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(Updated)
It has been a fascinating week in anti-Semitism, but then they all are. The more I witness it, the more persuaded I become of the identity of the purer, more direct forms and the ignorant forms. After all, much ignorance – lack of knowledge and sophistication – is open with wonder and without prejudice, like that of a child, so ignorance is not the explanation or an excuse. I begin to think the ignorance a cover, conscious or not, for the hate, and the hate need not be virulent, but only casually alienating, marginalizing, and dehumanizing. This is true of all racism, but anti-Semitism has its longer unified and coherent history.
Mainstream English culture and politics do anti-Semitism well, which is to say more publically and unashamedly, so in addition to the Guardian, which, additional to other roles, is a functionally anti-Semitic rag, we have the academic union UCU, which former member Ronnie Fraser is suing for being “institutionally anti-Semitic.” This week alone we got British MP David Ward issuing the latest “they of all people” slander and the Sunday Times publishing a cartoon with a new iteration of the “blood libel” slander. Both initially and secondarily and arguably tertiarily resisted acknowledgement and apology, and both, when succumbing to pressure, issued disingenuous apologies. Ward apologized for “unintended offence.” This is where a form of ignorance arises, of the nature of a pathology, like the self-delusion of the alcoholic who denies his problem: of course, Ward intended to offend. That was the whole point of his comments. They are deeply critical remarks – particularly in their invidious nature and timing – that have no other possible effect, even if one fools oneself into thinking it is tough love.
A twitter exchange I had was akin to the response and unreserved apology, finally, of the Times that appears, actually, to be somewhat reserved. Unlike some allies, I do not tweet to engage in 140 character argumentation, especially with hateful people who would only waste my time, but sometimes – many tweeters offering a black box of identity – I’ll engage a little to probe the box and satisfy a curiosity. One response to my tweeting the Times cartoon was
isn’t that what Israel is doing though? Maybe the wrong day for said cartoon, but not anti Semitic, is it??
This purposely chirpy tweeter over a few tweets went on to characterize the cartoon as “criticism,” which I, in closing, corrected to lie. The cartoon, in the manner of similar dishonest characterizations of the separation barrier, ignores or misrepresents the conditions of its origin. And even if one believes an argument can be made for the barrier’s problematic effect on some Palestinian lives, there is no manner whatsoever in which its construction or even its maintenance was or is the product of physical harm to Palestinians, much less mortared with their blood, by even Benjamin Netanyahu, who was not in office when the barrier was constructed. One need not know the history of the Jewish blood libel to recognize this one, even merely locally, as a libel. One need not know the history of Jewish caricature and demonization to recognize demonization and to know that demonization is dehumanization. To criticize, one must address facts; everything in the cartoon, without exception, is a lie.
It is finally meaningless to refer to the mind that looks at that cartoon and calls it true – “what Israel is doing” – and simply call it ignorant. It is the ignorance of a man who beats a woman and tells himself he did it because she misbehaved or in some way deserved it – he believes that, doesn’t he, as Ward and cartoonist Gerald Scarfe believe the Israel and Jews, for Ward, warrant the attack on them?
One has to hate, however so in denial, to form prejudice out of ignorance.
Not to focus on the English unfairly, though, even as I have been composing this post, information arrived that the Brooklyn College political science department does not think it prejudicial directly to sponsor a BDS event on campus – claiming sponsorship is not endorsement – and refuse to permit counter voices to participate.
And the Palestinian Ma’an News Agency, funded by the European Union, the United Nations Development Program, and UNESCO, publishes this:
“[The Jews] feel inferior to the nations and societies in which they live, because of the hostility and evil rising in their hearts towards others and for their plots and schemes against the nations who know with certainty that the Jews are the root of conflict in the world, wherever they reside.”
“[Jews are] outcasts in every corner of the earth, and not one nation in the world respects them… but Allah’s curse upon them and his fury at them cause them to continue with their transgression.”
“Allah has stricken fear in their hearts and decreed humiliation and degradation upon them until Judgment Day.”
The mind must simply reel at the pervasiveness of open anti-Semitism in the Muslim world and the pervasiveness today of covert anti-Semitism in the Western world. Here is how reminiscent the atmosphere is.
