timber, I'll see your anti-Americanism and raise you one anti-Semitism:
In 1967 I was a young communist, like most Italian youngsters. Bored by my
rebellious behavior my family sent me to a Kibbutz in the upper Galilee,
Neot Mordechai. I was quite satisfied there, the kibbutz used to give some
money every month to the Vietcong. When the Six Day War began, Moshe Dayan
spoke on the radio to announce it. I asked: "What is he saying?" and the
comrades of Neot answered: "Shtuyot," silly things. During the war I took
children to shelters; I dug trenches, and learned some simple shooting and
acts of self defense. We continued working in the orchards, but were quick
to identify the incoming Mig-im and the outgoing Mirage-im, chasing one
another in the sky of the Golan Heights.
When I went back to Italy, some of my fellow students stared at me as
somebody new, an enemy, a wicked person who would soon become an
imperialist. My life was about to change. I didn't yet know that, because I
simply thought that Israel rightly won a war after having been assaulted
with an incredible number of harassments. But I soon noticed that I had lost
the innocence of the good Jew, of the very special Jewish friend, their Jew:
I was now connected with the Jews of the State of Israel, and slowly I was
put out of the dodecaphonic, psychoanalytic, Bob Dylan, Woody Allen, Isaac
Bashevis Singer, Philip Roth, Freud shtetl, the coterie that sanctified my
Judaism in left wing eyes.
I have tried for a long time to bring back that sanctification, and they
tried to give it back to me, because we desperately needed each other, the
left and the Jews. But today's anti Semitism has overwhelmed any good
intention.
Throughout the years, even people that, like me, who had signed petitions
asking the IDF to withdraw from Lebanon, became an "unconscious fascist" as
a reader of mine wrote me in a letter filled with insults. In one book it
was simply written that I was "a passionate woman that fell in love with
Israel, confusing Jerusalem with Florence." One Palestinian told me that if
I see things so differently from the majority, this plainly means that my
brain doesn't work too well. Also, I've been called a cruel and insensitive
human rights denier who doesn't care about Palestinian children's lives. A
very famous Israeli writer told me on the phone a couple of months ago: "You
really have become a right-winger." What? Right winger? Me? An old feminist
human rights activist, even a communist when I was young? Only because I
described the Arab-Israeli conflict as accurately as I could and because
sometimes I identified with a country continuously attacked by terror, I
became a right-winger? In the contemporary world, the world of human rights,
when you call a person a right-winger, this is the first step toward his or
her delegitimization.
The Left blessed the Jews as the victim "par excellence," always a great
partner in the struggle for the rights of the weak against the wicked. In
return for being coddled, published, filmed, considered artists,
intellectuals and moral judges, Jews, even during the Soviet anti-Semitic
persecutions, gave the Left moral support and invited it to cry with them at
Holocaust memorials. Today the game is clearly over. The left has proved
itself the real cradle of contemporary anti-Semitism.
When I speak about anti-Semitism, I'm not speaking of legitimate criticism
of the State of Israel. I am speaking of pure anti-Semitism:
Criminalization, stereotypes, specific and generic lies which have
fluctuated between lies about the Jews (conspiring, blood thirsty,
dominating the world) to lies about Israel (conspiring, ruthlessly violent)
starting most widely since the beginning of the second Intifada in September
2000, and becoming more and more ferocious since Operation Chomat Magen
("Defensive Shield"), when the IDF reentered Palestinian cities in response
to terrorism.
The basic idea of anti-Semitism, today as always, is that Jews have a
perverted soul that makes them unfit, as a morally inferior people, to be
regular members of the human family. Today, this Untermensch ideology has
shifted to the Jewish state: A separate, unequal, basically evil stranger
whose national existence is slowly but surely emptied and deprived of
justification. Israel, as the classic evil Jew, according to contemporary
anti-Semitism, doesn't have a birthright, but exists with its "original sin"
perpetrated against the Palestinians. Israel's heroic history has become a
history of arrogance.
