Is Being a Critic of Israeli State Policies the Same as Being
an Anti-Semite?
Signing on to the State Department's definition of the term could mean denying
academic freedom and free speech
By David Palumbo-LiuMay 22, 2015 "Information
Clearing House" - "Salon"
- Recently a battle has begun over the way the U.S. State Department
defines the term “anti-Semitic.” As the
Los Angeles Times notes, the current State Department version, “defines more
general ethnic and religious hatred against Jews but also declares that it is
anti-Semitic to demonize Israel, deny Israel’s right to exist, liken Israeli
policy to that of the Nazis and blame Israel for all inter-religious tensions.”
The Times goes on to note that
57 rabbis from California and 104 University of
California faculty members called on UC administrators to adopt that State
Department definition when dealing with protests and potential discipline
for anti-Semitic statements. They said they did not aim to silence free
speech, but they contend that too often protests against Israel have turned
into inciting anti-Jewish attitudes. In a letter to UC President Janet
Napolitano and the UC regents, the rabbis urged that campus leaders “be
trained in using the State Department definition to identify anti-Semitic
behavior and to address it with the same promptness and vigor as they do
other forms of racial, ethnic and gender bigotry and discrimination.”
Careful readers will note the extreme slipperiness
of the assertion that the petitioners do not “aim to silence free speech, but …”
They seem to address the issue of how this definition of anti-Semitism might be
used to suppress free speech, but then they plow ahead undeterred, as if the
denial of academic freedom and free speech was an unfortunate but inevitable
price to pay.
Before we sign on to this bargain, it’s necessary to
get back to the basic issue: Is being a critic of Israeli state policies
actually the same as being an anti-Semite? If every time one voices a criticism
of Israel one is acting as an anti-Semite, and if making an anti-Semitic
statement is prohibited by the State Department, then ardent supporters of
Israeli state policies have won a huge victory — they have essentially made
Israel immune from criticism, and made anyone even thinking about raising a
serious concern about Israel think twice about just how (or even if) to voice
that point of view. But that victory is based on false reasoning, if not a lie.
Being an anti-Semite means denigrating, persecuting
and victimizing a people solely because of the fact they are Jewish. Being a
critic of Israel’s policies means criticizing a set of actions undertaken by a
government. This seems self-evident, but those who wish to make the equation
between anti-Semite and critic of Israeli state policies care less for accuracy
and more about silencing and punishing critics with any means available,
legitimate or not.
We all should seriously think about why we are, and should be,
especially firm in our condemnation of anti-Semitism. At the same time we
should, out of respect for the term itself, not abuse its meaning and
significance for political or ideological gain. We condemn anti-Semitism not
only because bigotry is wrong; we condemn it because of the terrible effects
anti-Semitism has had historically, and continues to have today. Anti-Semitism
must be challenged swiftly and decisively by each and every one of us.
However, some Israel advocacy groups are making it more
difficult to combat actual instances of anti-Semitism by using the label in a
broad and reckless fashion simply to smear critics of Israeli state policies.
They also make it impossible to defend the human rights of Palestinians, which
is what many of them aim to do. We are de facto then put in the position of
acquiescing to the status quo; we are de facto made into tacit supporters of
Israel, out of fear of being tarred with the anti-Semite brush. In sum, for
those who are critical of, or at least dubious about, Israel’s policies toward
the Palestinians and others, we are forced to be silent, we are forced to go
against our better selves, out of fear of being called a horrible thing,
something we detest. Another way of putting this: We are forced to be
dishonest, we become hypocrites by omission.
Now our own inner silencing mechanisms are being aided and
abetted by the state, and by certain pro-Israel organizations. Legislation
in several states and at the national level has accepted and exploited the
equation of criticism of Israel and anti-Semitism, targeting in particular the
Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS)
movement. Such bills use precisely the same tactics and even words of Benjamin
Netanyahu. In a 2014
speech before AIPAC, Netanyahu criticized BDS no fewer than 18 times:
“Attempts to boycott, divest and sanction Israel, the most threatened democracy
on Earth, are simply the latest chapter in the long and dark history of
anti-Semitism. Those who wear the BDS label should be treated exactly as we
treat any anti-Semite or bigot. They should be exposed and condemned.”
Such slanderous attacks are being met, and efforts to fight
back have yielded some success. This fight is absolutely critical, as it
pertains specifically to the ability of colleges and universities to present and
debate different views on the subject of Israel-Palestine. Recently the
Jewish Voice for Peace Academic Advisory Council mounted a campaign to have
the U.S. formally change its definition of anti-Semitism, to make clear the
difference between anti-Semitism and criticism of Israel. In an open letter
addressed to Secretary of State John Kerry, Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat
Anti-Semitism Ira Forman, and Ambassador at Large for the Office of
International Religious Freedom David Saperstein, the group notes that the
legislation presented in statehouses condemning anti-Semitism draws on the State
Department’s definition, which conflates anti-Semitism with criticism of Israel.
The group notes:
The so-called “State Department definition” includes
clauses about “demonizing,” “delegitimizing” and “applying a double-standard
to the state of Israel,” prohibitions that are so vague that they could be,
and have been, construed to silence any criticism of Israeli policies.
These clauses were taken from the “Working European Union
Monitoring Centre definition” which has been widely criticized and was
removed (3) as a working definition by the European body in 2013. This
definition has limited legal authority (4) in the US because, if
implemented, would unconstitutionally restrict freedom of speech. Further,
this overbroad definition diminishes the ability to identify and address
incidents of true anti-Semitism when they do occur.
