Published by the ABC
by Alex Ryvchin
21^st August 2014
On July 25, as Israel’s war with Hamas raged, my niece, who is nearly 5 years of age, arrived at her Jewish day school in Perth to find the words “Zionist scum” daubed on the outer walls of the school. A Star of David was drawn between the words. The incident was hardly the most serious crime visited upon Australia’s Jewish community, which has become accus­tomed to verbal abuse and even acts of violence during times of turmoil in the Middle East. During the Gulf War in 1991, in which Israel was not a combatant, Jewish kinder­gartens in Sydney and Melbourne and three syn­agogues in Sydney were fire­bombed.
Yet the incident at my niece’s school affected me severely. It touched me per­son­ally. No-one should be attacked solely because of their national origin. Griev­ances from foreign conflicts should not be trans­planted into Aus­trali­an society. An attack on an Aus­trali­an child with no under­stand­ing of or con­nec­tion to conflict abroad is a study in cowardice. When a child that I deeply love was con­fron­ted with such senseless hatred, it stung.
Perhaps the incident evoked memories of a Rabbi describ­ing to me his pain at seeing Holocaust survivors arriving at his synagogue for a Sabbath service to find neo-Nazi slogans and swastikas emblazoned on the walls of the building. The Rabbi shed tears as he described this attack on “the souls” of people who had already exper­i­enced the limits of human suffering.
Viewed dis­pas­sion­ately, the incident in Perth would rate at the lower end of antisemitic acts committed during the course of the latest Gaza war.
In Melbourne, on July 10, a Jewish man was con­fron­ted by two men who called him a “Jewish dog” in Arabic and then violently assaulted him.
On August 4, at a Perth Shopping Centre, a visiting Rabbi from Jerusalem and his assistant were set upon by six teenagers threat­en­ing to “fix [them] up” for “killing babies in Gaza.”
In Sydney, on August 6, eight teenagers boarded a school bus servicing three Jewish schools and threatened to “slit the throats” of 30 terrified primary school children aged between 5 and 12, while shouting “Heil Hitler,” and “all Jews must die.”
Whilst these overtly antisemitic incidents are char­ac­ter­ised as oppor­tun­ist­ic or random because they do not appear to be the product of careful planning or delib­er­a­tion, the increas­ing frequency and intensity of these incidents closely cor­rel­ates with the escal­at­ing use of antisemitic motifs by Israel’s critics. This phe­nomen­on has spread from the extreme margins of politics into the main­stream media in several instances.
Take for example the cartoon drawn by Glen Le Lievre, which appeared in the July 26 edition of the Weekend Herald. The cartoon unam­bigu­ously portrayed an ugly ste­reo­type of a Jew, iden­ti­fied with hook nose, kippah (religious head covering) and Magen David (Star of David), sitting in an armchair and using a remote control to blow up houses and people in Gaza.
The cartoon, for which the Herald sub­sequently apo­lo­gised, portrayed Jews as a group as col­lect­ively guilty of acting outside the norms of civil­isa­tion and the laws of war, inten­tion­ally causing civilian deaths in Gaza. The cartoon thus attrib­uted to Jews a col­lect­ive blood guilt for the deaths and suffering in Gaza. This kind of calumny of the entire Jewish people has deep his­tor­ic­al roots in the Deicide myth (“the Jews killed Jesus”), a myth that was only abandoned by the Christian churches in the twentieth century.
The increas­ing frequency of ref­er­ences to a shadowy, cor­rupt­ing, omni­po­tent lobby advancing the interests of the Jewish people at the expense of the rest of humanity has become another dis­turb­ing feature of the political discourse. This too plays into long-dis­cred­ited myths about a global Jewish con­spir­acy.
The British liber­tari­an thinker, Brendan O’Neill observed the resur­gence of con­spir­at­ori­al thinking and its inev­it­able fixation with symbols of Jewish iden­ti­fic­a­tion, not least Israel:

“There is a growing tendency to think con­spir­at­ori­ally, to be con­stantly on the lookout for the one malevol­ent thing or group or person that might be held respons­ible for the myriad problems afflict­ing Western societies and inter­na­tion­al affairs. This is the real driving force of modern-day populist anti-Zionism that sometimes crosses the line into antisemitism.”

Global audiences are con­tinu­ously bombarded with images and other content on tele­vi­sion and social media which become the basis for shallow and unin­formed opinion-formation for billions of people. This plays into and fosters a reduc­tion­ist mindset, a craving for sim­pli­fic­a­tion in the form of one big theory that will “explain everything”.
