The following article was ori­gin­ally published on 13^th March, 2018 in The Times of Israel (Blogs). The original article can be accessed here.

The Zionist Bogey-man

Julie Nathan
The Times of Israel (Blogs)
March 13, 2018
A perennial fixation of the anti-Israel movement is the myth of an all-powerful Jewish lobby working behind the scenes to ensure support for Israel and to crush all oppos­i­tion. This idea looms so large and is so over­whelm­ing in the minds of many critics of Israel that the workings and influence of organ­isa­tions and indi­vidu­als who are generally sup­port­ive of Israel have become encrusted in mythology.
Like the bogey-man, that ter­ri­fy­ing mythical creature conjured up by adults to frighten children into sub­mis­sion or into obeying bound­ar­ies, so too have anti-Zionists conjured up their own bogey-man of an all-powerful and sinister Jewish lobby fright­en­ing and threat­en­ing anyone who dares to oppose Israel.
Regard­less of which term is used – Jewish lobby, Zionist lobby, Israel lobby – the idea is vague and general enough to include virtually anyone who happens to take Israel’s side on any issue, including the Jewish community and its lead­er­ship. Jewish community organ­isa­tions – like other organ­isa­tions rep­res­ent­ing different sectors of society, whether other ethnic com­munit­ies, business, workers, envir­on­ment­al­ists, and the like – do indeed at times talk to gov­ern­ments, the media and other bodies, in order to put forward their views on any number of issues of concern to the Jewish community. It is called freedom of expres­sion, something which is indis­pens­able to the workings of democracy.
However, to anti­semites and anti-Zionists alike, the acts of Jewish organ­isa­tions are seen to skew the natural order of how things sup­posedly should be. It is not merely that this bogey-man is seen to exist, and that its agenda is seen as threat­en­ing in some unspoken way; some of the discourse that this idea elicits is indis­tin­guish­able from that of hard-core anti­semites.
This portrayal of the Jewish lead­er­ship and community is based on centuries-old antisemitic ste­reo­types of Jews somehow acting in concert every­where as the sinister hidden hand con­trolling the banks, media and gov­ern­ments across the world. Any supporter of Israel who happens to be Jewish, whether rich or poor, weak or powerful, is seen through this warped lens. It is as though only “Zionist Jews” have any power.
From popes, kings and caliphs, in previous eras, to the powerful oil cor­por­a­tions and cor­por­a­tions in other sectors that have opposed the very idea of Israel for more than 70 years, all are portrayed as hapless subjects, lacking all agency compared to the “Jewish lobby” bogey-man.
This deranged view of the world finds its most infamous expres­sion in the fab­ric­ated work known as ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’, first published by the Czarist secret police in 1903 as part of a sinister scheme to discredit political oppos­i­tion to Czarist rule by falsely branding all such oppos­i­tion as “Jewish”.
The portrayal of the Jewish communal lead­er­ship as a bogey-man has two equally warped corol­lar­ies – firstly, that Israel has no merit, and secondly, that opponents of Israel are brave heroes.
Corollary 1
The first corollary is that there is no possible positive reason to support Israel. Anti-Zionists cannot conceive that anyone supports Israel on merit, and thus conclude that any such support must be due solely or pre­dom­in­antly to any com­bin­a­tion of the following factors: “Jewish” money, “Zionist” intim­id­a­tion, and “Holocaust guilt”.
This per­spect­ive was suc­cinctly expressed by Bishop George Browning, president of the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN), in an article in December 2016 in which he asked rhet­or­ic­ally whether Australia continues to support Israel dip­lo­mat­ic­ally: “because Jewish money (sic) is a major factor in Aus­trali­an politics… because the Zionist Lobby (sic) is so strong that it imposes a fear factor upon Aus­trali­an MP’s… because a sense of guilt still prevails in relation to the holocaust, guilt that blots out normal moral oblig­a­tions to others.”
Those who hold this view can see nothing good or positive about Israel, nothing that is worthy of support. They cannot concede that politi­cians, media, and others can and do have good reasons for sup­port­ing Israel. The fact that Israel is a thriving liberal democracy and a suc­cess­ful multi-faith nation means rel­at­ively little, if anything, to these critics. The fact that all of Israel’s citizens, including women and minor­it­ies, have equal voting, religious and legal rights, that LGBTI people are free of per­se­cu­tion, that Israel is the only country in the Middle East with a genuinely inde­pend­ent judiciary and that Israel has made extraordin­ary efforts and con­ces­sions towards peace (despite the loud, often-pro­claimed threats to its very existence) is brushed aside as if it is of no con­sequence.
Any good in Israel is ignored and any bad is high­lighted and amplified. Many positives, such as LGBTI rights or envir­on­ment­al reclam­a­tion, are portrayed as mere pink-washing or green-washing, implying that they are policies which act as a cover or a diversion from the alleged wrong-doings of Israel. For the anti-Zionists it is all black and white, and Israel is irre­deem­ably bad. The fragility of their entire world-view is exposed by the fact that they feel that their world view might crumble the moment they concede even one good thing about Israel.
