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Zionist antisemitism

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Zionist antisemitism is the phenomenon whereby individuals, groups, or governments support the Zionist movement and the State of Israel while simultaneously holding antisemitic views about Jews. In some cases, Zionism may be promoted for explictly antisemitic motives. Antisemitism has been widely noted within the Christian Zionist movement, whose adherents may hold antisemitic and supersessionist beliefs about Jews while also supporting Zionism for eschatological reasons. Antisemitic right-wing nationalists, particularly in Europe and the United States, sometimes support the Zionist movement because they wish for Jews to be expelled or to emigrate to Israel. Alleged Israeli government complicity with antisemitic politicians abroad has been criticized as an example of Zionist antisemitism. Anti-Zionists have criticized the Zionist movement since its conception for alleged complicity or capitulation to antisemitism, with some anti-Zionists referring to Zionism itself as a form of antisemitism.

Allegations of Zionist complicity with antisemitism

According to the anti-imperialist Jewish-American academic Amy Kaplan, history "shows that anti-Semitism and pro-Zionism have never been mutually exclusive." Kaplan believes that Zionist advocates "for a Jewish state enlisted stereotypes of Jews –wittingly or not–to further their cause." She lists Theodor Herzl as an early Zionist who appealed to antisemitic European leaders who believed the "Jewish Question" would be solved by sending European Jews to Palestine.[1] Edwin Montagu, an ardent anti-Zionist and the sole Jewish member of the British Cabinet, was "passionately opposed to the [Balfour] declaration on the grounds that...it was a capitulation to anti-Semitic bigotry, with its suggestion that Palestine was the natural destination of the Jews..."[2] Writing for International Socialist Review, Annie Levin argues that the writings of Theodor Herzl, Max Nordau, and other European Zionists were "littered with descriptions of European Jews as parasites, social diseases, germs, aliens"...and that these antisemitic views "flowed quite logically from Zionism’s basic assumptions about Jews. Zionists accepted the 19th century view that anti-Semitism–in fact all racial difference–was a permanent feature of human nature. For this reason it was pointless to struggle against it." Levin states that Jews have often been "hostile to Zionism" as the movement "called for a retreat from the struggle against anti-Semitism."[3] Writing for Jacobin, Sarah Levy claimed that early Zionists "partnered with a rabidly antisemitic British ruling class to secure funding for their colonial project in Palestine" while also aiding British attempts to "defeat left-wing “International Jews” (such as Karl Marx, Trotsky, Bela Kun, Rosa Luxemburg and Emma Goldman, among others)" because "Churchill understood that revolutionary socialists, organizing against racist pogroms in their own countries, posed a threat to the ruling class’s need to divide and rule its population, and so understood the benefit to supporting a “Jewish movement” that could counter this logic of antiracism and internationalism."[4]

The Austrian-Jewish anti-Zionist writer Karl Kraus attacked Zionism in general and Herzl in particular in his book Eine Krone für Zion (A Crown for Zion), making the claim that antisemitism is the essence of the Zionist movement. Kraus referred to Zionist aims as antisemitic and called Zionists "Jewish antisemites", asserting that "Aryan antisemites" and Zionist Jewish antisemites share the same goal of expelling Jews from European culture.[5]

Richard S. Levy, a scholar of antisemitism, has written that "Antisemites certainly found Zionism useful" because Zionism provided "antisemitic Zionists" with a justification for why Jewish people living in diaspora should be expelled from the societies where they had lived for centuries. Coerced emigration to Palestine appealed to antisemites because it provided a "solution to the Jewish question".[6]

The Zionist writer Bari Weiss has stated that there is a history of antisemites endorsing Zionism, listing Arthur Balfour as an example of an antisemitic Zionist.[7]

In the early 1980s, the British-Jewish anti-fascist and anti-Zionist activist Tony Greenstein published the booklet Zionism: Antisemitism’s twin in Jewish garb. Greenstein argued that early Zionists actively collaborated with antisemites to achieve their political aims. Elaborting his views in The Guardian, Greenstein wrote that "Beneath many Zionists there lurks an anti-semitic undercurrent.” He has also stated on the Muslim Public Affairs Committee's UK website that "Zionism is a Jewish variant of anti-semitism."[8]

