Light On Dark Water

“…we have to hide the fact we are Jewish.”

Where? The complete sentence is "In France we have to hide the fact we are Jewish."

In France? How can this be? I've read many times over the past five or ten years of an increase in anti-Semitism in some parts of Europe. But that Jews are "leaving France by the thousands" is startling.

One commenter offers the inevitable justification: "It isn't anti-semitism. It's anti-zionism." You can certainly be anti-Zionist and not anti-Semitic (obviously, since there are many anti-Zionist Jews). But when you blame and physically threaten all Jews everywhere precisely because they are Jews, that argument just looks like a dodge. 

Maclin Horton

33 responses to ““…we have to hide the fact we are Jewish.””

  1. Paul

    “It isn’t anti-semitism. It’s anti-zionism.”
    People say this often when protests about Israeli policy are labelled as anti-semitic, and sometimes they have a point. Thus to characterise shootings in a Jewish school in France and a Jewish museum in Belgium is idiotic. Either the commenter didn’t actually follow the story being commented on, or possibly it’s an attempt at dead-pan sarcasm about the use of the phrase in more appropriate circumstances.

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  2. Mac

    Right, that’s more or less the same thing I’m saying. I don’t think the commenter was being sarcastic, though. At any rate there are others saying the same thing at greater length and clearly not being sarcastic. If all Jews feel threatened, to the point of leaving the country, it’s not just anti-Zionism.

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  3. Marianne

    There’s an article on this at National Review that’s worth a read — Why Anti-Zionism Is Modern Anti-Semitism.
    The piece contains this quote made by an Austrian Jewish writer in the 1960s: “Anti-Zionism contains anti-Semitism like a cloud contains a storm.” That strikes me as being on the mark.

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  4. Mac

    Right on the mark.

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  5. Mac

    I was reacting to the “cloud” remark. Having read the whole piece now, I think the author goes a bit too far in identifying opposition to Israel with anti-Semitism. I think there are other things going on. I mean, setting aside the criticisms of Israel’s actions that are truly sincere criticisms, other under-the-surface things having to do with left-wing hostility to the West in general. I discussed that in a post a week or so ago:
    http://lightondarkwater.typepad.com/lodw/2014/09/israel-and-the-press.html
    One should be able to criticize Israel without being considered anti-Semitic, just as, for instance, in this country one should be able to criticize the high crime rate in the black community without being considered racist. But also, if you read the comments on a story about black crime on a mainstream news site, you quickly find plenty of evidence that the subject brings out genuine racism. I think the key in respect to Israel is whether the object of criticism becomes “the Jews” at large.

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  6. Louise

    I can understand anti-Zionism and I can’t see why it would necessarily be anti-semitic.
    But the current rise in anti-semitism is very worrying imo. And it does look like anti-semitism to me, not merely legitimate criticism of the actions of the state of Israel.

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  7. Mac

    I think it’s safe to say that when someone’s response to Israel includes chanting “death to the Jews”, they’ve crossed the line. :-/

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  8. Louise

    Yeah.
    😦

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  9. Marianne

    Mac, you made a brilliant observation in your earlier piece on Israel and the press (which you linked to above):
    But if Israel is said to have no right to exist because its borders were drawn by the colonial powers, why not also others, such as Iraq? Would there be any nation-states in the modern sense at all in that region if not for colonial impositions?
    That failure to have a general antipathy toward all states that resulted from the design of colonial powers seems key. And, for the life of me, I can’t think of any truer reason for the failure than anti-Semitism. Perhaps that’s why I’ve always found it difficult to distinguish between anti-Zionism (the exact meaning of which I’ve never been sure) and anti-Semitism.
    It also reminds me of the French ambassador to London who referred to Israel as a “shitty little country”. There’s something so ugly and deeply embedded about that, it’s frightening.

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  10. Art Deco

    obviously, since there are many anti-Zionist Jews

    There are severely orthodox Jews who regard Israel’s creation as some sort of blasphemy (because it happened absent the appearance of the Messiah and the restoration of the Temple, IIRC). Then you have characters like Tony Judt (and characters in Israel much more vitriolic). The thing is, there is a class of people who identify only with the social circles of which they are a part. Referring to Shlomo Sand or Norman Finkelstein as a ‘Jew’ is rather like referring to Scott Nearing as an ‘American’. It’s not an affiliation that matters to them (or matters only as a foil to their self-concept).