Nowadays, its narrative focuses much more on Deir Yassin massacre than on
the creation and defense of Kibbutz Degania; it focuses more and more the
suffering of the Palestinian refugees than on the surprise of seeing five
armies in 1948 denying Israel's right to exist just after being established
by the United Nations; much more on the Jewish underground resistance
organizations, the Lechi and the Irgun, than on the heroic battle along the
way to Jerusalem. The caricature of the evil Jew is transformed to the
caricature of the evil state. And now the traditional hook-nosed Jew bears a
gun and kills Arab children with pleasure.
On the front pages of European newspapers Sharon munches Palestinian
children and little Jesuses in cradles are threatened by Israeli soldiers.
This new anti-Semitism has materialized in unprecedented physical violence
towards Jewish persons and symbols, coming from organizations officially
devoted to human rights. Its peak occurred at the United Nations summit in
Durban when anti-Semitism officially became the banner of the new secular
religion of human rights, and Israel and Jews became its official enemy.
Jews, and the international community in general, have been caught unaware,
and have failed to denounce the new trend of anti-Semitism. Nobody is
scandalized when Israel is accused daily, without explanation, of excessive
violence, of atrocities, of cruelty. Everybody is tormented about the
necessity of painful attacks against terrorist nests, often located among
families and children. Still, every country has the right to defend itself.
Only the Jews in history have been denied the right of self-defense, and so
it is today.
Why is the war on terrorism often looked upon as a strategic problem that
the world still must solve (look at the US war against Afghanistan and Iraq)
and Israel is treated like a guilty defendant for fighting it? Is it not
anti-Semitism, when you act as if Jews must die quietly? Why is Israel
officially accused by the human rights commission in Geneva of violating
human rights, while, China, Libya, Sudan, have never ever been accused? Why
has Israel been denied a fixed place in regional groups in the UN while
Syria sits in the Security Council? Why can everybody join a war against
Iraq except Israel, despite the fact that Saddam has always threatened
Israel with complete destruction? When sovereign states and organizations
threaten death to Israel, why does nobody raise the question at the UN? Has
Italy been threatened by France or Spain like those Iranian leaders who
openly say that they will destroy Israel with an atomic bomb? And what is
said when a large part of the world newspapers, TV, radio and school
textbooks recommend kicking the Jews out of Israel and killing them all over
the world using terrorist bombers? The international community doesn't
consider this a problem. Israel is an "unterstate", denied the basic rights
of every other state, to exist in honor and peace. The Jewish state is not
equal.
Like the mythical Medusa, this new Anti-Semitism has a face that petrifies
anyone who looks at it. People don't want to admit it, don't even want to
name it because doing so reveals both the identity of its perpetrators and
its object. Even Jews don't want to call an anti-Semite by his name, fearing
disruption of old alliances. Because the left has a precise idea of what a
Jew must be, when Jews don't match its prescription, they ask: How do you
dare being different from the Jew I ordered you to be? Fighting against
terrorism? Electing Sharon? Are you crazy? And here the answer of Jews and
Israelis is the same. We are still very shy, very concerned about your
affection. So, instead of requesting that Israel become an equal nation and
that Jews become equal citizens in the world, we prefer standing with you
shoulder to shoulder, even when you have come out with hundreds, thousands
of anti-Semitic statements. We prefer to stand with you at Holocaust
memorials cursing old anti-Semitism while you accuse Israel, and therefore
the Jews, of being racist killers.
Let's take a well known example: A famous Italian journalist, the former
director of Corriere Della Sera, was named president of RAI, which is a very
important job. RAI is an empire that shapes Italian public opinion and
manages billions of dollars. The nominee's last name, Mieli, is Jewish.
Mieli is a widely appreciated journalist and historian who enjoys enormous
and well deserved prestige. When he was appointed, the same night, the walls
of RAI headquarters were filled with graffiti.
