by Julie Nathan
Feb­ru­ary 10, 2016
This let­ter is addressed to that small frac­tion of the polit­i­cal Left which not only crit­i­cis­es Israeli gov­ern­ment poli­cies or prac­tices but also demonis­es and den­i­grates Israel at every oppor­tu­ni­ty and thus denies its legit­i­ma­cy.
We see you, we hear you, day after day, mak­ing your igno­rant, big­ot­ed and mali­cious accu­sa­tions against Jews and Israel. You claim to be speak­ing for human rights and for jus­tice, but your words and actions betray you. You are haters, liars and bul­lies.
You pre­sume to define our Jew­ish iden­ti­ty to suit your own sen­si­bil­i­ties and con­ve­nience. You assert that Zion­ism has noth­ing to do with Judaism. You say we are only a reli­gious group and deny our 3,500 year old his­to­ry as both a nation­al and a faith com­mu­ni­ty. In short, you pre­sume to tell us who we are – a lib­er­ty you would not dare to take with any oth­er group – and you are wrong.
You say you have noth­ing against Jews. You say you are only against Zion­ists. You cat­e­gorise us into “good Jews” who oppose Israel and “bad Jews” who sup­port Israel. This is your cyn­i­cal, sin­is­ter way of offer­ing accep­tance only to those Jews who are so lack­ing in knowl­edge or moral fibre that they are will­ing to embrace your hol­low car­i­ca­ture of what it means to be Jew­ish. You are against the mil­lions of Jews, the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty, who are proud­ly Jew­ish and sup­port Israel’s right to exist as the State of the Jew­ish peo­ple.
You are guilty of ignor­ing, min­imis­ing and obfus­cat­ing the anti­semitism with­in your ranks. You claim to be anti-racists but will not con­demn the all too obvi­ous anti-Jew­ish racism which is man­i­fest­ed every day by adher­ents of the anti-Israel move­ment – on web­sites, on social media, at demon­stra­tions, in pub­lic lec­tures, talks and speech­es. When this anti­semitism is exposed, you go into hys­ter­i­cal denial, accus­ing those who expose the ugly anti-Jew­ish racism you have helped to spawn of try­ing to sti­fle pub­lic crit­i­cism of Israel. As if there is any short­age of pub­lic crit­i­cism of Israel.
When Jews are attacked or mur­dered in Istan­bul, Mum­bai, Toulouse, Paris, and else­where, you blame the vic­tims – you say “Israel is the cause of anti­semitism”. You say “If Israel behaved bet­ter, then Jews through­out the world would not be attacked.” Yet you would not dream of blam­ing the vic­tim for any oth­er form of racism or racial­ly-moti­vat­ed vio­lence.
When Jews are mur­dered in Israel, you defend it, excuse it, min­imise it and at times con­done it. You demonise Israeli Jews. You say they are “occu­piers, oppres­sors”, whether they live in a remote out­post on the West Bank or in Tel Aviv. These Jews, you claim, are “set­tlers” who steal Arab land. You say all of Israel is Arab land. You cry: “Resist!” You give suc­cour and encour­age­ment to those who mur­der Jews.
You say “Israel is ille­git­i­mate. Israel must go.” You say “the Jew­ish state has no right to exist.” The only state in the world you say must be destroyed is the one and only Jew­ish state. The right you claim for all oth­er peo­ples, that of nation­al self-deter­mi­na­tion, you deny to the Jew­ish peo­ple.
You call Jew­ish Israelis “invaders, occu­piers, colo­nial­ists, and set­tlers”, even though 80% of them are native born. You call them a “west­ern implant to con­trol the Mid­dle East.” You tell them to “go back” to Poland and Ger­many – the grave­yard of our peo­ple. Your true mes­sage is abun­dant­ly clear.
You talk of indige­nous rights, yet deny the fact that the Jew­ish peo­ple, and our Hebrew lan­guage, cul­ture and reli­gion, are indige­nous to the land of Israel. You ignore the fact that Jews have con­tin­u­ous­ly lived in the land of Israel for 3,500 years. You ignore our nation­al, reli­gious, and cul­tur­al ori­gins in, and con­tin­u­ing con­nec­tions to, the land of Israel.