JNS.org posted a fascinating piece a couple of weeks ago about “How the press soft-pedaled Hitler” in the period after he was elected to the Chancellorship of Germany.
A law passed on April 7 required the dismissal of Jews from all government jobs. Additional legislation in the months to follow banned Jews from a whole range of professions, from dentistry to the movie industry. The government even sponsored a one-day nationwide boycott of Jewish businesses, with Nazi storm troopers stationed outside Jewish-owned stores to prevent customers from entering.
Nevertheless, in July 1933, nearly six months after Hitler’s rise to power, the New York Times ran a front-page feature about the Fuhrer that presented him in a flattering light. For Hitler, it was a golden opportunity to soften his image by praising President Roosevelt as well as a platform to deliver lengthy justifications of his totalitarian policies and attacks on Jews.
The article, titled “Hitler Seeks Jobs for All Germans,” began with Hitler’s remark that FDR was looking out “for the best interests and welfare of the people of the United States.” He added, “I have sympathy with President Roosevelt because he marches straight toward his objective over Congress, over lobbies, over stubborn bureaucracies.”
The story was based on an interview with the Nazi leader by Times correspondent Anne O’Hare McCormick. She gave Hitler paragraph after paragraph to explain his policies as necessary to address Germany’s unemployment, improve its roads, and promote national unity. The Times correspondent lobbed the Nazi chief softball questions such as “What character in history do you admire most, Caesar, Napoleon, or Frederick the Great?”
McCormick also described Hitler’s appearance and mannerisms in a strongly positive tone: Hitler is “a rather shy and simple man, younger than one expects, more robust, taller… His eyes are almost the color of the blue larkspur in a vase behind him, curiously childlike and candid… His voice is as quiet as his black tie and his double-breasted black suit… Herr Hitler has the sensitive hand of the artist.” [Emphasis added]
Contrast to this: in the Guardian about a year ago ran a feature titled “My Worst Shot,” in which prominent photographers commented, surprisingly, on just that – a photograph of theirs presented as one they chose to meet that description. Among the photographers was Platon who presented a photograph that was controversial on its first publication, of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Here is Platon’s account of the photo:
‘In 2009 I photographed around 110 world leaders at the UN. Ahmadinejad was the biggest surprise. That day, he made a speech that was one of the most controversial ever given and a large proportion of the auditorium walked out. I was expecting to get that dictatorial menace but he suddenly realised that, not only was he about to sit for the most intimate portrait of him ever taken, a crowd of his supporters was watching. They were all cheering; he lost his composure for a second and started to laugh. What I got was him trying to regain his composure. It’s the most sinister leer I’ve ever caught on film. It was a missed opportunity, in the sense that he was trying to gather himself. On the other hand, it gave me something I would never have expected. No one thinks of Ahmadinejad as a man with a hint of a smile.’
Platon never actually calls this photo his worst or offers reason for its being so. His comments implicitly only, for those who already know, recall the controversy over the image. Beyond that, despite Platon’s renown and acknowledged mastery, notice how his account of the image he produced is directed toward Ahmadinejad and entirely away from his own craft and artistry, his own intention and selection.
Wrote Chas Newkey-Burden, who is not Jewish,
Put aside for a moment that the “oppression” which proponents of this argument are accusing Israel of committing is usually imaginary. When directed by gentiles towards Jews, the “they-of-all-people” argument is in its very essence so fundamentally ill-judged and unjust, and voiced with such a breathtaking lack of self-awareness, that my spirit flags when I hear it.
….
I contend that, as a result of the Holocaust and what preceded it, it is we gentiles who should know better. The Holocaust followed centuries of slander, persecution, violence and murder committed by gentiles against Jews. So it is not you who have an increased responsibility to behave morally, but us.
….
Let us strip the “they-of-all-people” argument down to its very basics: gentiles telling Jews that we killed six million of your people and that as a result it is you, not us, who have lessons to learn; that it is you, not us, who need to clean up your act. It is an argument of atrocious, spiteful insanity. Do not accept it; turn it back on those who offer it. For it is us, not you, who should know better.
(Update:
AJA
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