
the Zionists wanted to take Palestine from the Palestinians and they made it
a fact.”22
Said’s charge of Orientalism also stripped Western scholars of their
standing in Middle Eastern studies, discrediting them and their potential
contribution to scholarly inquiry because of their innate biases and Orientalist orientation. If Western academics were no longer able to conduct scholarship about the Orient that was authentic and valid, who, then, could? The
answer, of course, was clear: Middle Easterners and Arab-Americans, who,
after the publication of Orientalism, began to fill the academic slots in
departments of Middle Eastern studies in increasing numbers in a type of
academic affirmative action program.
The language of the “scholarship” of these post-colonial academics is
often harsh, and, when involving Israel, sometimes borders on the kind of
21. Martin Kramer, Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America (Washington, DC: The Washington Institute for Near East Policy,
2001).
22. M. Shahid Alam, “How to Be a Good Victim,” Counterpunch, August 2728, 2005, http://www.counterpunch.org/2005/08/27/how-to-be-a-good-victim.
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raw, antisemitic ranting that is constant in the state-controlled media of the
Arab world. As an example, Hamid Dabashi, Hagop Kevorkian Professor of
Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia, ensconced in the
same department where Said himself once sat, wrote a psychobabble-filled
narrative during a visit to Israel. Published in Al-Ahram Weekly, it dehumanizes the entire Jewish state in language that drips with repulsive images
and hatred:
What they call “Israel” is no mere military state. A subsumed militarism,
a systemic mendacity with an ingrained violence constitutional to the
very fusion of its fabric, has penetrated the deepest corners of what these
people have to call their “soul” . . . Half a century of systematic maiming
and murdering of another people has left its deep marks on the faces of
these people . . . There is . . . a vulgarity of character that is bone-deep
and structural to the skeletal vertebrae of its culture. No people can perpetrate what these people and their parents and grandparents have perpetrated on Palestinians and remain immune to the cruelty of their own
deeds.23
This lurid, hateful language used in the critiquing of Israel, given academic respectability by an Ivy League professor, has also begun to show
itself in the attitudes and language of students—who themselves regularly
engage in half-truths, counter-historical appraisals of Middle Eastern history, and emotional outbursts bordering on what, in a different context,
might well be considered antisemitic hate speech.
CHOMSKY, FINKELSTEIN, AND SOME OF ISRAEL’S OTHER
ACADEMIC DETRACTORS
In the morally incoherent pantheon of the academic defamers of Israel,
perhaps no single individual has emerged as the paradigmatic libeler, the
most vitriolic and widely followed character in an inglorious retinue as Norman Finkelstein, late of DePaul University. Finkelstein has loudly and notoriously pronounced his extreme views on the Middle East, not to mention
his loathing of what he has called the Holocaust “industry,” something he
has called an “outright extortion racket”; in fact, he blames Jews themselves
for antisemitism. Writing in Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, his off-handed, sardonic response to Harvard
professor Alan Dershowitz’s book, Chutzpah, Finkelstein accused Jewish
leadership, a group he defines as a “repellent gang of plutocrats, hoodlums,
23. Hamid Dabashi, “For a Fistful of Dust: A Passage to Palestine,”Al-Ahram
Weekly, September 23-29, 2004, http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/709/cu12.htm.
2011]
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and hucksters,” of creating a “combination of economic and political
power” from which “has sprung, unsurprisingly, a mindset of Jewish superiority.” He has called Nobel Prize winner Eli Wiesel, Holocaust survivor
and author of Night, a “clown.” What is more, he continued, echoing the
familiar refrain that it Jews themselves who inspire antisemitism, “from this
lethal brew of formidable power, chauvinistic arrogance, feigned (or
imagined) victimhood, and Holocaust-immunity to criticism has sprung a
terrifying recklessness and ruthlessness on the part of American Jewish
elites. Alongside Israel, they are the main fomenters of antisemitism in the
world today.”24
Finkelstein, who was denied tenure at DePaul, has now also adopted
the position that this professional setback is the direct result of being bold
enough to speak up against Zionism and Israel, and he has been punished
into silence accordingly. Despite this analysis of why his professional academic career has stalled, Finkelstein has now become what Washington
University professor Edward Alexander called “the dream-Jew of the
world’s anti-Semites,”25 and regularly visits college campuses nationwide
to speak at rallies, anti-Israel events, and symposia and conferences where
anti-Israel, anti-American biases infect scholarship and undermine the credibility of the events. In fact, suggested StandWithUs’s Roz Rothstein, Finkelstein’s “true occupation is as a member of a traveling circus, a freak
show of anti-Semites who promote anti-Israel propaganda from campus to
campus.”26
While Finkelstein was busy demonizing Israel and America at his
many campus appearances as a lecturer, he coddled homicidal Palestinians
and defended terrorists. In 2009, when Israel was pounding Hamas
strongholds to weaken the terrorist underbelly and minimize the likelihood
of continuing rocket attacks into southern Israeli towns, Finkelstein, with
apologetics matching those of Harvard University’s Sara Roy, wildly proclaimed it was Hamas, not Israel, who had kept the truce and was softening
its rhetoric, and it was Hamas, not Israel, who actually wanted peace.
Hamas has pure political intentions and passively yearns for truces and safe
borders, according to Mr. Finkelstein, while the invidious state of Israel,
fearing moderate Arab foes who would force it into peace, is obdurate, con24. Norman Finkelstein, Beyond Chutzpah (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2008), 85.
25. Edward Alexander, “Academics Against Israel: Martin Jay Explains How
Jews Cause Anti-Semitism,”Ariel Center for Policy Research.org, December 23,
2009, http://www.acpr.org.il/ENGLISH-NATIV/issue1/alexander-1.htm.
26. Roz Rothstein, “Beware the Finkelstein Syndrome.” The Jewish Journal of
Greater Los Angeles, June 8, 2006: http://www.jewishjournal.com/opinion/article/
beware_the_finkelstein_syndrome_20060609/.
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niving, and bellicose. In fact, Finkelstein suggested, Israel was collectively
going mad, while everyone else in the rational world yearned for Middle
Eastern peace:
I think Israel, as a number of commentators pointed out, is becoming
an insane state. And we have to be honest about that. While the rest of the
world wants peace, Europe wants peace, the US wants peace, but this
state wants war, war and war. In the first week of the massacres, there
were reports in the Israeli press that Israel did not want to put all its
ground forces in Gaza because it was preparing attacks on Iran. Then
there were reports it was planning attacks on Lebanon. It is a lunatic
state.27
If Finkelstein lives in an academic netherworld of political fantasies,
conspiracies, and intellectually imbecilic distortions of history and fact, his
spiritual mentor, MIT professor emeritus of linguistics Noam Chomsky, has
inhabited a similar ideological sphere, but has become an even more widely
known, eagerly followed creature of the Israel-hating, America-hating,
antisemitic left. Chomsky’s vituperation against America has been a defining theme in his intellectual jihad, but an obsessive, apoplectic hatred for
Israel has more completely dominated his screeds and spurious scholarship.
In all of his work, suggested Paul Bogdaner, an essayist who has extensively examined Chomsky’s “scholarly” output, “one theme is constant: his
portrayal of Israel as the devil state in the Middle East, a malevolent institutional psychopath whose only redeeming feature is the readiness of its own
left-wing intelligentsia to expose its uniquely horrifying depravity.”28
And Israeli Jews are not solely responsible for the crimes of the Jewish
state; American Jews, too, in Chomsky’s opinion, share culpability. “In the
American Jewish community,” he stated, “there is little willingness to face
the fact that the Palestinian Arabs have suffered a monstrous historical
injustice, whatever one may think of the competing claims. Until this is
recognized, discussion of the Middle East crisis cannot even begin.”29
Indicting American Jews for the offenses he perceives as having been perpetrated by Israel is another way in which Chomsky allows his rabid antiZionism to engulf Diaspora Jews as well, making them morally responsible
27. Selcuk Gultasli, “Norman Finkelstein: Israel Is Committing a Holocaust in
Gaza,” Today’s Zaman, January 19, 2009, http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/
detaylar.do?load=detay&link=164483.
28. Paul Bogdanor, “The Devil State: Chomsky’s War Against Israel,”
PaulBogdanor.com, December 17, 2009, http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomsky/
bogdanor.pdf.
29. Noam Chomsky, Peace in the Middle East? Reflections on Justice and
Nationhood (New York: Pantheon Books, 1974.
2011]
423
for the crimes of the Jewish state—with which they may, or may not, share
any affinity. What is more, Jews’ support of Israel, and their abrasive and
powerful presence in the world, are factors contributing to the increase in
world-wide antisemitism—not, of course, the malevolent impulses and psychological defects of Jew-hating antisemites themselves.
“Jews in the US are the most privileged and influential part of the
population,” Chomsky claimed. Not only that, but with the same sentiment
articulated in such spurious “histories” as The Protocols of the Elders of
Zion, or even the Israel Lobby, he asserted that Jews strove for even more
omnipotence, and that “privileged people want to make sure they have total
control, not just 98% control”—the basis of “why antisemitism is becoming
an issue. Not because of the threat of antisemitism; they want to make sure
there’s no critical look at the policies the US (and they themselves) support
in the Middle East.”30
Jewish power is a repellent notion for Chomsky, just as the hegemonic
might he ascribes to the terror states of Israel and America—not the destabilizing barbarism of Islamism—is the scourge of peace. The existence of
Israel not only subjugates the long-suffering Arabs, but also is driving the
entire globe toward annihilation, Chomsky suggested, using the same image
used by Finkelstein of Israel’s having succumbed into a kind of moral madness. Its very psychosis had become a source of power, and the exercise of
that power would bring about global genocide. “Israel’s ‘secret weapon
. . .,’ ” Chomsky wrote, evoking an apocalyptic vision, “is that it may
behave in the manner of what have sometimes been called ‘crazy states’ in
the international affairs literature . . . eventuating in a final solution from
which few will escape.”31
ACADEMIC FREE SPEECH
AS A
COVER
FOR
CAMPUS ANTISEMITISM
While academics fulminate regularly against Israel and America, give
tacit support to these countries’ enemies, and heap vitriol on the Jewish
state and its supporters—much of it approaching or exceeding what would
be considered reasonable or rational criticism of a democratic state—they
regularly cloak themselves with the protective shield of “academic free
speech,” that sacrosanct philosophy that has come to mean that liberal academics can express themselves, even loathsomely, and expect no one to
question their poisonous rhetoric or answer back with a vigorous defense
30. Noam Chomsky, “Anti-Semitism, Zionism, and the Palestinians,” Variant.org.uk, October 11, 2002, http://www.variant.org.uk/16texts/Chomsky.html.
31. Noam Chomsky, Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians (London: Pluto Press, 1999), 468-69.
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from the other side. When the left derides Israel and promotes false, biased,
or hateful ideas about Zionism, provoking the Israel government, or military policies, and defenders to speak back (as they did, for instance, when
Walt and Mearsheimer published their controversial study of the “Israel
Lobby”) and commentators to call them on their defective views, the common claim is that the outspoken critics of Israel have been “silenced” by the
accusation of antisemitism and that their free speech is being “suppressed.”
It is, of course, perfectly acceptable for academics to question the status quo and challenge prevailing ideas as they help students to find some
truth amid many ideological options; indeed, that is one of the chief roles of
the university, and should be. What is not acceptable, and in fact is damaging the very core of higher education in its one-sided, doctrinaire approach
to learning, is the pattern of lies, contortions, and mistaken assumptions
endemic to discussions about the politics, military actions, and very existence of Israel.
Moreover, while leftist and radical professors profess to be guarding
the tradition of academic freedom and free speech on their campuses, universities as a lot have been subsumed by a rank hypocrisy when it comes to
actually balancing competing views from different sides of academic
debates. What has been dubbed “political correctness” is actually the subversion of the stated goal of promoting the free expression of all views
within the university community. What it has come to mean, unfortunately,
is that only those views conforming to prevailing political orthodoxies are
considered to be “acceptable” by the guardians of what may be said and
who may say it.
Unfortunately, concern for Jewish students’ well-being and emotional
safety do not seem to be viewed with any great alarm by college administrations. This has meant that Jewish students at UC Irvine, San Francisco State
University, and York University in Toronto, to name a few schools, have
had to endure being assaulted by waves of anti-Israel propaganda, vitriolic
speeches, hate-fests, and lengthy campaigns of anti-Zionist vilification,
including physical intimidation and assaults. University officials have been
slow to address these incidents, and have not regularly taken strong public
moral stands against the professors and students groups who have conjured
up this odious brew against Israel and Jews.
That does not mean that university administrations are unaware of certain groups’ concerns when their rights or “feelings” are trampled on; it
does mean that Jewish students—like Caucasians, heterosexuals, Christians,
conservatives, or Republicans—are not perceived as being a group needing
protection. So, in the greatest moral fraud perpetrated by universities claiming to be diverse and all-inclusive, diversity on most campuses today
encompasses diversity of thought, as Professor Thornton put it, on “a con-
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425
tinuum that starts at liberal and ends at radical leftist.”32 In their mission to
protect the sensibilities and emotional well-being of identified campus victim groups, universities, often violating their own written guidelines and
codes of behavior, have instituted speech codes to prevent what is generally
called “hate speech” now, but that has become a tactic to marginalize, and
exclude, the speech and ideology of those with whom liberals and leftists do
not agree. These tactics are evident as Muslim students’ sensibilities
become offended when critics of Islamism come to speak on campuses;
administrators now deem offensive behavior and speech to be “harassing”
and “intimidating when it is directed at Muslims or Islam,” not merely
expressive. On college campuses, to paraphrase George Orwell, all views
are equal, but some are more equal than others.
The moral relativism that imbues academic free speech was clearly at
work on one campus during the tenure of Lawrence Summers as Harvard’s
president between 2001 and 2006. Summers’ ignoble loss of his presidency
confirmed the reality that, despite its claims to the contrary, academia, even
at hallowed Harvard, was no longer the certain intellectual marketplace for
open discourse and free speech, even on matters of controversy where vigorous debate and alternate views would be productive.
One of Summers’ defining moral decisions was embodied in his controversial 2002 speech, in which he rejected a divestment petition to withdraw funds from Israel signed by, among others, seventy-four Harvard
professors, many from the College of Arts and Sciences. He observed that
antisemitic and anti-Israel attitudes, once the invidious products of fringe
groups and right-wing cranks, had begun to appear on college campuses,
that “profoundly anti-Israel views are increasingly finding support in progressive intellectual communities. Serious and thoughtful people,” he said
in the most pointed section of his comments, “are advocating and taking
actions that are antisemitic in their effect if not their intent.”
But even as he was cautioning divestment proponents to examine the
true nature of their attitudes and the ramifications of their actions, Summers, unlike his critics, was willing to let even foolish views be heard. “We
should always respect the academic freedom of everyone to take any position,” he said. But, he added, those who take provocative positions have to
assume that their views can and will be challenged; “that academic freedom
does not include freedom from criticism.”33
32. Bruce Thornton, “Ideology Trumps Truth on Campus,” City Journal,
November 25, 2007, http://www.city-journal.org/html/eon2007-11-21bt.html.
33. Lawrence Summers, “Address at Morning Prayers,” Cambridge, Massachusetts, September 17, 2002, http://www.harvard.edu/president/speeches/summers_
2002/morningprayers.php.
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One thing those on the left despise is being questioned about their
integrity, and so it was with the indignant petition-signers and their fellow
travelers, who accused Summers of being intellectually oppressive and “stifling debate” by questioning the morality of their actions and raising a point
about the true intent of the divestment effort: singling out Israel specifically
among all nations for economic sanctions. The offended faculty never forgave Summers for expressing his opinion, engaging in intellectual inquiry,
and naming them for what they were.
That same sensitivity to language about Israel and antisemitism did not
seem to faze faculty members and liberals, however, when Harvard’s
English department in 2002 invited poet Tom Paulin to speak as a prestigious Morris Gray Lecturer, and did so, according to English Department
chair Lawrence Buell, to affirm a “belief in the importance of free speech as
a principle and practice in the academy.” That of course is a noble and
purposeful role for universities, save for the fact that Paulin, poet and lecturer at Oxford University, had been quoted articulating the appalling sentiment that “Brooklyn-born” Jewish settlers [in Israel] should be “shot dead.”
He told Egypt’s al-Ahram Weekly, “I think they are Nazis, racists, I feel
nothing but hatred for them. I can understand how suicide bombers feel . . .
I think attacks on civilians in fact boost morale.”34
In those instances when controversy arises because Israel-hating or
antisemitic professors have publicly expressed radical views, not only is
there general silence from most faculty and administrators about how these
views may have harmed the collegiality of academic community, but many
will reflexively defend the speech, regardless of how outrageous the content
or potentially “hurtful” the message. In January of 2009, for example, a
tenured sociology professor, William I. Robinson, of the University of California Santa Barbara, sent an odious e-mail to the 80 students in his Sociology 130SG: The Sociology of Globalization course. Under the heading
“Parallel Images of Nazis and Israelis,” the e-mail displayed a photo-collage of 42 side-by-side, grisly photographs meant to suggest a historical
equivalence between Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in its occupation of
Gaza and the Third Reich’s subjugation of the Warsaw Ghetto and its treatment of Jews during the Holocaust. Robinson sent the e-mail without supplying any context for it, nor did it seemingly have any specific relevance to
or connection with the course’s content.
Robinson’s e-mail contained the following commentary:
34. Robert F. Worth, “Poet Who Spoke Against Israel Is Reinvited to Talk at
Harvard,” The New York Times, November 21, 2002, http://www.nytimes.com/
2002/11/21/education/21POET.html.
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427
I am forwarding some horrific, parallel images of Nazi atrocities against
the Jews and Israeli atrocities against the Palestinians. Perhaps the most
frightening are not those providing a graphic depiction of the carnage but
that which shows Israeli children writing “with love” on a bomb that will
tear apart Palestinian children.
Gaza is Israel’s Warsaw—a vast concentration camp that confined
and blockaded Palestinians, subjecting them to the slow death of malnutrition, disease and despair, nearly two years before their subjection to the
quick death of Israeli bombs. We are witness to a slow-motion process of
genocide . . ., a process whose objective is not so much to physically
eliminate each and every Palestinian than to eliminate the Palestinians as
a people in any meaningful sense of the notion of people-hood.35
In response to the inflammatory e-mail, two students dropped the
course and immediately filed a complaint with the university’s Academic
Senate’s Charges Committee, and also went to two off-campus advocacy
groups, the Anti-Defamation League and StandWithUs. Not surprisingly,
charges of “antisemitism” came from some of Robinson’s critics, as well as
from those who believed, like StandWithUs’s Roz Rothstein, that professors “should [not] be using their class roster to sell their own political opinions . . . Our concern,” she said, “is that he abused his position and that it
was unrelated with his class.”36
But many students and professorial colleagues at UCSB immediately
came Robinson’s defense, forming an ad hoc group called the Committee to
Defend Academic Freedom (CDAF) at UCSB, “dedicated to organizing
students on campus against nationwide campaigns against political repression,” and also resisting what they ominously referred to as a “silencing
campaign” waged against Robinson by outside forces who had undertaken a
“flagrant and baseless affronts to academic freedom on this campus and to
Professor Robinson in particular.” In June, five months after the university
had initiated its investigation into Robinson’s conduct, officials dismissed
all charges and terminated the case without any negative findings against
the sociology professor, and the CDAF smugly asserted that “the charge of
anti-Semitism [was] made in bad faith,” and that “its real purpose is to
vilify and stifle any honest critiques of the state of Israel’s policies and
practices.”37
35. Maane Khatchatourian and Jenna Ryan, “Officials Investigate Questionable
Email,” Daily Nexus, May 21, 2009, http://www.dailynexus.com/article.php?a=
19071.
36. Elliott Rosenfeld, “Investigation of Professor Forges Ahead,” Daily Nexus,
June 4, 2009, http://www.dailynexus.com/article.php?a=19161.
37. Committee to Defend Academic Freedom at UCSB, “About Us,” 2009,
http://sb4af.wordpress.com/about-us/.
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Apparently, Professor Robinson shared the committee’s belief that sinister, outside “thought policemen” had instigated a campaign of suppression
against him. Like professors Matory and Walt at Harvard, Robinson knew
exactly where to assign blame for the scrutiny he had undergone as a result
of his provocative e-mail. “The Israel lobby is possibly the most powerful
lobby in the United States,” he told the Daily Nexus, UCSB’s student newspaper, repeating the same accusation that is common to those who have
actually acted in an antisemitic way, “and what they do is label any criticism of anti-Israeli conduct and practices as anti-Semitic. . . . This campaign is not just an attempt to punish me. The Israel lobby is stepping up its
vicious attacks on anyone who would speak out against Israeli policies.”38
So in Professor Robinson’s morally incoherent mind, depicting Israeli Jews
as the new Nazis who are committing genocide against the Palestinians is
merely instructive content for a sociology course, but when those who
believe that the comparison between Nazis and Jews is a perverse and
libelous reading of historical fact answer back, it is a “vicious attack,” a
tactic of pro-Israel forces to deflect criticism and obscure the malignancy of
their deeds.
THE ANTI-ISRAEL ‘HECKLER’S VETO’:
SHOUTING DOWN CONSERVATIVE SPEECH
When campus radical and leftist professors are not moaning about how
the dreaded Israel Lobby is attempting to suppress all criticism of Israel, or
complaining about how any scrutiny of radical Islam, Palestinian terror, or
Arab intransigency constitutes “hate speech” that will intimidate or harass
Muslims, they have found other means to ensure that countervailing opinions about Israel and the Palestinians are shut out. With greater frequency,
Muslim student groups, radical, anti-Israel professors, and even college
officials have taken it upon themselves to either restrict the ability of conservative or pro-Israel speakers to appear on campuses, or to deny them
access to a campus altogether.
In October 2009, for example, St. Louis University’s College Republicans and Young America’s Foundation had invited conservative author
David Horowitz to deliver a talk entitled “An Evening with David
Horowitz: Islamo-Fascism Awareness and Civil Rights”—but university
administrators, once again choosing to avoid a close examination of radical
Islam, cancelled Horowitz’s planned appearance.
What St. Louis University’s administration had done in this instance
was essentially to exercise the “heckler’s veto,” shutting down speech with
38. Rosenfeld, “Investigation.”
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which it did not agree or that is felt was too controversial for certain protected minorities on campus. Ominously, however, and in seeming contradiction to the school’s own stated policy “to promote the free and open
exchange of ideas and viewpoints, even if that exchange proves to be offensive, distasteful, disturbing or denigrating to some,” this particular speech
was suppressed in advance of the event, based on a belief that the speaker’s
words would possibly insult Muslim students and inflame their sensibilities.
The school officials’ decision seemed to belie the university’s own
contention, in its “Policy Statement on Demonstrations & Disruption,” that
it “encourages students, faculty and staff to be bold, independent, and creative thinkers,” and that “fundamental to this process is the creation of an
environment that respects the rights of all members of the University community to explore and to discuss questions which interest them, to express
opinions and debate issues energetically and publicly, and to demonstrate
their concern by orderly means.”
There were troubling issues here, putting aside the basic question of
fairness of denying certain students, with certain political beliefs, the opportunity to invite speakers to campus to share their views. Horowitz’s speech
was canceled (and he had appeared, by his own account, on more than 400
campuses in the past), not because it might contain speech that was demonstrably false or even incendiary, but because some individuals might be
“offended” or “intimidated” by speech that they were perfectly free never to
hear.
“For me, it was . . . the content,” explained the university’s dean of
students, Scott Smith, in rationalizing the decision to rescind Horowitz’s
invitation to speak—“particularly, the blanketed use of the term IslamoFascism.”39 The school was also concerned that the speech would be seen
as “attacking another faith and seeking to cause derision on campus.” But
where does a college administration, whose own institution claims to value
speech that is even “offensive, distasteful, disturbing or denigrating to
some,” decide that this particular topic—radical Islam—cannot and should
not be spoken about? Is this not a relevant discussion in a world where,
since 9/11, over 15,000 acts of terror have been committed by murderous
radicals in Islam’s name? Does not an ideology that has as its aim the subjugation of other faiths and a world-wide caliphate under sharia law, and is
fueled by billions in petro dollars, deserve, and in fact require, some critique and evaluation?
39. Kelly Dunn, “Horowitz Speech Rejected by SLU,” The University News,
October 1, 2009, http://media.www.unewsonline.com/media/storage/paper953/
news/2009/10/01/News/Horowitz.Speech.Rejected.By.Slu-3790132.shtml.
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Most disingenuous is how institutions of higher education like St.
Louis University, while horrified by the prospect of a David Horowitz visit,
use their claims of academic free speech as a cover for regularly bringing
outrageous, out-of-the-mainstream views to campuses—either in studentrun organizations, in course materials and teaching philosophies, in the
sponsorship of festivals and cultural events, or in the person of controversial speakers and artists. For example, the concern over offending certain
student groups suddenly did not have the same sense of urgency when
speakers, with views certainly as controversial as Horowitz’s, were enthusiastically invited to the Washington University campus, notable among them
Norman Finkelstein, who spoke in 2007 as part of “Palestine Awareness
Week,” sponsored by the on-campus group Saint Louis University Solidarity with Palestine.
Horowitz had been prevented from speaking and shouted down by ideological bullies before. In 2007 at Emory University, as a guest of Emory’s
College Republicans, Horowitz was scheduled to speak to an audience of
some 300 people as part of that year’s Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week.
While boos, catcalls, and shouts of “Heil Hitler” filled the room, and protestors stood, backs turned to the stage, Horowitz attempted to deliver his
speech. Finally, the hecklers, raucous members of radical groups such as
Amnesty International, Veterans for Peace, Students for Justice in Palestine,
and the Muslim Student Association (MSA) were sufficiently intrusive and
belligerent enough to prevent Horowitz from speaking any further, and the
speech was cancelled as police, finally unable to calm the angry crowd,
escorted Horowitz off stage to safety.
Ideological thugs were also present at the University of Chicago in
October 2009 to greet Israel’s former prime minister Ehud Olmert, who was
invited to speak at Mandel Hall as part of the King Abdullah II Leadership
Lecture series organized by the Harris School of Public Policy. Dozens of
protestors inside the hall and some 100 outside, from Chicago’s Muslim
Students Association, Students for Justice in Palestine, as well as groups
from the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) and Northwestern, were
intent on disrupting the speech with catcalls, jeers, and outrageous threats
and condemnation, and were so effective in their incivility that the planned
20-minute presentation ran nearly an hour and a half. Police had to forcibly
drag a vociferous protestor out the door as others hurled invectives, condemnation, and epithets at Olmert, calling him a “murderer,” “war criminal,” and “racist.”
One student who had attended the speech, Frank Pucci, a political science and history major, wrote in the university’s student newspaper, The
Chicago Maroon, his view that “Ehud Olmert is not an academic who happens to have a difference of opinion that must be respected; he is responsi-
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ble for the deaths of thousands. As the first protester who stood cried out,
‘War crimes are not free expression.’ ” Not only that, Pucci claimed, but the
mere fact that Olmert was invited to speak was insulting and hurtful to the
campus community. In light of the grave moral injustice engendered by
Olmert’s presence, “the only responsible course of action is for the University of Chicago to apologize to the members of the Arab, Muslim, and proPalestinian community for allowing such a blatant display of bias and insolence against them.”40
Apparently, no groups of students were hurt and offended by “blatant
display[s] of bias and insolence against them” at Yale University, for example, when a former Taliban member matriculated on campus, or in 2003,
when Yale’s Afro-American Cultural Center and the Black Student Alliance invited Amiri Baraka, former Black Panther and the soon-thereafterdismissed, and embattled, poet laureate of New Jersey, to speak. It surprised
and annoyed some in the Yale community that Baraka—a virulent antiwhite, antisemitic, anti-Establishment leftist—was invited to the university
in the first place, but not Pamela George, assistant dean of Yale College and
director of the Cultural Center; she drew a comparison between Baraka’s
hate-filled visit to that of Yoni Fighel, a former Israeli general and soldier
who had come to Yale earlier that semester to engage in apolitical discussions on Middle East security and Israel.
Perhaps the comparison was made precisely because Mr. Baraka had
been under assault by many who were shocked by the conspiracy-laden
antisemitism of his poem “Somebody Blew Up America,” in which he
referred, among other wild claims, to Israel’s foreknowledge of and complicity in the bombing of the World Trade towers. But the poem also had
words to denigrate American culture, imperialism, the white race, Zionism,
and other sinister powers in Baraka’s cynical imagination.
But more revealing than the fact that such a seemingly antisemitic
speaker was invited, and then celebrated, at Yale was the reaction of one
student whose theory was that the only reason that there was controversy
about Baraka’s poetry and slurs of Jews was because, incredibly, that Jews
control the press. Writing one of his regular columns in the Yale Daily
News, Sahm Adrangi decided that, in this case—where, after all, it was only
Israel, Jews, and America being slurred—“student groups who invite controversial speakers ought to be congratulated, not condemned. Contrarian
thinkers and conspiracy theorists,” he mused, “expose us to vantage points
we rarely encounter in fellow Yalies. Their arguments are often more
40. Frank Pucci, “War crimes Are Not Free Expression,” Chicago Maroon,
October 20, 2009, http://www.chicagomaroon.com/2009/10/20/war-crimes-are-notfree-expression#.
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sophisticated than we’d expect and in debating them, we gain a deeper
understanding of our own opinions.”41
That aside, however, the real lesson to be gleaned from incendiary
anti-Israel speakers like Baraka “isn’t really about free speech,” Adrangi
cautioned; “it’s about how special interests manipulate the public discourse
to advance their agendas.” And who were those special interests attempting
to make much ado about Baraka’s poetic ravings? The Jewish press, of
course. “Jews tend to sympathize with Israel more so than non-Jews. And in
my three years at the Yale Daily News, Jewish students have comprised a
majority of management positions . . . .” Adrangi was quick to point out,
however, that he was not suggesting there was a conspiracy among Jewish
journalists to tilt the argument in Israel’s favor. “But,” he asked rhetorically, and apparently knowingly, “does the prevalence of Jews in American
media, business and politics help explain America’s steadfast support for
Israel, whose 35-year occupation of Palestinian lands is an affront to human
decency? Of course.”42
THE MUSLIM STUDENT ASSOCIATION AND ANTISEMITIC RADICALISM
CALIFORNIA CAMPUSES
ON
If any area of the United States can be identified as the epicenter of
anti-Israelism on campus, California, the nation’s most populous state, can
certainly be said to have earned that dubious distinction. In fact, observers
of out-of-control anti-Zionist and antisemitic activity on campuses consider
California’s universities to be the veritable ground zero of such vitriol, with
particularly troubling and persistent problems of radical student groups,
venom-spewing guest speakers, annual hate-fests targeting Israel and Jewish students, and a pervasive mood on campus in which Jewish students and
other pro-Israel faculty and students experienced visceral and real “harassment, intimidation and discrimination,” as a 2004 Zionist Organization of
America’s complaint to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil
Rights described the situation on one campus, the University of California
Irvine.
In fact, even after the U.S. Office of Civil Rights had initiated their
2004 inquiry into rampant antisemitism on campus—including at UC
Irvine, a focus of their study—a second similar effort, the “Task Force on
Anti-Semitism at the University of California, Irvine,” was launched in
41. Sahm Adrangi, “Not Just Another Conspiracy Theory: Manipulating
Anger,” Yale Daily News, February 26, 2003, http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/
2003/feb/26/not-just-another-conspiracy-theory-manipulating.
42. Adrangi, “Not Just Another Conspiracy.”
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December 2006 by the Hillel Foundation of Orange County and staffed by
local professionals, religious leaders, and academics. Feeling that the federal inquiry had uncovered some troubling trends on the Irvine campus, but
delivering a somewhat soft response to the university’s administration, the
Orange County task force decided to revisit some of the incidents in an
attempt to show a pattern of anti-Israelism and antisemitism as endemic to
the Irvine campus. Its stated goal was “to study, investigate and issue a
report on alleged incidents of racism and anti-Semitism at the University of
California Irvine (UCI). We are not singling out any specific group. We are
looking at all instances of alleged anti-Semitic and racist activity.” The U.S.
Office of Civil Rights, as the task force report noted, had focused more
specifically on issues of discrimination based on students’ national origin,
and the “investigation applied narrow legally technical analysis about
whether UCI violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its
implementing regulations.” The task force came to the following conclusions, based on their own extensive interviews with students, faculty, and
UCI administrators (at least those who agreed to respond to inquiries):
• Jewish students have been subject to physical and verbal harassment because they are Jewish and support Israel.
• Hate speech, both direct and symbolic, is directed at Jews by speakers and demonstrators.
• An annual week-long event sponsored by the Muslim Student
Union is an antisemitic hate fest targeting Israel and Jews using lies
and propaganda dating back to the antisemitism of the Middle
Ages.
• Speakers who are pro-Israel and/or those who condemn speakers
who espouse anti-American and anti-Israeli views are subject to
disruptive behavior by Muslim students and their supporters.
• Jewish students state that they are subject to a hostile class environment by faculty members who adopt an anti-Israel bias.
• Materials contained in certain Middle-East studies courses are
biased and indicative of a “leftist” orthodoxy that characterizes this
area of study.
• The UCI administration is not responsive to complaints by Jewish
students.
• Jewish students complain of a “double standard” when the administration enforces campus rules and regulations.43
43. Orange County Task Force, “Report on Anti-Semitism at UCI,” February
12, 2008, http://octaskforce.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/orange-county-task-forcereport-on-anti-semitism-at-uci.pdf.
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These are troubling assessments, but not at all uncommon on campuses
across the country, and in Canada and Great Britain, as well. Yet, despite
the two protracted investigations into antisemitic activities at UCI, the incidence of hate-fests, protests, and incendiary speakers has not subsided.
In fact, in May 2009, the Muslim Student Union continued its tradition
of sponsorship of vile, hate-spewing events to further demonize Israel, this
time an 18-day extravaganza offensively named “Israel: The Politics of
Genocide,” which preposterously proclaimed on their posters announcing
the event that Israel has resulted in “61 years of illegal occupation. 61 years
of statelessness. 61 years of systematic ethnic cleansing. The Palestinians
have lost thousands of lives and millions of have been displaced from their
homes. Despite all of this, their resolve remains steadfast, their resistance
enduring, their fire unflinching. However, though Israel continues to violate
international law and inflict these injustices, Palestinian blood stains our
hands, too.” If the astounding claim is made here that the existence of Israel
represents “61 years of illegal occupation,” then that either exposes a sore
lack of historical insight on the part of the sponsors, or, more likely, it
reflects the notion held in much of the Arab world that all of Israel—not
just the “occupied territories” gained in 1967—is “occupied” Muslim land
and that Israel is therefore “illegal” and not a nation at all.
The “Politics of Genocide” event included speeches by such notorious
figures as the vitriolic Amir-Abdel Malik-Ali, a black Imam associated with
the Masjid Al Islam mosque in Oakland and the frequent guest of the Irvine
MSU. Malik-Ali, former Nation of Islam member, convert to Islam, and
cheerleader for Hamas and Hezbollah, has been a ubiquitous, poisonous
presence on the Irvine campus who never hesitates to castigate Israel, Zionists, Jewish power, and Jews themselves as he weaves incoherent, hallucinatory conspiracies about the Middle East and the West. As an example,
UCI’s student newspaper, The New University, reported that Malik-Ali, in a
February 2004 speech, “America under Siege: The Zionist Hidden
Agenda,” “implied that Zionism is a mixture of ‘chosen people-ness [sic]
and white supremacy’; that the Iraqi war is in the process of ‘Israelization’;
that the Zionists had the ‘Congress, the media and the FBI in their back
pocket’; that the downfall of former Democratic [presidential] front-runner
Howard Dean was due to the Zionists; and that the Mossad [Israel’s intelligence agency] would have assassinated Al Gore if he had been elected [in
2000] just to bring Joe Lieberman (his Jewish vice president) to power.”44
Malik-Ali used a February 2005 MSU-organized event to proclaim
that “Zionism is a mixture, a fusion of the concept of white supremacy and
44. Discover the Networks, “Amir-Abdel Malik-Ali,” DisoverTheNetworks.org,
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2102.
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the chosen people.” He complained about Zionist control of the American
media, Zionist complicity in the war in Iraq, and Zionists’ ability to deflect
justified criticism. “You will have to hear more about the Holocaust when
you accuse them of their Nazi behavior,” he warned, after railing against
Zionist control of the press, the media, and the political decisions of the
American government. And what was his vision for Israel and the Palestinians? “One state. Majority rule. Check that out. Us. The Muslims.”45
In May 2006, speaking from a podium under a banner reading “Israel,
the 4th Reich,” Malik-Ali referred to Jews as “new Nazis” and “a bunch of
straight-up punks.” “The truth of the matter is your days are numbered,” he
admonished Jews everywhere. “We will fight you. We will fight you until
we are either martyred or until we are victorious.”46
Another guest speaker who regularly makes appearances on the MSA
hate-fest circuit is Muhammad al-Asi, an antisemitic, anti-America Muslim
activist from Washington, D.C., who has written, among other notorious
ideas, that “The Israeli Zionist are [sic] the true and legitimate object of
liquidation.”
At an MSU-sponsored event in February 2008, “From Auschwitz to
Gaza: The Politics of Genocide,” which tried to draw parallels between the
Holocaust and Hamas-controlled Gaza, al-Asi was a featured speaker. In his
remarks, he repeated the canard of Jewish control of world politics, suggesting that “Zionists or what some people call the Jewish lobby” had
reduced the United States to playing “second fiddle to the Israeli government.” This situation had to end, he warned, before the perfidious Zionists
draw America into yet another war for their own benefit. “How long are we
going to take the Israeli dog wagging the American tail?” he asked. “Now
the pro-Zionist, Israeli crowd in the United States says the United States
should go to war against Iran.”47
Just months after 9/11, al-Asi had similar invective to utter toward
Jews, in the context of Israeli oppression of Palestinians. Using his favorite
image of the ghetto when describing Jews, he observed that, “We have a
psychosis in the Jewish community that is unable to co-exist equally and
brotherly with other human beings. You can take a Jew out of the ghetto,
but you can’t take the ghetto out of the Jew, and this has been demonstrated
45. Terrorism Awareness Project, “The Muslim Student Union at the University
of California Irvine,” TerrorismAwareness.org, http://www.terrorismawareness.
org/muslim-groups-on-campus/128/the-muslim-student-union-at-the-university-ofcalifornia-irvine/.
46. Terrorism Awareness Project, “The Muslim.”
47. Anti-Defamation League, “Backgrounder: “Mohammad al-Asi, ADL.org,
http://www.adl.org/main_Anti_Israel/al_asi.htm.
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time and time again in Occupied Palestine.” What is worse, he continued,
this behavior on the part of the malicious Jews would likely continue, since
“now they have American diplomats and politicians and decision makers
and strategists in their pocket.”48
San Francisco State University is not far behind UC Irvine in the way
it has enabled its Muslim students’ organizations to create a veritable reign
of terror on campus against Jewish and pro-Israel students. Most notorious
was the Muslim student-sponsored, pro-Palestinian April 2002 demonstration at SFSU that included grotesque flyers and posters depicting a dead
Palestinian baby on a soup-can label imprinted with the words “Palestinian
children meat, slaughtered according to Jewish rites under American
license,” echoing the centuries-old blood libel of European antisemitism
that accused Jews of murdering Gentile children and using their blood to
bake matzos—a slander that has, not surprisingly, currently gained
credence in the Arab world.
Not content just to mount their own vile protests against Zionism,
Jews, and Israel, the following month the pro-Palestinian student groups
disrupted a vigil for Holocaust Remembrance Day, where some 30 Jewish
students who were reciting the Mourners’ Kaddish—the Jewish prayer for
the dead—were shouted down by protesters, who countered with grisly
prayers in memory of Palestinian suicide bombers. The pro-Palestinian
counter-demonstrators, armed with whistles and bull horns, physically
assaulted the Jewish students, spat on them, and screamed such epithets as
“Too bad Hitler didn’t finish the job,” “Get out or we will kill you,” “F**k
the Jews,” “Die racist pigs,” and “Go back to Russia, Jews.” The violence
escalated to the extent that San Francisco police officers finally had to usher
the Jewish students to safety off campus.
Laurie Zoloth, SFSU’s director of the program in Jewish studies at the
time of the incident, described the event in an open letter: “The police could
do nothing more than surround the Jewish students and community members who were now trapped in a corner of the plaza, grouped under the flags
of Israel, while an angry, out of control mob, literally chanting for our
deaths, surrounded us . . . There was no safe way out of the Plaza. We had
to be marched back to the Hillel House under armed S.F. police guard, and
we had to have a police guard remain outside Hillel.”49
In July 2006, SFSU’s General Union of Palestinian Students co-sponsored with Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition, yet another
48. Anti-Defamation League, “Backgrounder.”
49. Melissa Radler, “Anti-Semitic Riot at San Francisco State University,” Free
Republic.com, May 16, 2002, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/684040/
posts.
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hate-fest against Israel, this time the Fourth International Al-Awda Convention, the overarching ambition of which is to enforce the right of all Palestinian refugees to return to their former homes in what is current-day Israel,
with the express purpose of demographically eliminating Israel’s Jewish
identity and continued existence. “Racism, tribalism, all the ‘isms’ we’re
fighting, you cannot exclude Zionism from,” proclaimed Michel Shehadeh,
the host of the tellingly named Radio Intifada, a KPFK-FM Los Angeles
radio program, and one of the convention’s featured guest speakers. “If
struggling against Zionism isn’t at the core of defining yourself as a progressive, then you’re not. You cannot be progressive if you’re not fighting
fascism and Nazism. It’s a package. You can’t be selective in this.”50
Al-Awda’s intransigency regarding the mere existence of Israel, and its
radical stance with respect to terrorism and a desire to totally replace the
current state of Israel with an Islamic Palestine, are so breathtakingly
extreme that it is difficult to see how any university could look at the tone
and content of this conference and pretend that it created productive dialogue or inspired positive academic debate. It is one-sided and biased in the
extreme, and barely disguises the overt antisemitism amid its calls to dismantle what it describes as an illegal Zionist regime.
Another of the conference’s speakers, Lamis Jamal Deek, an attorney
and a member of Al-Awda New York, summed up the overriding sentiment
of the movement: “There can never be a place for Zionism in the Arab
world . . . Zionism will never be allowed to exist peacefully among the
people. Today we again demand the end of the Zionist presence in the Arab
world.” At San Francisco State University, such sentiments seem to have
found a welcoming home.
ISRAEL APARTHEID WEEK: AN ANNUAL ON-CAMPUS OPPORTUNITY
DEMONIZE ISRAEL AND JEWS
TO
Initiated in 2004 at the University of Toronto, Israeli Apartheid Week
(IAW) was held in 40 locations worldwide by 2008, with the stated purpose
of educating “people about the nature of Israel as an apartheid system and
to build Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns as part of a
growing global BDS movement.”51 IAW uses as its primary tactic what has
been referred to the “Durban strategy,” referring to the 2001 anti-Israel
50. Joe Eskenazi, “Vitriolic Anti-Israel Gathering Held at SFSU, Jweekly, July
21, 2006, http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/29842/vitriolic-anti-israel-gatheringheld-at-sfsu.
51. Israel Apartheid Week, Israel Apartheid Week.org, November 9, 2009,
http://apartheidweek.org/en/about.
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hate-fest in South Africa, where the representatives of member countries
perversely defined Zionism as racism. Events were held on the campuses of
academic institutions that included Berkeley, Toronto, Boston College,
Yale, Michigan, and Columbia.
In addition to the racism charge, IAW events continue debate on the
other thorny issues of the Palestinian question: the “right of return” of all
Palestinians to their old homes in what is now present-day Israel, dismantling the security wall, and forming a binational state in which Jews, then a
minority, would be but one class of citizens into whatever type of political
structure that state evolved—in short, a world without Israel. Since the
motive of the sponsors in producing these events seems pure—ending
racism—the stridency of the message and the vitriol of the speakers and
marketing materials of the IAW has ramped up as supporters have become
emboldened by their mission. In some instances, such as at the University
of Manitoba in the weeks after the 2009 Gaza incursion by Israel, when
sentiments ran high, posters for the event created by the Muslim Students
Association were so extreme that school officials reigned in the incendiary
marketing efforts. “One of them depicted a Jewish fighter plane targeting a
baby stroller,” reported a National Post article. “Another featured a caricature of a hooked-nosed Hasidic Jew with a star of David, pointing a
bazooka at the nose of an Arab carrying a slingshot; a third one showed an
Israeli helicopter with a swastika on top, dropping a bomb on a baby bottle.” Even on university campuses, where the right to speak offensively and
often seems to be one of the bulwarks of higher education, the grisly and
explicitly antisemitic tone of the posters was all a little too much, the Post
reported, and “the school forced their removal the same day.”52
In a statement in which he defended the university’s decision to permit
the event, Deputy Provost and Vice-Provost of Students David Farrar said
that despite numerous requests from opponents of the IAW to have the
event canceled, “We will not. To do so would violate the university’s commitment to freedom of speech . . . As an academic community, we have a
fundamental commitment to the principles of freedom of inquiry, freedom
of speech and freedom of association . . . [T]he university has no reason to
believe that the activities will exceed the boundaries for free speech. . . .”53
But that spirit of “freedom of inquiry and freedom of speech” seemed
to be absent from the actual goings-on during the event, according to at
52. Craig Offman, “Campuses Awash in Tension over Israel Apartheid Week,”
National Post, March 2, 2009, http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=
1343206.
53. Graham F. Scott, “Apartheid: Is This the Israel You Know?,” The Varsity,
February 3, 2005, http://thevarsity.ca/articles/15158.
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least one attendee, Ilan Nachim. “I think it’s one of the most racist presentations I’ve ever seen,” he told the school’s newspaper. “I was not allowed to
express myself at any point during this evening, from beginning to end. We
had our hands up, we did not open our mouths. We were not allowed to
express ourselves. This is what the university calls free speech?”54
More ominously, by 2009 the annual event had so degenerated into a
racist, rabid rally that proceedings were closed to cameras and reporters,
and individuals who actually attempted to participate in a dialogue about
the issues being raised by the event in the first place were confronted with
physical intimidation and threats, encountering the dark side of proPalestinianism.
One of these individuals, Isaac Apter, a Jewish alumnus of the University of Toronto, recounted how he and others in the audience of one evening’s events quizzed a speaker about why Hamas had persistently refused
to recognize the legitimacy of Israel—“did Israel have the right to exist?”—
and when the speaker repeatedly sidestepped the questioning, some audience members shouted out, “Answer the questions!” Apter found himself
approached from behind by a member of a private guard retained by Students Against Israel Apartheid, slapped in the head, yanked from his seat,
and yelled at with the warning, “You shut the fuck up!” A second Jewish
attendee was similarly assaulted that night by one of the hired security team
and given a far more chilling warning, particularly in light of the practice of
beheadings in the Middle East: “Shut the fuck up or I’ll saw your head
off.”55
In fact, the IAW event, by singling out Israel and attacking it for its
alleged racism, might well be a violation of Canadian and international
laws. In a paper published in the Jewish Political Studies Review, Avi
Weinryb suggested that by allowing the IAW events to be held, the University of Toronto’s decisions “conflicts with the 2004 European Monitoring
Center on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC)’s working definition of antiSemitism . . . which includes such examples of anti-Semitism as: denying
the Jewish people their right to self-determination (e.g., by claiming that the
existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor), [and] applying double
standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any
other democratic nation.”56
The University of Toronto is not the only Canadian institution of
higher education to become a breeding ground for anti-Israel radicalism.
54. Scott, “Apartheid.”
55. Offman, “Campuses Awash.”
56. Avi Weinryb, “The University of Toronto: The Institution Where Israel
Apartheid Week Was Born,” Jewish Political Studies Review, December 2008.
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There was, notably, the infamous riots at Montreal’s Concordia University
in September 2002, where mobs of marauding students smashed windows
and destroyed furniture and fixtures to express their displeasure at the invitation to Benjamin Netanyahu to speak there. Toronto’s York University
has also recently defined itself as having a rabid antisemitic leaning when,
in February 2009, some 100 pro-Palestinian students initiated a near-riot,
and police had to be called to usher Jewish students to safety after they had
been barricaded inside the Hillel offices and were “isolated and threatened,”
according to Hillel itself, by the physically and verbally aggressive
demonstrators.
Parroting the morally incoherent and factually incorrect exhortations
of Israel-haters elsewhere of “Zionism equals racism!” and “Racists off
campus!,” the York mob, members of both the York Federation of Students
and Students Against Israeli Apartheid, demonstrated once again that what
is positioned as “intellectual debate” on campuses about the Israeli/Palestinian issue has changed into something that is not really a conversation at all;
instead, it is more akin to an ideologically driven shout-fest with a new
version of pro-Palestinian brown shirts. York’s supporters of the cult of
Palestinianism apparently no longer felt even a bit uncomfortable voicing
what was actually on their minds when the subject of Israel comes up: when
the York Hillel students were trapped inside locked offices, surrounded by
an increasingly violent and aggressive mob, the intellectual “debate” that
day included such raw slurs as “Die Jew—get the hell off campus.”57
That thuggery by anti-apartheid Jew-haters had already become something of a tradition on the York campus. A year earlier, in April 2008, Barbara Kay of Canada’s National Post reported that York’s Hillel had invited
then-Knesset member Natan Sharansky to deliver an address. Not content
with allowing anyone with a pro-Israel viewpoint to share his or her views
on campus, the Palestinian Students Association and Students Against
Israeli Apartheid@York (SAIA) used the common tactic of intellectual bullies: they jeered at and shouted Sharansky down, spoke loudly among themselves during his talk, and generally prevented anyone in the audience from
listening to the content of the speech—but not before they had articulated
their own vitriol with such comments as “Get off our campus, you genocidal racist” and “You are bringing a second Holocaust upon yourselves.”58
57. Ron Csillag, “Cops Quell Anti-Israel Attack at Toronto College,” JTA.org,
February 13, 2009, http://www.jta.org/news/article/2009/02/13/1002990/cops-quell
-anti-israel-attack-at-york-u.
58. Barbara Kay, “York University Must Get Serious about Taking Back Their
Campus from Anti-Zionist Radicals,” National Post, April 16, 2008, http://network
.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2008/04/16/165656.aspx.
2011]
ISRAEL: THE CANARY
IN THE
MINESHAFT
OF
441
WESTERN CIVILIZATION
The university’s jihad against Israel and Jews is a grim reminder that
the world’s oldest hatred has not yet vanished; in fact, either because of the
widespread negative attitudes toward Israel, or simply due to a lingering,
poisonous Jew-hatred in the Arab world and increasingly in the West as
well, Jews once again are targets of libels, denunciation, demonization, and
slurs against Judaism, against Zionism, and against Israel itself, the Jew of
nations.
This hatred metastasized on campus, when it was promulgated by leftist professors with a reverence for Palestinian victimization and by Muslim
student groups with a theologically based hatred of the Jewish state. It
spread though being enabled by administrators who allowed their campuses
to be hijacked by radicals with the purported objective of elevating the Palestinian cause, but whose actual purpose was promoting their own agenda
for vilifying and eventually eliminating Israel.
The manifestations of these on-campus hatreds have been obvious and
ugly: ripped Israeli flags drizzled with blood; Stars of David juxtaposed
with swastikas; charges of apartheid, racism, and genocide leveled against
Israelis and also assigned to their proxies, American Jews; accusations of
dual loyalties, with American Jews accused of undermining American interests with the covert purpose of assisting Israel; physical threats against Jewish students; and blood libels that transform Israelis into murderous,
subhuman monsters who almost gleefully shed Arab blood in their insatiable quest for land—land that, their critics say, they neither deserve nor for
which they have any legitimate claim.
The campus war against Israel and Jews is also indicative of the compromised purpose of higher education, where scholarship has been degraded
by bias and extremism on the part of a leftist professoriate with a clear
political agenda that cites Israel as the new villain in a world yearning for
social justice. University leaders and other stakeholders have been noticeably negligent in moderating this radicalism, either because they are unaware of how whole fields of study have been hijacked by academic frauds
and morally incoherent scholars, or because they sympathize with the intellectual approach of their faculties and have become complicit in the production of pseudo-scholarship, academic agitprop, and disingenuous “learning
experiences” that have a one-sided, biased approach to understanding the
Middle East, and particularly the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
That all this is taking place in the rarified air of college campuses,
where civil discourse is the expected norm and scholarly inquiry is the
anticipated intellectual product, makes the seething hatreds and bias against
Israel and the Jews all the more unexpected and morally dangerous. Only
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65 years after one of the most horrific crimes against humanity that saw the
murder of some six million souls, the same unsettling tropes against Jews
are being restated, this time often targeting the Jewish state that arose, in
part, from the ashes of the Holocaust. One would hope this battle would not
have to be waged again, that college students, Jews and non-Jews alike,
would not have to be confronted with “the longest hatred” once again, this
time conflated with the very survival of a democratic Jewish state, precariously coexisting amid a sea of jihadist foes who seek its very elimination.
*Richard Cravatts, PhD, is professor of practice and director of the Master’s Program in Communications Management at the Simmons College School of Management. Dr. Cravatts is the author of the forthcoming Genocidal Liberalism: The
University’s Jihad Against Israel and Jews; in addition, he has published over 350
articles, op-ed pieces, columns, and chapters in books on antisemitism, anti-Israelism, higher education, and campus free speech, terrorism, Constitutional law, politics, and social policy. He is a board member of Scholars for Peace in the Middle
East, the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism, the Investigative Taskforce on
Campus Anti-Semitism, and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights under
Law.
Antisemitism at the University of California
Leila Beckwith*
Antisemitic speech and actions have occurred on the University of California (UC) campuses for more than ten years, initiated by registered
Muslim and pro-Palestinian student groups and some faculty. Jewish
organizations and individual members of the California Jewish community have urged the administration to enact and implement policies to
protect Jewish students from harassment and intimidation. The present
paper analyzes the responses of the university administration to the problem: the degree to which antisemitism is acknowledged, identified, combatted, and condemned. The analysis shows the administration to be
averse to acknowledging antisemitism; therefore, its policies in combatting anti-Jewish bigotry are incoherent and ineffective.
Key Words: Antisemitism; Muslim Student Association; Olive Tree Initiative; Students for Justice in Palestine; University of California
The crown jewel of California’s public higher education system is the
University of California (UC). Yet, bigotry against Jewish students has
occurred on University of California campuses over many years and on
many campuses. Jewish students have been subjected to: acts of physical
aggression; intimidation; swastikas; speakers, films, and exhibits that use
antisemitic imagery and discourse; speakers that praise and encourage support for terrorist organizations; the organized disruption of events that Jewish student groups had sponsored; and the promotion of student resolutions
for divestment from Israel that demonize and delegitimize the Jewish
State.1
1. See Kenneth Marcus, “A Blind Eye to Campus Anti-Semitism,” Commentary, September 2010; “Campus Anti-Semitism: Briefing Report,” United States
Commission on Civil Rights, Washington, D.C., July 2006; “Muslim Students
Association: The Investigative Project on Terrorism Dossier,” The Investigative
Project on Terrorism, http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/misc/84.pdf;
“Emerging Anti-Israel Trends and Tactics on Campus,” Anti-Defamation League,
October 2011, http://www.adl.org/main_Anti_Israel/campus_anti_israel_trends_
activity.htm; “Anti-Semitism at UC Irvine,” Anti-Defamation League, July 27,
2010, http://www.adl.org/main_Anti_Israel/Anti-Semitism+at+UC+Irvine
.htm;“Task Force on Anti-Semitism at the University of California, Irvine Report,”
Orange County Independent Task Force on Anti-Semitism at the University of Cal-
443
444
OFFICIAL POLICY
AND THE
[ VOL. 3:443
UC COMMUNITY
Discrimination against Jews, of course, is not a policy of the University of California. Old-fashioned antisemitism, in which a quota existed for
Jewish students and the number of Jewish students and Jewish faculty were
deliberately minimized, no longer exists in the United States. In fact, Jewish
students and faculty, although members of a very small ethnic/religious
minority among the American populace, exist in disproportionately higher
numbers at UC. The overwhelming majority of UC students, faculty, and
staff show no antisemitic attitudes or feelings. Yet, some campuses have
become places in which hostility is shown to Jews and the Jewish state.
THE EXISTING HOSTILITY
This hostility is often manifested in the guise of anti-Zionism and antiIsraelism. Whereas historically antisemitism was manifested under a religious guise, then a racial guise, it is now evidenced in a political/ideological
guise. What is often disguised as “legitimate” criticism of the Jewish
nation’s policies frequently morphs into the tropes of classical antisemitism,
such as blood libels and Jews controlling the United States. As Bernard
Lewis2 points out, the political aspect is marked by the same two features
that mark classical antisemitism: Jews and/or the Jewish state are portrayed
and accused of cosmic evil; Jews and/or the Jewish state are judged by a
standard different from that applied to others.
Is the University of California atypical among American universities in
its manifestation of antisemitism? It is unlikely that UC is an exception. As
will be seen in the following sections, the sources of antisemitic acts and
discourse on campus are Muslim and pro-Palestinian student groups, as
well as some individual faculty and staff. Those agents share a common
ideology, exist in universities across the United States, and make it likely
that animus against Jews will occur at least sporadically.
Some of UC’s characteristics, however, may fuel the depth and extent
of manifestations of anti-Jewish bigotry. One such element, as pointed out
by Alvin Rosenfeld,3 the left-wing political culture on the West coast
ifornia, Irvine, 2008, http://octaskforce.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/orangecounty-task-force-report-on-anti-semitism-at-uci.pdf.
2. Bernard Lewis, “The New Anti-Semitism,” The American Scholar, 75
(Winter 2006):25-36.
3. Alvin Rosenfeld, “Responding to Campus-Based Anti-Zionism: Two Models,” in Anti-Semitism on the Campus: Past and Present, ed. Eunice G. Pollack
(New York: Academic Studies Press, 2011).
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ANTISEMITISM AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
445
allows ideologically extreme positions to be influential; a significant thread
in left-wing discourse is obsessive pro-Palestinian/anti-Israelism. Two, the
students and faculty at UC are heirs of the “Free Speech” movement, initiated and organized by some students at UC Berkeley in 1964-1965. The
movement, through a series of acts of civil disobedience, successfully broke
the administration’s ban on campus political activities by students; its success unleashed student groups to engage in and advocate for political
causes. Activist politics by students on campus probably contributed to the
loosening of restrictions on faculty. The broadening of the UC academic
freedom rules for faculty in 2003, directly related to allowing pro-Palestinian propaganda in an official university course, allows faculty to engage in
political advocacy in classrooms and official university events.4
SOURCES
OF
HOSTILITY
TO
JEWS
AND
ISRAEL
Student groups.5 Two officially registered student groups at the University of California, the Muslim Student Association, sometimes named
the Muslim Student Union (MSA/MSU), and the Students for Justice in
Palestine (SJP), exert considerable influence in promoting a hostile antisemitic environment. The student groups are supported by mandatory fees
that are collected from every student, although most UC students would
condemn antisemitism. The MSA/MSU exists on nine of the 10 campuses
of the university, and the SJP is extant on six of the 10 campuses. Both
student groups are represented across North America, with approximately
600 chapters of the MSA/MSU and more than 75 chapters of SJP in universities in the United States and Canada.
Since at least 2001, MSA/MSU and SJP, individually and in collaboration, have invited speakers, posted flyers, and staged events whose rhetoric
and imagery fit the U.S. Department’s Working Definition of Anti-Semitism. These include classical antisemitic tropes of blood libels and accusations of Jews controlling the U.S. government, as well as more current
tropes of equating Jews/Israelis with Nazis and denying the Jewish people
the right to self-determination by falsely identifying Israel as a racist, white4. Martin Trow, “Californians Redefine Academic Freedom,” Center for Studies in Higher Education, February 2005, http://cshe.berkeley.edu/publications/
publications.php?id=60.
5. Leila Beckwith, “The Contribution of Student Groups to Anti-Semitism at
the University of California, Paper presented at the Summer Research Workshop,
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C., July 26-August 6,
2010; Leila Beckwith and Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, “Are Jewish Students Safe
on California Campuses?,” American Thinker, April 25, 2010, http://www.
americanthinker.com/2010/04/are_jewish_students_safe_on_ca.html.
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[ VOL. 3:443
supremacist, colonialist nation that should be boycotted and/or destroyed. In
fact, a stated aim of the SJP is to mount boycott, divestment, and sanctions
campaigns.
Faculty. Some UC faculty also have contributed to the hostile environment for Jewish students by promoting a virulently anti-Israel ideology on
occasion in their classrooms, in university-sponsored events, and in official
university media. Some also use their university affiliation to promote an
academic and cultural boycott of Israel faculty, students, scientists, artists,
and cultural institutions.6 Their anti-Israel activism is not deterred by its
violation of basic academic precepts, as asserted by the American Association of University Professors in 2006, almost 300 university presidents in
2007, and 38 Nobel laureates, who condemned the boycott as “antithetical
to principles of academic and scientific freedom, and antithetical to principles of freedom of expression and inquiry.”7
An example of the interjection of inflammatory anti-Israel material
into the classroom was seen when William Robinson, tenured professor of
sociology at UC Santa Barbara, in April 2009 sent an e-mail to his students
with a set of photos that attempted to equate Nazi atrocities in the Warsaw
ghetto with Israel soldiers’ defense of their citizens in the war with Hamas
in Gaza.8 Some students viewed the material as antisemitic, quit the course,
and filed a misconduct grievance against Robinson.
The university charges officer summarized the allegations in an e-mail
to Robinson: “You, as professor of an academic course, sent to each student
enrolled in that course a highly partisan e-mail accompanied by lurid photographs. The e-mail was unexpected and without educational context. You
offered no explanation of how the material related to the content of the
course. You offered no avenue to discuss, nor encouraged any response, to
the opinions and photographs included in the e-mail. You directly told a
student who inquired that the e-mail was not connected to the course. As a
result, two enrolled students were too distraught to continue with the
course. The constellation of allegations listed above, if substantially true,
may violate the Faculty Code of Conduct.”
The faculty committee ruled that no further investigation was necessary, and the charges were dismissed.
6. Elizabeth Redden, “Israel Boycott Movement Comes to U.S.,” Inside
Higher Ed, January 26, 2009, http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/01/26/
boycott.
7. “38 Nobel Winners Slam Academic Boycotts Against Israel,” The Jerusalem Post, November 2, 2010, http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=193700.
8. Scott Jaschik, “Crossing a Line,” Inside Higher Ed, April 23, 2009, http://
www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/04/23/ucsb.
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In 2009, a faculty member, the head of the University of California
Los Angeles (UCLA) Center for Near East Studies, exemplified the misuse
of university-sponsored events by organizing a conference in which she
invited four other faculty, longtime demonizers of Israel, to discuss the
topic “Human Rights and Gaza.” As reported by UCLA professor Judea
Pearl,9 the speakers attacked the legitimacy of Israel, condemned its birth
and survival, and portrayed Hamas as a guiltless, peace-seeking organization. During the Q&A, the audience chanted “Zionism is Nazism,” and
“F—, f— Israel.” The next day, the UCLA Bruin, the student newspaper,
published an uncritical article entitled “Scholars Say Attack on Gaza an
Abuse of Human Rights.” When Professor Pearl tried to enlist Jewish
faculty into speaking out, “the new Marranos,” as he named them, insisted
on keeping their pro-Israel sentiments secret in order to protect themselves
from condemnation by other faculty. Thus, the event influenced the attitudes of students and faculty.
EFFECT
ON
STUDENTS
Many Jewish students are affected by the antisemitic manifestations on
campus. In May 2010, more than 700 Jewish UC students10 signed a petition expressing outrage at anti-Jewish rhetoric and imagery on their campuses. They asserted that these incidents are as offensive and hurtful to
Jewish students as a “Compton cookout” or a noose are to African-American students. In addition, dozens of Jewish students from three different UC
campuses, who responded to an on-line questionnaire, described feeling
harassed and intimidated by the promotion of hatred against the Jewish
State and of Jews. Almost all of the students felt that the administrators on
their campuses did not treat Jewish concerns as sensitively as they did the
concerns of other minorities such as African Americans and Latinos.
President Yudof, in a public response,11 criticized the sampling of student opinion as unreliable.
9. Judea Pearl, “The Rhino Tramples Through,” The Current, www.columbia.
edu/cu/current/articles/spring2009/pearl.html.
10. Larry Gordon, “Jewish Organizations Protest UC President’s Handling of
Reports of Anti-Semitism,” Los Angeles Times, July 7, 2010, http://articles.latimes.
com/2010/jul/07/local/la-me-0707-uc-jewish-20100707.
11. “Yudof: Letter from 12 Jewish Organizations Concerning Campus AntiSemitism: ‘Dishearteningly Ill-Informed Rush to Judgment,’ ” Orange County
Independent Task Force on Anti-Semitism, July 6, 2010, http://octaskforce.word
press.com/2010/07/06/yudof-letter-from-12-jewish-organizations-concerning-camp
us-anti-semitism-dishearteningly-ill-informed -rush-to-judgment.
448
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ON
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FACULTY
Faculty also are affected by the “hatred against Jews and Israelis on
campus.” Whereas many faculty self-censor, as pointed out by Professor
Pearl, others speak out. In May 2010, 63 faculty members at UC Irvine
published a letter12 in which they stated that they “are deeply disturbed
about activities on campus that foment hatred against Jews and Israelis.”
They described “the troubling events over the past few years” as including
“the painting of swastikas in university buildings, the Star of David
depicted as akin to a swastika, a statement (by a speaker repeatedly invited
by the Muslim Student Union) that the Zionist Jew is a party of Satan, a
statement by another MSU speaker that the Holocaust was God’s will, the
tearing down of posters placed by the student group Anteaters for Israel,
and the hacking of their web site.” They reaffirmed that “Some community
members, students, and faculty indeed feel intimidated, and at times even
unsafe.”
UC Irvine Chancellor Drake did not respond.
RECOMMENDATIONS
TO
UNIVERSITY ADMINISTRATION
In June 2010, leaders of 12 Jewish organizations, including the
Wiesenthal Center, the Orthodox Union, and the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, wrote to UC president Mark Yudof,13 expressing their
concern about the hostile environment faced by Jewish students on UC
campuses, and calling on him to address this serious problem. They recommended that he issue a written statement to the UC community condemning
all forms of antisemitism, including language or behavior that demonized
and delegitimized Israel as included in the Working Definition of
Antisemitism of the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia. They also recommended that a campus policy be established that
included a definition of antisemitism and differentiated it from other
bigotries.
12. “UC Faculty Letter Update: Some Community Members, Students, and
Faculty Indeed Feel Intimidated, and at Times Even Unsafe,” Orange County
Independent Task Force on Anti-Semitism, May 17, 2010, http://octaskforce.word
press.com/2010/05/10/some-community-members-students-and-faculty-indeed-feel
-intimidated-and-at-times-even-unsafe/.
13. The letter is published in the Orange County Independent Task Force on
Anti-Semitism, June 28, 2010, http://octaskforce.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/
letter-to-president-yudof-6_28_10.pdf.
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President Yudof responded14 by ignoring the recommendations and
asking Jewish leaders to have patience and faith in the newly established
Advisory Councils on Campus Climate, Culture, and Inclusion, which he
had organized in June 2010 in response to a spate of acts of bigotry, including antisemitism, that had occurred on several UC campuses, with nooses at
UC San Diego, a fraternity party that mocked Black History month at UC
San Diego, anti-gay graffiti and swastikas at UC Davis, and the deliberate
disruption, by the Muslim Student Union, of an invited speech by Israel
ambassador Michael Oren at UC Irvine.
One year later, growing impatient with the university’s efforts, more
than 5,200 members of the California Jewish community, including 1,400
UC alumni and current students, more than 2,200 UC parents and family
members, and more than 230 UC faculty and staff members, signed a letter
to President Yudof15 expressing their grave concern for Jewish students. In
their letter, they stated their opinion that although it had been over a year,
the Advisory Councils had recommended no policies and issued no public
statements informing the UC community about the problem of antisemitism
or how it would be addressed. Their letter again recommended incorporating a definition of antisemitism that provided concrete examples, in accordance with the EUMC and the U.S. State Department working definitions,
of how such a definition would be incorporated into UC policies and practices on antisemitism.
UC ANTISEMITISM ACKNOWLEDGED
President Yudof, in his reply16 to the Jewish community, continued to
ignore its recommendations. He did, however, publicly acknowledge the
presence of antisemitism on campus, and affirm that it is the responsibility
of the UC administration to combat it. In an official UC Web site posting in
October 2011, he stated:
I am extremely sympathetic to the concerns of Jewish students. . . . sadly
the cancer of bigotry and antiSemitism runs deep and long through
human history. As Berkeley Law Dean Chris Edley, who is acting as a
14. The letter is published in the Orange County Independent Task Force on
Anti-Semitism, July 2, 2010, http://octaskforce.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/letterfrom-yudof-7_2_10.pdf.
15. “Amcha Initiative’s Letter to UC President Yudof,” Amcha Initiative, September 19, 2011, www.amchainitiative.org/letter-to-president-yudof.
16. “President Yudof Addresses Campus Climate Concerns from Jewish Community,” University of California Newsroom, September 21, 2011, http://
www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/26327.
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special advisor to me on these issues, told the University’s Board of
Regents, this is not rocket science—it’s more difficult than rocket science. Such difficulties, of course, do not lessen our obligation to do everything in our power to eradicate this cancer whenever and wherever it
flares anew.
Yudof reiterated his personal and official commitment to answering
every act of violence, hatred, and intimidation by any member of the community, and to ensure that he and the chancellors made certain that all students, regardless of their faith, encounter an atmosphere that is conducive to
their intellectual and personal growth.
INCOHERENT RESPONSES
TO
BIGOTRY
Given that the president of UC acknowledges antisemitism on its campus and takes responsibility for combatting it, it would be reasonable to
expect that the university has written, adopted, and communicated coherent
policies to the campus community, including effective policies of censure.
This report, however, examines four steps the administration has taken to
combat bigotry—and finds their measures to be intellectually incoherent
and pragmatically ineffective.
Administrators’ Free Speech to Condemn Bigotry
President Yudof, the chancellors of the 10 UC campuses, and the chair
and vice chair of the university-wide Academic Senate issued a statement17
on February 26, 2010, in which they condemned “all acts of racism, intolerance and incivility. When violations occur it is incumbent on us, as leaders
and as stewards of free speech on our campuses, to push back. We have a
responsibility to speak out against activities that promote intolerance or
undermine civil dialogue.” This policy statement is consistent with a recommendation made on October 26, 2010, by The Office of Civil Rights
(OCR),18 that oversees possible discrimination in higher education. The
OCR advocated that university administrations speak out and condemn
antisemitism as a remedial step to bigotry on campus. Earlier, the U.S.
17. http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/documents/chancellors_state
ment_022610.pdf.
18. “Dear Colleague Letter Harassment and Bullying,” U.S. Department of
Education, Office of Civil Rights, October 26, 2010, http://www2.ed.gov/about/
offices/list/ocr/docs/dcl-factsheet-201010.pdf.
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451
Commission on Civil Rights,19 examining the problem of campus
antisemitism, also specifically recommended that university administrations
condemn antisemitic speech.
Despite the stated policy, UC chancellors and other UC administrators
are very reluctant to name and condemn antisemitic acts. They often ignore,
but sometimes sanction, intolerance toward Jews. Since the UC administration refuses to incorporate into policy a working definition of antisemitism,
they often do not identify antisemitic discourse and imagery. What they
cannot identify, they cannot condemn.
The pattern existed before the policy and continues to be manifested
after. To mention only one example of many,20 before the policy was stated,
the UCIrvine Alumni Association and vice-chancellor of UC Irvine,
Manuel Gomez, in April 2006, honored Vanessa Zuabi Zuabi for making
“the campus . . . a better place”—despite her being vice president of a
student organization that displayed posters of the Star of David defaced by
the swastika, and had excluded Jewish groups from an “antihate rally.”
Gomez spoke at the rally, although he knew that Jewish student groups
were excluded, and thus conferred official endorsement of an event that
discriminated against Jews.
Even after the policy was enunciated, the UC administration continues
to condone, sometimes engage in, and often not condemn antisemitic
actions on campus. For example, Chancellor Michael Drake at UC Irvine
praised Apartheid Week 2010 as “the hallmark of an educational institution
committed to an exchange of ideas,” while he disregarded the statement at
the event made by Malik Ali, one of the invited speakers, that “you Jews
are the new Nazis.”21 A year later, in June 2011, a few weeks after another
Apartheid Week of events demonizing Israel and featuring speakers who
advocated for boycotts and elimination of the Jewish state, the UC Irvine
Muslim Student Union was given an award for “demonstrating a commit-
19. “Findings and Recommendations of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights
Regarding Campus Anti-Semitism,” April 3, 2006, http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/
050306FRUSCCRRCAS.pdf.
20. Leila Beckwith, “Anti-Zionism/Anti-Semitism at the University of California-Irvine,” in Academics Against Israel and the Jews, ed. Manfred Gerstenfeld
(Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, September 2008).
21. Leila Beckwith, “Most Anti-Semitic College,” Minding the Campus, September 16, 2010, http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2010/09/post_70
.html.
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ment to transforming structures of inequality and injustices through reflection and action” by the UC Irvine Office of the Dean of Students.22
In October 2010, a letter23 to UC Berkeley chancellor Robert J.
Birgeneau, sent by the author, Roberta Seid, and Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, protested the sponsorship by a unit of UC Berkeley’s College of Letters and Sciences of an event promoting the boycott of Israeli academics
and businesses. The letter pointed out that the action established an official
association of the University of California Berkeley with the promotion of a
boycott against Israel. The letter asked Chancellor Birgeneau to detach the
university’s involvement with the event and publicly condemn the Boycott
Divestment and Sanctions campaign as contributing to a hostile environment for Jewish students. Birgeneau was silent.
In stark contrast to his silence about rhetoric offensive to Jewish students, however, Birgeneau has vigorously condemned speech and behavior
that he perceives gives offense to other identity groups, specifically, African Americans and Latinos. In May 2010, in response to the state of Arizona’s passage of an immigration bill, Bill SB1070, Birgeneau posted on
the official Web site of UC Berkeley the following statement:24 “I made it
widely known last week to our campus community that I was horrified by
this law. I, along with many others on this campus, and others across the
nation, am profoundly disturbed by the passage of this bill, which so many
of us personally believe cannot be implemented without engaging in racial
profiling. The drafting of similar bills by other states is truly frightening.”
More recently, he again used his own free speech to condemn the
Berkeley College Republicans25 for holding a bake sale that priced the
goods according to a person’s ethnicity, race, or gender. Chancellor
Birgeneau perceived that event as hurtful to African Americans and Latinos
and spoke out. Yet, he has been unwilling to condemn speech and behavior
offensive to Jewish students.
22. “UC Irvine ‘Awards’ MSU Legitimacy,” The Investigative Project on Terrorism, June 3, 2011, http://www.investigativeproject.org/2939/uc-irvine-awardsmsu-lefitimacy.
23. “Serious Concerns about UC Berkeley BDS Event Tuesday October 26,”
Orange County Independent Task Force on Anti-Semitism, October 24, 2010, http:/
/octaskforce.wordpress.com/2010/10/24/3001/.
24. “Chancellor Birgeneau Denounces Arizona Immigration Bill,” UC
Berkeley News Center, May 7, 2010, http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2010/05/07/
immigration/.
25. Javier Panzar, “UC Berkeley Administrators Send Out Campuswide Letter
Condemning Bake Sale,” The Daily Californian, September 27, 2011, http:
//www.dailycal.org/2011/09/26/uc-berkeley-chancellor-sends-campus-wide-lettercondemning-bake-sale/.
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Chancellor Birgeneau’s reluctance to intrude in the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement on his campus is mirrored by President
Yudof. Only after the pain of a bitter student battle at UC Berkeley in 2010
and the defeat of the student resolution that called on the university to
divest from American companies doing business in Israel did Yudof
notify26 the campus that the Regents had established a policy in 2005 that
would not allow for divestment from Israel. Although President Yudof, in
his letter to the Jewish community of October 12, 2011, touted his leadership in notifying the university community of the Regents policy as
responding “assertively” to anti-Jewish bigotry, the action was peculiarly
hesitant, since it occurred only after students had experienced intense harassment from fellow students and from organizations and persons outside of
the university community.
President Yudolf’s Advisory Council
In June 2010, President Yudof established the President’s Advisory
Council on Campus Climate, Culture and Inclusion, in response to multiple
acts of bigotry that targeted African Americans, Jews, and gays on several
of the UC campuses. The choice of members of the council was directly
guided by assumptions that underlie principles of diversity; people were
chosen by their racial and ethnic identity, and because they were active
advocates for their identity groups.
President Yudof then established working groups within the council.
Some of those groups were directed specifically to address concerns of
African-American, Latino, and gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgendered students.
Jewish students and antisemitic hostility was not set as a specific focus of
any working group. A review of more than 600 pages of documents
received under a public records request about the proceedings of the Advisory Council during the 2010-2011 academic year revealed that there was
virtually no discussion of anti-Jewish bigotry.
After a proposed letter signed by many thousands from the California
Jewish community came to President Yudof’s attention, he instructed two
members of the UC Advisory Council “to speak with Jewish students in an
effort to better understand both their challenges and positive experiences on
our campuses.” The representatives visited UC Irvine, UC Davis, and UC
Santa Cruz, where they spoke to small groups of selected students for little
more than an hour on each campus. UC Santa Cruz students who attended
26. “UC Regents Statement on Divestment,” Orange County Independent Task
Force on Anti-Semitism, May 10, 2010, http://octaskforce.wordpress.com/2010/05/
10/uc-regents-statement-on-divestment/.
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[ VOL. 3:443
the meeting reported that they were given insufficient time to speak about
their concerns. Several students also stated that one of the two representatives was surprisingly ill informed about campus anti-Jewish harassment
and instead tried to emphasize to the students how privileged Jewish students were.
