FREE PORK: RACISM & OUR VIEWS ON ISRAEL

Is it a stretch to believe that many of us look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and, knowing little to nothing about Palestinians, make our judgments based on what we think we know about Jews?

Sure, I guess, if you say so.

Q: What’s a Jewish dilemma?

A: Free pork.

This was a joke my nephew brought home from elementary school.

The joke is brilliant in its power to convey a lot in two words. Observant Jewish people are so dedicated to the moral law set out thousands of years ago that they abstain from something most of us view as mundane: eating pork. In order to get the joke, the kid had to understand that. But the laugh line comes from the underlying assumption required to “get it”: There is one thing that can compete with hundreds of generations of adherence to tradition: Greed. Something for nothing. Stinginess.

Maybe we shouldn’t put too much stock in the power of a joke, but this is one way cultural biases are transmitted. That kid may have never met a Jew but the joke ensured that, when he did, he would be equipped with a little forewarning about the type of person he was encountering.

This is key to understanding the endless argument over whether (or how) antisemitism and anti-Zionism intersect. When pro-Israel voices suggest bigotry is at play, anti-Israel people respond with outrage, insisting they don’t hate Jews.

That’s not the point. This isn’t (mostly) about overtly antisemitic people or ideas permeating the anti-Israel (or “pro-Palestinian”) movement. This is about unconscious ideas we do not even know we carry influencing how we view a complex conflict about which we may know very little — except that it involves the Jews and … someone else.

The historian Walter Laqueur summed up the European antisemitic worldview:

Jews were said to be greedy, arrogant, and aggressive; they had to push themselves always to the top of the line; dignity, modesty, and altruism were qualities alien to them. They were by nature dishonest and disloyal. They were cold rationalists, incapable of deeper feeling; true spiritual life, the realm of the soul, was outside their ken. They took care of each other but remained always critical or hostile to non-Jews. They were overly ambitious and competitive, quite incapable of team spirit or effort, always devious, never straightforward.[i]

This was not a left or a right worldview. It was, according to Laqueur, a European worldview. It was prevalent for generations, if not centuries, reinforced through religion, popular culture, folklore, theatre (including Shakespeare) and every aspect of life. To imagine that we, in this generation, have decisively overcome this pervasive stereotyping gives us a great deal of credit.

I have found in business settings, social settings, sitting next to people on planes settings, that a lot of people still maintain a lot of presumed-dead preconceptions about Jews. Can’t compete with them. Fight you for a nickel. Only help their kind. Crafty.

Is it such a stretch to believe that many of us look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and, knowing little to nothing about Palestinians, make our judgments on the issue based on what we think we know about Jews? We may not know anything, really, about Palestinians, but given the choice in a conflict between Jews and someone else, we side with someone else. 

This is what we mean when we raise the spectre of antisemitism as a role in anti-Zionism: When Israel is depicted in ways that reflect the negative characteristics we might (even unconsciously) associate with Jews, we are likely to accept the argument that accompanies it.

When Israelis build homes on lands occupied in 1967, do we investigate the historical, legal, economic, political, theological or other justifications for this? Or do we simply accept that this comports with what we think we already know about grasping Jews?

When we insist, as the Palestinian narrative does, that the Palestinians couldn’t have expected a fair deal in negotiations with Israel, is that because there is any evidence to support this, or is it because we have, however deep in our psyches, a voice that says nobody wins when haggling with those people?

Is our distorted response to Palestinian violence — a licentiousness we grant to violence from no other group — possibly a byproduct of a bias that says maybe terrorism is sort of a legitimate alternative to negotiation in this case because no one can beat the Jews at their own game?

When the Palestinian movement routinely advances a deceptive tableau vivant of Israelis living lives of luxury at the expense of exploited Palestinians, do we consider how generations of rampant corruption, wasted opportunities and deliberate failure perpetrated by Palestinian and Arab leaders contributed to this situation? Or do we satisfy ourselves that this dovetails with ideas we harbor that Jewish people care for their own at the expense of others?

Depicting Israel as a conniving, greedy entity bent on stealing Arab land is a core theme of the Palestinian movement. It owes much to traditional antisemitic ideas of Jewish avarice. The defence that, well, that’s what Israel is actually doing is both antisemitic and ahistoric.

