Recently I was at the centre of a Twitter storm for having the audacity to point out that the Alt-Right openly uses zionism and the state of Israel as a prime example for their desire to have a white ethno state.
It didn’t take long for the right wing to attack me and call me an anti-semite and even go so far as to tweet at my institution apparently demanding some sort of intervention.
Instead of getting dragged further into a meaningless Twitter war, I will use this opportunity to elaborate on my comments and give a general overview of the issues concerning the Left and its critique of Israeli far right politics.
It didn’t take long for the right wing to attack me and call me an anti-semite and even go so far as to tweet at my institution apparently demanding some sort of intervention:
Before continuing I have to set out what I mean when I talk about white supremacism. White supremacism is a pseudoscientific, racist ideology which claims that white people are superior over any other ethnic group. Looking back at the history of 19th Century Europe it becomes clear that Zionism is a result of its time and was like many ideologies conceived through a lens of nationalism and white European settler colonialism.
The Encyclopaedia Britannica defines “Zionism as a Jewish nationalist movement that has had as its goal the creation and support of a Jewish national state in Palestine, the ancient homeland of the Jews”.
Yes, there are many different strands of Zionism, from Labour Zionism, Liberal Zionism, Christian Zionism, and even Muslim Zionism (see Colin Schindler’s A History of Modern Israel and Joseph Massad’s The Persistence of the Palestinian Question: Essays on Zionism and the Palestinians and Sasson Sofer’s Zionism and the Foundations of Israeli Diplomacy). Like any nationalist movement of its time it was not very inclusive; for example Zionists at the time didn’t intend that their movement would include Jewish communities from Arab or African countries (see Rachel Shabi’s We Look Like the Enemy: The Hidden Story of Israel Jews from Arab Lands). The Zionist movement was one of and for white Jewish Europeans and the element of white supremacy becomes more obvious during the founding years of the state of Israel.
David Ben-Gurion, the founding father and first Prime Minister of Israel has a dark past when it comes to who is welcome in Israel and who isn’t. He regularly made clear distinctions between Jews of European origin and Jews of Arab or African origin and made no secret of his dislike for Arab and African Jews. He openly advocated for a segregated school system since he did not wish for the children of Arab heritage to drag the white European children down, a policy that impacts Arab Jews to this day. From the beginning it became clear that the Israeli government did not believe that Arab Jews and European Jews were and to a greater and lesser extent still are equal citizens of the state of Israel and openly employed policies which where discriminatory against Jewish Arab communities.
In 2016 the Knesset Special Committee on the Disappearance of Children from Yemen, the East and the Balkans published documents from the 1950s which show how the Israeli government conducted experiments on Jewish Yemeni children to test if Yemeni children had “negro blood”. Between 1948 and 1950, hundreds if not thousands of Yemeni children were taken away from their birth mothers under the guise that they did not survive after birth and given up for adoption to European Jewish families without the mothers’ consent.
In addition, in 2013 the Israeli government had to admit that it gave Ethiopian Jews long term birth control without their consent which lead to a 50% drop in the birth-rate among Ethiopian Jews. The racism against the Jewish Arab and Ethiopian communities is by no means a thing of the past. Ethiopian Jews are among the communities who suffer the most from state racism and police brutality.
Whereas European Jews are commonly referred to as settlers, Arab and African Jews are referred to as refugees. Even the national commemoration day honouring the suffering of Arab Jews is referred to as the Jewish Refugee Day. How come European Jews fleeing persecution in Nazi Germany are called settlers and Arab Jews forced to flee Arab countries are called refugees? The discrimination between European and Arab Jews is also present within Israel’s elites, be they the military, government institutions or cultural institutions they are largely made up of European Jews.
And yet, despite being critical towards Zionism the state of Israel has a right to exist like any other state as well. Criticising Zionism as the founding ideology of the state of Israel is as valid as criticising colonialism as the founding ideology of the Americas. Anyone making the claim that Israel has no right to exist is not just morally but also intellectually wrong.Pointing out that the United States were founded on a genocidal campaign against millions of Native Americans and the abhorrent practice of chattel slavery does in no way imply that the United States should forfeit its right to exist.