    That aside, what does it mean, brass tacks, to be an ‘anti-Zionist’? You might suggest it means endorsement of one of the two prevailing strands of opinion on the West Bank and Gaza: that Israel must be dissolved or that Israel must allow a fuzzily-defined seven digit quantum of Arabs to immigrate at their own discretion. Neither is likely to advance the material welfare of the Jewish population (or much of the Arab population either; much tougher to build something than to trash something). We have not even gotten to the ‘nuke Tel Aviv’ option which has a constituency in Iran.
    Now, you can puzzle over whether that set of objects is ‘anti-semitic’ or not, but the whole business seems like a game of rhetorical capture-the-flag.

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  11. Art Deco

    It also reminds me of the French ambassador to London who referred to Israel as a “shitty little country”
    Pretty rum from an official representing a country with an acrid population of public bathrooms.

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  12. Art Deco

    One should be able to criticize Israel without being considered anti-Semitic,
    There are people who are motivated to criticize Israel. Then there are people who have a certain amount of granular knowledge on which to base these criticisms. The intersection between these two sets is formed of people generally to be found in … Israel.

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  13. Art Deco

    In France? How can this be?
    1. Anxiety does not necessarily arise from careful risk-assessment.
    2. Otiose law enforcement. It’s been policy in France to channel Arab and Berber immigrants into public housing slums and then allow them to decay into no-go areas for ordinary Frenchmen.

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  14. Mac

    I’m familiar with the “banlieu” (however it’s spelled) problem in France, or at least aware of it, via reporting on the riots there a few years ago. My “how can this be?” is primarily about law enforcement and maybe about culture: how is it that French society tolerates this kind of thing? As for anxiety and risk-assessment: true, but I the statements in that piece like “If you have a David star over here, you can have a problem” to refer to experience more than the kind of exaggerated anxiety based on a few publicized incidents that, for instance, makes some white suburbanites in west Mobile think they’d be taking their lives in their hands if they went downtown.

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  15. Mac

    I thought I remembered the “shitty little country” remark being attributed to an Englishwoman.
    “Mac, you made a brilliant observation…” I always enjoy hearing that.
    I do think, though, that Western anti-colonialism (to use a more benign term) or cultural guilt and masochism combined with an unacknowledged sense of cultural superiority (less benign), is a factor in addition to anti-Semitism accounting for the focus on Israel. But there seems to be a point where they become in practice interchangeable, and that point is the one at which the denunciation is not directed at any specific Israeli policy but rather at “the Jews.”

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  16. Mac

    ” what does it mean, brass tacks, to be an ‘anti-Zionist’?”
    I meant it in a very loose sense–overly so, really, for brevity–to include everything from objection to the whole concept of a Jewish homeland in the places where the events of the Bible occurred, to objections to particular policies and actions of the state of Israel. Basically I mean any objection that could and would just as well be raised against any state engaged in the same action, regardless of its ethnic or religious constitution.

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  17. Art Deco

    Basically I mean any objection that could and would just as well be raised against any state engaged in the same action, regardless of its ethnic or religious constitution.
    I think in the last 20-odd years there have been four or five other instances of paramilitary groups getting under the table assistance across the border or of cross-border operations of one military against the territory of another. The only one in which the central government’s efforts at suppression seemed to interest the bien pensants even intermittently was Burmese government’s campaigns against the Karen rebellion. Burma is definitely a niche cause and the Karen rebellion just one aspect of a generally wretched situation.
    The problems Israel confronts re Gaza are nearly unique (because nearly everyone in the world has more sense than Hamas). As for the West Bank settlements, if you want them dismantled, you have to cut a deal (and there have been multiple failed attempts to hand off the West Bank and Gaza to an Arab authority over 35 years). I’ve been in fora like this wherein advocates of the Arab cause were incensed at the idea that Arab interlocutors who wanted something of value should actually have to exchange something for it. I suppose you could call that mentality ‘anti-Zionist’.

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  18. Grumpy

    I find it so upsetting I can barely talk about it. For instance, I went out to dinner with the guys at the end of last semester and one of my best friends in my department said that Benjamin Netanyahu is an evil man and he hates him.