RAI means Radio Televisione Italiana - Italian Radio and Television. The
graffiti authors wrote the word raus (get out!) over it. They drew a Star of
David over the A of the word RAI, and transformed the acronym to "Radio
Televisione Israeliana" - Israeli Radio and Television. The phrase is a
perfect cross-section of what we are talking about: Raus and the use of the
star of David are the classic signs of traditional anti-Semitic contempt and
hate, and the words Radio Televisione Israeliana, putting Israel in the
center of the picture, is a clear indication of how Israel is the focus of
the left winged anti-Semitic hate today.
Surprisingly, or perhaps predictably, such a blatant expression of
anti-Semitism caused very little reaction from both the Italian authorities
and the Italian Jewish community. The aggression and threat to such a famous
intellectual, gave rise to weak exclamations in a subdued tone, and was
treated like a minor issue in a debate centered on more relevant ones, such
as the management of RAI and it's political meaning.
Another meaningful episode: a group of Professors at Ca Foscari University,
the prestigious Venetian institution, signed a petition calling for a
boycott of Israeli professors and researchers. The content of the document
is totally irrelevant, but the reaction it provoked among the Jewish
community is very interesting.
One prominent Venetian Jew, when asked for his opinion, said: "They're
making a serious mistake. Those professors don't realize that they are
reinforcing Sharon's policy with their boycott."
Such an absurd reaction is the clear proof of the failure, within the Jewish
world, to understand this totally new type of anti-Semitism that focuses on
the State of Israel. Another document, this time a letter by a group of
professors at the University of Bologna "to their Jewish friends", was
published with a very large number of signatures.
Here is an excerpt: "We have always considered the Jewish people an
intelligent and sensitive one because they have been selected (that's right,
selected!) by the suffering of persecution and humiliation. We have school
friends and some Jewish students whom we have helped and educated, taking
them to high academic levels, and today many of them teach in Israeli
universities. We are writing because we feel that our love and appreciation
for you is being transformed into a burning rage
we think that many people,
also outside the university, feel the same. You have to realize that what
was done to you in the past, you are now doing to the Palestinians
if you
continue on this path, hatred for you will grow throughout the world".
The letter is an excellent summary of all the characteristics of the new
anti-Semitism. There is the pre-Zionist definition of the Jewish people as
one that suffers, has to suffer by nature, a people bound to bear the worst
persecutions without even lifting a finger, and is, therefore, worthy of
compassion and solidarity.
And there is the well established, democratic, military powerful, and
economically prospering state of Israel, which is the antithesis of this
stereotype. The "new Jew" that tries not to suffer, and that, above all, can
and wants to defend himself, immediately loses all his charm in the eyes of
the Left.
But it was different before the map of Middle East was painted in red by the
Cold War and Israel was declared the long hand of American Imperialism. The
rising new born Israel, until the 1967 war, was built on an ideology that
allowed and even obliged the left to be proud of the Jews and the Jews to be
proud of the Left, even when Israelis were fighting and winning hard wars.
The Jews that survived Nazi-fascist persecution, the persecution of the
Right, created a socialist state inspired by the values of the Left, work
and collectivism, and by doing so, again sanctified the Left as the shelter
of the victims.
In exchange for this, the Jews were granted legitimization. But in fact, the
Jews were enormously important for the Left. The people of Israel were a
living accusation of the anti-Semitism that marked the Holocaust, the
Nazi-Fascist anti-Semitism; and now they were building collective farms and
an omnipotent trade union! To some degree, this absolved Stalinist
anti-Semitism, or gave it a much smaller importance than it really had. The
Jews became indispensable for the left: look at the passionate and
paternalistic tone of the Bologna professors, as they seem to plead: "Come
back, our dear Jews. Be ours again. Let us curse Israel together and than
take a trip together to the Holocaust memorials".
But the contradiction has become even ontologically unbearable: How can you
cry with the survivors for Jews killed by Nazis when the living Jews are
accused to be Nazi themselves? Somebody on a European radio program said
that after the diffusion of the images of Muhammed al Dura, Europe could
finally forget the famous picture of the boy in the Warsaw ghetto with his
hands raised. The meaning of this statement, often repeated in other forms,
is obliteration of the Holocaust through the overlapping of Israel and
Nazism, namely racism, genocide, ruthless elimination of civilians, women
and children, an utterly unwarranted eruption of cruelty and the most brutal
instincts. It means pretending to believe blindly, without investigation,
the Palestinian version of a highly disputed episode and of many, many
others; it means taking for granted the "atrocities" that the Palestinian
spokespersons always talk about, and ignoring every proof or fact that
doesn't serve this position.
