In Marx’s essay On the Jewish Question, written in 1844, there are two contrasting sets of themes vis-à-vis the Jews. In Part II of the essay Marx deploys some well-known negative stereotypes, according to which: the mundane basis of Judaism is self-interest, egoism, or, as Marx also calls it, ‘an anti-social element’; the worldly religion of the Jew is huckstering; and the Jew’s jealous god – ‘in face of which no other god may exist’ – is money. The emancipation of the Jews is said by him to be equivalent to the emancipation of mankind from Judaism. Part I, on the other hand, presents a version of secular democracy in which the Jews, like any religious or other particularistic grouping, may retain their religion and their separate identity consistently with the state itself rising above such particularisms, and rendering these politically irrelevant.
Though Marx himself regards this – political emancipation – as an incomplete form of emancipation, he nonetheless articulates a genuine type of moral universalism: different faiths, ethnicities, peoples, have a right to assert their specific identities and shared beliefs within the free secular order of the democratic state. The distinctions between such groups just cease to have a political bearing. Marx does not extend this argument beyond the single state to the global arena (that not being part of the discursive context), but the correlate at international level of what he argues in Part I of On the Jewish Question is today embodied in the notion of a right of nations to self-determination, as affirmed in Article 1.2 of the United Nations Charter.
The contrasting themes of Marx’s essay may be taken as emblematic of the state of affairs obtaining today between Jews and the left. It is not difficult to understand the long affinity there has been between them. Common traditions of opposition to injustice, the commitment within liberal and socialist thought to ideals of equality (whether this is equality under the law or equality in substantive economic terms), opposition to racist and other similar types of prejudice – these things have long served to attract Jews to organisations and movements of the left, and they still do.
Israel as alibi
At the same time, that affinity has now been compromised by the existence of a new climate of antisemitic opinion within the left. This climate of opinion affects a section of the left only, and not the whole of it. But it is a substantial section. Its convenient alibi is the state of Israel – by which I mean that Israel is standardly invoked to deflect the charge that there is anything of antisemitism at work. Israel, so the story goes, is a delinquent state and, for many of those who regard it so, a non-legitimate one – colonialist, imperialist, vehicle of oppression and what have you. Similarly, diaspora Jews who defend Israel within their home countries are not seen as the conduit of Jewish interests and/or opinion in the normal way of any other democratic articulation; they are treated, rather, as a dubious force – the notorious ‘Jewish lobby’ – as if their organised existence were somehow improper.
These themes pitch those who sponsor them out of a genuine, and into a spurious, type of universalism: one where the Jews are special amongst other groups in being obliged to settle for forms of political freedom in which their identity may not be asserted collectively; Jews must be satisfied, instead, merely with the rights available to them as individuals. I call this a spurious universalism because people’s rights to live as they will (subject to the usual constraint of not harming others) is an incomplete right – a truncated and impaired right – if it does not include the freedom to associate with others of their own kind.
To repeat: Israel has been made an alibi for a new climate of antisemitism on the left.
But could it not be, perhaps, that there is no such climate? Could it not be that Israel’s critics are just what they say they are, no more and no less: critics of the policies of successive Israeli governments, just in the same way as there are critics of the governments of every country? Well, it could be. There has been enough to criticise, goodness knows – from the long occupation of the West Bank and Gaza to the policy of permitting Jewish settlements on Palestinian land. It not only could be, it even in many cases is, since there are both critics and criticisms of Israel which are not antisemitic – such as the two criticisms I just made. Yet, if it both could be and is, it also in many cases is not. Much of the animus directed at Israel today is of a plainly antisemitic character. It relies (just as Marx did in Part II of On the Jewish Question) on anti-Jewish stereotypes. This can be shown with near mathematical precision; I endeavour to show it in the rest of what I have to say.
Very well-written, if I may say.
Great essay; I fear those who should read it most are those least likely to.
Excellent analysis of this phenomenon. Unfortunately though I wonder though how much impact this type of analysis can have.