For Jewish students, the council’s success will depend specifically on
its commitment to address antisemitism and its ability to identify discourse,
imagery, and actions that are unacceptable expressions of antisemitic bigotry. The evidence is not reassuring.
Diversity Initiatives
In March 2010, at the special Regents meeting called specifically to
address the acts of bigotry that had occurred on several of the UC campuses
in the previous month, the UC Regents’ response27 was to pledge to
increase diversity throughout the UC system, to raise more scholarship
donations for underrepresented minorities, and to expand the use of holistic
admission criteria.
Increasing diversity at UC was already a well-funded activity. Heather
Mac Donald, in July 2011 in an article published in Minding the Campus,28
documents the enormous enterprise to promote diversity, comprising many
people and entities within the university. As an example, she mentions one
campus, UC San Diego, that closed substantive academic studies because of
severe budget cuts, but added a new full-time position of “vice-chancellor
for equity, diversity, and inclusion.” The position increased the enormous
diversity enterprise that already existed, including: the Chancellor’s Diversity Office, the associate vice chancellor for faculty equity, the assistant
vice chancellor for diversity, the faculty equity advisors, the graduate diversity coordinators, the staff diversity liaison, the undergraduate student
diversity liaison, the graduate student diversity liaison, the chief diversity
officer, the director of development for diversity initiatives, the Office of
Academic Diversity and Equal Opportunity, and the Diversity Council.
27. “Regents Pledge Diversity Action,” UC Newsroom, March 24, 2010, http://
universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/23079.
28. Heather Mac Donald, “Less Academics, More Narcissism,” Minding the
Campus, July 18, 2011, http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2011/07/
less_academics_more_narcissism.html.
2011]
455
Diversity is a social ideal29 that has been embraced by university
administrations, including UC. UC, in a Regents Policy,30 defines diversity
as “the variety of personal experiences, values, and worldviews that
arise from differences of culture and circumstance. Such differences include
race, ethnicity, gender, age, religion, language, abilities/disabilities, sexual
orientation, gender identity, socioeconomic status, and geographic region,
and more.” The policy explicitly commits the university to remove
barriers to “recruitment, retention, and advancement of students, faculty,
and staff “from historically excluded populations who are currently
underrepresented.”
Thus, diversity is acclaimed as compensation for past grievances.
Equally important, it is touted as a way to combat bigotry, based on the
assumption that when members of groups of diverse backgrounds are
brought together, their attitudes will be transformed into tolerance and
respect. Given human history, such an assumption is doubtful, and despite
the high moral standards ascribed to diversity, it has come down to racial,
ethnic, and sexual orientation interest groups vying for the university’s
resources.
Diversity efforts do not combat antisemitism; its ideology and the way
in which it is practiced ignores Jews. To the degree that diversity acts to
include more members of “underrepresented minorities” on the UC campus,
it ignores Jews. To the degree that diversity acts to provide more resources
to members of “underrepresented minorities,” it ignores Jews. To the
degree that diversity promotes more special programs for or about “underrepresented minorities,” it ignores Jews. To the degree that diversity
encompasses the belief that proximity and/or social intercourse is a magical
solution to bigotry of others, it ignores history and fails Jews.
Olive Tree Initiative
In 2007, a group of students of different ethnic and religious identities
at UC Irvine formed the Olive Tree Initiative (OTI). Its stated goal was “to
promote dialogue and discussion regarding the Israeli-Arab conflict.” The
program became an integral part of the UC Irvine Center for Citizen
Peacebuilding, with a salaried director and faculty from the School of
Social Sciences. There have been four trips to Israel and the West Bank, as
29. Peter Wood, Diversity: The Invention of a Concept (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2003).
30. “Regents’ Policy 4400: University of California Diversity Statement,
September 15, 2010, http://www.ucop.edu/ucophome/coordrev/policy/PP063006
DiversityStatement.pdf.
456
[ VOL. 3:443
well as more than seventy events on and off campus. There are now chapters at UC Santa Barbara, UC Santa Cruz, and UCLA.31
President Yudof, in his letter of October 2011 to the Jewish community, identified the OTI as being in “the best tradition of activism, public
service and open discussion,” and affirmed that he was “a strong supporter”
of the program. In fact, in May 2010, President Yudof did publicly congratulate the OTI and two of its student leaders with a first-ever President’s
Award for Outstanding Leadership. UC Irvine Chancellor Drake has also
honored the OTI by giving its founders an award for “Living Our Values.”
At the Regents meeting on March 24, 2010, held specifically to address a
rash of incidents of bigotry, including the disruption at UC Irvine by the
MSU of the lecture by the Israeli ambassador to the United States, Chancellor Drake also acclaimed the OTI as proof that students at UC Irvine “live
and practice tolerance.” Thus, the UC administration touts the OTI as one
of their deliberate steps to combat anti-Jewish bigotry.
Yet, the program itself involves individuals and groups who have ties
to terrorist groups, who advocate for the destruction of Israel and its citizens, and who promote boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israelis
and American companies doing business with Israel. While the program
tries for a superficial balance of Palestinian and Israeli speakers, since the
overwhelming majority of the Palestinians have expressed virulent enmity
to Israel and its people, the program succeeds in giving “equal time” to
those who advocate for the destruction of Israel and its citizens, and Jews
who advocate for maintaining their own nation and lives.
A revealing incident about the Orwellian designation of the OTI as a
way to combat anti-Jewish bigotry was the inadvertent disclosure, revealed
by a Public Information request made by a member of the Jewish community, that the UC Irvine faculty and staff of the OTI arranged for OTI students in the fall of 2009 to meet with Hamas leader Aziz Duwaik. Hamas is
openly antisemitic; it is designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S.
State Department; its charter calls for the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews. Compounding the recklessness of the program, the organizers
told the students to keep the meeting secret from Israeli officials and from
“anyone who would have disagreed with this meeting.”
31. See Leila Beckwith, “The Olive Tree Initiative: A Fig Leaf for Anti-Semitism?,” American Thinker, January 2, 2011, http://www.americanthinker.com/
2011/01/the_olive_tree_initiative_a_fi.html; Leila Beckwith, “The University of
California’s Antisemitism Problem Deepens”, American Thinker, April 5, 2011,
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/04/the_university_of_californias.html;
Frank Crimi, “The Olive Tree Initiative and Terror,” Front Page Mag, October 6,
2011, http://frontpagemag.com/2011/10/06/the-olive-tree-initiative-and-terror-1-1/
2/.
2011]
457
Equally egregious, UC Irvine Chancellor Drake, who was notified in
October 2009 about the meeting, did not inform the public, did not censure
the organizers, but six months later touted it as the way in which he was
combating antisemitism on his campus.
President Yudof dismisses the significance of the event. But rather
than designating it as an isolated incident to be forgotten, it can be perceived as a glaring expression of the moral confusion of the program.
The University of California administration does not propose a similar
solution to bigotry against any other group. When it acts to combat racism,
it does not give a platform to racists to state their antipathy to African
Americans. It does not give a platform to those who consider homosexuality a moral sin when it acts to combat bigotry against gays/lesbians/bisexuals/transgendered. Unexplained is the singular and distorted response to
bigotry against Jews.
LEGAL REMEDIES
TO
COMBAT ANTISEMITISM
Given the ineffectiveness of the university administration in combating
anti-Jewish bigotry, legal remedies have been sought by individuals. Their
effect is not yet apparent, since the federal actions are still ongoing. But one
court case in the state of California has weighed in and has determined that
an action that resulted from the extreme animus of the Muslim Student
Union to Israel was unlawful.
Federal suit against UC by Jessica Felber and Brian Maissy. Jessica
Felber and Brian Maissy have brought the first federal lawsuit against the
University of California, in which they allege that the administration
allowed a hostile environment to exist that led directly to Felber’s being
physically assaulted.32 On March 5, 2010, Felber, then a student at UC
Berkeley, was attacked and injured on campus during a pro-Israel event
while she was holding a sign stating “Israel wants Peace.” Her assailant,
Husam Zakharia, also a UC Berkeley student, was the leader of Students for
Justice in Palestine at Berkeley. The attack was not the first she or other
Jews had experienced on campus from students who were members of SJP
and similar student groups. The suit alleges that the UC administration had
been made fully aware of the hostile environment, and failed to take adequate measures to quell it; instead, it has condoned, allowed, and enabled
student groups to threaten, harass and intimidate Jewish students.
32. Jamie Glazov, “Berkeley on Trial over Jewish Student’s Assault,” Front
Page Mag, March 8, 2011, http://frontpagemag.com/2011/03/08/berkeley-on-trialover-jewish-students-assault/
458
[ VOL. 3:443
The case was dismissed by U.S. District Judge Seeborg on December
22, 2011.33 The judge ruled that much of the alleged harassment constituted
protected political speech, and that the plantiffs had failed to show “deliberate indifference” of the university administration to the conduct not
amounting to protected speech. Nevertheless, the court granted Felber leave
to file an amended complaint, which means that she will have another
opportunity to make her case.
Title VI complaint against UC Santa Cruz for allowing faculty to
engender a hostile environment for Jewish students. In June 2009, Tammi
Rossman-Benjamin, lecturer in Hebrew and Jewish Studies at UC Santa
Cruz, sought legal remediation for a hostile environment for Jewish students at UC Santa Cruz by filing a Title VI Complaint with the Office for
Civil Rights (OCR) of the U.S. Department of Education.34 At that time,
and until October 2010, Jewish students were excluded from the protection
of the civil rights law because Jews were viewed as exclusively a religious
group not covered by the statute that protected ethnic and racial groups
from discrimination, intimidation, and harassment institutionally tolerated
by a school that received federal funds. In October 2010, the OCR reinterpreted the law to cover “any discrete religious group that shares, or is perceived to share, ancestry or ethnic characteristics (e.g., Muslims or Sikhs),”
including Jewish students.
On March 7, 2011, the OCR determined that the issue was appropriate
for investigation under the new guidelines, and identified the following
issue for investigation: The recipient (UC Santa Cruz) “failed to take steps
in a manner consistent with the requirements of the Title VI of the Civil
Rights Act of 1964 to respond to notice of a then existing hostile environment for Jewish Students based on their actual or perceived ancestry or
ethnic characteristics.”
Rossman-Benjamin’s complaint alleges, among other things, that antiIsrael discourse and behavior in classrooms and that departmentally and
university-sponsored events had created an “emotionally and intellectually
hostile environment for Jewish students and had adversely affected their
educational experience” at UC Santa Cruz. The complaint further alleges
that: rhetoric heard in Santa Cruz classrooms and at numerous events spon33. Felber v. Yudof, N.D.CA., case no. C 11-1012 RS (December 22, 2011)
(slip op.) (order granting motions to dismiss).
34. “Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education (OCR) Opens
Title VI, Civil Rights Act of 1964 Investigation at the University of California
Santa Cruz,” Orange County Independent Task Force on Anti-Semitism, March
13, 2011, http://octaskforce.wordpress.com/2011/03/13/office-of-civil-rights-of-the
-u-s-department-of-education-ocr-to-open-a-title-vi-civil-rights-act-of-1964-investi
gation-at-the-university-of-california-santa-cruz/.
2011]
459
sored and funded by academic and administrative units on campus went
beyond legitimate criticism of Israel and crossed the line into antisemitism
according to the standards employed by the U.S. Department of State; and
that there were students who felt emotionally and intellectually harassed
and intimidated to the point that they were reluctant or afraid to express a
view that was not anti-Israel; and that some students stayed away from
courses because they knew that the courses would be biased against Israel
and intolerant of another legitimate point of view.
Rossman-Benjamin’s complaint also chronicled the failure of numerous efforts that she and others had made from 2001 to encourage UC Santa
Cruz faculty and administrators to acknowledge and address the problem.
The acceptance by the OCR of Rossman-Benjamin’s complaint is a
landmark step in extending the same federal protection to Jewish students
that exists for other students for their racial, ethnic, and sexual orientation
membership. A previous Title VI complaint, filed by the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) in 2004 on behalf of Jewish students at UC Irvine,
was dismissed under the interpretation by the OCR that the law did not
protect Jews. The investigation, however, is still open by the OCR for a
new Title VI complaint against UC Irvine, filed by the ZOA.
Legal action against Muslim Student Union members for disrupting
Ambassador Oren’s speech at UC Irvine. Student members of the MSA/
MSU and SJP over the years, on several occasions at several campuses, had
deliberately attempted to silence lecturers with whom they disagreed. They
did so February 10, 2004, at UC Berkeley, attempting to stifle Dr. Daniel
Pipes, by standing up and calling out “racist” and “Zionist.” They did so
again, October 22, 2007, at UC Berkeley, repeatedly interrupting Nonie
Darwish, shouting out “Facist” and “Racist.” There were no consequences
to the student disrupters.
At UC Irvine, February 8, 2010, Michael Oren, Israeli ambassador to
the United States, was invited to speak at UC Irvine by the School of Law,
Department of Political Science, Center for the Study of Democracy, seven
student groups, and community co-sponsors. The MSU, in an organized
campaign, planned beforehand, as revealed by e-mails and minutes of a
meeting anonymously sent to the university administration, deliberately disrupted the lecture, calling out “Killer” and “How many Palestinians did
you kill?” Eleven students, eight from UC Irvine and three from UC Riverside, were arrested and cited for disturbing a public event. UC Irvine found
the MSU guilty of dishonesty, obstructing disciplinary procedures, disorderly conduct, and participation in a disturbance of the peace of unlawful
assembly, and suspended the MSU for Fall Quarter 2010.
The district attorney of Orange County brought charges against the
students. During the trial, conflicting views of who was being censored
460
[ VOL. 3:443
were argued by the prosecutor and defense attorneys. Although the MSU
attempted to turn their action of suppressing others’ free speech into an
expression of their First Amendment rights, the jury convicted 10 of them
of two misdemeanors of conspiring to and disrupting a public event.35
CONCLUSIONS
The university administration can be perceived as being quicker to
condemn acts of bigotry that may be hurtful to some groups, but less likely
to condemn rhetoric, imagery, and acts that may hurt Jews. Since they avoid
adopting a working definition of antisemitism, they avoid recognizing many
manifestations of antisemitism, particularly those that demonize Israel or
supporters of Israel. They also, then, do not grapple with differentiating
legitimate criticism of policies from demonization of Jews. Therefore, even
clearly antisemitic statements such as “You Jews are the new Nazis,” when
they are embedded in a screed about Israel, is overlooked by the
administration.
The university administration’s muddle arises from their refusal to
acknowledge the specificity of antisemitic bigotry; that in contrast to other
groups against whom bigotry might exist, anti-Jewish bigotry does not
operate now to restrict the presence of Jews on campus. Jews also, in contrast to other ethnic groups, are not demanding a different allocation of university resources. But harassment and intimidation of Jews on campus does
need to be confronted. The university administration cannot do so as long as
it refuses to acknowledge that demonization and delegitimization of the
Jewish state are manifestations of antisemitism.
Proposing diversity as a solution to antisemitism is either wishful
thinking or deliberate obfuscation. A basic tenet of diversity is promoting
equal access to membership in and resources of the university. It does not
address what the manifestations of antisemitism are, who on the university
campus engages in antisemitic behavior, or how to confront it. If diversity
is a solution, it is to a different set of problems. Using a diversity model will
not have the effect of reducing bigotry against Jews.
The only way to combat antisemitism is to identify and condemn it
when it occurs in rhetoric, imagery, and actions; to identify its agents and
condemn them; to grapple with the hard distinctions between free speech
and allowing and fostering a hostile environment for Jewish students; and to
institute policies based on those realities.
35. Lauren Williams, Nicole Santa Cruz, and Mike Anton, “Students Guilty of
Disrupting Speech in ‘Irvine 11’ Case,” Los Angeles Times, September 24, 2011,
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/sep/24/local/la-me-irvine-eleven-20110924.
2011]
461
*Leila Beckwith is professor emeritus of pediatrics at UCLA, and a Board member
of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, the California Association of Scholars,
and the Amcha Initiative. For the past several years, she has used her scholarship to
battle anti-Israeli rhetoric on university campuses and to protect Jewish students
from harassment and intimidation.
On Whiteness and the Jews
Linda Maizels*
In the 1990s, the American academy witnessed attempts by both individuals and groups to promote and legitimize inaccurate or false historical
narratives, specifically Holocaust denial and the allegation that Jews were
disproportionately responsible for the African slave trade. This article
offers the hypothesis that the label of Jewish “whiteness” has been used
as a rationalization to deny Jews a voice in the discourse of identity on
contemporary campuses and also to portray antisemitic rhetoric as protected political speech.
Key Words: Identity Politics, Jews, Multiculturalism, “New Antisemitism,”
“Whiteness”
On two different occasions during the 1990s, the governing council of
the American Historical Association (AHA) was compelled, however reluctantly, to take a stand against individuals and groups who promoted and
tried to legitimize inaccurate or false historical narratives. The first issue
that occupied the council was Holocaust denial. Those who denied the Holocaust styled themselves as revisionists, asserting that the attempted genocide of European Jewry was nothing but a hoax and that Jews ultimately
benefitted from this false story because it allowed them to capitalize on
their role as victims to reap material gain, garner support for the state of
Israel, and position themselves as an oppressed minority group.1 The second issue that drew the attention of the council was the allegation that Jews
were largely responsible for the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Those who
promulgated this view accused Jews of minimizing or denying their own
culpability in this historical injustice and, at the same time, privileging their
own history as victims, which had the effect of obscuring the pernicious
1. For rebuttals to the basic tenets of Holocaust denial, see Deborah Lipstadt,
Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory (New York:
The Free Press, 1993); Kenneth S. Stern, Holocaust Denial (New York: The American Jewish Committee, 1993); Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman, Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It?
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000); Pierre Vidal Naquet, Assassins of
Memory: Essays on the Denial of the Holocaust, trans. Jeffrey Mehlman (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1992); Alain Finkielkraut, The Future of a Negation: Reflections on the Question of Genocide, trans. Mary Byrd Kelly (Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1998).
463
464
[ VOL. 3:463
effects of the actual role played by Jews (and Israelis) as oppressors of other
minority groups or peoples.2 Although these issues were addressed by the
AHA in this order, it does not mean that they did not overlap; instead, they
each experienced peaks of importance at specific times during the decade.3
As we shall see, in both instances the common approach appeared to
be to falsify or distort the larger discourse about an historical event or series
of events by accusing Jews as a collective of having falsified or distorted
the historical record and then using their influence to cover up their actions.
Similarly, in both cases there appeared to be resentment at the concept of
Jews as victims and corresponding assertions about the power that Jews
wield both as privileged individuals and as a collective. The Jews were able
to maintain such elaborate artifices about historical events, according to
their accusers, because of the disproportionate influence they enjoy in government, the media, the academy, the world of finance and banking, and the
like.
Certainly, this canard about undue Jewish power and influence is nothing new. One relic of late 19th- and early 29th-century antisemitism, The
Protocols of the Elders of Zion, continues to be of interest in various parts
of the world, and the attacks of September 11, 2001, have provided even
more fodder for anti-Jewish conspiracy theorists of all types. It is interesting to note, however, that, in the 1990s, Jewish machinations were seen not
as attempts to manipulate economies or governments but as efforts to erase
larger truths by rewriting history. And these accusations about Jews
prompted the AHA to do what it had hardly ever done before—to affirm the
existence of certain historical verities.4
2. For answers to these charges, see Saul S. Friedman, Jews and the American
Slave Trade (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1998); Eli Faber, Jews,
Slaves and the Slave Trade: Setting the Record Straight (New York: New York
University Press, 2000); Harold Brackman, Ministry of Lies: The Truth Behind the
Nation of Islam’s “The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews” (New York:
Four Walls Eight Windows Press, 1994).
3. The book used most often to substantiate charges against the Jews concerning their involvement in the African slave trade was The Secret Relationship
Between Blacks and Jews, Volume One, published in 1991, at the same time that
interest in Holocaust denial was reaching a peak. And Bradley Smith’s Committee
for the Open Debate of the Holocaust (CODOH) was still sending advertisements
espousing Holocaust denial to college newspapers in 1999 (Shermer and Grobman,
64).
4. Toby Axelrod, “Combating a Monumental Lie,” Jewish Week, February 16,
1995. Axelrod reported that the AHA’s statements about Jewish involvement in
African-American slavery and on Holocaust denial were the only public announcements on a historical topic that had been released by the organization “within recent
2011]
ON WHITENESS AND THE JEWS
465
Because of this emphasis on the historical record, it might be said that
the effects of these efforts to discredit Jews were felt most keenly within the
insular community of American academia. This leads me to the first question I ask in the course of this essay: What made the political culture of the
American academy in the 1990s susceptible to attempts to manipulate and
falsify historical narrative? The second question that concerns me is this:
Why was it that Jews and Jewish issues appeared to be at the center of some
of the most serious of these attempts? It is my contention that the most
influential factor in regard to the falsification of the Jewish role in history at
that time was the question of Jewish “whiteness,” and that this factor
became especially salient in the cultural climate of American academia in
the 1990s.
When confronted in the early 1990s with repeated efforts to position
Holocaust denial as a legitimate attempt at revisionist history, the governing
council of the American Historical Association was at first reluctant to act.
The council decided in the fall of 1991 not to issue a statement that would
reaffirm the truth of the Holocaust, in part because some in the association
felt strongly that the AHA, in words of its president, William E.
Leuchtenberg, “ought not to get into the business of certifying what is and
is not history.” Instead, the council issued a statement that called on historians to “initiate plans now to encourage study of the significance of the
Holocaust.” Later that year, though, the council did take action on the closing day of the association’s annual meeting, when some historians at the
conference pressed for a more forceful response. In December 1991, the
governing council of the AHA unanimously adopted a statement condemning “attempts to deny the fact of the Holocaust” and underlined that “no
serious historian questions that the Holocaust took place.”5
It is simple enough to diagnose the underlying motives of Holocaust
denial as “antisemitic” and be done with the matter. Although there are
those in the denial movement who eschew overt Jew-hatred as injurious to
their overall cause, that the deniers harbor ill-will toward Jews and the state
of Israel will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with their tactics and
overall agenda. One of the reasons that deniers harbor antipathy toward
Jews that is germane to my central assertion is that the many of those within
the denial coterie see Jews as racially different from others of European
memory.” See also Karen J. Winkler, “Group Issues Statement on Role of Jews in
Slave Trade,” Chronicle of Higher Education, February 17, 1995.
5. Lipstadt, 205. See also Karen J. Winkler, “How Should Scholars Respond to
Assertions That the Holocaust Never Happened?” Chronicle of Higher Education,
December 11, 1991, and Ellen K. Coughlin, “Denials of Holocaust Are Condemned,” Chronicle of Higher Education, January 8, 1992.
466
[ VOL. 3:463
descent, an attitude that hearkens back to 19th-century racially based
antisemitism. The non-whiteness of Jews fits neatly with the allegation that
the “hoax” of the Holocaust was disseminated to defame white Europeans
and burden them with guilt, and it also feeds into conspiracy theories that
purport to explain world events and the “dispossession” of whites from their
rightful place in the racial hierarchy.6 While there are some within the white
nationalist world who have accepted Jews as white, this attitude appears to
be a minority viewpoint, and there are those who have conjectured that this
might be a ploy or a tactic to attract people to the cause of white nationalism who might otherwise be averse to raw anti-Jewish hostility.7
This conception of Jews as non-white, however, does little to explain
the attitude that deniers found for the dissemination of their ideas, especially within the extracurricular side of American campus culture. Certainly, by the 1990s, racially based hatred toward Jews had been largely
discredited in the United States outside of certain fringe groups, and quotas
that used to separate Jews from other whites in the interest of college
admissions were largely abolished by the 1960s.8 The number of minority
students, including people of color, that attended American universities had
also expanded exponentially since the end of World War II as the American
academy purposefully broadened its educational mission to include talented
students from all walks of life.9 Yet, Holocaust denial still found expression
on American campuses at the end of the twentieth century.
6. Leonard Zeskind described the attitude toward Jews within the white nationalist movement and concludes that, with certain exceptions, most of those within
the denial movement classify Jews as non-white. Leonard Zeskind, Blood and
Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the
Mainstream (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 2009), chap. 37 (especially pp. 373380). See also Evelyn Rich, “Ku Klux Klan Ideology, 1954-1988,” dissertation,
U.M.I. Dissertation Service, 1989.
7. Zeskind, 373-80.
8. For Jewish “whiteness” and the assimilation of Jews as “white ethnics,” see
Karen Brodkin, How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in
America (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1998); Eric L. Goldstein, The
Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006); Matthew Frye Jacobson, Roots Too: White Ethnic Revival in
Post-Civil Rights America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006). On
discrimination at American universities in the prewar period, see Jerome Karabel,
The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale and
Princeton (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2005), and Harold S. Wechsler,
The Qualified Student: A History of Selective College Admissions in America (New
York: J. Wiley, 1977).
9. John R. Thelin, A History of American Higher Education (Baltimore, MD:
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), chap. 7.
2011]
467
One reason for this somewhat ironic state of affairs was that the deniers were successful at repositioning their arguments so that, to the untrained
eye, they appeared to be making a political argument rather than one that
hinged upon antisemitism of a racial or conspiratorial nature. As has been
well documented, perhaps the most familiar instances of Holocaust denial
on campus concerned the efforts of Bradley Smith and the Committee on
Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH) to place advertisements with
titles such as “The Holocaust Controversy: The Case for Open Debate” or
“The Holocaust Story: How Much Is False? The Case for Open Debate” in
campus newspapers. While many of the periodicals that Smith approached
refused to run the advertisement, others, influenced by the positioning of
Holocaust denial as a challenge to the excesses of political correctness on
American campuses, argued that the publication of these ads was an issue
of freedom of speech.10
In the mid-1990s, just a few years after the ideological debates over
Holocaust denial on campus reached a peak, the subject of disproportionate
Jewish involvement in the trans-Atlantic slave trade became a recurring
issue on American campuses. At that time, the AHA governing council took
more decisive action than it had previously when dealing with Holocaust
denial and passed a policy resolution on February 8, 1995, that “condemn[ed] as false any statement alleging that Jews played a disproportionate role in the exploitation of slave labor or in the Atlantic slave trade.” The
council also cited the Davis-Drescher statement, submitted to the council by
historians David Brion Davis and Seymour Drescher, both noted experts on
the history of slavery and antislavery movements, which described “a number of egregious assaults on the historical record in institutions of higher
learning and at educational conferences” over the past few years, the statement confirmed that these types of allegations about Jews “so misrepresent
the historical record . . . that we believe them only to be part of a long
antisemitic tradition that presents Jews as negative central actors in human
history.” When asked why the AHA had created the resolution in connection with allegations about the slave trade, AHA president John Coatsworth
explained that the organization acted “because of the particularly pernicious
character of this falsehood” that “seemed directed toward defaming a particular ethnic or religious group. He added that, “While the association does
10. For rebuttals of the freedom of speech argument, see Lipstadt, chap. 10;
Stern, 10-14 and Appendix A; Shermer and Grobman, 13, 62-63.
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not have a policy of correcting every false statement about history that its
members encounter, in this case we were compelled to act.”11
If we view the events that precipitated the council’s policy resolution
through the lens of Jewish “whiteness,” we must turn to The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, Volume One, a polemic published by the
Nation of Islam that remains one of the most popular sources for allegations
about Jews and the slave trade. In the introduction to the book, the Jews are
depicted not only as white people but also as a representative symbol of
some of the worst qualities of white people:
Jews have been conclusively linked to the greatest criminal endeavor
ever undertaken against an entire race of people—a crime against humanity—the Black [sic] African Holocaust . . . Deep within the recesses of
the Jewish historical record is the irrefutable evidence that the most
prominent of the Jewish pilgrim fathers used kidnapped Black [sic] Africans disproportionately more than any other ethnic or religious group in
New World history . . . The immense wealth of Jews, as with most of the
White [sic] colonial fathers, was acquired by the brutal subjugation of
Black Africans purely on the basis of skin color [my italic emphasis
added].12
A number of scholars and Jewish professionals addressed the issues
that resulted when professors, including Tony Martin of Wellesley College
and Leonard Jeffries of City College of New York, employed this book in
the classroom, and others took on the issue of incendiary black speakers
making appearances on American campuses.13 To further illuminate the
issue of Jewish “whiteness,” though, I will examine a lesser known incident
that occurred at Ohio’s Kent State University. The events that took place at
11. American Historical Association, “”Statement about Jews and the Slave
Trade.” Press release, February 8, 1995. See also Axelrod, 1995, and Winkler,
1995.
12. The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, Volume One, prepared
by The Historical Research Department of the Nation of Islam (Chicago: Nation of
Islam, 1991).
13. For information on this type of anti-Jewish rhetoric on American campuses,
see Spencer Blakeslee, The Death of American Antisemitism (Westport CT: Prager,
2000); Henry Louis Gates Jr., “Black Demagogues and Pseudo-Scholars,” The New
York Times, July 20, 1992; Cornel West, “Black Anti-Semitism and the Rhetoric of
Resentment,” Tikkun, Vol. 7, No. 1, January/February 1992; Dennis Ross, Schooled
in Hate: Anti-Semitism on Campus (New York: Anti-Defamation League, 1997);
Jeffrey A. Ross and Melanie L. Schneider, “Antisemitism on the Campus: Challenge and Response,” in Antisemitism in America: Outspoken Experts Explode the
Myths, ed. Jerome Chanes (New York: Carol Publishing Group, 1995).
2011]
469
KSU will serve as an example, albeit an extreme one, of the ties that exist
between Jewish “whiteness” and the refashioning of historical narrative.14
In this particular case, an article appeared in a KSU journal called
Uhuru (Swahili for “freedom”) that was specifically devoted to black student interests and concerns and was published by the Black United Students
(BUS). The article that spawned such controversy and argument, “The Paradox of European Jewry,” was published in the spring 1994 issue of Uhuru.
It was written by Terry Shropshire, at the time a sophomore at the University of Akron. The article began with the acknowledgement that the Holocaust was “one of the most horrific crimes ever committed against
mankind,” and included the author’s assertion that his empathy for the horrors that had befallen Europe’s Jews stemmed from his “African descent.”
Nothing in the first two paragraphs of the article can be construed as either
anti-Jewish or antisemitic.
There were, however, two elements that provided semantic clues on
what would follow. First, the word “Jews,” mentioned twice in the first
paragraph, was always qualified by a reminder of Jewish whiteness; hence,
“By 1945, over one-third of all of the world’s Caucasian Jews had been
stuffed into ovens—as the world watched. In all, approximately eleven million Caucasian Jews, Gypsies, and other ‘undesirables’ had been eliminated” [my italic emphasis added]. Second, the word “Holocaust” was
qualified by the word “Jewish”; hence: “The Jewish Holocaust was a crime
that can never be forgotten and we must all ensure that something like this
is never repeated.” This detail indicated that, for the author, there had been
more than one holocaust in human history. Although such a contention is
not in itself an offensive or unusual opinion, it did reflect one of the main
assertions of the article—namely, that blacks had suffered more because of
their enslavement than had Jews because of the Holocaust.15
The rest of the article was less ambiguous in its intent. The second
section, subtitled “Victims Only?” listed the many times in history that
“Caucasian Jews” had portrayed themselves as victims, but then questioned
whether Jews could legitimately claim to have been victimized in each
instance. In particular, the article cast doubt on the veracity of the existence
of Arab and black antisemitism, and then proceeded to assert that “Jews
have exercised (what some call) an inordinate or disproportionate role in the
decimation, defilement, cultural colonization, enslavement and genocide of
14. The documents pertaining to events at Kent State University were collected
by Lewis Fried, who was a professor of English at KSU, and are housed at the
American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati.
15. Terry Shropshire, “The Paradox of European Jewry,” Uhuru, Vol. 6, No. 4
(Spring 1994): 34.
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many of the world’s people up until today.” The article also questioned how
Jews had “the audacity . . . to perpetually illuminate or highlight their own
victimization while conveniently ‘forgetting’ their role in the destruction,
murder and dehumanization of millions of others.”16
The next section, subtitled “The So-Called Chosen People,” employed
a multiplicity of information and quotes taken from a number of sources to
support and, ostensibly, to prove the author’s contention that Jews were
disproportionately involved in the African slave trade. A significant number
of these sources were described as direct quotes from the work of Jewish
scholars, a point that Shropshire was careful to make when he referred to
them.17
The article also emphasized that present-day Jews were unrelated to
the original Israelites of the Bible because they were descendants of “Russian-steppe tribesmen” found in “the dark caves of the Caucasus mountains,” and concluded that the claims of “Caucasian Jews” after World War
II “for a land in ancient Palestine, in the Middle East, looks absolutely
absurd, ludicrous, grotesque.” In addition, Shropshire inserted references to
Afrocentric scholars who asserted that the authentic heirs to Biblical Jewish
tradition were black and not white.18
The following section, “Spanish Inquisition and After,” explained that
Jewish money financed the first voyage of Christopher Columbus and that,
in later years, many of the conquistadors were Jewish and took a disproportionate role in the decimation of the native peoples of the Americas. With
the continent now largely depopulated of a native workforce, “Caucasian
Jews” then became some of the leading slave traffickers in the Americas. In
short, says Shropshire, “Jews were major participants in the slaughter of the
Native Americans, and were major participants in the greatest human tragedy history knows (no, not Hitler’s Holocaust), the Trans-Atlantic Slave
Trade.”19
16. Ibid., 34-35.
17. Many of the quotes in the article attributed to Jewish scholars were taken
from The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, Volume One, prepared by
The Historical Research Department of the Nation of Islam (Chicago: Nation of
Islam, 1991).
18. For a critical analysis of anti-Jewish thought in Afrocentric theory, see Amy
Newman, “The Idea of Judaism in Feminism and Afrocentrism,” in Insider/Outsider: American Jews and Multiculturalism, eds. David Biale, Michael Galchinsky,
and Susannah Heschel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). See also
Stephen Howe, Afrocentrism: Mythical Pasts and Imagined Homes (London: Verso
Books, 1998).
19. Shropshire, 36.
2011]
471
The rest of the article drove home the point that while Christian whites
were also involved in “the Holocausts of Native Americans and Africans,”
Jews were disproportionately involved: “Caucasian Jews outnumbered their
Caucasian Christian brethren in the number of slaves owned by almost two
to one . . . THESE ARE FACTS SUPPORTED BY THEIR OWN SCHOLARS, HISTORIANS, AND RABBIS” [emphasis in the original]. In addition, the whiteness of Jews was used to suggest their unqualified support for
the Confederacy, their instrumentality in instituting Jim Crow laws, and the
“unholy, ungodly alliance” that existed “between the political state of Israel
(occupied Palestine) and the barbaric, blatantly racist regime of white South
Africa.” Jews were subsequently characterized as “perniciously and atrociously anti-Black, anti-Arab, [and] anti-Native American.”20
The article accused Jews of bad faith in their participation in movements for social justice and civil rights because of their clannishness and
ethnocentrism. “Do the Caucasian Jews only take care of themselves and
continue to discard, and defile, and trash, and defecate on the rest of the
world?” Shropshire asked. “Don’t be fooled by the facades and affectations,
for they have not behaved like friends or benevolent allies to African, Arab
or Native American people. These are the works of those who should be
described as enemies of our people, our struggle, our children, and our
future.”21
Shropshire concluded that the relationship between Jews and other
minority groups was “built upon injustice, lying, thievery, murder, hypocrisy, duplicity, deceit and the distortion of historical facts.” Jews used “the
name of God to facilitate [their] racist, narrow-minded mentality and gutter
practices of religious doctrine . . . [and] to facilitate murder, oppression,
imperialism, international warfare, the taking of someone else’s land, or the
acquisition of power and wealth.” He also emphasized that he had written
the article because “[t]he only route to racial, ethnic, or religious reconciliation is through the distribution or dissemination of truth [and] of facts.”22
Clearly, the subject matter covered in this article went far beyond the
specific issue addressed by the AHA’s policy resolution condemning the
allegation that Jews had played a disproportionate role in the African slave
trade, although the timing of the publication of the piece (Spring 1994)
suggests that it may well have been one of the incidents that spurred the
AHA’s resolution on February 8, 1995. It is perhaps not too difficult to
extrapolate that the authors of the AHA policy resolution and the DavisDrescher statement were aware of the types of excesses that could accom20. Ibid., 36-37.
21. Ibid., 37.
22. Ibid., 42.
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pany the initial allegation about Jews and the slave trade and, although they
did not explicitly condemn the types of statements that appeared in the
Shropshire article, implied their condemnation through their unequivocal
statement against antisemitism.23 As we will see below, the deeper issues in
the case at KSU were the overall relationship of some members of the university community to the concept of the historical truth and, consequently,
their assessment of both the “whiteness” of Jews and the Jewish response to
the article.
Upon publication, the article immediately struck a nerve among
faculty members and subsequently split them into two rough factions,
though neither faction openly supported either the methodology or the conclusions reached by the student author. Instead, the split was based on
whether Uhuru should have published an article that carried false and
defamatory allegations about Jews as a corporate entity. This type of faculty
involvement ensured that the ensuing debate would eventually include both
detractors and supporters who were part of the established university structure. It is for this reason that the administration in general was inclined to
take what its members called a “balanced” view of the conflict in an attempt
to promote dialogue and to use the article to create a “teachable moment”
for the campus community that would be a “responsible way to engage in
more dialogue.”24 It was exactly this quest for evenhandedness, however,
that suggested to some Jewish faculty and students that the issues at stake
for both Jews and the larger community were neither understood nor taken
seriously at Kent State University.
A salient detail is that Uhuru was not formally affiliated with an academic department but did have a faculty advisor from KSU’s Department of
Pan-African Studies, both of which were influenced by theories of Afrocentrism. The discourse surrounding the article was tinged with negative assertions about Afrocentrism, and thus the hostile reactions to the article were
often understood by its defenders not only as criticism of the student author
and the student-run magazine but also of an academic unit of the
university.25
23. To read both the AHA policy resolution and the Davis-Drescher statement,
see http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/1995/9503AHA.CFM.
24. Quotes are from KSU president Carol Cartwright in the article by Douglas
Feiden, “Ohio Campus Torn by Tract Against Jews,” The Forward, April 14, 1995.
25. At the height of the conflict, Ken Calkins, a KSU history professor who
opposed the Uhuru editorial policy, sent several articles to his colleagues that
explained some of the tenets of Afrocentrism, accompanied by this note: “Here is a
little light reading to wile away the time. I send it with some trepidation. You must
promise to stop immediately if you begin to tense up. This is quite a revelation to
me. It appears that [the Department of Pan-African Studies is] teaching a kind of
2011]
473
A resolution consisting of three short paragraphs was presented to the
Faculty Senate on May 11, 1994, proposing that the Senate express its
“deep concern” and claiming that the article was “marked by virulent antiSemitism and devoid of reasoned argument or responsible scholarship.”
The authors concluded that the article represented a “blatant attack upon the
values of the University and should not have been published in a periodical
which is supported and publicly endorsed by major offices and programs
within our institution,” and asked that faculty connected to the publication
endeavor to teach “the methods and values involved in the scholarly pursuit
of truth.”26 The resolution was tabled and a committee was formed to write
a more general version that acknowledged other acts of racism and
prejudice on campus.27
A group of concerned scholars sent a letter to the Senate outlining their
reaction to some of the major issues surrounding the controversy. Responding to the charges of antisemitism made by those who opposed the article,
they acknowledged that Shropshire made problematic references to “the
linkages between the Caucasian Race and the Jewish Religion and Culture
in Eurasia,” and concluded that “The claims by many of this article’s critics
are true on this point, and from their perspective, they are justified in
expecting a disavowal of these references.”28
religion” (taken from a memo from Ken Calkins addressed to “Greer” and sent to
other colleagues (Helga, Mark, Gary, David, and Mike), dated October 20, 1995.
Calkins also copied a memo from George R. Garrison, the chair of the Department
of Pan-African Studies, to Calkins, dated October 9, 1995, that included a proposed
agenda for a meeting between members of the Department of Pan-African Studies
and those who opposed the Uhuru article. Calkins underlined and emphasized with
an ironic exclamation point the proposed addition of “Semitism” as a subject to
accompany the discussion over Afrocentrism and Eurocentrism.
26. “Faculty Senate Resolutions,” Uhuru Na Mazungumzo (Freedom and Civil
Discourse) (Spring 1995): 38-39.
27. Ibid. According to the editor(s), who appended an introduction to the
reprinting of the resolutions in Uhuru Na Mazungumzo, “While Senators were generally sympathetic with the resolution’s concern about the hostile tone of campus
discourse, many were uncomfortable with the wording. Several expressed concerns
about the possibility of censorship implied by the call to reconsider Uhuru’s financial support; and many objected to the resolution singling out Uhuru and Shropshire’s article as if this were the only significant act of intolerance to occur in Kent
over the past academic year.”
28. Letter from E. Timothy Moore, acting chair of the Department of Pan-African Studies and the faculty advisor to Uhuru; Dr. Alene Barnes-Harden; Dr. Francis Dorsey; Dr. Kwame Nantambu; and Dr. Meli Temu to Robert Johnson, chair of
the Faculty Senate Executive Committee, and to the members of the Faculty Senate, dated May 18, 1994. Reprinted in Uhuru Na Mazungumzo, Spring 1995.
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The members of this group, however, were not willing to condemn the
publication of the article, despite the fact that their letter had, somewhat
obliquely, acknowledged its problematic content. The reasoning, which
would be echoed by many others who would later defend the article, was
that Shropshire was justified in articulating his rage and frustration because
of the fact that he, along with the majority of the African-American community, had been brutally oppressed by American society. In these faculty
members’ words: “Due to the fact of institutional racism and other forms of
bigotry and hatred that are a part of our larger society, our magazine has
allowed for the articulation of perceived or experienced levels of frustration
and anger that students have felt, and do feel, toward segments of society or
within its smaller microcosm, the university.”29
Although those who wrote the letter admitted that they had not read
any of the books cited in the Uhuru article, they contended that other African Americans, some of them “bitter from past and present injustices,” had
reached similar conclusions.30 This appeared to suggest that if the student—
or others—had reached erroneous conclusions in the course of their
research, this was understood to be less important than the right to express
anger, pain, and frustration at societal injustice.
A second version of the original resolution, more general in its tone
and language than the previous version, was drafted by a follow-up committee and adopted by the Faculty Senate. This version referred to the
Faculty Senate’s concern about “an increase in intolerance on campus as
well as in society at large” and listed several grievances, including anonymous racist flyers distributed on campus, an anti-gay/lesbian display at the
Student Center, and derogatory depictions of women. It specifically mentioned, however, the Uhuru article as “marked by virulent anti-Semitism
and devoid of reasoned argument and serious scholarship. As such, it represents a direct challenge to both the University’s academic values and its
commitment to encouraging respect for diversity.”31
Students who defended the article not only stood for the right of Uhuru
to publish the article but also supported its methodology and conclusions as
correct. The campus newspaper, the Daily Kent Stater, printed a letter from
Adisa A. Alkebulan, a senior in the Pan-African Studies Department and
the assistant editor of Uhuru, who wondered, “Why is it racist or
antisemitic for Afrikan people to discuss their own history? Don’t we have
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid.
31. Kent State University Faculty Senate, Minutes of the Meeting, July 18,
1994. See also Roger J. Mezger, “KSU Faculty Senate Passes Anti-Intolerance
Resolution,” Akron Beacon Journal, July 19, 1994.
2011]
475
that right?” He called the Faculty Senate’s resolution “racist,” and asserted
that most of the faculty were “unqualified to accurately and truthfully say
that the information in this article or any other publication indicating Jewish
involvement in our holocaust is inaccurate.” He concluded that this was “a
very touchy subject among European Jews and Judeophiles,” not because it
was an attack on Jews but because it was “a well researched issue” that
drew a “painful conclusion.” Alkebulan called the issue “exaggerated” and
alleged that the opponents of the Uhuru article were ignorant and racist.32
Later in the year, an advertisement signed by 300 members of the KSU
faculty and administration with the title, “A Call for Civil Discourse,” was
published in the Daily Kent Stater. The ad condemned the Uhuru article as
“blatantly antisemitic” and warned that:
[A]rticles such as the one in question pose a peculiar educational
dilemma. Refuting them point by point elevates an inflammatory and academically indefensible article to the level of a serious scholarly document. Not responding opens the door to claims that silence confirms the
validity of the data and charges as presented.33
One solution offered by those who supported the publication of the
article was to issue a general invitation to those who opposed the article “to
take this article and disprove it in an empirical and scholarly manner to
show that indeed Mr. Shropshire and all of the points that he raised, or the
authors/texts he cited were in actuality what your assertions suggest.”34 For
the most part, those who supported the right of Uhuru to print Shropshire’s
article welcomed the invitation as a positive attempt to begin a healing dialogue on campus; the university administration, despite its condemnation of
the content of the article, also promoted this strategy.
Thus, despite the misgivings of those who sponsored the advertisement
condemning the article, the “peculiar educational dilemma” that they had
hoped to avoid became the proposed solution. In the spring of 1995, a special issue of Uhuru, entitled Uhuru Na Mazungumzo: This Teachable
Moment, was published. The issue comprised a reprint of the original article, “Paradox of European Jewry,” and nine response articles, three from
students and six from KSU faculty. Of the three student articles, two came
32. Adisa A. Alkebulan, Editorial, Daily Kent Stater, September 28, 1994.
33. “Campus Campaign for Civil Discourse,” Daily Kent Stater, October 12,
1994. Later, the accusation was made that some of those who signed the advertisement only did so “as a result of pressure or because they thought it was the politically correct thing to do (E. Timothy Moore, “Faculty Advisors’ Notes,” Uhuru Na
Mazungumzo [Spring 1995]).
34. Op. cit., Moore et al.
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from editors of Uhuru who were supportive of the magazine’s right to publish the article and one came from a self-identified Jewish student who
opposed the contents of the article. Of the six faculty contributions, two
opposed the article while the other four, although they may not have
embraced Shropshire’s conclusions, defended Uhuru’s right to publish the
article.
The student editors of Uhuru expressed their disappointment that they
had received relatively few submissions from those opposed to the article.
While the student editors suggested that the reason for the scant number of
opposition pieces was that those who styled themselves adversaries were
not truly interested in sponsoring tolerance and understanding within the
campus community, those who opposed the article explained that they were
not interested in dignifying the original article with a response and, consequently, elevating its ideas to the status of legitimate debate.35
The edition ended with an appendix consisting of a bibliography of the
works that Shropshire used to write his article. The appendix was titled,
“Notes: African-Jewish Relationship—Something to Cherish?” The first
five works that were cited were followed by selective quotes that supported
not only Shropshire’s contentions but also accused Jews of racism and
intolerance and made reference to the resolution passed in the General
Assembly of the United Nations in November 1975 that equated Zionism
with racism.36
35. This strategy of non-response, often used in connection with instances of
Holocaust denial, resulted in a dearth of material documenting Jewish reactions to
the incident.
36. Another 33 titles were listed with these prefatory comments: “A call number
listed for any of the following books indicates they can be found in the Kent State
University Library. (After this, there will be absolutely no excuse for the “distinguished” professors, administrators, and other members of the community to use
ignorance, amnesia or slight memory loss as a justification for not speaking about
these issues)” [sic]. The rest of the special edition consisted of a note from Moore
in his capacity as faculty advisor to the magazine; notes from the two student editors; two poems that, albeit obliquely, expressed the views of those who supported
Shropshire; a reprinting of the Faculty Senate Resolutions (with brief, introductory
comments), accompanied by a copy of Moore’s letter to the Faculty Senate and a
transcript of the remarks of Dr. Richard Feinberg to the Faculty Senate (Feinberg
contributed an article supportive of Shropshire to the special edition of Uhuru); an
editorial piece by one of the student editors of Uhuru that was sent to the Daily
Kent Stater on September 28, 1994; a copy of the full-page advertisement taken out
by the Campus Campaign for Civil Discourse in the Daily Kent Stater on October
12, 1994; a resolution written by the Pan-African faculty and staff; a resolution of
support passed by the Black Graduate Student Association; and a postscript signed
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477
The two faculty members who wrote in opposition to the article, history professors Kenneth Calkins and Robert Swierenga, were careful to
point out the problems with Shropshire’s methods of scholarship. They
accomplished this, in part, by meticulously checking Shropshire’s numerous footnotes; indeed, Calkins acknowledged that one of the most “striking
characteristics” of the piece was the “large number of quotations and citations of authority” that it contained. Nevertheless, he notes,
When one scrutinizes these sources, however, one soon discovers that
Mr. Shropshire apparently had little interest in conveying what they actually say about the issues he addresses. Of the seventeen direct quotations
I have been able to check, for example, only one is completely accurate.
Some of Shropshire’s errors seem to be simply the product of slip-shod
scholarship. On other occasions, however, it would appear that the quotations were altered with a calculated intention to mislead the reader . . .
One of the reasons for his difficulty in providing accurate quotations,
however, is that in at least six cases he has not gone directly to the
sources himself, but has rather used quotations which appear in a book
published by the Nation of Islam entitled The Secret Relationship
Between Blacks and Jews.37
Similarly, Swierenga added:
The facts are undeniable. Jews were not the instigators or major players
in the enslavement of Africans, either as traders or owners, and contemporary Jewish scholars have not been silent about the involvement of
their ancestors. Shropshire and his Nation of Islam tutors need to look
again at the facts of history.38
Of the four faculty members who wrote in support of the article, two
specifically called attention to their own “whiteness” through their appeals
to others of European descent to form their opinions of the article by
attempting to understand it through the lens of the African-American experience. Christina McVay, an instructor of English and German who was on
the faculty advisory board for Uhuru, expressed regret concerning the characterization of Judaism as a “gutter religion,” as well as other anti-Jewish
expressions and “inaccuracies” in the article, but reasoned that, although
this type of rhetoric was common in the black press, it was not the real
by four of the members of the Editorial Advisory Board, who also wrote supportive
articles for Uhuru.
37. Kenneth Calkins, “An Historian’s Response to Terry Shropshire,” Uhuru Na
Mazungumzo, Spring 1995, 14.
38. Richard Swierenga, “Jews and American Slavery,” Uhuru Na Mazungumzo,
Spring 1995, 31.
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problem. “I fear many of us educated white folks are missing the forest for
the trees,” McVay noted, and concluded, “[I]t all boils down to the pervasive and longstanding ignorance of whites (including Jews) regarding the
black experience, and more importantly, the refusal to acknowledge that
there is much in that experience worth learning.” In trying to characterize
the relations between the two groups, McVay claimed that the root cause of
what was termed “black antisemitism” was the lack of acknowledgement by
white people of black suffering and asked her white readers to consider the
issue “from the black perspective.” To do so, she suggested asking a number of questions:
Why does the U.S. now have a National Holocaust Museum but no
museum dedicated to the people upon whose backs this country was quite
literally built? (And if we did have one, would throngs of Americans visit
it, as they do the museum in Washington?) Why do taxpayers say nothing
about the billions of dollars we send to Israel every year but begrudge
every dollar that goes to inner-city schools? Why had six out of the
twenty white students in one of my classes last spring seen Schindler’s
List while none had seen Malcolm X, which had been in the theaters a
few months longer? Why are Jews called the Chosen People? And does
that mean that their suffering counts for more than that of blacks? Why is
the Jewish Holocaust treated with awe and respect, while the African
Holocaust is passed over as though it is insignificant? In short, why do
we believe we must remember the gas chamber but not the auction
block?39
Clearly, some of McVay’s questions (and particularly the one pertaining to “the Chosen People”) betrayed an irritation toward Jewish claims of
victimization, as well as discomfort with the concept of a collective Jewish
identity as an oppressed minority group. This impression was confirmed in
the next paragraph, when she referred to “the ultimate paradox that American Jews—acknowledged victims—are living very well these days,” and
reminded her readers that some blacks “are skeptical now about the motives
behind Jewish participation in [the Civil Rights] movement.” McVay justified the anger in the black community through the “desire to reveal Jews as
more than simply long-suffering victims, but as victimizers as well,” and
concluded, “Our nation, especially those of us in education, must take steps
to ensure that no more generations of Americans of any color are allowed to
pass through our educational system without gaining the same reverence
39. Christina McVay, “Speaking of Paradox,” Uhuru Na Mazungumzo, Spring
1995.
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479
and respect for the black experience that most of us have for the Jewish
experience.”40
The confidence with which McVay asserted her conclusion that Americans demonstrated “reverence and respect” for the Jewish experience was
rooted in her assessment of Jewish whiteness. This was echoed in an article
by Richard Feinberg, professor of anthropology, who wrote, “[T]he Kent
community owes Shropshire and Uhuru a debt of gratitude for raising
important issues and forcing us to talk about them openly.” While he
acknowledged Shropshire’s “incendiary language,” Feinberg reasoned that
such verbiage obscured a complex set of societal problems and readers
should focus more on what the author was trying to accomplish than on the
accuracy of the article itself. Therefore, he asserted,
What seems to bother Shropshire is that some Jews call upon historical
oppression as a license for self-righteous indignation, and they are sometimes so caught up in their own suffering that they fail to notice when
their actions injure others. I have heard comments from Jews regarding
Arabs (and occasionally blacks or other peoples of color) that are as
blindly hostile as the most offensive passages in Shropshire’s essay.41
Feinberg concluded by petitioning “whites, and particularly Jews, to
avoid over-reaction.” The rhetoric contained in Shropshire’s article, he
hypothesized, while it may have seemed “unfair” to Jews, was essentially
harmless because blacks “have little institutional power and limited opportunity to cause you serious injury.”42
The two essays excerpted above demonstrate that the much of the discourse surrounding Shropshire’s article was not simply a case of what some
might label “black antisemitism” or even a black-Jewish disagreement.43
Rather, they provide a window into a campus culture in which the label of
Jewish “whiteness” was, according to some members of the KSU community, enough to render Jewish objections to blatant falsehoods about Jews
40. Ibid.
41. Richard Feinberg, “Jews, Africans, and Human Liberation: Reflections on
Terry Shropshire’s ‘Paradox of Eastern Jewry,’ ” Uhuru Na Mazungumzo, Spring
1995.
42. Ibid.
43. An online version of a publication by the ADL, entitled Schooled in Hate:
Anti-Semitism on Campus (1997), did not list the incidence at KSU under the heading “Black Anti-Semitism” but included it under the more general rubric “Examples of Serious Campus Anti-Semitic Incidents.” This Web page is titled “Schooled
in Hate: Anti-Semitism on Campus” and subtitled “Specific Examples of Serious
Anti-Semitic Incidents,” from the Anti-Defamation League Web site, http://
www.adl.org/sih/SIH-Examples.asp, accessed December 28, 2011.
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and Judaism irrelevant and even mean-spirited. Thus, even though it is
undeniably true that American Jews have benefited handsomely from what
is referred to as “white privilege” in American society in general, one wonders whether the “whiteness” of Jews can be seen a disadvantage specifically within the milieu of the campus.
Naturally, the students affiliated with Uhuru supported the right of the
periodical to publish Shropshire’s piece. Editor Enloe Wilson wondered
about “the true motivation of the onslaught [of criticism],” especially
because, despite the “humbly admitted mistakes” of Shropshire’s article, “a
notable body of similar works” came to the same conclusions. For Wilson,
the real issue was that:
Many have speculated as to whether the true underlying source of discomfort has been Shropshire’s supposedly elaborate excursions in
“twisted logic” or “alternate truths,” or the fact that a student of color
(especially an Afrikan student) had the nerve—the gall to study a component of a European people’s history and to be forthright in expressing
alarm at what he found.44
Assistant editor Alkebulan hypothesized that the article gave people
“the opportunity to attack Afrocentricity in general and the Department of
Pan-African Studies and Black United Students in particular,” and commented on the absurdity of putting “oppressed people in the position of
defending themselves against being racist and antisemitic.”45
Only one student essay appeared in the special issue that opposed the
content of the Uhuru article. Mirroring the tendency of students who supported the article to use more strident language than the faculty who did so,
this student, Stephen Weinberg, was willing to make more controversial
allegations than those of the faculty members who opposed the publication
of the article. Weinberg asserted that an “ideology” allowing hostility
toward Jews and Jewish issues had made a negative impact on contemporary campus culture. He contextualized the article with his contention that
similar incidents had taken place across the country, and claimed that rhetoric such as Shropshire’s was proof that “hate is being legitimized in the
classroom.” While Weinberg did not specifically point to black studies programs, he alleged that:
44. Enloe Wilson, “This Teachable Moment,” Uhuru Na Mazungumzo (Spring
1995): 77-78.
45. Adisa A. Alkebulan, “Lessons Learned,” Uhuru Na Mazungumzo (Spring
1995): 80-81.
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At many universities, and Kent as well, resources are being diverted into
programs that are distant and separate from the main campus community
and its goals. These programs abandon academics and instead allow ideological indoctrination to flourish. The result of this has been racist dogma
justified behind the tutelage of multicultural education, and its various
offshoots.46
Weinberg was prepared to attack the entire edifice of multicultural
learning, condemning the “cultural relativity” that he felt “serve[d] to
deconstruct any notion of universal values and universal knowledge.” He
cautioned that those who touted the benefits of multiculturalism, like the
supporters of the article, were able to lay claim to absolute knowledge of
the subjects of their choice and could argue that, “Anyone who disagrees
with them has simply soaked up the views of what is perceived as the dominant, oppressive, societal view.” At the same time, the ideas advanced by
Shropshire’s article could be validated simply because they were “widely
held” in the black community. Such a stance promoted intolerance, Weinberg claimed, because it assumed that attitudes are racially based. Therefore, even though the article was shown to be historically inaccurate, “the
only possible claim for its validity must be made on ethnic grounds.”47 For
Weinberg, this meant that the right to criticize Uhuru was unfairly portrayed as a politicized racial issue.48
Weinberg expressed his disappointment over the aftermath of the incident, focusing specifically on the responses of some of the KSU faculty,
whom he characterized as “not interested in truth.” Similarly, he intimated
that Jewish students were powerless in the face of politically motivated
anti-Jewish rhetoric because of the prevailing climate of opinion on campus
and its indebtedness to concepts of multiculturalism. “There is nothing
46. Stephen Weinberg, “Legitimizing Hate,” Uhuru Na Mazungumzo (Spring
1995): 32.
47. Ibid., 32-34. Weinberg also published an opinion piece in the Daily Kent
Stater in which he echoed various faculty members’ assertions that Shropshire used
his sources and quotes incorrectly, mostly because of his reliance on The Secret
Relationship Between Blacks and Jews (Steven B. Weinberg, “Jews Not Solely to
Blame for Slave Trade,” Daily Kent Stater, October 12, 1994).
48. Other articles used for this section on Uhuru include: Douglas Feiden,
“Kent State University, Ohio Campus Torn by Tract Against Jews,” The Forward,
April 14, 1995; Marcy Oster, “Book May Drive Deeper Wedge between KSU’s
Blacks, Jews,” Cleveland Jewish News, Friday, April 14, 1995; “Notebook,”
Chronicle of Higher Education, May 12, 1995.
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[Jewish students] can do except congregate at the Hillel House and prepare
for the next attack,” Weinberg alleged.49
The animosity that Weinberg, as a student of the 1990s, harbored
toward the concept of multiculturalism is particularly salient. According to
American studies scholar Matthew Frye Jacobson, “Multiculturalism as a
coherent phenomenon captured little attention until the 1990s,” even though
it had been building as a movement for the previous twenty years and had
its roots in the formation of the New Left. Specifically, as the New Left
fragmented and group-specific identity politics surged, a relationship was
formed “between Civil Rights-New Left activism, education, and
multiculturalism.”50
Perhaps unsurprisingly, a number of Jews in the heyday of the New
Left in the late 1960s and early 1970s expressed discomfort concerning
antipathy toward Jews and Jewish issues, particularly the prevailing discourse over the state of Israel, in the political rhetoric that was such an
integral part of campus culture at that time.51 Eric Goldstein has also
argued that Jews were not entirely comfortable with the postwar description
of Jewishness as an ethnicity because it “did not totally resolve the dilemmas of asserting a distinctive identity in a society organized around the
categories of ‘black’ and ‘white.’ ” By the mid-1960s, when the emergence
of black nationalist groups led to a redefinition of whiteness that stressed
the negative aspects of attachment to the dominant group, some Jews began
to look for ways to reassert their group distinctiveness.52
That there would then be Jews who expressed discomfort with multiculturalism and the place of Jews within that discourse was certainly in
keeping with that earlier tradition. Indeed, a number of analysts have
referred to the difficulties that Jews faced when they tried to assert themselves qua Jews within the multicultural discourse that was a pronounced
49. Weinberg’s comment was taken from Oster’s article in the Cleveland Jewish News (see note 40).
50. Jacobson, 226-28.
51. See, for instance, Arnold Forster and Benjamin R. Epstein, The New AntiSemitism (New York: McGraw Hill, 1974); Martin Peretz, “The American Left and
Israel,” Commentary, Vol. 44, No. 5 (November 1967); Milton Himmelfarb, “In the
Light of Israel’s Victory,” Commentary, Vol. 44, No. 4 (October 1967); Seymour
Martin Lipset, “The Return of Anti-Semitism as a Political Force,” in Israel, the
Arabs and the Middle East, eds. Irving Howe and Carl Gershman (New York:
Bantam Books, 1972); Seymour Martin Lipset, “The Socialism of Fools: The Left,
the Jews, and Israel,” Encounter, December 1969.
52. Eric Goldstein, The Price of Whiteness, 190, 208.
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483
characteristic of campus culture in the 1990s.53 Political philosopher Marla
Brettschneider, for instance, discussed the need for “careful, reflective analysis of the role, importance, and even the dangers of multiculturalism to the
Jewish community.” While she and others have acknowledged the positive
impact of multiculturalism through the freedom that Jews have found to
incorporate their Jewishness with their political progressivism,
Brettschneider also warned that:
As identities become fair game in politics, Jewishness takes a beating
from the Left in ways Jews are usually more accustomed to being
attacked from the Right. Even in a politics that courageously seeks to
understand, name, and overcome oppression as well as to rethink and
rewrite history, historic antisemitic fantasies have resurfaced at times—
now from marginalized, rather than powerful, groups—about how Jews
run the world and are to blame for all the world’s problems. Recent
media attention to particular antisemitic Black Muslim speakers or the
“Holocaust hoax” problem only amplifies what Jews and multiculturally
oriented student activists have faced every day around the country. The
campus has felt like a battleground and Jews too often have found complications with progressive efforts to diversify canonically based curricula. Despite our community’s apparent success, we remain marginalized
from the majority Christian culture; adding insult to injury, despite our
minority status and experience, often we are marginalized in multicultural circles.54
Similarly, analysts Jeffrey Ross and Melanie Schneider explored the
relationship between multiculturalism and anti-Jewish hostility on American campuses when they wrote:
[These problems are] compounded and, to a degree, made possible by
many of the trends in academe that are included under the otherwise
well-intentioned phenomenon of multiculturalism. They include pressures to modify traditional academic standards in admissions, faculty hiring, and curriculum development as campuses are subject to
politicization and made to respond to claims of group entitlements.55
53. See, for instance, Peter F. Langman, Jewish Issues in Multiculturalism: A
Handbook for Educators and Clinicians (Jerusalem: Jason Aronson Inc., 1999),
and Sanford Gutman, “The Marginalization of Antisemitism in Multicultural Curricula,” in Approaches to Antisemitism: Context and Curriculum, ed. Michael Gary
Brown (New York: The American Jewish Committee, 1994).
54. Marla Brettschneider, “Multiculturalism, Jews, and Democracy: Situating
the Discussion,” in The Narrow Bridge: Jewish Views on Multiculturalism, ed.
Marla Brettschneider (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996), 1-2.
55. Ross and Schneider, 268.
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Ross and Schneider, however, were also careful to point out that these
issues were not necessarily the norm on American campuses. “Paradoxically,” as they explained, “these disturbing trends have emerged at the same
time that American colleges and universities have witnessed an unprecedented flowering of Jewish achievement.”56 In other words, Ross and
Schneider (and Brettschneider) were in agreement that multiculturalism as
an ideology or a general discourse was not in and of itself the problem.
Thus, if multiculturalism itself is not the issue, we might ask what factor or
factors were subsumed under the rubric of multiculturalism that allowed for
the falsification of history that is part of both Holocaust denial and accusations about disproportionate Jewish culpability for the African slave trade?
In the case of Uhuru at Kent State University, the author of the article
in question, as well as some of its supporters, were fairly open in their
emphasis on Jewish “whiteness” as a reason that the article, whether or not
it adhered to standards of objective truth, was an example of protected political speech rather than an antisemitic screed. In this case, my contention
concerning Jewish “whiteness” as a salient factor is fairly easy to support.
In other words, as Sander L. Gilman has observed, “Jews are simply dismissed as ‘white’” in the multicultural discourse. Further, once they
became white, “they [are] quickly lumped with the forces of patriarchy and
oppression by the new voices of multiculturalism. Their ‘whiteness’ seems
to deny them any presence in a world of hybridity defined by skin color as
cultural difference.”57
The perhaps unintended side effect of this use of Jewish “whiteness,”
though, was that it offered protection for other antisemitic rhetoric, including that which pilloried Jews, however obliquely, for reasons based on non“whiteness,” under its wide umbrella. As we have seen, for many of those
who espouse Holocaust denial, the underlying issue, whether it is openly
disclosed or not, is that Jews are different from white, Christian Europeans.
Many of the deniers who harbor personal antipathy toward Jews, however,
take great pains to mask their hatred with a pseudo-scholarly veneer that
presents Holocaust denial as legitimate revisionist history rather than base
antisemitism. And it was this pretense of intellectual inquiry and academic
neutrality that lent a sort of credence to the deniers’ basic argument as
champions of freedom of speech and allowed them to portray Holocaust
56. Ibid., 268, 277.
57. Sander L. Gilman, Multiculturalism and the Jews (New York: Routledge,
2006), 180. In an article, Gilman writes about the marginalization of Jews within
the discourse of multiculturalism while simultaneously using Jews as a model for
the multicultural (Sander L. Gilman, “ ‘We’re Not Jews’: Representing ‘Jews’ in
Contemporary Multicultural Literature,” Modern Judaism, Vol. 23, No. 2 [2003]).
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485
denial as one more in a series of controversial political topics that challenged Establishment norms and values.
In short, the argument may be made that those who portrayed Jews as
white Europeans in order to subject them to anti-Jewish hostility in the
guise of protected political speech offered sanctuary to those whose underlying objective was to attack Jews because they were different from white
Europeans. Both groups espoused antisemitic canards when they attacked
Jews, but the anti-Jewish hostility that each group expressed was based on a
different assessment of the Jewish relationship to “whiteness.” Thus, Jewish
“whiteness” was the salient factor that allowed both groups, however dissimilar in methods and members that they might have been, to promulgate
inaccurate historical narratives concerning Jews and to insist that such
falsehoods were to be welcomed because of the tenets of academic freedom
and freedom of speech. And it was the growing prevalence of this type of
falsehood that led, in turn, to the AHA’s decision to issue two different
statements about historical truth that both involved Jews and Jewish history.
Neither the advent of the modern age nor modernity itself was the
reason that Jews suffered in the 19th and 20th centuries from antisemitism.
Instead, the classification of Jews as a race was the salient factor encompassed by the general rubric of modernity, which eventually led to the murderous campaign against European Jewry. Similarly, multiculturalism may
have been the overarching climate within which both types of anti-Jewish
hostility in the 1990s were made possible, but multiculturalism in and of
itself was not the reason that Jews found themselves in a difficult position
vis-à-vis the multicultural discourse on campus. The salient factor in that
instance was the relationship that Jews were imagined to have with the concept of “whiteness.”
To bring this argument to a close, we might take a brief look at the
situation of Jews on campus in contemporary times and note that some analysts have claimed that the campus, more than any other sector of American
society, has proved to be susceptible to expressions of anti-Jewish hostility,
particularly in the period after World War II.58 I would offer the caveat that
58. See Phyllis Chesler, The New Antisemitism: The Current Crisis and What
We Must Do About It (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003), 143-49, 215-16; Gabriel
Schoenfeld, The Return of Anti-Semitism (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2004),
120-23; Gary Tobin, Aryeh K. Weinberg, and Jenna Ferer, The Uncivil University
(San Francisco: The Institute for Jewish and Community Research, 2005). For a
critical assessment of some of these books, see Jerome A. Chanes, “How, Why,
Who Hates Us: Various Takes on Old and New Antisemitisms,” The Forward,
November 27, 2009. In this book review, Chanes recommends a recent book on
antisemitism: Murray Baumgarten, Peter Kenez, and Bruce Thompson, eds., Varieties of Antisemitism: History, Ideology, Discourse (Newark: University of Dela-
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such statements must be tempered by the fact that Jewish students and
faculty, by most standards, are thriving on American campuses. They are
represented disproportionately at many colleges and universities, including
some of the most prestigious campuses in the nation. Jewish studies programs continue to grow, and the student group Hillel is highly successful.
Still, this general state of affairs may well lead us to ask about the losses
that Jews as a collective have sustained in order to make such impressive
gains. As David Biale, Susannah Heschel, and Michael Galchinsky
reminded us, at the close of the 1990s,
Never before have so few barriers existed to Jews’ entering the corridors
of political, cultural, and economic power. Yet the path to integration has
also created enormous contradictions in Jewish self-consciousness. Identification and integration with the majority stands at odds with the Jews’
equal desire to preserve their identity as a minority.59
In short, the desire of some American Jews to maintain a particular
Jewish identity conflicts with their designation as part of the “white” American majority. For many Jews in the United States, possibly even the majority, the conflation of Jews and “whiteness” is not problematic because of
the benefits such a designation can confer upon the bearer. Thus, Jewish
difference may well be acceptable to the larger community when it is
presented under the encompassing label of Euro-American difference.60 But
if Jews, in this case Jewish students, view themselves as separate from
others of European heritage and ask others to acknowledge this type of
particularity, they can be rejected because of the dictates of the surrounding
campus culture. As Biale, Heschel, and Galchinsky note, Jews are a
“boundary case,” occupying a liminal zone of identity that makes them
“insiders who are outsiders and outsiders who are insiders.”61
Relying in part on their examinations of the paradox of the anomalous
status of Jews in 21st-century America, a number of contemporary scholars
continue to probe the limits to the ways that Jews and Jewish issues are
ware Press, 2009) and especially Yehuda Bauer’s essay, “Problems of
Contemporary Antisemitism” as a counterbalance to the books listed above.
59. David Biale, Michael Galchinsky, and Susannah Heschel, “Introduction:
The Dialectic of Jewish Enlightenment,” in Insider/Outsider: American Jews and
Multiculturalism, eds. David Biale, Michael Galinchy, and Susannah Heschel
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 5.
60. Richard D. Allen has argued for the diminution of ethnic identity among
Americans of European heritage in Ethnic Identity: The Transformation of White
America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992).
61. David Biale, Michael Galchinsky, and Susannah Heschel, “Introduction:
The Dialectic.”
2011]
487
accepted within contemporary campus culture. Gary Tobin, Aryeh Kaufmann Weinberg, and Jenna Ferer have looked at the overall climate of the
campus and the problems that Jewish students face when they identify as
part of the larger Jewish community or with certain Jewish issues. Eunice
Pollack has expressed concern over what she sees as a resurgence of
antisemitism on American campuses. And, perhaps most germane to this
topic, Kenneth L. Marcus has examined the need to place Jewish students
under the protections of civil rights laws so that they will have recourse in
the event of damaging anti-Jewish or anti-Israel actions and rhetoric to seek
legal assistance. In the course of developing this project, Marcus has argued
that some of the most damaging anti-Jewish rhetoric on today’s college
campuses involve efforts to reracialize Jewishness as “preeminently white”
and therefore imbued with racist and colonial guilt.62
We know, too, that there are those who see the focus of contemporary
anti-Jewish hostility on campus as a product of antipathy toward the state of
Israel that goes beyond legitimate criticism and should be called
antisemitic. Often, this phenomenon is labeled “the new antisemitism.” To
tie this into the larger themes of this essay, there are those who asserted
long ago that much of the hostility toward Israel is based on the perception
that Israel is a “white” and imperialist nation.63 As Gilman explains,
“among many non-Jewish multicultural writers the fantasy of a monolithic
‘Zionism’ has become the enemy of the ‘multicultural.’ ”64 Thus, it may
well be that the trouble that some Jewish students have found in answering
the charges against Israel have to do not only with the perceived “whiteness” of the country but also with their own “whiteness” and the culpability
that this implies.
Perhaps another salient factor that we must consider if we view the
Jewish experience on campus through the lens of “whiteness,” though, is
that while Volume One of the Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews
was published in 1991, Volume Two was more recently released in 2010.
The subtitle of the new release is How Jews Gained Control of the Black
American Economy. Whether or not this particular volume will make a new
and different impact on reactions to Jews and Jewish issues on campus, of
course, remains to be seen.
62. Gary Tobin, Aryeh K. Weinberg, and Jenna Ferer, 2005; Eunice G. Pollack,
ed., Antisemitism on the Campus: Past and Present (Boston: Academic Studies
Press, 2011); Kenneth L. Marcus, Jewish Identity and Civil Rights in America
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
63. See, for instance, Percy Cohen, Jewish Radicals and Radical Jews (New
York: Academic Press, 1980), and the authors listed in note 43.
64. Gilman, 181.
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*Linda Maizels is the Faculty Fellow in Jewish Studies at Colby College. She
recently completed her doctorate at the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry, a division of the Faculty of Humanities at the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem. Her dissertation was entitled “Charter Members of the Fourth World:
Jewish Student Identity and the ‘New Antisemitism’ on American Campuses,
1967-1994.”
Holocaust Envy:
The Libidinal Economy of the New Antisemitism1
Gabriel Noah Brahm Jr.*
According to the cultural theorist Slavoj Zizek, “enjoyment,” in the psychoanalytic sense, should be understood as the paradoxical satisfaction
produced by a painful encounter with an impossible “Thing” that upsets
the balance of the pleasure principle. Nowadays, the Holocaust—or,
more specifically, Jews’ perceived (fantasized) enjoyment of it—has
become just such a fascinating and disconcerting, seductively irritating
object of obsessive overinvestment for the “new antisemitism.” In a
Lacanian reading of the foundations of human rights discourse, a pathological “Holocaust envy” is diagnosed as a symptom of neo-antisemitism’s rivalrous identification with Jews.
Key Words: Antisemitism,
Psychoanalysis
Envy,
Holocaust,
Jouissance,
Lacan,
1. This paper was originally prepared as a pair of talks, and retains some of
that character. First (as “Post-Holocaust, Postcolonial Theory”), it was part of a
panel presentation, on post-Zionism and the Holocaust, at the Association for Israel
Studies 27th International Conference (organized around the theme of “Israel as a
Jewish and Democratic State”), Brandeis University, June 13-15, 2011. Second (as
“Enjoyment of the Holocaust: The Latest ‘Thing’ in Antisemitism”), it was given
as a lecture at the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies (CHGS) at the
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, September 15, 2011. I wish to thank the
organizers of the Brandeis conference, the attendees, and my co-panelists—Eugene
Sheppard (chair), Elhanan Yakira, Bruno Chaouat, and Robert Meister—for their
insightful comments. I thank Bruno Chaouat additionally, in his role as director of
CHGS, for arranging my visit there, and the wonderful audience on that occasion
for a stimulating discussion of my work. Thanks, however, in one case are not
enough: I wish therefore to dedicate this essay to my teacher and friend of many
years, Robert Meister, who long ago played a priceless role in my learning to
understand the politics of enjoyment (and the enjoyment of political theory). We
may disagree in important ways about Israel and other sub-theoretical details (the
flaws in the argument you are about to read, needless to say, are entirely my
responsibility), but Bob’s intellectual curiosity and integrity of mind, at once
playful and serious, remain for me the most pure and infectious I have ever
encountered. For that inspiration, among other things, I am forever grateful. This
paper could not have been written had I not once been privileged to serve as a
teaching assistant in his legendary course, “After Evil,” nor without his recently
published book of the same name. Individual citations to that text in what follows
cannot do justice to the intellectual debt this paper owes to that rich and important
volume.
489
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The Other is he who essentially steals my own enjoyment.
—Jacques-Alain Miller2
Why is it that American academic anti-Zionism so frequently challenges, distorts, or seeks to appropriate Jewish Holocaust memory? To
understand this is to understand the way in which a new antisemitism has
arisen, paradoxically, from envy for what in psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan’s
terms can be understood as an imagined Jewish/Israeli “enjoyment” of their
own past collective suffering. The antisemitic thought process proceeds in
this way: The Other deprives me of my true “enjoyment,” or, what I most
urgently require, namely my innermost capacity to feel, in my bones, that I
am living fully—and I want it back. So . . . I plan to retake from him this
missing affective substance, my jouissance, “in return” for the (fantasized)
harm he has done me “initially.” Thus does one of the fundamental tropes
of racism appear, typically, according to Lacanian cultural theorist Slavoj
Zizek, as the largely unconscious conviction that the Other is always—and
already—responsible for my miserable lack of existential heft. If I can
neither feel successful no matter what I do nor even suffer my endemic
failure properly (if, in other words, something is always missing), it is
because my neighbor, who is really an alien and doesn’t belong here, is a
metaphysical gonif—someone from whom, not incidentally, I am therefore
legally, morally, and above all libidinally entitled to steal/reclaim all that I
can for myself.
Racist enjoyment is the (real enough, albeit frustrated) perverse enjoyment of the Other’s (imaginary, albeit nonetheless alluring) enjoyment.
Racist desire manifests reactively, as a symptom in the form of a fantasy of
the Other’s desire—a necessary misrecognition, constitutive of the racist
subject’s very identity. Antisemitic fantasies provide the paradigm case:
In terms of racism, the intersubjective element of fantasy means that,
paradoxically, the racist stages the desire of his victim. The racist, confronted with the abyss of the Jew’s desire, makes sense of it by constructing a fantasy in which the Jew is at the center of some nefarious plot. . . .
In this way, the desire of the racist to rid the country of Jews is actually a
means of concealing the anxiety generated by the desire of the Jews.3
2. Quoted in Slavoj Zizek, Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the
Critique of Ideology (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), 203. Subsequent references to this edition appear cited in the text.