Well, people can, and always did, take for granted the prejudices about
Jews; everyone is free to think whatever he wants. But we, the Jews, must
reserve our moral right to hold such people accountable: in our eyes, they
will plainly be anti-Semites. We will have to say to them: when you lie or
use prejudices and stereotypes about Israel and the Jews, you are an
anti-Semite, and I'll fight you.
We must not be intimidated by the professors who tell us in their letter:
"We have helped you poor Jews lacking everything, a non- existent nation, in
the Diaspora and in Israel, to keep you alive. Without us you are nothing.
And therefore be careful: if you continue with your treachery we'll
annihilate you. You don't exist if you don't know your place, and your place
is nowhere." They'll say that it is a legitimate criticism about the State
of Israel: the truth is that a big part of these criticisms are simply lies,
just as when Suha Arafat claimed that Israel poisoned Palestinian waters, or
when Arafat claimed that Israel use depleted uranium against the Palestinian
people, and that Israeli woman soldiers show up naked in front of the
Palestinian warriors to confuse them. It's just the same as when you say
that the Israeli Army purposely shoots children or journalists.
As a journalist, I must mention the significant contribution of the mass
media to this new anti-Semitism. Since the beginning of the Intifada,
freedom fighter journalists, grown in the Guevara and Fedayeen campus, have
given the Israeli-Palestinian conflict one of the most biased coverage in
the history of journalism. Here are the main problems that lead to distorted
reporting of the Intifada:
1) Lack of historic depth in attributing responsibility for its outbreak. In
other words, failure to repeat the story of the Israeli offer of a
Palestinian state and of Arafat's refusal which, in essence, is a refusal to
accept Israel as a Jewish state, and which continues the almost 70 year old
Arab rejection of partition of the land of Israel between Arabs and Jews as
recommended by the British in 1936, decided by the UN in 1947 and always
accepted by the Jewish representatives.
2) Failure, right from the very first clashes at the check points, to assign
responsibility for the first deaths to the fact that, unlike in the first
Intifada, in the second the IDF faced armed fighters hiding in the midst of
the unarmed crowd.
3) Failure to recognize the enormous influence of the cultural pressure on
the Palestinians from the systematic education in Palestinian schools and
mass media, vilifying Jews and Israelis and idealizing terrorist acts of
murder and mayhem.
4) Describing the death of Palestinian children without identifying the
circumstances in which they occurred. The equating of civilian losses of
Israelis with those of the Palestinian, as if terrorism and war against it
were the same thing, and as if intentional killing was the same as a
deplored consequence of a difficult and new type fight.
5) Using Palestinian sources to certify events, as if Palestinian sources
were the most reliable. I am thinking of Jenin, of the unconfirmed reports
that passed to printed pages or TV screens as absolute truth. In contrast,
Israeli sources, which are very often reliable, are seen as subservient,
prejudiced and unworthy of attention, despite the country's aggressive free
and open journalism, and the equally determined criticism of government
policies by opposition parties, conscience objectors, commentators and
journalists.
6) Manipulation of the order in which the news are given and of the news
itself. The headlines give the number of Palestinians killed or wounded in
most articles, at least in Europe, before describing the gunfights and their
causes, and linger on the age and family stories of the terrorists. The
purposes of the IDF actions, such as capturing terrorists, destroying arms
factories or hiding places and bases for attacks against Israel, are rarely
mentioned. On the contrary, Israel's operations are often described as
completely uncalled for, bizarre, wicked and useless.
7) Manipulation of language, taking advantage of the great confusion about
the definition of "terrorism" and "terrorist". This too is an old issue,
connected to the concept of freedom fighter, so dear to my generation.
