Reflections on Anti-Semitism: From this week's Canadian Jewish News

James Morton

In Jerusalem a few years ago, I re-read Theodor Herzl’s The Jewish State (1896).

Herzl was not a religious man and his early views were that Jews would simply integrate into modern societies as another religious group. But the experience of the anti-Semitic Dreyfus trial in France convinced Herzl that Jews would never be accepted unless they had a state of their own. Once there was a state, Jews would be just another group and accepted in the same way as, say, the Portuguese.

Herzl’s solution was dramatic and simple:

"let the sovereignty be granted us over a portion of the globe large enough to satisfy the rightful requirements of a nation. The rest we shall manage for ourselves."

And so, after two world wars and years of struggle, modern Israel was formed. The foundation has been a success – there is a Jewish state. Overt anti-Semitism is not widely accepted in western countries today (other parts of the world are not so tolerant), but attacks on the legitimacy or very existence of Herzl’s state are common enough, and indeed are getting more common day by day. And, if we’re being honest, we can admit that such attacks are usually just thinly veiled anti-Semitism.

If I mention to colleagues that I’m taking a trip to, say, Greece, they make polite noises about sunshine and food. But mentioning a trip to Israel – a similar country in a similar part of the world – and there is a pause, followed by anything from a quick change of subject to assurances that the listener believes in peace and one God for all people, to open hostility and anger.

Israel is not a nation like any other.

So how should we describe this phenomenon? Is it nothing more than anti-Semitism in disguise? In fairness, one must admit that not all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic. It’s fair to disagree with Israeli policy on, say, the integration of its Druze citizens without being anti-Semitic. As Thomas Friedman of the New York Times has written, “Criticizing Israel is not anti-Semitic, and saying so is vile. But singling out Israel for opprobrium and international sanction – out of all proportion to any other party in the Middle East – is anti-Semitic, and not saying so is dishonest.” As columnist and TV host Michael Coren has cleverly put it, not all criticism of Israel indicates anti-Semitism, but all anti-Semites criticize Israel. The sad truth is that attacks on Israel have become little more than a smokescreen for attacks on Jews.

Because modern western countries have social and legal obstacles that prevent the expression of anti-Semitism in its traditional form, prejudice toward Jews is now likely to be expressed through attacks on Israel. As a result, some bigots have embraced the anti-Israel cause as a way of making a statement about their attitude toward Jews. Suggestions that Israel’s foundation was a tragedy or that Israel is merely colonialism in action mirror earlier attempts to call Zionism racist.

Canadian parliamentarians have recognized this.

Federal Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff has said that criticism of Israel is legitimate, but attempting to describe Israel’s very existence as a crime against humanity is not. Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Jason Kenney notes that Canadians are free to express different views about the policies of a foreign government, but the annual campus event called Israeli Apartheid Week is not about that. It’s about a systematic effort to delegitimize the democratic homeland of the Jewish people, a country born out of the Holocaust. He says he finds the resurgence of the old slander that Zionism is racism to be very troubling.

Much criticism of Israel is merely thinly disguised anti-Semitism. Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz has set out some factors that indicate when a a particular criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic.

Some of them include:

• Characterizing Israel as “the worst,” when it’s clear that this is not an accurate comparative assessment.

• Discriminating against individuals only because they are Jewish Israelis, without regard to their
individual views or actions.

• Physically or verbally attacking Jewish institutions, such as synagogues or cemeteries, as a
means of protesting against Israel.

• Discriminating only against Israel in its attempts to qualify for certain positions or status internationally, such as obtaining a seat on the United Nations Security Council or the International Court of Justice, or joining the International Red Cross.

In the United Kingdom, a place where Jews have long been safe and welcome, anti-Israel attacks have been expressly directed at Jews, making the anti-Semitic nature of the attacks clear. Jewish-owned businesses are subject to harassment. In London, Starbucks – whose chairman, Howard Schultz, is Jewish – has been firebombed in allegedly anti-Israel attacks that are in fact merely anti-Semitic. A grocery delivery van owned by a Jewish firm was attacked by a gang of youths claiming to be protesting Israeli policy. The driver – surely no agent of Israel – was hospitalized with head injuries. Similarly, a Tesco supermarket was targeted, its windows smashed and “Kill Jews” daubed on the walls in paint. (The Tesco supermarket chain was founded by a Jewish immigrant to Britain.)

Here in Canada, recent incidents on university campuses, while not as violent, have shown the same tendency to attack Jews as Jews under the guise of attacking Israel. The conflation of anti- Israel with anti-Semitic is very clear.

There can be little room for doubt: the truth is that most attacks on Israel, and all attacks on
Israel’s existence, are anti-Semitic.

James Morton is a lawyer in Toronto.