Comments on: On Institutional Antisemitism

By: Petra

Petra — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 01:06:45 +0000

Interestingly, the notion of antisemitism without antisemites has also been brought up by the (not uncontroversial) German writer Henryk Broder; the English version of a related testimony he recently gave before a hearing of a German Parliamentary Commission is here:

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/anti-semitism-without-anti-semites/

By: Noga

Noga — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 23:40:22 +0000

I think Anthony Julius, in an article posted on “Z” Word, outlined the distinction between diffrent kinds (degrees) of antisemites and what he called their fellow-travellers. I’m less charitable than Julius and I refer to these fellow-travellers as “antisemites by proxy”.

http://contentious-centrist.blogspot.com/2008/07/creepy-norm-finkelstein-makes-joke-norm.html

By: vildechaye

vildechaye — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 22:51:01 +0000

Eamonn: both you and Zhkarya are onto something. To simplify, if i may, i think part of the problem is that both the recipients of anti-semitism (ie jews) and anti-semites confuse and/or are spooked by its equation with Nazism. As Zkharya says, Nazism was just one form of anti-semitism, albeit the most vicious one to date. There were anti-semites in Canada, England and pretty much everywhere who didn’t like Jews, excluded them from clubs etc, but had no desire to see them exterminated like so much vermin. That was what the Nazis added to the mix. however, to admit to anti-semitism when it is equated with nazism is too much for all but most ardent anti-semites.
As for jews, they too should clarify that when they say something or someone is anti-semitic they don’t mean it, he or she is a Nazi. Admittedly, this is hard to do when the anti-zionists feel perfectly happy calling Israel a Nazi state, but that’s just stupid and, dare i say it, anti-semitic hyperbole, and shouldn’t enter into the equation.

looking back on this argument, maybe it wasn’t so simple after all. have a nice weekend

By: Zkharya

Zkharya — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 18:40:54 +0000

Eamonn,

I would question your definition of ‘traditional antisemitism’ as ‘the jack-booted variety’.

There were many varieties of post-Christian or Islamic racial or collective hostility to Jews, that in turn that arose from Christian or Islamic anti-Judaism (or antisemitism).

It has ‘evolved’ even as the situation of Jews has changed. In 1900 over 80% of the world Jewry lived in European Christendom or post-Christendom, less than 0.02% in Palestine. Today 41% live in Israel, which vies with the US for the largest Jewish community in the world.

Today’s allegedly anti-racist anti-antisemitism tolerates the few Jews who are near but hates the many in Palestine-Israel, and not a few in the US, who are far off.

The Jewish state of Israel exists because, in the 19th and 20th centuries, most European, Asian, North African Jews were regardes as more ‘Palestinian’ than European or Arab, and either murdered or driven out, before 1914 mostly to America, after mostly to Palestine or what became Israel.

‘Traditional’ antisemitism is irrelevant because there is no ‘traditional’ Jew to speak of.

For 2000 years, Christianity, for 1500 years, Islam, have defined Jews as a people dispossessed of temple, city and land as a punishment for their rejection of Jesus and the prophets. Which is why, even in the 19th and 20th centuries, European and Arab Jews came to be essentialised as ‘Palestinian’.

The new antisemite is hostile to the memory of this, or seeks to mitigate its relevance. But in that act of ‘forgetting’, or erasure, or wilful ignorance of the past, he or she replicates the same prejudice: the proper place of Jews is outside the land of Israel, not inside it, because their sins are so terrible. Among the greatest in the world, even, in their ‘crucifixion’ of the Palestinian Christian and Islamic people-Christ.

Those who advocate the imposition, by force or boycott, of one state i.e. the dissolution of the Jewish state, by return of millions of refugees, or otherwise, are in effect replicating the same prejudice, as such a course of action will inevitably entail the removal of many if not most Israeli Jews.

The is why anti-Zionism, in its gospel like fervour, the zealousness of its adherents, is what ‘traditional’ antisemitism has evolved into, in fact replicates many of the characteristics of Christian and Islamic anti-Judaism as well as antisemitism.

‘Traditional’ antisemitism was never merely, if mostly, ‘the jack-booted’ variety. It was religious, it was intellectual (in the Church Fathers, it was both), it was popular, it was elist.