A few days ago, at a checkpoint, I was doing some interviews. It soon became
clear to me that the use of the word "terrorist" sounded to each one of my
Palestinian interlocutors a capital political and semantic sin. The press
has learned this very well: the occupation is the cause of everything,
terrorism is called resistance and does not exist per se. Terrorists who
kill women and children are called militants, or fighters. An act of
terrorism is often "a fire clash", even when only babies and old men are
shot inside their cars on a highway. It is also interesting to note that a
young shahid is a cause of deep pride for the Palestinian struggle, but if
you ask how a child of twelve can be sent to die and why young children are
indoctrinated to do such acts, the answer is: "come on, a child can't be a
terrorist. How can you call a 12 year old boy a terrorist?"
This is perhaps the most crucial point: Given the fact that there is a
ferocious debate on the definition of terrorism, it is widely accepted that
terrorism is a way of fighting. This is a semantic and even substantial gift
of the new anti-Semitism, where it is natural for a Jew to be dead. Namely,
intentionally targeting civilians to cause fear and disrupt the morale of
Israel is not a moral sin. It doesn't raise world indignation, and if it
does, it hides in its folds some or much sympathy for the terrorist
aggressor. What the European press fails to or doesn't want to understand is
that Terror is a condemnable and forbidden way of fighting, regardless of
the specific political goal it tries to achieve.
8) The media have promoted the extravagant concept that the settlers,
including women and children are not real human beings.
They present settlers as pawns in a dangerous game they choose to play.
Their deaths are almost natural and logical events. In a way, they asked for
it.
On the other hand, when a Hamas commander is killed, even though, he
obviously "asked for it", an ethical, philosophical debate arises, on the
perfidy of extra-judicial death sentences.
This would certainly be a licit debate, were it not for the grotesque double
standard on which worldwide press bases it.
9) Not to go overlooked is that censorship and corruption within the PA and
the physical elimination of its political enemies is hardly ever covered.
The points listed above all point in one direction: Durban.
Here, the human rights movements that we will later find on the streets
demonstrating against the war in Iraq chose Israel as their primary target
and enemy. This choice constitutes a great success for Palestinian
propaganda, but also a very serious signal of weakness from the movements
themselves. The ideologically and politically cornered Left chose to adopt
as universal a very controversial and sectorial struggle, marked heavily by
terrorism. A Left incapable of confronting the capitalist globalization
system, decided to appoint the state of Israel as its main target. In a
word, the Left decided to make Israel pay for what they think America should
pay. Isn't this real cowardice?
In addition , there is the issue of how the UN and its outrageous policy has
helped this process, and how Europe has coddled it because of its ancient
sense of guilt towards Israel and its hate for the US, Israel's friend and
ally. This matter alone deserves an entire book.
Denouncing this new human rights anti-Semitism is psychologically a terribly
arduous task for Israel and for Diaspora Jews.
It is even more difficult because between the Jews and the Left there is a
divorce that the latter does not want. The Left wants to continue being
considered the paladin of good Jews. It pretends to continue mourning the
Jews killed in the Holocaust, crying together with the Jews shoulder to
shoulder. And it does so because this gives it the moral authorization to go
a second later and speak of the "atrocities" of Israel. After writing about
the "atrocities" of Israel, the good European leftist will talk to you with
vivacity about the fascinating shtetl culture and the sweetness of Moroccan
Jewish dishes.
Until we break the silence, we, the Jews, give them the authorization to
deny us the right to a nation of our own, and to defense of its people from
unprecedented anti-Semitism.
Just as it curses Israel, the Left of human rights, of pacifism, of protest
against death penalty or war or racial and gender discrimination, also
praises suicide terrorists and the caricatures of Sharon worthy of Der
Sturmer. And none of its people will ever sit as a human shield in an
Israeli coffee house or in a Jerusalem bus.
Still, this new anti-Semitism has a peculiar characteristic: It allows
conversion. This kind of anti-Semitism, unlike Nazi anti-Semitism, is more
like the older theological anti-Semitism, for it gives the Jews the option
to renounce the devil (Israel, or sometimes Sharon). Whoever declares a
sense of revulsion towards Israel's conduct, is allowed to set foot again in
the civil society, the one of common sense, civilized conversation, groups
of good people full of good will that fight for human rights.