No country has ever handed over more land in peacetime than Israel has. Israel has given away (to Egypt, in the 1979 Camp David Accords; to Palestinians, in the 2005 unilateral withdrawal from Gaza) proportionately more landmass during times of peace than any country on earth. In the Oslo Peace Process, Israel offered to give away the West Bank for an independent Palestine — but were rebuffed. (What part of Yes don’t they understand?) Israel’s actions are among the most generous diplomatic steps in human history and repeated proof of their determination to compromise for peace.

Subscribing to the narrative of a greedy Israel is not just factually wrong, it is de facto antisemitic. It endures, despite all the evidence of Israel offering (and giving) land for peace, because it dovetails with what we think we know about Jews.

It is natural that a movement influenced by conscious or unconscious biases of Jewish greed would adopt as a first resort strategies like economic boycotts and divestment.

The strategy of punishing Israel through denormalization and BDS has kept the entire region in backwardness and punished Palestinians far more than it has Israelis. In practical terms, it is a disastrously failed approach. The Israeli economy hums along, the healthiest in the region by far. Ghettoizing Palestinians from the Israeli economic miracle, which is what denormalization and BDS do, leads to misery for Palestinians while having practically no tangible impact on Israel. So why do we do it?

Improving the situation of actual Palestinians is not a priority of the “pro-Palestinian” movement, we know. But in this case there is something more. Using boycotts and other economic weapons against Israel exposes another bias about Jews that is at the core of the narrative. If we want to punish the Zionists, we need to kick them where it hurts: In the wallet. Why? Because that’s the only thing they understand.

The association of Jews with money that is one of the tenets of antisemitism is also at the heart of anti-Zionism. It plays out all the time online, for example, where pro-Israel voices are accused of being in pay of the Israeli government. Enter a Twitter or Facebook debate, defend Israel and see how long it takes before someone accuses you of being a paid collaborator. Accusing Israel’s supporters of being paid is a natch because, for these interlocutors, Jews = money.

When U.S. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar wanted to make a case about the U.S.-Israeli relationship, look where she went: “It’s all about the Benjamins baby,” she said. There is a legitimate discussion to be had about the role of PAC money and other influences in American politics, but she went straight for the stereotype. As a Canadian, I was confused by her comment until I was reminded that Ben Franklin is on the U.S. $100 bill. Omar later defended herself, saying she had no idea there were stereotypes about Jews and money. Credulous observers might have been able to convince themselves of that, if it hadn’t been for something that happened a little later. Omar’s campaign criticized money raised from outside her home state of Minnesota by her primary challenger, which is a legitimate case for a politician to make. Except all the people mentioned by name were Jews.

Just as the mantra “anti-Zionism is not antisemitism” betrays bigotry that assumes Jewish people would lie about experiencing discrimination, consider what the “pinkwashing” libel says about our perception of Israelis.

Pinkwashing is a term invented to allege that the legal and comparative social equality enjoyed in Israel by LGBTQ+ people is actually a big ruse to turn gullible Western queers and our allies into Zionists.

Legal equality for gays and lesbians in Israel evolved as it has in other democracies, slowly, through determined activism and the inevitable arc of justice. To suggest that Israel effected gay rights to convince the world that it is something it’s not, or to distract outside observers from the oppression of Palestinians, is on par with suggesting that Canada legalized marriage equality to distract the world from the fact that many of our First Nations peoples living on reserves are without clean water or that the United States legalized equal marriage to distract from Black men being shot in the streets. It’s utterly ridiculous.

According to the pinkwashing narrative, the Israeli body politic made a decision to grant equality not out of any concern for LGBTQ+ people, but in a craven effort to get away with some master plan to oppress Palestinians.

“Pinkwashing” is an allegation that is sustainable only in an environment festering with the most extreme preexisting ideas of Jewish deviousness. Only through this bigoted lens could gay people possibly look at the situation in the region and declare Israel our enemy and Palestinians (their governments and, yes, their people, who according to opinion polls are among the most homophobic on earth) our ideological allies. On this, as on so much else, we betray not only the people with whom we claim solidarity, but our very values themselves.

When we review even just these few parallels between traditional biases about Jews and the manner in which Israel is portrayed in the progressive narrative, we begin to see how subconscious preconceptions play in this discussion.

Israel as a country in the world community is treated, often and in many ways, the way Jews through history have been treated.

Perhaps the nub of the problem is that most people involved in the Palestinian movement are ignorant of the sweeping history of antisemitism and so are innocently unaware of how our statements, imagery and choice of language dovetail with that history. 

