How the West uses antisemitism to manufacture support for Israel and criminalise Palestinians

During the official ceremony commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Vél d'Hiv roundup, on July 16, 2017,  French President Emmanuel Macron declared before the head of the Israeli government, Benjamin Netanyahu: 'We will give in nothing to messages of hatred, we will give in nothing to anti-Zionism because it is the reinvented form of antisemitism”. 

Since the October 7 attacks by Hamas and the ongoing massacre led by the Israeli state, antisemitism is on everyone's lips.

The equation is as simple as it is terrifying. If you are pro-Palestinian, you are antisemitic, a kind of present-day Nazi. And if the Palestinian cause is Nazi, then Palestinian men, women and children can die in the worst possible ways, like ‘human animals’ as one Israeli minister puts it. 

What is crystal clear is that the word ‘antisemitism’ is used to legitimise support for Israel and the criminalisation of pro-Palestinian voices and movements. Amid the legitimately emotional sequence we witness, we must think. Let’s take a step back. 

"Hijacked in such a way, the fight against antisemitism is waved as a demonising tool that legitimates restrictions of freedoms and the advance of authoritarian rule in Europe"

Since antisemitism is on all our lips, let’s look at it.

Antisemitism is a reality. It is a form of racism targeting Jews. Since most European officials use claims to fight against antisemitism to, at best keep silent about an ongoing settler-colonial enterprise, at worst support it economically and politically, let’s look at Europe’s history with antisemitism and with Jews.

In a book published in 2013, The End of Jewish Modernity, historian and professor at Cornell University Enzo Traverso — who extensively studied the history of the Jewish question on the left, particularly in Marxism — comes back to the history of Jewish modernity in Europe.

Not only dense and relevant, his findings are highly informative in light of the current circumstances. Jewish modernity, the entrance of Jews into European modernity, is a vibrant yet paradoxical history.

For two centuries (roughly between 1750 and 1940) Jews constituted a centre of critical thought in Europe. They have been at the heart, if not the forefront, of artistic, intellectual, political, literary and scientific avant-gardes whilst having to face the constitutive antisemitism of modern nation-states.

Antisemitism was paramount to European modernity and the creation of European nation-states. Jews were excluded from power and elites, in Germany in a much more striking way than in France, where you could find Jews at high positions (one could think of Alfred Dreyfus, a French artillery officer whose infamous Dreyfus Affair remains a striking example of antisemitism in effect).

Jews in Europe could not but be sensitive to avant-garde movements, and embraced critical, subversive and anti-conformist attitudes. Leon Trotsky, a cosmopolitan and internationalist Jew, is an archetypal figure of what Traverso calls Jewish Modernity.

The vibrant history of Jewish modernity is that of a tragic parable. As antisemitism grew, Jewish modernity came to an end in a tragic, genocidal culmination, that of the Holocaust.

After the genocide and World War Two, the very structure of the Jewish world was transformed. Before the Holocaust, the Jewish world was marked by extraterritoriality and movement.

If all the traits of Jewish modernity did not disappear, political Zionism and the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 reconfigured the Jewish world, defining it as an ethnic state, that of Jews in 2018, and negating the diaspora and Jewish Modernity as it existed.

While there were more than ten million Jews before, only two million were left after the Holocaust, and the axis of the Jewish world moved towards the US and Israel.

The figure of Trotsky gave way to that of Kissinger, an ideologist and strategist of US imperialism. Put roughly, a Kissinger was inconceivable in Jewish Modernity before 1945.

The Holocaust was followed by a period of collective amnesia, and its memory was first carried by the victims. The memory of the Holocaust is known as a very paradoxical history.

If it has been captured by Israel to legitimise itself, one must note that it was first carried by victims and survivors and its importance grew as the traumatic event faded away. The memory of the Holocaust has for a long time been an important factor in the fights against all kinds of oppression such as in decolonial struggles.

It was then institutionalised and became central in the memorial and educational policies of many European countries in ways that could sanctify certain values, such as freedom, equality and the legitimacy of diversity and otherness in society.

Unfortunately, the creation of Israel induced the capture of this memory which has now become, together with the fight against antisemitism, the guarantee and legitimisation for policies of occupation of Palestinian territories and all forms of oppression.

