Recent actions by the Israeli military in Gaza and Lebanon, and the responses to them, have prompted renewed fears of antisemitism among the British and other Jewish communities. Jonathan Sacks, the British chief rabbi, had already warned earlier this year of "a kind of tsunami of antisemitism." Yet some voices from within these same communities are quick to deny any link between Israeli policies and anti-Jewish feelings. Rather, current enmity towards both Jews and Israel, notably from within the Arab and Muslim worlds, is explained as a phase in Jew-hatred stretching back centuries. Melanie Phillips promotes such a theme in her book Londonistan, where she writes: "the fight against Israel is not fundamentally about land. It is about hatred of the Jews," who, she says, are viewed by Islam as "a cosmic evil." From this, it follows that the way Israel conducts itself is at most a minor factor in the hostility directed towards it.
This is certainly a convenient argument for those who have an interest in making it. But the evidence points in the opposite direction, as exemplified by the Israeli-Palestinian accords of the "Oslo years" in the mid-1990s, which sent Israel's stock to unprecedented heights, both in the Arab world and globally. In the same period, according to leading Jewish research institutions, "a general lessening of antisemitic pressure was recorded."
As for the claim of historical "Jew-hatred" in the Islamic world, its validity has been repudiated by no less an authority than veteran historian Bernard Lewis, a middle eastern scholar of impeccable pro-Israel credentials. In a presentation in 1985, he distinguished three kinds of hostility to Jews: "Opposition to Zionism, 'normal' prejudice (what has been described as 'the normal rough and tumble between peoples'), and that peculiar hatred of Jews which has its origins in the role assigned to Jews in certain Christian beliefs." Using the term "antisemitism" to refer to the third kind of hostility only, he remarked: "In this specialised sense, antisemitism did not exist in the traditional Islamic world." Although he held that Jews "were never free from discrimination," they were "only rarely subject to persecution."
Lewis identified three factors that gave rise to a more recent "European-style antisemitism in the Islamic world": the rise of the European empires, the collapse of the old political structures, and Jewish resettlement in Palestine along with the creation of Israel and subsequent Israeli-Arab wars. While arguing that antisemitism played a part from the start of the mandate period, Lewis claims "the real change began after the Sinai war of 1956 and was accelerated after the six day war of 1967."
What distinguished the 1967 war from previous battles was that it concluded with Israeli military rule over occupied territories that contained over 1m Palestinian Arabs, a number that has more than tripled since then.
The importance of the distinction highlighted by Lewis—between the centuries-old European Christian prejudice with its demonic conception of the Jew and the more recent antipathy sparked off by a bitter, contemporary political conflict—is compelling. Using the word "antisemitism" to cover antagonism to almost anything Jewish, including Israeli policies, Zionism as an ideology or even the existence of Israel, and then rationalising this modern tendency by slapping on the prefix "new" seriously risks debasing the coinage.
On the other hand, it is not as straightforward as this, for in certain circumstances the different anti-Jewish phenomena may blend into and nourish each other (what Brian Klug has termed "poisonous intercourse"). Consider the following hypothetical case. In the context of a fierce, long-standing dispute, the state of Armenia captures and occupies a chunk of neighbouring Turkish territory, builds Armenian-only settlements and highways, allows militant settlers to intimidate local inhabitants, imposes curfews and closures, erects myriad checkpoints, demolishes Turkish homes, imprisons a large segment of Turkish youth and periodically bombards Turkish-inhabited towns.
Instead of dissociating themselves from such conduct, imagine that organised diaspora Armenian communities around the world—haunted by memories of massacres of their kinfolk—elect to defend and justify it in a show of solidarity while displaying no tolerance for the dissenters—"self-hating Armenians"—in their ranks.
In these circumstances, would it be surprising if a certain anti-Armenian sentiment developed in a spread of countries, not only among those who felt an affinity with people of Turkish or Muslim origin but also among those committed to human rights and international law? Yet Armenian communities, feeling besieged and misunderstood, might put the animosity down to a historical Muslim antipathy towards Christians and a latent anti-Armenianism on the part of not just the Turkish people, but much of the rest of the world too.
For their part, the Turks and their supporters might investigate their own or Armenian scriptures to see if they could uncover historical explanations for what may seem to them like the cruel and treacherous nature of their oppressors. In this hypothetical case, the search would possibly lead nowhere. However, an equivalent investigation targeted at Jews in the case of the very non-hypothetical Arab-Israeli conflict would be certain to produce the sought-after results, if only because of the ancestral battles that once took place between the Jewish tribes of Medina and the contemporaneous followers of the Muslim prophet, Muhammad.
In general, however, Muslim scriptures are not bountiful source material for Jewish perfidy. It is not just that the messages they give out are not consistent but also that Jews are not an especial preoccupation of Muslim literature. And this is where bona fide antisemitic ideas eagerly step in. Imported into the Muslim and Arab worlds where once it was alien, the antisemitic "explanation" is now increasingly embraced by disaffected people with minds primed to be receptive to a simple it's-all-the-Jews'-fault answer to many problems. In short, what distinguishes the Jewish predicament from the hypothetical Armenian one is that in the Jewish case, a potent, ready-made ideology is lurking in the wings. Thus what starts out as a political "anti-Jewish sentiment" may, in given circumstances, metamorphose into classical antisemitism.
While helping to explain the cause of the phenomenon, none of this justifies the rise of antisemitism in the Arab and Muslim worlds, or anywhere else. It poisons the conflict and is intensely inimical to a solution. As a strategy, it is counterproductive: indeed, it was the spread of antisemitism that played the decisive role in winning so many Jews to the Zionist cause in the first place. As a tactic, it is highly divisive: confusing and alienating Jewish sympathisers of the Palestinian cause as well as many others who despise racism of all types. Moreover, stereotyping one party is liable to prompt equally pernicious and ignorant counter-stereotyping.
The charge of antisemitism against Palestinians and others who champion their cause is often made too flippantly. It lumps together real antisemites with the real victims of oppressive Israeli policies. Equally, many Arabs, Muslims and their supporters too easily dismiss the accusation of antisemitism as just a device for defending shameful Israeli policies. While this is sometimes true, the accusation is sometimes true too—just consider the Hamas covenant.
Some leading Palestinian figures have not only acknowledged the infiltration of antisemitism into Arab society but have been outspoken in their rejection of it. But the longer the broader conflict continues, the greater likelihood that antisemitism per se will indeed take root throughout the region. In that event, it would not only outlive the putative end of the Arab-Israeli conflict but enormously complicate its resolution in the first place.
These are matters of serious concern not just for Israelis and their government. They could affect the standing and safety of Jews everywhere. If only for their own protection, Jewish communities around the world have a strong interest in distancing themselves from Israel's repressive practices and annexationist tendencies. Beyond this, they are sometimes in a position to influence Israeli policies and to help bridge the gaps between the antagonistic parties. But to engage in such initiatives would entail jettisoning their more common instinct of unquestioningly following the Israeli government's cue, whatever it may be.