3. Tony Myers, Slavoj Zizek (New York: Routledge, 2003), 98. Subsequent
references to this edition appear cited in the text.
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HOLOCAUST ENVY
491
Today, aiming less to rid a given country of its Jews than to rid the world of
the Jewish State, the “new antisemitism” follows a similar but distinct logic.
For the postmodern antisemite, it is not so much the desire of Jews per
se, but that of Israel, that generates anxiety. The nefarious plot is no longer
whatever it was Jews were supposed to be up to in Europe, but what Israel
is supposed to be up to in the Middle East. The latter, it is believed, is
supported by an inordinate possessiveness concerning the Holocaust and the
privileges this custodianship is felt to confer. Therefore, in a symptomatic
wish to “retrieve” the memory and meaning of the Holocaust from greedy
Jewish hands, the new antisemite desires the delegitimization of a nation
seen as founded on (illicit) “enjoyment” of the Holocaust.
Following Jacques Lacan in his later period, Zizek sometimes refers to
this sort of investment in the Other’s imagined enjoyment as sinthome (in
the antique French spelling of the term), in order to emphasize its structuring role for subjectivity. The subject not only “suffers” from its sinthome; it
needs to suffer from it in order to be itself—the subject that it is. In this
understanding of symptom/sinthome, it is important to emphasize that “if
the symptom is dissolved, the subject itself loses the ground under his feet,
disintegrates. . . . [A]ll his ontological consistency hangs on, is suspended
from his symptom, is ‘externalized’ in his symptom.”4 Without the structuring effect of a peculiarly “central” symptom, in other words, there is no
reality as the subject postulates it, and no subject either.
With this in mind, is it hard to see that Israel, in the eyes of its detractors, serves as the world’s sinthome after the end of the Cold War—for
what other nation on the map is talked about as if perhaps it doesn’t belong
there? Israel’s “unnaturalness” is in this regard is a key to the spurious
sense of entitlement enjoyed narcissistically by the rest. In other words:
Since, in fact, as historians well know, all nationalities and perforce all
nation-states and national boundaries are (many of them recent) humanly
made political constructs, to talk about one in particular as if it alone were
“guilty” of being more invented than the others is to allow the rest the
fantasy of their own ostensibly more “substantial” identities. Jews who support the existence of Israel, or even those who are merely associated with it
metonymically, risk embodying racist enjoyment as the symptomatic standin for the evils of the world.
4. Slavoj Zizek, Enjoy Your Symptom! Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out
(Routledge: New York, 1992), 154.
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THE NEW ANTI-ZIONISM
Such scapegoating is not entirely new, of course, but it has gotten
worse—as I will maintain—with the rise of human rights discourse as the
consensual idiom of an increasingly global legal-moral order. In such a context, the Holocaust plays a crucial role as the imagined source of legitimacy
(or illegitimacy) both of Israel alone, as one nation among others, and also
of the community of nations (the others plus Israel). For only in such an
ideological environment does it make sense that, as Edward Alexander
warned presciently nearly two decades ago, “the campaign to steal the Holocaust from its Jewish victims [threatens to] remove whatever impediments
of conscience may yet stand in the way of the anti-Israel crusade.”5 For
where conscience (or super-ego) is at stake, in a competition over scarce
resources under capitalism, the “best” way to evade censorship, unleash
desire, and appropriate the desired object is to assert property rights. Thus,
what Alexander spied the roots of—the self-righteous campaign to redress a
primal Jewish “theft of enjoyment” from the world at large, a movement
fortified excessively by the indignant perception that too much is made of
Jewish suffering—is now in full swing, thanks in part to the expansion of
an international order that makes everyone, in principle, equally a victim or
potential victim of human rights abuse. And the politics of representation at
a deep level, not only consciously, but at the level of “enjoyment as a political factor,”6 have never been worse for Israel—seen as the victim/survivor
nation par excellence, and therefore the one that gets away with enjoying
this status “too much.”
Well-publicized fights over the meaning of the Holocaust around the
world,7 therefore—as what one might call a Jewish and democratic genocide—have implications, affectively as well as cognitively, for the concept
of a “Jewish and democratic state” (Israel’s longstanding self-definition). In
each case, those impatient with the first term in the equation (Jewish and
democratic), and who therefore can’t see what it has to do with the second
(particular and universal), have important things in common. In influential
sectors of the academy, post-Zionism and postcolonial theory harmonize as
mutually supportive ways of being “post-Holocaust”—in the sense of
5. Edward Alexander, The Holocaust and the War of Ideas (New Brunswick,
NJ: Transaction, 1994), 206. Subsequent reference to this edition appears cited in
the text.
6. “Enjoyment as a political factor” is the subtitle of Zizek’s second book in
English. See Slavoj Zizek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a
Political Factor (New York: Verso, 1991).
7. For example, in Europe, and particularly France; in the Middle East, and
notably Iran.
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being, in effect, “over it.” The post-Holocaust postcolonial post-Zionist can
thus dispense with the very idea of a Jewish state, because he has revised
his estimation of the “proper meaning” of the Holocaust—in order to transgress a once potent taboo and go “beyond” notions, seen as myths/ideologies, of the event’s uniqueness. Thus, an alt-neu prejudice (does not “new
antisemitism” sound almost like an oxymoron, given the longevity of Jewhatred?) adopts a distinctly anti-Zionist shape, as Israel’s Jewish-majority
population is pilloried for supposedly mismanaging the memory, meaning,
and significance of their tragedy.
Understood as the ideological cornerstone of post-World War II global
civil society, the memory of the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews can both grant
legitimacy and take it away. The philosopher and public intellectual Bernard-Henri Levy articulates the nexus of attitudes that must be understood—ventriloquizing today’s Israel/Holocaust-obsessed Judeophobia—as
follows:
We have nothing against Jews, the new antisemite protests, as always.
What we’re against is [1] people who traffic in their own memory . . . and
[2] push out the memories of others . . . for [3] the sole purpose of legitimizing an illegitimate state.8
These three pillars, as Levy calls them, of the new anti-Zionist antisemitism—the belief that Jews and the Jewish State run a Holocaust industry, by
means of which they monopolize compassion for racist/colonialist purposes—are mutually interdependent, and so my analysis necessarily
touches on each. But the heart of the matter, the problem on which I therefore concentrate from here—the linchpin joining the rest—is surely the second of the three elements Levy identifies: the accusation that Jews hoard
stockpiles of suffering, thus leaving insufficient funds of pity in circulation
for others—who are also miserable but haven’t got access to the libidinal
backing needed to capitalize their suffering and mass-market it to the
world—because the Jews have taken more than their share.
THE HOLOCAUST THING—GENOCIDE
AND
JOUISSANCE
Holocaust envy, or genocide jouissance, is not to be understood as
jealousy concerning the actual events of the Holocaust itself, but rather as
the enjoyment of the memory of the Shoah, perceived perversely as a kind
of privilege accorded to Jews. Since the notion of skimming surplus compassion—expropriating, stockpiling, and reinvesting someone else’s right8. Bernard-Henri Levy, Left in Dark Times (New York: Random House,
2008), 158.
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ful quantum of affect, in order to make a tidy moral profit for oneself—can
only be a fantasy; I have invoked contemporary psychoanalysis to explain
it. Keeping in mind that enjoyment is not to be confused with pleasure, but,
following Zizek, should be understood as the “paradoxical satisfaction produced by a painful encounter with a Thing that perturbs the equilibrium of
the ‘pleasure principle’ ” (280), I maintain that the Holocaust—or, more
specifically, Jews’ perceived (fantasized) enjoyment of it—has become just
such a perturbing Thing, the object of an obsessive libidinal investment on
the part of today’s new antisemite. It is the antisemite’s new Thing, and thus
the latest thing in antisemitism.
The Thing, in Lacanese, is whatever incarnates jouissance, or enjoyment. In the post-World War II libidinal economy of human rights, the
Thing—the real thing, what it’s “all about,” or, in Zizek’s words again,
“what gives plenitude and vivacity to our [way of] life”—what allows us to
“live fully” as who we really are—is the thought of genocide and the world
community’s stand against it, in which we participate as global citizens
(201). This community of civilized nations defines itself in principle by the
exclusion of genocide and genocidal regimes, which are to be counted as
criminal and therefore not regimes whose borders have to be respected.
Those who commit or threaten to commit genocide risk loss of standing as
moral/legal subjects—and, with that, excision from the human race
imagined as the human rights community.
In this context, the fear that the Jewish Other, whose sacrificial burnt
offering founded the community in the first place, has a unique relationship
to the Genocide Thing—some special relationship to its essence that is
denied the rest of the world—is evidently one of contemporary antisemitism’s driving passions. This fear supplies unseemly affective support for
Holocaust denial, minimization, relativization, and resentment of the Holocaust. As Zizek asks rhetorically, “Do we not find enjoyment precisely in
fantasizing about the Other’s enjoyment, in this ambivalent attitude toward
it? Do we not obtain satisfaction by means of the very supposition that the
Other enjoys in a way inaccessible to us?” (206). In this case, what makes
the Holocaust inaccessible, or seductively forbidden to the antisemite, is the
understandable sense that it was in fact a total human rights catastrophe in
ways that even other genocides cannot quite match; albeit, this is debated.
For, what’s not open to debate—“really” unique tragedy or not, and by
what scientific measure?—is that the Shoah is certainly the one man-made
disaster in history that people argue about in a unique way, debating endlessly whether or not and how it was or wasn’t unique. This obsessive
investment itself makes it unique, therefore, in one very important way at
least: the Holocaust is uniquely discussed for its uniqueness and/or lack
thereof. It appears thus to have been more of a genocide than others—even
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if this more can be difficult to define uncontroversially, or in a way that
achieves full consensus among rational people of goodwill (never mind
antisemites). Should the real “more” turn out to be less, or a lack, the symbolic and imaginary “more” would still be formidable. And because pointing to what in an object is “more than itself” is another way of talking about
the Lacanian Thing, we are definitely in the vicinity of human rights discourse’s Thing-in-itself.
DIALECTICS
OF THE
NEW ANTISEMITISM
Thus, holocaust envy is a subspecies of just the sort of prurient supposition about the Other’s enjoyment that Zizek famously remarks upon. It
has this two-fold intersubjective structure: It comes about when, first, Jews
are imagined to enjoy (or “get off on”) their tragedy more fully than others
can; and, second, when Jewish “theft of enjoyment” (203) is posited as the
reason why others can never enjoy fully, can never seem to “get in to”
either the Holocaust or their own tragedies sufficiently. Although psychoanalytic “enjoyment” is sometimes said to consist in “the kind of satisfaction
to be garnered from picking at your own festering wound” (Myers 86), this
is a simplification, insofar as it posits enjoyment as something real rather
than imaginary, something objective about the wound itself rather than
about the subjective fantasy of the wound’s appearance for the gaze, or in
the eyes of, (the) other(s) (Myers 86).
For my purposes, then, enjoyment is best defined dialectically—as the
satisfaction that the other is imagined to derive from his suffering, translated into the satisfaction that I, as subject-of-enjoyment, in turn derive
from obsessing about my own inability to enjoy as much/well as the
fantasized other. This is an important distinction because, by this definition,
what is perturbing about the Jew finally has nothing to do with the Jew
himself, nor even anything to do with the Holocaust, but rather what perturbs is the Jew’s obscene enjoyment of his festering wound as the
antisemitic mind hallucinates it. What Zizek says elsewhere explicitly of
the old antisemitism is also true—and even more so, thanks to the power of
a globalized human rights discourse—of the new:
What the perpetrators of pogroms find intolerable and rage-provoking,
what they react to, is not the immediate reality of Jews, but the image/
figure of the “Jew” which circulates and has been constructed in their
tradition. . . . [T]his image overdetermines the way I experience real Jews
themselves. What makes a real Jew that an antisemite encounters on the
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street “intolerable,” what the antisemite tries to destroy when he attacks
the Jew, the true target of his fury, is this fantasmatic dimension.9
This fantasmatic overdetermination of Jew-hatred means that not only
what Alain Finkielkraut calls the imaginary Jew, but also the imaginary
Jewish State of Israel (!) is the bearer of a projected “Jew-issance” or the
supposed enjoyably painful privilege of being Jewish after the Holocaust.10
With these concepts (and bad puns) in mind, one of the more perplexing
things about the life of Holocaust memory in recent decades—difficult to
make rational sense of otherwise—becomes suddenly less mysterious. I
refer to the observably proliferating phenomenon of those perverse, intense,
and destructive rivalries, which, seventy years down the line, remembrance
of the Holocaust increasingly stimulates—among those who would at once
identify with the victims of the worst cruelest, most systematic, thorough
and senseless genocide in history,11 and who, at the same time, seek to
displace those victims. Indeed, this double whammy of empathy/rivalry is
what one expects from identities based on identification, as Jacques Lacan
explained in his seminal essay “The Mirror Stage.”12 Today we see this
Lacanian jubilation of self-discovery in those subjects who ambivalently
find themselves held up to the mirror of the Holocaust by human rights
discourse.13
9. Cited in Kenneth L. Marcus, “The Definition of Antisemitism” (unpublished
manuscript). Slavoj Zizek, On Violence (New York: Picador, 2008), 66-7. Marcus’s
impressively well-informed investigation was helpful as I was revising this paper
for publication.
10. Alain Finkielkraut, The Imaginary Jew (Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 1994).
11. For a well-informed discussion of those properties that make the Holocaust
unique, see Yehuda Bauer, Rethinking the Holocaust (New Haven: Yale, 2001).
“The Holocaust,” writes Bauer, “has assumed the role of universal symbol for all
evil because it presents the most extreme form of genocide, because it contains
elements that are without precedent, because that tragedy was a Jewish one and
because the Jews—although they are neither better nor worse than others and
although their sufferings were neither greater nor lesser than those of others—
represent one of the sources [along with Athens and Rome] of modern civilization”
(270).
12. Jacques Lacan, “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function as
Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience,” trans. Bruce Fink, Ecrits (New York:
Norton, 2006).
13. “Though tightly held by some prop, human or artificial,” Lacan writes of the
young child entering the mirror stage, she or he “overcomes [feelings of helplessness] in a flutter of jubilant activity,” testing even “the constraints of his prop [the
mother/Other] in order to adopt a slightly leaning-forward position and take an
instantaneous view of the image in order to fix it in his mind” (Ecrits 76).
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Victims everywhere, from housewives under patriarchy to Bosnian
Muslims to members of the Audubon Society,14 ask to identify/be identified
with/as Jews, in order to take their place as the “real” Jews—the real victims, the victims whose suffering matters, about whom one properly should
care. As Robert Meister states in his extraordinary study, After Evil: A
Politics of Human Rights:
The global politics of human rights after Auschwitz is still about the
Jews. Today oppressed groups can qualify themselves as bearers of
human rights by recognizing what happened to Jews during the Holocaust and asserting that another holocaust might happen to them. They
are often said to disqualify themselves as bearers of human rights by
denying the Holocaust and declaring themselves enemies of the Jews.15
But this recognition and identification, the mandatory price of admission to today’s global culture of human rights, as Meister clearly sees, does
not yield entirely wholesome results in every case, and can by no means be
relied upon to redound to either Jews’ or Israel’s benefit over time. Given
the complex motivations of human beings, the vicissitudes of moral psychology, and the cynical ways in which the rhetoric of human rights is often
deployed in the service of a thinly veiled will-to-power—the sweet recognition that Meister adverts to can and frequently does in fact turn sour, giving
way to scandalized condemnation. This is particularly so among aggrieved
groups who feel themselves unrecognized or under-recognized when it’s
their turn to be the Jews. This is even more the case when the underrecognizers are said to be, of all people, the Jews themselves—who should
know better, given their access to a surplus genocide-jouissance.
As the particular standard bearers for what it universally means to be
oppressed, in other words, post-Holocaust Jewry’s privileged symbolic
position opens it to charges that—even or especially in a secular age that
sees itself as transcending the old antisemitism—could only be leveled at
Jews. The new antisemitism thus lays down one of its platform planks,
carved out of the sturdy cedar of resentment against Jews per se for failing
to learn the lessons of the Holocaust that they, of all people, should have
learned best but somehow didn’t—or, more diabolically still, which they
learned quite well but refuse to apply to others, holding on to their delicious
14. Alvin H. Rosenfeld documents thoroughly the spread of both trivial and notso-trivial analogies to the Holocaust in his important book, The End of the Holocaust (Bloomington: Indiana University Press), 2011.
15. Robert Meister, After Evil: A Politics of Human Rights (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 175. Subsequent references to this edition appear cited
in the text.
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Jew-issance for themselves. Meister again puts it brilliantly, with reference
in particular to Palestinian Holocaust envy (my term, not his):
In a world that has learned to feel good about itself by feeling bad about
the Jews, one can take special umbrage at Jews who refuse to apply the
Holocaust’s lessons to their own treatment of Palestinians. These Jews
are to be criticized for thinking that they are the only real Jews, and that
the Holocaust confers special privilege on actions they take to protect
themselves from those who, as enemies of the Jews, become the moral
equivalent of Nazis who would bring about the Holocaust again. This
attitude has become a seemingly new offense that Jews, and Jews alone,
can commit now that their victimary identity has been universalized.
(175-176; my emphasis)
Put another way: who are the literal Jews, after World War II, to say that
they are the Jews when everyone’s a metaphorical Jew nowadays—in the
age of never again, the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, and its mandate to stop genocide anywhere and everywhere across
the globe?
In a democratic age that abhors inherent distinctions of rank, even as it
positively valorizes everyone’s “victimary identity,” encouraging people to
see themselves as constitutively injured subjects and rewarding them for
doing so—in such a moral universe, is not everyone entitled to an equal
share of, or in, suffering, as the essence of subjectivity? “Picking at your
own festering wound” is something we’re all entitled (commanded) to do
nowadays, by the logic of multicultural political correctness. To “be” a multicultural subject is to be the bearer of just such a wound. So why then do
the Jews do it (pick at theirs) more? Can they be allowed to get away with
it? They do it too much, and so the rest of us can’t get to do it enough as a
result. Moreover, their wound, if it was ever as bad as they say, is surely
healed by now and a thing of the past. While ours yet bleeds. . . . So, in
effect, operate the gears of the new antisemitic unconscious. Perhaps this
also helps explain why Jews are not generally included on the syllabus as a
subculture, when the topic is ostensibly ethnicity-based multiculturalism on
American campuses. That, and the fact that they are now successful as a
group—a circumstance leaving Jews simultaneously both too wounded and
not wounded enough for multiculturalism’s egalitarian freemasonry of the
injured and in-need-of-affirmative-action.
DISTRIBUTIVE INJUSTICE
Applied to genocide, the logic of affirmative action means that everyone is entitled to a piece of the Holocaust, understood as the universal sym-
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bol of Radical Evil—an evil taken to operate on at least the principle of
equality-of-opportunity if not a more egalitarian, Rawlsian, rough equalityof-results16—Although it is Jews and “Jews alone,” as Meister notes, who
are in a position to be regarded as capable of missing this fact, uniquely
tempted as they are to seek to monopolize for themselves the properly
shared significance of the defining event of the 20th century. Moreover, the
Jewish State and the Jewish State alone can be—is—accused of instrumentalizing the ultimate example of suffering to serve its national selfinterest. Israeli philosopher Elhanan Yakira thus meticulously dissects the
myth of an Israeli Shoah chauvinism in his recent book, Post-Zionism, PostHolocaust.
In ways cognate with and supportive of my argument—though he
eschews my sort of “deep” analysis of motivations, which he says frankly
don’t interest him—Yakira focuses on the cadre of post-Zionist academics
inside Israel, identifying there what he calls an “opprobrium community” or
tight-knit club of hyper-intellectuals who cite each other’s books, all passionately dedicated to trashing Israel from the inside. In my view, this
kvetchers network can usefully be understood as another manifestation of
what American sociology conceptualized in the 1970s more broadly as “the
adversary culture of the intellectuals”—a product of comfortable bourgeois
society’s tendency to give rise to an influential segment of alienated
pseudo-bohemians that rejects the culture in total and in principle (as
opposed to the liberal voicing of more modest criticisms aimed at reform).
In Israel today, this apparently means rejecting Zionism (the idea of a Jewish and democratic state) by first, claiming falsely that Israel’s only-ever
source of legitimacy flowed from being the alternative to the Holocaust,
and second, insisting that it forfeited this passkey to the club of nations by
mismanaging its privileged status as the “survivor” state, almost from the
start—particularly if one follows Hannah Arendt’s influential condemnation of the Eichmann trial as less the prosecution of a mass-murdering fiend
than a poor piece of pedagogy.17
16. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press),
1971. In Rawls’s terms—translated into the present discussion in a way I cannot
imagine he would approve—in an unequal distribution of misery, “privileged” victims are entitled to relatively more suffering than “underprivileged” ones only if the
surplus jouissance of the former helps supply, in absolute terms, more enjoyment
of suffering for the latter. Otherwise, it needs to be redistributed.
17. Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil
(New York: Penguin Classics, 2006). The popularity to this day of this befuddled
text—by far the worst thing written by one of the great minds of the 20th century—
is a mystery for sociology, or psychoanalysis, to explain.
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The problem once again is that the Jews and the Jews alone think
they’re the real Jews—when today in fact (so say the members of the
opprobrium community) the Jews themselves behave more like Nazis and
the Palestinians, therefore, have become in effect the Jews that matter. The
prevalence of such grotesque analogies leads Yakira to protest what he calls
forthrightly “the systematic, simplistic, tendentious, and utterly baseless
way the Holocaust is used to lambaste Israel.” What’s more, discerning
continuities between post-Zionist uses of the Holocaust and outright Holocaust denial—the latter claiming of course that Jews were never the real
victims of the Nazis in the first place, but have always opportunistically
exaggerated their suffering to gain leverage—Yakira writes:
The way the Holocaust figures in quite a number of essays, articles and
books written in Hebrew, the way it is used as a central tenet in scathing
criticisms of Israel’s conduct in the occupied territories or of the moral
and historical justification given for the establishment of a Jewish state—
all this reflects a perversion quite similar, if not identical, to that of which
Holocaust denial . . . is the most extreme symptom.18
And symptom—as I have suggested—is the right word here, as we are
dealing with a kind of cultural pathology, or “perversion.” Without realizing it, Yakira, in his devastating deconstruction of the post-Zionists, has not
only revealed the conscious intentions of those he criticizes, but provides
the empirical basis for the psychoanalysis of this strange movement as well.
For what deniers and the opprobrium community have in common, as the
philosopher’s psychoanalytically tinged vocabulary hints, is a symptom
indeed, in the precise sense of a libidinal investment in the perturbing Thing
that embodies enjoyment. Symptoms, by definition, are what the subject
perversely enjoys suffering from. It appears that, just as Woody Allen once
joked, “I’m the only man ever diagnosed with penis envy,” the fact that the
post-Zionists whom Yakira disputes with are Israeli Jews does not prevent
them from feeling a vicarious Holocaustneid on the part of “castrated”
others.
THE HOLOCAUST-ENVY INDUSTRY
Holocaust envy, in sum, is that slimy libidinal ooze that palpably coats
Holocaust relativization and Holocaust resentment, as well as outright Holocaust denial. Moreover, with respect to the growing problem of “campus
antisemitism” in particular, the obsessively invested symptom of post-Holo18. Elhanan Yakira, Post-Zionism, Post-Holocaust (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2010), 86.
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caust post-Zionism is also part of the basis of postcolonial theory as an
academic subdiscipline. For how can a theory based on epochal grievance
fail to envy—narcissistically identify and compete with, seek to emulate
and displace—Jewish sufferers as the bearers of a surplus Jew-issance?
Diaspora is a ubiquitous term in postcolonial theory, for example. And as
the Jews have their capital-H Holocaust, so too shall the Palestinians have
their capital-N Nakba. From the postcolonial point of view, therefore, it is
especially easy to see that the Palestinians are now the Jews, and the Jews,
by becoming Israelis, have become (worse than) Nazis—a claim that goes
back to the 1975 UN resolution equating Zionism with racism (later
revoked, in 1991), and before that to Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War of
1967, and before that even to the founding of the State of Israel.19 Thus,
while the use and abuse of such repugnant rhetoric appears to be on the
increase today, in fact the taboo analogy between Zionists and Nazis proved
an irresistible frisson for some from the moment it became conceivable, and
has not in fact depended on the Palestinians’ weakness or Israel’s growing
might by comparison. Indeed, it is a Hitlerian invention—already a symptom/sinthome of the old-fashioned antisemitism, it turns out—from the
start. As is well known, Hitler himself projected blame for starting World
War II onto the Jews—famously displacing Nazism’s plans for world domination onto its victims.
This same obscene equation of antisemite and Jew—so symptomatic
of a perverse libidinal investment—is made by postcolonial theory, prevalent on today’s university campuses, in one of its founding gestures. Indeed,
according to the godfather of postcolonial theory, Edward Said, in his seminal 1978 text Orientalism, post-Holocaust antisemitism is best understood
as the prejudice that Arabs [sic] suffer from at the hands of Jews [sic]. At
the end of World War II, Said explains to his followers:
The transference of a popular antisemitic animus from a Jewish to an
Arab target was made smoothly, since the figure was essentially the
same. . . . Thus the Arab is conceived of now as a shadow that dogs the
Jew. In that shadow—because Arabs and Jews are Oriental Semites—can
be placed whatever traditional, latent mistrust a Westerner feels towards
the Oriental. For the Jew of pre-Nazi Europe has bifurcated: what we
have now is a Jewish hero, constructed out of a reconstructed cult of the
adventurer-pioneer-Orientalist [ . . . ] and his creeping, mysteriously fearsome shadow, the Arab Oriental.20
19. Norman Podhoretz, “The Abandonment of Israel,” Commentary (July
1976): 23-31.
20. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1978), 286; my emphasis.
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So it appears, just as Meister says, that “today oppressed groups . . . qualify
themselves as bearers of human rights by recognizing what happened to
Jews during the Holocaust and asserting that another holocaust might [have
already!] happen[ed] to them,” preferably at the hands of the survivors of
the first Holocaust and their descendants. As Alvin Rosenfeld powerfully
documents in The End of the Holocaust, the practice of analogizing the
Holocaust promiscuously has become widespread—with not only Palestinians suffering from “genocide” (while increasing in population), but also
Native Americans, African Americans, gays and lesbians, AIDS victims,
and fetuses—all suffering from their own holocausts.
When there is no denying the reality of far too much human misery,
the sad point that has unfortunately to be made is that “where there is a
‘holocaust’ there must be a Hitler.” According to the same logic as that by
which victims everywhere become metaphorical Jews, oppressors across
time and space become, in a reductio ad Hitlerum, not just gifted evil-doers
in their own right, but morph inevitably into virtual Nazis. As Pascal Bruckner observes:
Nazism is supposed to have begun on the day that the white man,
whether Portuguese, Spanish, or Dutch, set foot on the shores of Africa or
America, sowing death, chaos, and destruction. It is as if the Third Reich
had literally swallowed, one after the other, the centuries that preceded it,
this becoming the key to violent or atrocious phenomena that occurred
several centuries earlier. . . . People find it hard to realize that barbarity is
plural, that not all massacres are genocides, that not all genocides resemble each other, that there are degrees and diversity of horror as well.21
What Bruckner colorfully calls Hitlerizing history applies not only to the
past, however. And this matters greatly. For the present (and future?) is also
swallowed up and Hitlerized when, as Rosenfeld explains—focusing on the
American reception of the Holocaust in light of the identity politics that has
been so characteristic of the last thirty years on campus:
This tendency to relativize and universalize the Holocaust has been a
prominent part of the American reception of Holocaust representations
from the start. It is strong today and seems to be growing, especially
within those segments of American culture that are intent on developing a
politics of identity based on victim status and the grievances that come
with such status. (69; my emphasis)
21. Pascal Bruckner, The Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 125-126.
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The politics of identity, in other words, are so often anti-Jewish because
they are so saturated in Holocaust envy.
ANTISEMITIC AGALMA—CAMPUS CHRISTOLOGY
By way of conclusion, it seems important to note the (even) big(ger)
picture. As Rene Girard points out, we live today in the Age of the Victim:
Our society is the most preoccupied with victims of any that ever was.
Even if it is insincere, a big show, the phenomenon has no precedent. No
historical period, no society we know, has ever spoken of victims as we
do. We can detect in the recent past the beginnings of the contemporary
attitude, but every day new records are broken. We are all actors as well
as witnesses in a great anthropological first.22
Under such novel conditions, the Holocaust as “universalized” revelation becomes not so much a crime perpetrated by some against others, but a
“new Golgotha,” as Bruckner sees it, “the gold standard of suffering” (113).
In the Christological appropriation of history, the gassed Jew, like the crucified one, is no longer simply a Jew—and yet, tragically, shamefully, so
exquisitely disappointingly once again, it is the Jews themselves (of all people) who fail to get the message. Not only that, but in some of the more
aggressive post-Zionist scholarship—such as that of Idith Zertal, who follows in the footsteps of Arendt to focus on the role of Jewish councils in
supposedly helping to make the Holocaust more efficient—it is once again
the Jews themselves who murdered Christ (the gassed, shot, and starved
millions) or at least handed him over to the Romans.23 In the numismatic
reading (with regard to the metaphor of the “gold standard”): Who are the
Jews to hoard their imaginary shekels, thus threatening to destroy an otherwise booming symbolic economy of human rights, which now more than
ever, after the end of the Cold War (not to say the End of History), depends
upon the smooth convertability of every kind of depoliticized injustice (viz.
human rights violation) into every other kind?
So, the new antisemitism draws strength from the old, after all, it
seems, as fascination with these perennial tropes would indicate—even as it
revitalizes itself by “enjoying” genocide symptomatically, in new postZionist and postcolonial modalities that would have been impossible pre- or
post-Holocaust (if I may so inelegantly put it). It all points to a denial that a
22. Rene Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning (Mary Knoll, NY: Orbis Press,
2006), 161.
23. Idith Zertal, Israel’s Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2005).
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[ VOL. 3:489
specifically Jewish genocide can also be a democratic one, in the sense of a
shared object of veneration that nonetheless concerns a particular group of
people in a special way. Instead, “Auschwitz has become a monstrous
object of covetous lust,” as Bruckner says, “[w]hence the frenzied effort to
gain admission to this very closed club and the desire to dislodge those who
are already in it” (114; emphasis added). Or, as Alain Finkielkraut says,
“The model you wish to resemble becomes the rival you must supplant in
order to feel alive yourself [to extract your jouissance]. The metaphorical
principle (be like the Jews) leads to the violence of this murderous principle: It’s us or them.”24 And the all-too-literal—not only metaphorical—
conclusion? If there cannot be a Jewish and democratic genocide, then there
can/need be no Jewish and democratic state—it’s one or the other, us or
them. Forgetting that barbarity is plural—as are nationalities—the new
antisemitism winds up sounding much like the old, only more so.
What is not to be underestimated, however, is the virulence of contemporary neo-antisemitism’s Jew-issance-ridden manifestations in the form of
a metastasizing “Holocaust envy.” If there is a long-term menace to the way
Israel’s miraculously “imagined community” is imagined—and, with G-d’s
help, continues to be realized—this is part of it.25 For, as Edward Alexander
said in his courageous 1994 book, The Holocaust and the War of Ideas:
The campaign to steal the Holocaust from its Jewish victims expresses a
deep-seated wish to transform the Nazi murder of the Jews, a crime of
terrifying clarity and distinctness, into a blurred, amorphous agony, an
indeterminate part of man’s inhumanity to man. It subserves the designs
of those who wish to release the nations of the West from whatever slight
burden of guilt they may still bear for what they allowed or helped Hitler
to do to the Jews of Europe, and so remove whatever impediments of
conscience may yet stand in the way of the anti-Israel crusade. (206)
In keeping with Alexander’s foreboding, my concern is that in order to
“steal” the Holocaust from the Jews in good conscience, and so help release
the brakes on a disgustingly moralized campaign against Israel as uniquely
“illegitimate” among all the nations because of its “impure” founding, the
anti-Zionist antisemite first fantasizes the treasure (in Lacanese, “agalma”)
of the Holocaust’s significance as primordially stolen from innocent mankind as a whole—defiled luxuriantly by corrupt Jewish thieves to begin
24. Alain Finkielkraut, The Future of a Negation: Reflections on the Question of
Genocide (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1998), 113.
25. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (New York: Verso, 1983), cited
in Zertal, Israel’s Holocaust.
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HOLOCAUST ENVY
505
with. From such preternatural “thieves,” naturally, one has every right to
steal it back in return—while enjoying doing so.
*Gabriel Noah Brahm Jr. is a research fellow in Israel studies at Brandeis University, and assistant professor of English at Northern Michigan University. His latest
book (co-authored with Catherine Carlstroem and Forrest G. Robinson) is The
Jester and the Sages: Mark Twain in Conversation with Nietzsche, Freud and Marx
(Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2011). Contact: gbrahm@nmu.edu.
REFERENCES
Alexander, Edward. 1994. The Holocaust and the War of Ideas. New Brunswick,
NJ: Transaction.
Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities. New York: Verso.
Bruckner, Pascal. 2010. The Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Finkielkraut, Alain. 1994. The Imaginary Jew. Lincoln, NE: University of
Nebraska Press.
———. 1998. The Future of a Negation: Reflections on the Question of Genocide.
Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.
Girard, Rene. 2006. I See Satan Fall Like Lightning. Mary Knoll, NY: Orbis Press.
Lacan, Jacques, Bruce Fink trans. 2006. Ecrits. New York: Norton.
Levy, Bernard-Henri. 2008. Left in Dark Times. New York: Random House.
Marcus, Kenneth L. “The Definition of Antisemitism.” Unpublished manuscript.
Meister, Robert. 2010. After Evil: A Politics of Human Rights. New York:
Columbia University Press.
Myers, Tony. 2003. Slavoj Zizek. New York: Routledge.
Podhoretz, Norman. 1976. “The Abandonment of Israel.” Commentary (July): 2331.
Rosenfeld, Alvin. 2011. The End of the Holocaust. Bloomington: University of
Indiana Press, 2011.
Said, Edward. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Vintage.
Yakira, Elhanan. 2010. Post-Zionism, Post-Holocaust. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Zertal, Idith. 2005. Israel’s Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Zizek, Slavoj. 1993. Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of
Ideology. Durham: Duke University Press.
———. 2008. On Violence. New York: Picador.
Mental Models of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Wilhelm Kempf*
We need to reconstruct mental models according to which the participants make their own meaning of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as they
take a stance. Starting from the perspective that mental models have both
emotional and cognitive components, this paper introduces a questionnaire designed to measure these components and a two-step process of
data analysis with which the mental models can be reconstructed. The
results of a pilot study using German and Austrian participants support
the validity of this methodological approach. As in previous research, the
results are also consistent with the assumptions that: (1) the development
of an interpretive frame requires a certain minimum of knowledge and/or
familiarity with the issues people are trying to understand; and (2) even
those who adopt a war frame to interpret conflict believe in peace as the
ultimate goal of war.
Key Words: Israel, Palestinian, War, Empirical
Since the Gaza war of December 27, 2008, criticism of Israeli policy
has been on the rise throughout the Western world. The peace movement in
Israel and within Jewish communities worldwide appreciates this development, and many of its members even regard it as justifying their position.
On the other hand, however, there are Jews inside and outside of Israel who
fear that the increasing criticism of Israeli policy might be linked with a
new wave of antisemitism. Many Germans and Austrians who have learned
the lessons of their history also share this fear.
Already, Bergmann and Erb (1991a, 1991b) have pointed out that a
taboo against antisemitic utterances in public discourse can encourage using
criticism of Israel as a code for expressing antisemitic attitudes. The taboo
on antisemitic utterances also appears to be weakening. Not only has the
tone of criticism become sharper since the Gaza war, but also some persons
and groups have openly taken sides against Israel, and expressions from the
repertoire of secondary antisemitism such as “Holocaust bonus” have found
their way into political discourse. In reaction to the Israeli military operation against the Gaza aid convoy on May 31, 2010, there was a deluge of
antisemitic comments on the Internet. In the social networks, Twitter and
Facebook, we can find examples of the entire antisemitic repertoire, including utterances that have nothing to do with objective criticism of Israel—
comments like:
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• “Lock all the Jews in gas chambers and gas them!!! My idol is Adolf
HITLER” (Der Standard, January 6, 2010).
• “TOO BAD THAT ADOLF HITLER DID NOT KILL ALL THE
JEWS” (Spiegel Online, April 6, 2010).
• “SHIT JEWS SIEG HEILLLLL” (Spiegel Online, April 6, 2010).
Such vicious antisemitic utterances are not only posted in the Internet
anonymously; often, the authors also give their real names and photos.
As disturbing as this development undoubtedly is, it would nevertheless be wrong to automatically regard any criticism of Israel as motivated
by antisemitism. Criticism of Israeli policy can be due to a multitude of
factors ranging from concern for the future of Israel via partisanship for the
Palestinians to hatred of Jews. And insofar as antisemitic attitudes play a
role, they may either stand at the very beginning of Israel criticism (i.e.,
ersatz communication), or they may come at the end of a process in which
criticism of Israel is transformed into making Israel the enemy and finally
twisted into antisemitism.
Previously, however, little was known about the relationship of
antisemitism and attitudes critical of Israel. The available studies have
methodical weaknesses, and their results are contradictory.
Using 2004 survey data from the Anti-Defamation League, Kaplan and
Small (2006) conclude that antisemitic attitudes increase with growing
acceptance of anti-Israeli statements. Yet, correlation studies are only to a
limited extent conclusive. Participants who unconditionally support Israeli
policy will hardly be burdened with long-held antisemitic attitudes, and
dyed-in-the-wool antisemites will probably not be sympathetic to Israeli
policy; already, these two extreme groups are causing a moderate correlation between criticism of Israel and antisemitism. Still, this correlation, as
with other correlation studies (Baum, 2009; Cohen, Jussim, Harber, and
Bhasin, 2009), says little regarding the extent that antisemitism motivates
criticism of Israel.
A study by Heyder, Iser, and Schmidt (2005), on the other hand, gives
the impression that attitudes critical of Israel are not motivated by
antisemitism. While about three-quarters of all Germans in all educational
groups were found to harbor critical attitudes toward Israeli Palestinian policy, antisemitic attitudes were inversely proportional to the educational
levels of study participants.
A Swiss study that differentiates between cognitive attitudes and situational emotions toward Israel on the one side, and attitudes hostile to Jews
on the other, also concludes that anti-Israeli attitudes are “to be viewed as
an independent phenomenon and evaluated independently of actual
antisemitism” (GfS 2007, 48).
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MENTAL MODELS OF THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT
509
Bergmann’s analyses (2008, 493) likewise point in this direction. He
has compiled various empirical findings indicating that attitudes toward the
Middle East conflict are strongly politically steered and not simple expressions of sympathy or antipathy toward Jews and Palestinians. Thus, among
other things, Bergmann includes a 1991 Emnid study showing that sympathy for the Palestinians correlates positively with sympathy for the Arab
side, but has no influence on sympathy for the Jews in Israel. To the contrary: Anyone who lacks sympathy for the Jews in Israel has an aboveaverage tendency to lack sympathy for the Palestinians, and anyone who
sympathizes with the Israelis also tends to sympathize with the Palestinians.
A cluster analysis by Frindte, Wammetsberger, and Wettig (2005a,
2005b), finally, suggests that there are two different types of criticism of
Israel: (1) criticism of Israel motivated by antisemitism and (2) criticism of
Israel independent of antisemitic prejudices.
Kempf (2010) reaches a similar conclusion on the basis of a secondary
analysis of data from Petzold (2004). Latent-class-analysis of the data identified seven classes of participants who display typical response patterns:
one class supportive of Israel (typical of 18.2% of all participants), two
classes that refrain from criticizing Israel (18.97%), and four classes that are
critical of Israel (63.21%).
In addition, among those who criticized Israel, the majority (38.23% of
all participants) appears to be free of antisemitic tendencies, criticizing
Israel in a rather moderate way and not siding with the Palestinians. The
rest of the Israel critics (27.65% of all participants) positioned themselves
on the side of the Palestinians, and their criticism of Israel did not refrain
from encouraging antisemitic sentiments.
If we want to understand what sources give rise to criticism of Israeli
policies toward Palestine, we must study other motivations besides
antisemitism—e.g., pacifistic vs. bellicose attitudes, and the human rights
orientation of the participants as well. Above all, we must not forget that the
Middle East conflict is precisely not just a conflict between Jews and nonJews; it is also a conflict that as such is conditioned by the same psychological framework as other conflicts.
Of great importance in this connection is the distinction going back to
Deutsch (1973), between constructive and destructive conflicts. Whether a
conflict can be constructively settled or whether it will take a destructive
course depends essentially on whether the conflict parties conceptualize the
conflict as a cooperative (win-win model) or competitive (win-lose model)
process. According to Deutsch, competitive misperceptions represent the
motor of conflict escalation, which in cases of long-term (intractable) conflicts ultimately harden into societal beliefs (Bar-Tal, 1998). These beliefs
form an essential component of the psychic infrastructure that enables the
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members of a society to endure the burdens of war. They include, among
others, the justness of one’s cause, one’s victim status, the illegitimacy of
the enemy’s cause, the defense of personal and national security through a
policy of strength, and—last but not least—the belief in peace as the ultimate goal of war.
According to Deutsch, a process of competitive misinterpretation
begins with the conflict parties’ divergence of perspectives. Due to the
resulting asymmetry of trust and suspicion, the level of conflict ratchets up
so that the conflict parties become less and less willing to (also) view the
opponents’ actions from their perspective. Accordingly, the conflict parties
begin to lose the ability to receive information that could correct their prejudicial interpretations of the opponent’s actions and tend to regard their own
aims and actions as more appropriate and justifiable than those of the
opposing side.
Even in cooperative conflicts, however, characteristic forms of misunderstanding and misjudgment arise. Cooperation tends to weaken the perception of contradictions and to strengthen the partners’ goodwill.
According to Deutsch, these typical changes have the effect of containing
conflict and making escalation less likely, but they also pose the danger that
some conflict issues may be overlooked, or that the conflict parties may
engage in “premature cooperation.”
The members of a society directly affected by a conflict are not the
only ones who develop such convictions. Outsiders trying to make sense of
a conflict in which they are not themselves engaged will also interpret it
either in the sense of a win-win model (peace frame) or of a win-lose model
(war frame) (ASPR, 2003). How a person positions himself toward a conflict—which side he takes, e.g., in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—thus
depends essentially on the mental model he forms of the conflict.
The concept of mental models that we thereby adopt originally stems
from cognitive psychology, where it was first used by the Scottish psychologist Kenneth Craik in his book The Nature of Explanation (1943). He
writes therein about how people construct models of reality in their minds
that they use to derive conclusions, give explanations, and predict events.
According to van Dijk and Kintsch (1983), a mental model is “a dynamic
mental representation of a situation, an event or an object.” It serves as a
cognitive-emotional interpretive frame (Kempf, 2008), which organizes the
processing and organization of incoming information and endows it with
meaning.
Mental models have both an emotional and a cognitive component. In
the case of conflict, the emotional component is formed by (at least) two
factors: (1) concern about the conflict, and (2) the emotional ambivalence of
its consequences. The cognitive component is constituted by the frame
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511
according to which the conflict is interpreted and ranges from a peace frame
to a war frame and from a neutral frame to a partisan one. Only when we
have reconstructed the participants’ mental models can we relate them to
antisemitic attitudes and/or to the media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict and investigate whether what makes people critical of Israel is the
reported facts themselves, or instead the specific way these facts are framed
by the media.
The present paper discusses a questionnaire that we designed to help in
reconstructing mental models and, in addition, presents the results of a pilot
study in which we tested it.
METHOD
To assess participants’ mental models, we designed three separate
scales and applied a two-step Latent-Class-Analysis procedure. In this way,
we identified typical response patterns that give us clues as to the participants’ mental models of conflict.
Emotional closeness to a conflict refers to the participants’ familiarity
with and concern about the conflict, and was assessed by a total of nine
items, as shown in Table 1.
TABLE 1: ASSESSMENT
OF THE PARTICIPANTS’ CONCERNMENT
FOR THE CONFLICT
Knowledge
emo01: How would you judge your knowledge of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict?
Concernment
emo02: How deeply does the conflict affect you?
Partisanship
emo03: Which side do you feel more attached to?
Experience
emo04: Have you ever been in Israel?
emo05: Have you ever been in the
Palestinian territories?
Personal contact emo06: Have you ever had personal
contact with Israelis?
emo07: Have you ever had personal
contact with Palestinians?
Relatedness
emo09: Do you have Palestinian
friends, acquaintances or relatives?
emo08: Do you have Israeli friends,
acquaintances or relatives?
Emotional ambivalence refers to the fact that the frames according to
which people interpret conflict not only represent cognitive patterns, but
also have emotional dimensions—and indeed in an ambivalent way, for
both the war and the peace frames promise security, yet simultaneously
they also create insecurity (Kempf, 2010).
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The war frame offers security, because familiar, tried-and-true action
patterns can be continued, but it also creates insecurity, because it poses the
threat of continued antagonism and violence.
The peace frame also offers security, because it promises an end to
violence, but at the same time it creates insecurity, because new behavioral
patterns must be tried whose efficacy is still uncertain.
In our present research, the emotional ambivalence of the frames was
assessed by eight items, which are shown in Table 2.
TABLE 2: ASSESSMENT
OF THE PARTICIPANTS’ EMOTIONAL AMBIVALENCE
For Israelis
War frame
For Palestinians
Offers security ambi01i: With firm resolve and
military strength, Israel’s existence can be secured in the
long term
ambi01p: Through persistent
armed resistance, a Palestinian
state can be brought about by
force
Creates threat
ambi02p: If the Palestinian
leadership does not prevent the
use of force, the Palestinians
will not be allowed to found
their own state
ambi02i: As long as Israel tries
to control the conflict by military means (alone), its population will be exposed to the
constant threat of Palestinian
violence
Peace frame Offers security ambi03i: The complete return
of the occupied territories
would make it possible for
Israel to have an enduring
peace with the Palestinians
Creates threat
ambi04i: Returning to the borders of 1967 would represent a
great security risk for Israel
ambi03p: A little more flexibility would make it possible for
the Palestinians to have a lasting peace with Israel
ambi04p: A compromise with
Israel would mean selling out
Palestinian interests
Participants responded to the items on a 5-point Likert scale: “disagree
completely—rather disagree—neither disagree nor agree—rather agree—
agree completely,” with “don’t know” as an additional response category.
Positioning to the conflict: No less ambivalent is how people in Germany or
Austria position themselves in regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
(Kempf, 2010). The World War II lesson of “never again fascism, never
again war” implies a tendency toward the peace frame (never again war). It
is ambivalent, however, in regard to the human rights question (never again
fascism), which can be interpreted in two ways:
1. Support for the victims of National Socialism, which implies a tendency toward unconditional solidarity with Israeli policy and a
weakening of the peace frame. This can go so far that it turns into a
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513
war frame: never again fascism, therefore war, as was the case (in
part) in the Gulf War discourse in 1990-91 (Kempf, 1994).
2. Support for human rights worldwide, which implies a tendency to
refrain from endorsing at least some aspects of Israeli policy and
includes expressing solidarity with the Israeli peace movement and
at least a certain degree of empathy with the Palestinian side.
Although this at first means a strengthening of the peace frame, it then
can create the danger of shifting to a war frame and taking sides with the
Palestinians.
With regard to positioning toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we
can thus identify various positioning patterns that result from the two
dimensions of war frame vs. peace frame and from taking sides with either
of the two parties (Table 3).
TABLE 3: PATTERNS OF POSITIONING TOWARD
ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT
Pro-Israel
War frame
Neutral
Uncritical support of
Israeli policy, delegitimation of the Palestinians,
and justification of Israeli
violence
Peace frame Criticism of both sides’
policies, accentuation of
the vital needs of the
Israelis, and condemnation of violence on both
sides
THE
Pro-Palestine
Criticism of Israeli policy,
delegitimation of the
Israelis, and justification
of Palestinian violence
Criticism of both sides’
the vital needs of both
societies, and condemnation of violence on both
sides
Criticism of both sides’
the vital needs of the
Palestinians, and condemnation of violence on both
sides
In order to reconstruct the participants’ positioning patterns, we
designed a questionnaire consisting of 14 statements, shown in Table 4, to
which the participants responded on the same 5-point Likert scale as
described above.
In order to reconstruct the participants’ mental models, a two-step
Latent-Class-Analysis (LCA) was applied, and the set of classes that provide an optimal description of the data was determined according to
Akaike’s (1987) information criterion (AIC).
As a first step, we identified (latent) classes of typical response patterns for each of the three scales: “emotional closeness,” “emotional ambivalence,” and “positioning to the conflict.”
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TABLE 4: ASSESSMENT
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OF THE PARTICIPANTS’ POSITIONING
TO THE CONFLICT
Pro Israeli
Pro Palestinian
Endorsement of
peace
npeace01: A solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can only be found
through negotiation.
Accentuation of
vital needs
npeace03: A solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must take account of
the necessities of life of both populations.
ipeace01: All the participants should
work for the Israelis to be able to
look forward to a peaceful future
free of fear.
ppeace01: All the participants should
work for the Palestinians to be able
to lead a peaceful, self-determined
life.
Refutation of a
peaceful conflict
resolution
iwar01: The Palestinian leadership
can only be made to recognize Israel
by force of arms.
pwar01: The Israeli government can
only be forced to make concessions
by using military force.
Criticism of opponent’s policy
iwar02: The Palestinian leadership is
not ready to make compromises and
tries to impose its maximum aims
without regard to losses.
pwar02: Israel is intransigent and
tries to maintain the existing conditions by the use of force.
Delegitimation of
the opponent
iwar03: The goal of the Palestinian
leadership is the destruction of Israel.
pwar03: The aim of the Israeli policy is the continued oppression and
disenfranchisement of the Palestinians.
Legitimation of
own side’s warfare
iwar04: The Israelis are conducting a
legitimate defensive war against Palestinian terrorism.
pwar04: The Palestinians are conducting a legitimate war of liberation
against the Israeli occupation.
Condemnation of
opponent’s violence
iwar05: The Palestinian terror
attacks against the Israeli population
can be justified by nothing.
pwar05: Israel’s military operations
against the Palestinians are exorbitant and unjustified.
In these analyses, missing data and “don’t know” responses were
treated as separate response categories of their own. In the subsequent computation of mean judgments within the groups, on the other hand, they were
recoded as “neither disagree nor agree.”
In a second step, the participants’ mental models were identified by
means of a second-order LCA in which we entered the participants’ class
memberships as variables.
Before the background of German and Austrian postwar history (“lessons of World War II”), we can expect that the majority of the participants
will tend to be peace-oriented (Hypothesis 1). To be able to position themselves in regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, however, they need a
minimum of familiarity with the conflict (Hypothesis 2). Thereby, it will be
possible to find not only pro-Israeli, but also neutral and pro-Palestinian
peace frames (Hypothesis 3). The more familiar the participants are with the
conflict, the stronger the pressure will be for them to take a position in favor
of one side or the other (Hypothesis 4).
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515
Cooperative misperception (Deutsch, 1973) favors overlooking not
only the ambivalence of the peace frame, but also that of the war frame and
perceiving for both sides only the negative aspects of war and the positive
aspects of peace (Hypothesis 5).
The more familiar the participants are with the conflict and the
stronger the positioning pressure, the more likely it is that the participants
will shift to a war frame (Hypothesis 6). A minority of the participants will
therefore interpret the conflict either in the sense of a pro-Israeli or a proPalestinian war frame (Hypothesis 7).
Due to a belief in peace as the highest aim of the war (Bar-Tal, 1998),
however, even participants who interpret the conflict in the sense of a war
frame will agree with the demand for a negotiated settlement (Hypothesis 8)
that takes into account the necessities of life of both populations in equal
measure (Hypothesis 9). We expect that this tendency will increase in
strength as the radicalism of the war frame increases (Hypothesis 10). The
more the participants position themselves in favor of one side, the more
they will emphasize this side’s necessities of life as opposed to those of the
opposing side (Hypothesis 11).
SAMPLE
Data collection took place about a year after the Gaza war, from the
start of November 2009 until February 2010. In all, 68.5% of the data was
collected in Germany and 31.5% in Austria. The total number of participants in the study was N = 553. The age of the participants ranged from 17
to 63 (M = 22.73; SD = 5.245); 64.7% were female, and 35.3% were male.
The great majority of the participants were students: 6.9% had completed
job training, 9.9% had completed a vocational-technical school, 11.0% had
a university degree, and 0.9% had a PhD. In terms of religion, 47.6% were
Catholic, 25.5% Protestant, 1.4% Muslim, and 0.7% were Jewish; 4.4%
belonged to another (mainly Christian1) religion, and 20.4% claimed to be
non-religious. Of the participants, 12.8% had a background in migration,
whereby about a third of the migrants came from the former Soviet Union.
RESULTS
An LCA of the participants’ emotional closeness to the conflict identified four classes (Figure 1), which are clearly ordered with respect to the
participants’ emotional closeness: EmoClass 3 (20.2% of all participants):
very low; EmoClass 1 (40.5%): low; EmoClass 2 (33.8%): moderate, and
1. The only exceptions were two Buddhist participants.
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FIGURE 1: CLASS
[ VOL. 3:507
SIZES
EmoClass 4 (5.5%): relatively high. The LCA’s goodness-of-fit statistics
are shown in Table 5.
TABLE 5: PARTICIPANTS’ EMOTIONAL CLOSENESS TO THE
GOODNESS-OF-FIT STATISTICS OF THE LCA.
Number of classes
LOG-LIKE
n(P)
df
CONFLICT:
AIC
1
−3359,30
27
194372
6772,60
2
−3060,17
55
194344
6230,34
3
−3018,67
83
194316
6203,34
4
−2944,04
111
194288
6110,08
5
−2926,28
139
194260
Saturated model
−2495,01
194399
6130,56
393788,02
With increasing closeness, the share of participants who do not feel
attached to either side declines (Figure 2), the participants’ attachment
shifts toward the Israelis (Figure 3), the participants feel more deeply
affected by the conflict (Figure 4), and they also feel better informed about
it (Figure 5). The greater their closeness, the more often they have visited
Israel and/or the Palestinian territories (Figure 6), the more they have had
personal contacts with Israelis and/or with Palestinians (Figure 7), and the
more they have Israeli and/or Palestinian friends, acquaintances, or relatives
(Figure 8).
The relatively low familiarity of the participants with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is also reflected in the results on emotional ambivalence. On
average (Figure 9), the participants have no opinion about whether peace
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FIGURE 2: ATTACHMENT
FIGURE 3: ATTACHMENT
TO NEITHER SIDE
TO ONE OR BOTH SIDES
FIGURE 4: AFFECTED
BY THE CONFLICT
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FIGURE 5: KNOWLEDGE
FIGURE 6: VISITS
TO
FIGURE 7: PERSONAL
ISRAEL
AND/OR THE
CONTACT WITH
PALESTINIAN
ISRAELIS
AND/OR
TERRITORIES
PALESTINIANS
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FIGURE 8: ISRAELI
AND/OR
PALESTINIANS
519
FRIENDS,
ACQUAINTANCES, OR RELATIVES
FIGURE 9: EMOTIONAL
AMBIVALENCE
would be threatening for the Israelis (ambi04i = 3)2 or whether it could
offer them security (ambi03i = 3). Otherwise, they prefer a peace solution
to the status quo (war): War is regarded as threatening not only for the
Israelis (ambi02i = 4) but also for the Palestinians (ambi02p > 3), and able
to offer security to neither the Palestinians (ambi01p = 2) nor the Israelis
(ambi01i < 3). Conversely, at least for the Palestinians peace does not
represent a threat (ambi04p < 3), and can even offer security (ambi03p > 3).
2. All statements are based on a level of significance of p < 0.05.
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The distribution in Figure 9 is, however, not homogenous, but rather a
mixed distribution of various answer patterns. The LCA of the emotional
ambivalence scale identified six typical patterns that, altogether, regard the
consequences of peace as less threatening and offering more security for
Palestinians than for Israelis, for whom peace is (in part) even regarded as a
security risk. In addition, the status quo (war) is regarded as more threatening to the Israelis, but—on the other hand—is judged to threaten Palestinian
security interests even more than those of the Israelis. The LCA goodnessof-fit statistics are given in Table 6.
TABLE 6: PARTICIPANTS’ EMOTIONAL AMBIVALENCE:
GOODNESS-OF-FIT STATISTICS OF THE LCA
Number of classes
LOG-LIKE
1
−6633,36
2
3
n(P)
df
AIC
48
5764752
13362,72
−6217,59
97
5764703
12629,18
−6072,16
146
5764654
12436,32
4
−5968,23
195
5764605
12326,46
5
−5892,23
244
5764556
12272,46
6
−5817,95
293
5764507
12221,90
7
−5773,37
342
5764458
12230,74
Saturated model
−3410,73
5764800
11536421,46
AmbiClass 6: No opinion. Class 6 is a very small class that includes
only 1.3% of all the participants. The members of this class leave more than
64% of all questions unanswered, answer 3.5% of the questions with “don’t
know,” and have no opinion about whether war or peace creates threats or
offers security for either side (Figure 10).
All the other classes agree that war does not offer security for the
Palestinians and poses threats for the Israelis.
AmbiClass 5: Rather weak judgments. Among these other classes, Class 5
(Figure 11) is also characterized by rather weak judgments (78.6% “don’t
know” responses). Nonetheless, the participants in this class regard war as
threatening for the Israelis (ambi02i > 3) and have a significant opinion that
war can offer security neither for Israel (ambi01i < 3) nor for the Palestinians (ambi01p < 3). But they are undecided about whether war is threatening
for the Palestinians as well, and/or what the consequences of peace might
be for either of the parties.
AmbiClass 1: Distinct judgments, with no ambivalence. Class 1 is characterized by rather distinct judgments (5.4% “don’t know” responses) with no
2011]
FIGURE 10: NO
FIGURE 11: RATHER
FIGURE 12: DISTINCT
OPINION
WEAK JUDGMENTS
JUDGMENTS, WITH NO AMBIVALENCE
521
522
[ VOL. 3:507
ambivalence (Figure 12). War is threatening for both sides (ambi02i > 4;
ambi02p = 4) and cannot offer security for either party (ambi01i < 2;
ambi02p < 2). Peace offers security for both sides (ambi03i > 3; ambi03p >
3) and poses no threat for either side (ambi04i < 3; ambi04p < 3).
AmbiClass 2: Less distinct judgments, but skeptical about the consequences
of peace for Israel. Class 2 (36.4% “don’t know” responses) shows a similar—though less distinct—pattern (Figure 13; ambi01i < 3; ambi01p = 2;
ambi02i = 4; ambi02p > 3; ambi03p > 3; ambi04p < 3). Participants in this
class, however, are more skeptical about the consequences of peace for the
Israelis. They doubt whether peace can offer security for the Israelis
(ambi03i < 3), and they have no opinion about whether it might pose threats
for them (ambi04i = 3).
AmbiClass 4: Distinct judgments, without any opinions about the consequences of peace for Israel. Class 4 (10.7% “don’t know” responses) is
characterized by rather distinct judgments as well (Figure 14; ambi01i < 3;
ambi01p < 2; ambi02i > 4; ambi02p > 4; ambi04i = 3; ambi03p > 3;
ambi04p < 3). In contrast to Class 1, however, participants in this class have
no opinion about whether peace can offer security for the Israelis (ambi03i
= 3).
AmbiClass 3: Less distinct judgments, with no opinions about the consequences of peace for Israel. Class 3 (7.5% “don’t know” responses), finally,
shows a similar—though less distinct—pattern (Figure 15; ambi01p < 3;
ambi02i > 3; ambi02p > 3; ambi03i =3; ambi03p = 3; ambi04i = 3). Participants in this class, however, likewise have no opinions about whether war
might offer security for Israel (ambi01i =3) and whether peace might be
threatening for the Palestinians (ambi04p = 3).
On average (Figure 16), the participants display a neutral peace orientation that, to be sure, is more critical of Palestinian terror attacks (iwar05 =
4) than of Israeli military operations (pwar05 > 3), but conversely, however,
is only against denying legitimacy to the Palestinians (iwar03 < 3), but not
against denying legitimacy to the Israelis (pwar03 = 3).
While the participants tend to dispute not only the legitimacy of the
Palestinian liberation struggle (pwar04 < 3), but also that of the Israeli
defensive war (iwar04 < 3) and to accuse the Palestinian leadership of stubbornness in similar measure as they accuse Israeli leaders of this (iwar02 >
3) (pwar02 > 3), they reject the conception that the Israeli state must be
compelled to yield by means of military force (pwar01 < 2) just as clearly
as the view that the Palestinian leadership can only be induced to recognize
Israel with military force (iwar01 < 2).
Instead, the participants clearly think that a solution to the conflict can
only be found through negotiation (npeace01 > 4), that it must take into
2011]
FIGURE 13: LESS
DISTINCT JUDGMENTS, BUT SKEPTICAL
ABOUT THE CONSEQUENCES OF PEACE FOR ISRAEL
FIGURE 14: DISTINCT
JUDGMENTS, WITHOUT ANY OPINIONS
FIGURE 15: LESS
DISTINCT JUDGMENTS, WITH NO OPINIONS
523
524
FIGURE 16: POSITIONING
[ VOL. 3:507
TO THE CONFLICT
account the necessities of life of both populations (npeace03 > 4), and that
all the participants should work toward ensuring that not only will the Israelis be able to look forward to a peaceful future without fear (ipeace01 > 4),
but also that the Palestinians will be able to lead a peaceful and self-determined life (ppeace01 > 4).
The distribution in Figure 16 is, however, not homogeneous, but rather
a mixed distribution of various answer patterns. The LCA of the positioning
scale identified eight typical patterns, all of which support conflict resolution through negotiation and condemn Palestinian terror attacks.
• Two of the latent classes (10.07%) endorse peace but are not sufficiently familiar with the conflict to have a clear opinion about it (5068% no response or “don’t know”).
• Three of them (31.84%) interpret the conflict within a more or less
neutral peace frame with relatively high uncertainty (20-25% no
response or “don’t know”).
• Two of them (51.11%) hold a pro-Palestinian frame and are rather
sure of their evaluations (max. 3% no response or “don’t know”);
and
• A small group of participants (7%) that is fairly sure of its evaluations (3.4% no response or “don’t know”) interprets the conflict
according to a pro-Israeli war frame.
The LCA goodness-of-fit statistics are given in Table 7.
PosiClass 8: Support of peace without partisanship. Class 8 (Figure 17) is a
very small class that includes only 1.64% of all participants. The members
of this class leave 46% of all questions unanswered, answer 5% of the ques-
2011]
525
TABLE 7: PARTICIPANTS’ POSITIONING TO THE CONFLICT:
GOODNESS-OF-FIT STATISTICS OF THE LCA
Number of classes
LOG-LIKE
n(P)
df
AIC
1
2
−11085,26
84
6,78E+11
22338,52
−10374,51
169
6,78E+11
21087,02
3
−10069,66
254
6,78E+11
20647,32
4
−9830,46
339
6,78E+11
20338,92
5
−9673,03
424
6,78E+11
20194,06
6
−9487,20
509
6,78E+11
19992,40
7
−9389,14
594
6,78E+11
19966,28
8
−9303,28
679
6,78E+11
19964,56
9
−9255,27
764
6,78E+11
Saturated model
−3474,71
6,78223E+11
FIGURE 17: SUPPORT
20038,54
1,36E+12
OF PEACE WITHOUT PARTISANSHIP
tions with “don’t know,” and have no opinion about most issues. In contrast
to the members of all the other classes, who condemn Palestinian terror
attacks, they do not even have an opinion on this question (iwar05 = 3).
Instead, they tend not only to deny the legitimacy of the Israeli defensive
struggle (iwar04 < 3), but also to reject the exercise of military force against
Israel (pwar01 = 2) and to support a negotiated settlement (npeace01 = 4).
526
FIGURE 18: SUPPORT
[ VOL. 3:507
OF MUTUALLY BENEFICIAL PEACE
PosiClass 5: Support of mutually beneficial peace. The answer pattern in
Class 5 (Figure 18) is characteristic of 8.43% of the participants. The members of this class likewise have no opinion with regard to many issues and
answer 68% of all questions with “don’t know.”
In comparison with Class 8, the members of this class favor a negotiated settlement somewhat less strongly (npeace01 >3). They instead advocate a conflict settlement that would take into account the necessities of life
of both populations (npeace03 = 4), and in particular guarantee a peaceful
future without fear for the Israelis (ipeace01 = 4) but also ensure a peaceful,
self-determined life for the Palestinians (ppeace01 > 3). At the same time,
they tend not only to reject military pressure against Israel (pwar01 < 3),
but also against the Palestinians (iwar01 < 3).
PosiClass 3: Neutral peace frame. The answer pattern in Class 3 (Figure
19) is characteristic of 15.9% of the participants, who answer 26% of the
questions with “don’t know.”
The members of this class emphasize the necessities of life of both the
Israelis (ipeace01 > 4) and the Palestinians (ppeace01 > 4) in the same
measure and advocate a negotiated settlement (npeace01 = 4) that takes into
account the necessities of life of both societies (npeace03 > 4).
They reject equally definitely the notion that the Israeli state can only
be induced to yield by military force (pwar01 = 2) and the view that only by
force of arms can the Palestinian leadership be induced to recognize Israel
(iwar01 = 2).
They reject the legitimacy of the Palestinian liberation struggle
(pwar04 < 3) as much as they do that of the Israeli defensive war (iwar04 <
2011]
FIGURE 19: NEUTRAL
527
PEACE FRAME
3) and criticize Israel (pwar02 > 3) and the Palestinian leadership (iwar02 >
3) equally for stubbornness and/or intransigence.
While they disapprove of violence on both sides, they nonetheless condemn Palestinian terror attacks more strongly (iwar05 = 4) than Israeli military operations (pwar05 > 3); at the same time, they also doubt that the
destruction of Israel is the goal of the Palestinian leadership (iwar03 < 3).
PosiClass 4: Neutral peace frame, more definite but less critical. The
answer pattern in Class 4 (Figure 20) is characteristic of 10.8% of the participants, who answer 29% of the questions with “don’t know.” The members of this class differ from Class 3 in favoring a negotiated settlement
somewhat more strongly (npeace01 > 4) and still more emphatically reject
the employment of military force not only against the Israeli state (pwar01
< 2), but also against the Palestinian leadership (iwar01 = 1). As well they
reject the legitimacy of the Palestinian liberation struggle (pwar04 = 2) and/
or the Israeli defensive war (iwar04 = 2) somewhat more definitely and
reject Palestinian terror attacks still more strongly than does Class 3 (iwar05
> 4). On the other side, they criticize neither Israel (pwar02 = 3) nor the
Palestinian leadership (iwar02 = 3) for being stubborn and/or intransigent.
PosiClass 7: Peace frame, critical of Israel. The answer pattern in Class 7
(Figure 21) is characteristic of 5.14% of the participants, who answer 24%
of the questions with “don’t know.” The members of this class favor a
negotiated settlement somewhat less strongly (npeace01 > 3) and emphasize
the necessities of life of both populations (npeace03 = 4; ipeace01 > 3;
ppeace01 > 3) to a lesser extent than the other two classes. They also, but
528
FIGURE 20: NEUTRAL
[ VOL. 3:507
PEACE FRAME, MORE DEFINITE BUT LESS CRITICAL
FIGURE 21: PEACE
FRAME, CRITICAL OF
ISRAEL
less definitely, reject the employment of military force against the Israeli
state (pwar01 < 3) and/or against the Palestinian leadership (iwar01 < 3).
Unlike the other two classes, they do not defend the Palestinian leadership against the accusation that they aim to destroy Israel (iwar03 = 3), but
they do impute to Israeli policy the aim of continuing to oppress and disenfranchise the Palestinians (pwar03 > 3). At the same time, they dispute only
the legitimacy of the Israeli defensive war (iwar04 < 3), but not, however,
that of the Palestinian liberation struggle (pwar04 = 3); they condemn Palestinian terror attacks less strongly than the other two classes (iwar05 > 3);
2011]
529
and criticize only Israel (pwar02 < 3), but not the Palestinian leadership
(iwar02 = 3) for being stubborn and/or intransigent.
PosiClass 1: Peace frame, pro-Palestinian. The answer pattern in Class 1
(Figure 22) is characteristic of 26.24% of the participants, who answer less
than 3% of the questions with “don’t know” or leave them unanswered
(0.26%).
Similar to Class 3 (neutral peace frame), the members of this class also
support a negotiated settlement (npeace01 = 4) that takes into account the
necessities of life of both societies (npeace03 = 4). They emphasize the
necessities of life of the Palestinians somewhat more strongly, however
(ppeace01 > 4), than those of the Israelis (ipeace01 = 4).
Like Class 3, they also reject the view that the Israeli state can only be
induced to yield by force of arms (pwar01 = 2) just as definitely as the view
that the Palestinian leadership can only be induced by military pressure to
recognize Israel (iwar01 = 2).
In agreement with Class 3, they reject the legitimacy of the Palestinian
liberation struggle (pwar04 < 3) to the same extent as that of the Israeli
defensive war (iwar04 < 3) and criticize Israel (pwar02 > 3) and the Palestinian leadership (iwar02 > 3) to the same extent for stubbornness and/or
intransigence. Also similar to Class 3, they doubt that the destruction of
Israel is the goal of the Palestinian leadership (iwar03 < 3). While they
condemn the violence on both sides equally strongly (iwar05 >3; pwar05 >
3), they disapprove of Palestinian terror attacks somewhat less strongly than
does Class 3.
FIGURE 22: PEACE
FRAME, PRO
PALESTINIAN
530
[ VOL. 3:507
PosiClass 2: Pro-Palestinian frame, with an enemy image of Israel. The
answer pattern in Class 2 (Figure 23) is characteristic of 24.87% of the
participants, who answer less than 3% of the questions with “don’t know”
or leave them unanswered (0.44%).
The members of this class favor a negotiated settlement (npeace01 > 4)
that would take into account the necessities of life of both populations
(npeace03 >3) still more strongly than Class 1; they emphasize as well the
necessities of life of both the Palestinians (ppeace01 > 4), and the Israelis
(ipeace01 > 4) to a somewhat greater extent.
In addition, they more strongly reject the view that the Israeli state
(pwar01 < 2) or respectively the Palestinian leadership (iwar01 < 2) can
only be induced to yield or respectively to recognize Israel by employing
military force, and they condemn the violence on both sides (iwar05 = 4;
pwar05 >3) still more strongly than the members of Classes 1 and 3.
They contest, however, the legitimacy of the Israeli defensive war
(iwar04 < 2) even more strongly than that of the Palestinian liberation
struggle (pwar04 < 3) and accuse only Israel (pwar02 = 4), but not the
Palestinians (iwar02 = 3) of stubbornness and/or intransigence. And, while
they defend the Palestinian leadership against the accusation that they are
pursuing the goal of destroying Israel (iwar03 < 3), they accuse Israel of
aiming to continue to oppress and disenfranchise the Palestinians (pwar03 >
3).
FIGURE 23: PRO-PALESTINIAN
FRAME, WITH AN ENEMY IMAGE OF
ISRAEL
2011]
531
PosiClass 6: Pro-Israeli war frame. The answer pattern in Class 6 (Figure
24) is characteristic of 6.97% of the participants, who answer somewhat
more than 3% of the questions with “don’t know.”
To be sure, the members of this class also favor a negotiated settlement
(npeace01 = 4) that takes into account the necessities of life of both societies (npeace03 > 4), emphasizing, however, Israeli necessities of life
(ipeace01 > 4) somewhat more strongly than those of the Palestinians
(ppeace01 > 4) and rejecting the notion that the Israeli state can only be
forced by military means to cooperate (pwar01 < 2) more strongly than the
view that the Palestinian leadership can only be induced with military pressure to recognize Israel (iwar01 = 2).
With regard to all other issues, they display a clearly polarized pattern:
Whereas they accuse the Palestinian leadership of stubbornness (iwar02 =
4), they defend Israel against the accusation of intransigence (pwar02 < 2);
whereas they defend Israel against the accusation of pursuing the continued
oppression and disenfranchisement of the Palestinians (pwar03 = 2), they
allege that the Palestinian leadership aims to destroy Israel (iwar03 = 4);
whereas they emphasize the legitimacy of the Israeli defensive war (iwar04
= 4), they reject the legitimacy of the Palestinian defensive struggle
(pwar04 = 2); and whereas they condemn Palestinian terror attacks (iwar05
= 4), they justify Israeli military operations (pwar05 = 2).
FIGURE 24: PRO-ISRAELI
WAR FRAME
A second-order LCA identified 5 groups of participants (Table 8) that
can again be classified with respect to the participants’ emotional closeness
to the conflict.
532
TABLE 8: GOODNESS
Number of classes
[ VOL. 3:507
OF FIT STATISTICS OF THE SECOND-ORDER
LCA
LOG-LIKE
n(P)
df
AIC
1
−2589,22
15
176
5208,44
2
−2429,21
31
160
4920,42
3
−2385,66
47
144
4865,32
4
−2348,81
63
128
4823,62
5
−2320,41
79
112
4798,82
6
−2308,51
95
96
4807,02
Saturated model
−2264,14
191
4910,28
With increasing emotional closeness, the distinctness of the participants’ opinions regarding the consequences of war and peace also increases,
and the mental models according to which they interpret the conflict change
from sympathy for Israel (Class 4: 11.68%) to understanding for Israeli
concerns about peace (Class 2: 21.94%); to a pro-Palestinian perspective in
favor of peace (Class 3: 20.68%) to a peace perspective to the benefit of
both sides (Class 1: 35.94%); and finally to a polarization between peace
and the perpetuation of the status quo (Class 5: 9.76%).
Class 4: Sympathy for Israel. Though the participants in this group are quite
unfamiliar with the conflict and do not have a distinct frame from which
they could take a stance, they display some empathy for Israel’s concerns
about peace and believe that both war and peace are a greater risk for Israel
than for the Palestinians (Figure 25). In this group, most of the participants
reveal very little emotional closeness to the conflict (EmoClass 3: 72.3%),
and the distinctness of their opinions regarding the consequences of war and
FIGURE 25: SYMPATHY
FOR
ISRAEL
2011]
533
peace is also mostly low (AmbiClass 5: 72.1%). For the Palestinians, war
might perhaps create a threat (AmbiClasses 1-4: 27.8%) and offers no
security (AmbiClasses 1-5: 99.9%). Peace might not create any threat
(AmbiClasses 1-2, 4: 25.8%) and might even offer them security
(AmbiClasses 1-4: 27.8%). For Israelis, war creates a threat (AmbiClasses
1-5: 99.9%) and offers no security (AmbiClasses 1-2, 4-5: 97.9%). Peace
promises neither to create no threat (AmbiClass 1: 2.4%) nor to provide
security (AmbiClass 1: 2.4%). Peace could possibly even pose a security
risk (AmbiClass 2: 23.4%). Most participants in this group (79%; PosiClass
5 = 77.4%, PosiClass 8 = 1.6%) endorse peace and condemn Palestinian
violence but are not sufficiently familiar with the conflict to have a distinct
frame according from which they could take a position.
Class 2: Understanding for Israeli concerns about peace. On the basis of
(slightly) greater familiarity with the conflict, the participants interpret it
according to a neutral peace frame and reveal increased empathy for Israeli
concerns about peace (Figure 26). In this group, the participants show only
FIGURE 26: UNDERSTANDING
FOR
ISRAELI
CONCERNS ABOUT PEACE
slightly more emotional closeness to the conflict (very low, EmoClass 3 =
38.4%; low, EmoClass 1 = 39.6%) and the distinctness of their opinions
regarding the consequences of war and peace is mostly moderate
(AmbiClass 2+3 = 66.1%). For Palestinians, war creates a threat
(AmbiClasses 1-4: 88.4%) and likewise offers no security (AmbiClasses 15: 99.9%). Peace probably would not create any threat (AmbiClasses 1-2, 4:
77.9%) and does offer security (AmbiClasses 1-4: 88.4%). For Israelis, war
creates a threat (AmbiClasses 1-5: 99.9%) and offers no security
(AmbiClasses 1-2, 4-5: 89.4%). But peace neither promises not to create
any threats (AmbiClass 1: 13.7%) nor to offer security (AmbiClass 1:
534
[ VOL. 3:507
13.7%)—and is probably even a security risk (AmbiClass 2: 55.6%).
Nearly all of the participants in this group (96.4%) interpret the conflict
according to a neutral peace frame (PosiClass 3 = 66.5%; PosiClass 4 =
29.9%).
Class 3: Pro-Palestinian perspective in favor of peace. As their (still low)
familiarity with the conflict further increases, the participants become less
convinced of the threat the war poses to Israel, their empathy for Israel’s
concerns about peace again decreases, and the peace frame according to
which they interpret the conflict becomes biased in favor of the Palestinians
(Figure 27). In this group, the participants’ emotional closeness to the conFIGURE 27: PRO-PALESTINIAN
PERSPECTIVE IN FAVOR OF PEACE
flict ranges from very low (EmoClass 3 = 30.7%) through low (EmoClass 1
= 31.4%) to moderate (EmoClass 2 = 33.8%), and the distinctness of their
opinions regarding the consequences of war and peace is mostly moderate
(AmbiClass 2+3 = 76.1%). For Palestinians, war creates threat
(AmbiClasses 1-4: 93.8%) and offers no security (AmbiClasses 1-5:
93.8%). Peace might perhaps create no threats (AmbiClasses 1-2, 4: 39.9%)
and does offer security (AmbiClasses 1-4: 93.8%). For Israelis, war does
create threats (AmbiClasses 1-5: 93.8%) and might perhaps not offer any
security (AmbiClasses 1-2, 4-5: 39.9%). Peace promises neither to create no
threat (AmbiClass 1: 17.7%) nor to offer security (AmbiClass 1: 17.7%).
Peace might perhaps even create a security risk (AmbiClass 2: 22.2%). The
great majority of participants in this group (87.4%) interpret the conflict
according to a peace frame that is either pro-Palestinian (PosiClass 1:
68.3%) or critical of Israel (PosiClass 7: 19.1%).
