INVENTING “ANTI-PALESTINIAN RACISM”

How dangerous wordplay and political pranks diminish the fight against real racism.

What “pro-Palestinians” think “silencing” looks like.

“Anti-Palestinian racism” is a thing now. Or at least there are a bunch of activists who want us to think so.

This fresh kookiness is being taken seriously by the Toronto District School Board, and is wasting the time of the House of Commons justice committee hearings on Islamophobia. I’m sure we’ll be hearing tons more about “APR” in future.

But it’s a joke. A prank, really, by activists engaging in a dangerous form of wordplay and political posturing. In the process of this gamesmanship, “pro-Palestinian” activists undermine the fight against real racism.

The strategy at play here is both more and less complex than it seems. Let me explain.

We now generally accept that race is a social construct, not a biological reality. Which is good. Biological ideas of race have been used for everything from minor indignities to genocide.

However, we cannot deny the impacts of perceptions around race — the ways people are treated or experience the world because of how they are perceived by others. In other words, race may not be real but the impacts of perceptions around race absolutely are.

So far, so good.

Apparently, though, some people think they can use this changed conception to apply the definition of race to include whatever they want. And that diminishes the serious discussions we are still having — and still need to have — about racism.

To be totally clear, Palestinians absolutely experience racism. They experience anti-Arab racism, which projects assumptions onto them and influences our perceptions of Palestinians.

Those Palestinians who are Muslim (and, I suppose, even those who are Christian or hold other identities, but are assumed to be Muslim) experiences Islamophobia.

These are absolutely real and they play out in dramatic ways. That is a serious thing and we need to address it. Making up pretend racisms like “anti-Palestinian racism” harms the legitimate challenges Palestinians face and diminishes the larger fight against racisms of all kinds.

The invention of “anti-Palestinian racism” is a political maneuver that is intended as a cruel joke, a ploy that says, if Jews can claim to be victims of racism, so can Palestinians. It is among the least progressive approaches a self-declared progressive person could take on these issues. (In a forthcoming post, I’ll address a common misconception about the definition of “Jewishness,” which is often used to undermine claims of anti-Jewish racism based on the idea that Jews are not a race, and to undermine Israel’s right to exist by mischaracterizing Jews as “merely” a religious group. I will also explain why I refer to antisemitism as a form of racism, which some people contest.)

Interestingly, “APR” was invented by some of the same people who contest the definition of antisemitism. That’s not a coincidence. The hypocrisy of “APR” is not the issue here. In fact, it’s not hypocrisy, exactly, because the proponents of the idea of “APR” don’t seriously believe it exists.

For years, “pro-Palestinian” activists have claimed that “false claims” of antisemitism are a tool to “silence” criticism of Israel. They assert (if not always, usually, and if not explicitly, then implicitly) that antisemitism is fake. (And, if they do acknowledge it as real, they usually do so like it’s a tollbooth they need to toss a few coins at so they can continue on their path.)

And yet they invent “anti-Palestinian racism” precisely so that they can perform the political ploy they accuse “Zionists” of using.

Put plainly, the “APR” strategy is this: Zionists invent false claims of antisemitism to silence criticism of Israel. We’ll invent some false claims of our own and see how they like it.

Except antisemitism is real. “APR” is not.

To treat the serious issue of antisemitism with this level of recklessness is obviously despicable. But it is what we have come to expect.

What is new is the level of irresponsibility the invention of “APR” represents to the larger fight against racisms of all kinds. It makes a mockery of the entire concept of antiracism.

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The tactic is clear. When reasonable people make the case I just have that “anti-Palestinian racism” is bogus, a whole kabuki will commence — which is precisely the point.

How dare you, the players in this recital will indignantly proclaim. You expect us to take antisemitism seriously, but you dismiss and ridicule anti-Palestinian racism?! The hypocrisy!

Since people like me dismiss “APR” as the nonsense it is, they are now granted immunity (in their distorted worldview) to dismiss antisemitism.

But they will be hoisted on their own petard of false equivalency. Or they would be, if reason prevailed in these discussions.

Here’s why: If “anti-Palestinian racism” has a parallel, it is not with antisemitism (or any other form of racism).

It is with anti-Zionism.

Let me make this super-clear for the bigots in the back.

Anti-Zionism is a political position. Antisemitism is a form of racism.

“Pro-Palestinian” activists claim that we Zionists falsely conflate the two things — that we claim that a political position is racism. (We don’t. There is an undeniable intersection between the two. This is not a conflation.)

But “APR” does exactly that: It tries to recast a political position as a form of racism.

“Anti-Palestinian racism” tries to have it both ways. It alleges that people carry ideas about Palestinians based on a racial identity that does not exist.

What it is really trying to do is create a stigma akin to racism around criticism of the Palestinian national project — criticism that is every bit as legitimate as criticism of Israel.

Just check out the examples offered by the group that is purveying the idea of “APR” — they are constructed specifically to redefine criticism of Palestinian political approaches — including terrorism and one-sided, ahistorical narratives — as racism.

By claiming “anti-Palestinian racism,” they do precisely what they accuse Zionists of doing.

And that, of course, is exactly the point.

The purveyors of this dreamed-up new form of racism do not actually believe there is such a thing as “anti-Palestinian racism.”

It is merely a new way to dismiss the legitimacy of antisemitism in this discussion by hoisting a false flag that, by its ridiculousness, attempts to diminish the reality of anti-Jewish racism.

In the process, the perpetrators debase the antiracist movement, and the seriousness of racism. Because if everything is racism, then nothing is racism.

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All of this reminds me of one of the most spot-on quotes ever written on this subject. It is from Jean-Paul Sartre, in 1946, but has perhaps never been more relevant:

Never believe that antisemites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The antisemites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.

Exactly this.