In 1988, the Middle East Solidarity group published Why Zionism is Anti-Semitic: Jewish Socialist Critiques of Zionism.[9]

In an article titled Anti-Semitic Zionists, the Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery wrote that the "avowed aim of Zionism is to ingather all the Jews in the world in the Jewish State. The avowed aim of the anti-Semites is to expel the Jews from all their countries. Both sides want the same." Avnery wrote that Zionism has been antisemitic since its foundation, citing Herzl's cooperation with the antisemitic Czarist regime in Russia. Far from a "unique chapter", Avnery asserts that "many attempts have been made to enlist anti-Semites to help in the implementation of the Zionist project" throughout history.[10]

Steven M. Cohen, sociologist at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, has written that antisemitism is found among right-wing Zionists. Cohen believes that "Many people who dislike Jews like Israel and many people who are critical toward Israel are affectionate toward Jews." Todd Gitlin, sociologist at Columbia University, believes that right-wing Zionism and antisemitism "have the same soul...they rhyme" because both are variants of ultra-nationalism.[11]

France

In 2018, the Jewish French Union for Peace (UJFP), a pro-BDS Jewish anti-Zionist organization, was denied funding from the French government after producing video clips that claimed that Zionism is antisemitic. One member claimed that "it’s a form of anti-Semitism" for the Israeli government to claim to speak on behalf of all Jews, while another member said they were "revolted by the fact that an Israeli leader can come to France and tell French Jews: ‘you have a second country.'"[12][13]

Israel

Orthodox Jewish anti-Zionists in Mandatory Palestine sometimes criticized secular Jewish Zionists as "antisemitic Zionists" for interferring with Orthodox practice. Rabbi Baruch Meir Klein, President of the New York Board of Rabbis, claimed that the "Goyyim in America let us be Jews. They do not ruin our Torah Talmud. They do not reform our schools...They do not ridicule Jews who go to Mikveh or Kloppen Hoyshaness...It is enough for me to be in Galuth with Goyyim. I have no need to be [in Eretz Israel], in Galuth under Jews who are antisemitic Zionists."[14]

Critics of the Israeli government have alleged for decades that the Israeli government has supported, funded or armed antisemitic, pro-Israel governments and groups abroad. Critics also allege that the Israeli government has remained silent against the persecution of Jews living in the diaspora. The left-wing Argentine-Jewish writer Jacobo Timerman, arrested in Argentina and tortured by Nazis, decried the "Jewish establishment" for ignoring his plight and the plight of Argentine Jews because the Israeli government was a client of the Israeli armament industry. Timerman believed that the Israeli armament industry was "working against the people of Latin America" by selling weapons to antisemitic and fascist governments in Argentina, Guatemala, El Salvador, and elsewhere. The Israeli government maintained close ties with the Argentine government during the military dictatorship in Argentina, despite the junta's support for violent antisemitism.[15] The leftist Israeli politician Shulamit Aloni excoriated the Israeli government for "delivering arms to the brutal Argentine military regime that was exterminating citizens right and left."[16] Argentine Jews in Israel have pushed for the Israeli government to disclose information concerning the Israeli government's past support for the antisemitic Argentine junta.[17]

Many Israeli observers have questioned the Israeli government's alleged silence concerning the resurgence of antisemitism in the United States since the 2016 election of Donald Trump. Israeli critics of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Netanyahu of ignoring American antisemitism for political purposes. Daniel Shek, former Israeli consol general in San Francisco, claims that while the Israeli government is usually outspoken against acts of antisemitism abroad, Netanyahu minimized the severity of the problem to maintain good relations with the Trump administration.[18]

In January 2018, a freedom of information request petition to the Israeli Defense Ministry revealed that the Israeli government helped arm military regimes in Bolivia, despite Israeli knowledge that the Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie was part of the Bolivian regime. Legal documents have proven that members of Klaus Barbie's death squads used Israeli Uzis to murder Bolivian citizens.[19]

In 2018, a group of over 40 human rights activists petitioned the Israeli High Court of Justice to demand a cessation of Israeli arms exports to Ukraine. Human rights activists argued that the Israeli weapons were serving forces that explicitly espouse antisemitic neo-Nazi ideologies and Holocaust denial.[19]

