I abhor antisemitism, and make many of the same arguments as you do here in trying to understand the particular hatred which Israel attracts, and has attracted long before the horrors of this particular war, within a particular culture of activism that has gained more and more influence on the wider left. Where I live in Spain there are many social centres / bars which overlap with diverse manifestations of activist left-wing politics (including squats and Catalan independence movements). They frequently display their (ostensibly) pro-Palestinian politics through symbols and rhetoric - most obviously the Palestinian flag, but sometimes coded statements of support for violent resistance ("fire to Israel") or anti-colonial rhetoric or messages advocating river-to-sea liberation. The last such place I was in had a poster proclaiming explicit support for the axis of resistance. Never have I seen messages of solidarity with Ukraine, never mind any of the other countries or ethnic groups you mention. Not once! From a purely rational point of view, there is something going on here that needs explaining. And I don´t doubt that anti-Jewish racism is (a big) part of the picture.
That said, I think you overstate your case in a way that risks being unhelpful to the fight against antisemitism and the struggle for a better future for Palestinians and Israelis alike. Your analysis here, and in the generally excellent piece on Palestinian activism being inserted into other political issues, also misses some salient features of the modern left. While antisemitism can certainly account for an obsession with Israel, it is not the only way to explain this. People do not make choices between a number of causes on the basis of a rational weighing up of their moral claims, or allocate energy and attention proportionally. They are drawn to those causes which are thrust into the media spotlight (and their algorithms), or which can be shoehorned into prevailing ways of understanding the world, or which may have a hold on them through personal connections or experiences. Ukraine has certainly been visible, but it conflicts with the tendency you identify of seeing world history through a lens in which Western colonialism is the underlying cause of events. The longstanding nature of the Israeli / Palestinian conflict also surely accounts for not only its increased visibility in the media, but also its attractiveness as a locus of activism. Again, this dovetails with anti-colonial ideology, the idea of an "original sin", but also a tendency towards milleniarism, heightened by the religious aspects of the conflict and its location: if we can fix *this*, then anything is possible. Of course, antisemitic symbolism in which the Jews are cast as the ultimate evil is synergistic with milleniarism. My basic point, however, is that there is a lot more going on symbolically than Jew-hatred, and it can be difficult to untangle.
The example you provide of your colleague is not as clear-cut as you seem to think, and seems a strange choice when there are no shortage of deeply problematic or outright racist statements about Israel. Your argument basically rests on the first line where she argues that Israel will not be held to account for this alleged war crime. Many people, rightly or wrongly, believe that there is impunity for Israel when it comes to the conduct of their soldiers because they have, in the US, the most powerful actor in world affairs on their side. And also because Israel has successfully defied international law and countless UN resolutions regarding the establishment of settlements in occupied territory for almost 60 years, and human rights organisations and whistleblowers frequently testify to the conditions of impunity in which settlers and Israeli soldiers operate in the West Bank. If you had selected the remark about Netanyahu you would be correct, and there is an obvious contradiction between the way that left-leaning people treat other instances of racism. But it is clear that this, for you, is simply confirmation of underlying antisemitism. I think we need to be more careful than this, and more thorough in separating out the various cultural elements implicated in commentary on Israel / Palestine. What seems to me more pertinent here, and as you draw attention to yourself, are the particular, somewhat narcissistic terms of discourse she uses (calling out, humanitarian etc). For me, essential problems are that a) the left has embraced a culture of activism in which historical knowledge is downplayed in favour of action, hence the degradation of much discourse into dogma and b) this forms a nexus with a liberal tendency to make politics a question of symbolic struggles over language and identity rather than material outcomes.
More generally, I believe we would do better to treat antisemitism as a malignant cultural tendency with complex roots, rather than some individual pathology that can be solved by "calling out" people (as you, ironically, seem to do in a fashion with your colleague). Because if our arguments are unconvincing they will lead only to people being more careful with what they say. We need less displays of virtue and more historical understanding.
