Readjusting Cultural Codes: Reflections on Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism

In this article I seek to apply the notion of anti-Semitism as a cultural code, which I initially developed 25 years ago with relation to the antimodernist trends in late-nineteenth-century Germany, to the phenomena of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism today. From the 1960s anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism formed part of a larger ideological package consisting of anticolonialism, anticapitalism, and a deep suspicion of US policies. In the eyes of members of the developing countries, Jews became a symbol of the West and legitimate targets for hatred. Thus, the position on the Jewish question, even if not in itself of paramount importance, came to indicate a belonging to a larger camp, a political stand and an overall cultural choice. The question is whether the position towards Israel today, which has become a central issue for the European left, can still be considered a cultural code or whether it rather indicates a more direct anti-Jewish attack, above all as a result of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.     

From Cowards and Subversives to Aggressors and Questionable Allies: US Army Perceptions of Zionism since World War I

For most of the twentieth century, the attitudes and policies of the US army were consistently anti-Zionist. From World War I into the 1950s, army anti-Zionism was inextricably interrelated with a mutually reinforcing anti-Semitism that ranged from political and ethnic bias to extremist versions of biological racial and conspiratorial thinking. Army officers perceived Zionist objectives in the Middle East as detrimental to America's national interest regarding wartime security and geopolitical stability in a crucial region, as well as concerning oil resources and communist containment. In supporting Zionism and later Israel, America Jews revealed their suspected disloyalty. Although anti-Semitic concepts gradually disappeared from official army analyses, striking continuities remained in the army's anti-Zionist position. Until the end of the Cold War, the army rejected the “special relationship” argument based upon shared values or Israel as a military asset. The image of the cowardly, weak Jew incapable of establishing and defending a Jewish state in Palestine had been replaced by that of a militarily superior, potentially aggressive Israel destabilizing a strategic area.     

Anti-Zionism in Britain, 1922–2002: Continuities and Discontinuities

Since 1902 Britain has been engaged with Zionism. This prolonged involvement offers a case study of diachronically shifting patterns of anti-Zionism and their relationship with patterns of anti-Jewish discourse in a specific national context. This article begins with an account of political anti-Zionism in the 1920s, a model for all subsequent anti-Zionism and a benchmark of virulence. It surveys political discourse concerning Zionism during the conflict between Britain and the Zionist movement in 1930–31 and 1945–48, while Britain held the Mandate for Palestine. It then examines left-wing anti-Zionism in Britain in the 1960s and 1980s. It concludes with an analysis of rhetorical attacks on Israel, mainly from the left, since the second Intifada, and in the wake of 9/11.     

Ber Borokhov

The task of this article is to pose the question: Can there be a principled anti-Zionism? That is, can there be an anti-Zionism that escapes the scourge of anti-Semitism? After suggesting criteria by which this may be possible, the article excavates a tradition of Jewish anti-Zionism (or Zionist agnosticism) in the past that can hardly be branded anti-Semitic. The first current of this tradition flows out of early-twentieth-century Germany, where Jewish thinkers, in conscious opposition to Zionists, envisaged a Judaism that did not submit to the contingencies of time or space. The second current, comprised of twentieth-century Orthodox Jews, similarly opposed Zionism for its attempt to return Jews to history and to their ancestral homeland. After following these overlapping currents, the article concludes by returning to the contemporary scene and inquiring whether a principled Jewish anti-Zionism is possible today.     

Convergence: The Classic Case Nazi Germany,Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism during World War II

Despite granting permission for limited Jewish emigration to Palestine in the 1930s, the ideology and policy of the Nazi regime never supported establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. During World War II, Hitler's ideologically consistent view that such a state would be a branch of an international Jewish conspiracy converged with shorter-term efforts to gain Arab and Islamic support for the Third Reich's military goals in the Middle East. The ideological convergence of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism found expression in the works of Nazi propagandists as well as in the speeches and radio addresses of Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, broadcast from wartime Berlin to the Middle East. Examination of the lineages, similarities and differences between Europe's totalitarian past and its aftereffects in the Arab and Islamic world remains an important task for comparative historical scholarship.     

Walking the Middle of the Peace Road? The Emergence of JCall in France

On 3 May 2010, a ‘Call to reason’ (Appel à la raison) was presented to the European Parliament in Brussels by a number of prominent figures from European Jewish political and intellectual classes, launching JCall, which is supposedly the European version of the US J Street. JCall explicitly positions itself as pro-Israel on one hand but against the Israeli state's occupation and increased settlement of Palestine, including East Jerusalem, on the other hand. The ‘reason’ it calls for is thus a negotiated two-state settlement to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the organisation urges EU governments to apply pressure on both Israel and the Palestinian Authority to this end. This article looks at JCall within the French context, first in distinction to J Street in the USA, with which JCall shares a political position but not organisational links, and second in relation to the broader French political debate about Jewishness, Muslimness and the Middle East. Criticised by the right for its supposed disloyalty to Israel and even ‘anti-Semitism’, and by the left for its non-support of boycott, divestment and sanctions and its ongoing support of the Israeli state, JCall at first appears as somewhat middle-of-the-road in the French context. It also, from this writer's point of view, regrettably lacks a strong female presence or gendered perspective. It has, however, emerged as a serious political voice in the debate over the Middle East and could be less of a lightweight in the French political battles over Israel and Palestine than it may have first appeared.     