Poland

During the 1920s and 1930s, the General Jewish Labour Bund in Poland was vocally critical of antisemitic Zionism. The Polish government during this period was a staunch supporter of the Zionist movement, while also adopting increasingly antisemitic domestic policies. The Polish government actively encouraged emigration to Mandatory Palestine because it decreased the population of Polish Jews. The Bund produced election campaign materials including the terms "antisemitic Zionists" and "Zionist antisemites", arguing that the Zionist promotion of emigration and cooperation with the Polish government strengthened antisemitic forces within Polish society. The historian Emanuel Melzer believes that the Polish goverment's attitudes towards Zionism and Jewish emigration "implied that Jews were superfluous, alien, and even a destructive element" and that this atttitude "might have had its repercussions on a part of the Polish population's attitude towards the Jews during the war", but acknowledges that the Shoah itself was not caused by the intensification of Polish antisemitism between 1936 and 1939.[20]

In 1925, Polish Zionist members of the Sejm capitalized on governmental support for Zionism by negotiating an agreement with the government known as the Ugoda. The Ugoda was an agreement between the Polish prime minister Władysław Grabski and Zionist leaders in eastern Galicia, including Leon Reich. The agreement granted certain cultural and religious rights to Jews in exchange for Jewish support for Polish nationalist interests; however, the Galician Zionists had little to show for their compromise because the Polish government later refused to honor many aspects of the agreement.[21] During the 1930s, Revisionist Zionists viewed the Polish government as an ally and promoted cooperation between Polish Zionists and Polish nationalists, despite the antisemitism of the Polish government.[22]

Norway

The Norwegian far-right domestic terrorist Anders Behring Breivik is both an antisemitic neo-Nazi and a strong supporter of the State of Israel. The Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek has described Breivik's ideology as an "extreme version" of "Zionist anti-Semitism", writing that Breivik is "antisemitic, but pro-Israel" because in Breivik's view the Israeli state is a "first line of defense against Muslim expansion". Žižek notes that Breivik believes that France and the United Kingdom have a "Jewish problem" due to their large Jewish populations, whereas the rest of Western Europe doesn't, describing this as Breivik's belief that "Jews are OK as long as there aren't too many of them" living in diaspora.[23]

United States

After World War II, during the second Red Scare, some members of Congress called for the British government to open Mandatory Palestine to Jewish emigration, hoping that Jewish refugeees (suspected to be Communists) would migrate to Palestine rather than to the United States.[1]

Right-wing evangelical Christians in the United States are often vocally Zionist while also holding antisemitic attitudes towards Jews. Conservative Christians are amongst the strongest supporters of the State of Israel in the United States. With 7.1 million members, Christians United for Israel (CUFI) is the largest Zionist organization in the United States. Many Christian Zionists believe that the Gathering of Israel is a prerequisite for the final coming of the Christian messiah, after which a portion of Jews will convert and the majority of Jews will be killed and condemned to Hell.[1] Writing for Ha'aretz, Joshua Shanes condemned CUFI's founder John Hagee for promoting an "apocalyptic and deeply antisemitic worldview" and promoting some of the "most dangerous myths of the modern era." Hagee has promoted financial conspiracy theories about the Rothschild family controlling the federal reserve, claimed that Hitler was sent by God to murder Jews who refused to emigrate to Israel, and described the Antichrist as a "half-Jew homosexual."[24] Slavoj Žižek has also described John Hagee, as well as Glenn Beck, as examples of Christian fundamentalist "anti-Semitic Zionists." Žižek believes that Zionism itself has "paradoxically become anti-Semitic" because the movement promotes hatred of anti-Zionist Jews by constructing a figure of Jewish anti-Zionism "along anti-Semitic lines."[25]

Zionist leaders and organizations in the United States have been widely criticized, particularly by the Jewish left, for allegedly downplaying the severity of antisemitism in the United States and for alleged complicity with the Trump administation in order to pursue pro-Israel, Zionist causes. Atalia Omer, a professor of religion at the University of Notre Dame, has written that "Israel's silence on white nationalism and its implicit or explicit condoning of antisemitic Zionists" has decisively convinced many American Jews that the Israeli government is not keeping Jews safe and is actively endangering Jews living in the diaspora. Omer cites the "moral shock" of Israeli silence on white nationalist antisemitism for discrediting the "Zionist monopoly over the narrative of Jewish survival."[26] Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), has been criticized for being "notably silent" about antisemitism during the Trump era. ZOA was deluged by messages from outraged supporters following ZOA's support for Steve Bannon and Klein's statement that could not be an antisemite because "He's the opposite of an antisemite. He's a philo-semite."[4]