Also, please note that while there were jews occupying the region since very ancient times, the creation of Israel AT THAT POINT IN TIME was practised with acts of dispossession to palestinians who HAD ALSO OCCUPIED THAT REGION for generations. And that the sionists occupying the region starting from the 19th centuries were not the same as jewisch communities living there for generations and were deeply informed by nationalist theories of the 19th century that hold a view of the relationship between land and people that was not necessarily the same of jews living in the region before sionism in the 19th century. And far from being a simple "safe haven" for jews after the holocaust, the politics of holocaust survivors going to Israel is way more complicated. Survivors could be treated with hostility by the communities who came in the wave of sionism. But it is way easier and more convenient to put all complexities under the "post colonialism" moniker.
Furthermore, there is a rich intellectual history of jews who criticized sionism and there are many jews of today that criticise the creation of Israel and/or the Israeli politics regarding Palestine and Palestinians and the current Israeli military actions. If you take the word of Jews as authoritative, I wonder why you solemnly choose to ignore them.
The evidence surrounding the october 2023 hospital explosion is highly inconclusive and does not point to a misguided Palestinian rocket as the "most likely cause". I also completely agree with some of the points made by "La Republique" in this comment section, regarding other people's perceived indifference and the double standards argument.
While I agree with its premise, this piece would have benefited from being a little more thought out.
not to mention that people who worry about freedom of thought and the truthfulness of information should be very wary that Israel severely restricts the possibilities for investigating and checking information. there is a blatant conflict of interest to any declaration of an organisation with that level of military power over that territory when it comes to beind made responsible for their actions.
I think the poor global coverage on conflicts and human rights violations taking place everywhere is sad, but is not at all because people are antisemitic. There are studies showing that coverage of global issues in the "west" has been dwindling for a while. There are many factors to that - the de-politicization of the global information sphere, the decadence of the business model of journalism, among others. They all sadden me profoundly. In the end, Israel is more not because people do not care about other injustices, but because the "West" has become more self centered on one hand, and on the other the "western" governments have chosen Israel as a more important topic than others - this is reflected in military budgets. It is not something that some bureaucratic poli sci person in the EU chose as important. This person is reacting. And if someone cares about the fate of jewish communities, they should be worried because the so-called western powers are doing it because they are willing to sell their self proclamed values for keeping an important ally, not because they are worried about antisemitism (which, of course, does not mean that the people involved do not also see it/frame it in terms of values, because humans rationalize their actions in those terms).
I am very left wing, granted. I had a, granted, also left-wing Israeli flatmate in Berlin. She says that she and her friends of course do not think Israelis should not be displaced from where they are. They have different different views on the idea of one Israeli state - rather than, say, one single state for Israelis and Palestinians. They absolutely think that anti-semitism (in the form of tropes, ideas) shows up pro-palestine activism, but they do not think it dominates it or is a core reason behind it. Seriously, people in the pro-palestine camp are mostly not dumb. That said, they do not have faith in Israel as it is. Most of her friends who were there are simply fleeing because they do not see how anything being done now can bring long-lasting peace. What this guy labels as "impossible standards", they see as not only making things right but as the admittedly hard way to set foundations for a more humane future, more sustainable relations between both peoples, and long-lasting peace. They do not see a political horizon in Israel for this conversation of for things getting better for everyone. What is "post-colonial" about this? Nothing. The only explanation to label this as post-colonial is the refusal to take this position seriously.
"For me, the line is crossed when somebody obsesses over Israel/Palestine to the exclusion of all other conflicts" wouldn't this apply to you, however? would you comment on other people's indifference if it did not conflict with your own views in question? while all those conflicts are worthy of our attention, it is puzzling to me that some seem to only think of them when they are an opportunity to downplay criticism against other specific actors. also, RE charge of "holding Israelis to impossible standards": first, assessing the actions of IDF or the Israeli government is not quite the same as assessing the behavior of "Israelis" at large. second, would you say this about other actors in other conflicts? Would you interpret criticism at other armies as "holding them to impossible standards while downplaying attacks on them"? Rwandan aggression in neighboring countries is informed and justified publicly by the trauma of the genocide and the stated need to protect groups from minorities that were slaughtered in the genocide. Would you say the same about the Rwandan armed forces, as well as the other armed groups backed by them? If you cannot rule on this comparison for lack of information about Rwanda I am sorry, but it feels like you pay attention to Israel to the exclusion of all other conflicts. Furthermore, you hold other people and their choice of attention to impossible standards. On top of that, you downplay aggression when committed by Israel in a way you would not downplay if it was committed by other actions.
