A guest post by P. Naberrie
There was an antisemitic arson attack in Midwood, Brooklyn a few days ago, with three cars torched to the ground and swastika/SS and KKK graffiti on surrounding benches, right in the middle of an Orthodox neighbourhood. A “Daily News” article the following day quoted a local resident tying the attacks to OWS, because of the antisemitic signs that could be observed there.
The OWS General Assembly agreed upon following statement against antisemitism on the 12th
http://blog.occupyjudaism.org/post/12738875603/ows-official-statement-against-anti-semitism
and called for people to go down to a community rally today.
When I came down there it was mostly around 70 Orthodox/visibly religious Jews from the neighbourhood, lots of media, one Israeli flag, and some speeches by local politicians and NY state senator Eric Adams (focusing on a general “hate is bad” line), some attempts at Black-Jewish joint efforts against AS and racism, and then ending in a law-and-order tone stressing the need to track down the perpetrators and lock them up. One person held a sign saying “Orthodox Jews welcome OWS”, and got verbally attacked by somebody else, who said he didn’t want to have anything to do with antisemitic OWS.
After an hour or so around 30 people from OWS came down and joined the little march, handing out the flyer above and talking to people. There was a bit of interaction here and there, until 3 folks from Neturei Karta showed up with a sign saying “Judaism is not Zionism” and a swastika=Star of David drawing. They shouted fairly loudly, until one of them got beaten up and thrown to the floor. The attacker – apparently some Jewish man – got stopped or even arrested by the police, the Neturei Karta people got walked away.
So – one could argue that OWS has only come up with this kind of rally support because they have been under attack from the media/the right and want to get their public image straight. Most likely, without these attacks OWS would not have called for this kind of action (which wouldn’t be a sign of worry in itself – OWS endorses mostly stuff having to do with economic inequality, and sometimes police brutality, but not necessarily issues beyond that). Nevertheless, it seems to me from talking to people who came down there that there was a genuine concern about the arson attacks, and about making clear that antisemitism is not accepted. Also, no weird mixing-in of Israel-Palestine issues at all.
Apparently, the General Assembly made a pretty clear decision about this statement as well. To me, this just strengthens my perspective that antisemitism is not really an issue among the large part of the OWS crowd – at least not in any kind of open form, as the right would want to suggest. But I’d be curious to hear if other people have a different experience or analysis.
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From: Platypus Review 35 | May 2011
Last November Platypus hosted a roundtable discussion between Alan Goodman from The Revolutionary Communist Party USA, and Richard Rubin from Platypus entitled “Marxism and Israel: Left Perspectives on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict” at Hunter College in New York City. Panelists were asked to speak on the role the Left has played in the development of Israel, the Left’s analysis of the role of American intervention in the Middle East, and what a critical Marxian approach to the conflict currently looks like, compared to what it might look like. What follows is an edited transcript of the event. Full audio of the event can be found at: <http://www.archive.org/details/MarxismAndIsraelLeftPerspectivesOnTheIsraeli-palestinianConflict>.
….
“Richard Rubin: My esteemed teacher and friend, the late Eqbal Ahmad, who was himself a close friend of Edward Said, once remarked many years ago when speaking on the difficulty of addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that the first thing one must bear in mind is that one is dealing with two communities of suffering. Furthermore, each is a symbolic representative victim of two great crimes. The Jews, although by no means the only victims of Fascism, are the archetypal victims of Fascism. The Palestinians, although by no means the only victims of colonialism, or even the worst victims, have also, like the Jews, with their particular fate, become the archetypal representative of a colonized people for many around the world. The intersection of these two communities of suffering leads to many pitfalls of discourse. I will not be addressing such issues here, however, and you must take my sympathy for all victims of oppression for granted. Rather I will address, as much as is honestly possible, the question of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Marxism. This is by no means a self-evident perspective, and it is one that is generally avoided even by professed Marxists who, when they speak on the issue, usually say things that are identical to what many non- and anti-Marxists say. So is there, then, a Marxist perspective on the Israel-Palestine conflict?