2011]
535
Class 1: Peace perspective in both sides’ benefit. As familiarity with the
conflict increases, the participants believe that peace could offer security
and not create any threat for either of the sides. Losing their empathy for
Israel’s concerns about peace, they regard Israel as the main obstacle to
peace. The pro-Palestinian bias increases, and an enemy image of Israel
develops (Figure 28).
FIGURE 28: PEACE
PERSPECTIVE IN BOTH SIDES’ BENEFIT
In this group, the participants show somewhat more emotional closeness to the conflict (low, EmoClass 1 = 52.1%; moderate, EmoClass 2 =
36.8%), and the distinctness of their opinions regarding the consequences of
war and peace is mostly high (AmbiClass 1+4 = 81.6%). For Palestinians,
war creates threat (AmbiClasses 1-4: 98.9) and offers no security
(AmbiClasses 1-5: 100%). Peace would not create any threats
(AmbiClasses 1-2, 4: 91.7%) and does offer security (AmbiClasses 1-4:
98.9%).
For Israelis, war does create threats (AmbiClasses 1-5: 100%) and
does not offer security (AmbiClasses 1-2, 4-5: 92.9%). Peace would probably not create threats (AmbiClass 1: 67.5%), probably offers security
(AmbiClass 1: 67.5%), and does not appear to create a security risk
(AmbiClass 2: 10.1%).
The great majority of participants in this group (89.3%) interprets the
conflict according to a pro-Palestinian frame which is either a pro-Palestinian peace frame (PosiClass 1: 34.4%) or a peace frame bordering on a war
frame that already includes an enemy image of Israel (PosiClass 2: 54.9%).
Class 5: Polarization between peace and the perpetuation of the status quo.
In this group, which is the one (relatively) most familiar with the conflict,
the uncertainties of peace for Israel split the participants. They either form
536
[ VOL. 3:507
an enemy image of Israel or of the Palestinians, and they expect the enemy
to bear the burdens—either of peace to the benefit of the Palestinians or of
perpetuating the status quo (Figure 29). In this group, the participants’ emoFIGURE 29: POLARIZATION
BETWEEN PEACE AND
THE PERPETUATION OF THE STATUS QUO
tional closeness to the conflict is either mainly moderate (EmoClass 2 =
61.7%) or relatively high (EmoClass 4 = 27.4%), and the distinctness of
their opinions regarding the consequences of war and peace is also high
(AmbiClass 1+4 = 79.5%). For Palestinians, war creates threats
(AmbiClasses 1-4: 99.9%) and offers no security (AmbiClasses 1-5:
99.9%). Peace probably does not create any threats (AmbiClasses 1-2, 4:
79.5%) but does offer security (AmbiClasses 1-4: 99.9%). For Israelis, war
creates threats (AmbiClasses 1-5: 99.9%) and probably offers no security
(AmbiClasses 1-2, 4-5: 79.5%). But peace neither promises to create no
threats (AmbiClass 1: 0.8%) nor to offer security (AmbiClass 1: 0.8%).
Nonetheless, peace is also not regarded as a security risk (AmbiClass 2:
0%). The great majority of the participants in this group (88.8%) are for one
or the other side in the conflict. They interpret the conflict either according
to a pro-Palestinian frame with a clear enemy image of Israel (PosiClass 2 =
45.7%) or according to a pro-Israeli war frame (43.1%).
DISCUSSION
The results of this pilot study show that both the scales we constructed
and the strategy of data analysis we employed are suitable for reconstructing the mental models with which the study participants interpret the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Nonetheless, we intend to modify the scales
2011]
537
somewhat in our forthcoming field study. Since the positioning items
iwar01 and pwar01 were rejected throughout by all of the groups who had
formed a mental model of the conflict, we will replace them with the
weaker statements: iwar01—The Palestinian leadership must be forced to
recognize Israel; pwar01—The Israeli government must be forced to make
concessions to the Palestinians.
The results of the study also support most of our hypotheses. In agreement with Hypothesis 1, the majority of the participants (PosiClasses 1, 3,
4, and 7; 58.08%) interpret the conflict according to a peace frame. In order
to be able to position oneself, however, a minimum of familiarity with the
conflict is necessary (Hypothesis 2): PosiClasses 5 and 8 (10.07%) endorse
peace, but they are insufficiently familiar with the conflict to have a clear
opinion about it. Contrary to expectations (Hypothesis 3), in our sample we
could to be sure identify neutral (PosiClasses 3 and 4; 26.7%), Israel-critical
(PosiClass 7; 5.14%), and pro-Palestinian (PosiClass 1; 26.24%) peace
frames, but no pro-Israeli peace frame. In agreement with Hypothesis 7,
only a minority of the participants interpret the conflict in a war frame.
While there is certainly a relatively large group of participants who interpret
the conflict according to a pro-Palestinian frame that borders on a war
frame (PosiClass 2; 24.87%), contrary to our expectations, however, we
could find only a pro-Israeli (PosiClass6; 7.0%), but not a pro-Palestinian
war frame.
Based on the tendencies we found, the results of the second-order LCA
nevertheless confirm our supposition that as familiarity with the conflict
increases there is pressure to take a stance in favor of one party or the other
(Hypothesis 4), and finally also in the direction of a war frame (Hypothesis
6): Those participants (Class 4) who are the least familiar with the conflict
do indeed display sympathy for Israel, but most of them, however (79.0%),
are not sufficiently familiar with the conflict to have a distinct frame
according to which they could take a position. In all, 96.4% of the members
of Class 2, who are only slightly more familiar with the conflict, interpret
the conflict according to a neutral peace frame, and those participants who
are the most familiar with the conflict (Class 5) are polarized into the most
radical pro-Israeli (PosiClass 6; 43.1%) and pro-Palestinian (PosiClass 2;
45.7%) positions. Also, most (89.3%) of the members of Class 1, which is
in second place, interpret the conflict according to a partisan (pro-Palestinian) frame.
That the ambivalence of the frames is often overlooked due to cooperative misperception (Hypothesis 5) is likewise confirmed: The ambivalence
of the war for both sides is consistently overlooked. Apart from a very
small minority (AmbiClass 6; 1.3%), all agree that war can offer the Palestinians no security and is a threat to Israel. The largest group of participants
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[ VOL. 3:507
(AmbiClass 1; 29.9%) perceives for both sides only the negative aspects of
the war and only the positive aspects of peace. That peace is ambivalent for
the Palestinians is not seen by any of the groups. Only 1/4 of the participants (AmbiClass 2; 24.2 %) grasps that peace can also represent a security
risk for Israel, and about 1/3 of the participants (AmbiClasses 3 and 4;
33.6%) have no opinion regarding the consequences of peace for Israel.
The expectation was likewise confirmed that participants who interpret
the conflict in the sense of a war frame also agree with the call for a negotiated settlement (Hypothesis 8) that takes equal account of the necessities of
life of both populations (Hypothesis 9): Like all the other classes, not only
PosiClass 6 (pro-Israeli war frame), but also PosiClass 2 (pro-Palestinian
frame bordering on a war frame) favor a negotiated settlement of the conflict (npeace01) that must take into account the necessities of life of both
populations (npeace03).
The supposition is not confirmed, however, that this support will
increase if the radicalism of the war frame increases (Hypothesis 10):
Whereas PosiClass 2 supports both demands (negotiated settlement and taking account of both sides’ needs) the most strongly of all the classes,
PosiClass6 is only in the middle range with regard to both demands.
But Hypothesis 11 was confirmed: The more the participants position
themselves in favor of one side, the more they will emphasize the necessities of life of this side more strongly than those of the opposing side:
PosiClass 2 and PosiClass 6 are the only classes that emphasize the necessities of life of one side significantly more strongly than those of the other (p
< .05). PosiClass 2 emphasizes those of the Palestinians more strongly (M =
4.77) than those of the Israelis (M = 4.47), and PosiClass 6 emphasizes
those of the Israelis (M = 4.85) more strongly than those of the Palestinians
(M = 4.51).
Although the present study is not representative, it still gives some
insight into how (mainly) young educated people in Germany and Austria
relate to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Conflict resolution through negotiation is supported by the participants across the board, and yet the participants still consistently condemn Palestinian terror attacks more severely
than Israeli military operations—even after the Gaza war, which saw public
opinion shift toward a quite critical view of Israeli warfare.
Participants unfamiliar with the conflict show sympathy for Israel (second-order LCA, Class 4) and/or understanding for Israeli concerns about
peace (second-order LCA, Class 2). Those participants who sympathize
with the Palestinians (second-order LCA, Class 3) also favor peace and do
not interpret the conflict according to a war frame.
2011]
539
The largest group of participants (second-order LCA, class 1: 35.94%)
has a mental model calling for a peace settlement in the interest of both
sides. The participants in this group, however, show no empathy for Israel’s
concerns about peace, they tend to form an enemy image of Israel; and, due
to the disappointment of cooperation expectations, express a change in their
peace frame to a war frame that seems to be programmed. Those participants who are most familiar with the conflict (second-order LCA, class 5),
finally, are divided into the groups of unconditional supporters of Israeli
policies who interpret the conflict according to a pro-Israeli war frame and
sympathizers of the Palestinians, who interpret it according to a frame that
borders on a war frame.
However we interpret these results, they speak in any case for the view
that criticism of Israel is a far too complex issue to simply reduce it to
antisemitism. That criticism of Israel—besides other factors like pacifistic
attitudes, concerns about human rights, moral disengagement, and/or the
way the media report about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—can also be
influenced by antisemitic attitudes is certainly not precluded. The question
of whether and to what extent this is the case cannot be answered on the
basis of the present data. It will be, however, the focus of forthcoming
experiments and field studies.
*Dr. Wilhelm Kempf is a professor of psychological methodology and head of the
Peace Research Group at the University of Konstanz, Germany. His special areas
of interest are nonviolent conflict resolution, conflict and peace journalism, and the
social construction of reality. Since 2002, Dr. Kempf is the editor of conflict &
communication online. Currently, he is conducting a research project on the relations between Israel-criticism, modern antisemitism, and the media, funded by the
German Research Society (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft [DFG], grant No.
KE 300/8-1).
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Resentment Reloaded:
How the European Radical Right Mobilizes
Antisemitism and Counter-Cosmopolitanism
Lars Rensmann*
Radical right parties have successfully mobilized voters in Europe in the
last few years. Yet, empirical studies of the radical right’s political ideology are scarce. This article offers a comparative analysis of party platforms and political mobilizations of relevant radical right electoral
competitors. It reveals not only cross-national variations but also an
emerging transnational and modernized ideological profile: the combination of anti-immigrant politics with fierce opposition to cultural and economic globalization, and especially an increasing presence of
antisemitism. Corresponding radical right mobilizations are engendered
by three favorable conditions: social demand, a changing public climate,
and crises of globalization that feed into persistent resentments and antiJewish conspiracy theories. Antisemitism has not been replaced by other
resentments; instead, the new radical right plays its part in an evolving a
new antisemitic international.
Key Words: Radical Right, Counter-Cosmopolitanism, Antisemitism, AntiMuslim, Anti-Zionism, Anti-Immigrant
THE ANTISEMITISM
OF THE
RADICAL RIGHT
Established parties in advanced European democracies face the persistent challenge of new and modernized radical right parties. They also epitomize challenges to Europe’s politico-cultural cosmopolitanization (Beck
and Grande 2007) and the developing multi-level polity of the European
Union at large (Kitschelt 2007; Mudde 2007). In fact, Europe’s transformation from predominantly ethnic-nationalist self-understandings to the broad
recognition of cosmopolitan diversity and inclusion of minorities has come
a long way. But it also remains contested and conflict-ridden, as contemporary controversies over immigration policy and anti-immigrant politics indicate. The same can be said about European antisemitism and its legacy.
New radical right parties can be viewed as part of that contestation,
while their mobilization success varies and is often dependent on contextual
factors (Arzheimer 2009). To a large extent, these parties are politically
discredited actors and marginalized in European party systems; they also
succeed, however, in mobilizing voters in many regions across Europe, and
543
544
[ VOL. 3:543
they often have direct and indirect political leverage (Minkenberg and Perrineau 2007). To be sure, their partly dramatic electoral successes (See
Table 1) and electoral performances fluctuate in most contexts and are more
difficult to predict than those of their party system competitors. In several
cases, however, they are not marginal any longer but even have become
junior partners in elected democratic governments (Frölich-Steffen and
Rensmann 2007). This includes the heart of Western Europe. Think of the
Lega Nord in Italy—one of the European Union’s original six members. In
Eastern Europe, the radical right party Jobbik, with its strong ties to neoNazis and its own paramilitary organization, gained 17% in the 2010 general parliamentary election in Hungary (Hockenos 2010), a country now
TABLE 1: ELECTORAL
RESULTS OF RELEVANT* EXTREME-RIGHT PARTIES IN
PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS IN FIFTEEN
EUROPEAN
COUNTRIES,
1984-
2010.
AN (Italy)
LN (Italy)
FPÖ (Austria)
DF (Denmark)
PP (Norway)
NPD (Germany)
REPs (Germany)
DVU (Germany)
SNS (Slovakia)
VB (Belgium)
LPF (Netherlands)
RMZ (Czech Republic)
Ataka (Bulgaria)
VMRO-BND (Bulgaria)
FN (France)
BNP (Great Britain)
Jobbik******(Hungary)
LPR (Poland)
Samoobrona (Poland)
PUNR (Romania)
PRM (Romania)
1984-1989
5,9 (MSI)
-
1990-1994
5,4-13,5
8,6
1995-1999
15,7
8,4-10,1
2000-2005
12,0
3,9
9,6
8,35
0,6
1,9
9,7
0,0
-
16,6
6,3
0,3
2,1-1,9
14,0-5,4
6,6
6,0
6,5
12,6
0,1
21,9-26,9
7,4
15,3
0,3
1,8
1,2
9,1
7,8-9,9
8,0-3,9
9,4
15,0
0,1
0,1
4,4
4,5
10,0
12,0-13,3
14,6-22,1
0,4-1,6
0,6
3,3
11,6
11,35
1,0
8,9
5,7*****
11,3
0,2-0,7
7,9-8,0
10,2-11,3
1,4
19,5-13,0
-
2,8
7,9
3,9
2006-2010
11,5**
5,1-8,3
11,017,54***
13,9
22,9
1,5
0,4
11,7
12,0
-****
0,15
9,36
4,3
1,9
16,67
1,3
2,5
-*******
3,15
Sources: Norris 2005; Ignazi 2003; www.electionresources.org, www2.essex.ac.uk/elect/database; gesis.org.
*Although consistently below the 3% threshold, which we take as a minimum level to classify as relevant, the
NPD and the BNP are included as relevant parties because of the regional success and parliamentary representation (NPD) and their success in the 2009 European parliamentary elections and their subsequent parliamentary representation in case of the BNP.
**In 2008, AN no longer competed independently but under the umbrella of “Il Popolo della Libertà.” It is also
no longer classified as “extreme right.”
***After split from the BZÖ.
****LPF dissolved and did not compete in the 2006 election.
*****On an electoral platform with two other small parties.
******Jobbik was founded as a political party in 2003; in the 2006 elections it ran with MIÉP, which had
previously gained 5.5% in the 1998 and 4.4% in the 2002 elections, turning the radical right into a consistently
relevant competitor.
*******PUNR dissolved and did not compete in the 2008 election.
2011]
RESENTMENT RELOADED
545
governed by a national-populist party (Fidesz) facilitating coded antisemitism and courting anti-Jewish voters.
Of fifteen European Union member states examined, six countries of
the radical right have reached a new peak within the last election cycle
(2006-2010). The still widespread claim that the radical right has remained
an isolated force or become completely irrelevant within the European
Union is therefore difficult to sustain, even if we only looked at electoral
results and neglect that the radical right is also a significant social movement and subculture. However, while the radical right has recently been
recognized as a force to reckon with—in fact, the radical right is the most
scrutinized European party family today (Mudde 2007)—there is still a
striking void in systematic comparative studies of the radical right’s political ideology, especially of its role in antisemitism.
The radical right’s anti-immigrant resentments, and especially antiMuslim campaigns, have come under public and scientific scrutiny in recent
years (Mammone 2011). Yet, antisemitism as an ideological factor in
mobilizing radical right voters has neither been systematically examined in
scholarly research nor received much media attention, in spite of some
heated scholarly meta-controversies about “new antisemitism”—that is, the
partial or full convergence of radical right, radical left, and Islamist
antisemitism in the form of hatred of Israel and the chimera of “world Zionism.” While there are some notable exceptions—studies that explore the
radical right and antisemitism (e.g., Rensmann 2008; 2011; Weitzman
2006; 2010)—public and scholarly debates, in fact, often a priori presuppose that antisemitism is an ideology that is past its expiration date, and
thus also without significance in the radical right’s political and ideological
mobilizations.1 Indeed, it is a widely shared belief in contemporary European publics that antisemitism has largely dissipated, and generally become
socially and politically irrelevant—even though such claims are difficult to
substantiate and contradict social research findings. If antisemitism surfaces
as a problem today, it is frequently suggested that it is instrumentalized and
overused, presumably constituting an ubiquitous political charge allegedly
employed by Jewish and Israeli lobbies in order to suppress dissent and
fence off criticism of Israel in Europe and the United States (see, for
instance, Walt and Mearsheimer 2008; for a scholarly critique of these
1. Strangely complementary to such biased presuppositions, some scholars
who critically examine the rise of new forms of antisemitism, and who plausibly
substantiate the new antisemitism’s thesis about a partial left/right/Islamist convergence on the Jewish question and the Israel question, at times tend to view the
contemporary radical right as an irrelevant and marginal player, and thus also have
turned away from the empirical study of antisemitism in the radical right.
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[ VOL. 3:543
claims, see Lieberman 2009a, 2009b). In a similar vein, some scholars and
political pundits have suggested that the European radical right, with its
anti-Muslim vigor, has turned pro-Israel and pro-Jewish (Bunzl 2007), and
that Jewish organizations, in turn, now allegedly support the radical right
and xenophobia.2 Moreover, it has become popular to view Muslims as the
Jews of today, a trope that insinuates that Muslims are the subject of forms
of systematic persecution in Europe that is similar to those that Jews have
faced in European history; and a trope that suggests that islamophobia has
generally replaced—not just complemented—antisemitism, i.e., hatred of
Jews, in 21st-century Europe.3
2. Such claims, based on scarce evidence if any, also have political ramifications: if Jews are linked to or associated with the European radical right and with
fascist ideology, they are discredited, along with their possible support of the Jewish state of Israel. As will be shown, the Belgish Vlaams Belang may well be the
only relevant radical right party who has seriously tried—and failed—to court Jewish voters.
3. If antisemitism is no longer viewed as an acute challenge, it is also easier to
suggest that those who do address the issue are playing the antisemitism card for
political purposes, presumably to immunize Israel from criticism or to advance particular Jewish interests. Over the last years, some media and scholars across the
Atlantic have popularized the claim that Islamophobia is the new antisemitism (as
opposed to those theories about new antisemitism that seek to conceptualize a new
convergence of radical right, radical-left, and Islamist hatred of Jews and Israel),
and thus resentments—unquestionably significant—against Muslims and Islam
have taken antisemitism’s place in Europe and beyond (Bunzl 2007; Guarnieri
2010). Yet, it is also popular to suggest that this presumed change is not recognized. While “anti-Semitism is recognized as an evil, noxious creed, and its adherents are barred from mainstream society and respectable organs of opinion,”
Islamophobia is presumably widespread and well respected (Oborne 2008). This
proposition is problematic in at least three ways: First, it suggests that antisemitism
is always publicly identified as such and publicly refuted; while overt racial and
Nazi antisemitism has indeed long become largely illegitimate in mainstream public discourse, it can be questioned how far this applies to more subtle or coded
forms and anti-Jewish stereotypes. The meaning of the term Islamophobia is
equally unclear: does it entail, for instance, criticism of Islamism and criticism by
Muslims and non-Muslims against politicized religious practices, or does it signify
racial hatred and discrimination against Muslims, which is a contemporary challenge? Second, the assumption that antisemitism is barred from public life and
replaced by presumably legitimate Islamophobia suggests that antisemitism has
become irrelevant, although all existing survey data show that antisemitic resentments are far from isolated. Moreover, violent attacks against Jews, Jewish institutions, and synagogues continue to exceed—in actual numbers—those against all
other minorities (although there are various national exceptions in the case of violence against gypsies), including violence directed against Muslims, Muslim institutions, and mosques. Third, while Jews and Muslims are subjected to
2011]
RESENTMENT RELOADED
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Looking at contemporary radical right ideology and its political context, this article challenges the aforementioned propositions. It claims that
while racialized hostility against Muslims takes an important role in many
radical right mobilizations alongside general anti-immigrant resentment,
antisemitism remains an integral, indeed in many cases reinforced, element
of new radical right ideology. For much of the European radical right, however, antisemitism continues to function as a constitutive, persistent conspiracy ideology to explain the modern world and its crises. New radical
right parties thereby tend to modernize their ideology in order to increase
their appeal, even though overtly racialized stereotypes of Jews, ethnic
minorities, and immigrants—as well as Holocaust revisionism—continue to
surface in political campaigns; the alleged powerful conspirators of world
Jewry, for instance, are today often called “world Zionists.”
In general, the word Zionist is increasingly being used as a synonym
for Jew to make antisemitic attacks on world Jewry sound respectable.
Among the radical right and beyond, the chiffre—the Zionists—has generally become the main code for the Jews in antisemitic discourses. It allows
blurring the boundaries between legitimate political critique, innuendo, and
overt antisemitism while still mobilizing resentments—and also helps avoid
potential legal prosecution. In this ideological construct, Jews and the Zionists seek to dominate the world, orchestrate Zionist-Occupied Governments
(ZOG) behind the scenes, and personify globalism and global modernity,
including American and Zionist imperialism, the global financial system,
and global capitalism.
discrimination in Europe today, it is empirically unjustified to simply pit one set of
resentments against another. Both racist prejudices against Muslims and antisemitism are on the rise, according to various survey data (PEW Global Attitudes Project
2008). It is also worth mentioning, however, that the latter is quite distinct in its
nature. Antisemitism has generalizable dimensions, which are similar to other
forms of racial discrimination, and specific dimensions: antisemitism is a conspiracy theory and, ultimately, a world explanation that, among other things, personifies problems of the modern world with Jews and explains these problems by
pointing to Jewish machinations. In contemporary antisemitism, Jews are viewed as
a secret power behind the world’s cosmopolitan cultural change, economic modernization, wars, and global conflicts. It is not just a generalizable form or religious
hatred or prejudice; it also serves as a conspiratorial world explanation. In spite of
its generalizable dimensions, it is distinct in its profile from other forms of racial
hatred (Rensmann and Schoeps 2011). Antisemitism is also different in consequence. Equating modern racism with antisemitism misconceives not only the
nature of antisemitism, but also its societal origins, functions, and dynamics. The
claim that Jews have been replaced by Muslims as the target of discrimination is
therefore problematic. As David Ceserani (2008) has pointed out, The “Jews of
Today” are, and remain, Jews.
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[ VOL. 3:543
Furthermore, it is suggested that the radical right’s political antisemitism does not harm their political mobilizations but, on the contrary, feeds
into an increased public legitimacy of hostility against Jews; a hostility that
is fueled by social perceptions of the Middle East conflict and widespread
hatred of Israel as well as recent globalization crises. Such resentment
marches in step with, and complements, anti-immigrant resentments and
prejudices against ethnic minorities.
In the following section, we summarize findings of qualitative content
analyses of radical right party manifestos and public campaigns in order to
establish the constitutive features of the European radical right’s contemporary ideology, which we summarize in comparative findings. We then look
at the demand side, the general political context, and favorable conditions
for radical right mobilizations of resentment, focusing especially on the
neglected resurgence of political antisemitism and the origins and causal
mechanisms thereof.
A SEVEN-NATION SAMPLE
Here, we examine seven European national cases of radical right party
mobilization and ideology based on a comparative study of 11 countries
altogether.4 The study focuses on platforms and manifestos of relevant radical right parties, including public statements by leaders, party Web pages,
and political campaigns as components shaping the political ideology of the
European radical right.5 Special attention is paid to the modernization of
radical right party ideology. This includes the radical right’s responsiveness
to counter-cosmopolitanism, and the way it modifies its propaganda against
blacks, immigrants, and Muslims, and particularly the role old-fashioned
and modernized antisemitism plays in radical right mobilizations.
Poland
Success of the two most relevant extreme-right parties in Poland—the
extreme right League of Polish Families (Liga Polskich Rodzin—LPR) and
the national-protectionist agrarian-populist party Samoobrona, led by
Andrzej Lepper—has been fluctuating, along with the still unconsolidated
and fluid Polish party system in its entirety. Both parties had temporarily
4. Summaries of the other qualitative content analyses have been discussed
elsewhere (Rensmann 2011).
5. We classify parties as relevant that at least have shown some level of electoral success, that is, scoring at least temporarily 3% or more in regional or national
elections.
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RESENTMENT RELOADED
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significant electoral success in the first half of the 2000s: In the 2001 landslide parliamentary elections, the LPR, just created before the elections,
received 7.9%; Samoobrona, previously lacking electoral success, received
10.2% and became the third-strongest party in Sejm, the lower house of the
Polish parliament. Both parties repeated their success in 2005 (8.0% LPR;
11.3% Samoobrona). While the LPR is also anchored in the ideologies of
the nationalist prewar movement Endecja and Polish Catholic fundamentalism, it links those traditions with contemporary issues, modernized
antisemitism, and anti-globalization rhetoric in the core of party ideology.
In the first election campaign, LPR attacked President Aleksander Kwasniewski of bowing to Jewish interests (Pankowski and Kornak 2005, 159).
In its successful 2005 campaign, the party combined national protectionism
with economic protectionism against globalization and mobilized the
national solidarity of a new IV Republic of Poland against privatization
robbery (Kostrzebski 2005, 220ff.), thereby finding support among globalization losers. Moreover, the LPR unconditionally opposes European Union
membership, which it characterizes as anti-Christian (Kostrzebski 2005,
214). After 2005, however, the party lost its initial support of some powerful Catholic civil society agents and media such as Radio Marija, which is
connected to the Schiller Institute of the antisemitic U.S. billionaire Lyndon
LaRouche (Gazeta Wyborcza, March 9, 2005). The agrarian-populist
Samoobrona party lacks Catholic rhetoric, or a similarly distinct radical
right and antisemitic programmatic profile. Yet, in spite of socialist economic policy orientations, the party can be classified as populist radical
right, and it also nurtures a combination of authoritarian ethno-national populism, anti-immigrant resentments, and antisemitism, which is characteristic
for both old and new radical right party ideology. Party leader Lepper, for
instance, publicly glorifies democratic dictatorship, the Nazi propaganda
minister Goebbels, and the French radical rightist Jean-Marie Le Pen
(Pankowski and Kornak 2005, 160). While Goebbels represents the old fascist/Nazi and antisemitic right, Le Pen represents, as Piero Ignazi (2003)
has pointed out, the prototype of the new extreme or radical right. Samoobrona modernized its ideology, distanced itself from right-wing extremism,
and received dramatic electoral gains in return. The party now focuses on
political isolationism and a national-protectionist anti-globalization and
anti-European Union platform, though there are links to open antisemitism
through the personnel of the party elite (http://www.tau.ac.il/Anti-Semitism/asw2005/poland.html).
While their new ideological formulas and political mobilizations have
proven successful in reaching out to broader parts of the disenfranchised
electorate, their short performance as junior partners in government in
2006-2007 was not: in response to party scandals and the unwillingness to
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agree to new elections, turnout for both parties collapsed at the ballot box in
2007 (1.3% LPR; 2.5% Samoobrona) and they had to leave the Sejm.
Roman Giertych stepped down as LPR party leader; neither party recovered
from this slide in the 2009 European elections. In terms of ideological supply-side transformations, however, both parties exemplify (a) the turn to
“counter-cosmopolitan modernization” and (b) subsequent electoral
success.
Hungary
MIÉP (Magyar Igazság és Élet Pártja-Hungarian Party for Justice and
Life) has been the electorally most successful radical right party in postCommunist Hungary but faded in relevance in recent years. Under the
authoritarian leadership of István Csurka, the party promotes exclusivist
nationalism and expansionist ambitions, especially with regard to the Hungarian ethnic minority under foreign rule (www.miep.hu). The 2002
national electoral campaign particularly focused on an interrelated set of
anti-globalization, antisemitism, anti-Communism, and anti-Israel issues.
Initially viewing any cooperation with the West as part of a U.S.-Zionist
plan, MIÉP continues to oppose European Union membership and promotes
a distinctly anti-Jewish anti-globalization ideology: bankers, for instance,
are portrayed as a bunch of Jews sucking the money of average people.
Viewing cosmopolitan Judeo-Bolshevik plutocrats and cosmopolitanism
and globalization as the main enemy, the party has explained electoral successes of the left and allegedly ongoing Communist rule by referring to
Jewish-Zionist activity (Stephen Roth Institute 2002). According to Csurka,
Hungarians are being exploited and oppressed by Jews, who dominate the
economy and literature. He also fears a Jewish conspiracy, whose perpetrators are sitting in New York and Tel Aviv (cited in Bos 2011). Antisemitism and hatred of Israel are the core elements of this extreme ethnonationalist party, while resentment against minorities (or Muslims) is part of
the party ideology but less central to its identity.
The party, however, has continuously lost votes since 1998 (5.5%)
(2002: 4.4%). By 2006, electoral support for MIÉP was down to 2.2%, in
spite of the fact that it formed an electoral alliance with the initially even
more radical Jobbik Magyarországért Mozgalom (Movement for a Better
Hungary), and it virtually dissolved. Jobbik had taken MIÉP’s place as the
most significant political and electoral extreme-right force in Hungary, and
outperformed MIÉP. By 2008, the now independent Jobbik was already at
7% in national polls, and the party initially received a stunning 14.77% of
the vote in the 2009 European elections. This turned Jobbik into the third
strongest party in Hungary, gaining three seats in the European Parliament.
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It consolidated this position in the Hungarian party system by mobilizing an
average of 16.67% of the voters in the two rounds of the 2010 national
elections.
Replacing MIÉP without being less radical in its ethnic nationalism,
xenophobia, and especially antisemitism, Jobbik has managed to gain wider
electoral appeal after its separation from MIÉP. Jobbik’s current chairman
is the young historian Gábor Vona, the modern face of the party, and its
best-known and most popular politician is the human rights lawyer and law
professor Krisztina Morvai. Though Morvai, the head of Jobbik’s EP delegation, had worked as a women’s rights advocate at the United Nations and
also has a strong record in anti-Israel advocacy, her leadership role in this
radical right, extremely nationalistic party took many by surprise, and it
instantaneously helped Jobbik gain broader legitimacy in spite of its radical
platform and the catering to militant fascists.
Jobbik’s campaign platform for the 2010 electoral campaign declared
the reunification of the Hungarian nation, the rebuilding of Greater Hungary
from before 1919, and thus the redrawing of Hungary’s borders, to be the
first priority and the party’s most important political goal—a radical right,
nationalist, and expansionist claim that could ultimately be the cause for a
war with its European neighbors. It shows very little political constraints
and fosters an agenda of radical orientation and rhetoric that openly attacks
gypsies and Jewish capital. Its propaganda, along with a certain political
symbolism, is clearly reminiscent of the NYKP, or Hungarists—Hungary’s
Nazi party, which ruled in Hungary during the Nazi occupation between
1944 and 1945 and which established a ruthless terror regime that collaborated in the Holocaust (Maegerle 2009).
Jobbik’s slightly more strategic mobilization focus is nostalgic Hungarian nationalism opposition to globalism in its economic, political, and
cultural dimensions. Along with the leadership role of a feminist human
rights lawyer, its fashionable opposition to globalism, the European Union,
and foreign investment may turn the party into a prototype of a countercosmopolitan, modernized radical right party that seeks to mobilize both
nationalist core constituencies of radical right voters and a broader spectrum of globalization losers. While all the indicators of counter-cosmopolitan ideological transformation are prevalent and highly significant,
however, the party neither sacrifices its traditional fascist ideology and selfdeclared radicalism (www.jobbik.com) nor certain demonstrated militancy—both of which, however, do not seem to alienate voters anyway.
In 2007, Jobbik created the Magyar Gárda Kulturális Egyesület (Cultural Association of the Hungarian Guard). The Hungarian Guard is, along
with the movement by the same name, a paramilitary, uniformed street militia with sworn-in members designed “to awaken the active self conscious-
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[ VOL. 3:543
ness of the nation”; in 2009, the guard was prohibited. Jobbik has never
shied away from radical nationalist, racist, and antisemitic rhetoric. We find
party-affiliated publications that employ inflammatory rhetoric against
Jews, Roma, and gays. Party members are also linked to anti-Roma and
antisemitic violence (Freeman 2009).
Jobbik also proposes the creation of a national special police unit to
deal with gypsy delinquency. While the party is open to militant Christian
Hungarian nationalism and radicalism displayed by subgroups of the party
and segments of the party-elite level, it effectively broadened its appeal and
transformed its party ideology and identity; first and foremost, this entailed
a strategic major focus on opposition to globalization and Europeanization.
Reaching out to various disenfranchised segments of the Hungarian electorate, the modernized party platform is still dedicated to a combination of
anti-globalization views and coded popular antisemitism, alongside its previous support of Christian values, Hungarian nationalism, and attacks on
Roma and other ethnic minorities. Serving both radical nationalists and disillusioned voters, Jobbik’s economic policies are primarily directed against
“the neoliberal ideology dominated policies during these years under the
name of privatization, liberalization and deregulation” (Jobbik 2009), while
it also rejects the Lisbon treaty and European integration. In this way, Jobbik is capitalizing on increasing joblessness, corruption crises, and social
unrest caused by the global economic crisis. In light of widespread economic and cultural fears, the party mobilizes political and cultural resentments not only against pro-European and pro-cosmopolitan elites and
minorities but also against multinational corporations, America, and
Israel—i.e. globalism, imperialism, and international institutions.
Jobbik’s rise indicates that there is considerable legitimate political
space for such counter-cosmopolitan, nationalistic, and antisemitic views in
Hungarian politics. Its success, in fact, is accompanied by a broader rightwing nationalist turn in Hungarian politics. Challenging conventional wisdom about electorates and their spatial representation in the party system,
there seems to be no tradeoff between party constituencies supporting xenophobia and nationalistic claims. On the one hand, due to various factors—
including major corruption cases—the left-center Magyar Szocialista Párt
(MSZP), which was the major governing party for most of the post-Communist period, collapsed at the 2010 national elections, scoring only 19.3%.
Severely weakened, MSZP is now barely the biggest opposition party. On
the other hand, the national populist FIDESZ-Hungarian Civic Union
(Fidesz—Magyar Polgári Szövetség) gained 52.73% of the vote in 2010.
Thus, it achieved an absolute majority that equipped the party with a 2/3
majority in the national parliament and with the governmental power to
make sweeping changes to the legal system.
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The national-populist FIDESZ, led by the populist prime minister
Viktor Orbán since its inception, also campaigns against anti-national elements. While FIDESZ is less radical than Jobbik and combines various
political constituencies in its policies, it also provides a government that is
apparently sympathetic to radical nationalism and antisemitic resentment.
Without being penalized by the party, FIDESZ member of parliament
Oszkár Molnár, for instance, stated: “I love Hungary, I love Hungarians,
and I prefer Hungarian interests to global financial capital, or Jewish capital, if you like, which wants to devour the whole world, but especially Hungary.” Molnár, who also suggests that there is an Israeli conspiracy to
colonize Hungary, found widespread support, even though FIDESZ represents a government that ratified an authoritarian media law severely restricting freedom of speech under the pretense of fighting hate speech.
Hungary’s restrictive media laws and poor civil rights record as well as
discrimination policies have increasingly come under scrutiny by the European Union. However, it may also be a sign of the times and of a new
assertiveness of the populist and radical right in Hungary and across Europe
with regard to both xenophobia and antisemitism that Jobbik can flourish
and that even politicians of the ruling party also mobilize resentments
against Jews and gypsies without facing effective political opposition. The
Cultural Institute of the Republic of Hungary, operating under the auspices
of the FIDESZ government, today initiates discussions about what they call
the “Jewish problem” and how to deal with it. It is doing so in Germany,
that is, as part of transnational Hungarian cultural policy (Balassi Institute
2011).
Another sign of public collaboration with the radical right and the
legitimacy of ethnic nationalism and antisemitism in Hungary is the fact
that the mayor of Budapest, István Tarlós, recently appointed István Csurka,
the leader of MIÉP, and the nationalist György Dörner as the directors of
the Hungarian capital’s prestigious New Theater, despite concerns by Jewish groups and international condemnation. The new directors want to
rename the theater and act against what they call “the degenerate sick liberal hegemony,” and they demand that only Hungarian drama is performed
and want to stop what they refer to as “foreign garbage,” which is viewed as
a code word for Jewish and other non-Hungarian productions (Bos 2011).
Slovakia
The most relevant radical right party in Slovakia, Slovenska Narodna
Strana—SNS (Slovak National Party), has made attempts to modernize its
ideological profile as well. SNS describes itself as a modern, national, conservative, right-wing, Christian parliamentary party (www.sns.sk). Accord-
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[ VOL. 3:543
ing to three programmatic pillars, it also seeks to transcend the left-right
cleavage by claiming to be socialist, an ideological aspect that helped its
promotion to become junior partner in the socialist center-left government
led by Smer, which is part of the Party of European Socialists of mainstream European social-democratic and socialist parties.6 The coalition government, which makes the SNS the only Eastern European radical right
party in a national government of a European Union member state, was
formed after the 2006 parliamentary elections, when SNS scored 11.7%, its
strongest showing since the first post-Communist election in 1990. Yet, in
spite of its partially modernized image, its electoral success, and its
assumed respectability as member of a government in the European Union,
SNS hardly disguises its simultaneously radically ethnic-nationalist ideological orientation and its successful creation of sustainable bridges to its
radical right core constituencies. The party explicitly praises radicalism,
Slavic brotherhood, and the original Slovak culture on its Web sites and in
its party platform. It also continues to promote xenophobia and barely
coded antisemitism (People Against Racism & Milo 2005, 213ff). Even the
name SNS points to its roots in a Slovak radical nationalist party of the 19th
century. Contrary to other modernized radical right parties, it does not distance itself from fascist and antisemitic roots but seeks, in fact, to rehabilitate Jozsef Tiso’s fascist war regime, which collaborated in the Holocaust.
Tiso is portrayed as a martyr in the fight against Bolshevism and liberalism
(People Against Racism & Milo 2005, 213ff; http://www.tau.ac.il/AntiSemitism/asw2008/slovakia.html
Thus, while the SNS does adapt to new issues—initially, it primarily
mobilized for national independence from the Czech Republic—its ideological modernization is very limited. Its core agenda is determined by conventional Slovak ethnic nationalism, which marches in step with both antiimmigrant racism and antisemitism; globalization is not a central campaign
issue or a major factor shaping any ideological reorientation. While the
party attacks the European Union and supports both cultural/national and
economic “socialist” protectionism, it is successful enough and not in need
of modernizing its image, especially in times of a larger European Union
crisis. Its campaigning is aimed at law and order issues, which are combined with overt discrimination and attacks against ethnic minorities, especially the Hungarian minority and Rom people—which, according to the
SNS, are criminals who should be sterilized (People Against Racism &
Milo 2005, 214; http://www.sns.sk). The racist ideological profile of this
anti-liberal radical right government party certainly creates problems for
6. The party had been in government for the first time under the populist
HZDS and Vladimir Meciar between 1994 and 1998.
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European Union anti-discrimination guidelines and the European Union’s
cosmopolitan image and legitimacy.
Italy
While the Alleanza Nazionale, successor to the fascist Movimento
Sociale Italiano (MSI), can no longer be classified as right-wing extremist
(Ignazi 2003), the only relevant extreme-right party in Italy is the separatist
Lega Nord (LN) under the leadership of Umberto Bossi. The party is currently a junior partner in the Berlusconi administration as the only Western
European extreme-right party in government. After some internal crises and
programmatic shifts, the LN has turned to counter-cosmopolitan identity
populism (Betz 2002). Opposition to economic, cultural, and political
globalization has become its major campaign focus.7 While for the LN
regionalist separatism and the fight “for the people of the North” remains
the major objective, the Lega Nord per l’indipendenza della Padania continues to support the creation of the fictional state of Padania and separation
from southern Italy. It has adjusted its program accordingly, molding it into
its anti-Southern racism, which is also still characteristic for the party
(Gómez-Reino Cachafeiro 2001).
Recently, the LN began to specifically target Muslim immigrants and
illegals, responding and reinforcing current public discourses. It claims that
Italians live on a reservation like Native Americans, and calls for a stop of
the invasion by immigrants (www.leganord.org). The party’s participation
in government, its focus on identity politics, and the mobilization of new
popular resentments against globalization helped to regain electoral successes. After its modest reform and as a junior partner in government, the
LN recovered from its poor electoral results of the early 2000s, receiving
4.6% in the 2006 national parliamentary elections and 8.3% in 2008. The
party’s radical opposition to cultural globalization is more modest in economic terms, but it is supplemented by strong anti-European Union statements, anti-immigrant rhetoric, and modernized antisemitism. The latter,
however, is primarily limited to statements by politicians rather than evident in party platforms and programs. On a local level, the party collaborates with the openly antisemitic, neo-Nazi Forza Nuova (www.eumc.eu.int
2004; Caiani & Parenti 2009).
7. In the 1990s, Bossi began focusing on globalization, attacking “materialism” and the ”evil high finance controlling all economic power by means of globalization” as main enemies (Die Presse, October 20, 1999).
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[ VOL. 3:543
Austria
The Austrian radical right Freedom Party of Austria (Freiheitliche
Partei Österreiche—FPÖ), which was by far the most successful radical
right party in Western Europe and the second strongest party in the Austrian
parliament, experienced electoral seesaws over the last ten years since it
joined the government as a junior partner in 2000. After its split into FPÖ
and BZÖ (Bündnis Zukunft Österreichs—Alliance for the Future of Austria) and the departure of its charismatic populist leader Jörg Haider, the
party kept an ethnic-nationalist and antisemitic ideological profile. However, popular opposition to the European Union in favor of “Austrian patriotism” and “independence” (www.fpoe.at), populist calls for referenda, and
anti-establishment rhetoric and economic national protectionism against
globalization have also been its modernized ideological focal points for
more than a decade.
In recent years, the FPÖ further focused its ideological message and
effectively responded to new issues while keeping some of its hard-line
ideology. In the 2008 electoral campaign, it demanded a halt to immigration, a ministry for repatriating foreigners, and the return of powers conceded to the European Union (www.fpoe.at). The party now mobilizes
popular resentments, especially against Muslims (for instance, party leader
Strache campaigned for a ban on Islamic dress)8; it also articulates antiimperialist anti-Americanism and antisemitism in global politics. By such
emphasis on both modernized anti-Muslim xenophobia and antisemitism,
the party almost doubled its vote (www.elections2009-results.eu/en/austria_en.html) in the European elections after a campaign “against European
Union accession of Turkey and Israel” (www.derstandard.at, May 21,
2009).
To be sure, Israel has never been under consideration for candidacy.
The combination of ethnic-nationalist populism and effective counter-cosmopolitan mobilizations against the foreign forces Turkey and Zionism
consolidated the party’s electoral success (17.5% in the 2008 parliamentary
elections, in addition to 10.7% of the radical right competitor BZÖ).
The UK
The British National Party (BNP) has moved from the extremist
fringes to becoming the first radical right party in British history to win
seats in a national vote, namely, in the 2009 European elections. Agenda
8. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/austria/3097540/
Austria-election-delivers-gains-for-far-Right.html.
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changes seem to have come to fruition here: The new success can be
viewed as a reflection of its programmed modernization, trying to appear
more respectable (“suits not boots” strategy), and its reorientation toward a
counter-cosmopolitan ideology. This entails a focus on protection of
national identity, anti-European Union positions, opposition to the
Europhiles and the hypocrisy of the liberal elite and its multicultural experiment, national economic and cultural protectionism against globalization,
workfare instead of welfare, and—last but not least—an anti-immigrant
policy outlook that especially targets Muslims (www.bnp.org.uk; Goodwin
2007).
The undisputed party leader and chairman, Nick Griffin, attacks the
“Islamification of the West”; Britain’s becoming an Islamic state or like
Africa; Islamofascism; and the vicious faith of Islam (BBC News, July 16
2004; www.timesonline.co.uk, November 11, 2006). The party primarily
combines issues of inner security with anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant
resentment, leading to apocalyptic scenarios such as: Europe is sooner or
later going to have to close its borders or it is simply going to be swamped
by the Third World (www.bnp.org.uk). Yet, the party also attacks European
Union policy and the “European Union’s moves on Iran,” and the antiimperialist dictatorship of the Islamic Republic. The BNP modernizes and
at times downplays its antisemitism, but Griffin, for instance, has never
distanced himself from his Holocaust denial—he refers to the Shoah as
“Holohoax.”9
France
Similar transformations could be observed in case of the Front
National (FN), the prototype of the new radical right. The FN has been the
model for many other European radical right parties because it was able to
respond to, as well as frame and generate new issues and thereby modernize
its ideological image in a way that appealed to, new potential voters. In the
past, it was among the first to mobilize Euro-skepticism, address the representation crisis, launch attacks against immigration, and exploit anti-establishment effects (Ignazi 2003, 95ff.). While the party’s anti-globalization
rhetoric and national protectionism, including protectionist economic policies and attacks on multinational corporations, became conspicuous during
the 1990s, it was relegated to a less prominent role in recent years. Today,
antisemitism, in its overt or coded variations, is present but secondary in the
FN and its campaigns. Still, party leader Jean-Marie Le Pen openly displays
9. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/austria/3097540/
Austria-election-delivers-gains-for-far-Right.html.
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[ VOL. 3:543
his friendship with the actor Dieudonne M’bala M’bala and supports his
Islamic fundamentalist, anti-Israel, and antisemitic viewpoints.
The main issue for the FN today, however, is immigration. This dominant issue is linked to the “primacy of the French”
(www.frontnational.com) in opposition to multicultural diversity, cosmopolitanism, new Muslim minorities, and cultural globalization. Though it
had long benefitted from its powerful party leader Le Pen, the party’s dramatic loss in the 2007 election (4.29%) may be attributed to some program
modernizations initiated by his daughter Marine Le Pen. An anti-establishment campaign poster during the 2007 electoral campaign featuring an
immigrant complaining about the “usual suspects of politics” may have
been too much to swallow—and too much “modernization” of the party
image for some of the FN right-wing core constituencies. Even if not central to the party’s recent campaigns, Holocaust relativity and antisemitic
innuendo remain an essential part of the party’s ideological fabric.
RESENTMENTS
IDEOLOGY OF THE RADICAL RIGHT:
COMPARATIVE FINDINGS
AND
In sum, the comparative analysis of party ideologies and mobilizations
discloses a partly heterogeneous picture. Political contexts and contextdependent variables play a significant role, and campaigns are hardly unified transnationally; in part, they respond to specific national issues and
electoral demands. Even though ideological priorities and mobilizations
vary, however, there are some prevalent ideological features that have
emerged, and that overall characterize the contemporary European radical
right.
First, all radical right parties share a high level of xenophobia and antiimmigrant resentment. Immigrants are blamed for all kinds of economic
and social woes, as well as for a loss of cultural identity. In particular, this
resentment is currently often—though by no means exclusively—directed
against Muslim immigrants and, depending on the country, specific ethnic
minorities. Such resentment, which is intimately related to an opposition to
cosmopolitan diversity, expresses an ethnic nationalism and collective selfunderstanding that remains a constitutive core feature of the European radical right. There are, however, exceptions to the rule. In Eastern Europe,
anti-Muslim prejudice plays only a marginal role, if any, in public mobilization of the radical right. Hungary’s Jobbik, the most successful radical right
party in Europe, is predominantly antisemitic and also discriminates against
Rom; Muslims are largely irrelevant in campaigns.
Second, several relevant European radical right parties, while retaining
an ethnic-nationalist ideological profile, have also partly become transna-
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tional in their outlook. They claim to defend a “Europe of nations” against
cosmopolitan influences and immigration; multinational corporations; and
global political norms and institutions, including European Union governance. Some parties develop a significantly modernized, radically countercosmopolitan, anti-globalization identity (Mudde 2007) that reflects widespread counter-sentiments in the electorate. The counter-cosmopolitan
defense of cultural particularism includes, but is not limited to, national
particularism.
Third, and intimately related to the second feature, is that antisemitism
remains a core element of radical right ideology, old and new. In several
cases, there is even a noticeable resurgence of antisemitism, at times coded
in radical anti-Israel resentments, “world Zionism” or foreign influence, and
conspiracy theories.10 Such antisemitic mobilizations are often directly
linked to the anti-globalization discourse, whereby Jews are identified as
the key agents of cosmopolitan cultural change, global power, and the
global financial or economic system. Jews, once again, serve as a personified, reified world explanation.
The demonstrable relevance and revival of antisemitism in radical
right ideology, to be sure, is at odds with popular perceptions of the radical
right. Moreover, some premature scholarly claims that antisemitism has virtually disappeared from new radical right mobilizations and as a mobilizing
resource due to its allegedly bygone appeal, runs counter to our findings.
Instead, we see the contours of an emerging, new ideological combination
that couples domestic resentment against Muslims with hatred of Jews and
opposition to cosmopolitan norms and the cosmopolitanization processes;
in several cases, Israel, world Zionism, and Israel lobbies have become the
primary target in the radical right’s view of foreign affairs—an ideology
that engenders support for radical Islamist’s terror against Jews and Israel
abroad, even though Muslim immigrants are not accepted as equal members
of society.
BACK
BY
POPULAR DEMAND: COUNTER-COSMOPOLITANISM, XENOPHOBIA,
AND ANTISEMITISM
Before we explore several hypotheses to explain why such an ideological combination, and the resurgence of antisemitism in particular, may be
an effective mobilizing tool in party systems of the contemporary European
Union, we have a close look at the changing political climate and the
increased popular demand for counter-cosmopolitan, xenophobic, and
antisemitic politics. It is displayed in continuously widespread, in part
10. This should not be misunderstood as any kind of lexical ordering.
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[ VOL. 3:543
increasing resentments against Jews, Muslims, and immigrants; an
increased public and political salience of these subjects and related issues;
and economic and socio-cultural globalization crises that tend to embolden
and help intensify previously existing antisemitic undercurrents, including
reified perceptions of globalization and the cosmopolitanization of societies
as “Jewish machinations.”
Increased Resentments
PEW data indicate a strong relationship between anti-Jewish and sentiments against Muslim immigrants. Indeed, in six European countries
included in the PEW survey, the correlation between unfavorable opinions
of Jews and unfavorable opinions of Muslims is remarkably high (neg .80;
PEW 2008). Overall, negative views of Muslims have increased over a
four-year period; exceptions are Spain and Germany, where negative views
of Muslims are nevertheless still high (52% and 50%, respectively).11
Moreover, there has been considerable progress in the cosmopolitanization
of European societies, i.e., the diversification of European societies and the
recognition of cosmopolitan diversity and norms. Yet, there is still a considerable segment of the electorate that is hostile to immigrants and the sociocultural change they represent. Largely overlooked in public debates,
antisemitism has surged and resurged in Europe since the turn of the century (see Table 2). Antisemitism is a far cry from being merely a historical
legacy. Instead, empirical data show that antisemitic attitudes remain an
undercurrent—even if varying in scope and intensity—among parts of
European societies. Not only that: suveys indicate that such resentments are
now more prevalent than in previous decades and they matter more to certain segments of voters. Antisemitism, like xenophobia, is no marginal
minority opinion at the fringe of society.
11. A 2009 study on group-focused enmity conducted by researchers from University of Bielefeld in Germany finds, however, that hatred of Muslims to some
extent decreased, while, according to this study, hatred of Jews and homosexuals is
growing. The level of resentment against most minorities declined—sexism and
racism even considerably, resentments against Muslims slightly, while the percentage of people who believe “that there are too many Muslims” in their country is
still especially high in those countries that actually have a low percentage of Muslim minorities. According to the study, 41.2% of Europeans believe that “Jews try
to take advantage of having been victims during the Nazi era,” and 45.7% of
respondents supported the contention that Israel in general “is conducting a war of
extermination against the Palestinians,” thereby equating the Jewish state with the
genocidal Nazi regime and reverting colonial and Holocaust-related European guilt
to the Jews (Stricker 2009).
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TABLE 2: NEGATIVE
VIEWS OF
JEWS
IN
EUROPE
SINCE
2004 (PERCENT).
50
46
45
40
39
36
35
30
20
21
25
22
Germany
13
11
9
5
Spain
20
16
15
10
Britain
27
25
20
Poland
32
9
6
6
2005
2006
France
0
2004
2007
Sources: PEW Global Attitudes Project (2008); Unfavourable Views of Jews and
Muslims on the Increase in Europe (Washington, DC: PEW), http://
www.pewglobal.org/2008/09/17/unfavorable-views-of-jews-and-muslims-on-theincrease-in-europe/.
On average, antisemitic attitudes have been on the rise in Europe since
2000, although there are fluctuations and considerable cross-national variations. Moreover, hatred of Israel and “Zionists” has become a medium to
express hatred of Jews. Forms of radical anti-Zionism, wishing for the
destruction of the Jewish state and the de-Zionization of the world, may
also be motivated by secondary antisemitism (Rensmann 1998): the desire
to morally demonize Jews because they are living reminders of the German
and European atrocities committed against them during the Nazi era. Equating the Zionists with Nazis is a way to project one’s guilt and settle an old
score. According to a seven-country survey, including the most populous
European member states, almost every second European (45.7%) uses Nazi
associations and comparisons when thinking of Israel—i.e., they somewhat
or strongly agree that “Israel is conducting a war of extermination against
the Palestinians,” while 37.4% agree that “considering Israel’s policy, I can
understand why people do not like Jews” (Zick 2009, 13).
Increased Awareness
Antisemitism and hostility against Muslims have become more prominent issues to the public, in politics, and in modern media. The latter, antiMuslim hostility, seems to benefit from certain media debates about
mosques and the alleged introduction of Sharia law. In recent years, to be
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[ VOL. 3:543
sure, political and public discourse in Europe is also characterized by a high
level of awareness and alertness in the face of anti-Muslim campaigns or
statements. For instance, a best-selling book by a former German politician,
Thilo Sarrazin, which includes blatantly xenophobic, racialized anti-Muslim
claims, was subjected to scathing criticism across the German public and its
political class. After the terrorist acts by Anders Behring Breivik in Norway
in 2011, this public debate about anti-Muslim hostility reached a new peak,
and anti-Muslim radical right groups such as Stop the Islamization of Norway (Stopp islamiseringen av Norge—SIAN) have come under renewed,
particular public scrutiny. Anti-Muslim resentments have increasingly
become scandalized in European publics, and at least parties associated
with anti-immigrant or anti-Muslim resentments have recently lost electoral
support—for example, the national populist Progress Party of Norway has
suffered significant losses in local elections in the aftermath of the Breivik’s
acts of terror.12
However, while the public focus has shifted on anti-Muslim
prejudices—which remains a controversial subject from which the radical
right might draw long-term gains—radical right parties can also benefit
from an increasingly legitimate public discourse that is hostile to Jews. This
aspect has been neglected in recent research: We observe an expanding
zone of acquiescence in relation to antisemitism, which also finds reflection
in the radical right, that has hardly been recognized yet in research on the
subject. This increased legitimacy or public tolerance of anti-Jewish resentment is characterized by changing boundaries in what is a respectable conversation about Jews and Zionists. It also finds expression in the rise of
conspiracy theories, which often directly lead to a reservoir of antisemitic
images of Jews allegedly pulling the strings and controlling the world. Furthermore, antisemitism is also nurtured by a popular Manichean world view
12. On the one hand, some critics of Islam in European public discourse tend to
conflate political Islamism with private religious practices and downplay existing
racist discrimination against Muslim immigrants. On the other hand, many critics
of Islamophobia conflate these distinctions as well by suggesting that all criticism
of Islamism and of Islamic rule is illegitimate, prejudiced, and driven by hatred—
including criticism from Muslims and secularized citizens with Muslim background
who oppose pious interpretations of Islam in Europe and abroad. In this logic,
which centers on blasphemy rather than the discrimination of individuals and the
violation of individual rights, the Islamophobia charge has also been misused. It
can function as a sweeping brush against dissidents criticizing the discrimination of
women and gays in the name of Islam, or of radical Islamists’ genocidal antisemitism. In its most extreme version, it is used by radical Islamists to block off criticism
of anti-gay, anti-feminist and antisemitic statements by claiming that such criticism
would be Islamophobic.
2011]
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that is not necessarily antisemitic in itself but helps create a climate of antiJewish hostility, and has increasingly gained traction in European publics. It
portrays the two countries in which most of the world’s Jews live, the
United States and Israel, as the main—if not the only—villains of world
politics and of the world economy, while letting brutal dictatorships and
repressive regimes across the world off the hook. Anti-Israel sentiments and
anti-Zionism that go far beyond criticism of the Israeli government and its
policies are in most cases no longer discredited as illegitimate resentments
against another group or country but have become a badge of honor even
among publicists and politicians on the left who otherwise tend to support
anti-discrimination policies and universal human rights (Hirsh 2007; Markovits 2011; Rensmann/Schoeps 2011; Wistrich 2010).
In its radical version, this Manichean world view manifests itself in
publicly articulated stereotypes about war-mongering Zionists and a globally powerful Israel lobby that dominates governments and stifles free
debate about Israel’s atrocities against innocent peoples, especially the
Palestinians. Such claims go hand in hand with a wide-spread immunization
strategy in the form of antisemitism denial that reaches deep into the public
and the political left; in this view, antisemitism today is a generality relevant only insofar as it is seen as a spurious charge that the Zionists or the
pro-Israel lobby would throw at critics of Israel (Hirsh 2007, 73). Flanked
by the claim that criticism of Israel cannot be antisemitic (cited in Hirsh
2007) and the belief that if there is any antisemitism it is Israel that causes
its emergence,13 there are highly emotionalized boycott campaigns across
Europe exclusively directed against the Jewish state. These campaigns are
emboldened by widely popular charges that Israel is an apartheid regime
that deserves to be dismantled.14 Singling out Israel as the pariah among the
nations, such aggressive demonization of the Jewish state goes far beyond
13. Of course, criticism of Israeli policies does not have to be antisemitic. Often
it is not. There can, however, be antisemitic “criticism” of Israel, just as there can
be racist criticisms of African or Arab countries. It is equally implausible, and
prejudiced, to claim that an African regime is the “cause” for racist perceptions of
Africans as it is to say that Israel is the “cause” for antisemitic perceptions of Jews.
14. Under Israeli law, Arab Israelis, who constitute 20% of the nation’s multicultural citizenry and is equally represented at Israeli universities, have the same
civil and political rights as Jews and Christians (unlike Palestinians in Syria, for
instance). Israel hardly resembles the South African apartheid regime with which it
is often compared. It is, in fact, a safe haven for Arab gays and religious minorities
such as the Baha’i. Most striking is the double standard of the “apartheid” charge,
which indicates more than a biased predisposition: countries that systematically
discriminate against, indeed persecute, ethnic and religious minorities and violate
human rights, such as Iran or Sudan, are not subjected to similar boycott
campaigns.
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[ VOL. 3:543
any rational criticism, and the simultaneous denial of the problem of
antisemitism is not limited to the radical right. Anti-Israel demonstrations
resonate in public segments across the political spectrum and in civil society, including left-wing student and teacher unions and media. More often
than not, such aggressive anti-Zionism slips into overt antisemitic stereotypes and resentment. For instance, the left-leaning British newspaper the
Guardian recently published an article in which journalist Deborah Orr
claimed that the Israel-Hamas prisoner swap—Hamas released the captured
soldier Gilat Shalit in exchange for the release of 1,000 Palestinians responsible for the death of 600 Israelis, most of the victims women and children—gave evidence that Israel nurtures a supremacist Jewish selfunderstanding of being a “chosen” people whose lives are worth a thousand
times the lives of others (Orr 2011).15
There is, at any rate, a noticeable erosion of more rigorous discursive
boundaries—about what is tolerated as part of public discourse and what is
classified or scandalized as hate speech—with regard to Jews and Zionists,
boundaries that had evolved in postwar Europe. The most recent indicator
of antisemitism’s renewed public toleration, if not legitimacy, is the fact
that the extreme nationalist, radical right LAOS party, with its chairman,
Georgios Karatzaferis, is part of the new Greek coalition government that
was established in response to the European debt crisis. LAOS, claiming to
represent the “true Greeks” instead of “Jews, homosexuals, and Communists,” particularly campaigns against Jews and Israel. The party received
7% of the vote in the last national election. Karatzaferis is a professed Holocaust denier who hates Israel and is known for his openly antisemitic statements. After the 9/11 attacks in New York, he posed the question: “Why
were all the Jews warned not to come to work that day?” before the Greek
parliament. Karatzaferis also questions the “tales of Auschwitz and
Dachau.” During Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in 2008, Karatzaferis said
that the IDF was acting “with savage brutality only seen in Hitler’s time
towards helpless people” (Uni 2011).
15. In this case, the editor of the Guardian was forced to publish an unusual
“apology” three weeks later, in which he recognizes that “‘Chosenness,’ in Jewish
theology, tends to refer to the sense in which Jews are ‘burdened’ by religious
responsibilities; it has never meant that the Jews are better than anyone else. Historically it has been antisemites, not Jews, who have read ‘chosen’ as code for Jewish
supremacism.”
2011]
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565
Crises of Globalization
Crises of globalization have provided a fertile climate for mobilizations of resentments against immigrants and Jews that portray them as
responsible for social problems. Personifying the origins of theses crises in
immigrants, foreign capital, and particularly Jews, the radical right can tap
into—and strengthen the link between—existing social resentments and
current multifaceted crises of global modernity. In particular, the identification of Jews with globalism and cosmopolitan political, economic, and
socio-cultural transformations corresponds to what we call counter-cosmopolitanism, that is, the generalized, particularistic opposition to the combined set of political, cultural, and economic transformations associated
with globalization and cosmopolitan value change (Markovits and
Rensmann 2010; Rensmann 2011; Rensmann & Miller 2010).16
Counter-cosmopolitanism, as the unqualified rejection of all forms of
sociocultural, economic and political globalization as well as cosmopolitan
norms and diversity, is likely to become more prevalent during crises of
globalization. Counter-cosmopolitan parties, which generally oppose
globalization and the cosmopolitanization of society (Beck and Grande
2007), seek to strategically mobilize those citizens who identify with the
national community, citizens from economic strata that have traditionally
been protected by the nation-state and now find themselves increasingly
exposed to foreign competition, and those who lack the cultural competence
to meet the economic and cultural challenge of a globalizing world (Kriesi
et al. 2006).
While counter-cosmopolitanism bolsters hostility against immigrants
and cultural change, it particularly predisposes toward hostility against
Jews. As a form of a reified critique of globalization, such generalized
counter-cosmopolitanism is highly susceptible to conspiracy theories that
invoke the old social image of the cosmopolitan, wandering Jew. In
antisemitic narratives, Jews have traditionally been identified with modernity, cosmopolitanism, and globalism. Jews or Zionists are now often
charged with cosmopolitan social change, global wars, and global domination, cultural diffusion, the global erosion of the nation-state, dual loyalty,
and capitalist crises. It is, after all, one of modern antisemitism’s distinct
features to function as an objectified explanation of the modern world. In
this ideology, Jews are seen as the embodiment of these cultural and eco16. This rejection is part and parcel of, but not limited to, nationalistic attitudes;
it can also entail religiously or culturally grounded motivations, and it can be
expressed transnationally in its own organizational outreach or political alliancebuilding.
566
[ VOL. 3:543
nomic modernization processes (including immigration), and as the ones
who orchestrate them. In a world of abstract domination-governed complex,
abstract, and anonymous social relations, the antisemites present the
world’s problems as a Zionist scheme. The widespread uneasiness in the
changing world society of postmodernity and in the global village can
therefore be projected onto the image of Jews. Even if such projection is not
framed as a global Jewish conspiracy, global problems are often squarely
blamed on the Zionists and their allegedly disproportionate Jewish political
and media influence through powerful, secret Israel lobbies and Holocaust
industries ruling politics domestically and in world affairs.
CONCLUSION
Based on an analysis of contemporary radical right party platforms and
mobilizations, we have shown that there is continuity and change in the
political ideology of relevant radical right parties in Europe: a focus on antiimmigration issues and anti-Muslim resentment is accompanied by virulent
antisemitism. Contrary to common perceptions, this antisemitism remains
an integral part of the radical right’s political identity and mobilizations.
While anti-Muslim resentments often matter, the claim that antisemitism
has been “replaced” by other resentments cannot be substantiated; it is
equally invalid that the European radical right has largely turned pro-Israel
(Bunzl 2007). Instead, most of the radical right prominently features modernized, “anti-globalist,” and “anti-Zionist” antisemitism. Cross-national
variations notwithstanding, antisemitism has gained in importance. This is
especially the case among the most successful radical right parties in Eastern and Western Europe, such as Jobbik (Hungary), LAOS (Greece), and
FPÖ (Austria), in many instances, radical right parties cater to broader
counter-cosmopolitan constituencies. Thus, a modernized ideological profile tends to emerge: it combines xenophobic resentment against immigrants
and European Muslims with a counter-cosmopolitan agenda and antisemitism domestically, as well as modernized anti-Zionist antisemitism in foreign affairs. Even though Muslim immigrants are rejected domestically,
radical Islamists may hereby gain radical right sympathies for their struggle
against world Zionism.
These mobilizations and transformations on the radical right supply
side are supported by a set of favorable conditions. Radical right parties
express an evident electoral demand by catering to significant counter-cosmopolitan constituencies that harbor resentments against social and cultural
change in general, and immigrants and Jews in particular. Moreover, they
benefit from a broader European public climate in which certain anti-immigrant resentments surface, and in which especially forms of modernized
2011]
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567
antisemitism (Rensmann and Schoeps 2011) have become increasingly
respectable and tolerated. Finally, the radical right is one of several agents
that seeks to exploit current European and globalization crises that affect
European citizens, such as the European financial debt crisis, and that feed
into persisting anti-Jewish undercurrents and conspiracy theories. These crises can also be seen as crises of cosmopolitanism that help engender
counter-cosmopolitan responses, including hostility against immigrants and
Jews.
The radical right’s resurgent and reloaded politics of paranoia in
Europe find a special target in Jews and Zionists. The new and modernized
radical right, emulating the old, hereby plays its part in an emerging new
international antisemitism. In particular, the often neglected, and at times
denied, revival of antisemitism in radical right party ideology and beyond
epitomizes, both on the political demand and supply side, what can be conceived of as situated in a deeper political crisis in Europe. The broader
resurgence of antisemitism can be theorized as an anti-modern, countercosmopolitan response to rapid economic and cultural change and current
crises in the 21st century. Part and parcel of—but far from being limited
to—the radical right, there are indicators that this reaction has begun to
move from the fringes into the center.
*Lars Rensmann, PhD, is DAAD assistant professor at the Department of Political
Science, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. His recent publications include
Politics and Resentment (Boston & Leiden: Brill, 2011), ed. with Julius H.
Schoeps, and Gaming the World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010),
with Andrei S. Markovits.
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Operation Mural and Morocco’s Jewish Children
David G. Littman*
In November 1960, as a British citizen, I was newly established with
my wife in Lausanne, Switzerland, where I began reading William Shirer’s
Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. It led me to ask the following questions:
“What could a Jew, living in a neutral country like Sweden or Switzerland
during World War II, have done to help Jews?” “What can I do for Jews in
distress right now?”
I knew of the plight of Jews in Arab lands after the birth of Israel,
when hundreds of thousands were forced—or felt obliged—to leave their
native countries. Like 25,000 others, my wife, Gisèle, had fled Egypt a year
after the Suez War in the wake of the Free Officers’ Revolt.
I volunteered my services to all international Jewish organizations in
Geneva, but there was no enthusiasm until I reached my last door. There,
Professor Jacques Bloch, the director of an organization for Jewish children
(OSE), had received a visit two days earlier from the Jewish Agency’s representative, Naftali Bargiora, who was looking for a volunteer to arrange
Swiss holidays for Jewish children from Morocco—and from there to
Israel. After meeting Bargiora, I quickly accepted this fascinating mission,
to be called Operation Mural (after my code name, “Mural”).
The 1961 story of Operation Mural was first chronicled in the Israeli
newspaper Maariv, from a chapter in Shmuel Segev’s 1984 book on Operation Yakhin. That led to a public recognition by Chaim Herzog, then president of Israel, followed by the Mimouna award (1986), which Gisèle and I
received from then Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres before tens of
thousands.
A week later, a meeting was arranged in Tel Aviv for us to meet 120
of “our” children. It was an incredibly moving experience, and joy filled the
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room, with music. We were able to maintain contact with a few—two of
whom were interviewed for the film Operation Mural: Casablanca 1961
some twenty years later.
On June 1, 2008, a special commemorative ceremony was held in
President Shimon Peres’s Jerusalem residence. Alongside former Mossad
contacts and family members, Mr. Peres stated:
Well, it is a belated ceremony, but it doesn’t lose its value, because what
you did stands on its own legs and is not affected by time. I think that the
saving of 530 children is, I imagine, the most moving experience a man
can have. You say in Hebrew: “The one who saves one life is like the one
that saved the life of the whole world.” But when you save 530 children,
it’s really unforgettable. I want to express, on behalf of our people [and]
our nation, our recognition of your courage, your wisdom, of your determination under extremely difficult conditions at a time when our connections were extremely weak [with Morocco]. And I must say, whenever I
read again the story, I am moved to see the ingenuity and the courage that
you have shown, and the results. So, thanks to it we have 530 people,
families, [and] children alive, and it’s unique because in North Africa our
connections were even weaker than in Europe, and the ground was less
known And, I think, if you wouldn’t do it, it wouldn’t be done. In order
to do it, you were in touch with the Mossad and I wish to express appreciation [to] the Mossad for all the performance, your activities, under
cover, and [the] successful result.
On July 1, 2009, I received the Mossad Hero of Silence Order with
these words: “An order of highest esteem and appreciation awarded to a
clandestine warrior, who risked his life and who served a sacred cause of
the People and of the State of Israel.”
REMARKS
AT THE
PRESENTATION CEREMONY
Efraim Halevy (Mossad chief, 1998-2002), chairman of the Israel
Intelligence Heritage and Commemoration Center (MLM), Glilot, Tel Aviv,
recounts the operation’s place in Israel’s history in his very revealing presentation on July 1, 2009, just before I spoke and the prestigious Order was
conferred on me:
It [was] an operation which took place on the background of a crisis
which had its origin in the entire operation of bringing the Jews out of
Morocco. It was an operation which took place at the time when tension
in Morocco was rising, when the Algerian-Moroccan war was beginning
to take a very ominous character. Within a couple of years of this operation, Morocco was involved in a war with Algeria. Israel and Israelis
played a role in this war—far away from the shores of Israel—probably
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OPERATION MURAL
the first time in the history of the State of Israel that Israel began to
function and to behave like a strategic power.
Halevy then provided a very revealing personal analysis:
But this operation related to the rescue of Jews, a function which is
unique in the history of the international intelligence community. No
other intelligence community—no other intelligence organization in the
world—has ever been involved in rescue operations, mass rescue operations of people, because basically the rescue of people, of masses of people, of large numbers of peoples, contradicts the very principle of
intelligence activity, especially in enemy country—especially in hostile
environments. Normally, when intelligence operations were carried out, it
is essential, it is a rule that you do not expose yourself with your identity
to your environment. You don’t make contacts, unnecessary contacts
with people around you. You certainly don’t reveal the nature of what
your mission is—not only 10, 20, 50, 100, hundreds of people, but you
don’t reveal your mission to anybody. When we come to rescue operations, you cannot operate that way; you have to reveal your identity to
people around you, and when you’re in enemy country you have to
expose yourself to hundreds of people at various points, at various stages
of your activities. This was the way it has been in Iraq, this was the way
it was in Morocco, this was the way it was in Syria, and Iran, and Ethiopia, and in Sudan. And the Israeli intelligence community operated for
years in these environments at great risk—at enormous risk for the people involved in these operations. Moreover, we don’t usually recruit volunteers for these operations. Normally, these operations were carried out
by people who served in the Mossad as intelligence officers, who had
experience in intelligence activities, who know how to create contacts,
who know how to use various types of equipment, who have a background, and, who come from a family of activities which are directly
connected to the vision that they have to accomplish. In the case of rescue operations, very often the people who were recruited for these operations were not members of the Mossad, were not officers of the Mossad,
very often [they were] volunteers. The risk in operating such an operation
was very great, it was a risk taken by the commander . . . but it was also a
very, very grave risk taken by the people who volunteered—and one such
volunteer was David Gerald Littman, who had no experience at all in
intelligence activities, who had no experience at all. [ . . . ]
I believe that, in awarding this award to David Gerald Littman, we
are bestowing upon him a very, very distinct and a very, very unique
honor. But, in his coming here, after so many years, to accept this award,
I think he is bestowing something very unique upon us. The realization,
once again, of the solidarity of the people of Israel throughout the world
is not an empty phrase. It’s something very real, it’s something very concrete and it’s something which, in the end, continues an immense contribution to perpetuating the people of Israel and the State of Israel.
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Much moved by these words, I declared:
I am truly overwhelmed by what I have heard now and wish to express
my profoundest thanks and deep gratitude to all those in the MLM [ . . . ]
for their decision to confer on me this prestigious award and great honor
for a humanitarian mission in Morocco forty-eight years ago. We shall
cherish this moment forever. [ . . . ]
I wish to say now a few words on the history of North African
Jewry, which offers us a profound lesson in courage, perseverance and
moral force, in spite of constant humiliation and discrimination [that]
lasted well into the 20th century in Morocco. It ended only in 1912 with
the French Protectorate, when the dhimmi system was abolished, whereby
even the Chief Rabbi of Fez, Vidal Sarfaty, had to go barefoot on leaving
the mellah [the Jewish quarter] as described in a 1911 document that I
published in 1975. [ . . . ]
After Israel’s rebirth, approximately 92,000 Moroccan Jews made
their aliyah [return to Israel] before the gates were closed in 1956, soon
after Morocco’s independence. Clandestine departures continued, but
somewhat haphazardly. Contacts by the Mossad with the new king’s representatives were only beginning when I reached Casablanca on March
16, 1961, as a delegate of an international children’s organization, OSE,
renamed OSSEAN [Oeuvre Suisse de Secours aux Enfants de l’Afrique
du Nord].
OTHER REMARKS
ABOUT
OPERATION MURAL:
I made the following comments about Operation Mural on other
occasions:
That was two months after the illegal immigrant ship Egoz had capsized,
killing 44 Moroccan Jews, half of them children. The gates of immigration from Morocco were then closed. I arrived in Casablanca on March
16 and Gisèle on the 31, and in early May I brought out our five-monthold daughter, Diana. Our family “cover” as a normal Christian family
was now complete, with me as OSSEAN’s emissary. We stayed at the
Anfa, the city’s prime hotel, and I soon developed contacts with key people in administrative circles, among them a senior official in Morocco’s
security services. Concurrently, I had clandestine meetings with my “contacts,” Gad Shahar and Pinhas Katzir, and, on the last evening of Operation Mural, July 23, 1961, with the head of the Mossad in Morocco, Alex
Gatmon. I also worked with members of the misgueret, young Jews
recruited to help their community to immigrate to Israel.
Our goal was clear: to obtain government authorization for any
Moroccan children to attend summer camps in Switzerland. With the
assistance of the misgueret, I began drawing up lists for collective group
passports as the Moroccan authorities preferred, rather than for individual
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579
child passports (as preferred by the Jewish Agency). The authorities
agreed to prepare a list of Muslim children from families of the Martyrs
of the Moroccan independence. Between June 26 and July 24, 1961, 530
Jewish children, some as young as seven, left for Switzerland in five
convoys and later reached Israel.
Operation Mural was soon followed by Operation Yakhin, in which
nearly 100,000—entire families, the young and the old—reached Israel
between 1962 and 1964, using the same agreed system of “collective
passports,” this time with the king’s approval, after negotiations with the
Mossad.
CLOSING REMARKS
I ended my presentation on receiving the Hero of Silence Order with
these thoughts:
Looking back, I can truly say that the best decision I ever made in my life
was to marry my wife, Gisèle, and the second best was to volunteer to
bring out Jewish children from Morocco to Israel, via Switzerland. Our
Casablanca mission remains indelible in our minds, as will this unforgettable moment here.
In conclusion, I wish to quote those inspiring words of the prophet
Jeremiah:
“Behold, I will bring them from the north country and gather them
from the coasts of the earth, and with them the blind and the lame, the
woman with child . . .: a great company shall return thither. They shall
come with weeping, and with supplications will I lead them . . . . And
there is hope in thine end, saith the Lord; that thy children shall come
again to their own border” [31:8-9].
Yes, the children of Israel have returned to “to their own border”—
to the Land of Israel—and the long history of Moroccan Jewry is a special part of Israel’s unique saga, achieved with much tears, pain, and suffering, but also with joy and hope, and great expectations over the ages.
The Casablanca mission remains indelibly in my mind. When I think
of those days, let me say from my heart in simple Hebrew: Toda raba la
Malam—Many thanks to the MLM.
Operation Mural could not have been successful without the assistance
of many others in different fields, especially Alex Gatmon and his wife,
Carmit, in Morocco. I also gratefully acknowledge support from the head of
the Mossad in Israel (Isser Harel) and his deputy, Shmulik Toledano; from
Efraim Ronel in Paris; from my Casablanca “contacts”: Gad Shahar and
Pinhas Katsir; and from Hubert Korshia, the head of the misgueret, and his
wife, Miriam. Naftali Bargiora and the Jewish Agency were involved from
the start, as was Youth Aliyah, with Moshe Kol as its head.