The IDF lying blatantly is extensively recorded in reports of serious human rights organisations that are far from being left wing (if you think Human Rights Watch or the Amnesty International work under "left-wing" frameworks, please go study political theory). And she did not say that jews control international organisations, you interpreted that - she said that Israel is able to evade even investigations of responsibility for crimes, which is absolutely true. This has been less true in the past, it is more true now. More than that, the international right backing Israel now because it is more convenient to them for a number of reasons regularly uses antisemitic tropes and can be overtly antisemitic. How much time do you dedicate to criticize them - or is antisemitism only useful if you want to downplay IDF actions?
This makes a number of important points too. I would be curious to see you reply to criticism, because without doing so you also undermine your case. Musa al-Gharbi in US leftist magazine Current Affairs makes a fascinating argument about how people have used the culture wars and struggles over language to build successful careers, and how ultimately this has contributed to pervasive disenchantment with the left and its failure to improve objective, material conditions for many people. His main focus is on those who do this by adopting liberal-left dogma and language policing, but he also points out that their critics are doing exactly the same thing from the other angle: finding a niche within which to argue about language and improve their career prospects while contributing little or nothing to material improvements for the people they purport to care about. This, provocatively, is my point. Your blog seems to fit neatly into a niche created by deep and obvious flaws in leftwing activism, pro-Palestinian discourse etc. You write in an identifiable genre, with common arguments - but if you are genuinely interested in tackling the problem of antisemitism, or justice for Palestinians / Israelis, then surely you need to engage with a least some critical voices.
I abhor antisemitism, and make many of the same arguments as you do here in trying to understand the particular hatred which Israel attracts, and has attracted long before the horrors of this particular war, within a particular culture of activism that has gained more and more influence on the wider left. Where I live in Spain there are many social centres / bars which overlap with diverse manifestations of activist left-wing politics (including squats and Catalan independence movements). They frequently display their (ostensibly) pro-Palestinian politics through symbols and rhetoric - most obviously the Palestinian flag, but sometimes coded statements of support for violent resistance ("fire to Israel") or anti-colonial rhetoric or messages advocating river-to-sea liberation. The last such place I was in had a poster proclaiming explicit support for the axis of resistance. Never have I seen messages of solidarity with Ukraine, never mind any of the other countries or ethnic groups you mention. Not once! From a purely rational point of view, there is something going on here that needs explaining. And I don´t doubt that anti-Jewish racism is (a big) part of the picture.
That said, I think you overstate your case in a way that risks being unhelpful to the fight against antisemitism and the struggle for a better future for Palestinians and Israelis alike. Your analysis here, and in the generally excellent piece on Palestinian activism being inserted into other political issues, also misses some salient features of the modern left. While antisemitism can certainly account for an obsession with Israel, it is not the only way to explain this. People do not make choices between a number of causes on the basis of a rational weighing up of their moral claims, or allocate energy and attention proportionally. They are drawn to those causes which are thrust into the media spotlight (and their algorithms), or which can be shoehorned into prevailing ways of understanding the world, or which may have a hold on them through personal connections or experiences. Ukraine has certainly been visible, but it conflicts with the tendency you identify of seeing world history through a lens in which Western colonialism is the underlying cause of events. The longstanding nature of the Israeli / Palestinian conflict also surely accounts for not only its increased visibility in the media, but also its attractiveness as a locus of activism. Again, this dovetails with anti-colonial ideology, the idea of an "original sin", but also a tendency towards milleniarism, heightened by the religious aspects of the conflict and its location: if we can fix *this*, then anything is possible. Of course, antisemitic symbolism in which the Jews are cast as the ultimate evil is synergistic with milleniarism. My basic point, however, is that there is a lot more going on symbolically than Jew-hatred, and it can be difficult to untangle.