To begin to address this question, I will draw your attention to two articles that both purport to offer such a perspective, although they come to radically different conclusions. One is an article entitled “Bastion of Enlightenment or Enforcer for Imperialism?” that appeared recently in Revolution, the newspaper of the RCP USA, which we were just hearing about. The other is an article entitled “Israel and Communism” that appeared in the Platypus Review in issue 28, written by Initiative Sozialistisches Forum.3 The latter, which is a translation from a German article that appeared in 2003, will strike most American readers as by far the more exotic and strange of the two. Indeed, to many it will seem not a document pertaining to the Left at all, but rather a manifestation of neo-conservatism. The deep origins of the Antideutsch current, from which the “Israel and Communism” article is written, are in German Maoism. The article is premised on an acceptance of Marxist categories and written in a Marxist language close to jargon. While superficially the “Antideutsch” article and the Revolution article appear to be polar opposites, I would like to claim that they actually stem from a similar methodology and misconception of the Left”
Read the article here: Marxism and Israel: Left perspectives on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
By Eirik Eiglad | from New Compass
Until the end of the Second World War, anti-Semitism was primarily a reactionary phenomenon, espoused by the political and religious Right. This has changed. Now anti-Semitic prejudices are just as common on the Left and are often excused by moderates as well as radicals.
Usually today’s anti-Semites point to Israeli policy as their main argument, but too often they vilify the Jewish state and Zionism far beyond legitimate criticism.
Obviously, to be anti-Israel means more than to criticize some or many actions of the Israeli army, the Mossad, and the Knesset. Too often people judge Jews, Israel, and Israeli citizens according to extremely different criteria than when they are judging any other “nation.” Frankly I find this double standard puzzling.
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I just published this guest post by Toby Green, on leaving the Green Party.
Two extracts:
Essentially, much of the membership of the party is therefore grounded in a sort of superior bad faith. And so of course, members of the Green Party can´t be prejudiced. If they accuse members called “Levy” of being Israeli academics in disguise defending Israel, they can´t be rehashing old Jewish conspiracy theories. If they circulate emails from David Duke, a key figure in the Klu Klux Klan, on how “Jewish Zionists” are shaping American policy in Israel in alliance with Obama (thereby rehashing not only anti-semitic myths but also an alliance of this with anti-Black racism), they can still work in Caroline Lucas´s office and be on the list for the European elections. If they circulate emails accusing Jewish members of parliament of double loyalty (to Israel and the UK), there´s no need to suppose that they are re-hashing the anti-Catholic discourse which surrounded JF Kennedy´s run for office in 1960. If they talk of the “squealing zionists”, there´s no reason for them not to be respected party figures.[...]
After four years of this charade, it has become clear that the Green Party is institutionally anti-semitic. Its institutions have not dealt with clear evidence of anti-semitism. They show no evidence of wanting to, and indeed now seem to have decided to target perceived “problem” members of the party who have raised this issue. This is fundamentally a political decision: the Green party has decided that it is increasingly a hard left party, allied with enemies of Western capitalism. Rightly, it thinks that Islamophobia is one of the more dangerous phenomena to have arisen since 9/11, and in reaction against this it turns a blind eye to discrimination against perceived enemies of Islamic peoples, Israel, and the Jews. This is a classic case of projection: horrified at their own government´s attitudes towards Islamic countries, and wanting no part in it, this mentality projects this violence onto a scapegoat – Israel and Jews.
Further information: Modernity, Greens Engage.
The Community Security Trust (CST), the body which monitors and combats antisemitism in the UK, has recently published its annual “antisemitic incidents report” for 2010 (full pdf here, summary here). It reports that:
639 antisemitic incidents were recorded by CST in 2010. This is the second-highest annual total since CST began recording antisemitic incidents in 1984.[...]
The only significant trigger event in 2010 occurred whenIsraeli forces boarded a flotillaof ships bearing pro-Palestinian activists who were tryingto break the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza… Reactions to this episode led to a monthly total of 81 antisemitic incidents in the UK in June 2010, compared to 49 in June 2009, when there was no comparable trigger event.[...]
Of the 234 antisemitic incidents in 2010 showing political motivation as well as antisemitism, 149 showed far-right motivation; 53 showed anti-Zionist motivation; and 32 showed Islamist motivation.
CST received a physical description of the incident perpetrator in 214, or 33 per cent, of the 639 antisemitic incidents during 2010. Of these, 113 (53 per cent) were described as white; 16 (seven per cent) were described as black; 63 (29 per cent) were described as Asian; and 21 (10 per cent) were described as of Arab appearance.[...]
In other words, it is clear that white racism and far right politics remains key to antisemitism in the UK. A large percentage of perpetrators are involved in the far right, and more white people are perpetrators than Arabs and Asians combined.
CST has conducted analysis of antisemitic incident perpetrators by ethnic appearance since 2004. Since then, the only other year in which the proportion of incident perpetrators identified as white dropped below 50 per cent was 2006, which was also marked by a significant rise in incidents in response to events in the Middle East.
