The triangular debate between Norman Geras, Martin Shaw and Engage over the extent to which attitudinal antisemitism is a factor in the academic boycott campaign has continued. I want to weigh in on one point.

In his latest - and, apparently, last post on the subject, since he ends by announcing that “this correspondence is now closed” - Martin Shaw writes the following:

“I find it shocking that 70 years after the confinement of Polish Jews in the ghettos, a self-proclaimed Jewish state should be content to confine another people in the manner that the Gazans are confined, and that some Jewish socialists should use indiscriminate accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’ to discredit the outcry against this and other policies of the Israeli state.”

This is an argument that is both ridiculous and scandalous. Ridiculous, because it is based on very tenuous moral reasoning. Scandalous, because it dishonestly accuses “some Jewish socialists” of doing something that they are not in fact doing.

Back to this idea that the Jewish state is supposed to draw certain behavioral lessons from the history of Nazi persecution - to be, in essence, more moral. Firstly, let’s establish some basic facts: Gazans are not under siege because they are regarded as racially inferior stock en route to extermination. Therefore, it is not simply a matter of “degree,” as Shaw himself would appear to concede when he says, a few sentences earlier, that ghettoization “turned out to be a precursor to mass murder, which the Palestinians are not facing.” That can be said another way: the ghettos were a result of the Nazi decision to embark upon extermination. By contrast, Gaza’s unhappy situation is less a consequence of Israel’s intentions and more of general circumstances, among them: the constant rocket attacks on Israeli territory since the pullout, the regional security threat which Hamas represents, and Egypt’s own set of anxieties about having a sliver of territory on its northern border ruled by the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Invoking the Nazi comparison becomes all the more egregious when one recalls that this technique is almost always used to bash Israel - rarely any other state. So is this really about honest political critique, or is this about taunting the Jews with their demons? If it’s the former, as Shaw would like us to believe, then are there similar analogies one could make with regard to other conflicts?

Let’s take Rwanda, a country which Shaw, as a scholar of genocide, has written about in compelling terms, particularly on the subject of western culpability. In 1994, the genocidaires who murdered 800,000 Tutsis and Hutus opposed to the regime were ousted by the Tutsi-dominated RPF, led by Paul Kagame.

Fourteen years later, Kagame is still in power. He is widely accused of squashing dissent at home, fomenting conflict in neighboring DR Congo and even of turning a blind eye to the recruitment of child soldiers. Paul Rusesabagina, whose experiences were recorded in the film Hotel Rwanda, has described Kagame as a “war criminal.”

All these are serious accusations, magnified by the fact that the appalling human suffering in this part of Africa continues and remains largely forgotten about. Yet it also needs to be stated that Kagame enjoys the support of many Tutsis who are justifiably protective of the legacy and memory of the 1994 genocide.

Would it, then, be appropriate to compare Kagame and the RPF to the executioners of the Rwandan genocide? The burden of evidence is upon those who would make the comparison - just as it is in the case of comparisons between Israel and the Nazis. And those who make it need to think carefully about the volume and the quality of the evidence, as well as the prejudicial, wounding language which invariably accompanies these sorts of linkages.

More fundamentally, should we expect the Kagame government to be more moral because it came to power in the wake of a ghastly genocide? Where, precisely, does this idea that suffering creates moral sensitivity - nobility, even - come from? It’s hard enough to make that argument in the case of individuals. When applied to governments and states locked into an international system of power politics, it becomes harder still.

I’ve never, though, seen that argument made in the case of post-genocide Rwanda. Perhaps this is because of the racism which still plagues the post-colonial academy: we simply expect “them” to behave as they have always behaved and we don’t make distinctions between the victims and their tormentors. Not so with the western aligned, perceived-as-white-skinned Jews, of whom there is the unique demand for morally-grounded behavior in matters of security. Here is one more example of the “symbols, discourses and practices of discrimination” which sparked the dispute between Shaw and Geras.

Finally, and briefly, on the depiction of antisemitism as a tool to close down debate about Israeli policy. I said that was scandalous, as a cursory examination of Geras’s blog or of the Engage website amply proves. There is plenty of criticism here, much of it justified. But it is measured and proportionate.

The real deceit belongs to those who misrepresent concerns about antisemitism; the writers and academics who twist its meaning, so that the victims of antisemitism are not Jews, but those accused, often justifiably, of trucking with antisemitic themes.