Weaponization of antisemitism

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The weaponization of antisemitism, also described as the instrumentalization of antisemitism, is the levelling of charges of antisemitism[1] for political purposes, especially to counter criticism of Israel.[2][3][4][5] It has been criticized as a form of playing the race card, smear tactics and an "appeal to motive".[6][7]

Critics of the concept have in turn argued that charging weaponization amounts to an antisemitic ad hominem attack whose use fails to address the issue at hand of antisemitism.[8][9][10][11][12][13][14] The charge has also been criticized as a "testimonial injustice", rooted in presumption rather than evidence.[15][16]

Suggestions of such actions have been raised during phases of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict,[17][18][19] in the adoption of the controversial working definition of antisemitism by various organizations,[20][21][22][23] the 2014–20 allegations of antisemitism in the UK Labour Party,[24] and the 2023 United States Congress hearing on antisemitism.[25]

History

Israeli historian Benny Morris described John Bagot Glubb as an early example of critics of the Israeli government being routinely branded as antisemitic. Glubb wrote in his 1956 memoirs that: "It does not seem to me to be either just or expedient that similar criticisms directed against the Israeli government should brand the speaker with the moral stigma generally associated with anti-Semitism".[26][27]

Ben White in the Journal of Palestine Studies writes that similar charges of antisemitism have been levied by international Israeli advocacy groups against prominent individuals expressing pro-Palestinian sentiment, including the Nobel Peace Prize winners US President Jimmy Carter and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.[28]

Academics John Mearsheimer, Stephen Walt, Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein have said accusations of antisemitism rise following aggressive actions by Israel: following the Six-Day War, following the 1982 Lebanon War, the First and Second Intifadas and the Israeli bombardments of Gaza.[17][18][19] US politician Paul Findley, in his 1985 book They Dare to Speak Out, wrote: "In its latest usage, the term anti-Semitism stands stripped of any reference to ethnic or religious descent, signifying nothing more than a refusal to endorse all policy decisions of the government of Israel ... It has been a powerful factor in stifling debate of the Arab-Israeli dispute."[29]

Chomsky argued in 2002: "With regard to anti-Semitism, the distinguished Israeli statesman Abba Eban pointed out the main task of Israeli propaganda (they would call it exclamation, what's called 'propaganda' when others do it) is to make it clear to the world there's no difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. By anti-Zionism he meant criticisms of the current policies of the State of Israel."[30]

Philadelphia Inquirer opinion writer Abraham Gutman wrote in 2021 that claims by Israel's leaders to represent all Jews worldwide had equated criticism of Israel to prejudice against all Jews. He wrote that this had led to weaponization against pro-Palestinian voices "sometimes in ridiculous ways", including by Marjorie Taylor Greene.[31]

During the Israel-Hamas war, Bernie Steinberg, a former executive director of Harvard Hillel, wrote a 2023 opinion essay in The Harvard Crimson that pro-Israeli activists should stop "weaponization" charges of antisemitism against pro-Palestinian activism and that "It is not antisemitic to demand justice for all Palestinians living in their ancestral lands."[25] Marshall Ganz, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, criticized in The Nation the "weaponization" of antisemitism, writing the "tactics are remarkably similar to those used by Senator Joseph McCarthy".[32] Daniel Levy, a former Israeli negotiator, said at the Palestine Expo conference that "the accusation of antisemitism is being weaponised and abused".[33]

Description

Various writers have argued that charges of antisemitism raised in discussions of Israel can have a chilling effect,[34][35] deterring critical commentary on Israel[34] due to fear of being associated with beliefs linked to antisemitic crimes against humanity such as the Holocaust.[36] Mearsheimer and Walt wrote in 2008 that the charge can discourage others from defending in public those against whom the charge of antisemitism has been made.[37] Mearsheimer and Walt also argued that rhetorical accusations of antisemitism put a burden of proof on the person against whom the charge is raised, putting them in the "difficult" position of having to prove a negative.[38] They wrote that accusations of antisemitism are resonant with many Jewish communities, "many of whom still believe that anti-Semitism [sic] is rife".[39] They argued that by stifling discussion it[clarification needed] allows myths about Israel to survive unchallenged.[40]

