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Page last updated
September 25, 2008
Understanding the conflict
Antisemitism
In 2005 the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC)
produced a ‘Working Definition of Antisemitism’ which the September 2005 conference of European Jews for a Just Peace found 'highly problematic'. It responded with an Open Letter to the EUMC.At the end of 2005 an All Party Parliamentary Enquiry into Antisemitism was set up under Denis MacShane MP. JfJfP submitted a statement to it on 6th February 2006. The Report of the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Antisemitism published in September 2006 is available for download here.
Antony Lerner
Jewish Quarterly, summer 2008
"The concept of the ‘self-hating Jew’ strengthens a narrow, ethnocentric view of the Jewish people. It exerts a monopoly over patriotism. It promotes a definition of Jewish identity which relies on the notion of an eternal enemy, and how much more dangerous when that enemy is a fifth column within the group. It plays on real fears of anti-Semitism and at the same time exaggerates the problem by claiming that critical Jews are ‘infected’ by it too. And it posits an essentialist notion of Jewish identity."
24. Fighting Jewish anti-Semitism
Shulamit Reinharz
Jewish Advocate 14th January 2007
For those who feel that critics of Israel protest too much when they say they are met by cries of 'antisemite', here is proof positive - from the pen of the Jacob Potofsky Professor of Sociology at Brandeis University (and wife of the President of Brandeis, Jehuda Reinharz). Antisemitic mouthpieces include Jacqueline Rose, Joel Kovel, Tony Judt, Marc Ellis, Tony Kushner...
" They seem to be respectable. Most would say that they are simply anti-Zionists, not anti-Semites. But I disagree, because in a world where there is only one Jewish state, to oppose it vehemently is to endanger Jews. "
23. A Tsunami of Confusion: Antisemitism and the Arab-Israeli conflict
Tony Klug, July 2006
An abridged version of this article appeared in Prospect magazine in August 2006
'[T]o the extent that Arab antisemitism is a by-product of a contemporary political conflict, it may start to dissolve as a natural consequence of the settlement of the wider problem. But time is of the essence.'
22. The 'Israel lobby': US aid to and support for Israel
All previous discusions of US-Israel relations were overshadowed by the publication of a controversial article by John Mearsheimer & Stephen Walt 'The Israel Lobby', in the London Review of Books in March 2006. It provoked a deluge of responses in which the theme of antisemitism is writ large. Major contributions to that debate are listed here as are a few key earlier contribtions on the topic.
Brian Klug
Red Pepper, January 2006
c. 2,000 words
A thoughtful analysis of the arguments about left antisemitism
20. Yesterday' Alien and Today's Asylum Seeker
Brian Klug
A talk given to the Jewish Council for Racial Equality (JCORE) as part of a panel on ‘The Centenary of the 1905 Aliens Act’
c. 2300 words
"At bottom, the alien on Balfour’s mind was not the immigrant; it was the Jew. And while I have been focusing on the British Prime Minister, the same might be said of the British people at the time; or at least that broad swathe of the population that feared an ‘alien invasion’."
19. Jewish Power
A lengthy article by Paul Eisen, a director of Deir Yassin Remembered, which crosses the line into antisemitism. See the detailed rebuttal by Joel Finkel, who writes: "It is not my goal to argue that Eisen is an anti-Semite. I believe that Eisen has fallen into a trap that entices many activists - particularly Jewish activists - who are enormously frustrated by their impotence to make things better. They lose political clarity and resort to mythmaking. I am responding because I believe that Eisen's arguments are not only baseless, but dangerously wrong." (And see Finkel's postscript which refers to a new article by Paul Eisen in support of Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel... )
In this context Michael Neumann's January 2003 article Blame Yourself: American Power and Jewish Power, is also worth reading.
Uri Avnery, 17th July 2004
c. 1,300 words
On French antisemitism: "A week ago, a young Frenchwoman called Marie Leonie caused an uproar. According to her, six youngsters “with a North African look” attacked her in a Paris train, grabbed her purse and, (wrongly) believing her to be Jewish because she lives in the well-to-do 16th arrondissement, tore her clothes and painted swastikas on her belly. They then overturned her baby carriage - all this while 20 other passengers looked on without lifting a finger to help her..."
17. Lucy MichaelsA personal account of working ‘within the Palestine solidarity community, and the broader anti-globalisation/anti-war movement, [and] about the difficulties I have experienced speaking and working, as a Jew, within that movement. And to name that experience: anti-Jewish racism, or Judeophobia.’
