Insightful piece on media distortions in France, the collusion between the rightwing Jewish Defence League and the police; the clampdown on critics of Israel; and the reasons why anti Semitism has emerged at the margins amongst disaffected immigrant communities often abandoned by the Left: This bad faith and self-contradiction is actually intrinsic to pro-Israel discourse, in part because the Zionist movement internalized the precepts of antisemitism at a very early stage. However, the fact that this is so cannot be allowed to obscure the real dynamics of antisemitism, nor the fact that there is some novelty in its articulations. Certainly, whatever the recent myths, synagogues have been firebombed, and antisemitic incidents have reportedly increased — not only in France, but in the UK as well. In Germany, a synagogue was petrol bombed, supposedly “in solidarity with the Palestinian cause.” The antifascist journalist Rene Monzat, reporting on the banned protest at Barbès on July 19, noted that while he did not hear antisemitic slogans, “I’m convinced that, in the present circumstances, the confusion of Israelis/Jews/Zionists is exceedingly dangerous and that it often happens.” Likewise, Julien Salingue, a Palestine scholar and NPA member, argues that in France today there is “a combination of ‘classic’ antisemitism (right-wing, white and Catholic)” with “a ‘perverted anti-Zionism.’” Part of what is happening is the conflation of the Israeli state with Israeli Jews who support Zionism and those who do not, Jewish supporters of Israel, Jewish opponents of Israel, and Jews who are indifferent to Israel. This, logically, can only be a racializing gesture. It ignores the fact that Israel has far more solid allies on the Christian far right than it does among Jewish New Yorkers, some of whom were arrested in civil disobedience against the war on the Gaza Strip last week. It is the latter form of antisemitism that is the most troubling challenge for pro-Palestine activists. We can hardly be surprised that the subject of Israel attracts a degree of antisemitism. It advertises itself as “the Jewish state,” the privileges of which any Jewish person has access to by birth. As Sigal Samuel wrote in the Jewish Daily Forward: Is it really so hard to understand why — after Jews have spent decades telling every Jewish child that they are owed a free trip to Israel, citizenship in Israel, life and land in Israel purely by virtue of being Jewish — the world is slow to distinguish between Jews and Israel? Nevertheless, no one is forced to make this conflation, and the overwhelming majority of pro-Palestine activists refuse it and indeed actively combat it. Why does it gain currency among some? Salingue points out that the major political manifestation of this type of French antisemitism is “the Dieudonné-Soral axis.” What is this axis? And why does it have political support?
Posted on: Fri, 08 Aug 2014 19:16:08 +0000
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