A note on left wing anti-Semitism from an anti-Zionist Jew

It would really help if people wouldn’t keep insisting that it doesn’t exist. It does. And unfortunately you do find it more often in those parts of the left engaged in pro-Palestinian activism. It may be true that Zionists will always accuse anti-Zionists of anti-Semitism, regardless of whether it is true or not. But it is in the interests of the anti-Zionist struggle not only to be free of anti-Semitism, but also to recognise that at times there is anti-Semitism in pro-Palestinian movements. Only then can we try to do something about it instead of just denying it.

More broadly part of the problem is that a section of the left seems to think that all opposition to the current state of things, or to capitalism, is equally radical: this thought puts critical theories of society and conspiracy theories of society on equal footing. It is up to the left to recognise that the most racist Jewish conspiracy theories were also nominally anti-capitalist (even if they tended towards a critique of circulation rather than of capitalist production, or suggested that profit was founded on a swindle as opposed to on brutal exploitation, or if they theorised an enlarged image of the state to set themselves up against instead of the real enormity of private property, or if they saw the problem as a malignancy of who runs the world as opposed to the malignancy of how it is run.) For this reason we cannot gather all “anti-Capitalists” under our banner, but have to reject those whose theories tend to end in racism and conspiracy theory; we need to criticise ourselves to root out these tendencies in our own thinking.

On top of this, here are a couple of things that I really don’t want to hear again: “I can’t be anti-Semitic because Arabs are Semites too!” - unfortunately the word “anti-Semitic” refers as little to the oppression of non-Jewish Arabs as the word “television” refers to looking into the distance. This argument is akin to saying “I didn’t act in a racist way because I don’t believe in a theory of races.” This is not just to say that those interested in etymology ought also to care about philology (they would quickly discover that since the first uses of the term anti-Semitism, a translation of the German Antisemitismus, from the 1870s or there about, has always referred to an anti-Jewish sentiment); but also that anti-racism is an important weapon in the opposition of Zionism, and this isn’t something to be frivolous about. And nor, when it is pointed out to you that you are being racist, is it an invitation for you to try to use your linguistic cunning to get out of it.

I also don’t really want to see more images of octopuses and vampire squids, I don’t want to see cartoons of guys with long noses and clawed hands. And I think people ought to be more careful about what they imply about the relationships between Zionism, financial capital, and the media. In particular I think the word “lobby” needs to be used rather more judiciously than it is at present. This is not to say that there isn’t an enormous Zionist effort to present the case for Israel strongly in the Western media, nor is it to deny that this presentation rests on the eclipse not only of real present Palestinian suffering but also historic ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. But it is to say that given the history of anti-Semitism and the specificity of forms it has taken, care needs to be taken about how you say these things. If in doubt ask one of your anti-Zionist Jewish friends. We’re always happy to help with this sort of thing.

One final thing: it has taken a long and strenuous effort on the part of a lot of anti-Zionist Jews to force people to make the distinction between Jews and Zionists. The purpose of this was not so that anti-Zionists could simply go through a process of replacing all references to “Jews” with references to “Zionists”. Racism is not straightforwardly in the choice of words, but in the structure of the thought itself. And if your thinking is anti-Semitic but just replaces one word with another, this isn’t really helping solve this problem (and by the way, we still notice.)