16. Brian Klug - talks and presentations, 2004Peace, power and prejudice, Talk given to Jews for Justice for Palestinians’ annual meeting held on 9 May 2004 in a panel on ‘Antisemitism, racism, the left and conflict in the Middle East’
Implementing the Berlin Declaration: The Importance of Conceptual Clarity
Hearing on Anti-Semitism, Public Expert Forum on the Implementation of the Final Declaration of the Berlin Anti-Semitism Conference, April 2004
German Delegation in the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, 22 November 2004
15. Ha'aretz's 2004 Pesach supplement on anti-semitism has many interesting articles.See especiallyYair Shelag, Digging for the roots of an age-old scourge
Amira Haas, The Victimhood contest (about antisemitism in Germany today);
and Ori Nir's The freedom to dissent, a discussion of a new book Wrestling with Zion, edited by Tony Kushner & Alisa Solomon.Max Hastings, former editor of the Daily Telegraph and the London Evening Standard
Guardian, 11th March 2004
'I feel a commitment to the Jewish people, founded on awareness partly of their history, partly of their genius. Yet I see no reason why this should prevent me from asserting that the policies of Sharon and Netanyahu bring shame upon Israel.'
13. An interview with Ariel Sharon
EU politix.com, 24 Nov 2003
'Question: Mr prime minister, in Europe there is an attempt to distinguish between an anti-Semitism that should be condemned and a legitimate criticism toward Israel's policies...
Ariel Sharon: Today there is no separation.'
12. The controversial unpublished EU study on antisemitismCommissioned by the European Union's Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) and carried out by the Centre for Research on Anti-semitism at Berlin's Technical University, it was decided in February 2003 not to publish the 112-page report in favour of a fresh study, to be published in 2004, after staff at the center questioned the definition of anti-Semitism and its focus on Muslim perpetrators.
Political censorship or a responsible response to inadequate research....
This later study Manifestations of Antisemitism in the EU 2002-2003 was indeed published by the EU Monitoring Centre Report as promised in April 2004.
11. Anti-Zionism is anti-semitism : behind much criticism of Israel is a thinly veiled hatred of JewsEmanuele Ottolenghi
Guardian, 29 November 2003 c. 1,100 words
Replies by Brian Klug No, anti-Zionism is not anti-semitism; and (in a letter) by Michael Rosen Trying it on over anti-semitism
10. Anti-Semitism
Uri Avnery's acceptance speech for the Lev Kopelev prize which he shared with Sari Nusseibeh
c. 2,000 words
'...the curse of anti-Semitism must not be abused in order to choke every criticism of my state. We Israelis want to be a people like any other people, a state like every other state, to be measured by the same moral standards as others.'
9. Fanning the flames of hatredRoman Bronfman (Meretz MK)
Ha'aretz, November 2003
c. 900 words
A response in the aftermath of the synagogue bombings in Istanbul: 'I conclude that if Israel wants to be embraced by the family of nations as a full member, it must learn how to behave according to the accepted rules around the world - rules of ethics, fairness and justice.'
8. The collective Jew: Israel and the new antisemitism
Brian Klug
Patterns of Prejudice, Vol. 37, No. 2, June 200
c.9,300 words
An outstanding piece, teasing out the meaning of antisemitism, old and new. Essential reading!
Ran HaCohen
29 September 2003
An impassioned attack by an Israeli academic on the abuses of anti-Semitism by Israel and its zealot supporters.
Judith Butler London Review of Books, 21 August 2003
c.4250 words
A careful dissection and refutation of President of Harvard University, Lawrence Summers's declaration in September 2002 that calls for divestment from Israel and a series of other protest actions were 'anti-semitic in their effect, if not their intent'.
Michael Plitnik
Jewish Voice for Peace, 13 February 2003
'It is crucial for the long-term health of the Jewish people that we strike a much better balance between recognizing how good things are for Jews where most of us are living today and with being vigilant against the return of darker times.'
4. Israel, Palestine and the tiger of terrorism: anti-semitism and history
Richard Webster
New Statesman, 29 November 2002
A thought-provoking piece about the Western origins of Islamic anti-semitism.
The article linked to here is a slightly updated version of the published piece.
3. Sense on anti-semitism
Antony Lerman, executive director of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research from 1991 to 1999
c. 3,800 words
2. Thoughts on Anti-Semitism
Penny Rosenwasser, an active member of A Jewish Voice for Peace and of the Bay Area Women in Black.
c. 1,200 words
1. Letter From London
D.D. Guttenplan
13 June 2002
'The non-Zionist world has every reason to resent it when the moral odium of anti-Semitism is used to discredit those who object to the brutality of Israeli occupation, or when the tattered mantle of Jewish victimization is draped over policies of collective punishment and murderous reprisal that, as the Israeli press was quick to point out, are modeled on the tactics used to crush Jewish resistance in the Warsaw ghetto.'