The idea that a hidden force or shadowy cabal – whether it be Free­ma­sons, the “illu­minati” or some other mys­ter­i­ous-sounding group – is at the centre of power, inequal­ity and human misery has a natural appeal to the weak-minded. The char­ac­ter­isa­tion of Jews col­lect­ively as “powerful and pervasive” or “hating the light”, is a symptom of this mindset.
In seeking to under­stand why, for example, Israel’s right to exist in peace has enjoyed cross-party political support in Australia, con­spir­acy theorists are blind to the obvious strategic interests and demo­crat­ic values shared by Australia and Israel. They turn instead to paranoid fantasies which depict the Aus­trali­an gov­ern­ment and media as beholden to Jewish pup­pet­eers.
A further factor in the rise of hostility towards Jews in Australia has been the use of political protest directed at Israeli gov­ern­ment policies and actions, as a pretext to vent raw Jew-hatred.
As the British writer and satirist Howard Jacobson noted:

“It’s impossible to believe that an active antisemite wouldn’t – if only oppor­tun­ist­ic­ally – seek out somewhere to nestle in the manifold pleats of Israel-bashing… Tell me not a single Jew-hater finds the activity [of Israel-bashing] congenial, that cri­ti­cising Israel can “never” be an expres­sion of Jew-hating, not even when it takes the form of accusing Israeli soldiers of har­vest­ing organs.”

Political protest against any gov­ern­ment is legit­im­ate, whether or not the protest is factually-based and fair or, as is often the case with anti-Israel protests, hypo­crit­ic­al and based on out­rageous false­hoods. However, the abuse of legit­im­ate protest as a licence to indulge in racism is con­tempt­ible and unac­cept­able in any context.
The picture overseas is even worse. Anti-Israel rallies have not only descended into open and unashamed out­pour­ings of antisemitic rhetoric but have also become occasions for instig­at­ing anti-Jewish violence.
Out­rageously, anti-Israel rallies in Germany have featured calls for “Jews to the gas”. In France, several such rallies have concluded with mobs attacking syn­agogues. A Paris synagogue filled with Jewish wor­ship­pers was assailed by pro­test­ers chanting “death to Jews” and attempt­ing to firebomb the building.
In Australia, the use of antisemitic motifs in anti-Israel rallies has been more subtle but non­ethe­less pervasive.
Sup­port­ers of the Palestini­ans unhes­it­at­ingly condemn as racist any claim that the Palestini­ans are not an authentic people and have no right to national self-determ­in­a­tion. Yet they make the same claim about the Jewish people. The very rights that the Palestini­ans claim for them­selves they deny to others. This too is racism, not merely hypocrisy.
As the eminent Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer observed, “Oppos­i­tion to Jewish inde­pend­ence and to national rights for Jews does con­sti­tute antisemitism.”
The Jewish people are, and always have been, both a faith community and a national community, with a long history of statehood in the Holy Land, centred around Jerusalem. The Hebrew language, culture, religion and civil­isa­tion are native to Israel. Jews are offi­cially recog­nised almost every­where as a people, dis­tin­guished from others by a well-developed com­bin­a­tion of shared customs, beliefs, tra­di­tions and char­ac­ter­ist­ics derived from a common past. It is that com­bin­a­tion which gives Jews an his­tor­ic­ally determ­ined social identity, in their own eyes and in the eyes of others, which is based not simply on group cohesion and solid­ar­ity but also on their common his­tor­ic­al ante­cedents.
To try to redefine the Jewish people as a non-people so as to suit the interests or con­veni­ence of others is not only dishonest but also an assault on our people’s human dignity. This is quint­es­sen­tial antisemitism.
An expres­sion of this mindset is the slogan con­stantly heard at anti-Israel rallies that “Palestine will be free from the river to the sea” (a reference to the land between the Jordan River and the Medi­ter­ranean Sea encom­passing both the West Bank and the whole of Israel). This is an unam­bigu­ous call for the destruc­tion of Israel and its replace­ment with a Palestini­an State.
Equally, support for a range of terrorist organ­isa­tions at anti-Israel rallies, from Hamas to ISIS, leaves little doubt as to the protester’s inten­tions. It is self-evident that a supporter of the ISIS brand of roaming, barbaric Jihadism does not foresee a Palestini­an State co-existing with the Jewish national home. Most likely, the flag-bearer does not envisage Jewish existence in any form.
