Clio the cat, ? July 1997 - 1 May 2016
Joseph Massad
15 June 2023 11:22 BST | Last update: 5 months 4 days ago
The Biden 'antisemitism strategy' completely ignores the Jewish students and educators targeted because of their criticism of Israel
US President Joe Biden gives the opening remarks at the Jewish American Heritage Month celebration at the White House in Washington on 16 May 2023 (Reuters)
facebook sharing button
twitter sharing button
whatsapp sharing button
messenger sharing button
email sharing button
sharethis sharing button
The Biden administration recently released the "first-ever US National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism". Reviewing some of the more egregious examples of antisemitism in US history, it also emphasises cases of "Jewish students and educators" who "are targeted for derision and exclusion on college campuses, often because of their real or perceived views about the State of Israel."
It continues: "When Jews are targeted because of their beliefs or their identity, when Israel is singled out because of anti-Jewish hatred, that is antisemitism. And that is unacceptable."
If true, this would be an important concern. However, the statement sidesteps two related matters: first is the real history and experience of Jewish students and educators who have been targeted for derision and exclusion on college campuses by supporters of Israel, both Jewish and non-Jewish, as "self-hating Jews" or as Jews who "are abetting the antisemites" because they have been critical of Israel or supportive of Palestinian rights.
The targeting of these Jewish students and educators has been ongoing for more than two decades on university campuses, a much longer period than the alleged targeting of ones who support Israel.
Second is the fact that Israel is singled out by its American supporters precisely because of its Jewishness, wherein its wars, policies, and military achievements are identified as "Jewish", an identification that would hardly escape the legitimate charge of antisemitism were opponents of Israel to use it.
Stay informed with MEE's newsletters
Sign up to get the latest alerts, insights and analysis, starting with Turkey Unpacked
The Biden "strategy" completely ignores the Jewish students and educators targeted because of their criticism of Israel. It is only concerned for those who "feel they pay a social cost if they support the existence of Israel as a Jewish state" and never the Jewish students "who feel they pay a social cost" for opposing or criticising the existence of Israel.
The 'self-hating' smear
Supporters of Israel have relentlessly attacked Jewish professors (let alone non-Jewish ones) who criticise Israel as "self-hating". Some are appalled that there is "an even larger quantity of self-hating Jews" among those whom they accuse of antisemitism because they support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.
Equating Jewish criticism of Israel to a form of 'Jewish self-hatred' has been a strategy employed by the Israeli government for at least half a century
Zionist rabbis critical of Israeli policies have also been labelled “self-hating”, as have top White House aides who are big supporters of Israel but whom Israel’s own prime minister described as “self-hating” for calling on Israel to "freeze" building settlements in the occupied territories.
Equating Jewish criticism of Israel to a form of "Jewish self-hatred" is not new but has in fact been a strategy employed by the Israeli government itself for at least half a century.
At a 1972 conference of the American Jewish Congress held in Israel, then-Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban explained the strategy: "The distinction between antisemitism and anti-Zionism is not a distinction at all. Anti-Zionism is merely the new antisemitism."
If non-Jewish critics of Israel were castigated as antisemites then two US Jewish critics - the academic Noam Chomsky and journalist IF Stone - suffered from a complex of "guilt about Jewish survival". According to Eban, their values and ideology - meaning their anti-colonialism and anti-racism - "are in conflict and collision with our own world of Jewish values".
Eban's equation of Israeli colonial and racist policies with Jewish tradition would be correctly condemned as antisemitic had it been done by a non-Israeli official, as it implicates all Jews in Israel's actions and ideals, for which the Israeli state should solely be held accountable. Eban's insidious campaign to equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism has now become a standard line. The current head of the US Anti-Defamation League, Jason Greenblatt, reiterates it regularly.
Antisemitic generalisations
But the allegation that all American Jews support Israel, or that their support of it is intrinsic to their Jewish identity, is difficult to separate from antisemitic generalisations. Jewish identity, like all others, is multifaceted both religiously and ethnically, let alone geographically, culturally, and economically.
To claim Jewish identity as a synonym of Zionist ideology is something American Jews have fought against since the birth of Zionism, and more emphatically since the establishment of the Israeli settler colony.
Looking glass Labour: The Corbyn years and the weaponising of antisemitism
Read More »
If in 1949, American Jewish writer Alfred Lilienthal published his article in Reader's Digest titled, "Israel’s Flag is Not Mine", in 1950 the president of the American Jewish Committee, Jacob Blaustein, signed an agreement with David Ben-Gurion to clarify matters that antisemitic supporters of Israel miss. In the agreement, Ben-Gurion declared that American Jews were full citizens of the US and must only be loyal to it: "They owe no political allegiance to Israel."
Simultaneously, Blaustein declared that the US was not "exile", but rather a "Diaspora", and clarified that the State of Israel did not formally represent Diaspora Jews to the rest of the world. Blaustein importantly added that Israel could never be a refuge for American Jews.
Even if the US were to cease to be democratic, and American Jews were to "live in a world in which it would be possible to be driven by persecution from America", such a world, Blaustein insisted, "would not be a safe world for Israel either".
Instead of defending the right of Jewish students and educators to differ with Israel, to oppose its self-arrogated claim to speak for all Jews, and to criticise its colonial and racist policies, Biden’s strategy contradicts the historical record and accuses them and other critics of Israeli colonialism and racism of harassing supporters of Israel instead.
'Singling out Israel'
There are many cases where Israel is singled out by its supporters because of its Jewishness, while Palestinian victims and their supporters are accused of resisting Israel on account of its Jewishness, and not its colonial and racist policies.
For example, the Canadian-American billionaire publisher Mortimer Zuckerman has alleged that Israel cannot make peace with the Palestinians because they harbour "a virulent jihadist hatred of Jews and the Jewish state". This matter, too, is ignored by the Biden strategy.
Supporters of Israel, like American academic Daniel J Elazar, argue that Israel "was founded to rest upon Jewish values", a claim that controversially equates the colonial principles of the Israeli state with Judaism and Jewish identity. But he is not alone. Others like American Rabbi Irving Greenberg, who later served as the director of the President's Commission on the Holocaust, believed that God Himself supported Israel in war because of his love for the Jewish people and to make up for why He failed to defend the Jews against Hitler. Ctd....
The last working-class hero in England.
Kira the cat, ? ? 2010 - 3 August 2018
Jasper the Ruffian cat ? ? ? - 4 November 2021
Responses