The paranoid image of a “tsunami” of Muslim antisemitism sweeping Britain, promoted by some right-wing figures within the Jewish community, is clearly inaccurate. As the CST director, Mark Gardner, puts it:
“There is much talk of a “new” antisemitism, although “contemporary” would be more accurate. This is important, but risks distracting us from the fact that, beneath the surface, the “old” antisemitism is still there – and growing.”
Further, Jews and Muslims together are the targets of some of the incidents, as in some neo-Nazi literature distributed in East London, which concluded: “JEWS AND MUSLIMS OUT OF REDBRIDGE”.
At the same time, it is clear that the so-called “new” antisemitism, divorced from that far right context, is a significant problem. Antisemitism linked to or in the guise of anti-Zionism is a growing force, and it has a significant purchase at the fringes of Britain’s Muslims population.
Also clear is the cross-pollination of anti-Zionist and “classical” fascist themes, as in the following graffiti repeatedly daubed on a Manchester social club with a large Jewish membership: “YID SCUM, GAZA BLEEDS”; “SHYLOCK SCUM, GAZA BLEEDS, HAMAS COMES”; “YID SCUM”, “SHYLOCKS”, “HAMAS”; and “HEZBOLLAH COMES”. Or in this message left by a hacker on the website of a Jewish-owned business: “F**k you Israel bitches. Forever Adolf Hitler, there will be a war between Muslim countries and f**king Israel if [sic] near future and Turkey gonna f**k all Jewish bitches like Hitler. I love you Hitler.” The CST summarise the confused situation:
One feature of contemporary antisemitism is that the use of far-right references is no longer the preserve of neo-Nazis; nor is mention of Israel and the Middle East the favoured expression solely of Muslim or Arab perpetrators of incidents. In 26 incidents in 2010, the perpetrators employed more than one type of discourse, often mixing references to the Middle East with references to Nazism. It is more accurate to say that the Middle East and the Nazi period are both used by antisemites of all backgrounds as sources for material to use when abusing Jews.
Holocaust denial and the blood libel feature in many of the incidents, percolating out of their original far right home into Muslim contexts, while the Israel lobby meme features in others, filtering out of its original anti-Zionist home into far right contexts. There are examples of acts of racial abuse that mention both the World War II and the Gaza flotilla.
And the equation of Jews with Nazis, a meme derived from the anti-Zionist movement, is prevalent, as in this viral e-mail: “GREEDY Tribe of Nazi jews need to STOP your EVIL Deeds again [sic] Humanity”. Or in these comments, made by two men at a student activist meeting in Nottingham, revealing that Nazi sympathy are perfectly compatible with left-wing politics: “Israel is the aggressor; they are the same as Nazis”, “The Nazis did not set out to kill the Jews” and “All Jews are dirty Tories”.
One example especially struck me:
Glasgow, September: The local council erected two banners near its offices, one celebrating the Jewish festival of Rosh Hashanah and the other celebrating the Muslim festival of Eid. Graffiti reading “Love Jews Smash Zionism” was daubed on the Rosh Hashanah banner.
Here, the perpetrator has tried to show that it is not Jews, just “Zionism” that is the object of hate – but the location of the vandalism, a Rosh Hashanah banner, belies this.
In all, the report completely refutes the notion promoted by many anti-racist anti-Zionists that there is no connection between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. The section “Antisemitic or anti-Israel?” (p.32) is particularly interesting in this regard.
CST is often asked about the difference between antisemitic incidents and anti-Israel activity, and how this distinction is made in the categorisation of incidents. The distinction between the two is often subtle and the subject of much debate and disagreement. Clearly, it would not be acceptable to define all anti-Israel activity as antisemitic; but it cannot be ignored that much contemporary antisemitism takes place in the context of, or is motivated by, extreme feelings over the Israel/Palestine issue. Drawing out these distinctions, and deciding on where the dividing lines lie, is one of the most difficult areas of CST’s work in recording and analysing hate crime.
The CST received several reports of anti-Israel activity they did not categorise as antisemitic and did not include in the stats. Their rules of thumb are instructive: “Fuck Israel” daubed on a place frequented by Jews is antisemitic but the same slogan daubed on a High Street isn’t; an anti-Israel leaflet sent to a Zionist political group is not antisemitic, but sent unsolicited to a synagogue is; comparing Israel to Nazi Germany is antisemitic, comparing it to apartheid South Africa isn’t.
Finally, there is evidence that “the socialism of fools” is alive and well, as in the “Jews are Tories” quoted above, or the following incident in London in April: “A group of visibly Jewish men were standing outside a café when two white men walked past, and one said, “Look, it’s a meeting of Goldman Sachs planning how to rip us off”.”