You ignore or belit­tle Jew­ish con­cerns. You ignore the fact that for mil­len­nia Jews were ostracised and oppressed, per­se­cut­ed and mas­sa­cred, a pow­er­less peo­ple, a numer­i­cal­ly small peo­ple, exist­ing at the whim of popes, caliphs and kings, and the mobs of the host soci­ety. You expect us to for­get what it is like to be state­less pari­ahs, an alien nation in the midst of oth­er nations. You demand that we become state­less once again.
You say you are not anti-Jew­ish, only anti-Israel. Yet the false accu­sa­tions you make against Israel are the same as those pre­vi­ous­ly made against Jews. You say that Israel and “the Zion­ists” con­trol the banks, the politi­cians, the media; that they lust after Palestinian/gentile blood, and are satan­ic in every way. With­in the rubric of “anti-Zion­ism”, you have repack­aged and redis­trib­uted every col­lec­tive, racist lie that was ever told about Jews.
You call us Nazis. You equate the Jew­ish Star of David with the Nazi swasti­ka. You equate Zion­ism with Nazism. You equate Jew­ish Israel with Nazi Ger­many. You equate us with the mur­der­ers of our peo­ple. You lie and demonise. You do not polemi­cise against us for the sake of the truth. The truth does not inter­est you. You say these things delib­er­ate­ly in order to re-trau­ma­tise us. Know­ing that we are still haunt­ed by the geno­cide per­pe­trat­ed against our peo­ple more than 70 years ago, you implic­it­ly call for anoth­er geno­cide against us by equat­ing us with the per­pe­tra­tors.
Your words mean: “as Nazi Ger­many was destroyed, so too it is moral­ly just to destroy Israel.” Your words say: “if the Israelis and Zion­ists are so evil, then maybe Hitler had good grounds for com­mit­ting geno­cide against the Jews.” Your words say: “if Hitler had suc­ceed­ed in wip­ing out the Jews, then there would be no Israel.” Your words say: “in ret­ro­spect, Hitler was doing the world a favour.” The mur­der of six mil­lion Jews in Europe was not enough to sat­is­fy your blind, self-right­eous hatred. You are prepar­ing the way for the mur­der of the six mil­lion Jews in Israel.
You call for boy­cotts, divest­ment and sanc­tions (BDS) against Israel until Israel bends to your demands and self-destruc­ts. You lie when you say that BDS is only about Pales­tin­ian rights and jus­tice, know­ing full well that the BDS move­ment aims at elim­i­nat­ing the Jew­ish state. You do not care about Pales­tin­ian Arabs when their fel­low Arabs oppress or kill them. Only when you can blame Israel do you speak up. Of all the coun­tries in the world, you only tar­get Israel for boy­cotts, divest­ment and destruc­tion.
For you it is an incon­ve­nient truth that Israel is a lib­er­al democ­ra­cy with equal rights for all, includ­ing LGBT peo­ple, who are free to live as they choose. You ignore that in neigh­bour­ing coun­tries, gays are hung on cranes or thrown off build­ings. You ignore that plant­i­ng trees in Israel is an age old Jew­ish com­mit­ment to rein­vig­o­rat­ing the bar­ren land. So, in the depths of your moral and intel­lec­tu­al bank­rupt­cy, you accuse Israel of “pink-wash­ing” and “green-wash­ing”. You twist and dis­tort every good thing about Israel. To you, demon­is­ing Israel is more impor­tant than gay rights or the envi­ron­ment.
We see you, we hear you, day after day. Your lies about Jews and Israel is a rehash of the false accu­sa­tions against the Jew­ish peo­ple and Jew­ish reli­gion in pre­vi­ous cen­turies. The ter­mi­nol­o­gy has changed, but the sen­ti­ment, the actions, and the ven­om, remain the same. You come from the same mould as the Pharoahs, Cru­saders, Inquisi­tors, Almo­hads, com­mu­nists, fas­cists, Nazis, and Islamists. You are the con­tem­po­rary stan­dard-bear­ers of a long his­tor­i­cal line of prej­u­dice, envy and hate. Hang your heads in shame.
Julie Nathan is the Research Offi­cer for the Exec­u­tive Coun­cil of Aus­tralian Jew­ry
This arti­cle first appeared in the Times of Israel and J‑Wire