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*David G. Littman’s role in Operation Mural is presented in the documentary film
Operation Mural: Casablanca 1961 and in Shmuel Segev’s book Operation
Yakhim. Littman is now working on a detailed and documented narrative, retelling
the story as it occurred 50 years ago.
Jerusalem or al-Quds?:
The European Union’s Choice
Bat Ye’or*
The overwhelming effect of the international campaign of defamation
and delegitimization of Israel does not easily allow identifying where the
blows come from, nor its original source. Yet the operations and strategic
center of this widespread war that seeks to replace Jerusalem with al-Quds
is the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), which brings together
Muslim countries and those with a Muslim majority.
Created in 1969, this gigantic multinational religious organization
declares that it is rooted in the Koran and Sunna. It includes a large number
of subsidiary committees as well as various organizations embracing theological, legal, and political sectors. Since 2000, the OIC stated in many
documents that its mission is to speak for the Ummah, the worldwide Muslim community, which also includes those Muslims who emigrated to the
West. It claims to be their protector, with a particular responsibility toward
those living in Europe, since they are exposed to the immoral customs and
ideas of non-Muslims. The OIC constantly castigates these customs and
ideas as “Islamophobia,” making every effort to have it penalized in the
international courts and by European governments. Countless international
networks of multiculturalism, pro-immigration, and anti-Zionism, financed
by European governments and the European Union, are totally devoted to it
and act as its sounding board within Western societies. Those promoting the
line blaming the West and the victimization of the Palestinians feed from its
sap. In Europe its lobbies spread its arguments, and benefit in the universities and at the international level from maximum media exposure as they
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operate with the tacit approval of European governments and churches,
which provide them with unofficial, opaque financing.1
This Euro-OIC cooperation takes place through countless dialogue networks, partnerships, and associations that preach diversity and multiculturalism and that generally invoke the noble motives of “peace, justice and
human rights.” Drawn from human rights platitudes, these ideals incorporate the principles of Jihad and dhimmitude, imperceptible for a European
public unaware of them.
The subversion of the language and the twisting of its meaning are
particularly apparent in the OIC’s declarations. For example, the foreign
ministers of the member states of the OIC, meeting in New York in September 2008, reiterated in their final communiqué “their commitment to the
noble principles of peace, humanism and tolerance” to democracy and
transparency, while most of their governments are among the cruelest and
most corrupt dictatorships. They declared that the challenges of the 21st
century required the solidarity of the OIC member states, rallying round the
values of Islam.2 Yet, no country that applies shari’a applies democracy
and religious freedom as understood in the West. Less than three years
later, the Arab masses were rising against the repression of the regimes
represented by those same ministers, whose empty speeches slip into readymade phrases to seduce Western leaders.
So while these governments promote genocidal jihad against Israel and
never condemn the massacres of their non-Muslim and Muslim subjects,
their foreign ministers emphasize the paramount importance of protecting
cultural and religious diversity, greater freedom of speech, and mutual tolerance and understanding between peoples of different cultures and religions in order to advance the harmony of peace, freedom, and legal rights
(§11). The final communiqué gave assurances that “this diversity should not
be a source of conflicts; but rather a source of mutual enrichment and dialogue between the religions, cultures and civilizations.” Despite the respect
expressed for diversity, tribal wars, fanaticism, suicide bombings, and religious hate provoked by the governments of these ministers have been rampant throughout the countries of the OIC, including Turkey, which occupies
Kurdish lands and part of Cyprus.
1. On this subject, see the files prepared by Gerald Steinberg, NGO Monitor,
http:/www.ngomonitor.org/index.php, and the French detailed file “Souveraineté
sous condition. L’ampleur du soutien des gouvernements étrangers à des organizations politiques en Israël,” in Controverses, no. 15 (Paris: Editions de l’Eclat,
November 2010), 227-323.
2. “Final Communiqué of the Annual Coordination Meeting of Ministers of
Foreign Affairs of the OIC Member States,” United Nations Headquarters, New
York, September 26, 2008, OIC/ACM-08/FC/FINAL, §4.
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JERUSALEM OR AL-QUDS?
583
The conference called for the immediate freeing of the Libyan Abdul
Baset Ali al-Megrahi, convicted of the murder of 270 people in the terrorist
attack that exploded on board Pan Am flight 103 over the village of Lockerbie in Scotland on December 21, 1988. The conference also declared its
complete solidarity with Omar Hassan al-Bashir, president of Sudan, who,
according to the OIC, was unjustly accused by the International Criminal
Court (2009 and 2010) of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide as part of the Khartoum regime’s jihad wars in Sudan. The intangible
and sacred nature of jihad explains the disagreements between justice based
on the principles of Western jurisprudence and those based on the criteria of
shari’a that govern the OIC. Allowing for the European Union’s policy of
globalization and cross-cultural mixing, which has erased the historical, theological, and legal specificities of the Muslim world, these distinctions are
hardly noticed by Europeans. Hence, the conference, basing itself upon the
sanctity and laws of jihad, which promote striking fear in the heart of infidels by sudden and indiscriminate attacks, insisted that terrorism totally
contradicts the peaceful nature and teachings of Islam, which exhorts tolerance, forgiveness, and non-violence (§135). Such position assumes that
infidelity being itself, in essence, an aggression against Islam, Muslim
defense is called “resistance” rather than “terrorism.”
These few comments introduce us to the ambiguities of human rights,
its abuse of language, and the cracks in justice through the willful ignorance
of the inherent contradictions in different and even opposing ethical
systems.
In its anti-Israel obsession, the OIC is supported and often inspired by
the strategies of the pro-Islamists and senior European Union diplomats,
only too happy to make available their skills and their countless anti-Israel
platforms. After the OIC declared that the Palestinian question was the
supreme cause of the Muslim world,3 Europe also hastened to adopt this
path. This provides for the Palestinization of the cultural, social, and above
all political life of Europe. This OIC position was repeated at its meeting in
New York in 2008, where the Foreign Ministers of the member states,
referring to Jerusalem, “reaffirmed the centrality of the cause of al-Quds alSharif for the entire Islamic Ummah,”4 thereby releasing among European
Union strategists the motor for a delegitimization campaign against Israel.
3. The Islamic Conference summit meeting in Mecca (January 1981) declared
that, “The Palestinian should be viewed as the paramount issue of the Muslim
nation”; cf. extracts from the summit in Bat Ye’or, Eurabia: The Euro-Arabic Axis
(Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2005), app. 4, 84.
4. “Final Communiqué,” §20 (italics in the original).
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For three decades, Europe, servilely imitating the OIC, has effectively
created for itself a major problem that is eating away and destroying it. This
pathology is Palestine, which it made the hub of its international policy,
transforming it into a symbol of peace and universal harmony in a world
that would not know “justice” until its coming. The only obstacle to this
paradise is the Machiavellian Israel, the oppressor and usurper of Palestine,
whose purity as a peaceful victim is the harbinger of global justice. For
forty years this logic has governed perceptions of the Israeli-Arab conflict.
Any argument that contradicts it provokes a pathological hatred, while Palestinian-European correctness, totally resistant to both evidence and reason,
rejects its author as a pariah.
Europe does not yet dare use armed force against Israel, whose existence it claims to defend, while advising it to commit suicide. Europe fights
Israel with the infamous Nazi weapons of delegitimization, defamation,
propaganda, hatred, and attempts to destroy its economy through boycotts,
disinvestment, and sanctions (BDS). Toward this goal it encourages an
international campaign of incitement to hatred by financing anti-Israel
NGOs and lobbies. Europe claims that Jewish existence in its ancestral
homeland, Judea, and in Samaria is an “occupation,” a colonization. Israel
has in this way become a state that is occupying its own historical homeland; in Orwellian language, propagandists speak of “the Israeli occupation
of Palestinian land” that is called Judea, and not of the ethnic and religious
cleansing of Jews from their homeland through wars, expulsions, dispossession, and the dehumanizing ruling of dhimmitude. Euro-jihadists invoke
“Palestinian resistance”—not a terrorism that has spread throughout the
planet. The European Union has used every stratagem to force Israel to selfdestruct in the name of Palestine, which would lead to an era of “justice and
peace” in the world in the same way the charnel houses of Auschwitz were
meant to purify humanity from Jews.
I want to recall here the three main steps that led to the Palestinization
process of Europe, in line with the desires of the OTC:
1. The Declaration of the Nine in November 1973, where for the first
time the European community decided that part of the Jordanian
people were an Arab Palestinian people, distinct from the Jordanians. It recognized Arafat—arch-terrorist and henchman of
Egypt—as their sole President for Life, and demanded that Israel
withdraw to the indefensible 1947-48 armistice lines. France had
concocted this position several years earlier and had succeeded in
imposing it on the Community of Nine, notwithstanding the reservations of certain countries, including Holland, that deemed it
immoral. On the Arab side, this initiative followed the conditions
laid down by the Arab League for accepting a European rap-
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585
prochement policy. On the European side, it continued the traditional antisemitic, anti-Zionist policy of World War II set by those
who conceived and carried out the Shoah, and their collaborators,
discreetly maintained in their positions in the postwar period.
Within this setting the unofficial Euro-Arab dialogue started.5
2. The London Declaration in June 1977, reaffirming with even
greater authority the same position as that of the Nine, who had
been vexed by the Israeli-Egyptian Peace Treaty (1977-79),
which—despite all their efforts—they were unable to derail.
3. The Venice Declaration in June 1980, particularly severe toward
Israel and offered as a consolation to the Arab countries furious at
Egypt’s defection and Europe’s failure. Faced with the reduced oil
supply as a result of the Khomeini revolution of 1979, Europe
tried to convince the Arabs to increase production. The moral of
the transaction: Israel versus oil required that the State of Israel be
demonized.
These declarations were issued to mitigate Palestinian international
terrorism in Europe, to protect European interests in the Middle East, and to
delete the black pages of colonization of Arab countries. Even though these
three declarations were purported to be highly moral, they in fact punished
Israel for not having let itself be overwhelmed by the armies of three Arab
countries that sought to eliminate it in 1967—Egypt, Syria, and Jordan,
allied to Arab bands within the country. These countries continued Nazi
European antisemitic policy, justified solely by European economic and oil
interests. Such were the foundation and motives behind the European policy
toward Israel. Posing as a doxa based upon morality and peace, Europe,
wrapped in a specious ethic, tried to impose it lock, stock, and barrel upon
Israel.
The Venice Declaration of June 1980 anticipated that of the Islamic
summit in Fez in September 1980 and of the OIC meeting in Mecca in
January 1981, which bound Muslim countries to impose a political and economic boycott on countries with embassies in al-Quds al-Sharif, Jerusalem
5. We note in particular Walter Hallstein, an officer in the Wehrmacht, who
under Konrad Adenauer reached the very highest positions of state and had a leading influence in the Foreign Ministry. He became first president of the European
Commission (1957-67) and remained an influential politician until his death in
March 1982; Hans Globke, co-author of the Nuremberg racist laws, a minister of
Chancellor Adenauer and his eminence grise in the postwar period. On the French
side, Vichy ministers and diplomats quietly continued their career in postwar
France.
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for Jews and Christians. This Mecca Islamic summit recommended the
following:
• Confirming commitment of the Islamic states to the Liberation
Arab al-Quds to become the capital of the independent Palestinian
state, and rejecting any situation that may prejudice full Arab sovereignty over the city.
• Confirming the commitment of Muslim states to utilize all their
potentialities to oppose the Israeli decision to annex al-Quds;
endorsing the decision to impose a political and economic boycott
on those states that recognized the Israeli decision, contributing to
its implementation; or setting up embassies in al-Quds al-Sharif.
• Inviting all countries to respect international legitimacy by
abstaining from dealing with the Israeli occupation authorities in
any form that may be construed by these authorities as amounting
to implicit recognition or acceptance of the status quo, imposed by
their declaring that al-Quds to be the unified and eternal capital of
the Zionist entity, and in particular inviting all countries to refrain
from:
a) signing any agreement in al-Quds al-Sharif;
b) paying any official visits to al-Quds;
c) conducting any formal talks in al-Quds.6
This OIC declaration, in January 1981, called to support the al-Quds
Committee and to ratchet up the struggle for the liberation of the Palestinians from Zionist colonialism and occupation. Was that not precisely what
Europe was saying to Israel, a colonialist, occupying people, thereby refuting its own roots? Was it not providing political, legal, international, and
financial support to the Palestinian terrorist jihad against Israel?
This political link between the OIC and the European Union did not
only appear in the context of the Israeli-Arab conflict but also in internal
European politics concerning the massive Muslim immigration into Europe,
which started in the years 1974-75. It was then that a joint European-Arab
cell, the Parliamentary Association for Euro-Arab Cooperation (PAEAC),
was established with the task of passing on the political demands from the
Arab League countries to the European community and to monitor their
implementation within Europe. At the Euro-Arab dialogue session held in
Tunis February 10-12, 1977, the Arab delegation had proposed a joint EuroArab cell for political consultations.7 In a leaflet prepared in 1994, at the
6. The Conference of the Islamic Summit in Mecca (January 1981), cf. Bat
Ye’or, Eurabia, 288.
7. Documents D’Actualité Internationale, Ministère des Affaires Etrangères,
Paris, nos. 16-17 (1977):319-324, §11.
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time of PAEAC’s breakup in the official political body of the Barcelona
Declaration, PAEAC prided itself on having obtained the Venice Declaration of 1980. Opening the way toward Eurabia, PAEAC’s networks proclaimed in Europe the grandeur of Muslim civilization, promoted the spread
of Arab culture, advocated for changes in teaching in schools and universities, and called for special deference and respect toward immigrants and
their culture, blasphemy laws, sex segregation, censorship, and harsh antiZionist policy. These networks imposed multiculturalism and its politically
correct lethal framework. Such framework developed rapidly into a multicommunitarianism, recalling the regimes installed in the conquered territories of the Arab and Turkish caliphates founded on jihad and dhimmitude.
The terms of settlement of an immigration that was to profoundly
transform Europe and the Nine’s policy toward Israel were jointly discussed
in the summaries of the biannual, unofficial meetings of PAEAC (the EuroArab dialogue), co-chaired by an Arab and a European, and sponsored by
the General Secretary of the Arab League and the European Commission.
This cooperation between Europe and the OIC resulted from innumerable
networks bringing these two bodies together at every level over decades.
That is how the OIC succeeded—without too much effort, it is true—to
Palestinize the European political, cultural, and media sectors and to Islamize its demography, culture, universities, and policies. As is clearly evident
from the sessions’ documents, both cultural dynamics were interrelated.
Although Eurabian networks pretend that this whole issue is another
conspirational theory, references to this policy exist in numerous sources,
not least in the French minister for foreign affairs, in OIC texts, and in U.S.
academia.
What does Palestinization mean? First, it means creating a people as a
substitute for Israel, which takes over its history and therefore its legitimacy. From whence comes the delegitimization of Israel, an intruder state
in the region and in history? The Palestinization of history denies Israel’s
identity and its cultural and historic rights within its homeland, including
Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem.8 For the OIC, this process is part and parcel
of Islamic theology, which regards the Bible as simply a falsified version of
the Koran. According to Islam, biblical history is Islamic history, and the
biblical characters we see represented in churches are all Muslim prophets
who have virtually no connection with the facts reported in the Bible.
This context explains the Islamization of the Jewish and Christian
religious heritage, an approach that involves denying the identity of these
8. See this attempted subversion of history jointly undertaken by Europe and
the OIC in Bat Ye’or, Europe: Globalization and the Coming of the Universal
Caliphate (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2011).
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two religions, since Christianity views itself as emerging from Judaism,
whose scriptures it adopted. If the Bible is an Islamic account, Christianity
and not just Judaism are both falsifications of Islam. The negation of biblical history, with which Europe has assiduously linked itself by claiming
that Israel is a colonizing intruder in its own homeland—that is to say,
challenging the historic rights of the Jews to their own homeland—also
negates Christian history and confirms the Koranic interpretation refuting
the historicity of both Torah and Gospels.
Hence, if there was never a history of Israel or of the Gospels, but only
the history of Ibrahim, Ishmael, Issa—the Koranic Jesus—if all the biblical
kings and prophets were Muslim, in what religious belief is the West
rooted? Would it not be in the Koran? That is the logical conclusion of
Europe’s choice, when, furious at the return of the Jews to Jerusalem in
1967, it deliberately decided to chase them out and attribute their heritage to
those who, by a war invasion, had illegitimately occupied it since 1948,
expelling and dispossessing all its Jewish inhabitants. In a nutshell, if the
Israelis are foreign colonialists, occupiers of their own country, it means
they have no past, no history; and if Judaism is just a tissue of lies, the same
applies to Christianity. If Israel never existed in the past, then its modern
restoration is just a colonial deception on territory to which it has no historical, religious, or cultural claims, and so its destruction is justified. But if
history testifies to the contrary, then Europe becomes willingly responsible
for the abominable crime of genocide—wiping out the past existence of a
people in order to remove its current legitimacy and its human, religious,
cultural, and historical rights—not to mention the participation, organization, and financing by European nations and the European Commission of
an international campaign of incitement to hatred for the dismembering of
Israel.
The Palestinization of Europe is not just its theological Islamization
through Palestinianism, the ideology for Israel’s demise by disclaiming a
people’s territorial sovereignty, history, and culture, in conformity with the
jihadist worldview. Palestinianism is also a paranoid obsession to hound
Israel while claiming such hounding is for its own good. By proclaiming
that the Palestinian cause is the cause of peace and justice, Europe expends
great effort, energy, and violence in sending Israel back behind the 1948
lines it knows are indefensible. Hundreds of thousands of books, accusations, and speeches subvert the facts and impose this policy.
Since its 1981 symposium, the OIC’s requests have not changed:
Expulsion of Israel from all the territories that were annexed and occupied
by Jordan until 1967, including Jerusalem; refusal to renounce or abandon a
single inch of these territories; recognition of total Palestinian national sovereignty; the rejection of any situation that would harm Arab sovereignty
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over al-Quds al-Sharif; endorsement of the Arab Palestinian people’s inalienable rights, including the rights of return, self-determination, and the
establishment of an independent Palestinian state. The Mecca summit
(1981) recommended:
• Stressing the commitment to liberate all the Palestinian and Arab
territories occupied since the 1967 aggression, including Holy AlQuds al-Sharif; no renouncing or relinquishment of any part of
these territories or impairment of the full national sovereignty over
these territories [sic].
• Rejecting any situation that would prejudice [sic] Arab sovereignty
over al-Quds al-Sharif.
• Pledging to recover the national inalienable rights of the Palestinian
Arab people, including their right to return to self-determination
and to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state on their
national soil, led by the Palestine Liberation Organization, the sole
legitimate representative of the Palestinian people [sic].9
There followed the detailed announcement of the action plan to boycott Israel, the setting of an international defamation campaign, and the continuation of the OIC offensive by any and all means. This same anti-Israel
strategy has been repeated and maintained in all its details in the documents
of the OIC and reaffirmed at its 2008 New York meeting and thereafter.
HUMAN RIGHTS
FOR
EVERYONE—EXCEPT ISRAELIS
Europe is not saying anything else, having chosen al-Quds over Jerusalem. On December 6, 2010, a large group of former heads of state and
commissioners of the European Union—that is, those who obeyed the
OIC’s orders and perhaps even encouraged, promoted, and strengthened
them—sent a letter to the current leaders of the European Union reminding
them of the decisions that they had taken concerning Israel and requesting
them to oblige Israel to comply with them.10
It is no surprise to note that the European Union is poaching on the
OIC’s preserve—adopting its policies, locking up and ghettoizing Israel
within its indefensible 1948 armistice lines, and proceeding with the
Islamization of Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem. These leaders, while they
acknowledged the enormous sums paid to the Palestinian Authority to build
9. Extracts of this conference are in Bat Ye’or, Eurabia, 285.
10. Andrew Rettman, “Former EU Leaders Challenge Ashton on Israel,” http://
euobserver.com/9/31477, December 10, 2010. Cf. also http://www.dhimmitude.
org/eurabia/EU-Anti-Zionist-Campaign-Unveiled.pdf. A comparison of this letter
with sections 20-27 of the 1981 Mecca Islamic Conference proves their similarity.
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another state within this area, demanded that the European Union require
Israel to cede to the second Palestinian state—the first one being Jordan,
with 78% of the League of Nations’ Palestine—100% of the territories that
had been liberated from illegal Jordanian occupation in 1967, with Jerusalem—that is, al-Quds—as its capital. The signatories recalled that for
decades (in fact since 1973), the European Union had supported and
financed the new state’s institutions and infrastructure, which it was busy
building on Israel’s flank. In order to force Israel to follow their dictates,
the signatories forcefully demanded a boycott campaign, sanctions, and
reprisals against the Jewish state, because, as they claimed without further
explanation, Europe has a vital interest in the creation of a Palestinian state.
What is involved, claim the signatories, is the European Union’s credibility
and good diplomatic and commercial relations with the Arab world. This
implies that the European Union is constrained to help in the demise of
Israel in not failing its commitments to the Arab world, thereby preserving
its good relations with it.
The BDS campaign against Israel—required by the signatories of this
letter—is based upon two pillars: the OIC, and the one carrying out its
nefarious deeds: the European Union, which under the cover of human
rights has launched an international campaign of incitement to hatred
against Israel, based upon deceitful allegations it had concocted itself, while
denying human rights to Israelis. The names of the signatories to this letter
will enter history as the founders of the Palestinization of Europe. Among
them we can mention European Union functionaries Romano Prodi, Javier
Solana, Chris Patten, and Benita Ferrero-Waldner; among heads of state
and former ministers, Richard von Weizsäcker (former German federal
president, 1984-94), Helmut Schmidt, and the former British minister in the
Blair government, Clare Short. The French are the most numerous on the
list: Hubert Védrine, Hervé de Charrette, Roland Dumas, Lionel Jospin,
Jean-François Poncet.
PALESTINIAN–NAZISM CONNECTION: DE-JUDAIZING CHRISTIANITY
In a large number of documents going back to the 1970s, the OIC
recommends cooperation with churches in the fight against Israel. This
emerged in particular from a conference held in Amman in 2004 as part of
the Muslim-Christian dialogue. The official theme was the protection
against Israel of Muslim and Christian holy places in Palestine. The purpose
of the Amman conference was to establish a global strategy for the reIslamization of Jerusalem, because, as one of the lecturers explained, Jerusalem is central in the spiritual edifice of the Jewish Zionist entity, and its
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expulsion would make this entire spiritual edifice and the Zionist entity
come tumbling down like a pack of cards.
At th Amman conference, the speakers emphasized the major importance of Muslim-Christian solidarity in the fight to seize al-Quds and to
drive Israel out of it. Their proposals envisaged a whole range of schemes,
including the adoption of the Muslim and Christian holy sites in al-Quds by
every mosque, church, and monastery, and by Muslim and Christian institutions worldwide. They recommended a large-scale, joint Muslim and Christian media global campaign in the United Nations, the United States, and
international NGOs to expose Israel’s falsehoods. Promoting al-Quds would
be done through films, television, songs, and festivals, under the supervision of a special Muslim and Christian cell that would be working with all
the appropriate means.
Within this context is the Kairos Palestine declaration of 2010, which
brands Israel, using the terms occupation of Arab lands, colonization, and
apartheid; while conversely, Palestinians are innocent victims resisting the
occupation and aspiring only to security, justice, and peace. The Kairos
declaration, hardly surprisingly, condemns all Christian theology that is
based upon the Bible or on biblical faith or history that would legitimize
Israel. Understand if you can . . . What would remain of Christian theology,
faith, or history if you get rid of Israel and the Bible? Would Christian
Palestinianism be the camouflage of Nazism, which had planned to deJudaize Christianity? The document ends with a call to people, businesses,
and countries to take part in the boycott, disinvestment, and sanctions campaign against Israel. This request is in line with the demands of the OIC and
similar to the letter of the European former leaders, who are the ones
responsible for the current Eurabian situation.
What are the consequences of the choice of al-Quds by Europe for its
identity, the criteria for assessing its own history, and its immigration policy? The Europe that chose al-Quds and rejected Jerusalem is rejecting its
own basic identity. It is denying the Bible, which is not merely a religious
text that states various values, but also a chronicle of the coming of Jesus
and Christianity, which for Christians is its culmination. If there had not
been a Jewish people, nor biblical history or geography, there would not be
Christianity either. Accordingly, Judaism and Christianity are just a huge
aberration, and what remains are the Koran and the Muslim Jesus, whose
eschatological mission is the destruction of Christianity.
The choice of al-Quds replaces the Bible with the Koran. Europe
knows that the OIC has decided to move its head office from Jeddah to alQuds. The OIC is deemed the most suitable institution to represent the
world caliphate, its mission being to work to root the universal Ummah in
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the Koran and Sunna. What church could remain in al-Quds? By seeking to
destroy Israel, the Church is destroying its own very existence.
With such a disavowal of its own roots and identity, should we still be
surprised that Europe has sold off its peoples cheaply on their own territory? In the same way that the European Union has not ceased to harass
Israel and to challenge its roots and rights, it has dragged to court those
courageous Europeans who have asserted their own identity, rights, and
freedoms. Transposing its anti-Israeli policy to Europe, the European Union
wants to create a tabula rasa of historical nationalisms and of the privileges
of sovereign states to transfer to the United Nations—dominated by the
OIC—the world governance of human rights. The essential rights of
Europeans to security, their history, and freedom of expression are disproved, rebutted, and dismissed by the OIC under the guise of Islamophobia
and its vehement request for European multiculturalism. Rooted in the civilization of jihad and dhimmitude, Islamophobia imposes its own criteria
through its European and UN go-betweens in its new Western empire. So
while Europe prides itself on creating universal, humanitarian governance,11,12 on the international scene, the OIC is implementing a Koranic
order of Islamic human rights.
The OIC’s domination of the United Nations was recently illustrated
by the Goldstone Report. On its Web site, the OIC states its support for this
report, which contains accusations of war crimes allegedly committed by
Israel in the Gaza Strip in January 2009. Goldstone, according to the Web
site, was adopted by the Human Rights Council in Geneva with the support
of the Islamic group, which continues to defend it on the sidelines of the
UN General Assembly so that it will be referred to the Security Council.
The OIC has reaffirmed its wish to see its content adopted by the international community as an international document.
With the repudiation of Israel, the European Union is repudiating
itself. It is putting the emphasis on the Greco-Roman heritage and eliminating that of Christianity to please the OIC and Muslim migrants. When its
bodies named it, they eliminated its biblical and therefore Jewish basis, as if
Christianity had arisen in the world out of nowhere. This identity repression
is just one more concession to Islam and its culture that is hostile to Jews
and Christians, an issue that has been neither recognized nor repudiated. To
throw Judaism (Israel) and Christianity (the West) into the dustbin of his11. Mathieu Bock-Côté, “L’empire européen universel contre le Souverainisme
américain,” in Controverses: L’Europe, amie d’Israël? no. 16 (Paris: Editions de
l’Eclat, March 2011), 91.
12. http://www.oic-oci.org/topic_detail.asp?t_id=5154&x_key=.
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tory is to remove human, historical, religious, cultural, and national rights
from Jews and Christians.
The destruction of Israel will let Europe free itself from its own identity, one of the central objectives of Nazism. It flaunts itself as global, multicultural, and Islamic—deterritorialized in the vision of Sweden’s former
PM Carl Bildt—acculturated and without a past, reduced to being just an
ungrateful beneficiary of Islamic cultural superiority and an empty space in
which to welcome the immigrants and to subsidize their requirements while
financing their economic development in their own countries. As in days
gone by, when Byzantine princes paid tribute to the Turks to stop them
invading their lands, today Europe has to pay a ransom to Muslim Mediterranean countries to protect itself from their invasion. The world governance
the European Union seeks to obtain through the elimination of European
national sovereignties and cultures leads it to favor Muslim immigration, a
factor for interbreeding, rapprochement, and merger of Europe into the OIC
fold. Today, parties on the left are promoting the policy of the OIC and of
the Alliance of Civilizations: open up Europe to let young people from
Africa and Asia have two- to five-year stays in the European Union and
finance their businesses when they go back home. Will Europeans be able
to support their fragile economy together with those of Africa and Asia?
Are they unaware that they have become the dhimmis of the OIC, governed
by their ministers in its service?
Eurabia and Palestinianism come from the same rejection and the same
policy applied to the destruction of the nation-state and the manifestation of
the spirit and culture of peoples condemned to extinction in the globalized,
humanitarian utopia. Their points in common are the war against Israel; the
de-Judaization of Christianity; the de-Christianization of Europe; and the
joint European Union-OIC policy to strengthen UN’s global governance
that the OIC aims to monopolize. This suicidal approach is specific to
Europe; it does not exist in China or in India—even less in Muslim
countries.
Systematically pursued over decades by Europe’s chancelleries, this
policy requires an infrastructure, bodies, and screening of recruitment in the
political, media, and cultural sectors, which have consistently purged any
disturbing element. The Palestinization of politics since 1973 led to state
control over culture and the media and the development of a single, authoritarian thinking, dictated for the entire European Union by a conclave of
commissioners making arbitrary decisions.
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WAR
Europe, it is true, has renounced internal wars, but only to become the
mercenaries of the OIC. With its armies, networks, and financing in the
billions, it supports the Muslim advance into Europe, the Middle East, and
Africa, in the name of a version of human rights that is challenged by
shari’a and politically tainted, since it refuses equal rights for non-Muslims.
Provided with a mandate by the United Nations, which is to say by the OIC,
Europe in the name of “the right to protection” can finally go to war to
defend its allies’ interests. That is why it is helping the Muslim Brotherhood
rise in Egypt, supporting Islamist elements in Libya, and trying to replace
Israel with the caliphate, after having destabilized Europe.
With the anarchic uprisings of the Arab Spring (March 2011), most
European countries and the United States, led by France and its foreign
minister, Alain Juppé, have become involved in Arab and African tribal
conflicts, invoking the “right of interference” and the “right of protection.”
These rights, however, as we have said, are applied selectively, because
they are never invoked to protect Christians against persecution in Egypt,
Iraq, Turkey, Algeria, Sudan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Indonesia, or Pakistan;
they are also not used to protect sailors arbitrarily taken hostage by the
Somalis. Europe would find it grotesque and indecent to invoke these rights
against the spread of anti-Israeli hatred, calls for genocide against the Jews,
against the deluge of rockets launched from Gaza into Israel, or against the
hideous crimes perpetrated by its Palestinian allies against Israeli civilians.
Nor has it reacted to the Islamization of the biblical holy places in Hebron,
both Jewish and Christian, by UNESCO, acting on orders of the OIC. Yet
this approach is a serious breach of the religious and historical rights of
Jews and Christians, and contradicts human rights.
It is evident that those Europeans wishing to restore the essential values that caused the flowering of their civilization can only proceed through
the destruction of occult mechanisms grafted, without their knowledge, by
those promoting Eurabia onto the recovery of the Nazi heritage and pursued
in the postwar period by its servants within the political and diplomatic
systems, as has been recently investigated by German historians and journalists. What in the 1970s seemed to be just a little ritual dance about the
hopes for the disappearance of Israel and the French infatuation with Arafat,
carried out by a corps de ballet of European politicians and diplomats, has
proven today to be a hell for Europe. These days of Passover’s commemoration remind us that Israel, in its march from slavery to freedom, gave to
humanity the principles of equality, unalienable human dignity, and man’s
individual responsibility. Against this message of freedom and man’s basic
and imprescriptible rights, the supporters of totalitarianism and of the dehu-
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manizing system of dhimmitude strain unremittingly to replace the right to
life by the granting of tolerance to exist in infamous dhimmitude.
*Bat Ye’or is an Egyptian-born British writer on Jews and Christians living under
Islamic governments. Her several books include Islam and Dhimmitude, Eurabia,
and her most recent work, Europe Globalization and the Coming of the Universal
Caliphate (Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 2011). She is married to David Littman.
Conspiracy, N’est-ce Pas?
Hadassa Ben-Itto*
We democratic countries see the masses gathered in the public square
and are very sympathetic to the outcry against dictatorships and to the fight
for freedom. But I am concerned with the masses in the streets and with the
outcome of a brainwashing process that has been going on for such a long
time. Lies have been spread around the world as a strategic weapon. Public
opinion and public discourse have been polluted, and now the masses are
standing up and trying to tell the leaders what to do.
If you paid careful attention to what happened in Cairo’s Tahrir
Square, for instance, you saw the placards of Mubarak with a Star of David
on his face. Lara Logan, an American journalist, was sexually molested in
the middle of the square and was called a Jew, although she is not Jewish.
She does not have to be Jewish; the word “Jew” has become an accepted
insult in the public square. A well-known preacher stood up and talked not
about freedom but about the Jews, about what is going to happen to us
when the masses take over. So we are rightfully worried.
THE PROTOCOLS: A LONG
AND
LASTING IMPRINT
These deeply disturbing phenomena of attacks on Jews have been
fueled by The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a virulent antisemitic screed
produced in France in the late nineteenth century. The Protocols, which
proclaims that there is a Jewish plan for achieving global domination, has
been proven to be both a forgery and a lie.
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World democratic societies have sinned for years by ignoring this phenomenon. After being a judge for many years, I retired to study The Protocols. After six years of research I wrote a book about my findings that has
now appeared in ten languages, most recently in Arabic. The Protocols was
never translated into Hebrew because we ignored it, thinking it was a bad
joke.
One of the stories in my book is about a retired agent named Henri
Rollin of the French Secret Service, who wrote books about European politics during the 1920s and the 1930s. Rollin was well educated about Russia
and, having been a secret agent, had a lot of information that was not available to others. He had realized the importance of The Protocols of the
Elders of Zion—maintaining that it influenced everything that was happening in Europe, most important the infiltration of the Nazis into European
politics. Rollin wrote an 800-page book entitled L’apocalypse de Notre
Temps, all about how The Protocols had left its imprint on European
politics.
L’apocalypse was published in France on September 3, 1939, and you
would think at the beginning of World War II the book would have been
completely ignored. The Nazis, however, did not ignore the book. When
they conquered France they banned it, and so it vanished. Only in 1991 was
Rollin’s book republished by a small publisher in France. I see myself as
continuing in Rollin’s footsteps by following the history of The Protocols
through the last decade and into the twenty-first century, and its impact on
world politics.
Why is The Protocols, a completely fraudulent document, important
today? Because it is being published around the world, with new editions in
Arabic almost every year, and in Persian and Turkish as well. These publications are financed by government money and distributed not only in
Arabic-speaking countries, but also to Muslim minorities around the world.
New editions are necessary because the introductions are updated
every year. The introductions say if you do not believe that the Jews are
really planning to take over the world, look at what is happening in your
country and region. Everything that is happening is rooted in The Protocols,
an implementation of the “Jewish Conspiracy.” If there is a financial crisis,
an AIDS or a flu epidemic, a terrorist attack, an upheaval or a catastrophe,
one can always point to a chapter or page in The Protocols because it is
such a devious document that everything is there. There is a whole detailed
plan of how to take over the world.
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CONSPIRACY, N’EST-CE PAS?
THE PROTOCOLS
AS
599
RATIONALE
During the preparation for the Russian Revolution, Russian Bolshevik
cells could not operate openly in Russia, so they were active elsewhere in
Europe, including France. A special envoy of the Russian secret police was
sent to France to uncover the Bolshevik cells. The Russian Secret Service
and the Black Hundreds, an ultra-nationalist movement in Russia whose
slogan was “Beat the Jews and Save Russia,” were trying to convince the
czar that the Jews were behind the Bolshevik Revolution. The czar was
already convinced, but they needed proof.
More than 100 years ago, a French woman by the name of Juliette
Adam had a salon. In those days, women still did not have the right to vote
or be elected, but important and educated women who wanted to make a
difference established salons. Adam was a very educated woman—a historian, newspaper owner, and author—and she had a political salon where
many antisemites gathered. There is much evidence that the preparations for
the Dreyfus trial, in which a French Jewish army officer was wrongly convicted of treason and later exonerated, took place in her salon.
Juliette Adam’s husband was the chief of police in Paris, who collaborated with the Russian envoy sent by the Secret Police, Piotr Rachkowsky,
because the French did not like Bolshevik terrorists preparing bombs in
small Paris hotels. Rachowsky, who was looking for ways to implicate
Jews, was invited to Adam’s salon, where someone told him of a book,
banned in France but that the salon possessed, that could be turned into
something against the Jews.
THE PROTOCOLS: ANTISEMITIC PROPAGANDA
The Protocols is a reworking of a book written by a French lawyer,
Maurice Joly, in the 1860s. In Joly’s biography, he tells how he decided to
write a book to describe to the French people the danger they were in from
the fearsome dictatorial regime of Napoleon III. He decided to write an
allegory in the form of a dialogue between two people in the afterworld:
Machiavelli and Montesquieu. Machiavelli would represent the ideas and
practices of Napoleon III and his terrible regime, while Montesquieu would
represent Joly’s liberal ideas. Joly published it in Brussels because the
French would not publish it. He was arrested, tried, and went to prison. His
book was banned.
In Joly’s book, Machiavelli explains to Montesquieu why the people
are dumb and why a dictator is necessary and what tools he can use to take
over, to dominate his country and the world. There are chapters in this book
dedicated to each subject—how to take over the police force, how to take
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over the legal system, how to do away with all the lawyers, how to raise
havoc in the labor field, and how to plant bombs in strategic locations. It is
a manual on how to dominate the world. The voice of Montesquieu
becomes weaker while the voice of Machiavelli becomes stronger, and at
the end Montesquieu says, “Oh God, what have you allowed?” Through
allegory, Joly was telling the French people that this was what was happening in France.
Some 60 to 65 percent of The Protocols are verbatim passages from
this book. Chapters were added to make it the Jewish plan to dominate the
world. The Protocols was first published in Russia in 1905 by a religious
fanatic in a monastery. From there it went around the world. After the
revolution, officers of the White Army, who fled Russia, carried The Protocols with them to convince the world that what happened to the Romanov
dynasty in Russia would happen to them. The Jewish plan was to topple all
the monarchs and governments in Europe. Between 1919 and 1921, The
Protocols was published in every language in the world. Six editions, blaming the Jews for World War I, were published in Germany in one year.
The Protocols is not just a libel; it is a political document describing a
Jewish criminal conspiracy to dominate the world. Almost the first leader
outside Russia who picked it up was Adolf Hitler. As a strategic step, the
Nazis decided to use The Protocols as a central part of their ideology, as we
know from correspondence between Hitler and Goebbels. A German historian describes in his book how Hitler used The Protocols on the way to the
Final Solution, but Hitler had already mentioned it in Mein Kampf. The
Nazis were masters of the “Big Lie,” and their tactics have been adopted by
the Muslim world. The theory is that the bigger the lie, the better success of
brainwashing the public.
THE BERN TRIAL
OF
1934
There was a major trial in Bern, Switzerland, in 1934 after a new Nazi
organization started using The Protocols, distributing copies at a public
rally. The local Jews, who realized what was happening across the border in
Germany, decided to take the Swiss Nazis to trial. In the introduction to the
English edition of my book on The Protocols, Lord Chief Justice of
England Harry Wolfe wrote that the Bern trial is probably the most important trial ever because in this trial, live witnesses testified in court, describing the origins of The Protocols and the use made of this document. They
included the head of the opposition to the czar, historians, politicians, and
former agents who escaped the revolution and decided to bear witness to
this forgery.
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601
The Germans established what they called Weltdienst, a center located
in Erfurt, headed by Ulrich Fleischhauer, that spread Nazi ideology and
propaganda around the world. Nazi branches or organizations with different
names started springing up in every country, fed on Nazi ideology and tactics. At the 1934 Bern trial, the Swiss judge ordered both sides to appoint
experts. The Swiss Nazi defendants could not find an expert to testify that
The Protocols were an authentic document, so Ulrich Fleischhauer came to
Switzerland to be the expert. When the judge asked him if he was an expert
on The Protocols, he said that he was not, but that he was an expert on the
Jews.
Every trial against The Protocols before the Bern trial ended with a
settlement, because the defendants could never prove the authenticity of
The Protocols, but when the Nazis came into power they prohibited any
settlement in a trial concerning The Protocols, deciding to use courtrooms
as a forum to spread Nazi ideology.
THE PROTOCOLS
IN THE
UNITED STATES
The Protocols was also published in the United States, where its biggest promoter was Henry Ford, who published 97 excerpts in his newspaper, the Dearborn Independent; these scurrilous antisemitic articles were
then collected in a book called The International Jew. Ford was sued in
court by American Jews, and the trial went on for six years (1921-1927). In
the end, Ford settled with the Jewish community.
In 1964, the United States Senate appointed a committee to study The
Protocols. In a unanimous report nine senior senators called The Protocols
the hoax of the century and a document endangering America.
THE PROTOCOLS
IN THE
MUSLIM WORLD
The Protocols, first used by the Russian czars and then by the communists, later served as a central theme in Nazi propaganda. It now has been
handed over to the Muslim world.
The Protocols is a central issue in Arab and Muslim propaganda, even
in what we call moderate countries, including countries that made peace
with Israel. It is everywhere, in every Arabic book fair—more in Egypt,
less in Jordan. It is in public discourse, in newspapers, and even in TV soap
operas. It describes world history from beginning to end, including the
French Revolution, as part of the Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world.
Until the end of World War II, the problem was the Jews, but after the
establishment of the State of Israel, the target has become Israel.
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The Protocols is a best-seller in all Muslim countries because this is
what they have been told over and over again in their media and schoolbooks. When my book was translated into Arabic, the translator and publisher, both graduates of the Hebrew University, one a Christian Arab and
the other a Muslim Arab, told me that until they read my book, they did not
know that The Protocols is a forgery.
THE DANGER PERSISTS
There is no Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world, but there is an
anti-Jewish conspiracy. Using The Protocols against the Jews for 100 years
is part of a conspiracy, and everybody who takes part in it is a conspirator
against us. It starts with the Jews, but it does not end with the Jews.
The first airplane that was hijacked was an Israeli airplane, and now
we line up in every airport for security checks, so the world should be concerned. The danger of contaminating the public discourse with lies is a danger to the whole world.
*Hadassa Ben-Itto, author of The Lie That Wouldn’t Die: The Protocols of the
Elders of Zion (2005), served for 31 years as a judge in all levels of the Israeli
courts, including as an acting justice of the Supreme Court. She has also served as
an official representative of the State of Israel in various international forums,
including UNESCO and the United Nations General Assembly, and is currently the
honorary president of the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists.
This essay, which has been modified for publication in this issue of the Journal for
the Study of Antisemitism, first appeared in Jerusalem Issue Brief, Vol. 10, No. 38,
and is based on Judge Ben-Itto’s oral presentation at the Institute for Contemporary
Affairs of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs on February 24, 2011.
What Happened to Pakistan’s Jews?
Shalva Weil*
Pakistan was never traditionally antisemitic. In fact, it may come as a
surprise that Pakistan hosted small, yet thriving, Jewish communities from
the 19th century until the end of the 1960s. Recently, Yoel Reuben, a Pakistani Jew living in the Israeli town of Lod whose family originated in
Lahore, documented some of the history of the Jewish communities with
photographs of original documents. When India and Pakistan were one
country, before the partition in 1947, the Jews were treated with tolerance
and equality. In the first half of the 20th century, there were nearly 1,000
Jewish residents in Pakistan living in different cities: Karachi, Peshawar,
Quetta, and Lahore. The largest Jewish community lived in Karachi, where
there was a large synagogue and a smaller prayer hall. There were two
synagogues in Peshawar, one small prayer hall in Lahore belonging to the
Afghan Jewish community, and one prayer hall in Quetta. Even today,
according to unofficial sources, there are rumors that some Jews remain in
Pakistan, including doctors and members of the free professions, who converted or passed themselves off as members of other religions.
The Jews of Pakistan were of various origins, but most were from the
Bene Israel community of India, and came to Pakistan in the employ of the
British. Yifah, a student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, relates that
her great-great-grandfather Samuel Reuben Bhonkar, who was a Bene
Israel, came to Karachi in British India to work as a jailer, and died there in
1928. The Bene Israel originated in the Konkan villages, but many moved
to Bombay from the end of the 18th century on. In Pakistan, they spoke
Marathi, their mother tongue from Maharashtra; Urdu, the local language;
and most spoke English. Prayers were conducted in Hebrew.
In 1893, a Bene Israel from Bombay, Solomon David Umerdekar,
inaugurated the Karachi Magen Shalom Synagogue on the corner of Jamila
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Street and Nishtar Road, which officially opened in 1912. During these
years, the Jewish community thrived. In 1903, the community set up the
Young Man’s Jewish Association, and the Karachi Bene Israel Relief Fund
was established to support poor Jews. In 1918, the Karachi Jewish Syndicate was formed to provide housing at reasonable rents, and the All India
Israelite League, which represented 650 Bene Israel living in the province
of Sind (including Hyderabad, Larkuna, Mirpur-Khas, and Sukkur, as well
as Karachi), was first convened—founded by two prominent Bene Israel,
Jacob Bapuji Israel and David S. Erulkar. Karachi became a fulcrum for the
Bene Israel in India, the place where they congregated for High Holiday
prayers. There was also a prayer hall, which served the Afghan Jews residing in the city. A 1941 government census recorded 1,199 Pakistani Jews:
513 men and 538 women. So accepted were the Jews of Karachi in these
years that Abraham Reuben, a leader in the Jewish community, became the
first Jewish councilor on the Karachi Municipal Corporation.
ANTI-ZIONISM BEGINS
On August 15, 1947, India was partitioned and the Dominion of Pakistan was declared. Partition effectively signaled the end of the British
Empire. Fearful of their future in the new Islamic state, Jews began to flee.
Some fled from Afghanistan; the Bene Israel community in Lahore fled to
Karachi and from there moved to Bombay. Muslim refugees from India,
called Mohajir, streamed into Pakistan and attacked Jewish sites. The situation was exacerbated by the declaration of independence for the state of
Israel in May 1948. Many of the Karachi Jews left the city in 1948, after
rioters attacked the Karachi synagogue during a demonstration in May of
that year against President Truman’s recognition of Israel. Some members
of the community emigrated to Israel via India, while others settled in
Canada and the United Kingdom.
Pogroms against the Jews recurred during the Suez War in 1956 and
the Six-Day War in 1967. Most of the remaining Jews emigrated and, in
1968, the Pakistani Jewish community numbered only 350 in Karachi, with
one synagogue, a welfare organization, and a recreational organization.
After 1968, there is no record of any Pakistani Jews outside Karachi.
Today, anti-Israel discourse manifests itself in the notion that Israel
and Pakistan are ultimately in competition and thus only one can flourish.
In April 2008, Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul, the former chief of Pakistan’s powerful
Inter-Services Intelligence, proclaimed that “two states came into existence
in 1947 and 1948: one, Pakistan; two, Israel. The two are threats to each
other. Ultimately, only one of them will survive.” Pakistan aligns itself with
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WHAT HAPPENED TO PAKISTAN’S JEWS?
605
the Palestinian Muslim cause and rejects the United States insofar as it is
allied with Israel.
THE KARACHI JEWISH COMMUNITY ENDS
The Magen Shalom synagogue in Karachi was destroyed on July 17,
1988, by order of Pakistan president Zia-Ul-Hak to make way for a shopping mall in the Ranchore Lines neighborhood of Karachi. In 1989, the
original ark and podium were stored in Karachi; a Torah scroll case was
taken by an American to the United States.
As late as 2006, the sole survivor of the Karachi Jewish community,
Rachel Joseph, a former teacher, then 88 years old, was battling for compensation for the broken promise from the property developers that had
demolished the old synagogue; in exchange, she would receive an apartment, and a new small synagogue would be constructed on the old site.
While the litigation wore on, she languished in a tiny room.
This year, a Muslim Pakistani-American filmmaker, Shoeb Yunus,
shot a film about the Jewish cemetery in Karachi. Today, it is part of the
larger Cutchi Memon graveyard, which has a Muslim caretaker. It took
Yunus eight months to gain admission, and the camera crew was allowed
only 10 minutes to shoot. He estimates that there are 200-400 Jewish
graves. The neglected cemetery has not been destroyed since its last custodian, Rachel Joseph, died on July 17, 2006.
*Shalva Weil is a senior researcher at the Research Institute for Innovation in Education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. A specialist in Indian Jewry,
Weil is the founding chairperson of the Israel-India Friendship Association.
Remembrance of Warwick Days
Smadar Bakovic*
It was in the spring of 2010 that the University of Warwick’s Student
Union called for a referendum to twin with the Hamas-backed Islamic University of Gaza (IUG).1 To me, it seemed irrational that a Western university, which prides itself on inclusivity and on being a free marketplace of
ideas, would willingly associate itself with an institution in which Holocaust denial is taught in history classes2 and where a significant segment of
Warwick University’s own student body—gays, women, Jews, and
others—would be excluded. It was then that the vehemence of some students toward Israel, the Zionist project, realizing the national aspirations of
the Jewish people, erupted in full force, exposing the ugly, dangerous face
of British academia.
An anti-Zionist event was held, moderated by a British professor, in
which Israel’s right to exist was challenged. Israel was portrayed as a murderous apartheid regime committing a Holocaust against the Palestinians,
and Jews were demonized. In a Western university, in the nation where the
Balfour Declaration originated, the Jews’ right to self-determination was
questioned. The organizers, moderator, and supporters were not extreme
rightists, and neither were they predominantly Muslims; they were almost
exclusively European. Without exception, all would define themselves as
leftist liberals defending human rights and freedom around the world.
Their hostility, however, was deceitfully directed only toward Israel
and its “racist, apartheid-like policies.” It was not to be directed at Jews—
after all, the speaker was a Jew and a Jew can’t be antisemitic, they said.
Unable to focus their hatred at Jews (probably fearing accusations of racism
1. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2096876,00.html; http://
www.terrorism-info.org.il / malam_multimedia / English / eng_n / html / hamas_e093.
htm.
2. http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=450.
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and antisemitism), they directed their obsessive anger toward Israel, all the
while being moderated by a Warwick faculty member.
Israel was portrayed as an illegitimate entity, comparable to apartheid
South Africa, and as such must be eradicated. It was not surprising, then,
that I was to be called a Nazi by a European student, who shamelessly
posted such comments on the Internet. After all, if the existence of the Jewish state can be challenged, dooming Jews to endless antisemitism that
results for some in extermination, then any distorted criticism then becomes
legitimate.
Anti-Zionist and antisemitic sentiments became personal when the
Department of Politics and International Studies (PAIS) forced me to work
under and ultimately be graded by Professor Nicola Pratt—the same professor who moderated the event described above. Professor Pratt is an activist
in the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, which calls to “oppose the Apartheid
and Zionist nature of the Israeli state.”3 She supports the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement by signing petitions that call for boycotting all Israeli institutions4 and demanding “Palestinian right of return.”
Israel, according to the petitions, has no right to exist in its current form.
Invariably, the question of what should happen to the Jews is left conveniently open ended and clearly unanswered.
I was disturbed to see that a reputable Western institution employed
professors who boycott Israeli institutions in a judgment not based on merit.
Based on merit, I should have considered Jerusalem’s Hebrew University—
which outranked University of Warwick.5 But I wanted an English
education.
I asked myself how a Western academic institution could embrace
those individuals who insisted on continuing the traditional racist antisemitism in which Jews were boycotted as a group, whether in the Middle Ages
or in 1930s Germany, where Jews’ shops were boycotted and Jews were
expelled from European universities. Could it be that those who, seventy
years ago, would be defined as antisemites are now embraced by academia,
under the manipulative guise of human rights activists?
3. http://www.palestinecampaign.org/Index5b.asp?m_id=1&l1_id=2&l2_id=
10.
4. http://www.bricup . org . uk / documents / Gaza / DeclarationSignatories . html;
http://www.bricup.org.uk/why.html; http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/16/
gaza-israel-petitions; http://Israel-academia-monitor.com/index.php?type=large_
advic&advice_id=121&page_data[id]=178&the_session_id=2aa78d18972c159c8b
9ec8575213547a&cookie_lang=en; http://boycottzionism.wordpress.com/category/
boycott-divestment-sanctions/page/33/.
5. http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2011-201
2/top-400.html.
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REMEMBRANCE OF WARWICK DAYS
609
When I petitioned the politics department for an alternative professor, I
was immediately denied. They were unwilling to understand that an Israeli
student working under Professor Pratt would be equivalent of a black student working under the KKK. Had I been a member of a recognized minority group, the university would have resolved the issue and allowed me to
work under a different professor; it would also have stated that the university rejects all forms of racism and discrimination, as noted in its Charter of
Statutes.6 This option, however, was ignored by PAIS.
I am not saying that all British people are racist, as most are certainly
not. Neither am I saying that British academic institutions are inherently
racist and antisemitic. But there is an culture—an ambiance—within the
UK that permits discrimination against Jewish Israelis in favor of current
politics. This ambiance is not only wrong, but it also condones excluding
Jews. Most infuriating is that the university never reprimanded Professor
Pratt. That a university defends those who seek to discriminate against a
nation, and employs those who discriminate and silences students of a certain demographic, is tragic. If some elements of British academia are saying
yes to discrimination according to religion and nationality, what does this
say about the system and the so-called human rights activists?
After months of correspondence, participation in a video conference
with the university’s Complaints Committee, and fighting against the politics department for nearly a year, I was able to persuade the university that
what had I had endured was indeed unjust. When some cosmetic changes
were made to my dissertation, and it was re-marked by three professors, I
was finally awarded the doctoral distinction I deserved from a year earlier,
when Professor Pratt marked me down.
It is unfortunate that Warwick University failed to listen to the words
of pro-vice-chancellor Susan Brassnett. In 2005, Ms. Brassnett said that the
Israeli boycott was “wrong, bigoted and racist.”7 Had the university heeded
her statement,8 Warwick would not find themselves in the media today
addressing concerns of racism and antisemitism. And I would not have lost
a year of academic life fighting for nothing less than the equal rights of
Israeli citizens.
6. http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/gov/calendar/section2/charterstatues.
http://www2.
7. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/higher/susan-bassnett-thisboycott-is-wrong-bigoted-and-racist-526403.html.
8. http://www.ucu.org.uk/index.cfm?articleid=2829.
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*Smadar Bakovic, who holds a master’s in international relations, is the author
of Tall Shadows: Interviews with Israeli Arabs (United Press of America, 2006).
She has worked with the Jacob Blaustein Institute and the American Jewish Joint
Distribution Committee and participated in EuroMed and several Israeli-Palestinian
conferences. Bakovic thanks Stella Aniagyei, PhD, for her helpful suggestions on
this essay. You can reach Smadar Bakovic at smadar.bakovic@gmail.com.
Die Linke and the Left
Sebastian Voigt*
Recently, a small but audible segment of the German left considers the
criticism of antisemitism and equally of anti-Zionism and anti-Americanism
as central to the renewal of a progressive view of modern society.1,2 This
includes support of Israel, which is in direct opposition to the mainstream
left.3
The emergence of a pro-Israel left is connected to developments in
German society after the reunification in 1990. The discussions within the
left have to be regarded as a result of the profound political changes that
took place at the time. The reunification was seen by many leftists as a
reversal of the outcome of the Second World War. The reunification of
Germany coincided with a wave of pogroms and racist attacks against foreigners, asylum seekers, and Jews. Consequently, the fear of a Fourth Reich
and with it the fear of a reemergence of German imperialism surfaced. In
1. See the English version of the homepage of Die Linke, http://dielinke.de/
politik/international/english_pages/ (accessed May 7, 2011); see also Dan Hough,
Michael Koss, and Jonathan Olsen, The Left Party in Contemporary German Politics (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
2. See the homepage, http://www.european-left.org/ (accessed May 7, 2011).
3. For this trend, see the article by Jeffrey Herf, “Fresh Air in Central Europe,”
The New Republic, August 2010, http://www.tnr.com/blog/foreign-policy/77228/
fresh-air-in-central-europe (accessed May 7, 2011). A good summary of the historical genesis of this pro-Israel leftist position can be found in an interview with the
Austrian researcher and Stop-the-Bomb activist Stephan Grigat: Jens Misera,
“Communism, Anti-German Criticism and Israel. An Interview with Stephan Grigat” (first published in Israel Nachrichten, the German daily newspaper, in Tel
Aviv in 2004; first published in English at http://info.interactivist.net in 2005);
http://www.cafecritique.priv.at/interviewIN.html (accessed May 7, 2011).
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retrospect, these fears were unfounded and proved to be completely erroneous. Nevertheless, the misguided fears were a direct consequence of a decisive rupture in German and European history. The decline of the Soviet
Union and the end of the Cold War caused a collapse of the worldview of
many leftists, even if they never supported Soviet-style communism. The
apparent victory of capitalism and of liberal democracy turned the established ideology of leftist thinking on its head and caused a fundamental
disorientation.
At the time, a debate about the history of the left and its mistakes made
a cautious stand, and a small segment of the German left began to deal selfcritically with anti-Zionism, anti-imperialism, and their relationship to the
state of Israel. Several leftist magazines supported the second Gulf War in
1990/91.4 More members of the left even supported the war against the
Taliban after 9/11 and some unexpectedly had supported the overthrow of
the Hussein dictatorship in Iraq in 2003.5
BAK SHALOM
These changes within left-leaning groups, however, did not affect Die
Linke fundamentally until 2007, when a group called BAK Shalom was
founded with the purpose of exposing and combating antisemitism, antiZionism, anti-Americanism, and what was termed regressive anticapitalism
within Die Linke.6
Although I have never been a member of Die Linke, I was in touch
with many party members. In addition, I received a scholarship from the
Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, which is closely linked to Die Linke.7 I was
myself a founding member of BAK Shalom, wrote articles, and gave talks
4. The most important leftist magazine at this time was (and still is) konkret. It
had a long and difficult debate about the Second Gulf War but some authors supported the war, which led to the loss of half the readership. See the konkret
homepage, http://www.konkret-verlage.de/kvv/kvv.php (accessed May 7, 2011).
There was also an extensive discussion in the left in general; see, for example,
Klaus Schönberger and Claus Köstler, Der freie Westen, der vernünftige Krieg,
seine linken Liebhaber und ihr okzidentaler Rassismus oder wie die Herrschaft der
neuen Weltordnung in den Köpfen begann (Grafenau: Trotzdem-Verlag, 1992).
5. The most important book for the discussion was Jihad und Judenhass by
Matthias Küntzel. The book was translated into English: Matthias Küntzel, Jihad
and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11 (NY: Telos Press Publishing, 2007).
6. See the English version of the declaration of principles by BAK Shalom,
http://bak-shalom.de/index.php/english (accessed May 7, 2011).
7. See the English version of the homepage of Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung,
http://www.rosalux.de/english/foundation.html (accessed May 7, 2011).
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DIE LINKE AND THE LEFT
613
about antisemitism and anti-Americanism. Despite considering myself quite
liberal, I was consequently called an agent of imperialism, a Zionist traitor,
and a neoliberal racist. Nevertheless, BAK Shalom managed to make this
discussion that had been going on for several years a part of the overall
framework of Die Linke. BAK Shalom received considerable media attention and for some time I was so optimistic that I believed it might be possible to substantially influence the discourse within Die Linke.8
Unfortunately, this was not to be. I was obviously too optimistic or may
have been too naive—as I was often told from the very beginning.9
CORE IDEOLOGY
The fundamental principle of Die Linke is anti-imperialist, both
overtly and covertly antisemitic, and adamantly opposed to the existence of
Israel. This ideology has achieved predominance in Die Linke. The most
recent evidence of this ideology was revealed during the provocation on the
Mavi Marmara on May 31, 2010, when a commando of the Israeli defense
forces stormed the ship after the captain refused to stop it. Nine people were
killed in the ensuing struggle. Two current and one former member of the
German Bundestag were on board the Mavi Marmara. All—Norman Paech,
Annette Groth, and Inge Höger—are members of Die Linke. They were
arrested by the Israeli army, but released shortly thereafter.
It is noteworthy to look at what happened when they returned to Germany. They were not taken to task by Die Linke for cooperating with a
fascist organization; neither did they have to justify their support for radical
Islamists, who are well known to be reactionary to the very core and who
blatantly trample on the most basic human rights—not to mention women’s
rights. The chairwoman of Die Linke, Gesine Lötzsch, instead expressed
pride in their so-called mission.10 The only voice from within Die Linke
that criticized the actions of her colleagues was Petra Pau’s, the vice presi8. Members of BAK Shalom had several articles in leading newspapers. See
Sebastian Voigt and Benjamin Krüger, “Let the Left Go Forward,” Jerusalem Post,
December 9, 2009, or Sebastian Voigt, “An Israels Seite,” Der Tagesspiegel, May
5, 2008.
9. A discussion between Jan Gerber and the author was published in the German leftist weekly Jungle World. Sebastian Voigt, “Sich jetzt endlich einmischen”
and Jan Gerber, “Austreten, aber schnell,” Jungle World 23, June 5, 2008.
10. See Miriam Hollstein and Thomas Vitzthum, “Wir sind stolz auf Ihren Einsatz,” Welt Online, June 2, 2010, http://www.welt.de/die-welt/politik/article787932
0/Wir-sind-stolz-auf-Ihren-Einsatz.html (accessed May 7, 2011).
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dent of the German Parliament.11 She faced a storm of criticism from within
Die Linke afterward.
Paech, Groth, and Höger call themselves “survivors of the Israeli massacre” and went on a propaganda tour through various German cities in
order to tell the story of their heroism firsthand. During one of those events,
Paech, the former member of parliament and a retired professor of law,
went so far as to suggest that the next Gaza Freedom Flotilla should be
accompanied by German maritime forces, which patrol the Lebanese border. If this request were to be carried out, it would de facto amount to using
the German military against Israel. The audience loudly roared in response
to this suggestion. One member of the audience was so fired up that he
expressed his desire to hit the “fascist state of Israel” next time; Paech
called that “an idea.”12 It needs to be emphasized that this scandalous
response was made by a former member of the German parliament and the
former foreign policy expert of a legitimate German party, which is represented in the Bundestag.
Alas, statements like these are merely the culmination of a phenomenon that has been in the works for some time. Consider that Wolfgang
Gehrcke, a member of the Bundestag of Die Linke, wanted to invite representatives of Hamas to a conference in 2006. Fortunately, they were denied
entry visas to Germany.13 Many members of Die Linke consider Hamas as
the legitimate, democratically elected government of the Palestinians.
Hamas’s ideological and highly undemocratic structure does not raise the
red flag within Die Linke and its virulent antisemitism is conveniently
ignored.
During the Lebanon war in 2006, Christine Buchholz, a hardcore
member of Die Linke and a member of the Bundestag, referred to Israel and
the United States as warmongering countries, noting that “Hezbollah represents, along with the peace movement in Israel and the international antiwar
movement, the opposite part of the conflict. This is the position I am hold11. Petra Pau wrote an open letter to the Jewish community in Bremen, in
which she criticized the members of Die Linke who were on board the ship,
http://www.swr.de/report/-/id=6636856/property=download/nid=233454/mvqbrq/
index.pdf (accessed May 7, 2011).
12. This “event” was recorded by radio journalists of the independent station
Freies Sender Kombinat (FSK) in Hamburg. Afterward, they produced a 60-minute
radio program Wie antisemitisch ist die Linkspartei? (How Antisemitic is the Left
Party?). The program can be heard online at http://www.freie-radios.net/portal/
content.php?id=35000 (accessed May 7, 2011).
13. See Ulrich W. Sahm, Nahostkonferenz im Berliner Reichstag: HamasSprecher erhält kein deutsches Visum, hagalil.com, October 23, 2006, http://www.
hagalil.com/01/de/index.php?itemid=23 (accessed May 7, 2011).
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615
ing as well.”14 Buchholz went on to define the “demonization” of Hezbollah as one of the “most egregious prejudices” of the media that allegedly
took place during the war. For a politician of the left to say that she sides
with the terrorist organization of Hezbollah is almost beyond belief, but is
undeniable proof of very crucial shifts in leftist politics and its ideology.
THE UNDERLYING REASONS
There are several explanations for the driving forces of the bottomless
hatred against Israel within the left. One key factor is anti-imperialism,
which is defined by a dichotomous view of the world. According to this
worldview, the world and society are split in two opposing groups: one
group wants peace and the other group wants to pursue imperialism; in
other words, there is an exploiting First World and the exploited Third
World. This is as simplistic a concept of the complexity of modern societies
as one can imagine, and inherently and inevitably leads to the personification of social relations. One can consequently easily pinpoint the persons
responsible for exploitation and oppression. The results are wild conspiracy
theories for all those who refuse to use knowledge and rationality in understanding the complex world we are living in. By employing old, deeply
entrenched prejudices, Jews are perceived as those pulling the strings; Israel
is seen as the spearhead of Western imperialism in the Middle East and as
an artificial state that is a foreign object in the organic body of Arab
societies.15
14. The quote in German is: “Auf der anderen Seite stehen in diesem Konflikt
die Hisbollah, die Friedensbewegung in Israel und die internationale Antikriegsbewegung. Das ist die Seite, auf der auch ich stehe.” Interview with Christine
Buchholz by Rüdiger Göbel, “Im Krieg muss sich Die Linke positionieren. Die
Dämonisierung der Hisbollah ist Teil der Kriegsführung,” Junge Welt, August 15,
2008. It can be read online at http://www.achse-des-friedens.de/aktionen_lk05.htm
(accessed May 7, 2011).
15. Moishe Postone has written extensively about the criticism of antisemitism
and the relation of anti-Zionism and antisemitism. See his classic essay, “AntiSemitism and National Socialism. Notes on the German Reaction to ‘Holocaust,’ ”
New German Critique 19, Winter 1980, 97-115, and the interview with him by
Martin Thomas, “Zionism, Anti-Semitism and the Left,” February 5, 2010,
http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2010/02/05/zionism-anti-semitism-and-left
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COMMUNIST IDEOLOGY
The roots of this ideology in Die Linke are twofold. The first one is the
communist ideology and the politics of the German Democratic Republic
(GDR) toward Israel. The GDR was not an antisemitic country per se,
although it had several anti-Zionist campaigns that made ample use of
antisemitic stereotypes. The so-called Merker trial in the mid 50s—during
which Paul Merker and other leading members of the Communist Party
were convicted of having collaborated with Israel and the United States, the
“imperialistic archenemies”—is but one example. The GDR considered
itself to be an anti-fascist state that engaged in the self-righteous self-deception of having eliminated the roots of fascism by nationalizing the big
industries and by expropriating the reactionary Prussian landowners.16 The
hegemonic notion of fascism in the GDR stemmed from the orthodox communist view expressed in model fashion by Georgi Dimitrov in the mid
’30s. Fascism in power, he said, is “the open terrorist dictatorship of the
most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of
finance capital.”17
If fascism is regarded as the uppermost system of capitalistic dictatorship, the ideology of antisemitism has to be put on the back burner.
Antisemitism was not recognized as the core of Nazi ideology but as a
means of distraction by the ruling class to divide the proletariat. Auschwitz
and the annihilation of the European Jews were not recognized as ruptures
in civilization itself, as Dan Diner has pointed out.18 In the communist
countries of Eastern Europe, Jews were not acknowledged as a distinct
group of victims; instead, communists and antifascist resistance fighters
were the most important people to be memorialized. In this delusion, an
adequate research of the Holocaust never took place. In addition, the GDR
did not see any reason for normal relations with Israel, and rejected all
claims for compensation by Holocaust survivors. The continued antisemitism after 1945, which was very much alive in a large part of the population,
16. See the monumental work by Jeffrey Herf, Divided Memory: The Nazi Past
in the Two Germanys (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 69-105.
17. Georgi Dimitrov, The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist
International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism. Main Report
delivered at the Seventh World Congress of the Communist International,
August 2, 1935, http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/dimitrov/works/1935/
08_02.htm (accessed May 7, 2011). See also Thomas Haury, Antisemitismus von
links. Kommunistische Ideologie, Nationalismus und Antizionismus in der frühen
DDR (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2002), 293-455.
18. Dan Diner (ed.), Zivilisationsbruch. Denken nach Auschwitz (Frankfurt am
Main: Fischer Verlag, 1996).
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was never addressed or dealt with because—according to the ideology of
orthodox communism—the socialist nations were seen as the true winners
of history, bringing progress to the world.
Next to the historical context of the Cold War and the strong relationship of the Soviet bloc with the Arab states, this continued ideology plays a
major role in explaining the undiluted ferocity of anti-Zionism and the
enduring comparison and equation of Israel with Nazi Germany in the
GDR. This is not a legitimate form of political criticism, but is instead a
fierce form of antisemitic anti-Zionism.19 Such pernicious hatred of Israel,
derived from the orthodox communist ideology, is alive and well in a large
part of Die Linke to this day.
ANTI-ZIONISM
OF THE
GERMAN LEFT
The other justification of hatred of Israel in Die Linke is to be found in
the history of the radical left in West Germany. Its relation to Israel differs
from those of the GDR. Until the Six-Day War, the majority of leftists in
Western Germany had a pro-Israel attitude. The tremendous historical shift
after that decisive conflict unleashed a fierce hatred of the Jewish state,
which in turn became an integral part of left identity. This hatred has all the
attributes of the pathological. Israel was not regarded anymore as the socialist experiment with its kibbutzim and its egalitarian ethos, but was turned
into a country of oppressors—by no less than the previous murderous persecutors. It was hence called a racist and occupying power that deprived the
Palestinians of their human rights and of their national homeland.20
This hostility toward Israel can only be understood in the context of
the widespread romanticism of revolution itself. Since Western democracies
had given up on revolutions and since the proletariat—which was supposed
to be the carrier of the revolutionary banner—was ignorant of its historical
obligation, the longing for a revolution had to be transferred to the Third
World. The ideology of tiermondisme was on the rise, and the left began to
support all kinds of national liberation movements in the Third World as a
redirection activity, a transference of the ersatz for what was missing under
their very own noses. Some groups even supported the Khmer Rouge in
Cambodia. But first and foremost, the Palestinians became the main object
19. See Sebastian Voigt, “Das Verhältnis der DDR zu Israel,” in Dossier “60
Jahre Israel,” ed. Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, May 2008, http://
www.bpb.de/themen/XEBFIJ,0,0,Das_Verh%E4ltnis_der_DDR_zu_Israel.html,
20. See Martin W. Kloke, Israel und die deutsche Linke. Zur Geschichte eines
schwierigen Verhältnisses (Frankfurt am Main: Haag + Herchen, 1994), 65-81.
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[ VOL. 3:611
of solidarity. Their terror attacks were justified as the expressions of the
oppressed underdog fighting against a powerful enemy. The Palestinians
neatly fitted into the leftist cult of the noble guerillero. Leftist radical
groups like the Rote Armee Fraktion even received military training in Palestinian camps; leftist Western German groups went so far as to commit
antisemitic crimes. On November 9, 1969, the 31st anniversary of the Night
of Pogroms of 1938, a group called Tupamaros Westberlin placed a bomb
in front of the Jewish Community Center in Berlin and justified this attack
as a necessary reaction to the so-called “fascist” crimes committed by Zionists and to express solidarity with the fighting fedayin as the avant-garde of
worldwide revolution.21
SECONDARY ANTISEMITISM
In addition to these explanations, it is obvious that both former East
and West Germany cannot be compared to other countries. When all is said
and done, the fact remains that contemporary Germany is the successor of
Nazi Germany. Thus, a specific aspect has to be added to the leftist hostility
toward Israel in order to explain this particular anti-Zionist antisemitism.22
After 1945, the official expression of traditional antisemitism became
taboo in both Germanys. Unofficially, antisemitism was nevertheless
expressed both overtly and covertly without any restraint. During the following decades, the ever-present antisemitic resentment had to find a different venue to express itself. After the Holocaust, every Jew became the
personified accuser of the crimes committed by Nazi Germany. Jews were
perceived as an interference to the development of a national identity, disruptive harassers for the positive identification with Germany and its history. They were seen as the permanent accusers of Germans, who, besides
causing them a bad conscience, exploited German guilt by demanding reparations. This antisemitism is expertly expressed in the polemic: Germans
will never forgive Jews Auschwitz.23 Eventually, this bizarre and twisted
21. See Wolfgang Kraushaar, Die Bombe im jüdischen Gemeindehaus
(Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2005).
22. See Lars Rensmann, Kritische Theorie über den Antisemitismus: Studien zu
Struktur, Erklärungspotential und Aktualität (Hamburg: Argument Verlag, 2001),
231-287. See also Samuel Salzborn, Antisemitismus als negative Leitidee der
Moderne: Sozialwissenschaftliche Theorien im Vergleich (Frankfurt am Main:
Campus Verlag, 2010), 317-342.
23. This is how the journalist Henryk M. Broder put it. See Henryk M. Broder,
Der Ewige Antisemit. Über Sinn und Funktion eines beständigen Gefühls (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Verlag, 1986), 125. See also Andrei S. Markovits, “A New
(or Perhaps Revived) ‘Uninhibitedness’ toward Jews in Germany,” Jewish Political
2011]
619
thinking resulted in the externalization of German guilt. Nazis were consequently revealed everywhere, but most specifically in Israel. In due course,
Jews were and still are accused of having learned nothing from the Holocaust and of acting like Nazis. On the other hand, Palestinians are considered to be the new Jews, the victims of the former victims. By demonizing
and “Nazifying” Israel, opposing its existence creates the opportunity for
German leftists to construct an anti-fascist continuity for themselves and to
fight the anti-fascist battle that their Nazi parents and grandparents never
fought.
The advantage of this secondary antisemitism to German leftists can
be observed on an individual, psychological level (Western Germany) as
well as on a collective level (Eastern Germany). The defamation of Israel as
a fascist country and of Zionism as a fascist ideology conveniently strengthens anti-fascist self-deception. Because antisemitism was never recognized
for the core evil it was, and fascism was seen merely as a different kind of
capitalistic oppression, the Holocaust was not recognized as the worst genocide ever committed in the history of all of humanity, and consequently lost
its abominable horror.
The most common expression of current manifestations of secondary
antisemitism is anti-Zionism. Although both ideologies are not identical,
they do overlap to a large extent. According to a dictum by Léon Poliakov,
Israel has become the Jew among all nations; it serves as the collective
Jew.24 This antisemitic anti-Zionism is not exclusive to the German left, but
it expresses itself in Germany in its most unadulterated form.
IDEOLOGICAL IGNORANCE
The ignorance about the destructive importance of ideologies seems to
be a blind spot of a leftist wordview. This critical blind spot is repeated in
the leftist attitude toward Islamism. Evident in Die Linke, it has gained a
greater significance during the last few years. In the past decades, the German left supported various so-called national liberation movements, but
mainly secular ones. The PLO or the PFLP were supported, but nowadays
Hamas—a fanatically religious and oppressive organization—is supported.
Studies Review 18:1-2, Spring 2006, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, http://
www.jcpa.org/phas/phas-markovits-s06.htm (accessed May 7, 2011).
24. For the relationship of anti-Zionism and antisemitism, see Léon Poliakov,
Vom Antizionismus zum Antisemitismus (Freiburg: ça ira Verlag, 1992).
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This development was recently labeled the leftist-jihadist “Querfront”
(cross front) by the German journalist Ivo Bozic.25 Some parts of Die Linke
openly proclaim the collaboration with radical Islamic groups against the
“U.S. Empire” and its ally, Israel. Asked how they could possibly cooperate
with radical Islamic organizations and fascist groups, the parliamentarian
members of Die Linke either claimed that they didn’t know who had organized the Gaza Freedom Flotilla or they audaciously denied that fascist or
Islamist groups had indeed participated. In the most benign interpretation,
one might consider this naive. It is much more probable that the collaborators of radical Islamists know exactly what they are doing.
A particular convergence of orthodox leftist and Islamist ideology is
obvious. Both share an anti-imperialist ideology, a deep hatred of Israel and
of the United States, and the dystopian yearning for a simple, pre-modern
world. Both of these ideologies reject globalization and financial capital as
symbols of the exploitative capitalist society; both tend to simplify the complexity of the modern world into a clear-cut black and white without shades
of gray; and both feel morally superior and self-righteous. They delude
themselves in thinking that they fight for a higher cause and that they are
always on the side of the global underdog and the oppressed masses. On a
global level, the leftist-jihadist collaboration manifests itself in the alliance
of Venezuela and Iran, the self-proclaimed socialism of the 21st century,
and the reactionary dictatorship of the mullahs.
CONCLUSION
Die Linke cannot and must not be dismissed as an irrelevant radical
fringe of the German political spectrum. That would be the height of irresponsibility. Because of the lack of political restrictions, Die Linke often
expresses a widespread anger mixed with hatred toward Israel more openly
than the mainstream parties would dare to. The many incidents of
antisemitic anti-Zionism among politicians of all parties are shocking,26 but
only parliametary members of Die Linke could participate in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla and still be supported by the party leadership. In no other party
is the ingrained hatred of the left as rampant. In regard to Israel and the
conflict in the Middle East, Die Linke may almost appear to be the avant
25. See Ivo Bozic, “Die Entstehung der Mavi-Marmara-Linken,” Jungle World
31, August 5, 2010; http://jungle-world.com/artikel/2010/31/41448.html (accessed
May 7, 2011).
26. For a profound analysis of antisemitism in the political culture in Germany,
see Lars Rensmann, Demokratie und Judenbild. Antisemitismus in der politischen
Kultur der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaft, 2004).
2011]
621
garde of German society. I do hope that this is an overly pessimistic interpretation, and I would gladly be proven wrong. Still, I cannot avoid the
nagging fear that my presumptions are not totally over the top. The following incident shortly after the Mavi Marmara was taken over by the IDF
might be an indication. The German secretary for development, Dirk
Niebel, was refused entry into the Gaza strip by Israeli authorities. Even
though it is widely known that Israel prohibits official visits by secretaries
to Gaza to avoid legitimizing the Hamas government, the German
Bundestag passed a unanimous resolution condemning Israel’s actions,
including the blockade of Gaza strip.27 Even conservative politicians who
are in general considered to be pro Israel praised Die Linke.28 This resolution can only be interpreted as proof that all German political parties
presented a united front against Israel. Needless to say, this new and alarming development undeniably strengthened Hamas.
The debate within Die Linke is not yet over and done with.29 The
eventual development will be crucial not only for people on the left in Germany but in all Europe.
