By Steve Halpern
Recently I listened to a 95-minute YouTube video titled: The elephant in the room: the anti-Semitism that has taken over in the universities. This video appears to be a polemic against the newly released film The Encampments. The Encampments gives the background to the demonstrations on university campuses protesting the genocide against Palestinians. I haven’t seen The Encampments because it’s only showing in select theaters. Then there is the Oscar winning film No Other Land that is a depiction of the brutal repression against Palestinians who live in the West Bank.
A theme of the film: The elephant in the room is the idea that the political movement of Zionism is a core expression of what it means to be Jewish. Looking at reality from that perspective, all the demonstrations that protest Israeli organized genocide would be viewed anti-Semitic. Based on this twisted logic, the film supports withholding federal funding from any university that allows demonstrations protesting Israeli organized genocide.
The law they point to is Title Six of the Civil Rights Act. That law prohibits federal funding for universities that allow for discrimination based on race, color, or national origin. This film also advocates for firing university professors who openly oppose Israeli organized genocide. Zionist student organizations on several university campuses are promoting this perspective.
The film also attempts to show how the struggle to defend Israeli organized genocide is analogous to the struggle of many Jews who supported the Civil Rights Movement. That movement forced the government to outlaw Jim Crow segregation. There were a few African American supporters of Zionism in the film who also felt that supporting civil rights for Blacks is analogous to supporting Israel.
To put this absurd argument into context, we need to look at a bit of history. There was a time when Jim Crow segregation was the law in the United States. During those years it was illegal for Blacks and whites to use the same restaurants, hotels, or even bathrooms. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 effectively abolished Jim Crow. So, Title Six of the Civil Rights Act declared that schools, hospitals, and transportation facilities that received federal funding would be denied that funding if they discriminated against Black people.
There is a fundamental difference between vicious discrimination against African Americans and criticism of the state of Israel. Abolishing discrimination against Blacks merely recognizes the fact that everyone in this country is entitled to equal rights. The state of Israel became a nation because terrorist gangs expelled the majority of the indigenous population who happened to be Palestinians. The current genocide organized by the Israeli government against Palestinians is a continuation of the terrorism organized by the Hagenah, the Irgun, and the Lehi around the year 1948. The initial Israeli government felt that those terrorist actions were necessary to establish an overwhelmingly Jewish state in what used to be Palestine.
I happen to be Jewish and attended Hebrew school as a child. There I, like most Jewish children, was indoctrinated with the Zionist idea that the state of Israel is a homeland for all Jews. At the age of nineteen, a young Palestinian woman introduced me to the unvarnished history of the repressive nature of the state of Israel. I’ve been learning about that history and have been participating in Palestinian solidarity demonstrations since that time.
Ilan Pappe is one of the few Israeli historians who has uncovered the true history of Palestine. The title of one of his books is The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. Pappe, like many historians critical of Israel has labelled that nation as a colonial settler state. There are many similarities between the repressive nature of Israel and the repression in apartheid South Africa, and the British domination of Ireland.
The United States was also a colonial settler state with respect to Native Americans. Just as the U.S. government drove the indigenous inhabitants off their land, the Israeli government has been forcibly expelling Palestinians from their homeland.
Racist discrimination in the United States and Israel
However, the institutionalized racist discrimination against African Americans wasn’t driven by colonial settler motives. Black people were kidnapped from Africa, sent to the Americas, and coerced to labor under unimaginably horrendous conditions. Then with the Civil War and the defeat of radical reconstruction the government allowed for systematic discrimination with Jim Crow segregation and the less open discrimination in the rest of the nation.
Clearly the history of racist terror in the United States and Israel have similarities. Today there is a memorial to over 4,000 people who racists lynched located in Montgomery, Alabama. While there is no memorial to all the Palestinians murdered by Zionists before and after the establishment of the state of Israel, that number might be over 100,000.
In the United States, the Ku Klux Klan worked to terrorize the Black community into accepting a second-class status. For over 76 years, the Zionists worked to create an Israeli state that is overwhelmingly Jewish. Today about half of the people who live in Israel and the occupied territories are Palestinian. In 2018 the Israeli government adopted a law stating that Israel is a state for Jewish people. This law, as well as the 76-year history of Israel makes it clear that the Zionists never had any intention of supporting genuine equal rights for Palestinians.
In 2018 Robert Gregory Bowers murdered eleven Jews in the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. Those murders were clearly and unequivocally anti-Semitic and should be condemned by anyone who has a conscious. Yes, real anti-Semitism continues to exist. However, protesting those murders is clearly different from defending the state of Israel.