In such perspective, and as claimed by Emmanuel Macron at the 75th anniversary of the Vél d'Hiv roundup, antisemitism was presented as an ahistorical evil and anti-Zionism as its updated form. 

So when we talk about Zionism and anti-Zionism, what are we talking about? While the history of Zionism(s) is vast, talking about Zionism today is talking about modern political Zionism as theorized by Theodor Herzl, an Austro-Hungarian Jewish journalist and political activist.

As Herzl makes clear in his book The Jewish State: How the Zionists Created the Jewish Ethnostate, political Zionism and the creation of Israel is the Jewish version of 19th-century European nationalism.

The Jewish state was sought as a European and Western state that should bring Western civilization into a barbaric and backward world, that of the Middle East.

As such, Herzl’s Zionism, which built the state of Israel and which is at the origin of the Israeli government, is part of a culture of European nationalism, colonialism and racism. Talking of anti-Zionism is to stand against political Zionism and the dispossession and oppression of Palestinians in the establishment of a Jewish state. 

"So when we talk about Zionism and anti-Zionism, what are we talking about? While the history of Zionism(s) is vast, talking about Zionism today is talking about modern political Zionism as theorized by Theodor Herzl"

The equation “anti-Zionism is antisemitism” is the culmination of a process equating any criticism of Israel with antisemitism. Since its genesis, Zionism presented itself as the natural outcome and continuity of millennia-old Jewish history and considered its opponents as renegades.

Such a thesis is that of Israel and is supported by its allies. Yet, Jews who opposed Zionism, a majority before World War Two, considered Zionism to be the actual rupture.

One must note that anti-Zionism is also, and perhaps foremost, a Jewish history. Equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism is a deliberate ignorance and negation of rabbits, intellectuals (liberal, humanist and revolutionary) Jewish voices of various horizons that have contested the Zionist project.

While anthologies of anti-Zionist texts exist in the English-speaking world, a first of its kind was recently published in France: Antizionism, a Jewish History compiles more than fifty-one texts running from 1885 to 2020 by a diversity of Jewish voices who have spoken out against Zionism in the West, within the Arab-Muslim world and in Israel itself.

It is important to note that in the US, Jews currently play a very important role in the movements for Gaza because they know that Biden's attitude is important and key: if an American administration says stop, we must dismantle the colonies, reopen negotiations on a real basis, Israel could not sustain its colonial and genocidal ventures. Yet we are far from this, as the US vetoed a UN resolution calling for a ceasefire. 

As the memory of the Holocaust was used by Western powers to legitimise the occupation and dispossession of Palestinian territories, the so-called fight against antisemitism is now used by the same powers in legitimising support to Israel in its genocidal enterprise and criminalizing Palestinians.

Hijacked in such a way, the fight against antisemitism is waved as a demonising tool that legitimates restrictions of freedoms and the advance of authoritarian rule in Europe.

It also serves the rehabilitation of far-right parties that are historically, and at the core, antisemitic. In France, this culminated on the 12 of November 2023, in a march against antisemitism (which was in effect a gesture of support to Israel and criminalisation of pro-Palestinian marches) that included most of the far-right political spectrum: Marine le Pen and her party 'Rassemblement National’ as well as Eric Zemmour and his party 'Reconquete'.

Note that the Rassemblement National founding father, Jean Marie Le Pen, considered the gas chambers a “detail of history”. How can one explain that those parties, historically antisemitic, now present themselves as the defenders of Jews? As a matter of fact, and as shown by Traverso and others, while antisemitism was constitutive of the construction of European nation-states (as of 1750), it has known a relatively permanent decline in Europe from 1950 to the present day.

Such decline was almost accompanied by a substitution of antisemitism with Islamophobia. Crystal clear since the war on terror that Islamophobia is a consensus among the elites, which fulfils a function analogous to that which antisemitism had before 1950 as Muslims are considered internal enemies and diseases infecting the bodies of European nations.

Taking that into account, we can understand that far-rights movements, while still being antisemitic, are perhaps more urgently Islamophobic and that their racist priorities will drive them to defend Israel (pretending to defend Jews)  as this legitimises the criminalisation of Muslims and non-whites as barbarians. 