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Winston Picket of the European Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism (EISCA) has a blog post at the JC on the report, focusing on the press coverage the report got. He made an interesting observation relating to the “trigger events”: “what appears to be taking place is that a particular hatred is expressed, reaches a high water mark, recedes, but over the long run is seen to be constantly rising.” He thinks it is significant that the CST is now talking about “embedded” antisemitism, and a “bedrock” of antisemitism, exposed by the trigger events, but there already, and slowly growing.
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A useful concept deployed by the CST at their blog is “Ziocentrism”. Dave Rich defines it: “This ‘Ziocentrism’, which insists on placing Israel at the centre of any Middle Eastern story, also leads people to assume their positions on any given crisis according to how it may affect Israel.” He gives a series of examples of accounts of the recent events in Tunisia and Egypt, which view them thoroughly inappropriately (and often offensively) through an anti-Zionist prism. Mark Gardner explores one particularly pernicious example, using the Israel lobby meme, from Johan Hari, a commentator I usually admire. I have given further examples on my own blog here:
One of the most depressing aspects of both events in North Africa, especially Egypt, and the leftist commentary on it, is the power of the anti-Zionist narrative. Take as an example this well-written Marxist analysis at 19th Brumaire. Here’s one sentence: “Ahmed Ezz, the personification of the unity of personal corruption, neoliberalism and abasement to Zionsim has resigned.” What does “abasement to Zionism” mean? Why “abasement” and not, say, “accommodation with”, given the Egyptian ruling class and the Israeli state clearly have interests in common? Why talk about “Zionism” and not about, say, the Israeli state? There is something about the demonic Z-word that takes this phrase out of normal political discourse into another space. The demonic Z-word is a blunting of materialist analysis. (For more on insane anti-Zionism, see Snoopy. One of the things that is clear is that anti-Zionist antisemitism also pervades the pro-Mubarak camp, which makes the leftist anti-Zionist nonsense even more pernicious.)
Or for another example, from someone subject to antisemitic conspiracy theories himself, George Soros in the Post: “The main stumbling block [to democracy in Egypt] is Israel.”
(However, as blogger Waterloo Sunset points out, there is plenty of Ziocentrism from the other side too, with pro-Israel commentators wondering if what has happened in Israel is good or bad for Israel, rather than if it is good or bad for the people of Egypt.)
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Finally, I want to look briefly at two incidents which dramatise some of the issues this post has touched on. One occurred in my local area, Lewisham, where a leading local left-wing anti-cuts campaigner interrupted a speech at an official Holocaust memorial day ceremony to call upon a rabbi to mention Gaza in a list of genocides. Was this simply anti-Israel, a legitimate intervention to remind people of a state-perpetrated atrocity? Or was it antisemitic, because it was effectively acting a rabbi (as a Jew) to apologise for something done by the Israeli state? Or was it antisemitic because it trivialises the Holocaust by comparing the mechanised slaughter of millions to the killing in war-time of hundreds? And what matters most, the presence or absence of antisemitic intent on behalf of the heckler, or the effect (in the form of offence) on Jews, or the discursive context of intensified anti-Zionism? And is drawing attention to this sort of thing within our movement a distraction from real politics, designed to let our class enemies off the hook, or a necessary act of anti-racist self-criticism in a left that is ever more prone to this sort of thing?
The other incident occurred in Manchester (revealed by the CST report to be Britain’s no.2 hotspot for antisemitic incidents). Aaron Porter, the president of the National Union of Students, who has distanced himself from any militant activity by students protesting against cuts and fees, was subjected to a barrage of chants, jeers and taunts by student radicals. Two witnesses thought they heard antisemitic abuse of Porter (“Aaron Porter, you’re a Tory Jew” and so on). This was picked up by the right-wing press and widely reported, including hard-hitting articles by the likes of Nick Cohen, scourge of the indecent left. However, it now seems clear that, although there were several chants and not all of them were that easy to follow, the report was based completely on a mishearing, a point made by Sacha Ismail of the AWL and reported carefully in the Manchester Mule and at the blog The Great Unrest. Again, a warning against paranoia.
October 16th, 2010 | admin
Here is part of a report from inside the meeting:
While I didn’t know if I would have the opportunity to ask any questions or raise any issues at the meeting, I was hoping that I would be one among many that would challenge Ahmadinejad over Iran’s human rights violations.