That would be acceptable, because these are teachable moments. Among people who claim to subscribe to progressive values, the proper response in this situation would be to inquire and learn about this intersection. 

Instead, the response overwhelmingly is to react in the least progressive manner imaginable: to defensively insist that we are entirely innocent, that the motives of the other are suspect and we have nothing to learn or improve upon. This is the message we send every time we utter the retrograde slogan “Anti-Zionism is not antisemitism.”

One activist, who to his credit does not deny the existence of antisemitism, nevertheless gets caught in the weeds of his own dogma: “It is likely that there are individuals who use left-wing opposition to Israel as a cover for their antisemitism. The primary reason to be ‘against Zionism,’ though, is honestly held, long-standing, anti-racist and anti-imperialist conviction.”

Bypassing the Orwellian idiocy that to be “anti-Zionist” is in any way collateral with being anti-racist or anti-imperialist, this rationalization ignores the fact that the anti-Zionist movement attracts antisemites not by coincidence, but because it is founded on premises that are directly conducive to attracting antisemites.

He makes the case that the (apparently obvious) legitimacy of being “against Zionism” obviates the need to deal with the antisemites in the ranks. 

This is a contention that progressive people would never accept from the right — that the presence of a handful of bigots is OK because a whole bunch more are not bigots — and it should raise more questions than it has about our commitment to fight prejudice wherever it appears.

When this activist contends that the overwhelming presence of good people counteracts the presence of a small number of bad people, he directly inverts morality: the presence of evil ideas and bad people undermines and negates the good people and positive intents, not the other way around. When a Steve King or a David Duke finds success in the U.S. Republican party, we demand that any and every Republican who expects to be considered legitimate and mainstream denounce them. Yet, on our side, no such demands. Somehow, perhaps because “our” motives are pure while “theirs” are suspect, we can get away with an unknown number of outright bigots, advocates of violence, apologists for terrorism and assorted yahoos in our ranks because, simply, some of us are not violent, racist yahoos.

What is alarming here is not so much that the movement contains a number of antisemites. It’s that the (presumed) majority of people who may not harbor anti-Jewish biases seem almost completely unbothered that they are marching with people who do.

It is not nearly enough to acknowledge the presence of ill-intentioned people in our movement while denying their influence. Ideas and assumptions that are borne of antisemitism are the foundational approaches we take toward Israel. We employ their language, we use their tactics and we sow the seeds of anti-Zionism in a field that antisemitism has ploughed. While unquestionably the bulk of the anti-Zionist movement would view itself as unblemished by base antisemitism, this is not the same as saying the movement is uninfluenced by these preconceptions. That our movement could sustain an unknown proportion of antisemites yet remain unscathed by their ideas runs counter to our cherished ideal that empowered individuals can make a difference in the world.

If we believe what we say we believe, we are not free to deny the presence of these forces. Is not right for us to acknowledge the presence of antisemites in our movement but pretend they have no influence. We either seek out and purge people who are motivated by values that are based on anti-Jewish prejudices, or we stop calling ourselves progressive. We would demand — we have demanded — more from the movements of the right.

Moreover, the fact that antisemitism doesn’t look like we think it looks — it’s rarely as blatant as someone yelling “We hate Jews!” — does not excuse us for ignoring it.

We have an obligation to educate ourselves on how antisemitism differs from other prejudices. This is a moral imperative for all progressives, but it is an existential requirement if our leading human rights and anti-discrimination organizations want to maintain any legitimacy. Denial, dismissal, ridicule and accusations of “false claims” and “smears” of antisemitism are the norm today. So we have a long road ahead of us.

If we do not understand how antisemitism works and what it looks like in its many varied forms — not just the obvious far-right version we prefer to focus on because it absolves us of responsibility — we will not overcome it.

This is not, ultimately, about who is right or wrong in Israel and Palestine. It is about who is right or wrong in our own movements right here at home. 

We may chant “By any means necessary,” but if those means include standing on the shoulders of bigots, our causes and our self-righteousness are dirt.

No matter what happens, we are diminished by racism in our movements. We, the people who claim to be anti-racist, are damaged by our actions. Our cause is disgraced and weakened. 

Everything we claim to advance is debased.

[i] The Changing Face of Antisemitism: From ancient times to the present day. By Walter Laqueur. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Page 158