Airstrip One

Israel & Anti-Semitism. 3rd October, 2002.

My good Cde Goldstein dismisses as absurd the allegations that are often made that criticisms of Israeli policy are anti-Semitic, or, more precisely, anti-Jewish. Logically, of course, he is right to do so: there is no necessary connexion between opposition to a government & hatred of a race. But empirically, I am not so sure.

Some of the most trenchant criticism of Israel comes from the isolationist right, a group with whom Airstrip One is generally in sympathy; yet I find it perplexing & perturbing that our friends should be so exercised about Israel when, coolly considered, their avowed principles seem to enjoin a more neutral stance. What, after all, has the Arab-Israeli conflict to do with Britain? How are British interests affected by the non-existence or otherwise of a Palestinian state? Why should we care? By all means argue for the elimination of pro-Israeli bias from policy-making, but why go so far beyond that?

Very well, the anti-Zionist answers; we are not arguing about government policy, merely expressing our private opinion of the rights & wrongs of a conflict in another part of the world. Fair enough. But I cannot help wondering why this conflict. Palestinian sympathisers are for ever bleating, “What about the Palestinians?” whenever any oppressed group anywhere in the world is mentioned; I find myself sorely tempted, whenever the Palestinian question is raised yet again, to bleat in reply, “What about Tibet? East Timor? Kashmir? Zimbabwe? Chechnya?” Our friends seem to be selective in the conflicts they comment on, & I wonder what their principle of selection is.

Easy, the anti-Zionist answers: the Arab-Israeli conflict is by some distance the world’s most “high-profile” conflict; everybody else is talking about it, so why shouldn’t we? Fair enough again. But what about the way they talk about it? Think of all the sticks the right-wing isolationist uses to beat Israel with: Israel defies U.N. resolutions; Israel breaches “human rights”; Israel has “weapons of mass destruction”; Israel doesn’t allow in weapons inspectors; Israel restricts the movements of the international press; Israel blah blah blah. When similar accusations are made against Iraq, these very same right-wing isolationists regard them as so unimportant that they question the motives of those who make them; they can hardly complain, then, when I question their motives when they make precisely the same accusations against Israel, especially when – this is the nub of the thing – U.N. resolutions & human rights seem to acquire importance only when Israel infringes them, whereas the rest of the time, right-wing isolationists quite rightly couldn’t give a damn about U.N. resolutions & human rights. There must be an ulterior motive, & the odds are it is anti-Semitism.

It would, of course, be a genetic fallacy to reject criticism of Israel because we disliked its motive. The motive does not affect the truth of the criticism. But it should give us pause.