At a recent meeting organized by a British Jewish group called Engage, a varied group of more than 250 people gathered to analyze an increasingly worrying state of affairs regarding Israel. Emotions swayed with the recounting of a now familiar litany of distortions and deceptions that have helped demonize and ostracize the world’s only Jewish state.
Toward the end, lawyer Anthony Julius, celebrated for his expertise on English anti-Semitism and famous to a wider audience for representing Princess Diana in her divorce with Prince Charles, addressed a question that had floated in and out of the discussion all evening: Is the kind of hostility to Israel that has become commonplace in Europe a new form of anti-Semitism?
His answer was blunt and unambiguous: “Irrational hatred of Jews or specifically Jewish projects [such as Zionism] is anti-Semitism — end of story.”
The accursed disease of Jew-hating, many believe, is stronger today than it has been for decades. This time, the animus is aimed at what some call “the collective Jew” or “the Jew among nations.” But in style, if not in substance, the past has come back to haunt us. Jews were singled out when they were here in Europe. Now they’re singled out when they’re there in Israel.
As Amos Oz, the Israeli novelist, memorably characterized the message from Europeans past and present: “Don’t be here, don’t be there. That is, don’t be.”
But does the charge of anti-Semitism in the context of criticism of Israel really stand up to fair-minded scrutiny?
A “yes and no” answer to that question is no cop-out. “Yes,” it is partly anti-Semitism. But “no,” not entirely.
The singling out of Israel for criticism, the disregard for context and the blatant falsehoods that are the stock in trade of many of Israel’s critics are anti-Semitism. This is not simply because many Jews feel it to be so; their feelings could be misplaced. It is anti-Semitism because the object of criticism, the state of Israel, is the quintessential Jewish project of the 20th and 21st Centuries.
Israel is not a Muslim state, a Christian state or a Buddhist state. It is not a state of Africans, Asians or Latin Americans. It is a Jewish state: a state for Jews, by Jews, of Jews. To lie about Israel is, therefore, to lie about Jews. It is anti-Semitism. To equate Israel with Nazi Germany or apartheid South Africa is to defame Jews via gross and false analogies. It is anti-Semitism. To disproportionately criticize Israel while failing to employ one’s critical faculties with equal energy against other states is to discriminate against Jews. It is anti-Semitism.
There is, though, another level on which this question needs to be addressed. For if it is true that much European criticism of Israel has ended up as anti-Semitism, that does not mean it was anti-Semitism that motivated such vehement criticism in the first place.
The key point is that there is no substantial evidence to suggest that most, or even many, of Israel’s critics in Europe started out by hating Jews and then proceeded to look for Jewish causes to defame and defile. This is not, therefore, a case of traditional anti-Semitism writ large against the state of Israel.
The style of criticism may be anti-Semitic. But the motivation is not.
The distinction may seem too fine — even, to some, pedantic. It is not. Rather, it is to appreciate that the charge of anti-Semitism should not be made lightly or without a full understanding of what it may or may not entail.
There are many explanations of the motivations for Israel hatred in Europe. Some of the most plausible center on Israel’s status as a beacon of liberal-democratic capitalism in a sea of anti-Western hostility.
For the old European left, which has led the charge against Israel in recent years, the Jewish state is a microcosmic representation of a global capitalist enemy that has been in the ascendancy since the end of the Cold War. This helps explain why hostility toward Israel has so much in common with hostility toward the United States.
More than that, Israel is located in the very part of the world where the greatest challenge to Western hegemony is being mounted.
If Israel were an anti-Western dictatorship in South Asia, it would be ignored. Those who forlornly protest that Israel does not deserve such criticism because it is the Middle East’s only Western-style democracy are missing the point. It is precisely because Israel is a Western-style democracy in the Middle East that it is hated so much.
Americans are right to be worried about the way Israel is being treated these days in Europe. And they are right to worry about anti-Semitism. The underlying reality, however, is not as straightforward as it sometimes seems.
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Robin Shepherd is senior fellow for Europe at Chatham House in London, a foreign affairs think tank.
