Wilhelm Marr invented the term antisemitism, not as an epithet, but as a sign of enlightenment. The Chief Rabbi of England, Sir Jonathan Sacks explains:
We can date the third mutation to 1879 when the German journalist Wilhelm Marr coined a new word: anti-Semitism. The fact that he needed to do so tells us that this was a new phenomenon. It emerged in an age of Enlightenment, the secular nation state, liberalism and emancipation. Religious prejudice was deemed to be a thing of the past. The new hatred had therefore to justify itself on quite different grounds, namely race. This was a fateful development, because you can change your religion. You cannot change your race.
After Marr, antisemitism was no longer the province of the unenlightened and the superstitious, it could be, in the right circumstances, a sign of sophistication.
Perhaps that is why Andrew Sullivan seemingly wears the badge wtih honor. Eric Fingerhut explains (via David Bernstein):
In fact, the whole Wieseltier-Sullivan episode has served to illustrate an emerging trend among critics of Israel: Their eagerness to allege that they’ve been accused of being an anti-Semite. I do agree that some of Israel’s defenders are too quick to throw out charges of anti-Semitism or “self-hating Jew,” and that’s lamentable and a problem. But it seems that among many of Israel’s critics, claiming that you’ve been accused of being an anti-Semite has become some sort of bizarre badge of honor. And quite a few of those that have allegedly been accused of being an anti-Semite, according to Wieseltier’s critics, either were never smeared with such a term or were only accused of making a specific problematic remark and not tarred with some broad brush of disliking Jews, as they claim.
(Israel Matzav has another example.)
The one point I’d quibble with is that Israel’s defenders “are too quick” with the label. The problem isn’t that Israel’s has critics. The problem is that a lot of those critics aren’t simply criticizing Israel, but condemning Israel, questioning its right to exist while, hypocritically, remaining silent towards regimes that are much, much worse. It isn’t simply holding Israel to a higher standard, but holding Israel to an impossible standard and then damning it when it fails to make the grade. (I mean do any of these critics find it troubling that even Salam Fayyad the “moderate” Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority can’t bring himself to say that Israel is a Jewish state, while they insisted that Netanyahu declare his support for a Palestinian state?)
The modern day antisemitism also stems from a desire to appear sophisticated. No longer is Israel the democratic “light unto the nations,” but the flawed oppressor of Palestinians. That oppression marks Israel as illegitimate until it exorcises the demons of occupation. Does it make a difference that Israel has changed politically from 20 years ago and that now the “right wing” Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is closer in outlook to Peace Now of 20 years ago than to his predecessors Yitzchak Shamir or Menachem Begin? Well, no, as long as the Palestinians aren’t satisfied Israel hasn’t done enough. So peace and with it, Israel’s legitimacy, is given a veto by the very people who still haven’t amended their charter to say that Israel has a right to exist.
Worse the exorcism required an extreme form of denial. To quote Judea Pearl again.
As an analyst, I would not need to find out that things did not exactly change through those negotiations in the 1990s — the PLO, to this very day, has not amended the annihilationist clauses in its charter, as openly admitted by Farouq Kadoumi in an interview with a Jordanian newspaper (Al-Arab, April 22, 2004; see Benny Morris’ book “One State, Two States†for a detailed chronology).
On the contrary, an intractable Gordian knot has been created: Every Westerner now believes the charter is amended; every Palestinian says it is amended but believes it is not, and every Israeli knows what Palestinians believe. Not a healthy mindset for peace negotiations.
Most importantly, as a scientist, I would be obliged to acknowledge competing theories. For example, that the blood-soaked Second Intifada erupted precisely because Clinton and Rabin did not insist on seeing an Arabic text of an amended PLO charter on the White House lawn. Their naiveté, so the theory goes, gave Arafat the illusion that as long as the West buys into his double-talk, Palestinians are exempt from doing any homework toward peace. It subsequently made Israelis doubly suspicious of Palestinian proclamations and reinforced Palestinians’ delusion that they can achieve sovereignty without internalizing Israel’s permanency. Cohen now hands them another reinforcement and, once again, all in the name of peace.
That denial had deadly consequences as Charles Krauthammer observed at the time.
This is peace? “Israelis Unnerved by Peace That Kills,” says a Washington Post headline, March 5. Peace that kills? This is an absurd oxymoron. If peace means anything, it means at its very minimum an absence of violence. After all, “armistice” and “truce” — lesser forms of peace — mean cease-fire. Peace must mean at least that.
This Orwellian conjunction of peace and violence demonstrates the state of hypnosis that Americans and Israelis have placed themselves under since the September 1993 Handshake on the White House lawn. What followed has been called a peace process. It has been nothing of the kind. The Palestinian war on Israel has been unrelenting. More Israeli civilians have been massacred since the handshake than at any time in the entire history of the country.
The “peace process” is in fact nothing more than a unilateral Israeli withdrawal. The Palestinians have gotten Gaza, West Bank autonomy, huge influxes of foreign aid, international recognition, their own police force, their first free elections ever (something their Turkish, British, Egyptian and Jordanian rulers never granted them).
In return Israel has gotten what? Pats on the head from the United States. The occasional trade mission from Tunisia. And, from the Palestinians, death. This is peace?
It is sophistication that led Israel’s critics – whether benign or malevolent – to look past the terror enabling aspects of the Oslo Accords and hold Israel to its commitments and demand nothing of the Palestinians.
But increasingly it becomes harder and harder to blame Israel for the lack of peace with the Palestinians. Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000 only to see Hezbollah use the opportunity to build up its arsenal and threaten hundreds of thousands living in Israel’s north. This led to a war in 2006. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 only to see Hamas use the opportunity to build up its arsenal and threaten hundreds of thousands living in Israel’s north. This led to a war in 2008-9. Barak made a generous offer to Arafat at Camp David in July, 2000, which was rejected. Two months later Arafat launched the “Aqsa intifada against Israel. As his term wound down Ehud Olmert made an even more generous offer to Mahmoud Abbas, only to have Abbas reject it.
It’s harder and harder to say that Israel’s at fault. One need not know ancient history. One could just look through 15 years of news and see this. If one wanted to. But Israel’s critics deny the fundamental justice of Israel’s cause. Not only do they damage the cause of peace in the Middle East, but they’re demonization of the Jewish state, leads to antisemitism worldwide.
The sophisticates’ blaming Israel lead to what William Jacobson calls the Malmo Syndrome.
Malmö is the third largest Swedish city, and now the poster child for what I call Malmö Syndrome, the anti-Semitic violence which results from the shared anti-Israeli agenda of Islamists and leftists.
Like Wilhelm Marr today’s critics of Israel pretend to be sophisticated. I’m not sure that Marr intended for his ideology to metastasize as it did. But the writing is on the wall. The unfair and unrelenting criticism of Israel has excused terror and now encourages open displays of antisemitism in Europe. Do Israel’s critics understand the damage they’re causing? Or will they continue to wrap themselves in a mantle of sophistication and ignore the consequences?
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