In 2017, Judith Butler denounced antisemitic manifestations of Zionism within the Trump administration. Butler named Breitbart and Steve Bannon as purveyors of "antisemitic Zionism", writing that Bannon is both a "strong Zionist" and that "his antisemitism apparently does not get in the way of his support for the Israeli state, and that his supporters in the Israeli government do not seem to mind." Butler argued that right-wing antisemitic Zionism is a manifestation of white supremacy, whereby the white Ashkenazi ruling class in Israel makes alliances with right-wing politicians in other countries on the basis of shared anti-Arab racism, anti-Palestinianism, and Islamophobia.[27]

During the Summer of 2020, the Palestine Solidarity Collective (PSC) at York University published comments on social media claiming that Zionism is an antisemitic political movement.[28]

During the January 6 United States Capitol attack, several insurrectionists waved Israeli flags, sparking commentary for multiple organizations that described a link between Zionist ideology and antisemitic right-wing extremism. The Adalah Justice Project tweeted that "the forces in the US who seek to maintain white supremacy are inspired by Israel's racism and vice versa", which was retweeted by Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). The SJP chapter at the University of Illinois at Chicago also tweeted that the presence of Israeli flags "shouldn’t be surprising, as far right ideologies all stem from the same form of racist hatred." These comments were condemned by the Anti-Defamation League as "anti-Israel".[29][30] Jewish Voice for Peace maintained that "Antisemitic Zionists are common in right-wing movements", that "Many white nationalists both hate Jews and love Israel}, and alleged that both Zionist organizations and the Israeli government have failed to condemn antisemitic white nationalists.[31] Ben Lorber, writing for +972 Magazine, argued that American white nationalism support for the "Jewish state's supremacist values fits comfortably with its deep antisemitism" and that "philosemitic Christian Zionism carries deep undercurrents of anti-Judaism." Lorber refers to the phenomenon of right-Zionism fitting "comfortably alongside simmering currents of antisemitism" as "Antisemitic Zionism".[32]

In August 2022, the left-wing Jewish organization IfNotNow condemned AIPAC for antisemitism after AIPAC claimed that "George Soros has a long history of backing anti-Israel groups and that "J Street & Soros work to undermine" pro-Israel Democrats. IfNotNow asserted that AIPAC was not a Jewish organization, did not represent Jews, and in allegedly promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories about Soros, AIPAC had become part of the "antisemitic far right."[33]

Criticism of concept

The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America has rejected the notion that "Zionism is antisemitic" as an Orwellian canard, describing the claim as just as nonsensical as saying "Chinese nationalism is anti-Chinese" or "Palestinian nationalism is anti-Palestinian."[28]

Seth J. Frantzman, a Middle Eastern correspondent for The Jerusalem Post, has dismissed the "new narrative" that "Zionism is actually a form of antisemitism" as a fringe view and a leftist fantasy designed to protect the left from accusations of antisemitism. Franztman claims the notion that the "Israeli Right works with antisemites" is rooted in historical anti-Zionist rhetoric dating to the 1920s that suggests that Zionism is antisemitic because the movement calls into "question the place of Diaspora Jewry."[34]

Robert S. Wistrich, professor of European and Jewish history at Hebrew University, has written that the notion that "Zionism is Fascism" is a myth, including the thesis of that Zionists collaborated with Nazis. Wistrich named Tony Greenstein as one of the persistent advocates of the "myth", dismissing his writings as fringe radicalism that overlaps with the far right. Wistrich notes that Greenstein's work was praised "by an organ of the neo-Nazi National Front", which he regarded as a "peculiarly grotesque" example of the "spectacle of self-confessed Nazis expressing their approval of Jewish left-wingers."[35]

