It has become almost a mantra for those who defend Israel against the plethora of damning accusations levelled against it to be charged with dishonestly trying to equate any criticism of Zionism with antisemitism. As the very title of his opinion piece of 19 November indicates (‘History of anti-Semitism is being invoked by Zionism to justify genocide of Palestinians’), Mervyn Bennun lends his voice to those who push this caricature of what Israel’s advocates are supposedly doing.
So entrenched is this canard becoming in the public mind that many apparently consider it unnecessary to engage at all with what defenders of Israel might have to say. Of course, this suits the agenda of those whose intention is not merely to ‘criticise’ Israel, but to engage in a propaganda vendetta against it with the aim of turning it into a global pariah. After all, once you have persuaded people to buy in to the straw-man argument that Jews are making false accusations of antisemitism in order to shield the Israeli state from justified criticism, they are far less likely to take seriously, or even listen to what the other side have to say.
In reality, no credible Jewish organisation anywhere claims that it is ipso facto antisemitic to criticise the Israeli state. All accept unreservedly that no less than any other country, Israel’s actions are subject to critical scrutiny and also, to the extent that it might be deserved, condemnation. That, however, comes with an important caveat, which is that such criticism has to be similar to that levelled against any other country.
It needs, in other words, to be measured, reasonable and above all non-discriminatory. The issue of possible antisemitism inevitably arises when what purports to be mere ‘criticism’ takes so extreme a form as to amount to outright defamation of and unjust discrimination against what is after all the world’s sole Jewish majority state. To say the least, that begs the question.
It is not the place here, however, to respond to each and every libellous accusation Bennun hurls at Israel (foremost of these being the obscene ‘genocide’ charge, which in addition to defaming Israel in an especially ugly manner also minimises and belittles the experiences of those who have in actuality been the victims of this ultimate of crimes against humanity). That would require a separate article with a different focus. For purposes of this article, it will suffice to point out how for someone who takes pains to express his abhorrence against antisemitism, Bennun skirts dangerously close to endorsing a number of egregious antisemitic canards himself.
One such slippage would be his reference to Jews considering themselves to be morally superior to everyone else. This plays into all kinds of classic antisemitic stereotypes regarding the mythical superiority complex that they have towards non-Jews. Another, which requires a bit more unpacking, is his promotion of the pseudo-academic theory that the Jews of today have no connection to the original Jewish inhabitants of the Land of Israel, but are a later amalgam of different nationalities and ethnicities.
As Bennun puts it in support of this thesis, Jews are “a genetic cocktail, mixed over 2,000 years of history and involving settlement, expulsions, wars, pogroms, migrations, conversions, intermarriage and … rape”. Anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of the Jewish story will know this to be a complete falsification. During their many centuries in exile living as a small, invariably despised religious minority, Jews for the most part always existed as separate, self-contained communities in the countries where they were able to settle.
They would not have been permitted to engage in proselytization even had they wished to do so (which was certainly not the case, nor is it so even today). In the societies they lived in, extreme religious intolerance was the norm. One need only think of the horrors that Christians at one time inflicted upon even their fellow Christians for deviating from points of religious doctrine – what would have been the consequences had the hated Jews, a people so given over to evil as to have killed Jesus himself, attempted to lead good Christians astray?
While many Jews over the ages abandoned their faith to become Christians or Muslims, it was exceptionally rare for non-Jews to convert to Judaism, thereby risking being put to an appalling death. Jews themselves were well aware of what the reprisals would be should they be responsible for propagating such heresies.
As it was, even when they kept as much to themselves as possible and did everything they could not to antagonise their neighbours, Jewish communities in both the Christian and Muslim worlds were subjected to near-constant bouts of persecution, from summarily expulsions to out-and-out massacres. Even after Christian societies had moved beyond the religious intolerance of previous eras, the norm continued to be for Jews to convert to the majority faith, with minimal traffic in the opposite direction.
When intermarriage occurred, the overwhelming tendency was for Jews – and certainly their children – to adopt the faith of their partners; it was almost never the other way round. In Muslim majority societies, it remains the case to this day that proselytization aimed at drawing Muslims away from the ‘true faith’ is strictly prohibited. Thus it was that many Jews were lost to apostasy, intermarriage and assimilation, but a solid core remained loyal, and it is from them that today’s Jews are very largely (though not, of course, exclusively) descended.
By pushing the palpably false ‘genetic cocktail’ line Bennun aligns himself with those attempting to deny the Jewish people their own story by portraying them as historical charlatans falsely claiming for themselves a heritage rightfully belonging to others. This can only be regarded as an egregious form of racism, regardless of who might be the targets. And since the term ‘antisemitism’ denotes prejudice against Jews, this kind of theorising, which in essence seeks to lie the Jewish people out of history, must indeed be regarded as a form of antisemitism. It can neither be explained away as being legitimate ‘criticism’ of Israel nor as showing solidarity with the Palestinians.
There is another, equally egregious form of Jewish history denialism that Bennun indulges in, and which is really the main theme of his article. This is his rubbishing of one of the most fundamental tenets of Jewish belief, culture and identity, namely the millennia-old connection of Jews to their ancestral homeland. Little though Bennun and his ilk wish to acknowledge it, today’s State of Israel was not established on just any piece of territory but rather in the historic homeland of the Jewish people, one whose Jewish associations stretch back unbroken for more than thirty centuries.
Also wholly absent from Bennun’s screed is any recognition of how in Judaism, the Land of Israel is of central importance, and of how throughout the ages that connection has been an all-pervasive theme in its laws, liturgy and rituals. Those who act as if Jews somehow appeared from out of nowhere to unlawfully seize land that never belonged to them in the first place are in fact guilty of denying Jews their own culture and religious heritage as well as of trying to write them out of history.
De facto and de jure, the modern-day State of Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people. Far from being the kind of predatory, criminal enterprise Bennun evidently believes it to be, it can claim to be one of very few countries whose creation came about through the explicit consent of the international community of the time.
While seldom remembered nowadays, it was the United Nations itself that way back in 1947 voted in favour of the creation of a Jewish state. It is hard indeed to imagine how Bennun can indulge in the kind of revisionist rewriting of history that he does while at the same time claiming to be motivated by the ethical heritage and historical experience of the Jewish community he was born into
To return to the theme with which this response began, namely there exists a Zionist ploy to suppress all criticism of Israel by making false allegations of antisemitism, there is a pressing need for thoughtful, unbiased people to recognise the multiple nuances and complexities around those issues. To reiterate what was stated earlier, all reasonable voices within the pro-Israel camp acknowledge without reservation that like any other country, Israel is subject to being judged, and where appropriate condemned for its actions.
The caveat, however, is that such criticism must be consistent with the way other nation states are treated, that is, in a fair, measured and above all non-discriminatory way. The question of antisemitism only arises when Israel is in reality subjected to discriminatory, unfair treatment, such as being charged with crimes it palpably hasn’t committed, when it is held to standards not expected of any other democratic state or when it is singled out for special punitive treatment.
No, this does not necessarily constitute antisemitism as it is usually defined, namely prejudice against Jews as a religious and ethnic community or against their religion. However, it is sheer sophistry to argue that prejudice against the Jewish state does not at some level also amount to an attack on Jewish peoplehood.
So far as the modern-day state of Israel is concerned, it is home to the world’s largest Jewish community, in which Jews constitute a substantial majority. There is no other Jewish majority state – indeed, the next highest proportion of Jews is in the United States, where they constitute less than 2% of the total! Both historically and in our own day, Israel is a country that most Jews identify with and in turn are identified with. It is inevitable and quite understandable why the great majority of Jews wherever they might be do at some level support Israel and are concerned about its safety and wellbeing.
None of this means that Israel is therefore immune to criticism, and indeed it advocates claim no such a thing. What it does mean rather is that when that country is subjected to unfair and discriminatory treatment it inevitably impacts negatively on Jews everywhere. Likewise, when Jewish people are gaslighted, boycotted, maligned and intimidated simply for affirming this aspect of their core beliefs and identity, how in all honesty can that not be regarded as a form of antisemitism, in practice if not necessarily always in intent?
It is profoundly misleading, and in fact intellectually dishonest, to portray the modern-day Israeli state on the one hand and world Jewry on the other as if they are entirely separate and distinct entities, so that prejudicial treatment towards the one is unrelated to nor has any negative impact on the other. This is not the case, nor can it ever be.
One final point that can be made is that the mere fact that mainstream Jewry and its leaders are being routinely accused of deliberately fabricating charges of antisemitism as a way of protecting Israel from being held to account can itself be regarded as a non-too-subtle form of anti-Jewish bigotry.