The example you provide of your colleague is not as clear-cut as you seem to think, and seems a strange choice when there are no shortage of deeply problematic or outright racist statements about Israel. Your argument basically rests on the first line where she argues that Israel will not be held to account for this alleged war crime. Many people, rightly or wrongly, believe that there is impunity for Israel when it comes to the conduct of their soldiers because they have, in the US, the most powerful actor in world affairs on their side. And also because Israel has successfully defied international law and countless UN resolutions regarding the establishment of settlements in occupied territory for almost 60 years, and human rights organisations and whistleblowers frequently testify to the conditions of impunity in which settlers and Israeli soldiers operate in the West Bank. If you had selected the remark about Netanyahu you would be correct, and there is an obvious contradiction between the way that left-leaning people treat other instances of racism. But it is clear that this, for you, is simply confirmation of underlying antisemitism. I think we need to be more careful than this, and more thorough in separating out the various cultural elements implicated in commentary on Israel / Palestine. What seems to me more pertinent here, and as you draw attention to yourself, are the particular, somewhat narcissistic terms of discourse she uses (calling out, humanitarian etc). For me, essential problems are that a) the left has embraced a culture of activism in which historical knowledge is downplayed in favour of action, hence the degradation of much discourse into dogma and b) this forms a nexus with a liberal tendency to make politics a question of symbolic struggles over language and identity rather than material outcomes.
More generally, I believe we would do better to treat antisemitism as a malignant cultural tendency with complex roots, rather than some individual pathology that can be solved by "calling out" people (as you, ironically, seem to do in a fashion with your colleague). Because if our arguments are unconvincing they will lead only to people being more careful with what they say. We need less displays of virtue and more historical understanding.
Fully agree Sam. Thank you for writing it clearly.
Also, please note that while there were jews occupying the region since very ancient times, the creation of Israel AT THAT POINT IN TIME was practised with acts of dispossession to palestinians who HAD ALSO OCCUPIED THAT REGION for generations. And that the sionists occupying the region starting from the 19th centuries were not the same as jewisch communities living there for generations and were deeply informed by nationalist theories of the 19th century that hold a view of the relationship between land and people that was not necessarily the same of jews living in the region before sionism in the 19th century. And far from being a simple "safe haven" for jews after the holocaust, the politics of holocaust survivors going to Israel is way more complicated. Survivors could be treated with hostility by the communities who came in the wave of sionism. But it is way easier and more convenient to put all complexities under the "post colonialism" moniker.
Furthermore, there is a rich intellectual history of jews who criticized sionism and there are many jews of today that criticise the creation of Israel and/or the Israeli politics regarding Palestine and Palestinians and the current Israeli military actions. If you take the word of Jews as authoritative, I wonder why you solemnly choose to ignore them.
The evidence surrounding the october 2023 hospital explosion is highly inconclusive and does not point to a misguided Palestinian rocket as the "most likely cause". I also completely agree with some of the points made by "La Republique" in this comment section, regarding other people's perceived indifference and the double standards argument.
While I agree with its premise, this piece would have benefited from being a little more thought out.
not to mention that people who worry about freedom of thought and the truthfulness of information should be very wary that Israel severely restricts the possibilities for investigating and checking information. there is a blatant conflict of interest to any declaration of an organisation with that level of military power over that territory when it comes to beind made responsible for their actions.
I think the poor global coverage on conflicts and human rights violations taking place everywhere is sad, but is not at all because people are antisemitic. There are studies showing that coverage of global issues in the "west" has been dwindling for a while. There are many factors to that - the de-politicization of the global information sphere, the decadence of the business model of journalism, among others. They all sadden me profoundly. In the end, Israel is more not because people do not care about other injustices, but because the "West" has become more self centered on one hand, and on the other the "western" governments have chosen Israel as a more important topic than others - this is reflected in military budgets. It is not something that some bureaucratic poli sci person in the EU chose as important. This person is reacting. And if someone cares about the fate of jewish communities, they should be worried because the so-called western powers are doing it because they are willing to sell their self proclamed values for keeping an important ally, not because they are worried about antisemitism (which, of course, does not mean that the people involved do not also see it/frame it in terms of values, because humans rationalize their actions in those terms).