Unfortunately, after over one hour of speeches from other activists in the room, I found myself feeling disappointed and dismayed. One after another, the guests at the dinner delivered prepared statements, posing no questions or challenges to the Iranian delegation. Mostly, people expressed outrage over U.S. foreign policy. They lauded Ahmadinejad as a hero for standing up to the bullying of the United States government and likened the meeting to Malcolm X’s encounters in Africa with revolutionaries fighting against colonialism. Many apologized for decades of dire U.S. policy towards Iran, while calling for self-determination for Iran and confidence in Ahmadinejad.
Speech after speech failed to address any calls for solidarity with the brave young men and women in Iran who took to the streets and demanded their rights in the face of government suppression. Iran has upwards of 500 political prisoners and the highest rate of capital punishment in the world. In the last year government critical newspapers have been shut down and countless journalists imprisoned. An estimated 44 people were killed in street protests in the last year.
I recognize that many in the room were not there to excuse the Iranian government’s brutality, but their silence was striking. A fundamental role we have as American peace and social justice activists is to oppose our government’s threats towards Iran, while building solidarity with the Iranian people. Activists calling for solidarity at the dinner acted as though we stood in a town hall with our Iranian counter parts; however the fact is we stood in a room with the Iranian state, not its people.
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October 11th, 2010 | admin
From The Platypus Review, No. 28, October 2010.
This text was written collaboratively and originally published by the anti-Deutsch group, Initiative Sozialistisches Forum (Socialist Initiative Forum) as “Der Kommunismus und Israel” in the collection Furchtbare Antisemiten, ehrbare Antizionisten. Über Israel und die linksdeutsche Ideologie, Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany, 2002. Translated and reprinted with permission of the authors.
COMMUNISM, ACCORDING TO MARX, is the “riddle of history solved.” The riddle consists in the fact that the division of the human race into those who dominate and those being dominated, exploiters and exploited, has been exacerbated to such an extent that, caught between complete reification, on the one hand, and the transition to the “association of free individuals,” on the other, revolution seems imminent even as it recedes ever farther into the distance. Marxists of all persuasions, instead of denouncing the riddle in its tragedy, instead of submitting it to critique, persist in rationalizing it and as such are complicit in its ideological distortion.
Israel is the Schibboleth of the yet-so-close revolution, the uncomprehended shadow of its failure. It is the Menetekel that involuntarily both illustrates the minimal categorical conditions of communism while simultaneously demonstrating the beastliness of which the bourgeois national state is capable. Those who have failed to grasp the hatred against this state—embodied in anti-Zionism and antisemitism, both of which harbor a will to eliminate those who live there as well as the Jews who live in scattered cosmopolitanism around the world—have not understood the essence of antisemitism: the unconditional hatred of the idea of mankind living in free association. They fail to grasp communism as the riddle of history solved.
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[See all the Resources on anti-German tendency here]
AWL. The identification of global capitalist power with the Jews and Britain goes back before the Nazis to sections of the British left at the time of the Boer war — when they condemned as a “Jewish war” — and to the Populist movement in the USA in the late 19th century.
Moishe Postone: Yes, and it’s coming back in the United States now. The so-called “tea parties”, the so-called right-wing grass-roots fury about the financial crisis, have definite anti-semitic overtones.
Source: Postone interviewed by Martin Thomas of the Alliance for Workers Liberty (linked to here)
Back in 2004, Anne Summers writing at Engage noted that
Connoisseurs of déjà vu will be impressed by Claire Hirshfield’s article ‘The Anglo-Boer War and the Issue of Jewish Culpability’, published in the Journal of Contemporary History as long ago as 1980.
That war, which saw the first concentration camps set up by the British military to keep Boer villagers, mainly women and children, from supporting their own soldiers and guerillas between 1899 and 1902, was widely opposed within left and liberal circles in Britain. There was justified suspicion that a specious pretext had been found for invading the Boer republics, in which the British government, Transvaal mineowners, Cecil Rhodes and others were implicated.
However, the ugly side of ‘pro-Boer’ agitation was its stress on the involvement of Jewish settlers in South Africa.
I recalled this when noting Judeosphere’s post, which contains a large extract from another Hirshfeld article and is well worth reading for that extract.
Here are some extracts from the Journal of Contemporary History article:
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Workers’ Liberty condemned and opposed Israel’s invasion of Gaza, and we condemn and oppose its occupation of the Palestinian territories. We believe solidarity with the Palestinians should be the left’s starting point on the question of Israel/Palestine. But we believe that the proposal to boycott Israel is reactionary, counter-productive and will hinder efforts to build an effective movement of solidarity with the Palestinians.
In this briefing, we set out our arguments against the boycott, and for a different kind of solidarity with the Palestinians and the Israeli left.
Read here…
Hat tip: Engage.