As such the public debate, in France particularly, and in the West more generally has been saturated with injunctions such as “Do you condemn Hamas?”, “Do you denounce Hamas as a terrorist entity?”

And beware of those who, referring to international law — which emphasises a ”Lack of agreement on a clear and well-known definition” of terrorism — and therefore prefer to speak of war crimes or massacres: they are de facto disqualified if not criminalised. They are antisemitic or friends of terrorists if not terrorists themselves.

As such, accusations of antisemitism function as a form of censorship and intimidation. Dare you say, as Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, that the deadly Hamas attack on southern Israel “did not happen in a vacuum”, dare you try to bring forth context and speak about 75 years of occupation and permanent violence and humiliation of Palestinians, and you will be criminalised.  

"Rendering antisemitism an ahistorical evil by talking about a pogrom is a deliberate attempt to make those events unintelligible and to evacuate the context"

At national levels, in Germany, France and in many European countries the so-called fight against antisemitism targets Palestinians, Muslims, Arabs, the left parties, political opponents and human rights organisations.

A striking example is the French Council of State’s dissolution order on a pro-Palestinian group, Collectif Palestine Vaincra. Another is the cancellation by the municipality of Paris, of a conference on antisemitism and its instrumentalisation.

Initiated by the call “Permanent war or revolutionary peace, we must choose!” and co-organised with the decolonial Jewish groups UJFP, Tsedek, antifascist AFA Paris-Banlieue, anticapitalist party NPA, political revolutionary organisation Révolution Permanente and decolonial media Paroles d’honneur, the conference entitled Against antisemitism, its Exploitation and for Revolutionary Peace in Palestine, was supposed to welcome Judith Butler together with a remote message transmission from Angela Davis.

As such the case of an attempt to monopolise discourse on antisemitism is clear. The irony is tragic: Aren’t decolonial or anti-Zionist Jews, Jews? Can’t they speak on antisemitism themselves?

The French politico-mediatic class forbids reflection and conversation and even condemns the very journalists who try to question Israeli narrative and acts, as was the case with journalist Mohamed Kaci who was disowned by his management at TV5 Monde after he had raised the question of the methods of the Israeli army in an interview with the colonel and spokesperson for the Israeli army, Olivier Rafowicz.

As such, journalists doing their jobs, questioning claims and bringing forth context are criminalised and intimidated and no compassion is shown for the more than 63 journalists (and sometimes their families)  killed by Israel since October 7.

The French public debate, as in other European countries, gives no room for context while context is key. Not granting legitimacy, excuses or endorsement, the context reveals power and stakes and allows understanding, thinking and clairvoyance in the pursuit of solutions and fair judgment.

Some described the massacres of October 7 as a pogrom. The term pogrom originates in Russia and describes the violence organised by the state on an oppressed minority, the Jews. The attack of October 7 was carried out by Hamas who describe themselves as representatives of an oppressed community (the Palestinians), and its victims, the Israelis killed on October 7, are citizens of a state which oppresses the Palestinians.

Rendering antisemitism an ahistorical evil by talking about a pogrom is a deliberate attempt to make those events unintelligible and to evacuate the context.

At the root, is the 75-year-old occupation and oppression of the Palestinians. Context allows us to understand that we are witnessing a colonial reality between Israel and Palestine, and now a genocidal enterprise as asserted by many organisations such as the International Federation of Human Rights.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza announced that more than 20,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 7, including 70% women and children. The people of the world, from the Middle East to Africa passing by Latin America and the West, and those who have known colonialism especially, have shown solidarity with the Palestinian cause, with a significant sense of anti-imperialism.

Many do identify with Palestinians: either because they suffered analogous atrocities and dispossession (among others the indigenous people of the US, the Irish, and the Middle Eastern) or because they fear what could happen to them.

While Europe mobilises its past crimes towards Jews to legitimise an ongoing genocide and criminalise Palestinians and those who support their cause, power, economic and political interests are unveiled and the people of the World emphasise that never again shall be never again for all humanity.

It is our humanity that is at stake here: Colonisation dehumanises the colonised, to the extent that Palestinians can be held, imprisoned, tortured and killed in the worst possible ways, but colonisation destroys the coloniser’s humanity too.

Sarra Riahi is a French Tunisian journalist