Anti-Semitism Row - Palestine, Israel:
them and us or shared humanity? Lesley Grahame
It is hard to say anything on Israel, anti-Semitism and human-rights
without risking accusations of the ‘with us or against us’ variety, and this
is very damaging to debate, activism and the possibility of righting
wrongs, i.e. to achieving a just and lasting peace.
However, just as US and British peace voices are vital when our
countries invade Iraq, Syria, Argentina or anywhere else, so are Jewish
voices when others are attacked by people who claim to speak for us,
without our consent.
If we don’t speak out, we are allowing it to happen in our name, our
silence will be taken as permission. If we do speak out, there is a risk of
playing into the narrative that conflates Israel with Judaism with Zionism.
While rejecting both, I feel a responsibility to speak out, partly based on
wrong expectations from others, partly from the experience of solidarity
and its absence. This is a personal view.
When Muslims speak out against Daesh, or Christians against the alt
right, they show solidarity, and reflect the extent to which they feel they
should be their siblings’ keeper. Nobody deserves to be judged on the
worst thing they ever do, never mind the crimes of their co-religionists.
Being Jewish isn’t like being from a country, but it is my history, my
identity as a victim of history, my humanity, in the sense of identifying as
and with people who have been made victims because of where or who
or what they are. Victimhood may explain fears, but it does not excuse
violent, illegal and discriminatory actions.
Jewish heritage comes with many things, including both a history of life-
threatening persecution as well as the unfair privilege of a so-called
‘Right of return’ to a country whose government wishes to rule a Jewish
state, and to exclude others, even those, who lived there for
generations. I consider it important to keep sight of both those legacies,
seeing only one side of the story generates fear and ignorance, both of
which make for easy manipulation.
When Europe gifted land that wasn’t theirs to give, to get rid of a people
it regarded as problem, it set the scene for predictable and inevitable
conflict, and grave harm to both uprooted peoples. The story of a land
without a people for a people without a land is wrong on every count, yet
it’s a comforting, compelling narrative that many of us have had to
unlearn, along with a lot of our trust in our sources of information, also
known as our families and communities. This is difficult, but pales to
insignificance compared with my Jewish forbears and my Palestinian
contemporaries. The UN recognises this, with its scores of resolutions,
shamefully vetoed by those who benefit from occupation by selling
weapons and by having an unsinkable aircraft carrier in the Middle East.
There is a well-founded fear that pogroms and genocides that have
happened before can happen again. This makes many, many people
feel the need for a Jewish state to run to. This overwhelming fear is my
experience of Zionism. However, the perceived need for a Jewish
homeland somewhere, raises more general questions of identity,
homeland, and the right of any state to select citizens, or impose
religion. For Sikhs in Khalistan, Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, Jews
and Palestinians, and far too many others these are not academic
issues but matters of life and death. Everyone deserves somewhere to
belong, be and feel safe, worship if and as they wish. Nobody achieves
this by denying it to others.
Anyone who knows what it’s like to be afraid may recognize that for
some of us, some of the time, fear suspends both rationality and
compassion. Peace-making is therefore difficult, and those who say it is
impossible deny their responsibility, and the humanity of the other.
Nobody chooses their history, but we can choose some of what we learn
from it. Jewish suffering in Europe before 1948 may set the scene but
does not excuse suffering imposed on Palestinians ever since.
Comparing the two is offensive, inaccurate, and unhelpful, since it
obscures any other message and polarizes people, playing into the
hands of the powers that divide and rule us. This is unwise, but not
criminal.
The media attacks on Jeremy Corbyn and now the Green party’s
Shahrar Ali do not come from sources that care about Jews or other
Semites, but from the same papers that called for refugees to be
repatriated to the countries they were fleeing from in the 1930s and are
still doing so now. By stifling, sensationalizing and polarising debate their
efforts can only provoke the very resentments they claim to oppose.
It cannot be racist to talk about human rights, and it would be at best
patronizing to demand a different standard in say Israel or Saudi Arabia
to that which is acceptable elsewhere. It is right to speak out against
unprovoked violence, whoever it is perpetrated by and against. This
concern means everything when applied universally, when used
selectively to castigate a particular group, this can lead to various
phobias and even hate crimes. The point rarely raised about hate crimes
is that the relevant characteristic for study and prosecution is not that of
the victim but of the perpetrator.
That the media frenzy against Corbyn have gained so much traction
shows the appalling state of the media. Although I speak for myself, I am
one among many Jews appalled at the collusion of an establishment that
claims to speak for us.
Israel’s new Jewish State Law makes comparison with Apartheid
inevitable, as do Jews only roads, settlements, and checkpoints. It
shames many moderate Israelis and dispossesses Arab Israelis. More
hopefully, Apartheid ended following sustained boycotts, and Occupation
can too
It’s outrageous that those who preach free trade try to deny consumers
information and choice about their supply chains. Many who boycott
Occupation goods (often all Israeli goods, as labelling often fails to make
any distinction) also boycott corporate abusers such as Nestle, Coca
cola, arms investments and other unethical practices, and are right to do
so, on the basis of actions that can be changed, rather than identities
that can’t.
I look forward to buying Israeli aubergines with the same relish that I
now buy South African oranges
Lesley Grahame is member of Norwich Green Party and a supporter of Green
Left Twitter @LesleyJGrahame
PALESTINE SOLIDARITY UNDER RACIST ATTACK:
IHRA examples conflate antisemitism with anti-Israel
criticism
In fighting anti-Semitism, for a long time the threat has been
adequately understood as ‘hostility towards Jews as Jews’. But this
simple definition does not suffice for a different political agenda,
namely: conflating antisemitism with criticism of Israel in order to
attack the Palestine solidarity movement and intimidate its
supporters. This article will explain the attack, its background in a
racist agenda and the necessary anti-racist response. For numerous
sources, see hyperlinks in the online version at
https://londongreenleft.blogspot.com/2018/09/why-green-party-
should-not-adopt-ihras.html
For at least two years, a focus of dispute has been a long guidance
document including seven examples about Israel, four of them
especially contentious. The long document appears on the website
of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). Yet its
2016 delegate meeting agreed only a short definition without any
examples.
Back then, four of the examples were criticised by our Jewish-led
campaign group. For example, ‘Drawing comparisons of
contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis’ is supposedly
antisemitic. Yet Israel’s treatment of Palestinians has instructive
comparisons with the racist Nuremberg Laws; likewise the siege of
Gaza with Nazi-imposed ghettos. Such comparisons have been
drawn by Holocaust survivors (especially Hajo Meyer) and have been
explained in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. Are they antisemitic?
Deploying the four contentious examples, pro-Israel groups have
repeatedly made false accusations of antisemitism against pro-
Palestine activists, especially those in the Labour Party. In July 2018
the Labour Party leadership rightly adopted a Code modifying the
examples, rather than simply adopt them. Jewish pro-Palestine
groups have led the campaign to defend the Code. That defence has
been elaborated by the Jewish academic Brian Klug.
Regrettably, in September 2018 the Labour Party NEC voted to
accept the IHRA guidance with all the examples, plus a weak caveat
about freedom of expression to criticise Israel. Those elements
are incompatible: the four contentious examples provide weapons
for more disciplinary action against the Party’s pro-Palestine
activists, while the caveat might protect their criticisms of
Israel. Some NEC members supported the decision in the hope that
it would soften the Party’s internal conflict, but this will surely
deepen, especially as more CLPs pass a model motion defending the
July 2018 Code against the pro-Israel lobby.
Why such intense conflict over those four examples? Listen to those
who have led the false accusations: ‘Had the full IHRA document with
examples been approved,…. thousands of Labour and Momentum
Watermelon \Special Supplement Autumn 2018 Page 6 of 2
members would need to be expelled’ (Jewish Chronicle, 25.07.18).
Likewise ‘antisemitism’ accusations would apply to thousands of
Green Party members (including Jewish ones) who have opposed the
Israeli regime.
In particular, the well-known phrase ‘apartheid Israel’ has been
targeted as antisemitic according to this IHRA example: ‘Denying the
Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that
the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour’. This example
applies to the entire campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanction
(BDS); according to its 2005 Palestinian call, BDS will continue until
Israel ends its apartheid, settler-colonial regime. The example also
could apply to the Green Party’s 2008 conference decision
supporting the BDS campaign.
The taboo on the ‘apartheid’ label has been deployed to undermine
Palestine solidarity events. In December 2016 the full IHRA guidance
document was adopted by the UK government. Following the
adoption the Department for Education warned all universities that
they must apply the IHRA criteria and that ‘antisemitic comments’
may arise during Israel Apartheid Week 2017.
Accommodating the government, some universities denied or
cancelled permission to student groups for Palestine events. More
subtly, many universities imposed bureaucratic obstacles or speech
restrictions. Student activists have had no recourse to any formal
procedure for defending their right of free assembly and expression.
This political use of the contentious examples has been predictable.
The full document originated in 2004 from the American Jewish
Committee, a US pro-Israel lobby group aiming to counter ‘the one-
sided treatment of Israel at the United Nations’. According to the
main author of the antisemitism guidance document, Kenneth Stern,
the ‘apartheid’ label is ‘an accusation linked with antisemitism’.
Israel’s defenders have attempted to censor the label because
apartheid is a crime under UN Conventions.
Anti-racist response
Facing the campaign of smears and intimidation, we need an anti-
racist response. Thirty Jewish organisations in a dozen countries
have issued a Global Jewish Statement, which urges ‘our
governments, municipalities, universities and other institutions to
reject the IHRA definition’. As they argue, the text is intentionally
worded to suppress legitimate criticisms of Israel. It ‘undermines
both the Palestinian struggle for freedom, justice and equality and
the global struggle against antisemitism’.
Numerous BAME groups and Palestinians have denounced the IHRA
document on several grounds. In particular, it suppresses the
Palestinians’ own narrative of being dispossessed by a racist
colonisation project. As this shows, the contentious IHRA examples
are racist against Palestinians. The above example also portrays Jews
as a nation seeking self-determination in the state of Israel; this is a
racist stereotype of Jews. When Jewish pro-Israel groups try to
restrict criticism of Israel, moreover, such efforts increase
resentment against Jews and feed antisemitic conspiracy theories.
The Green Party should join the above groups in denouncing the
smear campaign and the IHRA’s contentious examples as prime
weapons. Yet some Green Party members have advocated a late
motion accepting the entire IHRA guidance document. For
identifying anti-Semitism, the motion refers to ‘the overall context’
of any statement – yet strangely ignores today’s context. Namely:
antisemitism has been weaponised in order to undermine the Labour
Party leadership and to promote false allegations against pro-
Palestine activists (including Shahrar Ali). The late motion
accommodates and sanitises that smear campaign. Both should be
rejected by all anti-racists.
For similar reasons, ‘antisemitism training’ must discuss how best to
define antisemitism. Which criteria would be anti-racist or racist?
Without such discussion, training may simply promote the IHRA
guidance, thus intimidating participants or deterring participation.
In all those ways, let’s defend the Palestine solidarity movement
from political intimidation in the guise of opposing antisemitism.
This anti-racist stance is essential for distinguishing real antisemitism
from false accusations.
Les Levidow
Bio-note:
The author has participated in several Jewish pro-Palestine organisations since
the 1980s. In particular, Free Speech on Israel was established in April 2016 to
counter the ‘antisemitism’ smear campaign. He also participates in the British
Committee for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP) and the Campaign Against
Criminalising Communities (CAMPACC).
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