Joshua Leifer, an editor of Dissent magazine, wrote in 2019 that campaigns which redefine anti-Zionism as antisemitism aim to shift criticisms of the actions of the Israeli government "beyond the pale of mainstream acceptability".[41]

Mitchell Plitnick and Sahar Aziz wrote in 2023 that a presumption that all Muslims are antisemitic has been "increasingly deployed by Zionist groups to eliminate critical debate inclusive of Palestinian experiences".[42] Ronnie Kasrils in 2020 compared claims of antisemitism in Britain to rhetorical strategies employed against the anti-apartheid movement by supporters of the South African government.[43]

Atalia Omer of the University of Notre Dame wrote in 2021 that weaponization of antisemitism is negative for all involved, including Israel and the broader Jewish community.[44] Joel Beinin wrote in 2004 that the "well-established ploy" of conflating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism exposes Jews to attack by suggesting they are responsible for the actions of the Israeli government.[45]

Kenneth L. Marcus, while warning in 2010 against denying or minimizing antisemitism, also cautioned against the rhetorical overuse of the "anti-Semitism card", paralleling concerns raised by Richard Thompson Ford with the broader misuse of "the race card": that it can be dishonest and mean-spirited, risks weakening legitimate accusations of bigotry, risks distracting socially concerned organizations from other social injustices, and hurts outreach efforts between Jewish and Arab or Muslim groups.[46]

Conceptual disputes

In the 1970s, the concept of "new antisemitism" emerged, with cultural critics identifying a novel form of antisemitism disguised as critique of Israel and Zionism.[47]

Sociologist David Hirsh has criticized the charge of weaponization in discourses about Israel, arguing that accusations of 'playing the antisemitism card' are often made in bad faith.[48][15][12] Hirsh coined the name the Livingstone Formulation, after Ken Livingstone, to refer to the charge of weaponizing claims of anti-semitism. In 2005, Livingstone made the argument that he was being subjected to weaponized charges of antisemitism after he compared a Jewish journalist to a concentration camp guard. Hirsh criticizes the rhetorical formulation as containing within it "a counter-charge of dishonest Jewish (or 'Zionist') conspiracy".[12] He also observes an inversion within the argument, in which antisemitism that has nothing to do with Israel is rhetorically defended with the claim that charges of antisemitism are misapplied to all criticisms of Israel. He terms this 'crying Israel', as opposed to 'crying antisemitism'.[49] He writes: "The Livingstone Formulation does not allege that Jews often misjudge what has happened to them, it alleges that they lie about what has happened to them. It is not an allegation of error, or over-zealousness, perhaps explicable by reference to the antisemitism of the past. It is an allegation of conspiracy."[50] He later compared the concept's invocation in discourses about antisemitism, writing that "The Macpherson principle says that if a black person says they have experienced racism you should begin by assuming that they are right. The Livingstone principle says: if Jews complain about antisemitism on the left then you should begin by assuming that they are making it up to silence criticism of Israel or to smear the left."[51]

Kenneth L. Marcus wrote in 2010 that although Mearsheimer and Walt described such accusations as "the Great Silencer", they had not themselves been silenced and had instead received a wide audience through their book and appearances. Marcus also wrote that many pro-Israel commentators who had condemned what they viewed as antisemitism in anti-Zionist rhetoric had also taken pains to say that many criticisms of Israel were not antisemitic.[52]

Dov Waxman writes that people—generally Jews—who raise charges of antisemitism are frequently accused of being disingenuous, and that charges of antisemitism are bound to be contested because "antisemitism today is not always easy to identify or even define".[1] He writes further that charges of bad faith may be dissipated by clarifying, when antisemitism is alleged or denied, which of the many potential understandings of antisemitism is being invoked. He also writes that "it is reasonable to insist that persons who encounter a Jewish claim of antisemitism at least adopt a presumptive disposition towards taking that claim seriously and considering it with an open mind. Jewish claims of antisemitism are not themselves sufficient to determine whether or not something actually is antisemitic, but these claims should not be ignored or dismissed out of hand. Thus, when a Jewish person experiences an incident as antisemitic this incident should be investigated as potentially antisemitic. A claim of antisemitism does not need to be the end of a conversation, but it should be the start of one".[1]

