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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
"I will be the one to decide what is Zionism and what is anti-Semitism," one militant wrote. Responded another: "I have to say that this [individual's previous] posting is a tiresome hedge that can be read as easily as endorsing Hamas' call to 'Drive the Jews into the sea' as demanding withdrawal from the occupied territories." At a meeting of the Berlin chapter of the War and Globalization committee in early April, a report on the Palestinian situation and the Israeli "defensive" wall by a member of Linksruck ("Shift to the Left," the German branch of the Trotskyist, revolutionary left) clearly revealed deep disgust at Israeli extrajudicial killings along with a tendency to toss about Nazi allusions while blaming Israel for the mess. Most voices urged common action with Israeli and Palestinian peace groups, the official ATTAC position, but others were less temperate. "It is not anti-Semitic to note the character of the Israeli state as a racist colonial state, like South Africa under Piet Botha," one Linksruck member said. "Our problem is to assert that, in this form, this state can no longer stand -- so long as it has this racist, colonial character, it must be destroyed."
Such views are what alarm Foreign Minister Fischer and other prominent Greens and Socialists. The Holocaust left Germany with a special responsibility for and to Israel, and this can never be forgotten, Fischer has repeatedly said. Ralf Fücks, a former Green parliamentarian who now runs the Heinrich-Böll Foundation, knows whereof he speaks. Like Fischer, he said, "I was a young left radical militant and had a blind solidarity with the oppressed Palestinians. We also saw the Palestinians as the victims of the original victims [the Jews]." What worries Fücks, he said, is "not just Israel being accused of oppressive acts, but the de-legitimization of Israel as a Jewish state."
A furor erupted at the European Social Forum in Paris last fall when ATTAC France allowed Tariq Ramadan, an Islamic theologian, to participate after Ramadan had denounced a string of French intellectuals (not all of whom were Jewish) of purportedly abandoning "universalist ideals" in supporting the first Gulf War, allegedly out of solidarity for Israel. Ramadan was in turn denounced for putting this "Jewish blacklist" on the Internet. Filippetti, the Green city council member, was vilified by some in her own party when she proposed wearing both the Israeli and the Palestinian flags at a Paris demonstration, saying she was shocked by the rabid anti-Israeli slant of previous marches.
The heart of the problem lies in identifying all Jews with the policies of the current Israeli government, a phenomenon some leftists claim Israel and its supporters foster by denouncing harsh criticism as anti-Semitic. Says Klug, "Many Jewish community leaders, religious and secular, publicly reinforce this identification with the state." Yet European Jewry finds itself in a delicate position. As Salomon Korn, vice president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, noted in a recent interview in the weekly Der Spiegel, to many German Jews, Israel is still the last refuge, the one safe place they could flee to if they had to again. It is therefore hardly surprising, says Julius Schoeps, a noted German Jewish historian who sits on the board of the Berlin Jewish Community, that criticism of Israel by European Jews is muted. It should also be noted, however, that the "new anti-Semitism" is predominantly a theory espoused by American, not European, Jewish leaders.
"The mantra of the new anti-Semitism is a way for us to insulate ourselves from the pain caused by that hostility to Israel which has increased so dramatically in the media and worldwide," observed prominent British Jewish leader Antony Lerman at the January forum in Berlin. "The motive of 'Better safe than sorry' is understandable, but does it help? I think not -- it simply alienates our allies and fails to confront a very serious issue."
Johannes Rau, Germany's outgoing president, opened the OSCE conference by calling upon all Europeans to "exercise special care" in criticizing Israel, which since its founding has lived "in a state of existential siege." But at the same time, he said, "this does not give us the right to discredit any criticism of an Israeli government. I know many friends of Israel who are deeply concerned about the situation, many Israelis who are sharply critical of their government, and not just in the opposition."
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell called upon member nations to "send the clear message to extremists of the political right and the political left alike that all those who use hate as a rallying cry dishonor themselves and dishonor their cause in the process." The conference's closing "Berlin Declaration" tried to tread a middle path, condemning all forms of anti-Semitism and declaring "unambiguously that international developments or political issues, including those in Israel or elsewhere in the Middle East, never justify" it.
Certainly, the left must do more, and forcefully, to condemn anti-Jewish speech and violence within its ranks when it occurs. "We cannot just say, we have a new anti-Semitism and it's Muslims and it excludes us -- we have to accept that we too are involved," says Marie-Luise Beck, the Green German minister for social integration. But she and many others point out that radical Islamic bigotry, combined with resilient ultra-nationalism, poses the greatest direct threat to Jews in Europe today. "Anti-Semitism is prevalent not just in the extreme right wing," says German journalist Eberhard Seidel, who runs tolerance programs for immigrant youth in Berlin schools. "Among Muslim young people it is also a part of everyday life."
Whether it lies in an Egyptian production of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" beamed by satellite into European living rooms, the suffering of ordinary Palestinians, incendiary prayers by radical Muslim clerics, the 20 percent of French voters who support xenophobic politicians like Jean-Marie Le Pen, or the unlikely prospect of those two disaffected groups joining, "There is danger ahead," says Schoeps.
Until very recently, these problems had not been named or addressed. But the rash of high-level conferences, and even the alarm bells pulled by American Jews, have made fighting anti-Semitism in Europe a priority and have been an enormous relief, said Weil, to French and Continental Jews. Still, in the end, the Israeli-Palestinian quagmire is the source of much hatred of Jews, and most Europeans believe it will not fade so long as that conflict goes unresolved.