For this reason they are impelled into the non­sensic­al pro­pos­i­tion that Israel and loyal Israelis are not only devoid of any virtue but also inher­ently evil. The more that Israel is portrayed as evil by anti-Zionists, the more powerful and insidious the Jewish lead­er­ship has to be painted in order to explain why good people defend and support Israel.
The intel­lec­tu­al and moral dead-end of the anti-Zionist view is laid bare by the anti-Zionists’ demon­isa­tion of both Israel and the diaspora Jewish community with epithets about “Jewish money”, “Holocaust guilt”, “a racist apartheid genocidal state” and, of course, the almost super­nat­ur­al power of “the Jewish lobby”. Such are the straws at which anti-Zionists must grasp in order to explain the per­sist­ent refusal of intel­li­gent, well-motivated people to buy their arguments.
In short, these anti-Zionists believe that the only reason their position is not the dominant one in politics, the media and society, is because of the bogey-man – the mythical image which have they have created, of a sinister Jewish lobby and its all-powerful mach­in­a­tions.
Corollary 2
The second corollary follows from the first. Since the “Jewish lobby” is portrayed as moneyed, all-powerful, a bully, and as vicious and threat­en­ing, anyone who publicly stands up against Israel, or against the Jewish lobby, or the Jewish community lead­er­ship must of necessity be hailed and feted as a brave “hero”.
The actions of Jewish organ­isa­tions and others who support Israel as part of the free inter­change of ideas in any democracy are spun into the old myth about a powerful Jewish con­spir­acy. Critics of Israel are thus conferred with an under-dog status, a victim-mentality, and a brave-res­ist­ance-hero image.
When journ­al­ist John Lyons wrote a book ‘Balcony over Jerusalem’, in 2017, he included a chapter titled ‘The Lobby’. No adjective was needed – everyone knew who the lobby was. Lyons alleged in an interview that he was “savagely targeted” simply because he wrote what he saw. The “savage” targeting appar­ently consisted of written com­plaints about his work. His dark allusions to “the Lobby” might have led readers to imagine that he suffered constant har­ass­ment, physical abuse and threats to his life, by Jewish organ­isa­tions. In reality there were letters of complaint and articles cri­tiquing his book, including an exposure of the book’s inac­curacies and biases. Nev­er­the­less, many anti-Israel activists and others lauded Lyons as a “brave” journ­al­ist and honoured him with celebrity appear­ances to tell his “brave” story.
The claim of unjus­ti­fied targeting even occurs when critics respond to obvious inac­curacies about Jews or Israel. John Lyons com­plained that he was also “attacked” for a doc­u­ment­ary, ‘Stone Cold Justice’, which he co-produced in 2014. The doc­u­ment­ary included unsub­stan­ti­ated claims that Israeli soldiers crucify Palestini­an boys, crudely invoking the murderous libel of Jews as “Christ-killers”. When objec­tions were raised by Jewish organ­isa­tions, Lyons com­plained that he was being targeted, bullied and attacked, without any valid reason. In truth his work was simply being critiqued – and with ample reason. Journ­al­ists are as account­able for their work as anyone else.
The lion­isa­tion of critics of Israel and the demon­isa­tion of those who critique their work has a more sinister aspect. It serves as a way of bullying and cowing into silence those who stand up against lies, demon­isa­tion, and incite­ment against Jews and Israel. It is appalling that it has again become necessary to state that Jews have the same demo­crat­ic rights as other citizens to voice their concerns, and to do so as robustly as advocates of any other cause.
Those who speak against Israel are no more “heroic” than those who speak up in a democracy on any con­ten­tious issue. Real heroes are those who risk their lives, freedom and live­li­hoods to speak truth to power, espe­cially in countries governed by dic­tat­or­ships of the kind that exist in Iran, North Korea, Gaza, China and Saudi Arabia.
Con­clu­sion
In western demo­cra­cies, those who generally take an anti-Israel stance, whether in journ­al­ism or in the anti-Israel movement or elsewhere, do not face any threat to their lives, freedom or live­li­hoods. Yet thev concoct the myth that they face a powerful and insidious oppos­i­tion, in order to obfuscate the nature of the power they truly fear – the power of ideas contrary to their own. In this, the far left of politics is following the far right.
Psy­cho­lo­gists would have a field day working out why anti-Israel critics and activists seem to have such a deep need to glorify their own work and to be hailed as brave warriors. Their con­struc­tion of the “Jewish lobby” as a bogeyman certainly helps them ration­al­ise why their views have failed to attain the dominance they crave.
Whether by accident or design, the entire discourse that has grown up about “the Lobby” has nurtured an atmo­sphere in which old dis­cred­ited con­spir­acy theories about Jews, and the recru­des­cence of antisemitism, flourish. This has done nothing to enhance, and has actually under­mined, the prospects for a better and clearer under­stand­ing of the raft of complex and multi-layered issues that relate to Israel and the Palestini­ans.
Julie Nathan is the Research Officer for the Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry.