Many defenders of Israel wrongly assume that sooner-or-later anti-Zionists will necessarily come out with something resembling old-style anti-Semitic tropes or racist language. These can include phrases such as “Zionist slaves” or accusing politicians of “doing the bidding of Zionists”. This assumption at first sight seems reasonable but is not only mistaken but dangerous.
The key word in the first sentence of this article is ‘necessarily’. It is true that anti-Zionists, particularly activists, often slip into overt racism but this is not always the case. Some of them, the more sophisticated ones, are generally careful to avoid making such slippages.
Indeed the most sophisticated anti-Zionists argue that they are vehemently opposed to anti-Semitism. They claim to be against both Israel as a state and hatred towards Jews.
That helps explain why waiting for ‘the mask to slip’, for the descent into old-style anti-Semitism, does not work. On the contrary, it makes it easier for anti-Zionists to deny they are anti-Semitic because they studiously avoid such crude language. It paradoxically has the unfortunate unintended consequence of making it easier for them to deny their anti-Semitism.
The fundamental error in the slipping mask argument is that it typically assumes that anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are identical. It fails to grasp the importance of them being different forms of anti-Semitism. That means that although they both embody virulent animosity to Jews the tropes and arguments around them can be fundamentally different.
I have previously argued that anti-Semitism is far more than mere hatred of Jews. It is the perception that Jews somehow symbolise the evils of the modern world. In what could be called classical anti-Semitism, from the 19th century onwards, these can include the idea that the Jews embody finance capital or modernity itself. In relation to Israel it takes the form of seeing it as a representative of the supposed evils of western values and western civilisation.
Therefore anti-Zionism can be fundamentally anti-Jewish without ever resorting to traditional tropes. Instead it uses concepts such as settler colonialism, apartheid and genocide to paint Israel as the embodiment of evil on earth. These terms are stripped of their original meanings to fit into the anti-Zionist narrative.
Defeating the anti-Zionist form of anti-Semitism means being able to take it on in its most sophisticated form. That necessitates showing the anti-Semitism embodied in the use of concepts such as settler colonialism and apartheid as used against Israel. Waiting for the mask to slip is counter-productive as it lets the most sophisticated and therefore dangerous anti-Semites off the hook.
PHOTO: "girl mask" by teo_ladodicivideo is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.