*Sebastian Voigt is a PhD candidate in history at the University of Leipzig and
holds a Hans-Böckler-Stiftung scholarship. This paper was presented at Yale’s
YIISA Global Antisemitism conference August 23-25, 2010, New Haven,
Connecticut.
27. For the precise wording of the petition dating from June 30, 2010, see http://
dipbt.bundestag.de/dip21/btd/17/023/1702328.pdf (accessed May 7, 2011).
28. The parliamentarian of the conservative CDU, Philipp Missfelder, praised
the hardcore leftist member of Die Linke, Wolfgang Gehreke, for sharing common
ground concerning the Gaza blockade. The original quote in German is: “Selbst
wenn in der Assendarstellung häufig der Eindruck entsteht, dass die Linkspartei
grundsätzlich anderer Meinung sei, so glaube ich doch, Herr Gehrcke, dass gerade
auch die Wortbeiträge, die Sie schon an verschiedenen Stellen abgegeben haben,
keinen Zweifel daran lassen, dass Sie sich auf einem ähnlichen, gemeinsamen
Boden befinden, wie wir das tun,” http://philipp-missfelder.com/de/Politik/Reden/
70/35_Rede_im_Deutschen_Bundestag/artikel,535,1,1.html (accessed May 7,
2011).
29. See Samuel Salzborn, “Die Linkspartei hat ein Antisemitismusproblem,”
Welt Online, June 8, 2010, http://www.welt.de/debatte/kommentare/article7957984
/Die-Linkspartei-hat-ein-Antisemitismusproblem.html (accessed May 7, 2011).
What My Daughter’s Friend and
Ambassador Gutman Need to Know
Richard Landes*
One of my daughters recently wrote me about a friend who thought
that “most of the Muslim antisemitism in Europe wasn’t based on their
dislike of what is going on in Israel and not so much on religion.” I knew
this belief was widely held not only by anti-Zionists, but also by liberals in
general, including Jews. It includes the widely held assumption that suicide
bombings were a response to the despair that Palestinians felt because of
how Israel treated them. It is also directly related to the problem of
“Islamophobia is the new Antisemitism,” in which speaking of Muslim
antisemitism becomes a new form of racist antisemitism. Of course, I did
not expect a Jewish U.S. ambassador to make those kinds of remarks, which
is just what Howard Gutman said to a group of Jewish lawyers in Belgium:
What I do see as growing, as gaining much more attention in the newspapers and among politicians and communities, is a different phenomena
. . . It is the problem within Europe of tension, hatred and sometimes
even violence between some members of Muslim communities or Arab
immigrant groups and Jews. It is a tension and perhaps hatred largely
born of and reflecting the tension between Israel, the Palestinian Territories, and neighboring Arab states in the Middle East over the continuing
Israeli-Palestinian problem.
Either the good ambassador has no awareness of just how paranoid,
genocidal, and depraved Muslim antisemitism is, or he is contemptuous in
his lack of standards. He would never excuse virulent Jewish hatred for
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Palestinians “merely” on the basis of the fact that Palestinians target Israeli
children, dance in the street when they succeed, and display exhibits honoring the dead Jews. And yet, somehow, virulent Palestinian hatred is
understandable.
Of course, the actual situation differs radically from this benign contempt. Most of this regional tension is a product of the mainstream [news]
media (MSM), both ours and theirs. Virtually none of the people who hate
Israel have seen this matter up close: their impressions and beliefs about
what’s happening are the product of what they read in the media, and
reports from activists who document the “apartheid” ways.
The argument, of course, can work inversely: Palestinians have produced a constant stream of lethal narratives describing Israelis as baby-killers, and have spread the virus throughout the Muslim world. These
narratives inspire suicide bombers and their cheering supporters, and the
violence that Israel does against the Palestinians—from targeted killings to
the separation barrier, to the Gaza blockade responding directly to
antisemitic propaganda.
Because the Western mainstream news media has focused some of this
propaganda, people, including my daughter’s friend, have formed beliefs
that are based on the television images and justify their disdain. “No wonder French Muslims hate you,” the French Christians say to their French
Jewish co-citoyens; “look at what your brethren in Israel do to their cousins
in Palestine.” To grant the Palestinians and other Muslims permission to
hate the Jews reveals unthinking racism: I don’t really expect anything
remotely rational or balanced from these folks. If you piss them off, you
deserve their rage.
The MSM not only report lethal narratives as news, but omit reporting
the hatreds that inspired such narratives. In the summer of 2000, the PA was
blasting hatred of Israel. If the MSM were surprised by Arafat’s Camp
David “no,” it’s because they ignored what he and his friends were saying
in Arabic. On the contrary, driven by a belief that peace was around the
corner, they felt that dwelling on such bad news would queer the peace
process. Nor did the Oslo war make a difference. Sheikh Halabiya gave a
sermon calling on Muslims to “slaughter the Jews everywhere.” William
Orme wrote a piece on Palestinian incitement in which he quoted Halabiya
saying: “Labor, Likud, they’re all Jews.”
As a result, the ferocious strain of antisemitism in Palestinian irredentism transferred easily from the mufti’s contribution to the Final Solution,
Nazi propaganda, and helping Nazism flourish in Egypt and Syria, to
Arafat’s national liberation and Hamas’s apocalyptic paranoia. Nor is this
merely a quirk of journalism, but a widespread practice of the “post-colo-
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nial” field of Middle East studies in the wake of Edward Said’s masterpiece
of cognitive warfare forbidding Westerners from othering Muslims.
Yet, what are we to make of crowds rallied by the moderate Muslim
Brotherhood chant, “One day we will kill all Jews”? Since 2000, Arab and
Muslim news media have been awash with gory video depictions of the
Elders of Zion carrying out their blood sacrifices of innocent Muslim youth.
Specialists disagree over whether this is primarily an import from the worst
of European hate-mongering, or an indigenous growth with roots in the
Koran. European anti-Zionists may like their fantasy that their attitude is
not antisemitic, but in the case of the Arab and Muslim world, the slide
from opposing Israel to ranting about al Yahud everywhere is effortless.1
Phillip (Mondo) Weiss’s response to Ambassador Gutman offers additional insight. Citing two other comments, Weiss proves Gutman’s thesis by
pointing to a study showing that antisemitic incidents in England spiked
after the Mavi Marmara incident. Of course, the near doubling of
antisemitic incidents did not arise in response to Israel’s behavior, but to the
reports of them, in which the MSM reported unfiltered anti-Zionist lethal
narratives about the IDF coming down spraying bullets and killing 19
peaceful, humanitarian activists. He also omits data showing that, compared
to Arabs, Israelis commit a faction of violence. Weiss, who never met a
lethal anti-Zionist narrative he didn’t like, probably still believes the initial
reports. But unless you are willing to argue that when Israeli soldiers carrying paint-gun rifles, defending themselves from a lethal assault by Jihadis
posing as activists, kill nine of their assailants, that it justifies a wave of
antisemitism, this case hardly supports Gutman’s analysis. On the contrary,
it proves the opposite.
No violent anti-Arab demonstrations exploded on British soil when
Lebanese soldiers killed seventy Palestinian refugees in a massive air
assault in 2007, or during the last year while the Syrian army killed over
3,000 of its own people. If you were to argue that Islamophobia is caused
by Muslim behavior, would you not get accused of Islamophobia by the
same people so ready to blame Israel for antisemitism?
All of it is linked to a particularly dangerous form of political correctness, in which criticism of Muslims is the new form of antisemitism. As a
Parisian colleague insisted, “The experience of the Muslims in Europe
today is exactly the same as the Jews a century ago.” Of course, that’s not
the case at all: both in terms of the wildly different behavior of the two
minorities, and in terms of how the European elites reacted to their pres1. Mohammed’s mission to retroactively supersede and claim the origins of
Judeo-Christian monotheism, then to “correct,” and finally to complete the Jewish
and Christian revelations.
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ence. By that logic, however, any attack on Islam is immediately comparable to an attack on Jews a century ago.
Even those Jewish organizations designed to protect Jews from
antisemitism share this attitude. Berlin’s Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung held a conference whose main theme was the close identity of
Islamophobia and Judaeophobia. In the United States, the Anti-Defamation
League released only 2.6 percent of 4,269 press releases since 1995 on
either Islamic extremism or Arab antisemitism, of which only .005 were
released since September 11, 2001—precisely when the threat to Jews from
Islamic extremism dramatically increased. That is almost as small as the
percentage of Jews in the world, or the percentage of the Arab world “occupied” by Israel: 0.002.
Which brings us to the dilemma that faces the morally concerned
Western observer. We are faced with two opposing narratives: one in which
the Muslims/Palestinians are victims who might be forgiven their imperialist Israelis hate; and one in which the Israelis are victims, who might be
forgiven their resistance to assaults from paranoid, sadistic antisemitism.
Why not toss a coin? Aside from the fact that in so doing one would
greatly increase support for the imperialist Zionists to 50 percent, there are
serious consequences to misreading this situation.
If I am wrong, and Palestinian hatred is merely a result of the occupation, then Israeli concessions should lessen Palestinian hatred. Of course, if
the Palestinians really are rational—really want their own state rather than
to destroy Israel, then they should be amenable to making some important
moves toward reconciliation, such as, for example, cutting off the hate
incitement on TV, and resettling their refugees out of the miserable camps
they’ve been confined to since 1948.
If I am right, if Muslim antisemitism is profoundly rooted among
Arabs and Muslims today, then it’s another story entirely. Solving the refugee problem by allowing these poor victims of war to have a real home is
not on the Palestinian agenda. On the contrary, these refugees are designated victim-weapons in a war of annihilation.
If I am right, then every time Israel makes concessions, it encourages
further aggressions. So despite the politically correct paradigm, each time
Israel engages in anti-imperialist activities—withdrawing from most of the
West Bank (1994-2000), southern Lebanon (2000), and Gaza (2005)—
increased aggression occurred.
There is a widespread fantasy that throwing Israel into the maw of the
beast will somehow solve the problem. Ultimately, the dilemma of
antisemitism is not a Jewish but a Christian problem. Granted, the Jews
suffer from antisemitism, but the ultimate price is paid by those foolish
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enough to get sucked into the vortex of hatred and paranoia that antisemites
peddle. As any historian of World War II can tell you, if six million Jews
were murdered, more than ten times as many Christians died in that
madness!
The Arab world in the latter half of the 20th century offers a striking
parallel to Spain in the 16th century. Both worlds had expelled their Jews
(Spain in 1492, Arabs in 1948); both experienced a flood of wealth (New
World gold and petrodollars); and both failed to parlay that wealth into a
thriving culture that made life better for its people.
In a recent article, Jeffrey Goldberg tried to acknowledge the problem
of antisemitic sentiments pervading the Arab Spring, all the while preserving the belief that “the people of the Middle East are finally awakening to
the promise of liberty.” But the two are intimately related. Indeed, Judeophobia is not the problem, but the symptom.
It’s the conspiracy thinking that blames everything on the other—Muslims attack Copts? It’s the Jews. Arab Spring turning into Islamist Winter?
It’s the Jews. If you’re the BBC, it’s the Jews, aka “outside forces.” How
can one possibly inaugurate, foster, and sustain a democratic culture of freedom, one that, in words of Isaiah Berlin, considers it “shameful not to grant
to others the freedom one wants to exercise oneself,” without an ability to
self-criticize?
Antisemitism is everyone’s problem—my daughter’s friend, Ambassador Gutman, and the Muslims. The sooner well-meaning progressives stop
feeding their antisemitic vulnerabilities and begin critical thinking, the
sooner we will see a real Arab Spring—one in which all people can rejoice.
*Richard Landes is an associate professor of history at Boston University and the
author of several books, including Heaven on Earth (Oxford University Press,
2011). He edits The Second Draft and The Augean Stables. This article is reproduced by permission of the author and originally appeared in The Telegraph
December 1, 2011, under the title “Muslim Antisemitism, Israel and the Dynamics
of Self-Destructive Scapegoating.”
Antisemitism and the Dutch Soccer Fields
Manfred Gerstenfeld*
In August 2011, the Foundation for the Fight against Antisemitism
(BAN)1 took the soccer club ADO to court. On March 20, during a game of
this top-league club from The Hague against Ajax from Amsterdam, frequent chants of antisemitic songs were heard. BAN also claimed that
ADO’s speaker had thanked the public for their support. The club’s lawyer
denied this, whereupon the judge remarked that one could hear this on the
tape.
ADO’s lawyer stated that his client had done all it could to prevent
antisemitic chants from being sung in the stadium. He listed measures ADO
had taken—security cameras to find the perpetrators, the employment of
special guards, banning certain troublemakers from entering the stadium,
and a general prohibition on misconduct, discrimination, and insults. The
lawyer remarked that ADO also takes its players on visits into neighborhoods of The Hague in order to tell people there that discrimination will not
be tolerated in the stadium.
BAN’s lawyer observed that the two parties agree that chants such as
“horrible cancer Jews” and “Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas” are not permitted. He added that a witness had declared that also other antisemitic
chants were sung during the entire game.2 They were aimed at fanatic Ajax
fans who call themselves “The Jews.”
In his decision, the judge wrote that the chants sung during the game
are considered antisemitic, hurtful, and thus inadmissible. The judge added
that he did not believe the claim by ADO management that they had not
heard the songs, as there were 150 special guards in the stadium who were
in contact with a “command room.” The judge decided that if during a
future home game there were antisemitic chants in which the word “Jews”
1. Stichting Bestrijding Antisemitisme.
2. Kemal Rijken, “Welles-nietes tussen BAN en ADO,” NIW, August 5, 2011.
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was mentioned, ADO’s management would have to take measures to end
these chants and prevent new ones from being sung. If necessary, this
would include stopping the game.3
A HISTORY
OF
ANTISEMITISM
The number of antisemitic incidents in the Netherlands has multiplied
greatly since 2000. The singing of antisemitic songs on soccer fields, however, began long before. Hate chants in Dutch stadiums have been sung as
far back as the 1970s. One of these was “Hi, ha, penis of a dog.” Gradually,
the chants became more hateful and were heard more often against several
teams.4 For instance, Feyenoord supporters are called “cockroaches.” Yet,
as has been remarked, cockroaches are not offended by name calling, while
Jews are insulted by antisemitic hate songs.
In its 1999-2000 Annual Report, Tel Aviv University’s Stephen Roth
Institute of Antisemitism and Racism noted:
Antisemitic slurs have long become the norm at football matches in the
Netherlands. Hissing, slogans and chants such as “Hamas, Hamas, Jews
to the gas” are often heard during games. The spokesperson of the CIV
(Center for Information on Football Vandalism) warned that “In football
arenas, things are accepted which would not be tolerated elsewhere.”
Even though the authorities, the judiciary and politicians agree that hissing and antisemitic chanting constitute unacceptable behavior, the law is
not being enforced and games are not stopped.5
Among the early major perpetrators were the thousands of Rotterdam
Feyenoord fans who sang from their stands in games against Ajax: “Gas the
Jews.”6 The Ajax supporters in turn often sang “Bomb Rotterdam” as a
reminder of the lethal German bombardment of the town, which led to the
Netherlands’ rapid surrender to the invading German army in May 1940.
Already in 1999, the public prosecutor had investigated possible punishable
acts committed by then-Feyenoord player Ulrich van Gobbel. After his
3. LJN: BR4406, Voorzieningenrechter Rechtbank’s-Gravenhage, 398200/KG
ZA 11-812, August 9, 2011.
4. Jaap Bloembergen, “Hatelijke leuzen op de tribunes niet uit te roeien,” NRC
Handelsblad, October 7, 2003.
5. 1999-2000 Annual Report, Stephen Roth Institute on Antisemitism and
Racism, Tel Aviv University, 2000. See also www.tau.ac.il/Antisemitism/asw992000/netherlands.htm.
6. Simon Kuper, “Ajax, de joden, Nederland,” Hard Gras 22 (Amsterdam)
(March 2000):141.
2011]
ANTISEMITISM AND THE DUTCH SOCCER FIELDS
631
team won the national championship, he shouted “Whoever doesn’t jump is
a Jew” eight times from the balcony of the city hall to the public below.7
The public prosecutor decided to dismiss the complaint. The prosecution considered that what Van Gobbel said was “improper and unwise” but
not discriminatory; its spokesman explained that, taking into account the
context in which the remarks were made, there was no criminal act. The
prosecution also took into account that Van Gobbel had apologized. Jorien
van den Herik, the then chairman of Feyenoord, said that he greatly regretted Van Gobbel’s behavior.8
HATRED
IN THE
NEW MILLENNIUM
The Royal Dutch Soccer Association (KNVB)9 reported that in the
season 2001-2002 there were 11 games with antisemitic chants shouted.
Many examples of soccer antisemitism were listed in a report by the Center
for Information and Documentation on Israel (CIDI), the leading Dutch
organization in combating antisemitism. The report mentions that the Feyenoord management wanted to remain silent about the antisemitic chants
from the club. In November 2002, twenty Feyenoord supporters shouted at
a suspect during a court session of the attempted murder of one of their
friends, “Cancer Jew, you will be killed.”10
In 2002, the CIDI complained about the shouting of “Hamas, Hamas,
Jews to the gas” on an “open day” of Feyenoord. The then deputy mayor of
Rotterdam, M. W. van Sluis, replied: “I received your letter of 1 August and
I share your worries about the shouting of slogans. It is totally unacceptable
that such slogans are being shouted at whatever moment and in whatever
context.” Van Sluis mentioned that because there were no policemen present at the gathering, no direct action had been possible, adding that he
would pass the information to the public prosecution and the mayor of Rotterdam would discuss the issue with Feyenoord and the KNVB.”11
In 2003, during a game between ADO and PSV from Eindhoven, the
fans of the latter shouted “Cancer Jew” at the referee. The internal prosecu7. “Het openbaar ministerie in Rotterdam onderzoekt mogelijke strafbare
uitlatingen van Feyenoord-speler Ulrich van Gobbel,” Trouw, April 30, 1999.
8. Jaaroverzicht antisemitisme in Nederland 1999, CIDI.
9. Koninklijke Nederlandse Voetbal Bond.
10. Hadassa Hirschfeld, “Antisemitische incidenten in Nederland. Overzicht
over het jaar 2002 en de periode 1 januari–5 mei 2003,” CIDI.
11. “Rotterdam belooft CIDI maatregelen tegen voetbalantisemitisme,” CIDI,
August 14, 2002.
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tor of the KNVB decided not to follow up on the matter.12 In 2004, Feyenoord supporters brought Palestinian flags to an Ajax game. Thereafter, in
the semifinal of the Amstelcup between Ajax and Feyenoord in April 2004,
when Israeli or Palestinian flags were banned, Feyenoord fans came to the
stadium with flags of the Arab-European League, a radical Arab
movement.13
THE FUTILITY
OF
COMPLAINT
After several failures to stop the hate chants, CIDI Director Ronny
Naftaniel said in 2004 that it was futile to lodge complaints with the authorities. He mentioned that he had even appealed to the court against the public
prosecutor in the Netherlands concerning extreme expressions of discrimination, which the prosecution did not want to deal with. Naftaniel said, “If
it were useful, I would put forward a complaint, but if we have to bring
proof after the fact, that is not possible . . . are we the people who have to
clean up the dirt which the police and the justice authorities leave lying
around?”14
In the KNVB, doubts were expressed about the effectiveness of any
measures to be taken in the soccer stadiums. The manager of its competition, Bert van Oostveen, said that all the talk about stopping games didn’t
mean anything. “In the end they [the referees] will let the game go on.”15
On many occasions, authorities did nothing; some actually opposed
taking action. In 2004. Peter de Jonge, the mayor of Heerenveen, who represented the Dutch municipalities in the Commission on Soccer Vandalism,
said that it would be “a reward to the hooligans” if a game were stopped
because of 100 or 200 fans.16 He thus mentioned a substantially lower number of offenders than there frequently are and suggested that the problem
should be ignored. This further illustrates how Dutch authorities indirectly
assisted in the development of racism and lawlessness in the country for a
long time.
13. Ibid.
14. Milco Aarts, “Hooligan baas in stadion,” Telegraaf, September 18, 2004.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
2011]
633
A RARE INTERVENTION
One of the rare occasions when the authorities took action was in April
2002. Supporters of FC Utrecht shouted, in the Amsterdam Arena train station, such chants as “Hamas, Hamas, all Jews to the gas” and “Send them to
the [concentration] camp.” The then Amsterdam mayor Job Cohen issued
an emergency order, and 670 fans were sent back by train.17
In 2004, the Amsterdam Commission for Complaints against the
Police decided that the police had used “excessive force” in executing the
mayor’s orders. Mayor Cohen replied that he could agree with most of the
commission’s conclusions, adding that in some cases, the police had reacted
to the fans’ violence.18
In 2003, the same commission had concluded that the police had used
unnecessary force against the fans of Feyenoord at a game against Ajax. In
2004, eight of the complainants received financial compensation from the
Amsterdam municipality.19
ATTEMPTS
AT
REGULATION
The history of hate slogans in Dutch soccer stadiums in the new century includes frequent complaints, official hesitations, and the announcement of measures, which were then often carried out halfheartedly. At the
end of 2004, a referee temporarily halted the game between the professional
clubs VVV and Heracles because there were chants of “Hi, ha, penis of a
dog.” A week later, there was a long debate at the General Assembly of the
professional soccer clubs about which songs were permissible. A former
referee suggested that no action should be taken against “Hi, ha, penis of a
dog,” stating that in the soccer world, this is considered a title of honor.20
In January 2005, a special advisory committee of the professional soccer league prepared a list of chants to be forbidden. This list was accepted
by the KNVB. It prohibited all references to prostitutes, illnesses, and genitals. Furthermore, insulting remarks about race, belief, or group of the population were also forbidden, which means that jungle sounds, bleating of
sheep sounds, hissing, firework noises, and the expression “fucker of goats”
17.
18.
2004.
19.
20.
“Supporters na roepen leuzen teruggestuurd,” Volkskrant, April 22, 2002.
“Amsterdamse politie op de vingers getikt,” Volkskrant, September 25,
Ibid.
“Hi-ha-hondenlul is een eretitel,” AD, December 7, 2004.
634
[ VOL. 3:629
were prohibited. This list expanded upon one published a year earlier,
which had been accepted by the public authorities.21
In September 2004, when ADO played Ajax, the varied chants were so
persistent that the trainer of the Amsterdam club, Ronald Koeman,
threatened to remove his players from the field if this happened again.22
The media mentioned that besides what they termed “the usual antisemitic
curses,” there was repeated singing of: “Sylvie is the prostitute of Amsterdam,” a reference to the then-girlfriend—and now wife—of Ajax’s international player, Rafael van der Vaart.23
After that game, the Dutch soccer authorities announced new measures. At ADO’s next match, the referee told the press that he had been
informed in writing by the KNVB that in the event of lengthy and insulting
chanting, the match should be ended. He had received written instructions
that references to “sexual organs, serious illnesses and Jews would not be
tolerated.” There was singing from time to time about the opponent Vitesse:
“They are the homos, yes, yes, the homos of Vitesse,” but the referee said
he had not heard it. Also, when ADO supporters felt the referee had made a
mistake, they sang another of their classic chants: “Hi, ha, dog’s penis.”
The media was of the opinion that “in general, the fans had behaved within
the borders of what is presently considered acceptable in stadiums.”24
Around that time, CIDI Deputy Director Hadassa Hirschfeld wrote to
Wim Deetman, the mayor of The Hague, expressing her disappointment
that the police failed to act against the continual singing of antisemitic
chants, which included “Jews have to be gassed.”25
Theo de Roos, a well-known professor of criminal law, commented
that many of the usual chants are punishable according to two articles of
Dutch law. “The first says that nobody may incite somebody else to hate,
and the second forbids the racist insulting of a group of the population. ‘All
Jews should be gassed’ is undoubtedly punishable.”26
21. “Lijst met verboden spreekkoren,” Telegraaf, January 21, 2005.
22. Erik van der Walle, “Niemand durfde ooit een wedstrijd te staken,” NRC
Handelsblad, September 14, 2004.
23. Jaco Alberts, “ADO-supporters vinden zichzelf nu ‘lief,’ ” NRC Handelsblad, September 18, 2004.
24. Ibid.
25. “CIDI ‘diep teleurgesteld’ in politie en gemeente,” Haagsche Courant, September 14, 2004.
26. Milco Aarts, “Hooligan baas in stadion.”
2011]
635
A STOPPED GAME
On October 18, 2004, a match between ADO and PSV was stopped by
referee René Temmink. Before it started, ADO fans had already thrown
objects onto buses filled with PSV fans. The speaker warned the public
before and during the game, but ADO fans regularly sang hate chants,
including “Temmink is the whore of PSV” and “Hamas, Hamas, Temmink
to the gas.” When Temmink stopped the game, he had intended to continue
it after a cooling-off period. Riots started, however, and Mayor Deetman
then canceled the game altogether.27
Once soccer fans had seen that in the professional leagues hate songs
went unpunished, this seeped down to the lower leagues, where at most it
was mentioned in the local papers. One example, which was even reported
in the national media, happened in a low amateur league in the northeastern
part of the Netherlands. In 2004, Lionel Huizing, a football player—who
has a black mother and a white father—from De Weide, a small club in
Hoogeveen, was insulted during the entire game by the players of another
club, Klazienaveen. The referee stopped the game for a short time in order
to explain to the Klazienaveen captain that this was misconduct, but when
the game resumed, the insults did not abate.28
A CULTURE CHANGE
Until recently, few effective and consistent measures were enacted to
counter antisemitic hate songs. Tolerating antisemitic chants in the stadiums
for so long was one manifestation of the Dutch gedoogcultuur—a culture of
looking away from transgressions. This also breeds tolerance for intolerance. Partly due to this longstanding culture, it took many years before the
KNVB was willing to take action against racist and antisemitic outbursts.
Nowadays, this culture has become largely defunct.
By 2011, the public mood was finally ready for a zero-tolerance
approach toward expressions of antisemitism in the stadiums. Thus, publicity suddenly focused on hate chants at a celebration of ADO supporters
after its victory against Ajax. There, the fans, including ADO players Lex
Immers and Charlton Vicento, sang with much gusto: “We go chasing
Jews.” Once again, their target was not actual Jews but the players and fans
of Ajax. “Hamas Hamas, Jews to the gas” was also sung; this chant had
27. Robert Misset, “Staking na wangedrag ADO-fans,” Volkskrant, October 18,
2004; “Duel ADO-PSV gestaakt na spreekkoren,” NRC-Handelsblad, October 18,
2004.
28. “Voetballer doet aangifte van discriminatie,” Volkskrant, October 4, 2004.
636
[ VOL. 3:629
already been prohibited by the Supreme Court in 2009.29 The trainer of
ADO, John van den Brom, and his assistant, Maurice Steijn, were present at
the party. It was filmed by some of those who attended.
Reactions differed greatly from those during earlier years. The board
of ADO fined Immers heavily. The player offered his apologies, and said:
“I had been totally carried away by the euphoria after this special victory. I
hadn’t been aware at that moment of the insulting nature toward a whole
group of the population. I mixed up a nickname for a group with that of a
segment of the population. I regret this. What I did was not permissible and
I of course accept the fine which I received.”30
Van den Brom apologized to Ajax. He said: “We are role models. This
was a very expensive learning experience for us. If you make a mistake,
you have to sit on the blisters. I would have preferred to turn the clock back
on this incident.”31 The KNVB decided not to invite Vicento for the young
Dutch national team who would play a friendly game against young
Germany.32
GOVERNMENT RESPONSE
Parliamentarian Richard de Mos of the Freedom Party, who is also a
member of the Municipal Council in The Hague, condemned the antisemitic
chants, submitting parliamentary questions asking for measures against
antisemitic slogans in professional soccer.33 Thereafter, De Mos, an ADO
fan himself, received death threats from supporters of the club.
Andre Rouvoet, the leader of the Christian Union party at the time,
asked Minister of the Interior Piet Hein Donner how he intended to deal
with the misconduct of ADO. Rouvoet said: “If influential people allow this
to happen, they legitimize it. This illustrates that antisemitism is not only a
problem stemming from Moroccan Muslim youngsters, but it is also unfortunately a broader societal problem. This type of reprehensible event at and
around the sport fields is unacceptable. The Hague Alderman Karsten
Klein, for instance, should quickly enter into discussions with ADO on how
the club will assume its responsibility.”34
29. Arne Hankel, “Ook Hoge Raad vindt Hamas-leus beledigend,” Elsevier,
September 15, 2009.
30. “Geschrokken Immers: Jodenjacht leek mij onschuldig,” AD, March 21,
2011.
31. “Voorzitter Ajax: Stop met Joden als geuzennaam,” AD, March 23, 2011.
32. “ADO-feestje kost Vicento plek in Jong Oranje,” AD, March 21, 2011.
33. “Kamerlid PVV met dood bedreigd door fans ADO,” AD, March 23, 2011.
34. “Rouvoet wil Donner horen over ADO-wangedrag,” AD, March 21, 2011.
2011]
637
CIDI asked the director of the KNVB, Ronny Naftaniel, to suspend
Immers and Van de Brom. Naftaniel replied: “Even though we know that
the slogans are against Ajax, it is reprehensible that this should happen on
the back of the Jews. In the past, such insulting slogans had been tolerated
quietly in the stadium. Now one also hears them in the streets. That is even
more reprehensible as incidents are on the increase against synagogues and
so are threats and violence against recognizable Jews in the street.”35
A HARMFUL NICKNAME
Uri Coronel, who is Jewish, was the chairman of Ajax in March 2011,
but has since resigned. He called on the club’s fans to refrain from using the
nickname “Jews” and said, “Our fans are not responsible for people who
use such horrible language. Apparently, however, by their songs, they provoke these reactions. They thus should stop [calling themselves Jews].”36
Coronel added that he had even heard members of the business club of
FC Utrecht singing that they “went to chase Jews.” He observed that he had
once entered the Feyenoord stadium between a double lineup of youngsters
who made the “Heil Hitler” salute; “One cannot even describe this experience,” he said.37
In 2005, there were complaints in a meeting of the Members Council
of Ajax about the nickname “Jews” because it provoked antisemitic reactions. The board was requested to take action against its use. The thenchairman John Jaakke asked Coronel to talk to the supporters; to them,
Coronel said that this way of presenting Ajax “as a Jewish club is painful
and relates to the Holocaust . . . If Ajax abandons the ‘Jews’ nickname and
related issues one can also ask others to behave differently.” Before a game
with the German club Bayern München, a banner with the text “Jews take
revenge for 1945” was removed.38 Coronel’s meeting with the supporters
produced no results.
Coronel’s observations on this issue go back many years. Already in
2000, he was quoted as saying: “I have seen things that, if they were filmed,
could be compared to Hitler’s Germany at the beginning of the 1930s . . .
you arrive by bus at Feyenoord or at The Hague; hundreds of people with
hatred in their eyes call out ‘Jews,’ they hiss [as an indication of the gas in
Auschwitz] and make the [Nazi] salute.”39
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
“CIDI eist bij KNVB schorsing Van den Brom,” AD, March 21, 2011.
“Voorzitter Ajax: Stop met Joden als geuzennaam,” AD, March 23, 2011.
Ibid.
Jop van Kempen, “Ajax wil van ‘Joden-gedoe’ af,” Parool, January 8, 2005.
Simon Kuper, “Ajax, de joden, Nederland,” 141.
638
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In 2005, Coronel told this author:
If we were to forbid these Stars of David, we would get riots in return. In
general, the authorities are already happy when there are no fights after
soccer games. There have been threats to end games, but they didn’t go
very far. We have, however, slept too long.
I think this nickname [“the Jews”] started in the 1980s. There was
no logical reason for it. Ajax had the image of a Jewish club which was
not based on anything. If 50,000 people come to a soccer game and
among them are 500 Jews, that is a lot for us, in particular if we more or
less sit on the same tribune, but basically Ajax has never had many Jewish members and hardly any Jewish players. We had in the 1960s and
early 1970s two players who had Jewish fathers and were both on the
Dutch national team, Sjaak Swart and Benny Muller. Swart, however,
always denied that he was Jewish. There were also some board members
who were of Jewish origin. Before the war there had been a Jewish Ajax
player, Eddie Hamel, who was on the national team. He died in a concentration camp.
We should have objected from the beginning to the nickname, but
we didn’t realize it. Thereafter the hooligans from some other teams,
mainly Feyenoord, ADO and FC. Utrecht started to sing antisemitic hate
songs. Our hard-core fans, perhaps 1000 among our 40,000 regular supporters, then started to say you cannot take away our “identity.” This is of
course nonsense. Gradually more and more Israeli flags and Stars of
David appeared in the stadium. At a certain moment, some fans started
putting tattoos of the Star of David on their hands.
After the murder of media maker Theo van Van Gogh in 2004 and
the increasing antisemitism from Muslims, there were more and more
voices asking for the nickname to be abandoned. It didn’t help much even
though the number of flags diminished.
Then the international publicity about this issue started for instance
in The New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, and Le Figaro
in France. Thereafter we got complaints from Israel that we were
ashamed of our Jewish image. When Ajax and supporters with it visited
there, people loved it and thought that it was a sign of solidarity with
Israel. That didn’t help us because now our fans started saying, “What do
you want? People in Israel love it that we call ourselves Jews!”40
After the ADO court case, Coronel summed up his current position:
It is annoying that Ajax supporters call themselves Jews, but it does not
touch me very much. We should realize that when about thirty years ago
Israeli flags appeared on the tribunes, the Jewish community was proud
and not annoyed. It became unacceptable due to the reaction of some of
40. Uri Coronel, personal communication to author.
2011]
639
our opponents. Yet it makes little sense to force Ajax supporters to give
up their nickname. First of all it will not succeed and secondly we should
concentrate on fighting against what it apparently provokes and not on
the use of the nicknames.41
A MAYOR’S OPINION
In May 2011, Eberhard van der Laan (Labor), the mayor of Amsterdam, criticized the fans’ use of the nickname “Jews” in an interview. He
said that this nickname could result in people coming out against Jews and
that this should be prevented. Van der Laan added that he didn’t have any
illusions about a quick response: “It is a matter of change in behavior,
which may take ten years. That does not mean that we shouldn’t start working on it immediately.”42
Robert Flos, head of the Liberal Party (VVD) faction in the Amsterdam Municipal Council, said that Van der Laan should discuss the use of
the nickname with the Ajax fan club. Flos mentioned that in Amsterdam, an
atmosphere is slowly developing that is very polarizing, noting that
“homophobia and antisemitism are on the rise.” He also thought that the
problems related to the nickname of “Jew” could take five to ten years
before they were solved.43
Two months earlier, Van der Laan expressed his anger about a T-shirt
that had been designed by a small group of Ajax supporters for the club’s
cup final against Feyenoord. The shirt, which was offered for sale on a fan
site, had a picture of Rotterdam being bombarded with Stars of David. It
had as text “Aboutaleb, the Jews are coming.” Rotterdam’s mayor, Ahmed
Aboutaleb (Labor), is a Moroccan-born Muslim.44
In September 2011, however, the BAN Foundation wanted to cash in
on its success in the court case against ADO, and brought a rapid court
cause claim against Amsterdam Mayor Van der Laan and Ajax in order to
force them to ban the word “Jew” in slogans displayed in the soccer stadiums. BAN mentioned chants like “We are super-Jews” or “Those who do
not jump are not Jews.” As a reaction to this, the Ajax supporters club
called on the fans to bring Israeli flags, scarves, and objects with the Star of
41. Ibid.
42. Hugo Logtenberg, “Van der Laan wil ‘Joden, Joden’ verbannen uit de
Arena,” Parool, May 13, 2011.
43. “VVD-Amsterdam wil af van term ‘Joden,’ ” NIW, May 18, 2011.
44. “Van der Laan boos over anti-Feyenoordshirt,” Parool, March 7, 2011.
“Ajaxfans verwijzen met shirt naar bombardement Rotterdam.” NRC, March 5,
2011.
640
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David on them to all games.45 In October 2011, however, BAN withdrew
first the court case against Van der Laan46 and thereafter also that against
Ajax.47
TRADITION
OF
INSULTING MINORITIES
The antisemitic songs have been heard now for many years by hundreds of thousands of people at Dutch football stadiums. The press has
described it as a recurring phenomenon over the years. Occasionally, efforts
were made to weaken the songs’ impact. One example of this is loud music
played during a game to drown out the chants.48
Frits Barend, a well-known Dutch TV program host, has a long-term
interest in soccer and has produced many programs about it. He mentioned
that the first groups insulted on Dutch soccer fields were black players, as
well as Moroccans.
Barend observed: “There was a Dutch international player who was
also a Moroccan—Dries Bousatta—who, when he played, songs were
chanted such as ‘Your mother has a moustache’ or ‘Your mother is a
whore.’ On the tribunes, minorities, homosexuals and referees have been
cursed terribly. In the Netherlands, these shouts at various minorities have
been tolerated for many years.”
He remarked further: “Former black Ajax goalie Stanley Menzo was
subjected to jungle noises from his opponent’s fans. I was once at a cup
final in The Hague against Ajax where they threw a banana at him in his
goal and made monkey sounds. I taped and broadcast it. After the game, the
chairman of the professional soccer section of the KNVB, Andre van der
Louw—a Labor politician—praised the public for their excellent behavior.
Van der Louw’s attitude was typical of the mindset of political leaders at
the time.”49
This behavior continued for years. In 2005, there were both antisemitic
and anti-black slogans heard during a home game between Ajax and FC
Utrecht. Fans shouted “Whoever doesn’t jump is a Jew,” and there were
45. “AFCA: Neem davidsster mee naar ArenA,” AT5, September 24, 2011.
46. “Toch geen kort geding VDLaan,” AT5, October 13, 2011.
47. “Stichting BAN trekt kort geding tegen Ajax in,” De Pers, October 24,
2011.
48. Willem Vissers, “Oplossing voor verbaal geweld: harde muziek,” Volkskrant, September 13, 2004.
49. Frits Barend, personal communication to author.
2011]
641
hissing sounds. When black player Ryan Babel got the ball, jungle sounds
were also heard.50
Looking back, Barend says:
Ajax never liked the use of the nickname “Jews.” One of the chairmen,
Michael van Praag, who was of Jewish origin, thought, “Don’t make a
fuss about it. If you don’t deal with it, it will go away.” I also thought for
some time: “Let’s perhaps not give too much attention to it for a year or
two perhaps the problem will indeed go away.” It of course didn’t disappear, but then the management of Ajax didn’t want to deal with it.
The issue had already started under Van Praag’s predecessor, but at
a certain moment, Ajax really got the nickname of the Jewish club, and
the Israeli flag and the Star of David became a kind of symbol. Of course,
one can laugh when, after Ajax scored a goal, they sang the Israeli song
“Hava Nagila,” but then they went further, into “We are super-Jews and
whoever doesn’t jump isn’t a Jew.” Thereafter, you get reactions from
Feyenoord—“Whoever doesn’t jump is a Jew.”51
MANAGEMENT
AT
RISK
In describing management’s response to antisemitic chanting, Barend
observes:
When former Ajax trainer Louis Van Gaal’s wife died of cancer, in some
stadiums supporters chanted: “Van Gaal had a cancer prostitute.”52 Journalists have also been threatened at times. The throwing of small objects
onto the playing field is common, along with excessive imbibing of alcohol and the unauthorized use of fireworks in the stadium.
I sat with a colleague of mine at the tribune of honor at PSV in
Eindhoven when they played against Ajax. There, “respectable people”
with suits and ties sang “Cancer Jew” and “He’s a friend of the Jews”
when the referee made calls against the PSV team. The same also happened at Feyenoord.
Even when the club management tried to do something about these
things, they were at risk themselves. If one excluded a fan, he might
throw stones through one’s window. These hooligans are anonymous in a
bigger group while the leaders of the fan club always distanced themselves from the violence.”53
over het jaar 2005 en de periode 1 januari–5 mei 2006,” CIDI, 22.
52. Milco Aarts, “Hooligan baas in stadion,” CIDI.
642
ATTITUDES NOW SEEPING
INTO
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SOCIETY
The authorities’ lack of desire to deal with the recurring racism and
antisemitism in the stadiums has allowed the hate songs to gradually seep
into society at large. Once there. it is almost impossible to combat. The
antisemitic chants have spread in various directions elsewhere. At demonstrations against Israel, for instance, the chant “Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the
gas” is often sung, mainly by Muslims. There the target is real Jews.
Soccer fans also started to sing the same chants outside of the stadium.
The non-Jewish journalist Matthijs Smits relates that he was invited a number of years ago by Jewish friends in Amsterdam for the first evening of the
Passover holiday. He entered an electric tram car full of soccer fans of PSV,
who were on their way to a game against Ajax. They chanted loudly,
“Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas.” Smits said that he did not know what
would have happened if they had considered him a real Jew.54
Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs, chief rabbi of the interprovincial rabbinate,
tells that he, together with a non-Jewish psychologist, once entered a train
full of Feyenoord supporters. When the fans saw them, they started to
chant: “Jews to the gas.” Jacobs said that he had the feeling that this whole
train of “ordinary Dutchmen” was against them.
“The psychologist shrunk from fear,” the rabbi remarked. “It seemed
to me that that reaction wouldn’t help very much, so I feigned that I was
indifferent to it as a sign of strength. One can consider this incident as an
act of hooliganism, yet if one of these idiots had attacked us, many more
would probably have followed him.”55
In 2006, The Hague rap group Den Haag Connection (DHC) published
a song on the Internet titled “Hague Jihad” (Haagse jihad). It included texts
such as “Hamas, Hamas, all Jews to the gas,” “One day you’ll get the
Hague Jihad on your roof,” and “Cancer Jews.”56
ANTISEMITISM
ON THE
PLAYING FIELD
There was also direct antisemitism against Jews on the soccer fields.
One example was in 2002, when a Jewish youth team of RKAVIC in a
lower league was physically attacked during a game by a team, mainly consisting of Turkish and Moroccan youngsters, from SC Oriënt in the northern
54. Matthijs Smits, personal communication to author.
55. Binyomin Jacobs, “Rabbijn in een polariserende samenleving.” Interview in
Manfred Gerstenfeld, Het Verval (Amsterdam; Van Praag 2009), 175-176.
56. Meir Villegas Henriguez, “Antisemitische incidenten in Nederland.
Overzicht over het jaar 2006 en de periode 1 januari–5 mei 2007, ” CIDI, 22-23.
2011]
643
part of Amsterdam; thereafter, they were harassed in the locker rooms.
When these SC Oriënt youngsters also made the Hitler salute, the team was
expelled from the competition.57
On International Holocaust Memorial Day, January 27, 2008, a text
message appeared on the video screen at the Vitesse stadium during a game
against Ajax. It read, “Hoezee, hoezee, Long live Zyklon B,” referring to
the gas used in extermination camps during the Holocaust.58 A Vitesse
spokesperson later expressed the club’s regrets and said that fans can send
SMS texts for the video screen. She explained that before being posted,
they are checked, but that this particular one had slipped through.59
During that same year, in a professional-league game against RBC
from Roosendaal, the Belgian player Daniel Guijo-Velasco of Helmond
Sport made the “Heil Hitler” salute. He was suspended by the KNVB for
five games.60 Velasco apologized the next day.61
The many years of unchecked verbal abuse have also occasionally led
to physical violence. In April 2004, a number of Feyenoord supporters were
wounded after a junior-team game against Ajax. Some of the attackers had
their faces covered.
In 2004, supporters of the top-league club FC Twente published data
on the Internet about their trip to Groningen for a game against the local
club, illustrated with a picture of a transport of Jews during the Holocaust.
It is one among many incidents during that year reported by CIDI.62
In 2005, three fans of Club Cambuur from Leeuwarden were removed
from the stadium in Emmen after they made a “Heil Hitler” salute and yelled out racist remarks. They also shouted the Nazi slogan “Sieg Heil” several times.63
57. Hadassa Hirschfeld, “Overzicht antisemitische incidenten Nederland 2001
en voorlopig overzicht 2002, CIDI.” See also Marc Kruyswijk, “Steeds vaker
Hitlergroet,” AD, May 31, 2002.
58. “Antisemitism Worldwide 2008/9,” The Stephen Roth Institute for the
Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism, 12.
59. “Vitesse betreurt antisemitisme tegen Ajax,” Hakehillot Nieuws, February
1, 2008.
60. “Midfielder handed five match-ban for Nazi salute,” International Herald
Tribune, December 3, 2008.
61. “Helmond-Sport: taakstraf en schorsing na Hitlergroet,” Omroep Brabant,
November 29, 2008.
62. Hadassa Hirschfeld en Agnes van der Sluijs, “Antisemitische incidenten in
Nederland. Overzicht over het jaar 2004 en de periode 1 januari–5 mei 2005,”
CIDI, 27.
over het jaar 2005 en de periode 1 januari–5 mei 2006,” CIDI, 22.
644
[ VOL. 3:629
Later, the identification of a group of Ajax fans with the nickname
“Jews” also became known internationally. In 2003, supporters of the Belgian team Club Brugge shouted in Amsterdam, “We are going to chase
Jews,” saying that ADO supporters joined in with the shouting. During subsequent fights with Ajax fans, 100 people were arrested.64
When the top Spanish team Real Madrid came to the Netherlands for a
Champions league game in November 2010, part of a group of 200 Spanish
fans shouted “Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil” and “Juden Raus, Juden Raus.” The
fans also made the “Heil Hitler” salute. Eleven fans were arrested, each
receiving a fine of 200 Euro. The Real Madrid fan club paid the fine.65
SOCCER ANTISEMITISM ABROAD
Antisemitism in and around soccer fields manifests itself in many
ways in several countries. Already in 1999, the Swiss-based International
Federation of Football (FIFA) had condemned the racist actions of the
Romanian Soccer Federation Vice President Dumitru Dragomir. Dragomir
was the editor of a publication in which Jews were referred to as “potential
soap.”66
In 2007, the American Jewish Committee published an overview of
antisemitism related to soccer in a number of countries.67 One extreme case
resulted in a death. After a match between Paris Saint-Germain and Hapoel
Tel Aviv in Paris in November 2006, “a fan of both clubs was chased by
about 150 Paris Saint-Germain supporters. An undercover police officer
who tried to help him was himself attacked and subjected to racial slurs
about his black skin color. When the use of tear gas proved insufficient to
stop the attackers, the policeman pulled his gun and fired a shot, accidentally killing a Paris Saint-Germain fan and wounding another.”68
One among many cases of antisemitism in soccer stadiums in 2011
was when top UK team Chelsea played in Malaysia. There were antisemitic
65. “Real Madrid betaalt boetes antisemitische hooligans,” Parool, 18 May
2011.
66. “World Soccer Federation Assures ADL Antisemitism Is Unacceptable;
FIFA Seeks to Distance the Sport from a Romanian Racist,” Anti-Defamation
League, August 16, 1999.
67. Yves Pallade, Christoph Villinger, and Deidre Berger, “Antisemitism and
Racism in European Soccer,” AJC Berlin Office/Ramer Center for German-Jewish
Relations, May 2007.
68. Ibid.
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chants shouted at its Israeli player Jossi Benayoun.69 Chelsea protested and
afterward Malaysia apologized.70 The subject of soccer antisemitism in
various countries is widespread enough to warrant an updated study.
Elements of incidents similar to those in the Netherlands occur elsewhere in Europe. For instance, after antisemitic insults were made against
their club, mostly non-Jewish fans of the London-based Tottenham Hotspur
called themselves Yiddos, which has led to demands that this be stopped.71
In Poland, soccer hooligans often shout: “Jews to the gas,” ”Kill the Jewish
whores,” or “Hit the Jew on their trap.” Soccer clubs have long ignored this,
explaining it as “Polish folklore.” In the summer of 2011, Polish Prime
Minister Donald Tusk said that to stop this was of prime importance for
him.72 Nowhere, however, does a multifaceted situation exist identical to
the Dutch one concerning Ajax.
AN IMPORTANT ISSUE
Antisemitism in the Dutch soccer world is ubiquitous and has had
many negative consequences. Hate songs, which were once confined to specific areas—mainly stadiums and their environment—have now permeated
the Dutch public domain. The phenomenon also exemplifies how discriminatory attacks directed at Jews intermingle or are followed by aggression
against other groups. The text “Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas” expresses
eloquently how anti-Israelism and antisemitism go together.
The official reactions to the phenomenon expose how weak the Dutch
justice system has been in implementing existing legislation for a long time.
Society is also often more concerned about the police’s behavior than that
of the hooligans or criminals. Both of these topics are outside the scope of
this essay.
The history of the antisemitic chants at the Dutch soccer fields also
opens up a window onto Dutch society at large and its long culture of tolerance for the intolerable. The brutal murder of Theo van Gogh in 2004 by
Mohammed Bouyeri, a radical Muslim, was a warning sign to Dutch society at large and also a turning point; yet, it has taken many more years to
begin dealing with the problem on the soccer fields.
69. Dominic Fiffield, “Chelsea object to ‘antisemitic’ abuse of Yossi Benayoun
in Malaysia,” Guardian, July 28, 2011.
70. “Malaysian FA apologises to Chelsea’s Yossi Benayoun after abuse claim,”
Guardian, July 29, 2011.
71. Ivor Baddiel, “ ‘Alarming’ level of antisemitism in football must be tackled,” The Telegraph, April 14, 2011.
72. “Antisemitismus als Folklore,” TAZ, September 5, 2011.
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For a long time, few understood how an issue unrelated to real Jews
mutated into many ugly and antisemitic directions. Even now, some Jews
write articles claiming that the hate chants have nothing to do with
antisemitism—as if that were the crux of the problem.73 Such people lack
the ability to see an issue in its full context.
The history of antisemitism on Dutch soccer fields shows how Jews
are very often drawn into problematic situations against their will. They
must always be far more on guard against potential risks than the average
Dutchman. Simultaneously, the issue illustrates once again how problems
involving Jews offer a prism view onto Dutch society.
It is evident that a more detailed analysis of antisemitism and racism
on Dutch soccer fields would be important for many reasons. This is so
even if a significant percentage of the hate-mongers are marginal individuals in society.
*Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld is chairman of the Jerusalem Center for Public
Affairs. His background is in chemistry, economics, environmental studies, and
Jewish studies. He has been an international business strategist for forty years; his
clients have included the boards of several of the world’s largest multinational corporations, as well as governments. Gerstenfeld has published twenty books, including the Italian bestseller Revaluing Italy. His recent book, in Dutch—The Decay:
Jews in a Rudderless Netherlands—has sparked a major public and parliamentary
debate in that country, and has had an international impact as well. The research for
this essay was made possible through the support of the Stichting Collectieve
Marorgelden Israel (SCMI).
73. Martijn Kleijwegt, “Wangedrag supporters is geen antisemitisme,” Volkskrant, March 25, 2011.
Was Cesare Lombroso Antisemitic?
Gabriel Cavaglion*
Jewish Italian physician Cesare (Hizkiah Mordecai) Lombroso (18351909) was a reformer in modern penology and is considered by many to be
the father of positivist criminology. His writings on race, however, make
him unquestionably antisemitic. Why would a Jew write on antisemitism?
Whether Lombroso was right or wrong is perhaps in the last analysis
not so important as the unquestionable fact that his ideas proved so challenging that they gave unprecedented impetus to the study of the criminal
offender. Any scholar who succeeds in driving hundreds of students to
search for the truth, and whose ideas after half a century still possess vitality, merits an honorable place in the history of thought (Sellin, 1937). A
careful study of Lombroso’s heritage, education, environment, and ambition
yields some rationales for both his attitude toward his fellow Jews and his
influential role in penology and criminology. This essay discusses all these
elements in the formation of Lombroso—the scientist and the man.
Lombroso went to secular Italian schools in Verona and Chieri, in
northern Italy. Here, thanks to his astute and idealistic mother, he was
exposed to cultures of the non-Jewish world, “rich in poetry and art, so
typical of distinguished and respectable Jewish families, in an enlightened,
scholarly atmosphere, in which Jewish tradition was utterly compatible with
revolutionary ideas” (Drapkin, 1977, 25).
Unlike his mother, his father was God-fearing, fearful and anxious,
unskilled, and, as merchant and breadwinner, a failure. He was a man
“made happy by a quiet life, study, and reading holy books” (Dolza, 1990,
29). His granddaughter, Cesare’s daughter Gina Lombroso, described him
as “scholarly, kindhearted, gentle, and mild, but very shy, very religious,
awkward, weak, and completely obedient to conservative traditions” (G.
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Lombroso, 1915). He caused the economic collapse and the loss of the family’s assets when Cesare was a boy. This character, known in Jewish-European satirical literature as a “shlemiel” (Gilman, 1986), would come to
represent the embodiment of traditional Judaism to the adult Cesare and the
focus of his attack, as described below.
As early as age 10, Cesare rebelled against his father in everything
connected with observance of the commandments, and he renounced faith
and ritual. He considered himself a free thinker and a rationalist, adopting a
worldview of materialism and skepticism, intermingled with the prevailing
liberal humanist ideology of the period, as befitted an enlightened northern
Italian Jew. As a telling example, his first name, Cesare, meaning a Roman
emperor, is a nickname that he adopted as his formal name. By doing so, he
allied himself with ancient Italian tradition and with the Romantic pride of
modern unified Italy. The names inscribed on his birth certificate, Mordecai
and Hizkiah, would be forgotten.
The tension he felt with religious conventions would remain conspicuous throughout his lifetime. For example, when he agreed, past the age of
30, to marry a Jewish girl, he refused to consult with family or with a
matchmaker, as was the custom then, thus causing great tension between his
traditional relatives and himself (Baima Bollone, 1992, 72).
Lombroso grew up in a period of historically fateful transformations:
the continued emancipation of the Jews of northern Italy and the assimilation of the Jewish middle and intellectual classes into the life of the young
nation, and their support for political movements that identified with insurgency and the unification of the state (Risorgimento Italiano). Lombroso
served as a military doctor in military prisons in southern Italy (the Calabria
region), where he encountered an assortment of dialects and cultures. He
later directed a psychiatric hospital, was an academic researcher at the University of Torino, and was a political initiator in the People’s Party in this
town (Wolfgang, 1973, 238).
According to Rafter and Gibson in their updated introduction to the
Criminal Woman, Lombroso grew up at a time of political and intellectual
upheaval, of yearning for the revival, unification, and independence of a
divided Italy—the dream of expelling the occupying foreign forces, defeating absolutist regimes, and unifying the Italian peninsula under a parliamentary government (in Lombroso and Ferrero, 2004, 15).
Lombroso believed in the leaders of the independence movement.
Shocked by the poverty, epidemics, ignorance, and malnutrition of the population that he saw as a military doctor in Calabria, he developed a sense of
mission to improve the physical and mental health of the lower class. In
time, notes the Italian historian Delia Frigessi, impelled by his political and
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649
social sensitivity, he became an active figure in the Socialist party and
served a term as a member of the Torino City Council (Frigessi, 2003, 263).
Lombroso was an active person by nature who, according to his
daughter Gina, wanted to know everything about everything. He loved to be
present where culture was produced and disseminated, and invested great
effort in being part of the literary scene. He never missed an opportunity to
express his opinion, even if it had no logical basis (Rondini, 2001). As will
be seen below, it is not difficult to separate his impetuous, mercurial, and
extroverted nature from the form and content of his scientific articles;
neither is it a problem to differentiate between his desire to distance himself
from what his father, as a believing Jew, symbolized for him and his own
convictions regarding the place of the people of Israel.
RACIAL SCIENCE THEORY
Lombroso, like many doctors of the period, was influenced by Darwinist theory and by phrenology and craniology (measurement of the brain and
cranium to identify attributes of character/disposition, morality, and personality of the patient). Among other things, he developed a model for the
identification of bodily attributes in criminals by measuring sizes, symmetries, and anatomical proportions. This anthropometry is an area that,
despite the credit accorded to Lombroso, began its development as early as
Della Porte in 1586 and Lavater in 1775 (for a review, see Jones, 1986, 82).
In the Lombrosian model, the concept of atavism is linked to an irreversible process of the hereditary transmission of internal physical characteristics and the creation of populations with inferior development among
the species, such as criminals, wild men, and apes. To protect society, Lombroso believed that deliberate selection was appropriate, to complement and
fortify natural selection (Lombroso, 1911, xv). In earlier versions, he considered criminals “atavistic throwbacks” to primitive varieties in the continuum of the development of the species. He determined that “the criminal is
not at all a member of the race of ‘knowing’ humans, Homo sapiens, but
represents instead a throwback to a residual form of an earlier, more primitive race—Homo delinquens” (Shoham, Rahav, and Addad, 1987, 72).
Lombroso dealt with issues of eugenics by prescribing programs of physical
and mental hygiene.
Lombroso considered himself a progressive, scientific emissary, tending to the concerns of the new status of his country, Italy. And as a scientist
it was his desire to promote Italy as an equal among the European nations.
He felt an obligation to an agenda of Italy’s internal affairs, wanting among
other things to propose a solution for the enormous gap dividing Aryan
northern Italy—European, progressive, and highly educated—from Semitic
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southern Italy—Mediterranean, conservative, poor, distressed, and
neglected (Gibson, 1998). One aim of Lombroso’s anthropology was to
position Italy among modern European nations, thereby creating boundaries
around a new Italian citizenry, or, in Horn’s terminology, “an imagined
Italian citizenry” (Horn, 2003, 33).
In Lombroso’s world, northern Italians were Europeans in every
respect, but he tended to marginalize the southerners, who had joined the
unification of Italy in 1871. The southerners were the “Other”—primitive,
untamed, poor, violent, vengeful, and corrupt. According to Horn (2003,
37-43), Lombroso’s preoccupation with crime represented his attempt to
eliminate the “savage” from the European Enlightenment: to demarcate the
boundaries between progressive Europe and the inferior third world. In the
fifth edition of The Criminal Man (L’Uomo Deliquente, 1878), Lombroso
stated that criminals speak like wild men living within the flourishing European culture. Thus, as a scientist, he proposed a solution involving the identification, classification, and eradication of the wild, a rational management
of social deviancy.
Not surprisingly, Lombroso provided racist ammunition for Western
demagogues. For example, in his book Delitti Vecchi e Nuovi (1902), he
says, “Regardless of dress or habits that may camouflage the American
black man, he has a surfeit of contempt for the lives of others, [has] the
pitilessness so characteristic of all wild men” (Lombroso, 1902, 12). The
white man is “most perfect,” the black, “most imperfect.” The black man
represents “the most primitive race; he has not changed throughout
thousands of years, and he still exhibits the childish style, his smile and
movements similar to that of the apes” (quoted in Gibson, 1998, 105). Lombroso praises Western-Northern civilization, which he defines as industrialized, rich, well educated, and well informed by the press (Lombroso, 1902,
7). Australia is depicted as the most civilized country and a happy civilization, because of its white population and modernity. States with high rates
of immigration from “barbarian” uncivilized countries nevertheless suffer
from violent crimes. The presence of “colored populations” in the United
States is characterized by “a lower stage of civility,” which accounts for the
high murder rates. Homicide is part of daily life in the sense that beast-like
sexual impulses are as well. Lombroso takes the same attitude toward people from the south of Italy, whom he views as the remnant of barbarian
hordes (Albanians and Greeks), living in an inferior moral stage (Lombroso, 1902, 57), thirsting for revenge and perceiving this as natural
behavior.
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AND
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RACIAL SILENCE
For the most part, modern Western criminology texts, with a few isolated exceptions—e.g., Adler, Mueller, and Laufer, 1991—have made little
mention of the racial implications of Lombrosian theory. There is no mention whatsoever of this sinister subject either in criminological or in historical texts (Gibson, 1998, 114).
An attempt to understand why the texts have repeatedly ignored or
muzzled the racial ramifications of Lombrosian theory and his shameless
attitude toward Judaism is beyond the scope of this essay. I will mention
just two possible explanations for the denial, the ignoring, or the silence: 1)
the lack of English translations of a few of the original texts, and 2) criminological positivism’s fear of harsh criticism of the “founding father” of
modern criminology, with the result, to be avoided at all costs, that the
branch upon which they have been sitting could be cut out from under
them.
Criminologists consider Cesare Lobroso’s methodology to be controversial. Criticism of the methodology of the father of positivism, however,
is only part of the story. It is true that Lombroso was guilty of positivist
thinking’s basic sin: the ability to organize one’s arguments with basic
internal logic in order to explain how phenomena occur and fall into place.
This is the First Commandment of positivism, as defined by Auguste
Comte. But surely a more serious sin, as this paper will stress, is its
substance.
It is primarily Lombroso’s flawed methodology that seems to have
attracted most of the criticism of these literary genres throughout the years.
This gives rise to a certain paradox in the body of our knowledge of criminology: while we can assert that Lombroso was indeed the father of modern
criminology, could he also have been the father of criminological positivism, which insists on basing itself on objective and neutral empiricism,
appropriate methodology, and the creation of internal logic?
A sample of 26 textbooks and introductions to criminology examined
from the bookshelves of Israeli institutions of higher education reveals an
invariable duplication of content. A thorough summary of this duplication,
with an expanded critical discussion of the methodological problem, can be
found in Dario Melossi (2008, 49-52):
• Regarding the nature of the criminal without regard to the cultural
variable and its influences on the law enforcement system.
• A rigid reliance on causal fallacy, using only two variables (for
example, body structure as a direct factor in criminal activity).
• The lack of a control group.
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• A disregard of the screening done by the law enforcement system,
which tends to imprison certain populations. These are prisoners, not
necessarily representative of the criminal population.
Internal logic is rarely mentioned as the most damning shortcoming. It
would appear that Lombroso took pains to eschew thought of any kind in
order to graft the facts onto a supposedly logical theory. Gould (1981) says
that Lombroso constructed virtually all his arguments in a manner that
excluded defeat, thus making them scientifically meaningless. Whenever he
encountered a contrary fact, he performed some mental gymnastics to incorporate it within his system (Gould, 126).
His “positivist method” was thus to create chaos in the course of
developing the theory, or “the messiness of science-in-the-making” (Horn,
2003, 5). Lombroso preferred adding to his publications, including ever
newer editions, to processing, fine-tuning, and integrating. He hastened to
publish as much as he could, never subjecting his various editions to revision. The result was text that was uneven, confused, and full of contradictions and errors. Lombroso, a man of curiosity, was also impulsive and
disorganized. He had an enormous craving for knowledge, information
gathering, measurement, and the creation of categories in the naı̈ve hope
that loading more and more material and creating more categories would
result in the creation of knowledge: “a considerable amount of work was
involved in trying to make these texts cohere, to hold everything together
under the umbrella of a new discipline, and to have it all count as science”
(Horn, 5).
For example, the first edition of his book The Criminal Man (L’Uomo
Delinquente, 1876) comprised 252 pages, while the three-volume fifth edition contained 1900 pages. Nothing was deleted from the earlier editions.
Criticism relating to Lombroso and the “other,” which centers on his
treatment of women, also takes him to task for contradictions in internal
logic (Smart, 1977, 32-34). A number of feminist scholars mention a qualitative defect in his distorted perception of women in general and delinquent
women in particular (see a survey in Harrowitz, 1994, chap. 2). Lombroso
was faced with a severe problem. He theorized that women turn to crime
less than men do; therefore, they must theoretically be less atavistic. On the
other hand, he adopted the notion that women are inferior to men and atavistic by nature. If Lombroso the private individual advocated free choice
and divorce, Lombroso the researcher spoke of the utter inferiority of
women to men (Gibson, 2002, 82). Here there is a failure of logic. As
Zedner remarks (1994, 279), if all women are atavistic by nature, it is difficult to identify women who are criminals, because of the lack of external
signs. The solution, according to Zedner, was the focus on prostitution,
which Lombroso said included unfaithfulness and sexual promiscuity, the
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natural expression of feminine degeneration. “Prostitution” was the magic
word that can make sense of Lombroso’s theory regarding female delinquency in general.
This contradiction and probable emotional ambivalence regarding
women is particularly manifest in Lombroso’s family life. He married a
young woman and then drove a wedge between her and her observance of
the Jewish commandments. Before his marriage, he wrote to a friend that
she was young and beautiful, but that she observed the commandments;
however, he would see to it that she forgot about them quickly. Although he
favored progress, liberalism, and sexual equality, he insisted on signora De
Benedetti’s devoting herself completely to being a wife and mother. Lombroso fell under the spell of a socialist feminist doctor, Anna Kulishov, a
frequent guest in his home, who used her influence to further his daughters’
academic lives. On the other hand, his daughter Gina, a doctor, submitted
entirely to his guidance and backing (Melossi, 2008, 61), and served as his
personal secretary and faithful emissary of his theories on the American
continent.
As noted, a review of the literature shows that only a few scholars are
conversant with Lombroso’s ideas about race and their negative implications for Western culture in the twentieth century. Brennan, Mednick, and
Volavka (1995) alone had the perspicacity to say that his ideas provided “a
rational basis for European imperialism and American racial social policy”
(Brennan et al., 65), but they do not elaborate. David Garland too (1997) is
aware that Lombroso gained popularity in Italy thanks to the fact that the
criminal type was both consistent with deep prejudices and endorsed the
middle class in its perception of the criminality produced by urbanization
processes (Garland, 30).
The Jewish question that preoccupied Lombroso, particularly in one of
his writings on antisemitism (1894) and in how his writing fanned the
flames of racism, is not discussed at all in the criminology literature. The
fact that Lombroso’s book Antisemitismo e le Scienze Moderne was not
translated into English probably explains this avoidance and silence, and it
is also likely that, as mentioned earlier, it is hard for contemporary positivist criminologists to tarnish the name of their “founding father” with
charges of racism or, worse, to accuse this enlightened and progressive Jewish doctor of Jew-hatred.
RACIAL THEORY
Some of Lombroso’s followers veered ominously in the direction of
race theory when they attempted to identify inferiority in human races,
including not only the Homo delinquens and the mentally ill but also infer-
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ior races—in particular Mediterranean/Semites, the black race, and the yellow race. There were those who suggested using selective breeding, social
hygiene, or primary prevention (the sterilization of at-risk mothers, among
other things) to deal with sub-races found in Europe. In Italy, for instance,
the promoter of Mussolini’s criminal code, Enrico Ferri, praised positivism
as a strong foundation for the fascist doctrine (as did Raffaele Garofalo and
Alfredo Niceforo). The “scientific alibi” and its adoption by totalitarian
political ideologies were exploited in other countries as well (Frigessi,
2003, 389). Gibson (2002) says that criminal anthropology promulgated the
notion of race as a biological given and focused attention especially on
racial differences by creating a hierarchy of superiors and inferiors, thus
granting legitimacy to acts of oppression by the white regime and providing
ammunition for propaganda for Italy’s colonial policy in Africa (Ethiopia,
Somalia, Eritrea, and later Libya).
Regarding the Italian fascist regime, Gibson (2002) states that the
cooperation of criminal anthropologists with Mussolini’s regime was not
entirely opportunistic, since forms of early positivism and fascism shared
ideological affinities. Both promoted surveillance, classification, and discipline. Both wanted to equip officials in the criminal justice system with
flexibility and discretion rather than binding them with the rule of law. And
both were careless about individual rights in the name of social defense
(Gibson, 2002, 202).
According to Frigessi (2003), political racism also exploited criminal
anthropology in the area of crime, since Lombroso interpreted physical and
mental degeneration as a sign of inborn criminality, thus justifying sterilization, capital punishment, or some other form of killing (Frigessi, 382-383),
or anything else that might justify forms of prevention, incapacitation, and
negative eugenics.
Historian George Mosse (1978) asserts that the Nazis in Germany and
the Fascists in Italy usually rejected Freudian theory, while they embraced
Lombrosian psychology, extending the claim of racial inferiority to other
populations, obviously including Lombroso’s own people:
Nazi euthanasia was based upon the proposition that degeneration as
exemplified by habitual criminals or insanity was structural and final. But
since the Nazis also believed the Jews to be degenerate as well as habitual criminals, Lombroso’s definition of criminality became a part of
Hitler’s final solution of the Jewish problem (Mosse, 78).
One may say that Lombroso the Jew, the socialist, the liberal, the progressive founder of the science of criminal law, he who took pains in his
political activities on behalf of weak populations, had an unintended, indi-
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rect influence on racist thinking one generation later. The concept of degeneration as Lombroso developed it became the intrinsic name for
“criminality, a soul imprisoned in Hell” (Mosse, 83).
With passage of the racial laws (leggi razziali) in 1938, Italy’s Jews
officially became the focus of Aryan official racism. Clearly, Mussolini
reflected the tradition of racial thinking and the dictionary that criminal
anthropology had constructed a few decades earlier (Gibson, 2002, 104).
Not only totalitarian regimes were enthusiastic with Lombroso’s teachings. His ideas were promulgated among welfare workers, educators, doctors, and clerics, especially after 1890 in the United States (Rafter, 1992),
where ideas about eugenics, especially negative eugenics, were proposed.
These ideas included sterilization of women with “defective genes” and
heredity research focusing on families with a high incidence of criminality
or some other deviancy (for example, the case study of the Kallikaks; for a
review, see Akers, 2000, 57-59).
In 1927, in the democratic United States of America, Earnest Albert
Hooton received generous funding from Harvard University to verify Lombroso’s theories. He sampled over 13,000 criminals and more than 3,000
adult men as a control group in ten states. He measured 107 physical traits,
crania, and faces, including tattoos. Hooton published his conclusions also
in a book of popular science, Crime and Man (Hooton, 1939). He determined, among other things:
We can direct and control the progress of human evolution by breeding
better types and by the ruthless elimination of inferior types, if only we
are willing to found and to practice a science of human genetics. With
sound and progressively evolving human organisms in the majority of
our species, problems of human behavior will be minimized, and there
will be improved educability. Crime can be eradicated, war can be
forgotten.
Lombroso proposed the establishment of penal colonies, the isolation
of inferior populations, and the prevention of the possibility to reproduce. It
is instructive to read the explicit original that encourages negative eugenics,
with an explanation of those with a hopelessly inferior structure who without mitigation will not be worthy of reproduction (Hooton, 392).
BLOND HAIR
OR A
HOOKED NOSE?
Many contradictions in internal logic, together with numerous distortions of basic facts, also arrest one’s attention in Lombroso’s treatment of
the Jewish question and antisemitism. In his book Anti-Semitismo e le
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Scienze Moderne (1894), Lombroso manifests ambivalence toward his people: he begins by defending but ends by accusing.
In the first part of his book, there is an attempt to define the Jews as
“having characteristics of the Aryan race . . . with hair lighter than that of
the British.” This claim is based on paradoxical logic arising from adoption
of prejudices, clichés, hearsay evidence, stereotypes, and even grotesque
gossip about his fellow Jews (Harrowitz, 1994, 29).
Lombroso did not identify himself as a Jew in his book. He disengaged, estranged himself, and spoke in terms of “they” and what “they”
must do to gain an equal status and be assimilated among the nations, to
emerge from their isolation and their inferiority. Among other things,
“they” should forget primitive customs (something he himself did as a child
and coerced his new wife into doing). In a sense, it appears that Lombroso
was settling an ongoing account, a psychological unfinished business with
his father, and he recommends that his people do what he did to his wife:
they should forget tradition and conduct themselves as the Gentiles do.
His enlightened aspirations and his apologetic intentions were steeped
in ignorance, particularly concerning Orthodox Jewish ritual, which he
resisted from early childhood to distance himself from the religiosity of his
father (Dolza, 1990, 30). Thus, for example, he called the eating of matzot
on Passover a “stupid ritual” (“stupidi riti”), and he designated the custom
of laying tefillin (phylacteries) as a primitive remnant of the real Orthodox
Jew (“of whom, fortunately, very few remain”—Lombroso, 1894, 14).
Regarding circumcision, he said:
Why should they not rid themselves of the savage injuring that is circumcision, of the many fetishes of their holy books . . . that they disperse
throughout their homes [referring to mezuzot] and even affix on their
bodies [phylacteries], as if they were amulets. . . . For the same reason,
they should leave the liturgical use of the Hebrew language to foreigners,
and become convinced that Our Father in Heaven can understand their
prayer in whatever language they speak (Lombroso, 1894, 107-108).
There is an identifiable phenomenon in Lombroso characteristic of the
spirit of the time: the fear of ritual and of the Holy Tongue—Hebrew. The
Holy Tongue is a forbidden language that separates the People of Israel
from the enlightened world. It is a language of merchants, of hidden codes,
of concealment and falsehood. This belief, which included Yiddish as well,
penetrated the consciousness of many enlightened Jews in Europe. It is a
kind of Jewish self-hatred, or the adoption of the ancient beliefs of
antisemites in Europe. For example, according to Gilman (1986): “The fear
of the way the Jews interpret Scripture is easily transformed into a fear of
the books possessed by ‘the people of the Book.’ The Jews’ books become
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657
the embodiment of the blindness and dangerousness of the Jews” (Gilman,
31); in addition, “The devious and corrupt language of the Jews reflects and
is reflected by their criminal actions against the Christian world. Remove
the barrier of language, and one will have reached the first level in civilizing the Jew” (Gilman, 85).
As an enlightened Jew (or, better to say, as an enlightened Italian with
a Jewish background), Lombroso attempted to renounce everything reminiscent of the past. Thus, for example, he asserts that: “The ridiculous rituals of matzot on Passover, which run so counter to what is accepted in the
countries in which they live, arouse ludicrousness and even revulsion made
even more intense by how important the Orthodox [Jews] consider them”
(Lombroso, 1894, 14).
It is not only the Jews’ behavior and habits that Lombroso attacks, but
also their physical and mental traits. Here, Lombroso contradicts himself by
attributing to the Jews traits dependent on the body and genetics, not merely
on language and customs. He further contradicts himself by identifying the
Jews in the beginning of the book as an Aryan people, blonder than the
British, but at the end he transforms them into Semites, and thus
reprehensible.
It is actually at this point that Lombroso proceeds from an apologetic
attitude to an antisemitic attack. Thus, for example, although at the outset
he defines the Jewish race as superior to the Aryan, he perpetuates
prejudices regarding both physical and mental traits. The Jew is “weak,”
physically “small,” “neurotic,” “wretched,” and “boring.” His morals are
also defective: he is “a cheat,” “a liar”; he is “lecherous” and “ambitious.”
Lombroso further confuses inherited and acquired traits, primarily due to
ghetto life and employment. Thus, for example, body measurements and
wretchedness are intermingled, and this becomes a permanent given: “The
Jews’ race is not a strong one. The Jew in large Jewish centers, particularly
in the East, is usually small and fragile, his appearance ruinous and
wretched” (Lombroso, 1894, 18). Lombroso turns fixed habits into hereditary physical traits, like tattoos among “born” criminals: “The habit [of
making deals] has been so intensive and has continued for so many years
that it has emphasized their habit of cunning and falsehood, the meager
muscular energy so prevalent among merchants” (Lombroso, 1894, 13); and
that “Jews make much use of their intellect, which gives rise to their neurotic characteristics” (Lombroso, 1894, 84).
Their moral inferiority is a result, among other things, of the Jews’
employment. Not only do they work with their intellect, but they are also
traders, and as such, they became “the principal moneylenders; they
brought to commerce the insatiable spirit of greed, as well as of deceit,
which waxed among them from their continued practice [of trading]” (Lom-
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broso, 1894, 89). From here he reaches his final conclusion: “I agree that
most of them are immoral and covet power more than they covet good”1
(Lombroso, 1894, 100). Noteworthy are the sources of this moral inferiority, which are the result not only of their traditional occupation, but also
of the nation’s difficult history:
This is one of the most stubborn races in existence; only the strong, the
stubborn, the energetic could have insisted on remaining Jews; this is
therefore a race of extraordinary stubbornness; but in order to hold their
own, it was necessary to cloak their stubbornness in humility and flexibility, a special type of flexibility that also gives rise to moral inferiority
(Lombroso, 1894, 16).
If the assertion that a number of Lombroso’s followers provided
ammunition for racist propaganda in Europe is true, unquestionably these
words, even without mediation or interpretation, could also have fanned the
flames of Jew-hatred. It is important to note that his book, written in Italian,
was translated in the same year (1894) into German, and into French in
1899.
THE ZIONIST QUESTION
The concept of degeneration that accompanies determinism and the
conviction that immutable physical and character traits are ingrained has
been interpreted differently by different thinkers. Some see a solution in
fusion with other peoples or extermination (negative eugenics); others seek
ways to improve the race (positive eugenics); on these concepts see, for
example, Beirne and Messerschmidt (1995, 352-353).
For example, in the modern Land of Israel, the settlement movement
of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, influenced by Max Nordau
(1965, 187-188), there was widespread Zionist discussion of questions
about Jewish degeneration in the Diaspora, and proposals along the lines of
positive eugenics by would-be reformers (Biale, 1992, chap. 8; Cavaglion,
2004, 57-58). The emphasis in this application of the theory was to create a
“Judaism with muscles” and to build the new Jew, who would grow and
thrive on his land. In the 1898 Second Zionist Congress in Basel, Nordau,
who had become one of the main leaders of the Zionist movement, called
Zionism the political “remedy” to revive the body of the young Jew, after
“the terrible desolation wreaked among us during 18 centuries of disper1. So that there be no doubt that these words are out of context, I will cite this
passage in the original Italian: Convengo tuttavia che la maggioranza loro non è
morale, e sente più la bramosia, l’avidità del potere che quella del bene (p. 100).
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sion” that have led to an “effete Judaism” (Nordau, 1965, 117-118). Nordau, who became Herzl’s right-hand man, saw in the teeming ghettoes the
reason for the Jews’ sickness, since they were deprived of decent physical
conditions (Nordau, 1965, 187). That being the case, it was not heredity and
the rigid determinism of biology but primarily the environment that caused
the Diaspora Jew’s degeneration. Changing the environment—in other
words, a return to the bond with the Land of the Fathers—would serve as a
blessed cure.
