Opinions of Peter Belmont
Speaking Truth to Power
| Confusing Muslim anti-Israelism with anti-Semitism |
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by Peter A. Belmont / 2011-12-04
We read in ABC News that: The US Ambassador to Belgium, Howard Gutman, finds himself under fire this morning for comments he made about the roots of some Muslim anti-Semitism, comments from which the White House distanced itself. The good (and perhaps soon to be former) ambassador failed to make a key distinction, as he emphasized a growing theme of the Obama administration—the theme that Israel has a job to do in reducing tension in the middle east. I don’t know (and really I don’t believe) that there is much (traditional) anti-Semitism (that is to say, hatred of Jews as such) among Muslims. Jews have lived among Muslims at least as long as there has been European anti-Semitism with the best-known immigration of Jews into Muslim societies occurring after the Catholic-Christian reconquest of Spain soon followed by the expulsion of Muslims (and also Jews) in 1492 (which Jews typically memorialize without reference to expulsion of the Muslims (Moors))[1] The world has a useful generalized word for racial hatred, “racism”, and a more specific word, “anti-Semitism”, traditionally used to denote hatred of Jews as such. The Nazis may have believed, for instance, that Jewish bankers were enemies who damaged Germany, but theNazis were clearly enemies of all Jews, whether or not bankers, whether or not rich, whether or not Germans—so that we can fairly call the Nazis anti-Semites. The Muslims of the Middle East, by contrast, have lived amiably with Jews for centuries within and outside the Ottoman Empire. The wave of anti-Israel feeling that engulfed the Middle East after the conquest of part of Palestine by Israel in 1947-50 was occasioned in part from a feeling that the Muslim holy places of Palestine should be in Muslim hands but chiefly—as I understand it—by anger at the dreadful treatment by Israel of the Palestinians during and after that war—cumulatively the “Nakba” or catastrophe for the Palestinians—which began with the expulsions of Palestinian Arabs (largely Muslims, but significantly Christian as well, for Palestine was always a friendly home to Muslims, Christians, Jews, and others before the in-rush of Jews which began seriously in 1930) and other indignities against Palestinians after the end of that war. Now, the educated and discriminating among Muslims (as among any other people) understand and express any anger or hatred they may feel toward Israel and Israelis as anti-Zionism, not as anti-Semitism. The uneducated may express such hatred—if they fell hatred for Israelis—as hatred of Jews because, after all, Israel persists in describing itself as “the Jewish State” and indeed calling itself the state of “the Jewish People”, and both these claims invite and almost require uneducated people who hate Israel to become confused and to imagine that they hate Jews as such. However, no-one should be accused of racism (or anti-Semitism) for wishing that Israel had never expelled most of the 80% of the Arab Palestinians who left Palestine during the 1948 war. And no-one should be accused of racism (or anti-Semitism) for wishing that Israel had not persisted in its refusal to re-admit as citizens of Israel the Arab Palestinian refugees and exiles who were expelled or who fled the war-zone of the 1948 war.[2] And, most strikingly, no-one should be accused of racism (or anti-Semitism) for wishing that Israel had not established settlements[3] and a wall in the occupied West Bank, following its capture and occupation of various Arab territories in the 1967 war—especially considering that the establishment of settlements and the building of the wall are all illegal under international law and violations, as well, of numerous UNSC resolutions. Infuriatingly, many leading Zionists have decided—in recent years—to begin to reuse the word “anti-Semitism” so that instead of using it to mean what it had long meant—hatred of Jews as such—these folks now use it, for the most part, to mean anti-Zionism. In its most extreme form, this re-use (which these Zionist leaders fervently hope will become a general re-definition of the old term anti-Semitism) would brand as “anti-Semitism” any criticism of Israel for its refusal to stop building settlements in the West Bank, even when such criticism is couched in the legalistic form of a demand that Israel comply with the prohibition within the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 of an occupier introducing its own citizens into occupied territory. Ambassador Gutman was exactly right to say that “a distinction should be made between traditional anti-Semitism, which should be condemned, and Muslim hatred for Jews, which stems from the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians” except that he should have avoided this inflamatory and incorrect formulation and said, instead: a distinction should be made between traditional anti-Semitism, or hatred of Jews as such, which should be condemned, and Muslim hatred for Israel and Jewish Israelis, which stems from the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians”. ----------- [1] In the spring of 1492, shortly after the Moors were driven out of Granada, Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain expelled all the Jews from their lands and thus, by a stroke of the pen, put an end to the largest and most distinguished Jewish settlement in Europe. The expulsion of this intelligent, cultured, and industrious class was prompted only in part by the greed of the king and the intensified nationalism of the people who had just brought the crusade against the Muslim Moors to a glorious close. The real motive was the religious zeal of the Church, the Queen, and the masses. The official reason given for driving out the Jews was that they encouraged the Marranos to persist in their Jewishness and thus would not allow them to become good Christians.See this Jewish History Sourcebook. ----------- [2] UNGA-194 (11 Dec 1948) calls upon Israel to readmit the refugees if they agree to be peaceful residents of Israel. ----------- [3] The Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank including occupied East Jerusalem now house close ot 600,000 Jewish settlers, about 10% of Israel’s population. |
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