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  19. El Miserable

    We should be allowed to criticize Israel’s government and their response to Hamas as we may criticize the US government and their response to 9/11. In both cases a response of some kind is certainly warranted, but should somehow be kept “in check” to some degree and not get to the point where those that are reacting are criticized more overtly than those who caused the incident to begin with. None of this helps with anti-Semitism in Europe, of course, I’m only speaking out in favor of being a vocal opponent of war and innocents dying needlessly (as they always do). Netanyahu may be a jerk, but then which politicians are not?

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  20. Robert Gotcher

    “Netanyahu may be a jerk, but then which politicians are not?”
    I have a friend who thinks that nothing should be named after Ronald Reagan because of the awful things he did as president, such as mining the Nicaraguan harbor. My response is that all presidents that I can think of at least since FDR have done that kind of thing, so we should remove the names of all those presidents. And, of course, some people, esp. southerners, but not limited to them, think Lincoln was a war criminal. Take Sherman’s March to the Sea, for instance.
    I haven’t studied the Civil War enough to have an opinion, so I’m not trying to start something, but you get my point.

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  21. Art Deco

    I have a friend who thinks that nothing should be named after Ronald Reagan because of the awful things he did as president, such as mining the Nicaraguan harbor.
    Your friend is a sectary with a long memory.

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  22. El Miserable

    I love your use of antiquated words, Art!

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  23. Mac

    Sorry not to be participating–I’m having a pretty hectic day. But then I don’t think I have anything of much consequence to add at this point.
    However (of course I had to add one thing) I wonder if your friend, Grumpy, would speak as passionately of, say, Kim Jong Il. Or the Iranian mullahs. Etc.

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  24. Grumpy

    Art Deco: There are people who are motivated to criticize Israel. Then there are people who have a certain amount of granular knowledge on which to base these criticisms. The intersection between these two sets is formed of people generally to be found in … Israel.
    A couple of years ago I spent a few days with a Dominican who teaches at the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem. The only person I’ve ever met who has a balanced view about the State of Israel. He was not an anti-Israel guy, but he did certainly criticize some things Israel has done and some things intrinsic to ‘Israel’ as a state. But he was not an anti-Israel ideologue in any sense of the word at all. He had some interesting nuances, such as the changing composition of ‘Israel’ since the huge influx of Russian ‘Jews’ since 1989 (many people pretended to be Jewish to get out of Russia).

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  25. Louise

    “It also reminds me of the French ambassador to London who referred to Israel as a “shitty little country”. There’s something so ugly and deeply embedded about that, it’s frightening.”
    Modern day Israel contains some portion of the Holy Land. Therefore I find this comment to be revolting. The Holy Land will always be hallowed ground as far as I’m concerned no matter what it looks like to the eyes.
    I doubt, in any case, that Israel is even remotely a “shitty little country.”

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  26. Louise

    Btw
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banlieue#2005_riots

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  27. Louise

    I am at one with whomever was making generalised uncomplimentary remarks about politicians. 🙂

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  28. Mac

    Never heard that before–about the Russian effect. What was it, in practical terms?

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  29. Mac

    Louise, my most immediate reaction to your link about the Banlieu riots was: 2005?!? It can’t have been almost ten years ago!

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  30. Mac

    btw, it was indeed the French ambassador, not an Englishwoman, or man, who made that shitty little remark.

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  31. Mac

    Art said “…advocates of the Arab cause were incensed at the idea that Arab interlocutors who wanted something of value should actually have to exchange something for it.”
    I freely admit that I don’t follow the matter all that closely, but something I’ve often noticed in the coverage is the tendency to point out some unpleasant thing Israel has done without saying much about what Israel was reacting to. It actually seemed less that way on this last go-round, as there was acknowledgement that Hamas was firing rockets incessantly. To little effect, yes, but what would they do if they had the means. But the walls erected by the Israelis are frequently deplored with little or no acknowledgement that the reason they’re there is because too many Palestinians were willing to blow themselves up if they could take some Israelis with them.
    If Israel were as ruthless as it is often accused of being, there simply wouldn’t be any big number of Palestinians left in the area, and those who were left would be completely cowed and subjugated. That’s how your classic strongman of the region solves that sort of problem.

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  32. Louise

    Louise, my most immediate reaction to your link about the Banlieu riots was: 2005?!? It can’t have been almost ten years ago!
    Gosh! I don’t recall the riots, but 2005 seems like just yesterday to me so it’s a shock to realise that 2005 is indeed almost 10 years ago.
    😮

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  33. Mac

    And the older you get the worse it gets. Just thought I’d warn you.

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