As Jews and allies, we ask that the US State Department
revise its definition of anti-Semitism to reflect its commitment to opposing
hate and discrimination without curtailing constitutionally protected
freedom of speech.
This letter has been signed by more than 200 prominent
academics and nearly 16,000 others.
A similar effort to protect the rights of students and
teachers to discuss both sides of the issue is being pursued by
Palestine Solidarity Legal Support and the Center for Constitutional Rights.
Noting the particular silencing of Palestinians students who are critical of
Israel, they write:
The conflation of criticism of Israeli policies with
anti-Semitism as a tool to silence activism in support of Palestinian rights
is increasingly widespread – and widely reported – on U.S. college campuses.
At the same time, accusations of support for terrorism are commonly used to
malign activists for Palestinian rights – a phenomenon that has gone largely
unreported.
In addition to instances of censorship and other forms of
suppression, these cases included anti-Arab and anti-Muslim slurs and death
threats against activists. Accusations that students criticizing Israeli
policies were anti-Semitic and supported terrorism pervaded the overwhelming
majority of these incidents.
These accusations subject students and scholars
to tremendous personal and professional harm, deterring them from publicly
criticizing Israel’s actions for fear of being attacked. They are also used
to encourage campus authorities to restrict and punish protected speech.
It’s essential to look at how all this plays out within the
classroom as well. This is where we can vividly see how attempts to silence and
censor teachers, based on rumor and innuendo rather than facts, can manipulate
administrators more interested in protecting their institution from bad
publicity and frivolous lawsuits than in protecting the academic freedom of
their faculty and students.
David Lloyd, Distinguished Professor of English at the
University of California, Riverside, wrote me of the attacks coming from
AMCHA, a group intent on
blacklisting faculty critical of Israel:
Their criticism of the course is typical, both in its
stridency and in its ignorance. They assume, simply because the leader of
the course is president of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), that it
will be “propaganda.” But the syllabus contains a broad range of views,
Palestinian, Jewish, Jewish Israeli and Palestinian Israeli. It has
readings from Edward Said, Saree Makdisi and Rashid Khalidi, all widely
respected scholars; it also has readings by Benny Morris, Israeli historian
and Zionist, David Grossman, the liberal Israeli writer, Neve Gordon, an
Israeli political scientist who is critical of Israel’s occupation, and Uri
Ram, an Israeli sociologist. Setting Benny Morris alongside Palestinian
journalist Ali Abunimah allows students to consider very different ideas of
possible solutions to the occupation, while reading a broad spectrum of
Israeli opinion allows students to see that criticism of Israel is by no
means the same thing as anti-Semitism: it is possible to be an Israeli
anti-Zionist, or an Israeli Zionist who is opposed to the occupation. To
suggest that criticism of Israel is identical with anti-Semitism is not only
absurd, but also implicitly racist, since it pretends that all Jews must
uniformly identify with that particular state.
As faculty sponsor of SJP (and past faculty sponsor of SJP
on other campuses), I have always understood that students benefit from a
thorough understanding of the issues about which they are concerned and for
which they advocate. They do not benefit from a purely one-sided treatment
of the issue, if only because not understanding one’s opponents’ arguments
prevents one from articulating one’s own arguments well. For that reason it
is pragmatic as well as intellectually responsible to explore a wide range
of opinions. However, that said, AMCHA and its supporters are not asking
for balance. They are asking to “eliminate” the study of Palestinian issues
from a Palestinian perspective.
Fortunately, we find telling signs that such “balance” is
coming about, finally. In March a bill condemning anti-Semitism was
placed before the
California state Legislature. Like others of its kind, it evokes the
State Department’s definition of anti-Semitism. Its first clause reads:
“WHEREAS, The United States Department of State defines anti-Semitism as
‘a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward
Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are
directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property,
toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.’” Many
Californians, while supporting the statement against anti-Semitism, were
deeply concerned about how the State Department definition includes, as
mentioned earlier, clauses about “demonizing,” “delegitimizing” and
“applying a double-standard to the state of Israel,” prohibitions that
are so vague that they could be, and have been, construed to silence any
criticism of Israeli policies. A campaign was launched to make sure that
the resolution protected against the silencing of criticism. And now a
critical clause has been added at the very end of the legislation:
“Resolved, That nothing in this resolution is intended to diminish the
rights of anyone, including students, to freely engage in any speech or
other activity protected by the United States Constitution.”
Becoming educated on this issue — from any number of
angles — is absolutely critical to our understanding of it, and, more
important, to acting to end the violence and destruction in
Israel/Palestine. For the moment, this still presents a danger to those
who are taking the relatively new, and still unpopular, stance of
raising doubts and criticism about Israel.
In an
interview with Salon, Cornel West sums things up this way:
The call for the end of the vicious Israeli
occupation is today a kind of litmus test for progressives, because
you have sacrificed so much. There is no doubt that you will be
called an anti-Semite, that you will be called a chauvinist; there
is no doubt you will be called someone who is downplaying the
history of oppression of Jews … [And yet] one can no longer say one
is a serious progressive, let alone committed to moral integrity,
without lifting one’s voice to call for an end to the Occupation of
the Palestinian people. We have got to make that more and more a
central part of our action.
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