Robert Gregory Bowers and Benjamin Netanyahu, in my opinion both committed horrendous crimes. However, while a court sentenced Bowers to death for his crimes, Netanyahu received close to $20 billion from the United States to carry out a genocide against Palestinians.
The Israeli government argues that its genocidal actions are only a response to the October 7 Hamas organized raid into Israel. Part of their argument is the accusation that Hamas is fundamentally anti-Semitic.
I don’t support Hamas. Targeting civilians only tarnishes the legitimate demands of the Palestinians. Both Nelson Mandela and Fidel Castro did not target civilians in the revolutionary movements they participated in.
However, about half of the Jews who live in the world live in the United States. Hamas never made statements against Jews who lived outside of Israel. So, while I don’t support Hamas, their actions were only directed against Israeli apartheid and not Jews who live outside of Israel. Therefore, it is clear that Hamas isn’t anti-Semitic, but opposed to Israeli apartheid.
The International Holocaust Remembrance (Forgetting) Alliance
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance began its activities in 1998. This organization responded to arguments that belittled the severity of the Nazi organized Holocaust that murdered about six-million Jews. The IHRA presented the evidence showing that a Nazi organized unimaginably horrendous holocaust was a historical fact. Many governments in the world signed on to the objectives of the IHRA.
The Israeli government dominated this organization and gave their definition of the word anti-Semitism. This definition states that anti-Semitism is an expression of “hatred toward Jews.”
The Israeli government broadened that definition to include the following statements. “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination e.g., by claiming that the existence of the State of Israel is a racist endeavor.” “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.”
When we look at the IHRA’s definition of anti-Semitism in the current context of the Israeli organized genocide against the Palestinian people, we’re looking at a profoundly strange point of view. Over the past eighteen months, the Israeli government has made it a routine policy of mass murder, starvation, and mutilation of the 2.3 million Palestinians who live in the Gaza Strip. Yet according to the IHRA definition, criticism of that genocide is anti-Semitic. Comparing that genocide to the Nazi organized Holocaust, according to the IHRA is also anti-Semitic.
One of the many flaws in the Zionist argument is that anti-Semitism if different from other forms of racist discrimination. They argue that because of the anti-Semitism in the world, Jewish people need to have their own nation.
Lord Balfour who wrote his 1918 Balfour Declaration was a British politician who first supported the idea of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Balfour also favored legislation that limited Jewish immigration to Britain. In other words, Balfour preferred to have Jews live in Palestine rather than Britain.
Zionists also made the Haavara (Transfer) agreement with the Nazis in the 1930s. Jewish people in the world initiated a boycott of Germany protesting the Nazi organized brutality against Jews. The Zionists agreed to work against the boycott of Germany. In return, the Nazis agreed to export commodities to the Jewish community in Palestine. As a result, about 60% of the imports to the Palestinian Jewish community came from the Nazis while they were in power.
This history points to the fact that the state of Israel was created because of support from viscous anti-Semites. Yet today, the IHRA, as well as the Anti-Defamation League argue that criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic.
The news media routinely reports that there is a war in the Gaza Strip and that war started on October 7. This blog argues that there is, in reality no war, but a decision by the Israeli government to commit mass murder. That genocide is being made possible because of the massive aid Israel receives from the United States and other nations.
The solution to this horror is to give Palestinians living in the world the same rights in Israel as Palestinians have who live in the United States. This sentiment is reflected in pro-Palestinian demonstrations that have erupted all over the world. The demand is, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Many Zionists feel this demand is anti-Semitic. Why?
Obviously, this demand doesn’t include Jews who also live in this area. However, those Jews already have equal rights. No one is demanding that Jews be denied equal rights. However, arguing for equal rights for Palestinians goes against the core of what the state of Israel has been about for 76 years.
The fundamental problem Zionists have with genuine Palestinian freedom is how that idea would compromise Jewish supremacy in Israel. We need to put this absurd idea in context.
Today Black and white people are supposed to have equal rights in the United States. Blacks and whites are supposed to have equal rights in South Africa. However, the Zionist movement argues that Jews and Palestinians should not have equal rights in the nation that used to be Palestine.
Like all the monstrous regimes of the past, the Israeli government appears to be invincible. However, the state of Israel also appears to be falling apart. It has become a pariah state in the world. Many Israelis don’t believe that nation has much of a future.
That said, I will continue to march in demonstrations demanding Ceasefire Now!!! I will do this because I believe in the possibility that in a future Palestine where Jewish and Palestinian children will play together in peace.
