THE SILENCING OF DISSENT
-
How do they get away with it?
By
Paul Eisen
As the onslaught on the Palestinian people continues and the
hundred-year conquest of Palestine enters what may be its final
stages, efforts by the Israeli, Zionist and Jewish
establishments to silence any remaining criticism of Israel and
Zionism intensify. At the centre of these efforts is the claim
that anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism. Critics of Israel are
warned that whilst like any other democratic state, Israel is
open to criticism of its policies, any criticism of Israel's
right to exist as a Jewish state is, by definition,
anti-Semitic.
As the onslaught on the Palestinian people continues and the
hundred-year conquest of Palestine enters what may be its final
stages, efforts by the Israeli, Zionist and Jewish
establishments to silence any remaining criticism of Israel and
Zionism intensify. At the centre of these efforts is the claim
that anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism. Critics of Israel are
warned that whilst like any other democratic state, Israel is
open to criticism of its policies, any criticism of Israel's
right to exist as a Jewish state is, by definition,
anti-Semitic.
First, it is not true that we are free to criticize Israeli
policies since so many perfectly legitimate criticisms of
Israeli policy are blanketed as attacks on Israel's right to
self-defense and therefore as attacks on Israel's right to exist
and, therefore themselves as anti-Semitic. But what of the core
argument that, since all other peoples are entitled to
statehood, to deny to Jews that which is granted to everyone
else is discriminatory and, therefore, anti-Semitic?
There are of course some who really do want to "push the Jews
into the sea", and there are certainly those who say that Jews
are not a nation, but a religious group. There are others who
undoubtedly would deny the right of Jews to establish a state
anywhere. These people can fight their own battles. For my part,
if Jews say they are a nation, that's fine and if Jews want to
wear blue-and-white, wave flags and set up a state on some piece
of uninhabited and unclaimed land, although I won't be joining
them, that's also fine. The problem is when this state is
established on someone else's land and maintained at someone
else's expense.
So what is this state of Israel, this Jewish state, whose
existence we are forbidden to question? Founded on the expulsion
and exile of another people, and defining itself as for Jews
alone, Israel officially and unofficially, overtly and covertly,
discriminates against non-Jews. Is denying Jews such a state
denying them that which is granted to all others? One may agree
or disagree with any of this. One may argue for or against
Jewish nationhood, the need for a Jewish state, the right of
Jews to have a state in Palestine, and even, post-Holocaust, the
justification for Jews to establish that state at the expense of
another people. One can agree or disagree with any of this, but
is such agreement or disagreement necessarily anti-Semitic?
ANTI-ZIONISM EQUAL ANTI-SEMITISM?
The anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism argument amounts to this:
If you do not agree with the right of Jews to go to Palestine,
settle there en masse against the wishes of the indigenous
population, expel this population from 75% of their land and
then, for the next fifty years and more, continue this assault
on the remaining land and population, then you are an
anti-Semite. Similarly, if you do not support the existence of
an ethnically based state which defines itself as being for Jews
only and discriminates officially both inside and outside its
borders against non-Jews, then, again, you are an anti-Semite.
This would be laughable if it came from any other group of
people, yet coming from Jews, even though not always agreed
with, it is still seen as legitimate. So how do they get away
with it? No-one else does, so what's special about Jews?
Whether there is anything special about Jews is not really
relevant. What is relevant is that a large part of the Western
world, even the most secular part, seems to believe that there
is, or, if they don't believe it, are not confident enough in
their disbelief to say so. The Western world seems at times
almost obsessed with Jews and Jewish life. Stories of struggle
from the Hebrew Bible, such as the Exodus from Egypt, have
become paradigms for other people's struggles and aspirations.
The emigration of Jews from Eastern Europe into their Golden
Land in America has become as American a legend as the Wild
West. Jewish folklore and myth, stereotypes of Jewish humour,
food and family life-all are deeply woven into the fabric of
Western, particularly American, life. Yet these preoccupations
are complicated and often ambivalent Despite our present
secularity, Christianity still occupies a central place in
Western culture and experience, and Jews occupy a central place
in the Christian narrative, so it is no surprise that Jews and
Jewish concerns receive a lot of attention. But Christian
attitudes towards Jews are themselves complex and contradictory:
Jesus was born a Jew and died a Jew, and yet, traditionally, His
teachings supersede those of Judaism. Jesus lived amongst Jews,
His message was shaped by Jews yet He was rejected by Jews and,
it has been widely believed, died at the behest of Jews. So, for
many Christians, Jews are both the people of God and the people
who rejected God, and are objects of both great veneration and
great loathing. This ambivalence is reflected in the secular
world too where Jews are widely admired for their history and
traditions and for their creativity and success yet are also
held in some suspicion and dislike for their exclusivity and
supposed feelings of 'specialness'. Jews seem either loved or
hated and, now since the Holocaust, publicly at least, they seem
loved or at least if not loved, then certainly, indulged.
IS JEWISH SUFFERING UNIQUE?
The establishment of the state of Israel in May 1948, coming
just three years after the liberation of Auschwitz in January
1945, marks, for Jews, the transition from enslavement to
empowerment. This empowerment of Jews took place not only with
the establishment of Israel, but also continuously, from the
mass emigration of Jews to the West in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries, to the present day. Today in the West
Jews enjoy unparalleled political, economic and social power and
influence. Jews are represented way beyond their numbers in the
upper echelons of all areas of public and professional
life-politics, academia, the arts, the media and business. But
even more than the political and economic power which Jews
possess, is the social power. Jews have a moral prestige derived
from their history and traditions as a chosen and as a suffering
people. In these more secular times, however, especially since
the Holocaust, it is as a suffering people that Jews occupy
their special place in Western culture.