The Israeli–Palestinian Road Block: Can Europeans Make a Difference?

Europe needs a resolution of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict for the sake of its own social harmony, and could reconfigure the calculations of the parties by inviting Israel to integrate into Europe's social, economic and security space in return for withdrawal from the West Bank, Gaza and Arab East Jerusalem. The idea would be to capitalize on the drive for separation that prevails in Israel and abandon an unrealistic policy that requires the Arabs to integrate Israel in the region. It is also time for Europe to face up to its own role in the problem and the solution, and demonstrate that anti-Semitism does not influence its policy.     

Righteous Realism Versus Postmodern Play: The Israeli–Palestinian Conflict in Female-Authored French Fiction

This article analyses literary mediations of francophone Jewish attitudes towards Israel, and particularly towards the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Its primary corpus comprises two female-authored novels published during the Second Intifada: Olivia Rosenthal's Les Fantaisies spéculatives de J.H. le sémite (2005) and Chantal Osterreicher's L'Insouciance d'Adèle (2006). It demonstrates how these two texts represent antithetical stances towards Israel, the former intermittently critical and even censorious, the latter defensive and at least partly valorising. Given the status of both authors as French-born Jews (although Osterreicher now lives in Israel), both of these texts can be seen to mediate heterodox attitudes to the conflict. But the heterodoxy depends upon the context in which the reader places the two authors. In the context of the twenty-first-century France in which it was published, which, like most other countries in the global mediasphere, is heavily critical of Israel, Osterreicher's text is acidly contestatory of default-position anti-Zionism. On the other hand, in the context of the French Jewry to which Rosenthal belongs, which has traditionally evinced unflinching solidarity with Israel, her own critique of that country's dealings with Palestinians is equally contestatory, and, despite its ludicity, is no less impactful than Osterreicher's reverse discourse. A final axis of enquiry is the extent to which there may be some consensus as well as obvious dissensus between these two ostensibly antinomous texts.     

Ideology and Realpolitik: East German Attitudes towards Zionism and Israel

Over several decades, the East German stance towards Israel was marked by condemnation of Zionism, a unilateral position on the Arab-Israeli conflict and denial of reparations and restitution claims. This position had its ideological background in the communist approach to the “Jewish question,” anti-Semitism and nationalism, while the most important criterion in shaping attitudes towards Israel was the incorporation of the German Democratic Republic's Middle East policy into the foreign policy of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. In addition, the East German political elite followed its own political interests when it tried to break through the West German Hallstein doctrine with the help of some Arab countries.     

The Rise and Fall of ‘Mediterranean Atlanticism’ in Italian Foreign Policy: the Case of the Near East

The article aims at studying the reasons for the new way of looking at the Palestinian-Israeli conflict by the Italian political world: the mutual recognition of Israel and the Vatican, the visit to Jerusalem by the leader of the formerly fascist party, Mr. Gianfranco Fini, and the beginnings of a movement of interest towards the Jewish State also within the political left. From a historical viewpoint, anti-Semitism in Italy found its origins in the Church's attitude toward the ‘deicide people’. Beginning with WWI, to this position was added the worry that the Holy Places might fall under Jewish control. From those times dates the Holy See's evermore manifest liking for the Arab populations of Palestine. Nowadays the line of conduct of the Church has as its basic objective the defense of Christian minorities in the Middle East, and for this reason it maintains dialogues with all actors in the region. The weight of the Church influenced also the attitude of the Italian State, even though from its inception the latter had to make adjustments because of other international requirements. This multiple subordination caused the different republican governments to always keep an official equidistant stance among the conflicting parties in the Near East. Behind this apparent neutrality, however, the feelings of benevolence for the Arab countries and the Palestinians have gradually intensified. Italian leaders have been trying to conduct a Mediterranean policy on the borders of the Western alliance, and their feelings have been oriented in consequence. During the 1970s, the governments went as far as to conclude a secret pact with Palestinian terrorists, to avoid terror acts on the Peninsula in exchange for some freedom of action. And in the mid-eighties the Craxi government did not hesitate to challenge the US in order to guarantee the continuity of that line of conduct. On that occasion Craxi, speaking in Parliament, compared Arafat to Mazzini. The end of the Yalta-established order has modified the traditional data of Italian foreign policy. However, the increased attention paid to Israel has also other causes: the changed attitude of the Church after the civil war and the Syrian occupation in Lebanon, events which both caused difficulties for the consistent Christian minorities; the hope that the Oslo process could reward the Italian ‘clear-sightedness’; last, but not least, the quarrelsome internal politics that make the Palestine conflict a mirror of the Roman conflicts. Lastly, the article connects the recent goodwill for Israel with the threats of Islamic terrorism in Italy. A political opinion trend would revisit the Middle Eastern conflict as the upturned perspective of a ‘clash of civilizations’ already existent nowadays. And a possible act of terrorism in Italy might give to this opinion a mass basis.     