Hadar Sela, writing for the Jerusalem Post in 2019, criticized the BBC for "amplification of antisemitic tropes" in alleged use of the Livingstone Formulation.[53] Lesley Klaff in 2016 called the charge a "denial of contemporary antisemitism [that is] commonplace in Britain."[13]

Jon Pike argued in 2008 that the charge of weaponizing antisemitism is an ad hominem attack that does not address the allegation of antisemitism levied: "Suppose some discussion of a 'new antisemitism' is used in an attempt to stifle strong criticism. Well, get over it. The genesis of the discussion and the motivation of the charge [don't] touch the truth or falsity of the charge. Deal with the charge, rather than indulging in some genealogical inquiry."[54]

David Schraub in 2016 called the charge "a first-cut response that presents marginalized persons as inherently untrustworthy, unbelievable, or lacking in the basic understandings regarding the true meaning of discrimination."[15]

The formulation was described by Terry Glavin in 2016 as a device deployed to shield left-wing anti-Semites from scrutiny.[55]

In 2020, the EHRC investigated antisemitism in the UK Labour Party and found that agents of the party had committed "unlawful harassment" by "suggesting that complaints of antisemitism are fake or smears," asserting in their report that "this conduct may target Jewish members as deliberately making up antisemitism complaints to undermine the Labour Party, and ignores legitimate and genuine complaints of antisemitism in the Party."[51]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c Waxman, Schraub & Hosein 2022.
  2. ^ Consonni, Manuela (1 March 2023). "Memory, Memorialization, and the Shoah After 'the End of History'". In Keren Eva Fraiman, Dean Phillip Bell (ed.). The Routledge Handbook of Judaism in the 21st Century. Taylor & Francis. p. 170. ISBN 9781000850321. In 2013, the Committee on Antisemitism addressing the troubling resurgence of antisemitism and Holocaust denial produced two important political achievements: the "Working Definition of Holocaust Denial and Distortion"...and the "Working Definition of Antisemitism"....The last motion raised much criticism by some scholars as too broad in its conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism. The exploitation, the instrumentalization, the weaponization of antisemitism, a concomitant of its de-historicization and de-textualization, became a metonymy for speaking of the Jewish genocide and of anti-Zionism in a way that confined its history to the court's benches and research library and its memory to a reconstruction based mostly on criteria of memorial legitimacy for and against designated social groups.
  3. ^ David Landy, Ronit Lentin, Conor McCarthy, ed. (15 May 2020). Enforcing Silence: Academic Freedom, Palestine and the Criticism of Israel. Zed Books Ltd. ISBN 978-1-78699-653-4. The weaponizing of antisemitism against US critics of Israel was evidenced in 2019 when Floida's upper legislative chamber unanimously passed a bill that classifies certain criticism of Israel as antisemitic{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: editors list (link)
  4. ^ "The Interview :We need an ethics of comparison". Medico International. 15 February 2024. "I do not doubt that antisemitism exists across German society, including among Muslims, but the politicization of the definition of antisemitism—for example, the way that the IHRA definition is used to stifle criticism of Israeli policies—makes it very difficult to reach consensus on what is and what is not antisemitic."&"The far-right instrumentalization of antisemitism and solidarity with Israel is one of the most disturbing developments of recent years."Michael Rothberg.
  5. ^ Roth-Rowland, Natasha (July 28, 2020). "False charges of antisemitism are the vanguard of cancel culture". +972 Magazine. Increasingly, however, those canards coexist with right-wing actors — above all those in power — increasingly labeling Jews as perpetual victims who must be protected, even as these same actors invoke well-worn antisemitic tropes elsewhere. By and large, these charges of antisemitism — especially as they relate to Israel — are made in order to gain political currency, even if the controversy at hand has no bearing on actual threats to Jews. Using the antisemitism label so vaguely and liberally not only stunts free speech, but also makes actual threats to Jewish people harder to identify and combat. This weaponizing of antisemitism is not only "cancelling" Palestinian rights advocates and failing to make Jews any safer; it's also using Jews to cancel others.
  6. ^ White 2020.
  7. ^ Mearsheimer & Walt 2008, p. 9-11.
  8. ^ Klaff, Lesley D. (2013). "Political and Legal Judgment: Misuses of the Holocaust in the UK". SSRN Electronic Journal. doi:10.2139/ssrn.2284423. ISSN 1556-5068. S2CID 154755601.
  9. ^ Guhl, Jakob; Mering, Sabine von (2022-03-22). ""Everyone I Know Isn't Antisemitic"". Antisemitism on Social Media. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-000-55429-8.
  10. ^ Allington, Daniel (2018-08-01). "'Hitler had a valid argument against some Jews': Repertoires for the denial of antisemitism in Facebook discussion of a survey of attitudes to Jews and Israel". Discourse, Context & Media. 24: 129–136. doi:10.1016/j.dcm.2018.03.004. ISSN 2211-6958. S2CID 149815128.
  11. ^ "How the BBC proliferates antisemitism in the UK". The Jerusalem Post | JPost.com. 2019-02-10. Retrieved 2024-01-14.
  12. ^ a b c Hirsh, David (January 2010). "Accusations of malicious intent in debates about the Palestine-Israel conflict and about antisemitism: The Livingstone Formulation, 'playing the antisemitism card' and contesting the boundaries of antiracist discourse" (PDF). Transversal: 47–77.
  13. ^ a b Klaff, Lesley (2016-12-01), Wistrich, Robert S. (ed.), Holocaust inversion in British politics : the case of David Ward, University of Nebraska Press, pp. 185–196, ISBN 978-0-8032-9671-8, retrieved 2024-01-09
  14. ^ R. Vaughan, James (2021-12-17), Rawnsley, Gary D.; Ma, Yiben; Pothong, Kruakae (eds.), "The media, antisemitism, and political warfare in Jeremy Corbyns Labour Party, 2015-2019", Research Handbook on Political Propaganda, Edward Elgar Publishing, doi:10.4337/9781789906424.00023, ISBN 978-1-78990-642-4, retrieved 2024-01-14
  15. ^ a b c Schraub, David (2016). "Playing with Cards: Discrimination Claims and the Charge of Bad Faith". Social Theory and Practice. 42 (2): 285–303. doi:10.5840/soctheorpract201642216. ISSN 0037-802X. JSTOR 24871344.
  16. ^ Digital, Ascet (2017-05-03). "Scribblings: Exposing the Livingstone Formulation". AIJAC. Retrieved 2024-01-09.
  17. ^ a b Mearsheimer & Walt 2008, pp. 190–191"Supporters of Israel have a history of using fears of a "new anti-Semitism" to shield Israel from criticism."
  18. ^ a b Muzher, Sherri (2005-10-27). "Beyond Chutzpah: An Interview with Professor Norman Finkelstein". Campus Watch. Whenever Israel faces a public relations debacle such as the Intifada or international pressure to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict, American Jewish organizations orchestrate this extravaganza called the 'new anti-Semitism.'
  19. ^ a b Chomsky 2002, p. 1.
  20. ^ Ahmed, Nasim (2023-09-15). "Weaponised definition of anti-Semitism is a 'tool' to undermine free-speech". Middle East Monitor.
  21. ^ Stern, Kenneth (2019-12-13). "I drafted the definition of antisemitism. Rightwing Jews are weaponizing it". the Guardian.
  22. ^ 128 scholars of Jewish history and Holocaust studies 2022.
  23. ^ 104 civil society organizations 2023.
  24. ^ Graeber, David (2020-04-12). "The Weaponisation of Labour Antisemitism". Double Down News.
  25. ^ a b Steinberg, Bernie. "For the Safety of Jews and Palestinians, Stop Weaponizing Antisemitism". The Harvard Crimson. Retrieved 31 December 2023.
  26. ^ Sir John Bagot Glubb, A Soldier With the Arabs, p.7: "In the course of this narrative, I have voiced criticisms of the actions of various governments, notably those of Britain, the United States, France, the Arab countries and Israel... Criticism of the Israeli government does, however, require a particular explanation. A number of people, both Jews and Gentiles, are apt to refer to any criticism of Israeli policy as "offensive anti-Semitism", an accusation implying a definite moral lapse. I wish to defend myself against such a charge. "Anti-Semitism", I assume, is an emotion of hatred or dislike towards Jews as a whole, whether considered from the point of view of race or religion. I can state categorically and with all sincerity that I feel no such emotion. But it is of the essence of Western democracy to allow free criticism of the government, a right freely exercised against the governments of the U.S.A., Britain, France and other free countries. It does not seem to me to be either just or expedient that similar criticisms directed against the Israeli government should brand the speaker with the moral stigma generally associated with anti-Semitism.”
  27. ^ Benny Morris (3 October 2003). The Road to Jerusalem: Glubb Pasha, Palestine and the Jews. I.B.Tauris. pp. 19–. ISBN 978-1-86064-989-9. Over the decades there has been a tendency among Israelis and Jews abroad to identify strong criticism of Israel as tantamount to, or as at least stemming from, anti-Semitism. Zionists routinely branded Glubb an 'anti semite', and he was keenly aware of this.
  28. ^ White 2020, p. 67: "Israeli officials, as well as Israel advocacy organizations internationally, have a long history of charging Palestinians and their allies, as well as Israel's critics and human-rights campaigners, with anti-Semitism. Prominent individuals are not exempted."
  29. ^ Findley 1987, p. 316
  30. ^ Chomsky 2002: "With regard to anti-Semitism, the distinguished Israeli statesman Abba Eban pointed out the main task of Israeli propaganda (they would call it exclamation, what's called 'propaganda' when others do it) is to make it clear to the world there's no difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. By anti-Zionism he meant criticisms of the current policies of the State of Israel. So there's no difference between criticism of policies of the State of Israel and anti-Semitism, because if he can establish 'that' then he can undercut all criticism by invoking the Nazis and that will silence people. We should bear it in mind when there's talk in the US about anti-Semitism."
  31. ^ Gutman, Abraham (2021-05-27). "Supporting Palestinian rights is antisemitic because Israel wants it to be". The Philadelphia Inquirer – via nbcnews.com. It is this conflation between Israel and Judaism, one that is baked into the foundation of Israel and perpetuated by its leaders, that leads to a problematic tautology: Israel's leaders represent all Jewish people, and thus by definition any criticism of Israel must be criticism of all Jewish people — and hence antisemitic.
  32. ^ Ganz, Marshall (February 2024). "Calling for Respect, Freedom, and Security for All Is Not Antisemitic". The Nation. Retrieved 19 February 2024.
  33. ^ Harpin, Lee. "Former Israeli negotiator Daniel Levy tells Expo event antisemitism 'weaponised' to silence Palestinian struggle". www.thejc.com. Retrieved 2023-12-15.
  34. ^ a b Lerner, Rabbi Michael (2007-02-07). "Highest Jewish values sometimes conflict with Israeli policy". The Mercury News. The impact of the silencing of debate about Israeli policy on Jewish life has been devastating.
  35. ^ Thompson 2012, p. 12: "They called the charge of anti-Semitism "the Great Silencer.""
  36. ^ Alexander, Jeffrey C.; Adams, Tracy (2023). "The return of antisemitism? Waves of societalization and what conditions them". American Journal of Cultural Sociology. 11: 261.
  37. ^ Mearsheimer & Walt 2008, p. 191b
  38. ^ Mearsheimer & Walt 2008, p. 191-192: "Third, this tactic works because it is difficult for anyone to prove beyond all doubt that he or she is not anti-Semitic, especially when criticizing Israel or the lobby"
  39. ^ Mearsheimer & Walt 2008, p. 192: "The accusation is likely to resonate among American Jews, many of whom still believe that anti-Semitism is rife."
  40. ^ Mearsheimer & Walt 2008, p. 196.