If we want to obtain something, if we decide that it is about time to fight,
we must renounce "liberal" imposters. We have to know how to say that the
free press is a failure when it lies, and that it does lie. We have to say
that all human rights are violated when a people is denied the right of self
defense, and that right is denied of Israel. Human rights are also violated
when a nation is subjected to systematic defamation and made a legitimate
target for terrorists. We have to stop what we have accepted since the day
the State was born, namely, that Israel be viewed as a different state in
the international community.
Another very important point is that of all the parameters of anti-Semitism
now used, one is the confusion between "Israeli" and "Jew". Supposedly, it
is wrong to insinuate that the Jews act in the interests of the state of
Israel and not their own state. The more a country confuses the two terms,
the more anti-Semitic it is considered, and therefore one would imagine that
the Jews combat this prejudice.
This is a serious conceptual error. Since the state of Israel, and along
with it Jews, have been made the objects of the worst kind of prejudice,
Jews everywhere should consider their being identified with Israel a virtue
and honor.
They should assert that identification with pride.
If Israel is, and it is indeed, the focal point of anti-Semitic attacks, our
attention must be concentrated there. We must measure the moral character of
the person we are speaking to on that basis: if you lie about Israel, if you
cover it with bias, you are an anti-Semite. If you're prejudiced against
Israel, then, you're against the Jews.
This doesn't mean criticizing Israel and its policies is forbidden. However,
very little of what we hear about Israel has to do with lucid criticism.
Prejudice and bias, not Sharon's personality is the major reason for
criticism. The self-defined critics are not the pious interlocutors for the
Jews that they pretend to be. So we must tell them: from now on you cannot
use the human rights passport for free; you cannot use false stereotypes.
You must demonstrate what you assert: that the army ruthlessly storms poor
Arab villages that have nothing to do with terrorism; that it shoots
children on purpose; that it kills journalists with pleasure. You cannot?
You called Jenin a slaughter? Then you are an anti-Semite, just like the old
anti-Semites you pretend to hate. You have to convince me that you are not
an anti-Semite, now that we know that you do not condemn terrorism, that you
have never said a word against the contemporary caricatures of hooked-nosed
Jews with a bag of dollars in one hand and a machine gun in the other.
Israel is in shock over the new anti-Semitism. All the theories that claimed
classic anti-Semitism would abate with the creation of the state of Israel
and that, in the long run, it would be extinguished have been destroyed.
Furthermore, Israel has actually become the sum of all the evil, the proof
that the protocols and the blood libels were right. The Palestinians are
turned into Jesus, crucified; the war in Iraq or in Afghanistan waged by the
US is part of the Jewish plan of domination. Jews all over the world are
threatened, beaten, even killed to pay the price of Israel's existence.
Israel and the Jews have today only one certainty: now that Jews have their
own means of defense, a new Holocaust is no longer possible. Still we have
to pass from the idea of our possible physical elimination, to that of
possible moral elimination. The only way to face this threat is to fight
fearlessly, on our own terrain, using all the historic and ethical weapons
that Israel possesses. No shame, no fear and no sense of guilt.
Israel has the chance to prove itself for what it really is: the outpost of
the fight against terrorism and the defense of democracy. That is no small
thing. But, we the Jews pose as victims and hide from this chance because
using it puts us in conflict with our ancient sponsors and their
legitimization. We have to realize that legitimization is really in our own
hands and we never used it.
The watchword of the Jews should be "Jewish pride," in the sense of pride in
our history and national identity, wherever we are.
Jewish pride means that we have to claim the unique identity of the Jewish
people and its right to exist. We must act as though it has never been
acknowledged, because today, once again, it no longer is. In defending this
identity we have to be, as Hillel Halkin says, as tough as can be and as
liberal as no one else is.
No left and no right. We won't give the Left the power to decide where we
stand. We will decide our alliances by ourselves according to the actual
position of our potential partners.
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