The problem is that both left-wing and Arab anti-semites justify their behaviour via their abuse of language when describing Israel. Thus, for instance, they casually throw out phrases like ‘Israel persecutes Palestinians’ or ‘deliberately shoots Palestinian children’ or occupies ‘Palestinian land’ (even Mr Geras used this latter contentious term).
Therefore, the fight against contemporary anti-semitism needs to challenge the basic language used about the Israel-Arab conflict.
Unfortunately, I wonder whether pointing to a continuity between contemporary anti-Israel antisemitism and antisemitic tropes (eg the blood libel) from the pre-1948 past has much purchase on people these days. The anti-semites shrug and say: ‘be that as it may, Israel and its supporters are still monsters.” It’s the grotesque and untrue terms in which Israel is described, exemplified recently by Gerald Scarfe’s cartoon in The Sunday Times, that must be challenged if we are to weaken the contemporary anti-semites.
Your conclusion says it all – I concur 100%
tonyk
It is a moral scandal that some few decades after the unmeasurable catastrophe that overtook the Jewish people in Europe, these anti-Semitic themes and ruses are once again respectable; respectable not just down there with the thugs but pervasively also within polite society, and within the perimeters of a self-flattering liberal and left opinion. It is a bleak lesson to all but those unwilling to see. The message of ‘never again’ has already proved to have been too sanguine. Genocides still occur. We now know, as well, that should a new calamity ever befall the Jewish people, there will be, again, not only the direct architects and executants but also those who collaborate, who collude, who look away and find the words to go with doing so. Some of these, dismayingly, shamefully, will be of the left.
Thanks very much for such a comprehensive (covers all bases) essay on this crucially
important subject. The alibi may take many years,even decades before any impact will be made to redress the age old mis-balance , still currently in fashionable use.
I look forward to further readings.
Good luck and best wishes,
Michael…..
You claim: “A well-known case of this second form arose with Caryl Churchill’s play ‘Seven Jewish Children’, following upon Israel’s invasion of Gaza in 2008-9. This play puts into Jewish mouths the view that Palestinians are ‘animals’ and that ‘they want their children killed to make people sorry for them’; but that there is no need to feel sorry for them; that we – the Jews – are the chosen people and that it is our safety and our children that matter; in sum, that ‘I wouldn’t care if we wiped them out’.” You go on to describe this as a “blood libel.”
It is true that Churchill’s play puts those words in Jewish mouths — but it’s not a blood libel. Those views are widely held by Jews. For instance, Alan Dershowitz once said: “Hezbollah and Hamas want to maximize civilian casualties on both sides. Islamic terrorists, a diplomat commented years ago, ‘have mastered the harsh arithmetic of pain. . . . Palestinian casualties play in their favor and Israeli casualties play in their favor.’” In other words, Dershowitz claims that Palestinians want their own civilians (including children) killed to obtain a political effect — almost exactly what Churchill says. Dershowitz’ books sell extremely well among Jews.
As for “I wouldn’t care if we wiped them out,” while this is not a majoritarian view among Jews, it is also widely held and accepted. There exist lots of videos showing Jews gathered at certain places overlooking Gaza and celebrating as the Israeli planes pound the place. In one of those videos, “Gaza war tourism,” a Jew by the name of Keren Levy hopes for the Israeli army to take the city off the ground. I.e., she doesn’t care if they are wiped them out, just like Churchill describes in her play. In the video, the Jewish war tourists are seen casually serving themselves from a coffee machine they brought. There was no outcry from the Jewish community in the face of such actions, which would suggest that they are accepted.
So that I fail to see where exactly the blood libel lies. Churchill describes phenomena that exist and are widely reported. Getting angry at her, rather than at the Jews who hold those regrettable views, is clearly an instance of shooting the messenger.