Sympathy for Hamas, a des­ig­nated terrorist organ­isa­tion, is equally dis­turb­ing. While the murders of over 1000 Israeli civilians during a relent­less campaign of suicide bombings during the Second Intifada may have been forgotten by some, Hamas remains committed to slaughter­ing as many Jewish civilians as possible. The Hamas Charter calls for Israel to be “oblit­er­ated” (preamble) and for the killing of Jews (Article 7, final paragraph).
Support or apo­lo­get­ics for Hamas’s “res­ist­ance” against Israel legit­im­ises the rhetoric and the crimes of the organ­isa­tion and seriously under­mines the cred­ib­il­ity of the Palestini­an cause.
It also exposes the fact that the anti-Israel movement is less committed to advancing legit­im­ate Palestini­an national aspir­a­tions than it is to denying legit­im­ate Jewish rights. This zero-sum thinking about the conflict, which has brought the Palestini­ans nothing but disaster for more than 100 years, epi­tom­ises the Palestini­an solid­ar­ity movement.
The frequent use of Nazi imagery and slogans to char­ac­ter­ise Israel and Israelis is further evidence of the extreme and often unhinged nature of pro-Palestini­an activism in Australia.
As described by Mark Lindsay, writing on this site, comparing Jews or Israelis to Nazis is “an analogic argument that fails to take seriously the par­tic­u­lar­it­ies of the current conflict and makes a mockery of the Holocaust itself.”
There is perhaps no greater insult to a people than to mock or minimise their national tragedy or to exploit it for rhet­or­ic­al value. It is not intended as a statement of fact or opinion. It is intended to be hurtful. Likening Israel, the only State in the Middle East which enjoys democracy and freedom of expres­sion, to Nazi German total­it­ari­an­ism is not just a lie, but an obscenity. It falsely equates des­cend­ants of murdered Jews to the tor­ment­ors of their forebears.
Unable to sub­stant­ively respond to the charge of antisemitism, the anti-Israel movement has sought to recruit indi­vidu­als identi­fy­ing as Jews. This appears to be based largely on the misguided and offensive belief that the endorse­ment of a small number of Jewish indi­vidu­als absolves the anti-Israel campaign of the charge of dis­crim­in­at­ing against, or vilifying, the Jewish people col­lect­ively.
While fre­quently claiming to represent a “growing number of Jews”, in reality, these indi­vidu­als represent virtually no-one. Soci­olo­gist Dr Philip Mendes estimates that “less than one percent” of Jews hold strong anti-Israel views. The Gen08 Survey, the most com­pre­hens­ive study of Aus­trali­an Jews carried out in Australia, found that while “there are a wide range of views on the policy to be followed in pursuit of peace with Palestini­ans… support for Israel unifies the Jewish community.”
Miniscule though they are in number, anti-Israel Jews are shame­lessly amenable to being put to use as vehicles for pro­pa­ganda.
Firstly, the inor­din­ate media attention they receive gives the false impres­sion that a sizeable number of Jews are sym­path­et­ic to their views. Secondly, they serve to “rubber-stamp” antisemitism in the anti-Israel movement by lending their names and Jewish cre­den­tials to its rhetoric and tactics. Thirdly, and perhaps most dis­turb­ingly, through grandiose public denun­ci­ations of Israel and the populist rallying cry of “not in my name”, it is implied that any Jew who refuses to join them in their denun­ci­ations of Israel bears respons­ib­il­ity for Israel’s actions and is therefore a legit­im­ate target for hatred and violence.
One such activist expressed this point expli­citly in a tweet the day after a recent antisemitic attack on Jewish primary school children on a Sydney school bus. He pro­claimed that Jews living outside Israel “are fair game” citing their supposed “influence” and “militant support for crimes of the Jewish state.” The statement speaks volumes about his skewed moral compass and descent into a mindset of dehu­man­isa­tion.
To be clear, it is false to contend that every criticism of Israel is antisemitic. Israel’s most incisive critics are its own citizens. But it is equally false to contend that no criticism of Israel is antisemitic. Criticism of Israel can cross the line into antisemitism in a variety of ways.
The Palestini­an solid­ar­ity movement fre­quently laments its inability to obtain broad popular accept­ance of its “narrative”. Until the movement abandons its extreme, anni­hil­a­tion­ist rhetoric and honestly examines the hatred it evokes and incites, the majority of Aus­trali­ans – and fair-minded people every­where – will continue to be repelled by its under­ly­ing aims and methods.
Alex Ryvchin is the public affairs director at the Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry.