Monday, November 30, 2020
Elder of ZiyonThe Guardian published a letter from 122 Arab academics, journalists and "intellectuals" arguing against using the IHRA working definition of antisemitism because they want to distinguish between anti-Zionism and antisemitism.
Instead of demolishing the letter point by point, let's look at the history of today's anti-Zionism and see how it is indistinguishable from antisemitism.
There are four main strains of anti-Zionism that have popped up ever since modern Zionism emerged. The only three that remain are based on antisemitism.
The four strains are traditional antisemitism extended to anti-Zionism, Jewish anti-Zionism, socialist anti-Zionism and Arab anti-Zionism.
Right-wing antisemites were, and are, naturally anti-Zionist. Hitler's Mein Kampf contained a number of anti-Zionist passages. Modern neo-Nazis liberally quote left-wing anti-Zionists. Their hate for Israel is animated by their hate for Jews.
Jewish anti-Zionism (outside the fringe Neturei Karta) really only existed before the establishment of the modern state of Israel. They opposed the establishment of a Jewish state for various political, philosophical, religious and practical reasons, but once Israel was reborn nearly all of their arguments became moot.
Today's Jewish anti-Zionism is nearly all socialist anti-Zionism, which is the most prevalent kind in the West today. It's origins are purely antisemitic. I recently wrote about antisemitism behind the Iron Curtain in the 1970s, where the charges against "Zionism" were identical to Protocols of the Elders of Zion propaganda that the Nazis used. There is no difference between the socialist antisemitism of the 20th century and today's socialist "anti-Zionism" except that today's socialists hide it better and use antisemitism as a means to attack the Right. Still, there is very little literature from the Left criticizing the more blatant antisemitism of their philosophical forebears, which shows that they really aren't against antisemitism as they claim - their core arguments against Zionism have not changed since the 1950s.
The style of anti-Zionism relevant to this letter is Arab anti-Zionism.
The Arab opposition to Zionism was based fully on the disgust at the idea of Jews who were looked upon as weak, pathetic second-class citizens and dhimmis in the Arab world rising and taking political power and controlling land in the Middle East.
Arabs were not opposed to non-Arab Ottomans controlling the region, and they opposed European control but were generally able to accept it as a de facto admission that Christian Europe was too powerful to oppose.
But Jews? That was wholly unacceptable. And it is because they were Jews not taking their proper place as obedient, controlled minorities who had little recourse when Arabs decided to attack as they did every once in a while.
It is absurd to separate Arab anti-Zionism from antisemitism. I just wrote about how Jordan banned Jews - not Zionists, but Jews - from visiting any Jewish holy sites the entire time they were under Arab control.
This is hardly the only example. Antisemitism was so entwined with Arab anti-Zionism in the 1950s and 1960s that no one took seriously the occasional Arab objections that they didn't hate Jews.
Here is a summary of official antisemitic propaganda in the Arab world from Middle East Review in 1961.
There was no distinction made or even attempted between Jews and Zionists. Only in response to Western distaste at the obvious Jew-hatred did Arab nations start to tone down that part of their hate in public.
But the history of Arab anti-Zionism is that it is based on Jew-hatred.
So this letter to The Guardian is meant to whitewash the history of Arab Jew-hate as the motivating factor behind Arab antisemitism. It takes some of the socialist arguments that they have no problem with Jews, but it is rewriting history.
The proof is obvious: neither today's Arab anti-Zionists nor the socialist anti-Zionists are willing to condemn the antisemitism of their predecessors. Antisemitism is inherent to those philosophies.
Today's apologetics don't change that.
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