See also

References

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  2. ^ Hitchens, Love, Poverty, and War p. 327
  3. ^ "The hidden history of Zionism". International Socialist Review. Retrieved 2022-08-22.
  4. ^ a b "Ignoring Antisemitism's Threat". Jacobin. Retrieved 2022-08-22.
  5. ^ Reitter, Paul (2008). The Anti-Journalist: Karl Kraus and Jewish Self-Fashioning in Fin-de-Siècle Europe. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. p. 79.
  6. ^ "Antisemitism in the Modern World: An Anthology of Texts". D.C. Heath. Retrieved 2022-08-22.
  7. ^ Weiss, Bari (2019). How to Fight Anti-Semitism. New York: Crown. p. 102.
  8. ^ "How can we best help the Palestinians?" (PDF). Workers' Liberty. Retrieved 2022-08-22.
  9. ^ "Why Zionism is Anti-Semitic". Middle East Solidarity Group. Retrieved 2022-02-22.
  10. ^ "Anti-Semitic Zionists". Portside.org. Retrieved 2022-08-22.
  11. ^ "How Steve Bannon and Breitbart News Can Be Pro-Israel — and Anti-Semitic at the Same Time". The Forward. Retrieved 2022-08-22.
  12. ^ "Recommendations: Implementing the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism for NGO Funding" (PDF). NGO Monitor. Retrieved 2022-08-22.
  13. ^ "French Jewish group accuses Israel of causing anti-Semitism, loses state funding". The Times of Israel. Retrieved 2022-08-22.
  14. ^ Proceedings of the ... World Congress of Jewish Studies, Volume 9, Issue 3. World Union of Jewish Studies. p. 525.
  15. ^ "Timerman Decries Lack of Jewish Response to Rising Anti-Semitism, JTA, Feb. 2, 1982". Center for Online Judaic Studies. Retrieved 2022-08-22.
  16. ^ ""Exile of the world": Israeli perceptions of Jacobo Timerman". GALE. Retrieved 2022-08-22. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |A268651617&v= ignored (help)
  17. ^ "Argentine-Israelis Urge Israel to Disclose Past Junta Ties". Ha'Aretz. Retrieved 2022-08-22.
  18. ^ "In Israel, Some Wonder Where The Outrage Is Over U.S. Anti-Semitic Acts". NPR. Retrieved 2022-08-22.
  19. ^ a b "Rights Groups Demand Israel Stop Arming neo-Nazis in Ukraine". Ha'aretz. Retrieved 2022-08-22.
  20. ^ Zimmerman, Joshua D. (2003). Contested Memories: Poles and Jews During the Holocaust and Its Aftermath. New Brunswick, New Jersey, and London: Rutgers University Press. p. 27.
  21. ^ "Zionism and Zionist Parties". YIVO. Retrieved 2022-08-22.
  22. ^ Edelheit, Hershel. History Of Zionism: A Handbook And Dictionary. Routledge. p. 116.
  23. ^ "A vile logic to Anders Breivik's choice of target". The Guardian. Retrieved 2022-08-22.
  24. ^ "John Hagee Is A Muslim-Hating, Antisemitic, Annexationist Extremist. He's No Friend of Israel". Ha'aretz. Retrieved 2022-08-22.
  25. ^ Žižek, Slavoj (2012). The Year of Dreaming Dangerously. London and New York: Verso. p. 39.
  26. ^ Omer, Atalia (2019). Days of Awe: Reimagining Jewishness in Solidarity with Palestinians. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. p. 242.
  27. ^ "Why Is Bannon's Antisemitism Considered Alright?". Johns Hopkins University. Retrieved 2022-08-26.
  28. ^ a b "PSC's Israel Libels Reflect a Systemic Issue at York". Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America. Retrieved 2022-08-22.
  29. ^ "Anti-Israel Groups and Activists Link Capitol Hill Rioters with Israel and her Supporters". ADL. Retrieved 2022-08-22.
  30. ^ "The Anti-Israel Movement on U.S. Campuses, 2020-2021". ADL. Retrieved 2022-08-22.
  31. ^ "Thread". Twitter. Retrieved 2022-08-22.
  32. ^ "How the Israeli flag became a symbol for white nationalists". +972 Magazine. Retrieved 2022-08-22.
  33. ^ "In ridiculous claim, left-wing Jewish group calls AIPAC 'antisemitic'". The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved 2022-08-22.
  34. ^ "The dangerous politicization of antisemitism". The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved 2022-08-22.
  35. ^ "The New War Against the Jews". Commentary Magazine. Retrieved 2022-08-22.