试论古代以色列民族的历史观——从资料构成、史书编集到观念的形成

与古代埃及和西亚诸国只留下编年体的历史记载不同,古代以色列民族具有自己鲜明的历史意识;与古代希腊充满人本精神的历史记载也不同,以色列民族历史观的实质是一神论的神权历史观.他们将对耶和华神的信仰融入对民族历史发展的思考和解释之中,其历史书卷的编写几乎持续了一千年之久,在这一过程中,以色列历史成为"历史就是耶和华神对以色列民族的救赎史"的生动体现.     

19世纪晚期法国反犹主义政治化原因初探

19世纪70年代以后,几乎所有西欧和中欧国家都出现了现代反犹主义思潮,其中法国尤为典型。当时,法国反犹主义的突出表现是反犹主义政治化,即反犹立法的确定、大规模的群众反犹运动以及民众对反犹观念狂热的、盲目的信仰。法国反犹主义政治化是个复杂的社会历史现象,是宗教、思想、历史、社会、经济、现实的政治状况等因素交互作用的结果,其中最为重要的是经济和现实的政治因素。     

Anglophobia and anti-Semitism: The case of Alphonse Toussenel (1803-1885)

Alphonse Toussenel (1803-1885) was a utopian socialist who criticised the economic liberalism of the July Monarchy. He was a follower of Charles Fourier who denounced the ills of civilisation: individualism, egoism and class conflict. However, he was also the founder of modern French anti-Semitism. His writings inspired Edouard Drumont. The present article explores the links between Toussenel's brand of anti-Semitism, rooted in a revolutionary-nationalist reading of French history, and his almost equally aggressive Anglophobia. He described 'Londres-Juda' as an insatiable vampire sucking the lifeblood of France. In Toussenel's hands zoology became a vehicle for social criticism and his natural history books, as much as his political writings, were infused with anti-English sentiments. The English and the Jews represented external and internal threats to French national identity. An examination of Toussenel's writings helps to understand the joint presence of Anglophobia and anti-Semitism within social romanticism.     

The Ordre Des Medecins and the Jews in Vichy France, 1940-1944

This paper examines the way in which the Jewish question washandled by the Ordre des Médecins, a representative institutionfor the medical profession created by the Vichy government.It discusses the historiography of Vichy anti-Semitism generallyand goes on to analyze the background of anti-Semitism in theFrench medical profession in the 1930s, comparing it with anti-Semitismin other professions such as Law. The paper then discusses thereactions of the Ordre des Médecins and its governingbody, the Conseil Supérieur, to the Vichy anti-Semiticlegislation which affected the profession and compares its brandof anti-Semitism with the official Vichy policy. It focuseson the unequal battle between the Conseil Supérieur,whose members were typically traditional nationalistic and protectionistanti-Semites, and the Vichy government, where quasi-racial anti-Semitismwas official policy. It explains the inevitable defeat of theConseil Supérieur.     

Anti-Semites on Zionism: From Indifference to Obsession

This article compares European and Middle Eastern anti-Semitism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. From the 1870s through the 1930s, in parallel fashion anti-Semitism became a mobilizing, all-embracing ideology in Europe, while the Arab world witnessed an eruption of anticolonial and nationalist sentiment, often directed against the Zionist project. Arab anti-Semitism featured the irrational and fantastic qualities of its European counterpart, but it took form against the reality of the Zionist project. The article draws a distinction between the realms of systemic intolerance, aggravated by socio-economic crisis, and political strife, driven by discrete events and policies. Its main sources are fin-de-siècle European anti-Semites' writings on Zionism, which are shown to be fundamentally different from the anti-Zionist rhetoric emanating from the Middle East at that time.     

Anti-Zionism as a Multipurpose Policy Instrument: The Anti-Zionist Campaign in Poland, 1967–1968

This article outlines the anti-Zionist campaign in Poland between 1967 and 1968, in particular its evolution from a Cold War anti-Israel policy in reaction to the Six Day War into a domestic anti-Jewish campaign. It focuses on the factors that influenced the top decision makers in launching the campaign, and its images of the enemy. The campaign was a peculiar combination of two patterns of symbolic aggression that belong to historically hostile camps: communist hate campaigns and anti-Semitism of the nationalist right. Notwithstanding its irrational components (i.e. anti-Jewish resentments and prejudices which fed much of its dynamics), the campaign appears to have been an effective policy instrument that achieved desirable results for the decision makers and instigators.     