You only fail to see where the blood libel lies, through a profound and colossal lack of intelligence. To begin with, it is not a ‘blood libel’ to point out that the so-called ‘Palestinians’ want their children to die. ‘Palestinian’ media is replete with the depictions of the ‘child martyr’. The Hamas boast that their women and children ‘love death the way you [the Jews] love life’. ‘Palestinian’ schoolbooks exhort children to martyr themselves, and teach that peace will not come to the region until even the very trees and rocks cry out, ‘There is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him’. Arab rhetoric across the entire region teaches that Jews are the ‘descendants of monkeys and pigs’.
As for the ‘lots of videos’, they pale into nothing compared with the images of sweets and cakes being handed out as Arabs in Gaza and Arab-occupied Judea & Samaria, after 9/11, and let’s not forget the Ramallah lynching, where animals were feted as heroes for ripping Jews to shreds with their bare, blood-stained hands.
By contrast, there never has existed and there still exists no reason for the blood libels aimed at the Jews over the years. Your anti-Semitism is nothing but a continuation of this age-old hatred, glossed over with a vainglorious attempt at justifying the unjustifiable.
Sir,
Some comments on your article. There is no ‘occupation’, save the illegal occuapation of Jewish land by Arab land thieves. There is no ‘Palestinian land’ for the simple reason that there is no ‘Palestinian’ people. The right of the Jewish people to settle on the land of Mandate Palestine was and is enshrined in international law.
Worse to me is the MSMs covering for this leftest hatred. They point at the far right, and like a 5 year old point and say “he did it too”. The big difference is that on the right, the anti-semites are fringe groups with almost no main stream support. The left, on the other hand sees this hate mongering come from it’s elites. In press, universities and the religious left, anti-Israel hysterics is the PC cover for a rabid Jew hatred. Even far left Jews seem to be infected.
And in answer to the last paragraph. Considering the population numbers, far more people have suffered in Tibet, Myanmar, South Sudan to name three, with only a fraction of the attention reserved for the Palestinians. Could the answer be that compassion is reserved to that purchased with Arab petro dollars and aided by centuries of anti-semitism in both the Christian and Islamic cultures.
Ibrahim Ibn Yusuf: “t is true that Churchill’s play puts those words in Jewish mouths — but it’s not a blood libel. Those views are widely held by Jews.” He then goes on to cite Dershowitz, who is reporting what is well known: that during Operation Pillar of Cloud, Hamas and/or other Gazan-based terrorist groups were launching rockets towards israel from within areas occupied by civilians – a war crime. How this can be described as a blood libel when even Human Rights Watch (not noted for its pro-Israeli stance) stated this in its report on the events of Pillar of Cloud is, to say the least, difficult to see..
In other words, its not a claim by Dershowitz, but a statement that is based on firm evidence: and Ibn Yusuf produces no counter argument, merely assertion.
I also note that he slides into a semi-McCarthyite “guilt by association” trope: because some Jews (not, note Israelis, the same error Churchill makes in her play) accept the view that “I wouldn’t care if we wiped them all out” – even if this is not a majoritarian view (his words), then the reverse blood libel cannot be dismissed. This is supported, if that’s the word, by the following: “There exist lots of videos showing Jews gathered at certain places overlooking Gaza and celebrating as the Israeli planes pound the place.” Apart from not being surprised at this phenomenon, given the literally thousands of rockets that had been fired into Israel between “Cast lead” and this response, we could, if we wished to draw comparisons, remind Ibn Yusuf of the celebrations across the West Bank and Gaza as Iraqi Scud missiles were fired into Israel during Gulf War 1. A conflict, note, in which Israel had no part and, further, had warned the US that the real threat to Middle Eastern stability was not Iraq but Iran.
How prescient of them.
But I wouldn’t be so crass. After all, it’s hardly comparable: the first concerns Jews (oops, Israelis) the second, victims of human rights abuses by Israelis.
It’s astonishing how logic and rationality, to say nothing of evidence, fly out of the window when Jews and Israelis are concerned.
Oh, and by the way, it;s a great essay, Professor Geras. Thanks for it.