AntiSemitism and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Talking about anti-Semitism is like walking barefoot through a mixture of broken glass and whole eggs, but it has to be done.

Let's start with the basic facts. Anti-Semitism is as fundamental a feature of Western culture as racism is of American culture. It begins among followers of Christ with the rhetoric of the Gospels, particularly the Gospel of John.  It becomes institutionalized in the emerging Catholic church, which made the gospels part of the Canon. It became embedded in the wider Roman culture when Christianity became the religion of the empire. From the 4th century until today anti-Semitism has been continually manifest in discrimination and violence against Jews, culminating but not ending with the Holocaust. 

Over the last 2000 years the character of anti-Semitism has changed. Vague anti-Semitic tropes and baseless accusations about Jewish behavior were systematized by Friedrich Schleiermacher in his taxonomy of religions and theological anti-Semitism became buried in the heart of liberal theology as it already was in Christian theology more generally. Subsequently anti-Semitism became engrained in religionswissenshaft, the scientific study of religion based around concepts of religious evolution.

In the 19th century new concepts of race, supposedly based in science, created yet another dimension of anti-Semitism - scientific anti-Semitism (a sub-set of scientific racism) based on the supposed recognition that physical and intellectual features of the Jews that made them inferior to white Europeans and justified segregation and bans on intermarriage. It is scientific anti-Semitism that would provide the basis for Nazi propaganda (and its counterparts elsewhere in the United States and Europe) leading to the Holocaust. 

I make these historical points so that we can see clearly that the creation of Israel as a state and its subsequent ongoing conflicts with the Palestinians are not the causes for anti-Semitism. They are just an excuse for the ancient evil at the heart of Western civilization to be allowed to rise again. 

However, the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has gotten dragged into efforts to end anti-Semitism because Israel itself, the modern nation-state, has become central to Jewish identity. 

Jews have always hoped for the restoration of Israel in its ancient homeland. Such a hope runs as a constant theme in Jewish life and liturgy and has been for more than 2000 years. With the Jewish enlightenment (haskala) in the 18th and 19th centuries the hope for a messianic restoration of Israel evolved to include a this-worldly hope that Jews as a people would have what every other ethnic people longed for; a homeland in which their existence and identity was secure. Zionism is the name of the political movement to secure this homeland in the land originally occupied by Israel and the Jews. 

(There is an elephant in this 19th century room that I'll need to explore in another post. Simply put it is the question of whether any ethnic or religious state whatsoever is legitimate. This question can be asked of dozens of nations and is at the center of multiple conflicts through the 20th and 21st centuries. In the meantime I'll note that the question of how to have a state dedicated to preserving a threatened ethnic identity while still having a culturally and ethnically plural population isn't unique to Israel.) 

Zionism, specifically the assertion that the Jews have a right to a secure nation-state in their original homeland, began in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. With the holocaust, and not least the refusal of Great Britain and the United States to provide a safe haven for Jews fleeing the holocaust, Zionism became a matter of existential importance to the Jews, and fundamental to Jewish identity. Christians and Americans more generally must remember that it is we who turned away the Jews and left them to be murdered by Hitler. And it is in our society that violence against Jews continues to take place and is in fact increasing. It is in our society that anti-Semitic tropes continue to be a regular part of political and religious discourse. Jews have no reason to believe that their existence as a people can be entrusted to anyone other than themselves in their own homeland. 

This is why attacks on Israel's right to exist are definitionally anti-Semitic. To attack Israel's right to exist is to attack the right of the Jewish people to exist. 

Simple enough, but it gets complicated. When does a criticism of the policies and practices of Israel’s government become an attack on Israel’s right to exist? When does a statement about, or addressed to Jews, become an anti-Semitic trope? 

There is no short, definitive answer to these questions. But it is helpful to note this: statements that label Israel in a way that delegitimize its existence as a nation-state are anti-Semitic. So, for example, criticism of Israel’s policy with regard to settlements in the Palestinian Territories, or its policies related to Arab Israelis, are not anti-Semitic and in fact can be widely found among both American Jewish and Israeli Jewish groups. However, labeling Israel as racist state, or an apartheid state, or as a slave state are anti-Semitic because such states are widely regarded as lacking legitimacy and therefore subject to overthrow or dramatic restructure. 

Similarly actions that directly threaten Israel’s existence are anti-Semitic. Probably the most obvious of these are economic actions intended to weaken or incapacitate Israel’s defense forces. The Hamas political party, which controls Gaza and operates in and is in alliance with Fatah in the West Bank, does not recognize Israel as a legitimate state and has consistently called for its destruction. Given the existence of a nearby enemy capable of launching military attacks, Israel regards its defense forces, and their ability to operate in Gaza and the West Bank, as essential to the continued existence of Israel as a nation. Thus economic actions intended to weaken or put an end to IDF operations in Gaza and the West Bank are anti-Semitic, even if those taking them support Israel’s right to exist. 

(Second elephant in an already crowded room: given that the BDS movement is anti-Semitic as defined above, should it nonetheless be protected as a form of legitimate political expression in a free society? Can it be, should it be legally differentiated from other calls for boycotts, divestitures, and sanctions aimed at perceived injustices and inhumanities by nations other than Israel?)

And here we see a key problem: the difference between the ways in which both words and actions are understood by Israel’s critics and Israelis and Jews more generally. Words and actions that Israel’s critics regard as legitimate political rhetoric and action that in no way attacks Israel’s right to exist can be and often are regarded by Jews as anti-Semitic. 

So who gets to define anti-Semitism? The easiest analogy is to ask who gets to define racism, Islamophobia, or homophobia. As in those cases, it is the victim. Because the perpetrators have already shown an inability to grasp the impact of their words and actions. The same of course is true when it comes to anti-Palestinianism, which is also real if much more recent. It is the Palestinians alone who can say what threatens their existence as a people.

What can we do, those of us who believe that Israel has unjust policies toward the Palestinians? How can we avoid anti-Semitism in our rhetoric and actions? Here the answer is simple. Make common cause with Jewish organizations that agree that Israel has unjust policies and who support the right of the Palestinians to their own state. There are many such groups in both the US and Israel. Even better, there are coalitions of Israelis and Palestinians working for the rights of Palestinians to both just treatment and a secure state. Such coalitions, however complex, provide the best guidance for those concerned with both Israel's right to exist and the necessity of a Palestinian state for a continued Palestinian peoplehood.

It is unfortunate that too many Christians have bought into a theology of zero-sum games, in which the world is divided into oppressed and oppressor, marginalized and powerful, victims and victimizers. Trading on the rhetoric of the New Testament and ignoring much of its teaching we adopt an eschatological frame of mind that relieves us from taking seriously the complexities of the realities around us. It is an abject failure no matter whom we cast in the binary roles above. 

In the end it is and will be hard to do justice. Sheep and goats will not so easily divide out as portrayed in Matthew 25. The one who visits the prisoner and feeds the hungry will spurn the naked and reject the stranger, and visa versa in endless combinations. We will never be able to choose between good and bad, only between better and worse. Sometimes our only choice will be that which is less terrible. Hardly satisfactory, unless we understand that our righteousness is found in Christ alone.