I am very left wing, granted. I had a, granted, also left-wing Israeli flatmate in Berlin. She says that she and her friends of course do not think Israelis should not be displaced from where they are. They have different different views on the idea of one Israeli state - rather than, say, one single state for Israelis and Palestinians. They absolutely think that anti-semitism (in the form of tropes, ideas) shows up pro-palestine activism, but they do not think it dominates it or is a core reason behind it. Seriously, people in the pro-palestine camp are mostly not dumb. That said, they do not have faith in Israel as it is. Most of her friends who were there are simply fleeing because they do not see how anything being done now can bring long-lasting peace. What this guy labels as "impossible standards", they see as not only making things right but as the admittedly hard way to set foundations for a more humane future, more sustainable relations between both peoples, and long-lasting peace. They do not see a political horizon in Israel for this conversation of for things getting better for everyone. What is "post-colonial" about this? Nothing. The only explanation to label this as post-colonial is the refusal to take this position seriously.
"For me, the line is crossed when somebody obsesses over Israel/Palestine to the exclusion of all other conflicts" wouldn't this apply to you, however? would you comment on other people's indifference if it did not conflict with your own views in question? while all those conflicts are worthy of our attention, it is puzzling to me that some seem to only think of them when they are an opportunity to downplay criticism against other specific actors. also, RE charge of "holding Israelis to impossible standards": first, assessing the actions of IDF or the Israeli government is not quite the same as assessing the behavior of "Israelis" at large. second, would you say this about other actors in other conflicts? Would you interpret criticism at other armies as "holding them to impossible standards while downplaying attacks on them"? Rwandan aggression in neighboring countries is informed and justified publicly by the trauma of the genocide and the stated need to protect groups from minorities that were slaughtered in the genocide. Would you say the same about the Rwandan armed forces, as well as the other armed groups backed by them? If you cannot rule on this comparison for lack of information about Rwanda I am sorry, but it feels like you pay attention to Israel to the exclusion of all other conflicts. Furthermore, you hold other people and their choice of attention to impossible standards. On top of that, you downplay aggression when committed by Israel in a way you would not downplay if it was committed by other actions.
The IDF lying blatantly is extensively recorded in reports of serious human rights organisations that are far from being left wing (if you think Human Rights Watch or the Amnesty International work under "left-wing" frameworks, please go study political theory). And she did not say that jews control international organisations, you interpreted that - she said that Israel is able to evade even investigations of responsibility for crimes, which is absolutely true. This has been less true in the past, it is more true now. More than that, the international right backing Israel now because it is more convenient to them for a number of reasons regularly uses antisemitic tropes and can be overtly antisemitic. How much time do you dedicate to criticize them - or is antisemitism only useful if you want to downplay IDF actions?
This makes a number of important points too. I would be curious to see you reply to criticism, because without doing so you also undermine your case. Musa al-Gharbi in US leftist magazine Current Affairs makes a fascinating argument about how people have used the culture wars and struggles over language to build successful careers, and how ultimately this has contributed to pervasive disenchantment with the left and its failure to improve objective, material conditions for many people. His main focus is on those who do this by adopting liberal-left dogma and language policing, but he also points out that their critics are doing exactly the same thing from the other angle: finding a niche within which to argue about language and improve their career prospects while contributing little or nothing to material improvements for the people they purport to care about. This, provocatively, is my point. Your blog seems to fit neatly into a niche created by deep and obvious flaws in leftwing activism, pro-Palestinian discourse etc. You write in an identifiable genre, with common arguments - but if you are genuinely interested in tackling the problem of antisemitism, or justice for Palestinians / Israelis, then surely you need to engage with a least some critical voices.
Perfectly put. It "should" be obvious, but it's eloquently spelled out in your column for all to see.