User:Jules.LT/Anti-Zionism and antisemitism

Anti-Zionism

Anti-Zionism and antisemitism
While antisemitism and anti-Zionism have distinct definitions, they are often conflated. This is done by antisemites seeking legitimacy as well as supporters of Israel seeking to delegitimize criticism of Israel. Research has found that the two phenomenons have a close correlation and feed each other.

Professor Kenneth L. Marcus, former staff director at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, identifies four main views on the relationship between anti-Zionism and antisemitism, at least in North America:


 * 1) anti-Zionism is anti-Semitic in its essence and in most, if not all, of its manifestations;
 * 2) anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are both analytically and historically distinct, but the two ideologies have merged since 1948;
 * 3) anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism remain distinct, but anti-Zionism occasionally crosses the line into "outright anti-Semitism", while anti-Semitism often pollutes anti-Zionist discourse; and/or
 * 4) anti-Zionism is analytically distinct from anti-Semitism, but much apparent criticism of Israel or Zionism is in fact a thinly veiled expression of anti-Semitism.

In recent years, numerous commentators have argued that contemporary manifestations of anti-Zionism have become a cover for antisemitism, and that a "new antisemitism" rooted in anti-Zionism has emerged. Advocates of this concept argue that much of what purports to be criticism of Israel and Zionism is demonization, and has led to an international resurgence of attacks on Jews and Jewish symbols and an increased acceptance of antisemitic beliefs in public discourse. Critics of the concept argue that the equation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism is used to stifle legitimate criticisms of Israel, and trivializes antisemitism.

Professor Robert S. Wistrich, head of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is the originator of Marcus's second view of anti-Zionism (that anti-Zionism and antisemitism merged post-1948) argues that much contemporary anti-Zionism, particularly forms that compare Zionism and Jews with Hitler and the Third Reich, has become a form of antisemitism: Anti-Zionism has become the most dangerous and effective form of anti-Semitism in our time, through its systematic delegitimization, defamation, and demonization of Israel. Although not a priori anti-Semitic, the calls to dismantle the Jewish state, whether they come from Muslims, the Left, or the radical Right, increasingly rely on an anti-Semitic stereotypization of classic themes, such as the manipulative "Jewish lobby," the Jewish/Zionist "world conspiracy," and Jewish/Israeli "warmongers."

Dina Porat (head of the Institute for Study of Anti-semitism and Racism at Tel-Aviv University) contends that anti-Zionism is anti-semitic because it is discriminatory:

...antisemitism is involved when the belief is articulated that of all the peoples on the globe (including the Palestinians), only the Jews should not have the right to self-determination in a land of their own. Or, to quote noted human rights lawyer David Matas: One form of antisemitism denies access of Jews to goods and services because they are Jewish. Another form of antisemitism denies the right of the Jewish people to exist as a people because they are Jewish. Antizionists distinguish between the two, claiming the first is antisemitism, but the second is not. To the antizionist, the Jew can exist as an individual as long as Jews do not exist as a people.

Israeli journalist Ben-Dror Yemini maintains that anti-Zionism is "politically correct antisemitism" and argues that the same way Jews were demonized, Israel is demonized, the same way the right of Jews to exist was denied, the right for Self-determination is denied from Israel, the same way Jews were presented as a menace to the world, Israel is presented as a menace to the world.

In July 2001, the Simon Wiesenthal Center reported that during a visit there, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer stated that "anti-Zionism inevitably leads to antisemitism."

Brian Klug has argued that anti-Zionism and antisemitism are distinct but not mutually exclusive concepts: There is a long and ignoble history of "Zionist" being used as a code word for "Jew," as when Communist Poland carried out "anti-Zionist" purges in 1968, expelling thousands of Jews from the country, or when the extreme right today uses the acronym ZOG (Zionist Occupied Government) to refer to the US government. Moreover, the Zionist movement arose as a reaction to the persecution of Jews. Since anti-Zionism is the opposite of Zionism, and since Zionism is a form of opposition to anti-Semitism, it seems to follow that an anti-Zionist must be an anti-Semite.

Nonetheless, the inference is invalid. To argue that hostility to Israel and hostility to Jews are one and the same thing is to conflate the Jewish state with the Jewish people. In fact, Israel is one thing, Jewry another. Accordingly, anti-Zionism is one thing, anti-Semitism another. They are separate. To say they are separate is not to say that they are never connected. But they are independent variables that can be connected in different ways.

Some critics of Israeli policy argue that Israeli propagandists and supporters often try to equate anti-Zionism and sometimes even criticism of Israeli policy, with antisemitism, to silence opposition to Israeli policies. Professor Noam Chomsky for example argues:"There have long been efforts to identify anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism in an effort to exploit anti-racist sentiment for political ends; 'one of the chief tasks of any dialogue with the Gentile world is to prove that the distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is not a distinction at all,' Israeli diplomat Abba Eban argued, in a typical expression of this intellectually and morally disreputable position (Eban, Congress Bi-Weekly, March 30, 1973). But that no longer suffices. It is now necessary to identify criticism of Israeli policies as anti-Semitism – or in the case of Jews, as 'self-hatred,' so that all possible cases are covered."