  41. ^ Leifer, Joshua (2019-08-26). "Israel's one-state reality is sowing chaos in American politics". +972 Magazine. Today, the Israeli hasbara apparatus's most active front is the attempted redefinition of anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism, with the goal of rendering any opposition to the occupation, Zionism – or even simply Israeli policies themselves — beyond the pale of mainstream acceptability.
  42. ^ Plitnick & Aziz 2023, p. 47.
  43. ^ Kasrils, Ronnie (2020-12-17), Against the Witch Hunt: On the Instrumentalization of Antisemitism in Britain's Labor Party
  44. ^ Omer, Atalia (2021-01-21). "Weaponizing Antisemitism is Bad for Jews, Israel, and Peace". Contending Modernities. Retrieved 2024-01-01.
  45. ^ Beinin 2004, p. 112: "Summers may have thought that he was expressing himself in a reasoned way to an academic audience. But the conflation of criticism of Israel and anti-Semitism was an already well-established ploy. The endorsement of this notion by the president of the country's most prestigious institution of higher learning authorised others to go on the political offensive without fear that they would be criticised as boorish enemies of academic freedom… Among these were several high-profile incidents, most of them motivated by opposition to Israel's policies towards the Palestinians. Paradoxically, by failing to make a clear distinction between anti-Semitism, which should always and everywhere be opposed, and anti-Zionism, which is a legitimate political opinion, the ADL and like-minded organisations exposed American Jews to attack because they were identified with Israel."
  46. ^ Marcus 2010, p. 68-69"Even if true, an overplayed "anti-Semitism card" may distract socially concerned individuals and organizations from other pressing problems, including social injustices facing other groups."
  47. ^ Berkman, Matthew (2022). "The Conflict on Campus". In A. Siniver (ed.). Routledge Companion to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Taylor & Francis. p. 522. ISBN 978-0-429-64861-8. Retrieved 2023-05-21. Attempts to rearticulate antisemitism to encompass opposition to Israel's "right to exist" or its character as a Jewish state date back to the 1970s, when the Anti-Defamation League first popularized a discourse on "the new antisemitism" (see Forster and Epstein 1974; on the subsequent development of that discourse see Judaken 2008). The identification of anti-Zionism with antisemitism has long been de rigueur in Jewish communal and broader pro-Israel circles, but only in the last two decades have Israel advocacy groups endeavoured to establish it as a principle of United States anti-discrimination law. The earliest step in this direction was taken in 2004, when Kenneth L. Marcus, the Assistant Secretary of Education for the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) under President George W. Bush, issued a game-changing policy guidance letter empowering OCR staff, for the first time, to investigate complaints under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act alleging pervasive antisemitism on college campuses.
  48. ^ "Antisemitism and Radical Anti-Israel Bias on the Political Left in Europe". Anti-Defamation League. 8 August 2023. Retrieved 2024-01-31.
  49. ^ Hirsh, David (2007). Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism: Cosmopolitan Reflections. Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism. ISBN 978-0-9819058-0-8.
  50. ^ "It was the new phenomenon of Israel-focused antisemitism that required the new definition. David Hirsh responds to a recent 'call to reject' the IHRA". Fathom. Retrieved 2024-01-09.
  51. ^ a b Hirsh, David. "The 'Livingstone formula' is dead". www.thejc.com. Retrieved 2024-01-31.
  52. ^ Marcus 2010, p. 73: "Indeed, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer recently called anti-Semitism allegations the "Great Silencer."
  53. ^ "How the BBC proliferates antisemitism in the UK". The Jerusalem Post | JPost.com. 2019-02-10. Retrieved 2024-01-09.
  54. ^ Pike, Jon (31 January 2008). "Antisemitism and Testimonial injustice". Engage. Archived from the original on 4 February 2008.
  55. ^ Glavin, Terry (2 May 2016). "Terry Glavin: The left confronts its antisemitism". National Post.

Bibliography

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