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”Anti-semitism” as a
political weapon
By Lasse Wilhelmson
Criticising Israel´s mistakes is acceptable.
But questioning whether Israel is a Jewish state with a racist
apartheid system that renders non-Jews second rate citizens –
that is not acceptable. It makes little difference whether the
criticism is based on facts. Few people who cannot claim Jewish
descent would dare to criticize publicly. They are afraid of
being accused of “anti-semitism”.
There is much talk of disarming countries
with nuclear weapons. Not the US and its allies, but the
so-called ‘rogue states’, especially Iran, which doesn´t yet
have any weapons. Israel is hardly ever mentioned as a nuclear
power although it has been for a long time. In spite of its
advanced plans to bomb Iran, Israel is not seen as a threat to
the surrounding world. The media regularly criticizes severely
various religions, especially Islam, but never Judaism. Catholic
pressure through lobbying, or the Pope´s speeches on political
issues are discussed and criticized. The fight in South Africa
against the Boers involved a whole world. Not because they were
a “race” with undesirable characteristics, but because they were
the social group who in their own interests formed and
administrated a racist apartheid system. The same sort of
criticism was aimed at the followers of Cecil Rhodes in
Rhodesia.
All types of social, ethnic and religious
groups defend their own special interests. It is considered
quite legitimate for their spokesmen to do their best to promote
these interests; just as it is quite legitimate to criticize the
same. But the moment Jewish spokesmen and their organisations
are criticised, the legitimacy vanishes into thin air. The
mention of “Jewish power” makes most people´s blood run cold,
but it is quite alright to discuss “gypsy power” or rather the
lack of it. “Jewishness” has become taboo. This applies
particularly to the combination of “Jewish” and of “power” . All
kinds of power can be examined and discussed, questioned or
rejected – but not the Jewish kind which is generally presented
as non-existent.
There is growing anxiety in the Palestinian
movement in Sweden about using “Jewish” as a prefix to the
settlements, the state of Israel or the apartheid system, albeit
the use is quite correct. The settlements for example are
“Jewish settlements” simply because only Jews are allowed to
live there. They are not Israeli because non-Jewish citizens are
forbidden access to them. Neither are they Zionist as many
Zionists are not Jews. It has now got to the stage where a
leading spokesmen for the Palestinians in Sweden denies that
Jews and Palestinians have disagreements, despite the law giving
Jews all over the world the right to return to Israel, thus
making them potential enemies of the Palestinians. Having a
Jewish mother gives the right to live in the country taken from
the Palestinians. One would be hard put to find a more
fundamental disagreement. The issue of blood-relationship
renders it, moreover, racist.
A reluctance to discuss Judaism´s
significance for Zionism in Israel of today makes it impossible
to understand why Israel was not content with fifty per cent,
later eighty per cent, of Palestine. Or why a social democratic
prime minister ordered his soldiers to break the bones of
children throwing stones? And how can one understand why Jews in
Jerusalem throw their garbage onto the roads and back yards of
their Palestinian neighbours, spit at them, or why masked Jewish
settlers during the “cease fire” launched pogroms on unarmed
Palestinian farmers, women and children? Or why the Israeli
“peace movement” and “left” do not question the Jewish apartheid
system? Just and lasting peace can never be achieved without its
transformation. Few people think that all this is a result of
the Jews being an “evil race”. But if it cannot be explained by
any other means, the few risk becoming too many. A
racially-based hate of Jews is helped along by the label of
“anti-semitism” pasted on nearly all criticism of Israel, not to
mention criticism of Judaism.
Zionism, through its Jewish organisations, is
the dominant interpretation of Judaism today. This is a
renaissance of national Judaism of the Middle Ages and the
judicial system Halakha with its extreme animosity towards non-jews
who were seen rather as subhuman. This revival is seen as very
beneficial by most Jewish organisations worldwide. They demand
of their members positive commitment to the state of Israel.
This is the context in which the behaviour mentioned above can
be understood. Most Jews in the diaspora are, however, “happily”
unaware of this and are being used by their Zionist leaders and
rabbis.
Politics and religion have merged in the
state of Israel today. A person speaking out for a secular
democracy to replace the Jewish state, is accused of, in fact,
wanting to “drive the Jews into the sea”. Most Jews today
identify themselves not with Israel but with Israel as a Jewish
state. This creates a fundamental contradiction for many Jews:
supporting the Jewish apartheid state while promoting democracy
in the countries where they actually live. Denying or
whitewashing Israel´s politics, becomes a way of keeping one´s
identity intact. Violent, groundless attacks with
“anti-semitism” as a weapon is the method used against any
attempt to lay bare this contradiction. A well known example is
how Israel´s former ambassador to Sweden vandalised the art
installation Snow White last year.
The risk of being labelled “anti-semitic” if
you are not a Jew or of “self-hatred” if you are, creates
self-censorship among those who are critical of Israel´s
policies or dislike the successful lobbying carried out by
Jewish and Christian Zionists, influencing US foreign policy.
The so- called Friends of Israel, most of them spokesmen for
Jewish organisations, have taken it upon themselves to be the
foremost interpreters of the term “anti-semitism”. Few question
this role as they run the risk of being tainted themselves if
they do. The term “anti-semitism” is taking on new nuances all
the time. Of late the slightest implication, as in “almost
anti-semitic” or an “anti-semitic point of interest” has been
enough to invoke self-censorship. The mention of these
circumstances is often felt to be “dangerous” as it could lead
to the growth of “anti-semitism”. All this in a western world
where islamophobia is a considerably greater problem.
Jews are rightly proud of their success in
almost all corners of society. In art and science and, not
least, the media and politics. Israeli newspapers tell of the
successful “likudification” of the Bush administration and
delight in the fact that the Israeli minister for the diaspora
is Bush´s new favourite author and pet in the White House.
Russian oligarchs with Israeli citizenship take breakfast there.
There is a culture of boasting about this among Jews. But should
a critic of Israel point to these exact same circumstances, he
would immediately be accused of spreading “anti-semite theories
of conspiracy” and thus be barred from any further discussion.
The Jews have for many years had total
entrepreneurship of “God´s chosen People” with a “biblical
right” to Palestine. Zionism has been politically successful in
reducing the Holocaust to Nazi war crimes against Jews. By
presenting themselves as the major (the only?) victims in the
history of humanity they expect to claim special moral rights.
The method is used favourably to justify and cover up the
genocide of the Palestinians. “Anti-semitism” is being used to
stop criticism of Israel´s way onwards to achieve the Zionist
goal of a Jewish state in the whole of Palestine. Before this
goal can be realised, “peace” must be reached with the creation
of a few Palestinian reservations on ten per cent of what was
originally Palestine, walled-in and gradually wasting away. We
are almost there now.
Lasse Wilhelmson
-Lasse Wilhelmson
was born in 1941 in Sweden. Part of Wilhelmson’s family fled to
Sweden from the Czar’s pogroms during the 1880s. Some members of
the family immigrated further to America and Palestine.
Wilhelmson lived in Israel for several years during the early
1960s. He also published the article ”Israel Must Choose the
Path of Democracy” the 16th of September 2003 and ”More Than
Traditional Colonialism and Apartheid” the 16th of February 2004
in The Palestine Chronicle.
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