Nordau continued the romantic streak of the people of the Enlightenment by depicting the male Jew in the Diaspora as a sickly creature, needing physical virility and “a stable and sound marriage” and a healthy bond
with the land (Biale, 1992). He proposed a unique remedy to combat the
frailty of the Jews. National health was guaranteed not only by physical
training—“Judaism with muscles,” in his words—and a return to nature,
but mainly by aliyah (immigration) to the Land of Israel, with the creation
of complete family and community life (see also Gilman, 1985, 130). In
Nordau’s opinion, it was the task of Zionism as a revolutionary movement
to establish in Israel a new kind of “deep-chested men, taut of limb, bold of
view,” strong young men like the legendary Bar-Kokhba (Nordau, 1965,
187-188).
Notwithstanding the controversy surrounding the source of the degeneration (usually hereditary according to Lombroso, environmental according to Nordau) and the various eugenic solutions, whether positive or
negative, it is important to point out that Lombroso, the assimilated (and
antisemitic?) Jew, and Nordau, the nationalist and Zionist, shared great
mutual admiration. Each of these doctor-authors dedicated a book to his
counterpart.
Lombroso met often with Nordau, entertained him in his home in
Torino, and on a number of occasions called him “my brother in arms.” He
identified with Nordau’s ideas, going so far as to define his thinking as “the
only true salve I have gotten from the world” (Frigessi, 2003, 315). In the
Viennese Jewish-Zionist newspaper Die Welt, the two doctors expressed
mutual praise on several occasions (Frigessi, 320).
Despite his friendship with Nordau, at the beginning of Lombroso’s
career he considered assimilation a solution for the problem of antisemitism, while the option of Zionism and the establishment of a Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel were out of the question. He advocated deliberate
absorption and the fusion of Judaism, Christianity, and socialism—a new
religion with political involvement that would bring new tidings to modern
man. This was also the message that Lombroso imparted to the members of
his family. Regarding Western Jews, he advocated their remaining in their
native countries and committing themselves to merging with the Christians,
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moving in the direction of a modern, syncretistic religion, with no narrowmindedness: “The perfect solution would be if Jews and Christians, once
they rise above the ordinary prejudices would unite in a new religion; in
other words, a new, socialist Christianity, in which the Jews, having freed
themselves of old and ridiculous rituals, could blend without shame or coercion” (Lombroso, 1894, 109).
Gibson (2002, 103) notes that the Jews of Italy became assimilated
into the surrounding culture more quickly than their coreligionists in other
Western European countries. They fought for the unification of Italy and
were committed patriots of the new country, which promised their emancipation. It is thus easy to understand why in the early years Lombroso
opposed Zionism in utterances such as the following:
One must also take into consideration that an extremely small proportion
of the Jews, from Russia and Romania [Eastern Jews], will continue to
feel an attraction to these countries (Palestine–Eretz Israel–Judea), which
are not even their homeland. . . . We have seen, similarly, that from both
an anthropological and a moral point of view, and even in terms of language and dress, they [Western Jews] have blended in their homelands
and have been planted in the spirit of the land in which they live. . . .
Thus, in Italy they are not merely Italians but also Venetians in [the]
Veneto [region], Piedmontese in [the] Piedmont [region]. Now, how
could they possibly be transformed into patriots of Judea? And what
manner of farmers could all these or matchmakers, jewelers, wine-makers
[be], and what kind of agricultural land can the desolate wasteland of
Palestine [provide]? . . . If emigration at all, it should veer toward more
modern centers, in Australia, North America, and also South America
(Lombroso, 1894, 104-106).
Lombroso’s Zionist thesis, like his theses about women, “colored people,” Southern Italians or Jews, is inconsistent. His position toward Zionism
did change with time, particularly after the Dreyfus trial, the pogroms in
Eastern Europe, and his meetings with Russian Zionist leaders during the
Criminology Conference in Moscow (Frigessi, 2003, 323). In the revised
version of his Zionist thesis, Lombroso still did not believe that Zionism
offered a solution for Western Jewry, which had already begun the desirable
process of assimilation. But at the same time he said (and here again he
contradicted himself) that the Land of Israel was the “cradle of eastern
European Jewry” (Frigessi, 324), and on at least one occasion he said, “I
believe in the renascence of the Jewish nation and in what could occur on
the land on which the light spread to all the world” (quoted in Frigessi,
326). At the end of his life, Lambroso favored the possibility of Jewish
settlement in the Land of Israel, although he refused to play an active part in
the movement, for reasons of age.
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DISCUSSION
This essay contradicts a long-standing criminological tradition that
considers methodology and internal logic the primary deficiencies of the
father of criminology. An analysis of texts in the original, to which Englishspeaking scientists—in particular criminologists, who have dominated academic discourse since the 1930—did not have access, sheds new light on
very objectionable content in Lombroso’s arguments.
A study of Lombroso’s case constitutes a further example of an
enlightened, assimilated Jew who adopts distorted exercises in logic to
alienate himself at all costs from his roots and his people by means of supposedly scientific justifications.
Rafter and Gibson say (in Lombroso and Ferrero, 2004, 6) that in
recent years scholars have been more cognizant of the intellectual and political context in which Lombroso operated. His internal contradictions reflect
not only his personality, but also the Zeitgeist and the scientific knowledge
available in the nineteenth century, and the attitude of assimilated Jews to
their people.
As previously noted, Lombroso grew up at a time of political and intellectual upheaval, of the emancipation of the Jews, and in a period of yearning for the revival, unification, and independence of a divided Italy
(Lombroso and Ferrero, 2004, 15). The issue, however, is not only time but
also place. Turin, Lombroso’s adopted city, was the catalyst of this unification. It was first capital of the Savoy reign and Italy, and also the city that
was the most open to European secular culture in that era. At this time,
Italy, as symbolized by its first capital, “went from being one of the most
backward countries in Europe, with its Jews confined to ghettoes until
1870, to one of the most enlightened, in which Jews were able to aspire to
the highest levels of society” (Stille, 2005, 22). To cite Cecil Roth (1946,
504):
. . . the impact of emancipation upon the internal life of Italian Jewry was
immediate; in most respects, it was deleterious. It had withstood,
cramped but unshaken the onslaught of the long generations of oppression; but as elsewhere, it proved unable to resist the insidious blandishment of the new world of opportunity and equality. Within a generation
of the great edict of Carlo Alberto, assimilation had made appalling progress. Synagogues that were formerly open for service twice a day now
had difficulty in assembling the necessary quorum once a week; and most
of those who attended were graybeards, whose sons considered such
things to savor of separatism and superstition.
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During the Risorgimento, Jews were highly involved in the political
revival; many died as patriots. In Italy, the struggle for the creation of a
united modern state and the struggle for emancipation of Italian Jews were
virtually synonymous (Stille, 2005, 25). As Molinari stressed (1991, 26):
This was the necessary premise to understanding the route taken by the
Italian Jews in the united State of Italy: their national integration
prompted them to cross the threshold of assimilation . . . and see their
presence in the life of the country as proof that Judaism had a universal
message.
Whereas before the unification of Italy identification with the Jewish
community in all its complexity prevailed, Italian heritage gradually
superceded ethnic ties. Italian Jews were Italian with a Mosaic faith/belief/
background (Molinari, 32). They felt, for a variety of reasons, that they
were the “most respected Jews in the world” (Milano, 1963, 370). Even at
its inception, the advent of fascism did not lead to any deterioration in the
position of Italian Jewry. On the contrary, twelve years after the March on
Rome (1934), relations between Jews and Gentiles in Italy were more harmonious that ever before (Michaelis, 1978, 6). During this period, before
the 1938 Leggi Razziali—the commitment to the Italian nation—caused
many Jews to reject Judaism, “as if being a Jew meant not being completely
Italian” (De Felice, 1961, 15), considering that identifying with tradition
meant being contaminated by the diseases of the ghetto (Milano, 1963,
372). The same attitude helps explain anti-Zionism among Italian Jews. It is
no accident that no Italian representative took part in the first Zionist Congress in 1897. Identifying with a new national movement meant betraying
any form of being Italian.
After the unification, three Jews were elected to the first Italian parliament in 1861. In 1874, there were eleven Jewish deputies and in 1894, their
number reached fifteen—the highest level in Italian history (Stille, 2005,
25).
This process highlights the perceived difference between the Jews of
the past, with “their stupid rites,” and the opportunity to climb the social
ladder. The fathers, like Cesare’s father, were seen as forced to live a life of
fear and harassment; they remained enclosed in their inner ghetto of bigotry
and superstition. The new generation, in particular in Turin, became “civilized,” more attuned and open to modernity, progress, science, nationalism,
and socialism (A. Cavaglion, 2009). This mounting drive for emancipation
and civil rights helps account for Lombroso’s fear of Jewish degeneration
and his excoriation of tradition, which he depicted as representing physical,
2011]
663
mental, and moral evils. More generally, it may clarify his professional
ambitions and his calls for assimilation.
*Gabriel Cavaglion is a senior lecturer in the School of Social Work and Department of Criminology, Ashkelon Academic College, Ashkelon, Israel.
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Jews in Afghan Eyes
Mark Silinsky*
Neither Israel nor world Jewry looms large in Afghanistan or the
Afghan mind. Afghan and Israeli soldiers do not face each other as enemies
or allies on any battlefield, and there are no ancient feuds or prominent
current grievances that grate. Commercial activity is very limited, and ethnic connections are very thin. There are some Afghan emigrants in Tel
Aviv, remnants of the Jewish-Afghan diaspora of the late 20th century. But
there are no Jews left in Afghanistan. Several empty, usually dilapidated
synagogues and gravestones are the last markers of a 2,700-year Jewish
civilization that never shone warmly, never brightly, in Afghanistan. But
unlike some countries in which there are few or almost no Jews, Afghans,
by and large, have no argument with Jews or Israel. Afghan politicians,
opinion makers, and clerics do not express the type or level of hate and
anger found in some neighboring states. They don’t seem to care much
about Jewish or Israeli issues.
Why, then, is there such passionate hatred in two of Afghanistan’s
neighbors, Iran and Pakistan, when Afghans have little interest in Israel or
Jews? In neither of these states is there a sizable Jewish community. But,
unlike Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan are consumed by Israel and world
Jewry. Few countries, perhaps no country since the defeat of Hitler’s Germany, has so passionately, ostentatiously, and repeatedly threatened to
exterminate Jews as has Iran. Teheran is nakedly ambitious about its intent
to build a nuclear arsenal to, in its words, “wipe Israel off the map.” Pakistan, too, attacks Israel, if only rhetorically. As in Iran, Pakistani political
and religious leaders, opinion makers, university students, and firebrands
preach unadulterated contempt for Israel and Jews. Afghan leadership and
its non-insurgent population, however, are generally quiet on issues surrounding Israel. There is no easy explanation for this.
667
668
ISRAEL
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IRANIAN PRISM
Jews have a storied, mercurial, and biblically celebrated civilization in
Persia/Iran. Some Iranian Jews living in Tel Aviv and Los Angeles speak
with warm nostalgia of the Jewish Golden Age during the rule of the shah, a
relatively secular leader, so hated by the theocrats in control of Teheran
today. But there are only an estimated 25,000-30,000 Jews living among
Iran’s Muslims, and these Jews live in fear of their lives.
Jews remaining in Iran are officially allowed to leave, but many obstacles prevent their exit.1 There are still synagogues and Jewish schools in the
capital,2 and some Western commentators underscore what they see as the
steady harmony in which many Iranians and their Jewish countrymen live.
For example, Roger Cohen of The New York Times wrote in 2009, “Perhaps
I have a bias toward facts over words, but I say the reality of Iranian civility
toward Jews tells us more about Iran—its sophistication and culture—than
all the inflammatory rhetoric.”3 Other observers are not as sanguine and
describe the Jewish community as one of hostages and Western journalists
who downplay the always-present threat to Iranian Jews as naive or
collaborative.
What is not open to speculation is the abiding hatred toward international Jewry as expressed in Holocaust denial and vast conspiracy theories,
as well as the repeated threats to attack Israel with nuclear weapons. Atomic
bombs are to be tools to create, in Iranian president Mamoud
Ahmadinejad’s words, “a world without Zionism.” If the Muslim world is
today free of large Jewish communities, Ahmadinejad’s future world would
be rid of the only Jewish state.
On the popular-culture front, Iran sponsored an international Holocaust-denial cartoon carnival in response to the now-famous Danish cartoon
contest that depicted Mohammad in a sarcastic light.4 Appealing to a sense
of humor perhaps not widely shared outside of Teheran, the quasi-pornographic cartoon (figure 1) lampooning an improbable sexual tryst between
Anne Frank and Adolf Hitler won first prize. This is an accurate representation and not an aberration of the official Iranian views on Jews and Israel.
1. Shelomo Alfasa, “What of the Jews of Iran?,” The Jerusalem Post, April 25,
2009.
2. “I Was Scared in Iran as a Jew,” Chicago Sun-Times, December 26, 2007.
3. Roger Cohen, “What Iran’s Jews Say,” Globalist, International Herald
Tribune, February 23, 2009.
4. Sharon Ashley, “From the Editor,” The Jerusalem Report, March 6, 2006.
2011]
JEWS IN AFGHAN EYES
669
Figure 1: Humor of the Mullahs
Winner of Iran’s Cartoon Contest of 20065
This hatred in Iran is vast and consuming. According to a 2006 Zogby
International poll on behalf of Reader’s Digest, 67% agreed that the state of
Israel is “illegitimate and should not exist,” and 9% disagreed.6 In a poll
conducted in May 2009 by KA Europe SPRL, a privately owned research
company, the most frequently cited threat to Iran’s security was Israel.
Forty-four percent of Iranians polled ranked Israel as the highest threat to
their country’s security. The United States was given 38 percent.7
But Iran’s hatred extends well beyond snickering antisemitism. Teheran boasts a missile capability of reaching Israel, which is the Shihad-3
missile, and displayed a mockup of the 85-ton Simorgh, which can hit Israel
and parts of the United States, according to the former director of Israel’s
Ballistic Missile Defense Organization.8
ISRAEL
AND
JEWS
THROUGH THE
PAKISTANI PRISM
As with Iran, Pakistan is contiguous to Afghanistan. It has a long border that flanks Afghanistan’s south and east. The borders themselves were
born of controversy and boundary disputes that still bedevil relations.
5. http://www.hyscience.com/archives/2006/02/dutch_islamists.php or http://
www.tomgrossmedia.com/MohammedCartoons.html.
6. Jim Lobe, “Iran: Poll Suggests Strong Nationalism, Anti-US Sentiment,”
Inter Press Service English News Wire, July 14, 2006.
7. Alan Fram, “Poll: Few Iranians Have Favorable Opinion of US,” Charleston Daily Mail, June 9, 2009.
8. Aron Ben David, “Nuclear Boost,” Aviation Week & Space Technology 172
(February 15, 2010): 33-34.
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Unlike in the dominant Farsi-speaking population in Iran, Pakistan’s ethnicity is often indistinguishable from most Afghans’, who are largely Pashtun.
Pakistan was born of British India, at about the same time Israel won
its independence. If Israel was created as a haven for Jews in a hostile, postHolocaust world, Pakistan came to statehood with Islam as its raison
d’Etat. Both states were relatively small compared to their neighbors, which
they saw as existential threats. India, adjacent to East and West Pakistan,
was always seen as the main enemy, and Israel was and is surrounded by
enemies. Beyond this, Pakistan and Israel had little in common. Israel had
no Pakistanis and Pakistan had no Jews.
Many Pakistanis hate Israel and Jews, though it is not likely that many
have ever met a Jew. According to a summer 2005 Pew Memorial Research
public opinion poll on three religions—Christianity, Islam, and Judaism—
only 5% of Pakistanis have a positive opinion of Jews, while 74% have
negative views.9 This same poll also revealed that of the majority of those
polled, 51% saw Judaism as the most violent of the three religions. Those
who thought that Islam was the most violent were 4% of the polled; Christianity also took 4%.
As in Iran, the current fever-pitch-level hatred of Jews and Israel grew
in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Radicalization began from a number of factors, not least of which was the large subsidy of Pakistani madrassas (religious schools) under the patronage of Saudi Arabia and other oilwealthy Gulf benefactors.
As in all countries, leaders help to shape public opinion. The highly
respected former head of Pakistani intelligence, General Hamid Gul,
declared openly on al Jazeera that “Israel is our main enemy. It is either
them or us.”10 In June 2010, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the former leader of the
major Pakistani religious-political party Jamaat-e-Islami, agreed: “Israel is
an illegitimate state . . . Muslims neither have accepted Israel, nor will they
ever do so.”11 This Manichaean view is shared by many Pakistani intellectuals, who also despise Christians and Hindus.
Elaborate conspiracy theories are common in many parts of the Islamic
world, and they flourish in Pakistan. Sometimes, Pakistan’s religious leaders portray Israel and world Jewry as intractable malefactors in Pakistan’s
affairs. India, Israel, and often America are rhetorically melded into an
abstract enemy. There are many examples of this conspiratorial prism.
9. “Islamic Extremism: Common Concern for Muslim and Western Publics,”
Pew Research Center, July 14, 2005, http://pewglobal.org.
10. General Hamud Gul, “Israel Is Our Main Enemy. It Is Either Us or Them,”
Al-JazeeraTV (Qatar), August 8, 2006.
11. Roznama Express, Pakistan, June 3, 2010.
2011]
JEWS IN AFGHAN EYES
671
Some of theories are built on vast collusions involving the intelligence and
security services from India, the United States, and Israel. A leading Pakistani television personality, Zaid Hamid, claims that these countries use the
Blackwater security firm to destroy Pakistan.12 When the Twin Towers
were attacked, many Pakistanis blamed Israel and world Jewry.13
Pakistani public figures speak often and loudly about meting out punishment against Israel and other enemies. It is difficult for Westerners to
follow the logic of some of the theories and proposed punishments. For
example, Majeed Nizami, owner of the Roznama Nawa-i-Waqt media group
and a leading figure in journalism, said, “We should unite to combat the
excesses by Jews and Christians. We cannot teach a lesson to Israel or to
India without Jihad. Jihad is the only way to fight injustice at the international level.”14
Maulana Chinioti, a prominent Pakistani cleric from the international
Khatm-e-Nabuwat movement, appealed to the world’s Muslims to boycott
all products marketed or made by Jewish-owned companies. He said that
Jews regularly and deviously conspire to smear the image of Islam. “I
appeal to all the Muslims to stop buying products made by Jews. They earn
from us and spend the money on heretic activities against our religion.”15
Figure 2: Israel Harming Palestine—
A Common Theme in the Pakistani Media16
12. Sabrina Tavernese, “Talk of Conspiracies Drives Political Dialogue in Pakistan,” Honolulu Star-Bulletin, May 26, 2010.
13. Mark McDonald, “Pakistanis Believe Israel Is Behind Attacks on America,”
Knight/Ridder Tribune Business News, September 22, 2001.
14. Roznama Nawa-i-Waqt, Pakistan, June 3, 2010.
15. Roznama Islam, Pakistan, May 27, 2010.
16. The News, Pakistan, June 2, 2010.
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[ VOL. 3:667
Some prominent Pakistani intellectuals are convinced that many international organizations—the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund,
international charities—are infected with un-Islamic, particularly Jewish,
contaminants. For example, Mian Mehboob Ahmed, retired chief justice of
Pakistan’s Shari’a Court, said: “Muslim countries should quit the United
Nations Organization (UNO) and strengthen the Organization of Islamic
Countries (OIC) [sic] to contest the conspiracies by the Jews and the Christians.” Given the block voting power of Muslim states and the constant
condemnations of Israel that emanate from their halls in the UN, it is not
clear why any Muslim state would leave that international body. But, as
Ahmed explained, the UN is “an extension of the power of Jews and nothing else.”17
AFGHANISTAN, ISRAEL,
AND
JEWS
In contrast to Iran and Pakistan, there is a much lower level of hatred
in Afghanistan for Jews and Israel, as judged by popular, religious, journalistic, and political rhetoric. The Jews of Afghanistan had an ancient, if small
and now extinct, civilization in Afghanistan. According to still-existing
Afghan lore, today’s Afghans are related to the lost tribes of Israel; more
specifically, some of the Afghan ethnicities see themselves as being
descended from some of the lost tribes of Israel. Partly legend, partly documented history, the Jews of Afghanistan traced their roots to the Assyrian
and Babylonian empires of 720 BCE and 560 BCE.
By the middle of the 20th century, there were fewer than 5,000 Jews in
Afghanistan, and most of these immigrated to Israel in the 1950s and 1960s.
By the early 1970s, only several hundred Jews remained, most of whom left
for Israel and the United States after the Soviet invasion of 1979. By the
time the Taliban consolidated its power, in 1996, only ten Jews remained in
Afghanistan. Almost all lived in Kabul, where there were not enough male
adult Jews to hold a Sabbath prayer service.
Life was miserable for most Afghans under the Taliban, who enforced
many totalitarian elements similar to those in Stalin’s Soviet Union.
Afghans were encouraged to report on their neighbors’ behavior; political,
artistic, and intellectual activities were heavily monitored by state authorities. The Taliban’s Caligula-like sadism shocked much of the world, but
there is no evidence that the handful of remaining Jews lived under worse
conditions than did the small Hindu community. In fact, the Hindus may
have received more contempt and scorn from the Taliban than did the Jews,
who had some nominal protection in being considered people of the book.
17. Roznama Nawa-i-Waqt, Pakistan, June 3, 2010.
2011]
JEWS IN AFGHAN EYES
673
Figure 3: Zablon Simintov—The Last Jew of Afghanistan
The Taliban were driven from Afghanistan in late 2001, if only temporarily. If life can imitate humor, the story of the desert-island Jew fits into
the Afghan drama. On their march across the Pacific in 1944, U.S. sailors
came across a lone Jewish castaway who had spent 20 years on a forgotten
Pacific atoll. When a sailor asked him why he built two synagogues when
he was the only person on the island, he said, “This one I pray in, and this
one I won’t step foot in.” This old yarn captured the spirit of the only two
remaining Jews in post-Taliban Afghanistan, Zablon Simintov and Ishaq
Levin, who loathed each other and were loud about it.
Simintov, known to his neighbors by the moniker “the Jew,” became
the only Jew in Afghanistan after Levin died in 2005. The long-standing
feud between the two became a scrap of humor in a land about which there
was little to joke. Each had accused the other of crimes that included theft,
espionage, and attempted murder. Not least of the spats had to do with
possession of the one remaining torah in Afghanistan.18 But the rivalry died
with Levin; when Simintov died, he took to his grave the last spark of Jewish Afghanistan, which had had endured for 2,700 years.
The memories aren’t all bad. There remains some warm nostalgia in
pockets of the Jewish-Afghan diaspora; some Jews remember periods of
calm and warm relations with their Muslim neighbors. During the Taliban,
many Muslims, who earlier were friendly with the few remaining Jews,
became reluctant to be seen socializing with non-Muslims. Under the
Taliban, fear was widespread and victimized all but the most observant and
18. Judy Mandelbaum, “Would Afghanistan’s Last Jew Please Turn Out the
Lights?,” Salon Magazine, May 10, 2010, salon.com.
674
[ VOL. 3:667
conformist Sunni Muslims. In 2001, one middle-aged émigré said: “I have
mixed emotions about the apparently upcoming attack [the impending U.S.
attack against the Taliban]. On the one hand, like many Afghani expatriates,
I have sympathy for those Afghani Muslims with whom I was friendly.”19
GENERAL CALM
AND
OCCASIONAL ANGER
There are far fewer regular and visceral anti-Israel and antisemitic protests in Afghanistan. Polls, which are generally respected and conducted by
credible sources, reflect a disinterest in Israel or Jews. But there are criticisms, such as occasional diplomatic notes of protest against Israel military
actions. For example, in December 2008, the Afghan Foreign Ministry condemned Israel’s retaliation against Palestinian terrorist attacks. In this
démarche, the Afghan government demanded that both parties cease hostilities.20 There are also periodic student and popular protests—most small and
transitory—over controversial, exaggerated, or fabricated charges. In the
spring of 2010, students in Mazar el Sharif protested against Jews and
Christians for proselytizing in Afghanistan;21in fact, there is no evidence
that either Jews or Christians were trying to convert Afghans.
These protests differ from many in Iran and Pakistan in that they are
infrequent, have limited conspiracy elements, and are often tied to specific
international events. Protests in which Jews or Israel are referred to as a
cancer or a parasite, commonly made in Iran and Pakistan, are much rarer in
Afghanistan. The most recent object of protest was the Israeli response to
the Gaza-bound flotilla. When incident passed, so did the protests—which
themselves were limited.
Results from different pollsters over many years confirm that Israel
and Jews are not large issues in Afghanistan.22 Polls do not list Israel as a
priority, a danger, or a source of violence or instability, as they do in Iran
and Pakistan. It could be that those polled were not given the option of
selecting Israel, but they had the option of placing Israel in the category of
something else, which took 0%.
The three polls shown below indicate that Afghans do not focus on
external issues and do not see Israel or Jews as players in their country’s
19. “Jews in Afghanistan under the Taliban,” IsraelNationalNews.com, September 25, 2001.
20. “Afghanistan Condemns Israel’s Air Strikes on Gaza,” Xinhua News
Agency, December 28, 2008.
21. Wazpanra Weesa, Afghanistan, June 9, 2010.
22. It is necessary to so assess Afghan opinion, because pollsters have not asked
directly about positive or negative feelings toward Israel and Jews.
2011]
675
JEWS IN AFGHAN EYES
affairs. The poll results in figure 4 demonstrate that Afghan priorities focus
on stabilizing the country and bettering the lives of the people. Figure 5
does not list Israel or Jews as dangers to Afghanistan.
Which one of the following in your
opinion should be the single most
important priority for our country?
Which is second most important?
Creating jobs and economic
opportunities
Improving roads, water, and electricity
supply
Security from crime and violence
Establishing a stable national
government
Rebuilding the schools
Improving medical care
Getting U.S. troops out of Afghanistan
First
Second
Third
31
18
49
14
32
45
40
5
45
5
19
24
6
1
2
15
6
4
21
7
6
Figure 4: What Should the National Priorities Be? October 2005
Which of the following do you think
poses the biggest danger in our country?
Taliban
Drug traffickers
Local commanders
United States
Current Afghan government
Suicide attacks
Neighboring countries
Criminals
Corruption in the government
Poppy cultivation
Al-Qaeda
High prices/Lack of jobs
Bombardment from foreign forces
Lack of security
Drought
Illiteracy
Something else
No opinion
First
58
13
7
8
1
4
1
1
2
1
*
*
*
1
*
*
0
3
Second
11
21
10
15
4
4
1
2
4
2
1
*
*
*
*
0
*
25
Total
69
34
17
23
5
8
2
3
6
3
1
1
1
*
*
*
28
Figure 5: What Are the Greatest Dangers to Afghanistan? January 2009
676
[ VOL. 3:667
A 2010 poll does not name Israel or Jews as a cause of the violence in
Afghanistan.23 Non-Afghan forces—Al Qaeda/foreign jihadis, U.S. forces,
the U.S. government and NATO forces—take 76% of the blame. But Israel
is not included, and could not have placed any higher than 3% if it were
placed in the “other” category.
Whom do you blame the most for the
violence that is occurring in the
country?
Taliban
Al Qaeda/Foreign jihadis
U.S./American forces
Obama/Bush/U.S. government/America
Local commanders/warlords
Drug traffickers
Afghan government/Karzai
Afghan forces
NATO/ISAF forces
Other
No opinion
2010
%
42
24
5
2
7
6
6
1
3
3
1
2009
%
27
22
12
6
6
5
12
3
3
3
1
2007
%
36
22
9
7
6
6
5
2
3
2
Figure 6: Whom Do Afghans Blame Most for Their Problems?24
DIPLOMATIC
AND
MILITARY TIES
Despite perennial rumors of Afghanistan’s pending recognition of
Israel, it is not likely that that diplomatic relations will be formalized soon.
There are several reasons for this: the current government in Kabul is sensitive to international and local opinion on important Islamic topics; the
recent negative press coming from the Turkish flotilla; and the attacks on
terrorist bases in Gaza years before has stirred Muslim anti-Israel hate.
These and other sources of resurgent anti-Israel sentiment will make it difficult for Kabul to break from the ranks of Muslim countries.
Another reason Kabul is hesitant to appear to close to Jerusalem is
because Teheran, which already gives significant aid to insurgents, will
become even more alienated. Teheran is developing nuclear weapons,
expanding its regional influence, and supporting Farsi-speaking insurgent
bands.
23. “Afghans More Optimistic for Future, Survey Shows,” http://
abcnews.go.com/images/PollingUnit/1083alAfghanistan2009.pdf.
24. The survey was conducted for ABC News, the BBC, and ARD by the
Afghan Center for Socio-Economic and Opinion Research, December 2009.
2011]
JEWS IN AFGHAN EYES
677
But Israel’s military technology has a place in Afghanistan, if only in
its atmosphere. Israeli military engineering soars in the skies over insurgent
areas, helping to locate enemy forces. The Israeli Heron drone is used by
several Coalition Force armies in Afghanistan.25 This aircraft serves as the
eyes of the counterinsurgent forces. The much smaller, Israeli-made
pilotless Skylark is a pocket-size intelligence-gathering aircraft, which is
also in use in Afghanistan.26 Israel, with its high technology, could play a
stronger role in Afghanistan’s agricultural and military development.
LESS LIKELY REASONS
FOR
TOLERANCE
There are no clear reasons that the level of hatred toward Israel and
Jews seems so much lower in Afghanistan than it does in Iran or Pakistan.
There are several hypotheses that are probably not likely:
• Israel is distant, and there are no Jews in Afghanistan. There are
simply no Jews to hate. If geographic distance from Israel and the
low number of resident Jews explain Afghan disinterest, Iran and
Pakistan could be expected to show similar low levels; they are very
far from Tel Aviv. In addition, antisemitism and anti-Zionism have
long existed in countries largely void of Jews. In 1933, Germany had
no more than a 2% Jewish population, and anti-Zionism flourishes in
a contemporary Europe in which few countries have more than small
pockets of Jewish communities. So, the presence or lack of presence
of Jews does not and historically has not been a valuable indicator in
understanding antisemitism or anti-Zionism.
• Afghans are too occupied with their own concerns, particularly low
living standards and security concerns, to focus on external targets.
Afghans have burdens associated with insurgent violence, but life in
Pakistan and Iran is often brutish and miserable. The teeming poverty, poor schooling, lack of gainful employment, and generalized
fatalism does not prevent Iranians and Pakistan from blaming Jews
for many of their problems. But Afghans do not make this argument.
• Israel and world Jewry are scapegoated by clerics and political
leaders in Pakistan and Iran to draw attention away from their failing social policies and continuing low standards of living. But if
Iranians and Pakistanis scapegoat Israel and Jews to divert attention
from domestic failures, why wouldn’t Afghan leaders do the same?
25. “Israel Drones to Be Used by Germany in Afghanistan,” AP Online, October 28, 2009.
26. “Elbit Systems: Israeli-Made Drones in Action in Iraq, Afghanistan,”
Haaretz, March 20, 2007, http://www.haaretz.com/.
678
[ VOL. 3:667
Afghanistan is wracked by insurgency, political instability, and corruption. Why not blame Israel, as well?
• Pashtuns see themselves as tied to the Jewish tribes. There are some
elements of ethnic solidarity between the dominant Pashtun tribe and
the Jews, but this is not likely. Pakistan is heavily Pashtun, and many
of its citizens embrace wild, antisemitic conspiracy theories. Some
Pashtuns believe they are descended from the lost tribes of Israel,
and some anthropologists agree. But, Pashtun racial connections to
Israelis or Jews are not common themes in Afghan popular
literature.27
MORE LIKELY REASONS
FOR
TOLERANCE
There are several reasons that likely explain, if only partially, Afghanistan’s lack of interest in Israel or Jews:
• Isolation from antisemitism. Afghanistan has been more isolated
from trends of antisemitism. Antisemitism has ebbed and flowed in
Iran. The Jewish holiday of Purim celebrates the salvation of the
Persia’s Jewish community in biblical times. In the 20th century,
many, but not all, Iranian intellectuals were partial to Hitler. From
the late 20th century, Saudi-funded madrassas in Pakistan indoctrinated scores of students with anti-Christian and antisemitic ideas.
Afghanistan, in many ways in this sense, is more part of Central
Asia, and this area of the world has relatively low historic levels of
antisemitism.
• Non-hostile leaders in Kabul. Leaders in Afghanistan depend upon
international aid and NATO funding, and these donors would be
very reluctant to support hate speech. Western powers simply do not
want to associate themselves with the blood libel, Protocols of the
Elders of Zion, and the other grandiose and chuckleheaded conspiracy theories common in parts of the Islamic world. As it is, many
NATO partners are leaving the Coalition Force and associating with
the Karzai regime with hate speech might accelerate the exodus.
• Education. The current and constantly evolving Afghan educational
system, primitive as it is by Western standards, is inclined to downplay hatred and focus on tolerant elements of Islam, secular subjects,
or nation-building issues. Texts and schools, which are funded by
international donors, are monitored.
27. “Link between Israel’s Lost Tribes and Pashtuns of Af-Pak to Be Genetically Analyzed,” The Hindustani Times, January 22, 2010.
2011]
679
JEWS IN AFGHAN EYES
• Ideological distancing from al Qaeda and Taliban. Neither al Qaeda
nor the Taliban are popular in Afghanistan. Most of the influence
they exert comes from fear. Much of the hatred they espouse is not
shared by other Afghans, and Afghans do not seem inclined to take
up many of their hate-based causes.
• Israel and the United States are often cast together in Islamic dramas. Pakistanis, Iranians, Afghans, and many others in the Islamic
world see Israel and the United States as partners in world affairs.
Muslims who distrust and dislike the United States share similar
feelings about Israel. Many Pakistanis and Iranians hate the United
States,28 but Afghans are more positive. Afghans were very proAmerican in an April 2007 poll, and most are still very pro-American.29 There could be a connection between the relatively positive
feelings toward the United States and the apparently low level of
hatred of Jews.
AFGHAN-ISRAELI RELATIONS
AND THE
FUTURE
Afghan-Israeli relations may change for either better or worse; the case
of Turkey illustrates how things can turn for the worse. For years, Turkey
was one NATO’s most loyal allies, a model of progressive Islam, and a
practitioner of sustainable human development. A generation ago, few
could have predicted the Turkish hatred of Israel that haunts relations today.
Well through the 1990s, Israeli-Turkish relations were solid and warm;
Jerusalem and Ankara shared common concerns about subversion coming
from Syria, Iran, and Iraq.30 But new leadership in Turkey froze these warm
relations.
It does not have to happen this way in Afghanistan, however, and it
has not happened that way with Caucasian and Central Asian states of the
former Soviet Union, particularly Azerbaijan. Jerusalem enjoys warm and
profitable relations with Azerbaijan, which is Israel’s largest supplier of
28. “Muslim Public Opinion on US Policy, Attacks on Civilians and al-Qaeda,”
World Public Opinion Organization, April 24, 2007, http://www.worldpublicopinion.org./.
29. “Afghan Public Overwhelmingly Rejects al-Qaeda, Taliban,” World Public
Opinion poll, January 30, 2006. Eighty-one percent said that they have a favorable
view of the United States (40% very favorable), with just 16% giving an unfavorable rating. In the war zone, one in four (26%) had an unfavorable view of the
United States, but 73% were favorable.
30. Barry Rubin, “Israel and Turkey Share Interests,” Jerusalem Post, December 9, 1997.
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[ VOL. 3:667
oil.31 Israel also enjoys cordial relations with the key Central Asian countries Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Uzbekistan has boasted relatively high
economic growth rates and has availed itself of Israeli technology to build
its agricultural and communications sectors.32 In Kazakhstan, Israeli telecommunications, mineral extraction, and construction companies have
partnered with domestic companies.33
Israel began as an agricultural state and became a “start-up,” hightechnology nation within two generations. Afghanistan is not likely to have
the level of human capital or the educationally driven cultural base to make
this transition to the highest levels of the industrial information spectrum—
but it can enjoy sustained human development if it can beat back the insurgency. Israeli expertise can help Afghanistan improve livestock, design
modern farms, and boost nutrition.34
Israel stands to gain much from a robust economic relationship with
Afghanistan, if reports of a yet-to-be-tapped, extractive mineral treasure
trove in Afghanistan are true. In June 2010, scientists at the U.S. Geological
Survey determined that there are minerals valued at over $1 trillion in
Afghanistan. These minerals include gold, copper, and lithium, critical to
Israel’s high-technology sector.35 In addition, Afghanistan includes Israel in
where it exports its world-acclaimed textiles.36
It could be that poisoned opinions will begin to flourish in Afghanistan
as they now do in Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey. But this is not predetermined,
and hate does not have to fester. For many centuries, the Muslims of
Afghanistan lived warmly and respectfully with their Jewish neighbors; in
Afghan eyes, Jews were of a different, but not hostile, tribe. Afghanistan
could follow the models of its northern Central Asian neighbors. The contagion of hate that flourishes in Iran and Pakistan may not flow to
Afghanistan.
31. “Israel, Azerbaijan Enjoy Excellent Relations,” Panarmenian.net, February
16, 2010.
32. “Central Asia Should Be a Priority from the Point of View of Israel Foreign
Policy,” UzReport, April 30, 2009.
33. Galym Orazbakov, “Kazakhstan and Israel: Good Friends and Reliable Partners,” Jerusalem Post, May 20, 2009.
34. “Central Asia Should Be a Priority,” April 30, 2009.
35. Rahim Faiez, “Huge Mineral Discovery Could Alter Afghan War,” Associated Press, June 15, 2010.
36. “Central Asia Should Be a Priority,” April 30, 2009.
2011]
JEWS IN AFGHAN EYES
681
*Mark Silinsky is a 26-year veteran of the defense intelligence community. He has
served as a senior analyst in U.S. Army intelligence; as a Russian-language Army
civilian foreign area officer for Eurasia; as an Africa analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency; as a J5 action officer for the Joint Staff; and as a research fellow at
the National Defense Intelligence College, as part of the Exceptional Analyst Program. Silinsky, who holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Southern California, a MPhil from Oxford University, and an MS from Tulane
University, is currently completing his doctoral studies at Tulane. He graduated
from the Naval War College, intermediate level, and the National Defense University, senior level, where he earned the prize for the outstanding research paper. He
is also a 2008 graduate of the Afghanistan Counterinsurgency Academy, located
near Kabul.
“Saint” Chesterton
Simon Mayers*
In the early 1970s, David Lodge stated that following Vatican II, “the
Chesterbelloc brand of Catholicism,” which he characterized as “triumphalist, proselytizing, and theologically conservative,” is no longer “congenial
to the mood of the Church.”1 This mood may be changing. A recent address
by the Vatican prefect in charge of The Congregation for the Evangelization
of Peoples announced that “the world today needs Christian apologists, not
apologisers.” The address named Chesterton and Belloc as worthy examples who “brilliantly expose the beauty of the Christian faith without blushing or compromise.”2
In the past ten years there has been a resurgence in Chesterton’s popularity. This renewed interest has been marked by a recent flurry of books
examining Chesterton’s life, literature, theology, “prophetic insight,” and
“holiness.”3 Sensing this change in mood, a small following of Chesterton’s
1. David Lodge, The Novelist at the Crossroads (London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1971), 145.
2. “Address of his Eminence Cardinal Ivan Dias, Prefect of the Congregation
for the Evangelization of Peoples, on the Occasion of the Anglican Conference of
Lambeth,” July 22, 2008: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/
cevang/documents/rc_con_cevang_doc_20080722_dias-lambeth_en.html
(downloaded July 9, 2011).
3. The following are just some examples: Dale Ahlquist’s G. K. Chesterton:
The Apostle of Common Sense (2003), Aidan Mackey’s G. K. Chesterton: A
Prophet for the 21st Century (2009), Aidan Nichol’s G. K. Chesterton, Theologian
(2009), William Oddie’s Chesterton and the Romance of Orthodoxy (2008), William Oddie’s The Holiness of G. K. Chesterton (2010), and Ian Ker’s G. K. Chesterton: A Biography (2011).
683
684
[ VOL. 3:683
most fervent admirers have raised the question of his beatification.4 A conference at Oxford to discuss the holiness of Chesterton proceeded in July
2009. Prayer cards with a prayer for the intercession of Chesterton have
been created in multiple languages. These were distributed and well
received at a one-day symposium at Beaconsfield in October 2010. The
main focus of the symposium was Chesterton and Cardinal Newman. Newman was recently beatified by the pope, and one purpose of the symposium
was to suggest that Chesterton was the natural successor of the cardinal. A
number of apologetics have been formulated by Chesterton’s admirers concerning his discourse about Jews; their general intent is to refute the charge
that he engaged in antisemitism. This short essay is intended as a critique of
just a few of these apologetics.5
In a recent volume on the holiness of Chesterton, William Oddie did
not merely defend Chesterton from the accusation of antisemitism; he
argued that he was in fact a “philosemite.”6 Oddie predominantly relies on
material that dates back to the early 1890s. He quotes an entry from Chesterton’s diary, dated 1891, in which Chesterton wrote that he felt so
strongly about an incident in Russia where a Jewish girl was treated with
great cruelty that he wanted to “knock some-body down.”7 He also quotes a
number of passages from Chesterton’s school magazine, The Debator, also
from 1891, in which Chesterton fantasized about traveling to Russia to fight
on behalf of “the Hebrews” suffering in pogroms.8 Oddie cites a poem, “To
a Certain Nation,” published in 1900, to demonstrate that Chesterton was
also appalled at the persecution of Dreyfus.9 These do indeed reflect Chesterton’s early attitude toward the persecution of Jews, thereby demonstrat4. Chesterton has already been appointed Knight Commander of the Order of
St. Gregory the Great (by Pius XI in 1934) and Defender of the Catholic Faith (in
1936).
5. In this essay I examine only those aspects of Chesterton’s discourse that
relate to the apologetics examined. This represents a tiny selection of his anti-Jewish discourse. For a scholarly introduction to Chesterton’s literary discourse about
Jews, I recommend Bryan Cheyette, Constructions of “The Jew” in English Literature and Society: Racial Representation, 1875-1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
6. William Oddie, “The Philosemitism of G. K. Chesterton.” In The Holiness
of G. .K. Chesterton, ed. William Oddie (Leominster: Gracewing, 2010), 124-137.
This volume contains papers presented by scholars at the 2009 Oxford conference.
7. Diary entry, January 5, 1891, cited by Oddie, “The Philosemitism of G. K.
Chesterton,” 127.
8. The Debater, III, 1891, 11, 29, 71, cited by Oddie, “The Philosemitism of G.
K. Chesterton,” 128.
9. Gilbert Keith Chesterton, The Wild Knight, 4th ed. (London: J.M. Dent &
Sons, 1914), 92-93.
2011]
“SAINT”
CHESTERTON
685
ing that Chesterton was by no means consistently antisemitic throughout his
life.
Early into the 20th century, however, largely as a result of his friendship with Hilaire Belloc, Chesterton’s attitude toward Dreyfus and Jews
became increasingly unsympathetic. By the time of the second edition of
The Wild Knight, published in 1905, he expressed suspicion at the acquittal
of Dreyfus in a new preface for the volume. The preface stated that he was
no longer convinced about the innocence of Dreyfus and that while “there
may have been a fog of injustice in the French courts; I know that there was
a fog of injustice in the English newspapers.” According to the preface,
Chesterton was unable to reach a final “verdict on the individual,” which he
came “largely to attribute” to the “acrid and irrational unanimity of the
English Press.”10
In letters sent to a periodical in March and April 1911, he denounced
the type of Jew who “is a traitor in France and a tyrant in England,”11 and
stated that in “the case of Dreyfus” he was quite certain that “the British
public was systematically and despotically duped by some power—and I
naturally wonder, what power.”12 The following passage by the narrator of
Manalive (1912) would seem to suggest that Chesterton’s belief in the innocence of Jews suffering in Russian pogroms had also become somewhat
ambivalent. The narrator stated: “Wherever there is conflict . . . any soul,
personal or racial, unconsciously turns on the world the most hateful of its
hundred faces.” In the case of Moses Gould, the Jew in the novel, it was
“that smile of the Cynic Triumphant, which has been the tocsin for many a
cruel riot in Russian villages or mediaeval towns.”13
Another popular defense has been that Chesterton and Israel Zangwill
were friends.14 Michael Coren stated that Zangwill was a friend of Chesterton, describing them as a “noted literary combination of the time.”15 Joseph
Pearce likewise stated that Israel Zangwill, “that most quintessential of Jewish writers,” was someone with whom Chesterton had “remained good
10. The British press almost universally condemned the Dreyfus trial. The second edition is difficult to locate, but the 1905 preface can be found in the fourth
edition. Chesterton, The Wild Knight, 4th ed., xii.
11. Gilbert Keith Chesterton, “Letter to the Editor: The Jews in Modern Life,”
The Nation, March 18, 1911, 1004.
12. Gilbert Keith Chesterton, “Letter to the Editor: The Jew in Modern Life,”
The Nation, April 8, 1911, 58.
13. Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Manalive (1912; London: House of Stratus, 2001),
137-138.
14. Israel Zangwill was a prominent Anglo-Jewish author and playwright.
15. Michael Coren, Gilbert: The Man Who Was G. K. Chesterton (London:
Jonathan Cape, 1989), 209.
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friends from the early years of the century until Zangwill’s death in
1926.”16 Neither Coren nor Pearce provided sources with which to verify
this friendship. This has not prevented the alleged friendship being used by
many other admirers of Chesterton, including Ian Boyd from the Chesterton
Institute, Aidan Mackey, and Stratford Caldecott, who cite Coren’s book as
if it were evidence.17 The strongest evidence of a friendship, circumstantial
at best, is a photo of Chesterton and Zangwill walking side by side after
leaving a meeting about government plans for the censorship of stage plays
in 1909. As they both wrote plays, this is not a shocking revelation. This
photo was reproduced in an issue of the Chesterton Review with a caption
to suggest two friends together.18 The photo probably demonstrates little
beyond their sharing an interest in government censorship.
In 2008, a special issue of Gilbert Magazine, the periodical of the
American Chesterton Society, devoted sixty pages to “Chesterton & the
Jews.” Its aim was to refute the “mean and wretched lie”19 that Chesterton
was an antisemite. It claimed that Zangwill and Chesterton admired each
other; the same photo can be found on the front cover.20
Prior to 1915, Chesterton had on occasion referred to Zangwill in positive terms, describing him as “a very earnest thinker” and the “nobler sort
of Jew.”21 During the first world war, however, he accused Zangwill of
being “Pro-German; or at any rate very insufficiently Pro-Ally,” “though he
probably means at most to be Pro-Jew.”22 Whatever the nature of their relationship, it did not prevent Zangwill from describing Chesterton as an
antisemite. In The War for the World (1916), Zangwill referred to The New
16. Joseph Pearce, Wisdom and Innocence: A Life of G. K. Chesterton (London:
Hodder and Stoughton, 1996), 446.
17. For examples, see: http://www.secondspring.co.uk/spring/semitism11.htm
(downloaded July 9, 2011); Aidan Mackey, “Chesterton: Case for the Defence,”
The Jewish Chronicle, December 19, 1997, 23; Ian Boyd, Chesterton Review, Vol.
XXXII/3&4 (2006), 276. Ironically, Gerald Kaufmann, an Anglo-Jewish politician,
wrote a hostile critique of Chesterton but accepted the claim that Zangwill and
Chesterton were friends. Gerald Kaufmann, “Chesterton’s Final Solution,” The
Times Higher Education, January 2, 1998, 14.
18. Chesterton Review, vol. XIII/2 (1987), 144-145.
19. Dale Ahlquist, Gilbert Magazine, Vol. 12/2&3 (November/December
2008), 20.
20. Sean P. Dailey, “Tremendous Trifles,” Gilbert Magazine, Vol. 12/2&3
(November/December 2008), 4.
21. Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of
Charles Dickens (London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1911), x-xi; and Gilbert Keith Chesterton, “Our Notebook,” Illustrated London News, February 28, 1914, 322.
22. Gilbert Keith Chesterton, “Mr Zangwill on Patriotism,” The New Witness,
October 18, 1917, 586-587.
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CHESTERTON
687
Witness as the organ of “a band of Jew-baiters,” whose “antisemitism” is
rooted in “ignorance, envy and mediaeval prejudice.” He stated that G. K.
Chesterton provided the “intellectual side” of the paper, which was, he concluded, “not strong except in names.” He suggested that the “conductors” of
The New Witness would “do better to call it The False Witness.”23 In 1920,
Zangwill stated: “In Mr. Chesterton’s own organ, The New Witness—the
change of whose name to The False Witness I have already recommended—the most paradoxical accusations against the Jew find Christian
hospitality.”24
If Zangwill believed Chesterton was guiltless of antisemitism, then he
had a strange way of showing it.
Another resilient but mendacious defense has been that Chesterton
could not have been an antisemite because the Wiener Library, the UK’s
key institute dedicated to researching antisemitism, has defended him from
the charge. This defense has been recycled in a number of books, newspapers, and periodicals.25 The resilience of this myth is demonstrated by the
fact that at last count there were nineteen Web sites26 that refer to it, despite
the Wiener Library’s “efforts to have these false attributions removed.”27
The exploitation of the Wiener Library’s name is discussed in the institute’s
Winter 2010 newsletter.28
This short essay presents just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to
apologetics written to rehabilitate Chesterton’s reputation. They share in
23. Israel Zangwill, The War for the World (London: William Heinemann,
1916), 58-59. At this point, the paper was edited by Cecil Chesterton. G. K. Chesterton was a regular contributor who became editor in October 1916, when Cecil
joined the army, and continued to run the paper when Cecil died in 1918.
24. Israel Zangwill, “The Jewish Bogey (July 1920),” in Speeches, Articles and
Letters of Israel Zangwill, ed. Maurice Simon (London: The Soncino Press, 1937),
103.
25. For examples, see Coren, Gilbert: The Man Who Was G. K. Chesterton,
209-210; Pearce, Wisdom and Innocence, 448; Oddie, “The Philosemitism of G. K.
Chesterton,” 130; Ian Boyd, Chesterton Review, Vol. XXXII/3&4 (2006):276.
26. A few examples include knowledge Web sites Wikipedia and Answers.com,
the antisemitic Web site Metapedia, and the Roman Catholic Web site
Secondspring:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_K._Chesterton
http://www.answers.com/topic/g-k-chesterton
http://en.metapedia.org/wiki/GK_Chesterton
http://www.secondspring.co.uk/economy/chesterton-anti-semitism.html
27. Ben Barkow, “Director’s Letter,” Wiener Library News, 61 (Winter 2010):2.
Ben Barkow is the director of the Wiener Library.
28. Simon Mayers, “G. K. Chesterton and the Wiener Library Defence,” Wiener
Library News, 61 (Winter 2010):10.
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common a problematic use of sources. In some cases, such as the Zangwill
and Wiener Library defenses, they cite little or no discernable evidence.
Considering Chesterton’s discourse about Jews, which was often offensive
and mendacious, the wisdom of considering him a saint and a philosemite
is, from the perspective of promoting understanding rather than misunderstanding between Catholics and Jews, at the very least questionable.
*Simon Mayers is a final-year PhD candidate at the Centre for Jewish Studies in
the University of Manchester. His PhD project, funded by the AHRC, examines
English Catholic constructions of “the Jew” during the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries; his main interest is how “the Jews” were represented in newspapers, periodicals, novels and short stories, sermons and pastoral letters. Mayers
also has an interest in Jewish novels and Jewish philosophy.
Nicholas Kristof, Israel, and Double Standards
Jeffrey Grossman*
Over the years, Nicholas Kristof has written several New York Times
op-eds that have demonstrated an appalling nescience regarding their subject matter. For example, in one less than remarkable 2010 opinion piece,
“New Alarm Bells About Chemicals and Cancer,” Kristof declared: “The
President’s Cancer Panel is the Mount Everest of the medical mainstream,
so it is astonishing to learn that it is poised to join ranks with the organic
food movement and declare: chemicals threaten our bodies.” (http://
www.nytimes.com/2010/05/06/opinion/06kristof.html). In that same op-ed,
Kristof went on to advise: “Avoid meats that are cooked well-done.”
Apparently, Kristof was blithely unaware that our bodies consist of
chemicals and that well-done meat (as opposed to charred meat, which can
be carcinogenic) ensures that dangerous bacteria have been killed.
Ignorance, however, has never prevented Kristof from foisting twaddle
upon the Times’s readership, particularly with respect to Israel. In an
August 2011 op-ed, “Seeking Balance on the Mideast” (http://www.nytimes
.com/2011/08/04/opinion/seeking-balance-on-the-mideast.html?_r=1&hp),
Kristof lambasted Israel at a time when Assad’s tanks were massacring the
inhabitants of the Syrian city of Hama. Kristof sought to excuse himself by
observing:
Whenever I write about Israel, I get accused of double standards because
I don’t spill as much ink denouncing worse abuses by, say, Syria. I plead
guilty. I demand more of Israel partly because my tax dollars supply arms
and aid to Israel. I hold democratic allies like Israel to a higher standard—just as I do the U.S.
True, Syria has not been a recipient of U.S. aid. But whereas Egypt has
received billions of dollars of American aid, Kristof doesn’t write about the
persecution and murder of its Coptic Christian minority (see, for example,
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http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.com/2011/03/story-nicholas-kristof-isnt-covering
-11.html).
And while Pakistan, a democracy of sorts, has also benefited from billions of dollars of U.S. aid while abetting the Taliban in Afghanistan, Kristof has been seeking a reduction of tariffs on Pakistani garment exports to
the United States. purportedly in order to fight extremism (see http://
www.nytimes.com/2010/05/13/opinion/13kristof.html?hp).
Kristof used “Seeking Balance on the Mideast” to smear Israel’s Operation Cast Lead:
Similarly, when Israel stormed into Gaza in 2008 to halt rocket attacks,
more than 1,300 Gazans were killed, according to B’Tselem, a respected
Israeli human rights group. As Gazan blood flowed, the House, by a vote
of 390 to 5, hailed the invasion as “Israel’s right to defend itself.”
Kristof failed to state the number of mortar shells, rockets, and missiles fired from Gaza at civilian targets in southern Israel prior to Operation
Cast Lead—over 8,600—i.e., a hailstorm that would surely be regarded by
the United States or any other Western nation as an act of war, requiring
that it defend itself. Hypothetically, if Cuba were periodically to shell Key
West and its environs over the course of some eight years, I doubt that any
American government could or would adopt the restraint demonstrated by
Israel prior to Cast Lead.
More odious, however, was how Kristof failed to mention that the
accuracy of B’Tselem’s casualty figures and its impartiality are hotly disputed (see, for example, http://maurice-ostroff.tripod.com/id328.html). The
Israel Defense Forces painstakingly determined that 1,166 Palestinians
died, of whom only 295 were non-combatants (http://www.jpost.com/Israel/
Article.aspx?id=137286), and these numbers were subsequently confirmed
in large part by Hamas (http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=
193521). Was this a further manifestation of ignorance on the part of Kristof, or was there some other determinant in play?
Kristof followed up on this August 2011 op-ed with another myopic
New York Times opinion piece that appeared in October 2011, “Is Israel Its
Own Worst Enemy?” (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/06/opinion/kristofis-israel-its-own-worst-enemy.html?_r=1&hp). Kristof wrote:
These days, the world has been turned upside down. Now it is Israel that
is endangered most by its leaders and maximalist stance. Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu is isolating his country, and, to be blunt, his hard
line on settlements seems like a national suicide policy.
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691
Netanyahu stands in the way of peace? Let’s have a look at his “maximalist stance” in his September 2011 speech to the UN:
The settlements have to be—it’s an issue that has to be addressed and
resolved in the course of negotiations.
President Abbas, stop walking around this issue. Recognize the Jewish state, and make peace with us. In such a genuine peace, Israel is prepared to make painful compromises.
Ladies and gentlemen, I continue to hope that President Abbas will
be my partner in peace. I’ve worked hard to advance that peace. The day
I came into office, I called for direct negotiations without preconditions.
President Abbas didn’t respond. I outlined a vision of peace of two states
for two peoples. He still didn’t respond. I removed hundreds of roadblocks and checkpoints to ease freedom of movement in the Palestinian
areas; this facilitated a fantastic growth in the Palestinian economy. But
again—no response. I took the unprecedented step of freezing new buildings in the settlements for 10 months. No prime minister did that before,
ever. Once again—you applaud, but there was no response.
Netanyahu offered to meet with Abbas at the UN, but again, there was
no response from Abbas.
Kristof attacks further. He would have us believe that future Israeli
construction of 1,100 housing units in the Jersualem neighborhood of Gilo
means that Israel now demands sovereignty over all of Jersualem:
With that diplomatic fight at the United Nations under way, Israel last
week announced plans for 1,100 new housing units in a part of Jerusalem
outside its pre-1967 borders. Instead of showing appreciation to President
Obama, Mr. Netanyahu thumbed him in the eye.
O.K., I foresee a torrent of angry responses. I realize that many
insist that Jerusalem must all belong to Israel in any peace deal anyway,
so new settlements there don’t count. But, if that’s your position, then
you can kiss any peace deal goodbye. Every negotiator knows the framework of a peace agreement—1967 borders with land swaps, Jerusalem as
the capital of both Israeli and Palestinian states, only a token right of
return—and insistence on a completely Israeli Jerusalem simply means
no peace agreement ever.
This was pure sophistry on Kristof’s part. Every peace proposal proffered by former Israeli prime ministers Barak and Olmert to their counterparts Arafat and Abbas in 2000, 2001, and 2008 was premised upon the
1967 lines with land swaps and a division of Jerusalem. In the case of
Olmert’s proposal, it involved sharing of Jerusalem’s holy places. Although
they scorned these peace proposals, Arafat and Abbas never contested that
the Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo would remain with Israel.
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Kristof continued:
The Israel Defense Forces can deal with suicide bombers and rockets
fired by Hezbollah. I’m not sure that they can defeat Palestinian women
blocking roads to illegal settlements and willing to endure tear gas and
clubbing—with videos promptly posted on YouTube.
Was Kristof referring to those same Palestinian women who are
repeatedly subjected to “honor killings” by their Palestinian male kin?
Though Kristof has avoided writing about this horrifying phenomenon, his
attempt at conjuring up a picture of IDF soldiers clubbing Palestinian
women bordered on a blood libel.
Kristof also blamed Israel for a deterioration of relations with Turkey:
“Mr. Netanyahu has also undermined Israeli security by burning bridges
with Israel’s most important friend in the region, Turkey.”
What about democratic Turkey? There was no mention by Kristof of
the increasingly radical Islamic stance adopted by Turkey’s ruling AKP
party, its efforts to curry favor with Iran, and its attempts to offer succor to
the Hamas regime in Gaza. There has been no Kristof story about Turkey’s
oppression of its Kurdish minority; there has been no Kristof op-ed concerning Turkey’s imprisonment of journalists. Kristof never bothered to tell
the story of how Turkey’s Prime Minister Erdogan accepted the Qaddafi
2011 Human Rights Prize and then refused to participate in NATO’s operation to dislodge the Libyan tyrant.
And I have yet to see a Kristof piece about child brides (37%) in Turkey or the spiraling murder rate of women under the current AKP
government.
Kristof further declared in this op-ed: “If Jews in the West Bank can
vote, then Palestinians there should be able to as well.” But it is Abbas who
has refused to allow West Bank Palestinians to vote. Elected to serve as the
president of the Palestinian Authority until January 2009, Abbas continues
in his current position without a mandate. It is also peculiar how Kristof
failed to mention that Abbas insists that the future Palestinian state must be
free of Jews and that Abbas will not accept Israel as a Jewish state.
Kristof concluded:
Some of my Israeli friends will think I’m unfair and harsh, applying
double standards by focusing on Israeli shortcomings while paying less
attention to those of other countries in the region. Fair enough: I plead
guilty. I apply higher standards to a close American ally like Israel that is
a huge recipient of American aid.
Friends don’t let friends drive drunk—or drive a diplomatic course
that leaves their nation veering away from any hope of peace. Today,
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Israel’s leaders sometimes seem to be that country’s worst enemies, and
it’s an act of friendship to point that out.
Kristof is a friend of Israel, again fearful of being accused of applying
a double standard? Ridiculous. The former mayor of New York, Ed Koch,
has stated that he has “no hesitation in calling Kristof by his rightful name:
an enemy of Israel” (http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/49982/).
But from where does Kristof’s enmity toward Israel derive? Is his hostility
the product of naı̈veté (akin to “Avoid meats that are cooked well-done”),
or is he merely toeing the line with respect to the institutionalized “antiZionism” of the left?
Let’s get straight to the point: Is Kristof an unwitting antisemite? He
would undoubtedly deny this accusation and provide a laundry list of Jewish friends and colleagues, but ultimately any such determination would
depend upon your definition of the term.
According to the “working definition of antisemitism” of the European
Forum on Antisemitism (http://www.european-forum-on-antisemitism.org/
working-definition-of-antisemitism/english/): “Examples of the ways in
which antisemitism manifests itself with regard to the State of Israel taking
into account the overall context could include: . . . Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other
democratic nation.”
If Kristof indeed holds “democratic allies like Israel to a higher standard—just as I do the United States,” where are his recent opinion pieces
decrying civilian casualties in Afghanistan, which have exceeded those
resulting from Israel’s Operation Cast Lead by a multiple of almost a hundred, according to some estimates?
Back in 2002, Kristof wrote a New York Times op-ed, “A Merciful
War” (http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/01/opinion/01KRIS.html?todays
headlines), justifying civilian casualties resulting from America’s involvement in Afghanistan, in which he concluded: “All this underscores a simple
truth, and enough time has passed since Vietnam that we should be able to
acknowledge it: Military intervention, even if it means lost innocent lives
on both sides, can serve the most humanitarian of goals.”
For 2001-2011, there are estimates that between some 10,000 and
30,000 civilians have died in Afghanistan as the result of military activity
undertaken by the United States and its allies. Compare this number with
the 295 noncombatants estimated by the IDF to have died in Israel’s Operation Cast Lead, some of whom were murdered by Hamas as Israeli collaborators. Whereas Kristof is quick to repeatedly skewer Israel, he has largely
ignored the issue of civilian casualties in Afghanistan on the op-ed page of
The New York Times.
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Kristof plainly has no problem ignoring the persecution of 30 million
stateless Kurds, the oppression of Iran’s Baha’is, and the despair of Egypt’s
Copts. He clearly holds Israel to rules unlike those that he would set for any
other country, democratic or otherwise, be it Egypt, Pakistan, Turkey, or the
United States. Kristof worries over whether he will be accused of applying
a double standard to Israel, to which concern I would observe that there is
an old Jewish maxim applicable to Kristof’s angst: “The hat burns on the
head of the thief.” In the best-case scenario, Kristof is guilty of applying
double standards to Israel, notwithstanding his protestations to the contrary.
In the worst-case scenario, Kristof is guilty of something far more insidious.
*Jeffrey Grossman, who holds degrees in law and philosophy, is the CEO of Bear
and Bird Ltd., a boutique international business advisory firm. He has appeared on
television throughout Europe, supplying real-time, on-the-scene commentary during crises and wartime. Grossman lives in Caesarea, Israel.
The CST: A Vital Partnership
Michael Whine*
The Community Security Trust (CST) provides security and security
advice for the Jewish community in the United Kingdom. In addition, it
monitors and analyzes antisemitic incidents and political and physical
threats to the community. The CST has been carrying out these tasks for
over twenty years, through its growth and under different names, but keeping its organizational core.
Recent political, legal, and cultural developments in Britain have
allowed the CST to expand its role, both within the Jewish and the wider
community, in keeping with the aspirations of its lay and professional leadership and the responsibilities that successive governments wish faith communities to adopt. As the oldest non-Christian faith community, with a
developed organizational and communal capacity dating back over three
hundred years, Jews play a disproportionate role in British society, and governments appreciate any assistance that the CST may give to newer migrant
communities, especially in combating racism and hate crime. Indeed, the
constant stream of requests from central government has caused several
organizations, most notably the Board of Deputies of British Jews (the representative body) and the CST (the Community Defence Agency), to reconfigure their professional structure to meet these calls.
HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENTS
Jewish ex-servicemen returning to Britain at the end of World War II
were confronted by renewed antisemitism on the streets of London, organized by supporters of Sir Oswald Mosley, who had been released from
prison in 1943 after being interned for three years for his Nazi sympathies.
Having spent six years fighting against Nazism, the ex-servicemen
were unwilling to accept renewed incitement against their community. A
small group therefore established the 43 Group, which successfully beat
Mosley’s thugs off the streets. Concurrently, the official body of Jewish war
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veterans—the Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen (AJEX)—developed a
policy of seizing the street pitches before the fascists could do so (Beckman, 1993; Sugarman, 2010).
Twenty years later, when supporters of Colin Jordan’s National Socialist Movement and of Spearhead, its paramilitary offshoot, began to attack
Britain’s synagogues and its growing Afro-Caribbean community, activists
within the Jewish community developed a similar response, creating the 62
Committee (Copsey, 2000; Williams, 1967).
Although their activities were marginal to Britain’s overall political
life, the far right was not marginal to the life of Britain’s Jews, who
believed, with some justification, that the governments of the time were not
interested in confronting the intimidation and violence that Jews were
experiencing and cared only for the maintenance of public order. English
law has always regarded racial incitement as a public-order concern, rather
than as an offense against the rights or dignity of minorities.
When the Public Order Act was passed, in 1936, as a direct response to
pro-Nazi provocation, the most important provision, Section 5, made it an
offense “to use threatening, abusive or insulting words or behavior at a public meeting, with intent to provoke a breach of the peace or whereby a
breach of the peace was likely to be occasioned.” It did not address the
consequences of intimidation for the Jewish community (Brownlie, 1968;
Malik, 2009).
The Jewish community’s representative body, the Board of Deputies
of British Jews, composed of elected representatives of all synagogues and
communal institutions but largely led in those days by long-established
families rather than more recent immigrants, who were experiencing
antisemitism on the streets, was also active in lobbying government to crack
down on the extremists’ violence (Langham, 2010; Tilles, 2010).
Despite differences over strategy and tactics, the Board, the 43 Group,
the 62 Committee, and the AJEX all shared information on the neo-Nazis
with each other, and on occasion with the police (Thayer, 1965). They were
also willing to share their information and experiences with others who
were prepared to combat racism and hate.
These distinct streams within the community, and the differing tactical
approaches they adopted, were merged in the late 1980s as a consequence
of new strategic thinking and of changes in legislation. The Jewish groups
felt that the far right, which had been the primary historic source of
antisemitism, was unlikely to fade altogether, but that it was being replaced
by threats from new and different directions. The political and social
antisemitism that had, for example, limited Jews’ membership in the higher
professions or in the commercial institutions of the City of London and
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697
certain golf clubs, were slowly fading as a consequence of the Holocaust,
the creation of the State of Israel, and a more self-assured and assertive
Jewish community, which had played a disproportionate part in defeating
Nazism and fascism.
Now, a resurgent anti-Zionist left, the overspill of Middle East tensions, and Islamism provided new directions from which Jew-hatred was
flowing. Not every criticism of Israel and Zionism was viewed as
antisemitic, but on many occasions such comment served to mask
antisemitism. Moreover, from the late 1960s until the mid 1980s, terrorism
posed actual dangers to Jewish communities around the world. Terror
attacks were perpetrated by Palestinian secular groups, neo-Nazi and white
supremacist groups, and far-left groups. Iranian proxies—Hizbollah in particular—also targeted Jewish communities, as demonstrated by the 1994
AMIA bombing in Buenos Aires. Although terrorism from these sources
peaked in the mid-1980s, at least in numerical terms, it was replaced after
2000 by the threat of terrorism from Al-Qaeda and its affiliates and supporters in the global jihad movement (CST, 2011a).
The Jewish community also wanted to demonstrate a commitment to
aiding newer immigrant communities and fighting racism generally. The
Board of Deputies had successfully campaigned during the 1960s for legislation that guaranteed equality on the one hand, and criminalized incitement
to hate on the other. The legislative outcome of this political campaign had
been the 1964 Race Relations Act, which, inter alia, made it a crime to
discriminate on racial grounds, and the 1986 Public Order Act, which
criminalized incitement to racial hatred. Of course, the Board was not the
only champion in these areas, but it did play a major part in drawing public
attention to the malign consequences of discrimination and racism (Board
of Deputies of British Jews, 1969).
As part of its commitment, the Board established the Community
Security Organisation (CSO) in 1986. With its creation, the CSO absorbed
and adopted the activism of the 62 Committee and the AJEX, along with
the political defense work of the Board’s Defence Department. In 1994,
after changes in charities legislation facilitated the establishment of a standalone, not-for-profit body focused on security and defense for the Jewish
community, the CSO became the Community Security Trust (CST). In
granting the CST charitable status, the Charities Commission had insisted
that it incorporate in its instruments a reference to aiding other communities. The CST did precisely this, thereby formalizing its belief that, while
antisemitism is a singular and unique hate form, the fight against antisemitism must be carried out in partnership with others, and that the experiences
and techniques gained in doing so should be shared with other victim
groups (CST, 1994).
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POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS
Along with these internal developments, the British government and
its criminal justice agencies were also forced to make substantial changes to
their response to hate crime, from the mid 1990s onward, that benefited the
Jewish community. The spark for this process was the lamentable failure of
the Metropolitan Police Service to properly investigate the murder of black
teenager Stephen Lawrence in April 1993, which had set in motion a series
of investigations and attitudinal changes that led to a radical revision in
policing and the manner in which it responds to hate crime. The case was
reported in the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry Report by Sir William MacPherson (Macpherson, 1999); it is still working its way through the criminal
justice system.
The 1936 Public Order Act, which had been passed to counter the rise
in prewar pro-Nazi activities, and the 1964 Race Relations Act, which outlawed racial discrimination, were not designed to address the growth of
“institutional racism,” which the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry Report defined
as:
the collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and
professional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic
origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour
which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance,
thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people (Macpherson, 1999, 28).
The inquiry made 70 separate recommendations, which went to the
heart of police responses to hate crime and were designed “to increase trust
and confidence in policing amongst minority ethnic communities.” Among
them was an agreed definition of a racist incident as: “A racist incident is
any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person”; this is now known as the “Stephen Lawrence test.” Other recommendations included: a code of practice for police and criminal justice agencies
that would allow the reporting of racist incidents 24 hours a day at locations
other than police stations; sharing of information on racist incidents among
the relevant agencies; the creation of a practical guide for responding to
racial incidents; improved liaison with victims and their families; a rebuttable presumption that the public interest test be in favor of prosecution for
hate crimes; and training reviews for all police officers and scenes of crime
officers, including racism and cultural diversity training (Macpherson,
1969, 327-335).
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699
In 2001, the Crown Prosecution Service commissioned a Diversity
Monitoring Project, under the leadership of Professor Gus John, to investigate its own institutional practices and to ensure that these were not contributing in any respect to the denial of justice or to a lack of public confidence
in prosecution systems on the part of black and other minority communities.
The investigation found no evidence of racial discrimination in prosecution
decision-making, but it did point to some worrying trends about the way in
which racist crimes were prosecuted, and formulated ten recommendations
to address shortcomings. Among them were the establishment of a common
standard for casework management, a competency framework for prosecution advocates, the creation and nurturing of an improved management culture, the appointment of specialist prosecutors for racist and religious
crimes, and the adoption of a holistic approach across the criminal justice
system (Crown Prosecution Service, 2003).
The recommendation for a holistic approach persuaded the attorney
general to establish a task force to analyze the context in which racial
crimes occur, to consider improvements in training, and to devise strategies
for good practice. Such strategies include the development of common
reporting methods for the police, to include the use of same categories and
definitions, common protocols, and online reporting of hate crimes; more
effective police training; systematic victim and defendant monitoring by
ethnicity; and training for prosecutors and judiciary.
To oversee the recommendations, the Office for Criminal Justice
Reform established the Race for Justice Delivery Board, composed of
senior representatives from the criminal justice agencies, to be advised by a
small committee of civil society representatives, guided by an independent
chairman. Following the formation of the Coalition Government in 2010,
the committee names were changed to the Hate Crime Advisory Board and
Advisory Group, on which the CST plays an active role representing all
faith groups. These bodies had already moved their affiliation from the
Home Office to the Ministry of Justice, from where both continue to meet
quarterly (Attorney General’s Office, 2006).
The second substantive development affecting Jewish communal concerns was the Report of the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Antisemitism in 2006. The initiative for the inquiry came from the chairman of the
All-Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism (PCAA), John Mann,
MP, who realized that the nature of antisemitism was changing in the wake
of Middle East developments, as was the direction from which it was now
coming. This inquiry was chaired by the former minister for Europe, the Rt.
Hon. Dr. Denis MacShane, MP, and its membership was drawn from all
parliamentary parties; to avoid charges of bias, none of the members was
Jewish or represented any significant Jewish constituency.
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Over the course of twelve months, the PCAA heard evidence from
government, police, Jewish organizations, Muslim groups, Jewish day
school principals, journalists, and others. The inquiry made thirty-five recommendations across a range of issues, which included: adoption of the
EUMC Working Definition of Antisemitism; greater government support
for the Jewish community’s security needs; an investigation into the low
number of prosecutions for antisemitic criminal acts; intensified cooperation between the police and CST; commissioned academic research on the
correlation between conflict in the Middle East and antisemitic attacks;
government action on Internet sites that promote antisemitism; the establishment of an academic working party to investigate and take action
against antisemitism on British campuses; increased inter-communal dialogue; and the appointment of a special high-level envoy on antisemitism
(Report, 2007).
Two particular recommendations concerned the Crown Prosecution
Service, which was asked to investigate the low level of prosecutions for
crimes motivated by antisemitism, and to review cases that had been
brought before the courts in order to see what lessons could be learned.
Again, an inquiry was established to which the CST, along with other Jewish organizations, gave evidence. The inquiry established that 69 percent of
cases from the small sample investigated did not progress because of the
failure to identify suspects. In 58 percent of cases that could have been
prosecuted, however, it was the reluctance of witnesses or victims to support a prosecution by, for example, not wishing to give evidence in court,
which resulted in cases being dropped. This clearly had implications for the
prosecution service and the police, who were failing to pursue cases; both
needed the assistance of the CST to encourage victims of crime to report the
offenses and to provide counseling where necessary. In this area, the CST is
well placed, having earned the trust of members of the Jewish community
over many years (Crown Prosecution Service, 2008).
The parliamentary inquiry also required action by government, and
that progress be reported. The government’s responses have therefore been
published annually for three years, and reflect the progress made in combating antisemitism across a wide spectrum of public life (All-Party Inquiry,
2008; All-Party Inquiry, 2010).
The CST played a substantial part in the antisemitism inquiry, both in
the evidence that its staff gave and in assisting other witnesses, such as the
representatives of the Board of Deputies and the Union of Jewish Students,
to frame their evidence. It continues to play a major role in its participation
in the Cross-Governmental Working Group to Tackle Antisemitism, which
reviews the progress being made.
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THE CST FRAMEWORK
CST’s work is carried out by approximately 3000 volunteers, managed
by a professional team that is based in offices in London, Manchester, and
Leeds and is overseen by a management board. Entirely self-financing, the
CST raises the funds it needs from within the community, although it has
received three government grants in the past two years. Its work covers the
entire community, from secular to strictly orthodox. In this respect, it is
almost unique among Anglo-Jewish institutions, which engage only to a
minimal extent with other Jews in the community. The CST also makes no
charge for its services so that no part of the community should be excluded
(CST, 2010).
Security work is concentrated into two areas. The first is the provision
of security advice and training for community members and institutions.
Threat assessments, based on the expected participants, guest speakers, and
local environment, are made for major communal events, and, where necessary, teams of trained volunteers provide security. In this capacity, they
often work closely with the police and venue management, establishing
joint command and control infrastructures where appropriate.
The second area of security work is the provision of advice to Jewish
community institutions and the staff who work in them. This includes technical advice for community buildings, and particularly for new buildings,
on the basis that security hardening is more effective, and cheaper, at the
design stage rather than adding it on retroactively. Three years ago, after
analyzing the nature of terror attacks on synagogues in other countries, and
finding that the majority of injuries and fatalities were caused by bomb
blast from terrorist attacks, the CST embarked on a multimillion-pound project to shatterproof the windows of all synagogues and Jewish day schools.
At CST urging, at the end of 2010 the UK government agreed to provide
substantial funding for Jewish schools’ security needs, having accepted that
the Jewish community faces particular terrorist and violence threats (Gove,
2010).
A third area, and one that has grown in response to growing needs, is
that of advocacy, public affairs, and communications. Among its many
areas of engagement, the CST is the primary author of communal submissions to government inquiries on the related matters of hate crime,
counterterrorism, and legislation; participation in police, central government, and municipal authority advisory groups; and advice to minority faith
groups. Two years ago, the CST began to publish an annual report on
antisemitic discourse, and more recently has developed a blog, on which
staff members comment on current issues of concern to the Jewish
community.
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The provision of information on political and physical threats to the
community is a substantial part of CST work. Its base for information is the
community leadership itself, law enforcement, and government, and it has
developed longstanding relationships with many of these municipal leaders,
who have come to rely on the quality and timeliness of CST analyses.
On its own initiative, or in response to requests for advice and assistance, the CST has provided training on security and responses to hate
crimes to National Churchwatch, a similar but much smaller body than the
CST that serves the Anglican Communion, various Hindu temples, Sikh
gurdwaras, and, as of 2010, a number of Muslim communities and their
mosques that have been victims of hate crime attacks either by anti-immigrant groups or from radical Islamists.
In fact, the CST’s relationship with Hindu and Sikh national and local
bodies has developed in recent years to form a close, mutually supportive
relationship. This is not just a consequence of the growing diplomatic and
commercial ties between Israel and India, but primarily because the three
ethnic-religious groups frequently adopt common public positions and share
a common outlook on many social or political issues. As a consequence,
occasional meetings are held between the communities’ professional and
lay leaderships, and the CST has provided developmental and infrastructure
advice to the Hindu community, in particular, for over fifteen years.