All these criticisms are clearly directed at a government and its policies. They are neither directed at the Israelis living in Israel nor are they directed at Jewish communities around the world. The Israeli government does not speak for people of Jewish faith in their respective home countries. According to the latest approval ratings Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doesn’t even seem to speak for the majority of Israel’s population.
But of course, anti-semitism exists and I am sure that some deluded anti-semite will rub his or her hands in glee reading these paragraphs. Does this however mean that we should shy away from these debates? Certainly not! These debates are obviously ongoing within the Left, some would say to the detriment of the Labour Party who has to fight constant accusation of anti-semitism.
So, does Labour have an anti-semitism problem? Yes, for the simple reason that British society has an anti-semitism problem. Unfortunately, most societies around the world have some elements who have prejudices against their Jewish neighbours and since big parties are a reflection of society at large these attitudes are found within them.
According to the Institute of Jewish Policy Research 12.6% of Britons have a somewhat unfavourable or very unfavourable attitude towards people of Jewish faith. It would be laughable to suggest that the 12.6% of Brits with those deluded attitudes all constitute some fraction of the Left. Momentum founder Jon Lansman points out that there is as much anti-semitism in the Conservative Party as there is in the Labour Party. I would agree but also add that one aspect of anti-semitism is fairly unique to Labour and the Left, that of conflating anti-semitism with anti-zionism and criticism of Israel’s policy towards the Palestinians.
The Left has always been a supporter of those it sees as supressed and this is not any different in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is no coincidence that most, if not all, accusations of anti-semitism and anti-semitic incidences are documented at forums or issues surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If this is indeed the case it suggests that anti-semitism in the Left is not the result of some racial understanding of Judaism, as is found among the anti-semitic right, it suggest a lack of understanding between anti-semitism and legitimate criticism of the state of Israel and zionism as one of its founding policies.
This lack of understanding one would suggest is due to the fact that there has yet to be a thorough public debate about how we as a society should talk about the political differences we have towards the policies of the state of Israel and in what manner they should be addressed.
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, an intergovernmental body gives a fairly straight forward working definition of anti-semitism. In addition, it lists a variety of examples that put anti-semitic incidences in context. None of these examples define criticism of the state of Israel or critiquing Zionism as anti-semitic. Therefore, it is self-explanatory that harsh criticism of Israel’s policies and Zionism as a nationalist ideology are permitted.
This is especially important as it is becoming more and more clear that the Israeli government under Benjamin Netanyahu has no real interest in a Two-State solution and that radical right wing zionism is at the heart of this policy. Also, to make the argument that attacking Netanyahu means attacking Israeli citizens or even more ridiculous Jews around the world in their respective home countries simply does not understand the fact that the Prime Minister of Israel does not speak on behalf of all people of Jewish faith, in fact nobody does.
It is worth repeating that the criticism of zionism does not question Israel’s right to exist. The criticism levelled against zionism is that Israel has no right to exist in the boarders of the ancient land of Palestine beyond the pre-1967 boarders agreed unanimously by the United Nations.
The Left cannot make the case against the occupation of the West Bank by Israeli forces and settlements while at the same time advocate a similar policy towards Israel. This would simply be revenge and not support for a Two-State solution. While this debate isn’t happening anywhere in Europe in a meaningful way, it is happening in Israel on a daily basis as progressive media outlets like +972mag.com impressively demonstrate.
If the Left is truly interested in a peaceful Two-State solution, which it should be, it needs to step up to the plate and educate itself on how to argue for a peaceful solution and more importantly how to argue critically and eloquently against Israeli government policies without attacking our Jewish brothers and sisters. If it is truly internationalist, it not only needs to support the Palestinians in their struggle for their own state but also the Israeli Left in their struggle against an emboldened radical right, because one cannot exist without the other!
Dan Weissmann is a PhD Researcher and lectures in International Relations at Bournemouth University.