Israel and Post‐Mubarak Egypt: Perils of Historical Analogy

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has perceived the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 as a replica of Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution. Drawing on the apparent similarities between the two revolutions—both made against dictators who reigned over secular, Western‐oriented regimes advocating coexistence with Israel, and both having Islamists as the best‐organized opposition force—Netanyahu appears to have concluded that the outcome for Israel would be the same: the advent of an aggressive Islamist regime in Cairo that would initiate a larger conflict. Based on this historical analogy, the Netanyahu government has adopted policies that are meant to help Israel defend against the potential deterioration in relations with Egypt. However, looking at Iran 1979 to draw on lessons about Egypt 2011 is misleading and does not take into account the significant differences that would rather lead Egypt to preserve the peace. This article analyzes Netanyahu's employment of this historical analogy and examines other appropriate lessons that Israel could draw from Iran's Islamic revolution, and proposes that Israel should instead engage the Egyptian revolution and reach a peace deal with the Palestinians so that it avoids misperception and maintains the Egyptian–Israeli peace.     

Karl Popper on Jewish Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism

This paper re-contextualizes Karl Popper's thought within the anti-nationalist cosmopolitan tradition of the Central European intelligentsia. It argues that, although Popper was brought up in an assimilated Jewish Viennese household, from the perspective of the Jewish Enlightenment or Haskalah tradition, he can be seen to be a modern day heterodox Maskil (scholar). Popper's ever present fear of anti-Semitism and his refusal to see Judaism as compatible with cosmopolitanism raise important questions as to the realisable limits of the cosmopolitan ideal. His inability to integrate an understanding of Jewishness in his cosmopolitan political ideal resulted in his strong opposition to Zionism and the state of Israel. By comparing Popper's positions with those of Hermann Cohen, another neo-Kantian philosopher, I argue that although their solutions fall short in certain respects, their arguments have continuing purchase in recent debates on cosmopolitanism and the problem of the integration of minority groups. In addition, the arguments of the Jewish Enlightenment thinkers offer important insights for the current debates on minority integration and xenophobia.     

‘A Wagner for the Jews’: Moses Pergament,Richard Wagner and anti-Semitism in Swedish cultural life in the interwar period

This article deals with the Finnish-Swedish, Jewish composer and author Moses Pergament and his relationship with Wagner's theories, anti-Semitism in particular, and their influence on the development of modern Swedish classical music during the interwar period. The author emphasizes the importance of recognizing that Pergament's reaction to Wagner's cultural theories was part and parcel of his struggle for assimilation. The basis of Pergament's interpretation of Wagner was the notion that it is possible to separate life and belief: the anti-Semitism and enthusiastic lechery were part of Wagner's life, to which it was not necessary to attach much importance. The beliefs, on the other hand, were there to be analysed. Furthermore, an explicit and public critique of Wagner's anti-Semitism was inconsistent with an attempt to gain a foothold in Swedish cultural life. As Wagner's anti-Semitism was well known but was deemed either acceptable or irrelevant, paying attention to it was by definition proof of a Jewish identification. To be accepted as a Swedish music critic, Pergament had to follow the unwritten rules of the game, amongst them the requirement not to exhibit his ‘Jewishness’ openly. The actions of certain members of Föreningen Svenska Tonsättare (FST, the Association of Swedish Composers) indicate that Pergament's work was not thought to indicate a Swedish identification. On the contrary, his reviews were seen as a threat to ‘Swedish music’, and with implicit references to Wagner this was attributed to Pergament's supposed lack of feeling for the ‘spirit of the Swedish people’.     

The model of ethnic democracy: Israel as a Jewish and democratic state

The liberal democratic nation–state is on the decline in the West as a result of globalisation, regionalisation, universalisation of minority rights, multiculturalism and the rise of ethno–nationalism. While Western countries are decoupling the nation–state and shifting toward multicultural civic democracy, other countries are consolidating an alternative non–civic form of a democratic state that is identified with and subservient to a single ethnic nation. This model, ‘ethnic democracy’, is presented; its defining features, the circumstances leading to it and the conditions for its stability are elaborated upon; and it is applied to Israel. Contrary to its self–image and international reputation as a Western liberal democracy, Israel is an ethnic democracy in which the Jews appropriate the state and make it a tool for advancing their national security, demography, public space, culture and interests. At the same time, Israel is a democracy that extends various kinds of rights to 1 million Palestinian Arab citizens (16 per cent of the population) who are perceived as a threat. The criticisms against the general model and its applicability to Israel are discussed. The model has already been applied to other countries, but more applications are needed in order to develop it further.