REPORTING HATE CRIME
The CST began to record antisemitic incidents in the UK in 1984; this
reporting system was changed in 1990 to ensure consistency and greater
accuracy, and to bring it into line with UK criminal justice system classifications and international moves to regularize the gathering of data by Jewish communities. Incident reports are gathered from the victims themselves,
from press reports, and from the police. The CST has an investigative
capacity that has worked with the police on occasion, and regular meetings
are held with national and local police agencies to facilitate information
exchange and consistency of reporting. The CST’s annual Antisemitic Incidents Report has been cited by the British government as the definitive
source of information on the subject for a number of years, although the
police began to collect their own data, and published the first set of official
figures in November 2010.
As a result of its experience, the CST has long urged Jewish and other
communities to standardize data collection and analysis, and it plays an
active role within international agencies to educate law enforcement agencies and NGOs (CST, 2011b; Whine, 2009).
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In September 2009, the Home Office awarded the CST a substantial
grant from the hate crime section of its Victims’ Fund to assist its work
with victims of antisemitic hate crime—the first time that the CST had
received any government funding. The award was one of ten made by the
fund to help support a range of organizations working on behalf of hate
crime victims. This is a core element of CST work, and the money helped
staff and volunteers to support victims, as well as advertise its services
more widely through, for example, public advertising on bus stops in Jewish areas. At the end of 2010, the CST received a second, smaller grant
from the same fund. On this occasion, the money has also been used to fund
a booklet for other communities on reporting and responding to hate crime.
It provides a range of practical suggestions based on CST experience (CST,
2010). In 2011, the Ministry of Justice gave the CST a grant to develop the
means to report antisemitic incidents on Internet-enabled mobile phones.
This is similar to an app, and the QR code can be scanned into a phone from
the CST Web site.
In early 2011, UK police services launched a national online hate
crime reporting system known as True Vision (see http://www.reportit.org.uk/home). This enables victims to report hate crimes without having
to visit police stations, recognizing that some may be fearful or unable to
visit themselves. In doing so, it meets one of the recommendations urged by
the Macpherson Report. True Vision also facilitates third-party reporting to
enable them to report on behalf of victims, a system pioneered by the CST
in conjunction with some police forces. The online system provides safeguards to protect information, automatically refers reports to local police
forces, and guarantees a 24-hour initial response. Web site sidebar icons
enable victims to access CST reporting mechanisms, and the CST will in
turn facilitate referrals to True Vision.
INTERNATIONAL WORK
In early 2011, the CST received a substantial grant payable over two
years from the European Commission for the Facing Facts project to be
carried out in partnership with the Brussels-based European Jewish Information Centre (CEJI) and the Netherlands-based Centre for Documentation
and Information Israel (CIDI).
The project aims to distill the analytical and pedagogical knowledge
gained by three experienced Jewish bodies, and extend it to smaller Jewish
and other minority communities across Europe. It will focus on establishing
national non-governmental infrastructures and methodologies for collecting
data on antisemitic and other hate crimes.
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This is not a new venture for the CST, though the scale of its involvement is certainly a change. The CST has maintained relations with Jewish
community monitoring bodies for a number of years and routinely
exchanges data with them. Indeed, a glance at the product of some European and Commonwealth equivalent bodies illustrates strong similarities in
their names, organizational logos, and presentation styles (see, for example,
France’s Service de Protection de la Communaute Juive, http://www.spcj.
org).
The dearth of reliable data on hate crimes, including antisemitism, is
regularly criticized by the two main monitoring bodies, the European Union
Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA, the successor body to the EUMC), and
the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR).
For example, the ODIHR noted in its 2009 Annual Report on Hate
Crimes in the OSCE Region that:
The full extent of hate crime in the OSCE region continues to be
obscured by a lack of adequate or reliable data. Although data collection
by both governments and NGOs improved in 2009, it is clear from the
information provided to ODIHR that significant gaps in data collection
remain a major obstacle to understanding the scope and nature of hate
crime within most participating States and across the OSCE as a region
(ODIHR, 2010, 7).
The CST has sought to involve itself in the process of collecting and
analyzing data at the international level, and, in fact, aside from its liaison
with and support for other Jewish community agencies, plays an active role
within international agencies. The EUMC commissioned a report on
antisemitism in 2004 that drew heavily on CST data, and it continues to
provide data and analysis through the University of Warwick, which acts as
the FRA National Focal Point on hate crime data (FRA, 2009).
The CST also participated in the drafting of the EUMC Working Definition of Antisemitism, a specific outcome of the 2004 report, which had
noted that:
The basic premise for a valid monitoring and analysis of a phenomenon
is an adequate definition; and the basic premise for comparability is the
common use of such an adequate definition within a country, or even
better, within the EU. The country-by-country evaluation has shown
explicitly that neither is the case. . . . future data collection and assessment should be commonly based on the proposed definition of antisemitism. (EUMC, 2004, 24)
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Both the U.S. State Department and the ODIHR now recommend the
Working Definition, which can be found at http://fra.europa.eu/fraWebsite/
attachments/AS-Main-report.pdf.
An indirect outcome of the PCAA’s work was the establishment of the
Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Combating Antisemitism (ICCA). In February 2009, the British government hosted its first conference and summit
for parliamentarians from around the world, which produced the London
Declaration on Combating Antisemitism (ICCA, 2009). With this document, parliamentarians agreed to press their governments to honor international agreements such as the OSCE Berlin Declaration that focus on
combating antisemitism. In November 2010, the ICCA held its second conference, in Ottawa. The result of this occasion was the Ottawa Protocol,
which noted the alarming resurgence in anti-Jewish libels, such as blood
libels and the publication of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and
affirmed the calls from the London conference for governments and international agencies to take effective action to combat antisemitism (ICCA,
2010).
In both conferences, the CST played a substantial role, providing
administrative support and direction, as well as expert presentations for the
participants. For the first conference, in London, the CST organized the
Experts’ Forum, and in 2011 became a member of the ICCA Task Force on
Internet Hate, which works separately but in parallel to the main ICCA to
combat the promotion of hate online. In October, the task force held its first
hearing in the British parliament, attended by parliamentarians from diverse
countries and Internet experts, at which the CST made a presentation.
Within the Jewish world, the CST was involved in the early discussions that led to the formation of the Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of
Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism at Tel Aviv University, the primary agency for the collection and analysis of data on antisemitism. CST
staff draft the UK contributions to the annual Antisemitism Worldwide
Report and participate in the biannual meetings of the contributors to the
Reports. CST analyses also inform the reports of the Monitoring Forum, as
well as the annual report delivered by the Israel government (see http://
www.tau.ac.il/Anti-Semitism/).
CST staff provides advice and assessments for the World Jewish Congress, the representative body for Jewish communities, and its European
affiliate, the European Jewish Congress. The staff has also participated in
all the meetings organized by the Israeli government-sponsored Global
Forum against Antisemitism (www.gfantisemitism.org), again providing
expert presentations and advice.
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ASSESSMENT
The CST provides much-needed security advice and training to a community whose members continue to suffer from physical and political
attacks (CST, 2005). The nature of these threats has changed since the postwar years, but they continue to undermine the community’s self-confidence.
The chief rabbi, Lord Jonathan Sacks, has spoken of the continuing concern
of many British Jews, namely, feeling the need to look over their shoulder
while at the same time participating fully and successfully in political,
social, and cultural life in Britain (Sacks, 2011). Neither Sacks, nor the CST
and its leadership, see any inconsistency in this. Indeed, Jews have come to
play a not inconsiderable part in civic life, while recognizing that they must
remain vigilant in safeguarding their position.
The terror threat to the UK, and indeed to other Western states, will
require a continuing high level of security, and CST expertise in confronting such threats is not only in demand by the Jewish community, but is
also given high recognition by government and the police. CST expertise in
training civil society to provide its own security as an adjunct to that provided by the state and its agencies meets the needs of these communities, as
well as the state itself.
Occasional testimony from senior police officers confirms this. In
2005, the then commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service, Sir John
Stevens (later Lord Stevens), expressed the opinion that “The Community
Security Trust is one of the finest examples in the world of an effective
crime prevention partnership that really works hard to make the community
safer.” Assistant Commissioner David Veness (later Sir Veness) noted, “If
the Community Security Trust didn’t exist, we would have to invent something very much like it” (CST, 2005).
The Board of Deputies and the CST have taken a lead in lobbying for
legislation that guarantees freedom from discrimination on the one hand,
and freedom from incitement on the other. It has used its historical experience to inform and propel its substantial contribution. Of course, changes
that have been made in British laws in these related fields would not have
been possible were it not for a wider concern, and the general review and
changes brought about by Britain’s acceptance of international conventions
and legal instruments that came about as a consequence of the Second
World War and the universal acceptance of human rights norms.
The Jewish community has seized the opportunities that events have
provided to campaign for improvements that strengthened both its security,
and that of others. It could not have taken these initiatives without changes
in British society, and in particular changes in legislation that recognize the
social harm that incitement to hatred brings; recognition that racism must be
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confronted; and, more recently, encouragement by government of a culture
that consults and involves civil society to a greater extent than in the past.
The CST is very much an events- and client-driven organization that
responds to the needs of the Jewish and increasingly some other minority
communities. It draws on the strengths of its predecessor organizations, but
it is also clear that it could not have achieved what it has achieved without
the parallel political and cultural initiatives that have persuaded successive
recent governments to reform and modernize legislation and involve civil
society in the criminal justice system and in combating hate crime.
*Michael Whine is government and international affairs director at the Community
Security Trust, defense and group relations director at the Board of Deputies of
British Jews, and security consultant to the European Jewish Congress, which he
also represents at the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
He has been professionally engaged in researching antisemitism and religious and
political extremism for twenty-five years, and has published and lectured widely.
Portions of this essay were delivered at the Second International Conference on
Hate Studies, Gonzaga University, Spokane, Washington, April 6, 2011, and partly
published in Journal of Hate Studies, 9 (http://journals.gonzaga.edu/index.php/johs/
information/authors).
REFERENCES
All-Party Inquiry into Antisemitism: Government Response, One Year On Progress
Report. 2008. Cm 7381. London: The Stationery Office.
All-Party Inquiry into Antisemitism: Government Response, Three Years On
Progress Report. 2010. Cm 7991. London: The Stationery Office.
Attorney General’s Office. 2006. Report of the Race for Justice Taskforce. London:
Author.
Beckman, Morris. 1993. The 43 Group, 2nd ed. London: Centreprise.
Board of Deputies of British Jews. 1969. Improving Race Relations—A Jewish
Contribution. A report and recommendations by the Working Party on Race
Relations. London: Author.
Brownlie, Ian. 1968. The Law Relating to Public Order. London: Butterworth.
Community Security Trust (CST). (n.d.). Annual Review 2010. London: Author.
Available at http://thecst.org.uk/docs/Annual%20Review.
———. 1994. Declaration of Charitable Trust. London: Author.
———. 2005. Working with the Police to Protect the Jewish Community (video
and leaflet). London, Spring 2005.
———. 2010. Grant payment. Letter from Home Office to CST, May 14, 2010.
———. 2011a. London, UK: Author. Available from http://www.thecst.org.uk/
downloads/Terrorist_Incidents_Report.pdf.
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———. 2011b. Antisemitic Incidents Report 2010. Available at http://
www.thecst.org.uk/docs/Incidents%20Report%202010.pdf.
Copsey, Nigel. 2000. Anti-Fascism in Britain. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Crown Prosecution Service. 2003. Race for Justice: A Review of CPS Decision
Making for Possible Racial Bias at Each Stage of the Prosecution Process.
London: Author. Available at http://www.cps.gov.uk/publications/equality/
racejustice.html.
——— 2008. The Crown Prosecution Service Response to the All-Party
Parliamentary Inquiry into Antisemitism. Available at http://www.cps.gov.uk/
publications/research/antisemitism.html.
EUMC (European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia). 2004.
Manifestations of Antisemitism in the EU 2002-2003. Available from http://
fra.europa.eu/fraWebsite/attachments/AS-Main-report.pdf.
FRA (European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights). 2009. Antisemitism:
Summary Overview of the Situation in the European Union, 2001-2008.
[Working paper]. Available at http://fra.europa.eu/fraWebsite/attachments/
Antisemitism_Update_2009.pdf.
Gove, Michael, MP, personal communication to author, December 8, 2010.
ICCA (Inter-parliamentary Coalition for Combating Antisemitism). 2009. The
London Declaration on Combating Antisemitism. February 17, 2009.
Available at http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/corporate/pdf/
1151284.pdf.
———. 2010. Ottawa Protocol on Combating Antisemitism. Available at http://
www.antisemitism.org/archive/Ottawa-protocol-on-combating-antisemitism.
Langham, Raphael. 2010. 250 Years of Convention and Contention: A History of
the Board of Deputies of British Jews, 1760-2010. London: Vallentine
Mitchell.
MacPherson, William. 1999. Stephen Lawrence Inquiry: Report of an Inquiry by
Sir William Macpherson of Cluny. London: The Stationery Office.
Malik, Maleiha. 2009. “Extreme Speech and Liberalism.” In Extreme Speech and
Democracy, Ivan Hare and James Weinstein (Eds.), (chap. 6). London: Oxford
University Press.
ODIHR (Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights). 2010. Hate Crimes
in the OSCE Region—Incidents and Responses: Annual Report for 2009.
Available at http://www.osce.org/odihr/73636.
Report of the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Antisemitism: Government
Response. (2007). Cm 7059. London: The Stationery Office.
Sacks, Jonathan. 2011. “Having Pride in Britain Protects All Cultures.” The Times,
February 7, 2011. Retrieved from http://www.thetimes.co.uk.
Sugarman, Martin. 2010. Fighting Back: British Jewry’s Military Contribution in
the Second World War. London: Vallentine Mitchell.
Thayer, George. 1965. “The Yellow Star Movement.” In George Thayer, The
British Political Fringe (82-95). London: Anthony Blond.
Tilles, Daniel. 2010. “Some Lesser Known Aspects—The Anti-Fascist Campaign
of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, 1936-1940.” In New Directions in
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Anglo-Jewish History, Geoffrey Alderman (Ed.), (135-162). Brighton, MA:
Academic Studies Press.
U.S. Department of State. 2008. Contemporary Global Antisemitism: A Report
Provided to the United States Congress. Washington DC: Author. Available at
http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/102301.pdf.
Whine, Michael. 2009. “Devising Unified Criteria and Methods of Monitoring
Antisemitism.” Jewish Political Studies Review, 21: 1-2.
Williams, David. 1967. Keeping the Peace—The Police and Public Order. London:
Hutchinson.
Economic Crisis and Blaming You Know Who:
Antisemitism and Nationalism in Austria
Karin Stoegner*
Today’s situation of economic (and political) crisis in a globalized and
intransparent world raises the question of whether the well-known modes of
antisemitic complexity reduction are still in use to cope with insecurities
and uncertainties. Accordingly, in the autumn of 2008 the Anti-Defamation
League expressed concern about antisemitism in the course of the global
economic crisis and demonstrated this by a number of articles in U.S.,
South American, and European print media and Internet forums where more
or less open antisemitic resentments were articulated.1 The extent of these
antisemitic indictments was quite broad, ranging from traditional
antisemitic stereotypes like the “greedy Jew” to “Jewish world conspiracy.”
Nationalism and antisemitism are interrelated, as this essay will
demonstrate via samples from two research projects.2 The first part of the
article provides a brief historical and sociological overview of the nationalism and antisemitism connection. Examples from Austrian print media
1. http://www.adl.org/.
2. Karin Stoegner, “Nationalism and Antisemitism. A Study on their Relations,
continuities and discontinuities from a sociological, political and historical perspective,” Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship carried out at Central European
University, Budapest, 2009-2011 (FP7/2007-2013, Grant Agreement 2335241);
“Antisemitismus und Finanzkrise: Eine Untersuchung österreichischer
Printmedien,” research project funded by the Jubiläumsfonds der Oesterreichischen
Nationalbank, carried out at the Institute of Conflict Research, Vienna, 2009-2011.
I would like to thank my colleagues Karin Bischof and Elke Rajal in Vienna for the
fruitful collaboration in the latter project.
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regarding the economic crisis will demonstrate how this connection infuses
the public discourse.
ANTISEMITISM
AND
NATIONALISM
In European history, times of economic crisis and social transition
have shown a particular tendency to produce antisemitism as a strategy to
cope with the demands of modernization and the uncertainty and insecurity
that come with social change. The persistence of antisemitic stereotypes and
their constant reoccurrence in ever-adapting shapes can be read as an exemplification of the dialectic of static and dynamic that is indeed characteristic
for modern society and sociation: static presupposes dynamic, while at the
same time dynamic results in static (Adorno 1997a; 1997b). It has been a
major insight of critical theory that in modern society continuity cannot be
thought without discontinuity. Thus, the status quo on the level of social
structures can be maintained only through discontinuity on the level of
social interaction. While life worlds seem to change, power and domination
as the underlying principles of sociation are reproduced throughout all
transformation. In late modern society, real social change that would result
in a society beyond domination is systematically banned by integrating
those very moments that would have the potential to transcend the universe
of domination (Marcuse 1966). Each economic crisis fundamentally challenges society and bears the potential to destroy the economic and social
system. It is interesting to analyze how the phenomenon of crisis is itself
integrated into the very structures it threatens. With Marcuse and
Habermas, we can say that social change is being transformed into a
moment of system enhancement (Habermas 1969; Marcuse 1966).
The role of antisemitism in this dialectical process has been broadly
analyzed in historical studies on antisemitism, e.g., Germany’s 1870s
Gründerkrise (Massing 1949), the Great Depression of the late 1920s and
1930s (Hanloser 2003), and National Socialism (Horkheimer and Adorno
2002; Horkheimer et al. 1981; Lepsius 1990). Antisemitism has to be
viewed not only as an outlet for the individuals deprived of their traditional
certainties and bonding, but also as a structural moment effective straight
through the individuals. Furthermore, antisemitism is a phenomenon that
incorporates the dialectic of static and dynamic. It serves the function of
system enhancement, and for this very task occasionally has to take on different shapes. This is why in spite of all continuity and persistence we cannot assume an eternal antisemitism. It depends on the social constellation in
which antisemitism appears, and this constellation can only be detected and
understood when taking into account the necessary differences and changes
(cf. Claussen 2000, 66). The assumption of an eternal antisemitism runs the
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713
risk of essentialization, and in the end can be seen as a corresponding part
of the myth of the eternal Jew. This myth can be regarded as part of what
Walter Benjamin, citing Nietzsche, called the Eternal Return of the Same
(Benjamin 2002; 2003). It is the task of critical antisemitism theory to permeate the foreclosed ideology by accurately analyzing the dialectic of continuity and discontinuity of antisemitism’s function within society and its
manifestations. This is particularly demanded with regard to analyzing and
historically situating contemporary forms of antisemitism that, especially in
Germany and Austria, cannot be understood without the National Socialist
past and the effort of not working through it.
The modern (19th century) nation state—itself an answer to capitalist
transformation (Anderson 1991; Hobsbawm 1992)—implicated antisemitism as a strategy for national social transformation. These two ideologies
provided modernization’s anxiety reduction. Yet, the intertwining of nationalism and antisemitism ideologically covered the actual social antagonism
by pretending a homogeneous national in-group (Holz 2001; Horkheimer
and Adorno 2002; Massing 1949; Rensmann 1998; 2004). Thus, as a necessary adaptation to the demands of system enhancement, antisemitism
evolved into a nationalist and voelkisch stance. That the relation between
antisemitism and nationalism is so close, especially in the German and Austrian historical context, leads us to the assumption that there must be common features in terms of their structures and the functions they serve in
modern society.
A core element in 19th-century antisemitic rhetoric was the image of
the anti-national Jew (Holz 2001; Rensmann 2004). It implied that Jews
were incapable of building their own nation. Instead, they would live as
“parasites” and eternal aliens within the European nation states. The antinational Jew emerges as a figure that threatens the nation from within and
without. The stereotype serves as a national projection for unarticulated discomfort with the very concept of the nation, its actual design as a nation
state, and the exclusive mode of identification it demanded. The nation state
produced this anxiety due to its intrinsic contradictions of inclusivity and
exclusivity. The idea of the nation suggests that all members would be
equal, the nation itself passed off as homogeneous. But this hypostatized
homogeneity and formal equality clashed with the reality of inequality and
social antagonism. So the nation as an ideology had the function of repressively covering class antagonism. National antisemitism became an effective device to project heterogeneity outside the nation’s inward and outward
borders. The ideology of the nation reflected a common universal interest,
but in fact it legitimized the particular class interest. The particularity was
successfully hidden by national antisemitism (Adorno 1997b; Horkheimer
1988).
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The basis of this ideology can be found in class society. It is also the
basis of an antagonist relationship of the individual and society. Non-identical is also the bourgeois subject (Adorno 1997c) as it unifies two contradictory and competing moments: the bourgeois and the citoyen. As bourgeois,
the individual has to act selfishly and rationally in the sense of purposiverational action (Max Weber) and has to act according to motives that are in
opposition to the norms of the citoyenneté, which claim to act for the good
of the nation. Now the chimerical unity of the system is maintained
throughout this antagonism via collectivizing ideologies, among which
antisemitism and nationalism are the most appropriate ones. Both bear
mythologizing tendencies that make them even more suitable to fill the void
the loss of religion has left (Klinger 2008). They bridge the unbroken need
for collective hold in a modern secularized world (Horkheimer 1988).
Antisemitism and nationalism both suggest unity and identity even when
there is inequality and antagonism; unity of the in-group against an outgroup. By covering capitalist class inequities, they serve the ideological
function of obscuring social structures.
Both antisemitism and nationalism give the appearance of anti-capitalist revolt. But this is characterized by a reductionist view that divides capitalist economy into an industrial and a financial domain, thereby attributing
exploitation to the latter one. The mediation between the two spheres is
blinded out and ideology does not recognize that both spheres constitute the
capital relationship. The industrial and financial distinction as two spheres
independent of each other served as a basis of antisemitism, e.g., two books
by National Socialist Gottfried Feder—Brechung der Zinsknechtschaft/
Abolition of Interest Slavery and Kampf gegen die Hochfinanz/Battle
Against High Finance—were key ideological devices of Nazi propaganda.
The corresponding division between “creative” and “grasping” capital
offered competing stereotypes in the respective spheres: the “unproductive
Jew” and the “productive Aryan”; Jews as exploiters, Aryans as exploited.
The ideological reduction is at least twofold: irrespective of reality, all Jews
are identified with the financial sphere; and in the financial sphere Jews are
made responsible for the evils of capitalism (Horkheimer and Adorno 2002,
142f.). The exploitive character of capitalism is reduced to a financial sector
and personalized in the figure of the Jew. Financial capital is thought to
erode the national community. By contrast, industrial capital is seen as productive and rooted in national community. In modern antisemitism, this
division identified financial capital with alienated Jewishness, while industrial capital was aligned with the nation, authenticity, and the Aryan. There
was also the abstract and concrete distinction. Jews were to be regarded as
abstract, compared to Christians as the concrete industrial capital of the
nation (see Postone 1988). The function of this ideology was again twofold:
2011]
715
to demonize the Jew as international in character while rescuing capitalist
production processes from criticism. Furthermore, the hypostatization of the
nation and industrial capital as the concrete successfully obscured that in
reality the nation was an abstract form of domination and a repression of
peculiarities, especially with regard to language (Habermas 1998, 25; Hobsbawm 1992; Volkov 2001, 42). The fact that it was about hiding class
antagonisms in the name of the nation can be observed in the ideology of
industrial capital being rooted in national community.
A whole archive of antisemitic and nationalist imaginations developed
in the course of the second part of the 19th century. The imagination of a
racially pure Aryan nation—as the corresponding part to the anti-national
Jew—stands for a yearning for wholeness and unity within a modern world
characterized by cleavages and non-identity. So the concept of the pure
nation clearly shows its origin in the fear of insecurities and uncertainties.
The reasons for these uncertainties are not sought in antagonist social structures but projected onto the Jew, who would threaten the unity and pollute
the pure nation.
This imagination was very influential in the 20th century as well. It is
interesting to note that many of those images were used to transport nationalism. This was the case until National Socialism. After the murder of European Jews, a change in both the emphasis and the direction of the
antisemitism and nationalism link can be observed. While open and aggressive antisemitism became tabooed and even outlawed in some circles, this
was not nearly the case for nationalism. The members of Frankfurt’s Institute of Social Research noted the development of a single anti-democratic
attitudinal syndrome in which the components of antisemitism, ethnocentrism, nationalism, and sexism reinforced and stood for each other (Adorno
et al. 1967). Thus, while overt antisemitism is tabooed to a certain degree, a
functionally equivalent ideology is able to come to the fore. Horkheimer
named nationalism as a catalyst of antisemitism after 1945, recognizing a
national “we” (Horkheimer 1985, 139) that covered the need for collective
and exclusionary identification so characteristic of Nazi antisemitism. After
the Shoah, nationalism could be expressed more openly than antisemitism
and without arousing suspicion. Thus, behind a nationalist discourse of
patriotism, old antisemitic ideas could be preserved.
Given the long history of antisemitism and nationalism in Europe, the
close historical connection and mixing of these two movements became
part of the cultural and linguistic archive of whole generations. This socalled cultural and ideological heritage is bequeathed to the next generation
and can be easily activated, even in a “postnational constellation” (Fine
2010; Habermas 1998). The need to unambiguously identify oneself to a
group one incidentally belongs to, like the nation, is unbroken because soci-
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[ VOL. 3:711
ety is still deeply antagonistic. Yet the question of identity itself implies a
need for and a lack of identity. Invariably, both nationalism and antisemitism enable people to seemingly overcome the socially induced ambiguity.
Both permit the chimeric identification.
PRINT MEDIA DISCOURSE
How can one transmit antisemitism without an open allusion to the
Jews? Due to the taboo on manifest antisemitism (Reisigl and Wodak
2001), new ways of articulating antisemitic resentments have developed—
what Dan Diner calls cleavage products. Except for neo-Nazi circles, we
will probably not observe a coherent antisemitic ideology anymore today
but rather “particles of resentment” (Diner 2004, 310) that can be connected
even to allegedly emancipatory narratives.3 We can observe this in certain
discourses of the left that have an anti-imperialist touch. The taboo on open
antisemitism and the following necessity to find new ways to express
antisemitic resentment leads to a dissolution of the traditional borders of
argumentation while broadening antisemitism’s spectrum (Knothe 2009,
142). Hence, the discourses based on latent antisemitism can do without
reference to Jews. Still, they operate with codes that can be understood by
the recipients to be antisemitic.
The specificity of tabooed antisemitism raises the question of intentionality being brought forward in antisemitism research. For example,
Siegfried Jäger (2005, 121) suggests that an utterance is to be interpreted as
antisemitic if intentionality on the part of the speaker can be presumed.
Apart from the difficulty to detect intentionality on the basis of a single
utterance or text, this position poses problems as it situates antisemitism in
the domain of the individual and no longer views it as a structural phenomenon that can be effective as well against the conscious and explicit intention
of the speaker. Thus, Horkheimer and Adorno analyzed antisemitism in late
capitalist society not as an independent impulse based on personal experience but as a cliché, as fixed part of the ticket: “The anti-Semite’s conviction, however mendacious it may be, has been absorbed into the
preconditioned reflexes of the subjectless exponents of a particular standpoint. [ . . . ] Experience is replaced by cliché, the imagination active in
experience by diligent acceptance” (Horkheimer and Adorno 2002, 166).
Rather than exclusively focusing on either the individual or the structural level, it is recommended adapting a perspective that considers the constant mediation of structure and interaction, society and individual. The
complex phenomenon of antisemitism is neither to be located uniquely on
3. In Islamic countries or communities, this may be different indeed.
2011]
717
the structural level, nor uniquely in a subjective sphere of intentional attitude and understanding. One cannot think of an individual understanding
that would not reflect social structures, which in turn have to be analyzed
by looking at how they assert themselves in communicative interaction. If
we overemphasize the structural level at the expense of the subjective one,
we run the risk of viewing social structures as ontological givens that exist
separate from the individuals. Even when social structures take on a reality
independent from and against the individuals, they are still consolidated and
petrified social relations that are constantly reproduced through the communicative interaction of the subjects. With regard to antisemitism, neglecting
the subjective level would also essentialize it as an structural given. But
then we still have to explain why some individuals are not antisemitic. Considering only the subjective level, on the other hand, would imply absolutization of the individual toward the objective conditions of sociation.
Antisemitism would be moved into a purportedly autonomous subjective
sphere of individual meaning and in the end would become a question of
individual opinion. The individual, hypostatized as absolute, would become
an anthropological constant. We see that the two opposed modes of excluding the dialectics of individual and society lead to similar results.
Given the tabooed form of Austrian antisemitism, the major task
becomes to decipher the discursive strands of latent antisemitism. When
Austrian print media was investigated, several thematic categories
emerged—a foreshortened capitalism critique, nationalist discourse, globalization critique, anti-Americanism, post-Holocaust discourse, and gendering. These thematic lines are not necessarily antisemitic, depending on the
context; in addition, such themes are rarely isolated from each other but
occur in different combinations. The various combinations legitimize the
interpretation that antisemitism is actually under the surface of manifest
argumentation.
The results of the study on the current Austrian print media discourse
bear a confirmation of Horkheimer’s and Adorno’s assumption that after
the Shoah, antisemitism is very likely to be covered by nationalist discourse
fragments. This can be shown by reference to a reductionist view on capitalist economy.
The financial sphere is seen as solely accountable for the evil of crisis
in capitalism. An example of this is the common way of discussing the
American housing bubble as the starter of the crisis. Here we can observe
that the financial sector is being made responsible for the hype that led into
the financial disaster of millions of people. But many public debates on this
issue strikingly disregard the actual profit for industrial capital, like the construction industry. Such one-sided attribution of guilt and responsibility for
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[ VOL. 3:711
the crisis in particular, and for exploitation in general, can be observed
throughout the whole media corpus that we have looked at closer.
But there are of course major differences to an open antisemitic discourse. While in modern antisemitism greediness and exploitation used to
be explicitly identified with the Jews, this is different here: Jews are rarely
mentioned directly; instead, the discourse operates with group constructions
like international high finance, greedy speculators who had worked out a
conspiracy against the nations, American finance capitalists, and so on.
These group constructions are specific in that they intend to construct clearcut groups to be made responsible for the crisis, thereby ignoring that capital is a social relationship. This serves the function of personification. At
the same time, these groups are very cryptic and thus often resemble empty
shells. Hence, they may be filled with any, also antisemitic, meaning on the
part of the readers. The discourse centrally operates with asymmetric
counter concepts (Reinhard Koselleck) that are an intrinsic part of structural
binarities and exclusions characteristic for everyday understanding. Such
devices are universally understood, and it is only necessary to name one
side of these binary constructions; the corresponding second part will be
understood by the readers automatically. Thus, if we read about
schmarotzende internationale Hochfinanz (parasitic international high
finance), this implies a counterpart, i.e., national productive capital, even if
it is not expressly mentioned. Sometimes the media writers jog the reader’s
understanding by explicitly naming the Volk (the nation) as the counterpart
to the high finance. Mentioning the Volk alone would not be nationalist or
völkisch from the outset. Again, it depends on the context. Several metaphors linking high finance and the Volk are constructed with the aim to
mark an opposition of self and other. The other/alien becomes identified
with “high finance” and represented as unproductive, greedy, cunning,
grasping, international, artificial, unauthentic, and rootless, while the Volk
stands for the exact opposite characteristics. The Volk as the in-group are
deemed honest, authentic, rooted, productive, and laboring, though
exploited and betrayed by the other. Subsequently, exploitation is regarded
as alien, as coming from outside the nation’s borders, and not as belonging
to its own people, while the Volk is represented as universally victimized
by international high finance.
Consider the rhymes of Wolf Martin, writer for the popular Austrian
daily paper Neue Kronen Zeitung.4
4. Extremely influential in Austria, this paper prints about three million copies
a day. In 2005, it ranked 45 of the 100 biggest newspapers worldwide, which is
quite remarkable for such a small country as Austria. Wolf Martin is one of the
paper’s most important columnists, whose daily column has the form of short
2011]
719
Konzerne, Banken, Hochfinanz schmarotzen an der Volkssubstanz und
schädigen sie materiell nicht weniger als ideell. Politiker sind ihnen
hörig, korrupt und drum total willfährig. In der EU ist’s konzentriert,
was Völker in den Abgrund führt.5
This classic example of nationalist and völkisch ideology operates with
codes of world conspiracy: international high finance is represented as
omnipotent and ubiquitous, while non-rooted and non-transparent, as
mingling into the good national economy and thereby damaging the very
heart of the Volk—its substance—in a material as well as spiritual sense.
While here, what is deciphered as bad and ruinous to the nations is not
identified with Jewishness, the codes the author operates with show particular characteristics of modern antisemitism: the word schmarotzen directly
points to parasites that live at the expense of those they exploit. In this
scenery, high finance is represented as parasitic, international, and rootless—the total other, the anti-national element whose aim is to destroy
national community and national wealth. The national element is clearly
opposed to an international or cosmopolitical one.
Who are the Volk whose substance is threatened by the realm of high
finance? In nationalist discourse, this is neither the working nor bourgeoisie
class, but the petty bourgeoisie. Nationalism and antisemitism have a tendency to hide their extremism behind an ideal of mediocrity, as Sartre
showed in Réflexions sur la question Juive (1946). A particular imagination
of instinctiveness and simpleness as authenticity is in the center of this
idealization of mediocrity. It locates itself halfway between the extremes.
As Kurt Lenk (1994) has pointed out, the ideal of mediocrity asserts its own
extremism by seemingly neutralizing the extremes. Neither high finance nor
the proletariat belong to the idealized mediocrity; instead, they are both
regarded as exaggerated, unnatural, unauthentic, uncertain, and unsettling.
In nationalist and antisemitic ideology, it is very much about establishing
security and certainty, a feeling that can be provided by belonging to the
average (cf. Tajfel and Turner 1979). This is a reason that in antisemitism
totally contradictory and opposed moments can be combined into one ideology: the Jew being identified both with capitalism—in the first place
finance capitalism—and bolshevism. Both incorporate evil; both would try
to establish the abstract against the concrete Volk.
rhymes on current political, economic, or social topics. His orientation is rightwing, nationalist, and anti-democratic.
5. “Trusts, banks, high finance batten on the substance of the nation (Volk)
and damage it materially no less than spiritually. Politicians are slaves to them,
corrupt and thus totally compliant. The EU incorporates all that brings ruin on the
nations.” (author translation)
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[ VOL. 3:711
We see evidence that the need for unambiguous national identification
remains unbroken in periods of crisis. The question of national identity,
however, always seems to come up when it is actually a problem of social
development. The corresponding anxiety that national identity could be
undermined or eroded by conspiratorial international evil powers is central
to nationalist ideology. This is a way of dealing with insecurities and uncertainties quite familiar from antisemitism—the Jew being imagined as the
international conspirator who aims at polluting and undermining the pure
and authentic Aryan Volk.
This seems to support Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s assumption that the
need for collective and exclusionary identification becomes virulent, especially when individuals not only become anxious, but the social structures
putting the individual as individual come into question—i.e., the individual
loses his or her substance in collectivity, even if society hypostatizes individualism (Adorno 1997b; Horkheimer 1988). In modern society, the individual is hypostatized as an autonomous being, while in reality the
individual suffers from constant denigration. The conditions for individual
autonomy—e.g., economic security—are given but insufficiently, making
the whole concept of the autonomous subject highly ambiguous. Nationalism, as with antisemitism, finds a remedy by duplicating and exaggerating
the demand of society for identity. The constraint to unambiguous identification with a national group to which one belongs is the very heart of
nationalism. While nationalism purports to solve the problem of the individual in modern society, it actually deepens it. This becomes evident in that
nationalism always needs the other, which can be marked as non-identity.
Non-identity and abstractness are in the end a container for all that cannot
be filled by unambiguous and exclusive identification.
So in times of crisis, identity can only be reassured through an eradication of ambiguity, ambivalence, or uncertainty. In antisemitism, these characteristics were traditionally ascribed to Jews, who were seen as
international and cosmopolitan and thus denying the rootedness within the
nation. Jews were seen as an anti-nation that endangered the collective hold
of nationalist identity (Holz 2001; Horkheimer and Adorno 2002;
Rensmann 1998). This habit expresses a deep discomfort with mediation
and intermediacy. Economic hatred toward any form of mediation is central
to antisemitism, where and when Jews are perceived as representatives of
the sphere of circulation.
This hatred is also expressed in the resentment against other groups,
such as intellectuals, who also inhabit an intermediary position in society
and are not part of the immediate production sphere, seemingly do not produce, and therefore remain suspect. The intermediary position in society
2011]
721
contradicts the compulsion to artificial unity and unambiguousness in modern antagonist society, and this is why it is feared and loathed.
The complex problem of identity formation in times of crisis is also
evident in Austrian print media discourse. The following passage is taken
from a letter to the editor entitled Weltgeldbetrug! (world money fraud),
published in the Neue Kronen Zeitung.6 This letter operates with rather
open antisemitic allusions.
Die Hochfinanz hat für sich vorgesorgt und hat die USA und die gesamte
Welt dank der Federal Reserve (Fed), des privaten Bankenkartells unter
Führung der beiden Grossfinanzgruppen Rothschild und Rockefeller,
noch im Griff. Reibach in Krisen und Kriegen. John F. Kennedy wollte
die Fed verstaatlichen—doch vor Erbringung des Gesetzes wurde er
ermordet. [ . . . ] Die Finanzkrise (war) von langer Hand geplant und seit
Jahren vorbereitet, um tief in die Taschen der Völker zu greifen [ . . . ].
Das Volk muss die Politikermarionetten zwingen, dass Schluss gemacht
wird mit Globalisierung und Privatisierungswahn [ . . . ]. Rückbesinnung
auf Ethik und Moral, Werte wie Ehre, Familie etc. und weg von der identitätslosen “Masse”, die sich willenlos gängeln und ausplündern lässt.
(Neue Kronen Zeitung, May 5, 2009)7
Consistent with völkisch ideology, the people shall be rescued by
means of a return to traditional values; the Volk has to be brought to its
senses, otherwise its unity would become eroded. Due to globalization, the
Volk is at risk of losing its honor and identity. Crisis and globalization are
argumentatively interwoven in the text and represented as a planned conspiracy. Interestingly, Rothschild is named, and even though Rockefeller
was not Jewish, he is represented as Jew-like and so the association of conspiracy and Jewishness continues. The text goes so far as to insinuate that
the financial trusts Rothschild and Rockefeller were behind the murder of
6. The letters to the editor in the Neue Kronen Zeitung are said to be sometimes inauthentic, i.e., written by the editorial staff.
7. “High finance has provided for itself and keeps the USA and the whole
world under control, thanks to the Federal Reserve (the Fed) and the private cartel
of banks under the leadership of the two big financial trusts, Rothschild and Rockefeller—Reibach in crises and wars. John F. Kennedy wanted to socialize the Fed—
but before the law was brought in, he had been murdered. [ . . . ] The financial
crisis (was) planned and prepared well in advance in order to break into the pockets
of the nations [ . . . ]. The people have to force the puppets of politicians to put an
end to globalization and privatization mania [ . . . ]. What is needed is a return to
ethics and morals, to values like honour, family, etc., and a departure from the mass
that lacks identity and submissively lets itself be kept on puppet strings and preyed
on.” (author translation)
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[ VOL. 3:711
Kennedy. The rhetoric around conspiracy is clear in the representation of
the financial crisis as a planned and well-prepared plot on a global level.
There is a further manifestation of antisemitic discourse in this text as
it strategically makes use of the term Reibach, which etymologically stems
from Hebrew. This term is commonly used in Viennese German, but while
the Hebrew word Rewach,8 from which it stems, simply means profit, the
term Reibach in Viennese German also has the connotation of very high
profit made by means of unfair business practices. Reibach is commonly
understood as a Jewish word,9 and thus it reinforces the identification of an
evil financial sphere with Jewishness, an identification that was anticipated
by explicitly naming Rothschild and defining a semantic area around international high finance.
The lament over an alleged loss of identity, caused by an international
(Jewish) conspiracy of “high finance,” corresponds to the demand to return
to purportedly traditional values. National belonging is set in opposition to
internationalism and loss of identity. The direction of impact is an opposition against cosmopolitanism as well as against transnationalism. The scenario of metaphors around an authentic Volk in opposition to a spoon-fed
mass without identity addresses the threats coming from globalization. In
the overall constellation the latter is again identified with Jews, yet with
Jewish conspiracy, as names connoted with Jewishness (Rothschild) are put
in central position. The threat is internationalism—cosmopolitism associated with rootlessness and non-authenticity. Against these “outward” and
“alien” threats the Volk has to defend itself by means of a return to “traditional values.” Here it becomes evident that the Volk is exactly the committed and sworn-in community that in nationalism and antisemitism is
projected on the Jews.
The demonization of the financial sphere as an alien and outward
power that would live at the expense of the Volk and damage its substance
like a parasite is an explicit manifestation of the antisemitic rhetoric—
Volksfremde Elemente—elements alien to the racially pure nation. Among
the print media texts we looked at, it was found only in articles and letters
to the editor in the Neue Kronen Zeitung. But the corresponding pattern of
8. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_deutscher_W%C3%B6rter_aus_dem_
Hebr%C3%A4ische.
9. The word “Reibach” is also used in another article in the Neue Kronen
Zeitung on Bernard Madoff (August 19, 2009), entitled “Der böse Geist der Wall
Street” (“The evil spirit of Wall Street”). There, Madoff is described as a typical
“money Jew”: “böse, gierig, verschlagen, durchtrieben” (“evil, greedy, sly, cunning”), who only through the belief of others in “Rendite und Reibach” (“yield and
Reibach”) could become a “Finanzgott” (“financial god”), but who in reality would
only be “the evil spirit of Wall Street.”
2011]
723
argumentation, the central demand for a return to traditional norms and values, are more widespread and occur also in quality Austrian papers, thereby
implying that traditional values in terms of economics sometimes emerge
divided between an evil financial sphere and good and real entrepreneurial
values. So in an article in Der Standard (November 14, 2008), greediness is
exclusively attributed to the financial sector, while real entrepreneurship is
portrayed as devoid of this base motive.
ANTISEMITISM
AS
ANTI-AMERICANISM
The two examples from the Austrian media discussed here, however,
show in the first place an open and aggressive anti-Americanism. Meanwhile, the interconnection of antisemitism and anti-Americanism is a wellknown phenomenon common not only today, but in the fin de siècle (Diner
2004; Gilman 1993; Hahn 2003; Marcovits 2007). But while a hundred
years ago antisemitism was in the foreground, this relation has reversed in
the second half of 20th century. Now antisemitism is paralleled to antiAmericanism.
It is remarkable how close the dual resentments actually are in their
structures and contents. America is often viewed as a stronghold of alienation, money, and violence that is driven by greediness, and furthermore as
undermining all traditions that encourage unity and the feeling of belonging
(Diner 2004, 326). In times of crisis, American investors and speculators
are the favorite images of the enemy on the part of nationalist actors in
Europe. In the current situation, anti-American resentments come readily to
hand, just as the American housing bubble is commonly viewed as the
major cause of the global crisis. It often happens that on actual occasions
anti-American stereotypes are applied—stereotypes that refer to a purported
essence of America (cf. Rensmann 2008, 409). The figures and cryptic
group constructions of the American speculator or the American high financier are drawn with similar if not the same characteristics, as was the case in
antisemitic discourses with regard to Jews. Just as in antisemitism, antiAmericanism also operates with a critique of capitalism that is too narrow,
locating its evil solely in uncontrolled financial transaction.10
Today, anti-Americanism is one of the most common manifestations
of European nationalism and the need for exclusive identification. The stereotyped image of the American as the mastermind behind globalization and
10. There are further similarities between antisemitism and anti-Americanism:
e.g., both are predominantly expressed by persons who know neither Americans
nor Jews. Thus, the resentment is based on mere images that are largely unconnected to reality.
724
[ VOL. 3:711
modernization has a long tradition in Europe, and America today is often
made responsible for social indifference. The heart of such denunciation,
however, is often not an accusation of real neoliberal cutback of social
security measures in Europe, but rather a lament of the loss of an actual or
imagined shared identity and community.
Without well-defined hierarchies, the individual today seems to feel
adrift and disoriented. With good reason, social isolation is felt as depressing, but in public discourse it is too often not viewed as a structural and
economically mediated problem of late modern sociation, but rather as a
situation projected on one single responsible element—the American. Due
to their purported lack of tradition, Americans would be to blame for the
loss of social relations and hierarchies.
Anti-Americanism as one major contemporary manifestation of European nationalism gets further input from the Austrian and German Nazi past
and the widespread unwillingness to take over responsibility for the crimes
of National Socialism. Thus, anti-Americanism has become a central issue
in secondary antisemitism: beneath the resentment against America the
hatred against the nation that had defeated National Socialism can often
easily be deciphered (cf. Rensmann 2004, 243).
CONCLUSION
Conspiracy theories, nationalism, and Manichean worldviews are
widespread today. They each intermingle with the protest against world
imperialism and exploitation. The perspective that exploitation was founded
in financial capital often outweighs a more universal and analytical view
that sees the reason for the crisis in capital relations. Simple patterns of
explaining the world, thereby operating with nationalist and conspiratorial
discourse elements, can be observed plainly in the debates on the current
economic crisis in the Austrian print media, especially in the Neue Kronen
Zeitung.
For an analysis regarding the intersection of nationalism and antisemitism, it was necessary to look beneath the surface of nationalist argumentation in order to find out whether antisemitic argumentation, consciously or
not, was at stake. In the Austrian media, antisemitic intent is brought forward, largely indirectly, by using specific exclusionary semantics of self
and other. The self is thereby often marked as the Volk, who are perceived
as pure and innocent—victims of international powers. The crucial point
was to find out where these semantics rely on an essentialization of the self
and the other. Major junctions to antisemitism were observed along the thematic lines of nationalist identification. It can be said that in a number of
texts we sampled it is about the creation of unity, wholeness, and
2011]
725
unambiguousness against those imagined actors and spheres that are considered as not belonging, non-productive, unauthentic, artificial, and rootless.
This is a specific framing that personalizes social structures and attributes
guilt by using dichotomies of in group and out group, national and antinational, self and other. Intermediaries are seen as threatening national
belonging and certainty, as the evil par excellence. All this strikingly
reminds us of traditional modern antisemitism.
Especially in times of crisis, patterns of antisemitism and nationalism
are reactivated and interwoven into simplistic explanations. The world they
want fixes guilt and responsibility for socially induced problems on precast
figures. The intertwining of an exclusionary nationalist form of identification with antisemitism in whatever latent form proves to be very effective
today—it quietly satisfies the need for certainty, stability, and unambiguous
identity in a crisis-ridden society.
*Karin Stoegner, PhD, studied sociology and history in Vienna and Paris and wrote
her doctoral thesis on antisemitism and sexism. From 2009-2011 she held a Marie
Curie Fellowship at the Central European University in Budapest. Currently, she is
lecturer on social theory at the University of Vienna, researcher at the Institute of
Conflict Research, and co-editor of the Austrian Journal of Political Science. She
can be reached at Karin.Stoegner@univie.ac.at.
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Überlegungen zu den EUMC-Berichten 2003 und 2004 zum Thema
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The Inane Politics of Tony Cliff
Camila Bassi*
No one is obliged to become a Marxist; no one is obliged to swear by
Lenin’s name. But the whole of the politics . . . was directed towards
this, that the fetishism of two camps would give way to a third, independent, sovereign camp of the proletariat, that camp upon which, in point
of fact, the future of humanity depends.
—Leon Trotsky (1938-1939, 996)
On the question of our labor movement’s position on international
conflicts, the British University and College Union (UCU) has seemingly
been fixated with an academic boycott of Israel. Yet in actual fact it is a
small bureaucratic layer within this union, the UCU left, that has driven this
obsession over and above the heads of the mass rank and file. This is not to
say that there is not a progressive proportion of the rank and file, who with
good instinct want their union to “do something” in response to the Palestinian plight.
The UCU left is a group set up by members of the British-based
Socialist Workers Party (SWP) along with a number of independent-left
union activists. Rather than a grassroots democratic collective, the UCU left
reflects a bureaucratic stratum that organizes as a block against those to its
political right and, more generally, unites in its opposition to the neoliberalization of education and Israel’s oppression of Palestine—often a code for
the end of occupation dated from 1948 rather than 1967, thus for the dissolution of the nation-state of Israel proper. In the years that I have attended
the UCU Annual Congress, UCU left motions and speeches deliver, at best,
a passionate identification with the Palestinian-Arab oppressed, and, at
worst, a conflation of the wrongdoings of the Israeli-Jewish state with
Israeli-Jewish workers. Israeli-Jewish workers are singled out like no other
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group of the working class worldwide now or in recent history, as either in
need of proving themselves politically worthy or in need of penalization for
being politically depraved.
It is an antisemitic anti-Zionism that ought, more than it does, to
shame the union. As a revolutionary socialist intervening into this perennially hostile exchange, my modest efforts fall short in steering this debate
away from a boycott and toward what kind of political solidarity we can
forge with our Arab and Jewish labor movement comrades in the Occupied
Territories of Gaza and the West Bank and in Israel—in particular, political
solidarity based on a collective struggle against the Israeli and Palestinian
reactionary ruling classes, against Jewish fundamentalism and Islamism,
and for a “two nations, two states” settlement on pre-1967 borders.
YGAEL GLUKSTEIN,
AKA
TONY CLIFF
The founder and key theoretician of the SWP, whose politics infuse
the UCU left, is Tony Cliff.
Cliff was born in 1917 in what was then commonly regarded as a
southern region of Syria—Palestine. The son of a Jewish family who supported Zionism, his birth name was Ygael Gluckstein. In 1947, he moved to
Britain, where he remained until his death in 2000. During the 1930s and
1940s, Cliff wrote a series of articles under the pseudonym L. Rock and
later (1945) as Tony Cliff, calling for an anti-imperialist, independent Arab
and Jewish labor movement. These early writings of Cliff are notably different from his later writings from 1967 onward: on the one hand, this discontinuity is glossed over by an amnesia or a distortion of Cliff’s own
historical analyses and conclusions to fit into a neat picture of the contemporary; on the other hand, this deterioration is made possible by some early
kernels that later grew into a more recognizable inane politics.
EARLY CLIFF
Not without their shortcomings, Cliff’s writings in the period before
the formation of the nation-state of Israel are nevertheless an effort toward
an independent class-based assessment of concrete conditions. He observed
that the imperialist government of the British Mandate of Palestine “systematically prevented all attempts at effecting reconciliation of the two peoples” while a “labour movement as an independent factor exercising
influence in political affairs does not yet exist” (Rock 1938a). As “an old
policy in new clothing,” he pointed out that, first, British imperialist oppression was directed against the Arab masses, and later (“even if less brutality”) against the Jews, evident in the British fostering of the clerical-
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fascists, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the services-in-hand of the German
fascist collaborator, the mufti of Jerusalem (Cliff 1946b).
On the relationship between imperialism and Zionism, Cliff (1945,
1946b) was keen to spell out its common and antagonistic tendencies and to
draw a class differentiation. Although British imperialism supported a Jewish capitalist state, “enveloped by the hatred of colonial masses,” he argued
that they did not want this state to become too strong (Cliff 1945). British
imperialist policy on Jewish immigration and colonization was thus duplicitous. By opening the door on immigration, the British stoked Arab chauvinism and gained Jewish sympathy, and by closing the door they stoked
Jewish chauvinism through the perception of Arab domination over the
British (Rock 1938a). The Balfour Declaration strengthened “anti-Jewish
tendencies among the Arabs” and the position of both Zionism and imperialism (Rock 1938a). The leaders of Zionism, who align with British imperialism, are not, Cliff (1945) saw, one and the same as the rank and file of
Zionism, who are “misled by their leaders into believing that they are not
simply puppets motivated by imperialism for its benefit and their harm:
British imperialism tries its best to keep the Jewish and Arab toilers in different compartments of the same train speeding toward destruction. The
Zionists act in this as the tools of imperialism (Cliff 1946c).
Zionism was defined as a “nationalist reactionary conception,” because
it diverted from the international class struggle and consolidated itself on
world reaction (Rock 1938b, 1939). Its solution was short lived, with the
only genuine answer lying in the Jewish rank and file’s renouncing the
Zionist ambition for domination (Cliff 1945).
On anti-imperialism and anti-Zionism, one of the major tasks Cliff
identified for an international socialist leadership was to resolve the contradiction within the Arab nationalist movement: “While the opposition of the
Arab upper classes to the Jews is reactionary, the struggle of the Arab
masses against Zionism is absolutely progressive” (Rock 1938b).
Cliff expounded that the Arab feudal and semi-capitalist leaders
desired a partnership with British imperialism in an effort to block the
objective capitalist development of a working class which threatened their
own destruction (Rock 1938b, 1945, 1947). Put plainly: “The majority of
the Arab exploiters—the feudal lords, the compradore bourgeoisie, the
merchants and usurers—identify themselves in this matter completely with
imperialism” (Cliff 1945); thus, “The Arab feudal lords are no more interested in the real independence of Palestine by the action of the masses, than
are the Zionists” (Cliff 1946c).
By fueling anti-Jewish chauvinism, fascism, and terror, the Arab leaders prevented the growth of Arab anti-imperialism while reinforcing their
own position (Rock 1938a). Cliff referred to a period of prosperity between
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1932 and 1935, during which time the anti-Jewish economic arguments of
the Arab leaders weakened their appeal among the Arab masses as income
and living standards rose “in consequence of Jewish immigration” (Rock
1938b). In this same period, however, “the Zionist chauvinist tendencies”
among the Jewish masses grew as the international working class movement declined (Rock 1938b). Instead of the original slogan, “Palestine, a binational state,” the Zionists rallied for “The Jewish state.” Concurrently, the
Arab leaders were “afraid that the nationalist movement would develop
along independent and consistently anti-imperialist lines” (Rock 1938b); as
such, “The present Arab nationalist movement, permeated with an
exclusivist spirit in the struggle against the Jews, is fertile soil for chauvinist fascist and particularly anti-Jewish ideas” (Rock 1938b).
Connecting British (and later American) imperialism with a classbased understanding of Zionism and the Arab nationalist movement, Cliff
concluded:
Palestine cannot emancipate itself from the imperialist yoke unless a unification of the Arab arid Jewish masses takes place [ . . . ]. The Jewish
toiling masses will not, however, support the anti-imperialist movement
if no class differentiation takes place in the Arabian national movement.
(Rock 1939)
In light of a weakening international labor movement and a strengthening anti-Jewish chauvinism, Cliff was highly critical of the Comintern’s
turn to the Stalinist right; in particular, he was scathing of their analogy of
the situation in the British Mandate of Palestine with South Africa (Rock
1938b): it is “especially dangerous that such a perverted analogy should
take root” (Rock 1939). The Jews, he explicated, do not depend on their
existence by exploiting the Arab masses (Rock 1938b) and, as part of the
working class, are not offered preference by the British imperialists (Rock
1939). Moreover, although exclusivist and pro-imperialist propensities exist
among the Jews, he makes clear that it is false to see Jewish immigration as
conquest and the Jews as an integral part of the imperialist camp, and consequently the Arab nationalist struggle as simply a defensive one (Rock
1939). The ultimate bankruptcy of the Stalinists was, in Cliff’s mind,
expressed during the 1936-1939 protests. Here, the real, progressive antiimperialist and anti-Zionist aims of the Arab masses were diverted by the
Arab feudal leaders—“who were agents either of British imperialism or of
Germany and Italy, and sometimes the two together”—into anti-Jewish
communal terror, which the Palestine Communist Party, in their opposition
to Zionism, blindly supported (Cliff 1945).
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For Cliff, the correct Marxist perspective on the conflict derived from
a correct assessment of Arab nationalism on the one hand, and Jewish
immigration and settlement on the other hand (Rock 1938a, 1939). On the
latter, Jewish immigration accelerated capitalist development and objectively developed a Jewish and Arab working class and anti-imperialist
forces (Rock 1938a, 1939). Together, Cliff framed the conflict as a twofold
struggle between Arab and Jewish exclusive nationalist movements and
between the Arab masses and Zionism (Rock 1938b), and saw its solution
in the formation of a republic of workers and peasants of the Arab East,
with minority autonomous rights for the Jews and others (Cliff 1946b). The
Jews were effectively a cushion between the Arab masses and imperialism,
and powerless against the world leaders (Cliff 1947). Cliff reasoned that no
significant anti-Zionist movement developed for two reasons:
First of all, the Jewish masses in Palestine do not yet see in the Arab
proletariat a strong ally, which will protect them from all the intrigues
and provocations of imperialism, feudalism and Zionism, as till now the
Arab working class of the whole east has not come to maturity. Secondly,
the international working class has not yet appeared as a power struggling
for the right of asylum in their countries. (Cliff 1947)
That said, Cliff took hope from the largest strike in Palestine’s history,
in April 1946, which “proved that while there are not a dozen Arabs who
support Zionism, there are tens of thousands of Arab workers who are ready
to stand shoulder to shoulder with their Jewish class fellows for the defence
of their common class interests” (Cliff 1946a).
The quandary nevertheless was that since only “an internationalist
labour movement can be the leading force in the consistent anti-imperialist
struggle,” and that “such a force does not yet play an important role,” “the
Jewish masses and the Arab national movement will remain in a difficult
and distressed position” (Rock 1939).
LATER CLIFF
Looking back on my own experience in Palestine I can see how today’s
horror grew from small beginnings. [ . . . ] I grew up a Zionist, but Zionism didn’t have the ugly face we see today. However, there was always a
fundamental crack between the Zionists and the Arabs. (Cliff 1982)
Absent in Cliff’s writings after 1967 is any endeavor toward an independent, class-based evaluation of actual conditions of existence. What he
presents is a remarkably one-sided picture of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict:
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a dual camp struggle between the persecuted underdog and the fascist and
imperialist Chosen One.
The conflict has its origins in Zionist terror, Cliff (1982) asserts, with
the barbarous wars of 1947, 1967, and 1982 increasingly exposing the true
ugliness of this terror, including Zionism’s long-term complicity with fascism (“Zionist leaders repeatedly told German rulers it would be in their
interests if Zionism flourished in Palestine” [Cliff 1982]) and imperialism
(“Israel is not a colony suppressed by imperialism, but a colony, a settler’s
citadel, a launching pad of imperialism” [Cliff 1967/1990]). The 1967 war
marked above all a victory for Western imperialism (Cliff 1967/1990). Cliff
stresses an irony that those persecuted by Nazi barbarism now subject this
barbarism on the Palestinians (Cliff 1982, 1967/1990, 1998). In brief, he
constructs a simple truth that these “monstrosities are the logic of Zionism”
(1982) that will continue to escalate.
Cliff (1998) regards the conflict as analogous to apartheid South
Africa, except that the black workers were numerically stronger and central
to the economy so could win reforms for themselves. He reasons that, given
the “Palestinians have not the strength to liberate themselves,” Trotsky’s
theory of permanent revolution is applicable (Cliff 1998). Therefore, it is
for the wider Arab working classes to rise up and liberate the Palestinians
and to “stop Zionism and smash imperialism” (Cliff 1982). The only solution is once again “a socialist republic, with full rights for Jews, Kurds and
all national minorities” (Cliff 1967/1990), in which, he qualifies, it is “simple hypocrisy to claim that this will menace the Jews of the area” (Cliff
1998).
REFLECTIONS
Consideration of the basic role of global and regional imperialist
forces in dividing and ruling over the working classes evaporates from
Cliff’s later work on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. So too does the class
distinction of all nationalism between the bourgeoisie (whose political
economies dominate) and the proletariat masses. Cliff dramatically ups the
wrongdoings of the Zionist leadership as pure and innate to its history and
conflates this leadership with the Jewish people, and downplays or erases
the historical wrongdoings of the Arab nationalist leadership in stoking
anti-Jewish chauvinism, fascism, and terror, and in courting imperialism.
Also expunged are Cliff’s early criticisms of the Stalinists: in fueling antiJewish tendencies, in naively analogizing the conflict with South Africa,
and in wrongly seeing the Jews in general as integral to the imperialist
camp. What’s more, these Stalinist shortcomings are ones that a later Cliff
develops without musing or qualm. In sum, a third camp, Marxism—“to
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develop the independent political agency of workers internationally, as a
class capable of self-government in their struggles against capitalism and its
reactionary products” (Bassi 2010, 114)—is thoroughly lost from an “early”
to a “late” Cliff. This said, Cliff only ever clumsily attempted third-camp
Marxism, with some early flaws offering a clue to where his analysis would
end up.
While recognizing the conflict as one between two exclusivist and
chauvinist nationalisms, the leadership of both tailing imperialism, Cliff
always placed ultimate emphasis on the struggle of the Arab masses against
Zionism and on the Jewish masses denouncing Zionism. The question of
liberation was always one of the Arab masses winning Arab liberation and
independence, for which the Jews as a minority would, at best, be accommodated. From early on there were hints within Cliff’s assessment that, en
masse, Jewish workers might be conflated with their ruling class and, as a
consequence, would be singled out as undeserving of their existence in this
territory:
From the negation of Zionism does not yet follow the negation of the
right to existence and extension of the Jewish population in Palestine.
This would only be justified if an objectively necessary identity existed
between this population and Zionism, and if the Jewish population were
necessarily an outpost of British imperialism and nothing more (Rock,
1939).
And so emerged Cliff’s later position—which, not incidentally, was
immediately after the 1967 war:
The Jewish population in Israel is divided into classes and a class struggle rends the country. But this in itself does not mean that any significant
number of Israeli workers are ready to join forces, or will be ready to join
forces, with the Arab anti-imperialist struggle. [ . . . ] While the Jews
were the underdogs of Europe, in the Middle East the Arabs are the
underdogs, and the Israelis the privileged and oppressors, the allies of
imperialism (Cliff 1967/1990).
Here lies the decline of Cliff’s politics into the SWP’s antisemitic antiZionist push of an academic boycott of Israel through the UCU left, specifically, an internationally and historically unprecedented writing-off of an
entire body of the working class. To understand the final slippage into an
unparalleled demand to undo a nation-state already formed and several
decades old (and accordingly to repudiate a “two nations, two states” settlement on pre-1967 borders), one must identify the absence of democracy in
Cliff’s politics. Though Cliff references “democratisation” (Rock 1938b,
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1939, 1946c) more in his early than later writings, throughout these references he does not grasp the meaning of consistent democracy on the
national question. For Lenin (1913c, 87), not Cliff, the conclusion of Marx
is clear:
The working class should be the last to make a fetish of the national
question, since the development of capitalism does not necessarily
awaken all nations to independent life. But to brush aside the mass
national movements once they have started, and to refuse to support what
is progressive in them means, in effect, pandering to nationalistic
prejudices, that is, recognising “one’s own nation” as a model nation (or,
we would add, one possessing the exclusive privilege of forming a state).
Lenin (1913b) recognizes nations as a historically inevitable product
and feature of capitalist society, and thus for him mass national movements
are historically legitimate. Furthermore, he applies a principle of consistent
democracy to the national question: “There is one case in which the Marxists are duty bound, if they do not want to betray democracy and the proletariat, to defend one special demand in the national question; that is, the
right of nations to self-determination (clause 9 of the R.S.D.L.P. Programme), i.e., the right to political secession” (Lenin 1913a, 7-8).
Lenin continues that the consistent democratic defense of the right of
all nations to self-determination is a negative task: beyond this “border-line
[ . . . ] which is often very slight” lies positive work that effectively
strengthens bourgeois nationalism (1913b, 28). In other words, the recognition and defense of workers’ right to national self-determination does not
impede the task of exposing bourgeois nationalism or agitating against
secession in favor of the international unity of workers in their class struggle against the bourgeoisie (Lenin 1913-1922). Against critics who (in line
with Rosa Luxembourg’s “The National Question and Autonomy” [19081909]) argue that such an approach is contradictory and concedes a maximum to nationalism, Lenin (1913c, 84) points out, “In reality, the recognition of the right of all nations to self-determination implies the maximum of
democracy and the minimum of nationalism.” On 1948, then, as the U.S.based revolutionary socialist Hal Draper (1948) clarifies, regardless of what
socialists might have wished possible in the early years:
A new state has been set up. A people have declared that they want to
live under their own government and determine their own national
destiny. They have taken a blank cheque made out to the Right of SelfDetermination and have signed their name to it: Israel. And they have
sought to cash it in.
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To deny the legitimacy of the nation-state of Israel proper, under the
guise of justice for the Palestinians—which effectively means taking away
the right of one group of the working class and handing it over to another
group of the working class by way of redress—is to betray the most fundamental quality of socialism: consistent democracy.
*Camila Bassi (DPhil, University of Sheffield, 2003) teaches at Sheffield Hallam
University with research interests in the relationship of minority culture to urban
political economy, the competing historical narratives of the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict, and, more generally, the return to and reinvigoration of Marx and Marxism. She is the author of several papers and book chapters, including the 2010
paper “The Anti-Imperialism of Fools: A Cautionary Story of the Revolutionary
Left Vanguard of England’s Post-9/11 Anti-War Movement” and the forthcoming book chapter “Shanghai Goes West: Reflections on the City’s Gay Political
Economy.” Bassi has been an active socialist for over sixteen years.
REFERENCES
Bassi, Camila. 2010. “ ‘The Anti-Imperialism of Fools’: A Cautionary Story on the
Revolutionary Socialist Vanguard of England’s Post-9/11 Anti-War
Movement,” ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies 9(2):
113-137.
Cliff, Tony. 1945. “The Middle East at the Crossroads,” Marxists Internet Archive,
http://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1946/me/index.htm.
———. 1946a. “Palestine Strike: Arabs and Jews Unite,” Marxists Internet
Archive, http://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1946/05/strike.html.
———. 1946b. “A New British Provocation in Palestine,” Marxists Internet
Archive, http://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1946/07/provocation
.htm.
———. 1946c. “Terrorism in Palestine: Are the Terrorists Anti-Imperialist?,”
Marxists Internet Archive, http://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1946/
12/terrorists.html.
———. 1947. “On the Irresponsible Handling of the Palestine Question,” Marxists
Internet Archive, http://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1947/xx/
palestine.htm.
———. 1982. “Roots of Israel’s Violence,” Marxists Internet Archive, http://
www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1982/04/isrviol.htm.
———. 1967/1990. “The Struggle in the Middle East.” Marxists Internet Archive,
http://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1990/10/struggleme.htm.
———. 1998. “The Jews, Israel and the Holocaust,” Marxists Internet Archive,
http://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1998/05/israel.htm.
Draper, Hal. 1948. “How to Defend Israel: A Political Program for Israeli
Socialists,” Marxists Internet Archive, http://www.marxists.org/archive/
draper/1948/07/israel.htm.
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Lenin, Vladimir. 1913-1922. Questions of National Policy and Proletarian
Internationalism (Moscow: Progress Publishers).
———. 1913a. “The National Programme of the R.S.D.L.P.,” in Questions of
National Policy and Proletarian Internationalism, 5-11.
———. 1913b. “Critical Remarks on the National Question,” in Questions of
———. 1913c. “The Right of Nations to Self-Determination,” in Questions of
Rock, L. 1938a. “British Policy in Palestine,” Marxists Internet Archive, http://
www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1938/10/britpol.htm.
———. 1938b, “The Jewish-Arab Conflict,” Marxists Internet Archive, http://
www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1938/11/jew-arab.htm.
———. 1939, “Class Politics in Palestine,” Marxists Internet Archive, http://
www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1939/06/classpol.htm.
Trotsky, Leon. 1938-1939. Writings of Leon Trotsky: Supplement (1934-1940)
(New York: Pathfinder).
Sayeeda Warsi: A Trifle Confused
Melanie Phillips*
The co-chairman of Britain’s Conservative Party, Sayeeda Warsi, has
delivered a speech about antisemitism to the European Institute for the
Study of Antisemitism. I am sure that Baroness Warsi means well. I am
sure that she is personally genuinely opposed to bigotry and prejudice in
any form. I would therefore like to be able to say it was a fine speech. I
cannot do so. Despite much in it that was worthy and unexceptionable, in
one vital respect it was a travesty—made no more palatable by the fact that
many Jews subscribe to precisely the same lethally misguided misapprehension. This revolves around the comforting but mistaken notion that Jews
and Muslims stand shoulder to shoulder against the same threat by racists
and bigots. It’s the argument that says “antisemitism = Islamophobia.” And
it’s the claim that there is nothing intrinsically threatening to Jews within
Islam.
All three—notion, argument, claim—are false. Yet, all three are promoted by many Jews; all three were to be found in Baroness Warsi’s
speech. She said: “The ugly strain of antisemitism found in some parts of
the Muslim community arose in the late 20th century. The point is that
there’s nothing in our history which suggests that hatred between Muslim
and Jews is inevitable.”
This is total rubbish. Muslim persecution of the Jews started in the 7th
century with the birth of Islam and has continued ever since. It is true that
down through the decades persecution of the Jews by Christians was more
savage and barbaric than persecution by Muslims. It is also true that there
were periods when Jews prospered under Muslim rule. But the so-called
“golden age” for Jews in Muslim lands was very short indeed. The true
history is a story of humiliation, persecution, and pogroms.
The great medieval Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides was forced
to flee his native Cordoba in Spain (after it was conquered in 1148 by the
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Muslim Almohads, who gave the Jews a choice of conversion, death, or
exile). In his Epistle to the Jews of Yemen, written about 1172, Maimonides
related news of compulsory conversion for the Jews in Yemen, having
“broken our backs . . . astounded and dumbfounded the whole of our community. . . . The Arabs,” he said, “persecuted us severely and passed baneful and discriminatory legislation against us . . . Never did a nation molest,
degrade, debase and hate us as much as they. . . .” Is there really nothing
that suggests that hatred between Muslim and Jews is inevitable? From my
book, The World Turned Upside Down:
The Qur’an says Islam came before Judaism and Christianity, and was
the faith practised by Abraham who was a Muslim. (3:67-68). It refers to
Islam as the religion of Abraham many times (2:130, 135; 3:95; 4:125;
6:161). It teaches that Jews and Christians corrupted their Scriptures so
Allah sent a fresh revelation through Mohammed. This cancelled out
Judaism and Christianity and brought people back to the one true religion
of Islam that Abraham had practiced. After the Jews rejected Mohammed, the Qur’an says the Jews were cursed by Allah (5:78) who transformed them into monkeys and pigs as punishment (2:65, 5:60, 7:166). It
accuses the Jews of corrupting their holy books and removing the parts
that spoke of Mohammed (2:75, cf. verses 76-79, 5:13). It says the Jews
were the greatest enemies of Islam (5:82), that both they and the Christians want Muslims to convert (2:120), that the Jews start wars and cause
trouble throughout the earth (5:64, cf. verse 67) and even that they claim
to have killed the Messiah (4:157).
As religion historian Paul Merkley observes:
. . . the Qur’an declares that the whole of Jewish scripture from Genesis
15 onwards is full of lies. . . . When the Jews refused to accept Islam,
Mohammed denounced them as not people of faith. The outcome was the
eradication of the Jewish-Arab tribe called the Banu Qurayza. Unable at
first to break them, Mohammed entered into a truce with them which he
broke, following which he slaughtered the entire Jewish population.
Unlike the wars between tribes in the Hebrew Bible, which remain
merely a historical account with no practical application today, the eradication of the Banu Qurayza is constantly alluded to by the Islamists, for
whom it remains an exemplary and timeless call to arms against precisely
the same enemy and with similar tactics.
Baroness Warsi said that Jews were currently targeted by the far left
and the far right. So they are. But she omitted to say that they are also
targeted by Muslims well beyond the groups she singled out—Muslims
Against Crusades, Islam 4 UK, and Al Muhajiroun. She refers to Muslim
Judeophobes as “religious fanatics. The people who claim faith drives them
2011]
SAYEEDA WARSI: A TRIFLE CONFUSED
741
to acts of hatred . . . but who in reality are nothing more than bigots, who
hijack their faith to justify their acts.”
But as author Andrew Bostom (Bostom, The Legacy of Islamic
Antisemitism, Prometheus, 2008) notes, Muslim hatred of Jews is rooted in
mainstream Koranic exegesis (perhaps someone should give the Baroness
Bostom’s book). Nothing suggesting that hatred between Muslim and Jews
is inevitable? The late Sheikh Tantawi, the grand mufti of Al Ahzar University in Cairo and the most prominent and influential cleric in the Sunni
Muslim world, used passages from the Koran to depict Jews as enemies of
God, his prophets, and of Islam itself.
The U.S. media monitoring group CAMERA quotes Tantawi:
Qur’an describes people of the Book in general terms, with negative
attributes like their fanaticism in religion, following a false path. It
describes the Jews with their own particular degenerate characteristics,
i.e., killing the prophets of God, corrupting his words by putting them in
the wrong places, consuming the people’s wealth frivolously, refusal to
distance themselves from the evil they do, and other ugly characteristics
caused by their [ . . . ] deep rooted lasciviousness.
After quoting from the Koran, Tantawi writes, “This means that not all
Jews are not the same. The good ones become Muslims; the bad ones do
not” (Bostom, Legacy, 394).
Matthias Küntzel, author of Jihad and Jew Hatred (Telos, 2007) provides some other detail about Tantawi. He notes that “Tantawi, the highest
Sunni Muslim theologian, quotes Hitler’s Mein Kampf: “In resisting the
Jew, I am doing the work of the Lord.” Küntzel continues: “He praises The
Protocols of the Elders of Zion, noting without the slightest trace of sympathy that “after the publication of the Protocols in Russia, some 10,000 Jews
were killed.”
Tantawi has made a number of other troubling statements. For example, in 2002, he claimed that Jews are “the enemies of Allah, descendents of
apes and pigs.” The following year, however, Tantawi issued an edict
declaring that Jews should no longer be described in such a manner, apparently under pressure from the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
While Tantawi condemned the September 11, 2001, attacks, he later
affirmed terrorism against Israelis. In 2002, the Middle East Media
Research Institute (MEMRI) reported that Tantawi declared that martyrdom
(suicide) operations and the killing of civilians are permitted acts and that
more such attacks should be carried out. Tantawi’s positions were posted on
a Web site associated with Al-Azhar (see http://www.lailatalqadr.com/).
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[ VOL. 3:739
To repeat: Sheikh Tantawi was the most prominent religious authority
in Sunni Islam. Does Baroness Warsi also class him as a bigot who hijacked
Islam to justify his hatred?
Jews cannot stand shoulder to shoulder with Muslims against attacks
by bigots because a disproportionate number of Muslims reportedly harbor
or even act upon prejudice against Jews. Reports by the Community Security Trust over the years persistently suggest that, while most attacks on Jews
are carried out by white people, between a quarter and a third of such
attacks where the perpetrators’ appearance has been noted are carried out by
people described as Asians or Arabs. Opinion polls have also shown that
nearly two-fifths of Britain’s Muslims believe that the Jewish community in
Britain are a legitimate target as part of the ongoing struggle for justice in
the Middle East; that more than half believe that British Jews have “too
much influence over the direction of UK foreign policy”; and that some 46
percent think that the Jewish community is “in league with Freemasons to
control the media and politics.”
There are Muslims who truly abhor this hatred of Jews among their
community—groups like Muslims for Israel, for example, who are true
fighters against bigotry, and truly brave. But in order to genuinely condemn
something, you have to call it out for what it is—as do Muslims for Israel—
openly and honestly. Those who condemn anti-Jewish hatred while refusing
to identify its perpetrators properly are not in the business of fighting bigotry. They are doing something quite different—to put it most charitably,
trying to build bridges between communities in order to defeat hatred.
Of course, such bridge-building is in itself a noble aim. But if in the
cause of building bridges between one community and another such people
deny or sanitize the hatred of one of those communities for the other, they
will inevitably, if inadvertently, end up strengthening that hatred—especially if at the same time they damn those who do tell the truth about this as
bigots whose voices must therefore be silenced. Which is what, believe it
or not, elements within the Jewish community are shamefully doing—and
which is why it is perhaps not so surprising that Baroness Warsi is, shall we
say, a trifle confused.
*Melanie Phillips is a British journalist and author, now a political and social issues
columnist in the Daily Mail. She is the author of All Must Have Prizes, an
acclaimed study of Britain’s educational and moral crisis; her latest book is The
World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth and Power
(Encounter, April 2010.) Phillips is a strong voice for conservatism, which she
believes is essential in defending traditional liberal values and culture.
Captain Basto, the Portuguese Dreyfus
Isabel Ferreira Lopes*
An antisemitic act committed by the Portuguese dictatorship continues
74 years later to maintain an effect, as that democratic state has not corrected the injustice. The victim was my grandfather, Artur Carlos de Barros
Basto, a Portuguese army captain and a practicing Jew who was banned
from the army for performing acts of the Jewish religion.
My grandfather came from a family of descendants of Jews whose
ancestors had been forced to convert to Catholicism in the 15th century.
The great work of my grandfather’s life was to rescue the descendants of
those forcibly converted to escape the expulsions decreed by King D.
Manuel I in 1496, and the persecutions that followed during the Inquisition.
My grandfather toured the country identifying the descendants of the
crypto-Jewish underground, bringing them to light and guarding them from
feeling diminished as they publicly professed the religion they believed.
Donning his military uniform and medals, he traveled among Portugal’s
interior, giving rousing speeches, conducting Jewish services, and seeking
to inspire others to follow his example. After centuries of hiding, thousands
of Catholic converted Jewish descendants answered his call and tentatively
agreed to join his movement.
But my grandfather’s love for Judaism and the many hundreds of people whom he touched did not sit well with the government or with Church
authorities. They sought to quell his nascent movement by bringing him up
on charges connected to the practice of the Jewish religion. At a time, 1937,
when antisemitism reigned throughout Europe and millions of human
beings were murdered, my grandfather was on trial for being a Jew and
practicing the Jewish religion.
743
744
[ VOL. 3:743
The military council alleged that my grandfather had performed circumcisions on several students of Porto’s Israeli Theological Institute. Following a precept of his religion, he professed and stated that he was
excessively affectionate toward his pupils. In light of these “facts,” the
Superior Disciplinary Council of the Army found that my grandfather
lacked “the capacity for mo

JOURNALfor the STUDYof ANTISEMITISM

Transcription

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