That Jews have suffered is undeniable. But acknowledgement of
this suffering is rarely enough. Jews and others have demanded
that not only should Jewish suffering be acknowledged but that
it also be accorded special status. Jewish suffering is rarely
measured against the sufferings of other groups. Blacks, women,
children, gays, workers, peasants, minorities of all kinds, all
have suffered, but none as much as Jews. Protestants at the
hands of Catholics, Catholics at the hands of Protestants,
pagans and heretics, all have suffered religious persecution,
but none as relentlessly as Jews. Indians, Armenians, Gypsies
and Aborigines, all have been targeted for elimination, but none
as murderously and as premeditatedly as Jews
Jewish suffering is held to be mysterious and beyond
explanation. Context is rarely examined. The place and role of
Jews in society - their historical relationships with Church and
state, landlords and peasantry - is hardly ever subject to
scrutiny, and, whilst non-Jewish attitudes to Jews are the
subject of intense interest, Jewish attitudes to non-Jews are
rarely mentioned. Attempts to confront these issues are met with
suspicion, and sometimes hostility, because of a fear that
explanation may lead to rationalization, which may lead to
exculpation, and then even to justification.
The stakes in this already fraught game have been raised so much
higher by the Holocaust. Is the Holocaust "The ultimate mystery,
never to be comprehended or transmitted" as Elie Wiesel would
have us believe? Are attempts to question the Holocaust
narrative just a cover for denial or even justification? Was
Jewish suffering in the Holocaust greater and of more
significance than that of anyone else? Were the three million
Polish Jews who died at the hands of the Nazis more important
than the three million Polish non-Jews who also died? Twenty
million black Africans, a million Ibos, a million Kampucheans,
Armenians, Aborigines, all have perished in genocides, but none
as meaningfully as the six million Jews slaughtered in the only
genocide to be theologically named and now perceived by Jews and
the rest of the Western world to be an event of near religious
significance.
Jews have not been just passive recipients of all this special
treatment and consideration. The special status accorded to
Israel's behaviour in Palestine, and Jewish support for it, is
not something that the Jewish establishment has accepted
reluctantly. On the contrary, Jews and Jewish organisations have
demanded it. And at the heart of this demand for special
consideration is the demand that the whole world, recognising
the uniqueness of Jewish suffering, should join with Jews in
their fears about anti-Semitism and of its resurgence.
Anti-Semitism in its historic, virulent and eliminationist form
did exist and could certainly exist again, but it does not
currently exist in the West in any significantly observable
form. Jews have never been so secure or empowered, yet many Jews
feel and act as if they are a hair's breadth away from
Auschwitz. And not only this, but they require that everybody
else feel the same. So soon after the Holocaust this is perhaps
understandable, but less so when it is used to silence dissent
and criticism of Israel and Zionism. Jews, individually and
collectively use their political, economic, social, and moral
power in support of Israel and Zionism. In their defense of
Israel and Zionism, Jews brandish their suffering at the world,
accusing it of reverting to its old anti-Semitic ways.
THE SILENCING OF DISSENT.
Is a Jewish state acceptable in this day and age? Are the Jews a
people who qualify for national self-determination, or are Jews
a religious group only? Post-Holocaust, does the Jewish need for
a state of their own perhaps even justify the displacement of
the Palestinians? Are Jews who wield power to serve what they
perceive as their own ethnic interests and to support Israel, to
be held politically accountable? What is anti-Semitism? Is
anti-Zionism anti-Semitism? All this and a great deal more could
and should be debated. What need not be debated is this: that
every complexity and ambiguity of Jewish identity and history,
every example of Jewish suffering, every instance of anti-Jewish
prejudice, however inconsequential, is used to justify the
crimes of Israel and Zionism. Every possible interpretation or
misinterpretation of language, and every kind of intellectual
sophistry is used by Zionists to muddy the waters and label the
critic of Israel and Zionism an anti-Semite. Words and phrases
become loaded with hidden meanings, so that even the most honest
critic of Israel has to twist and turn and jump through hoops to
ensure that he or she is not perceived as anti-Semitic.
And the penalties for transgression are terrible. For those who
do not manage to pick their way through this minefield, the
charge of anti-Semite awaits, with all its possibilities of
political, religious and social exclusion. No longer a
descriptive term for someone who hates Jews simply for being
Jews, 'anti-Semite' is now a curse to hurl against anyone who
dares to criticise Jews and, increasingly against anyone who
dares, too trenchantly, to criticize Israel and Zionism. And for
those Jews of conscience who dare speak out, for them there is
reserved the special penalty of exclusion from Jewish life and
exile.
Marc Ellis's 'ecumenical deal' which translates also into a
political deal, says it all. It goes like this: To the Christian
and to the entire non-Jewish world, Jews say this: 'You will
apologise for Jewish suffering again and again and again. And,
when you have finished apologising, you will then apologise some
more. When you have apologised sufficiently we will forgive you,
provided you let us do what we want in Palestine.'
As hard as it may be, for the sake of us all - Jew and non-Jew
alike, do we not now have to break free?
Paul Eisen is a director of Deir Yassin Remembered and is on the
Executive Committee of Sabeel UK.
dyr@eisen.demon.co.uk
This article is based on "Speaking the Truth to Jews" which will
appear in a forthcoming book, "Speaking the Truth about Israel
and Zionism", edited by Michael Prior and published by Melisende
in March 2004.
PAUL EISEN
|