Does Jewish anti-Semitism exist?

By BENJAMIN WEINTHAL AND ALEX FEUERHERDT

Prof. Alvin H. Rosenfeld's 2007 essay "Progressive Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism" triggered an international debate over a largely neglected phenomenon: anti-Zionist Jews who are waging fierce polemical and organizational campaigns against Israel's existence. Many of them employ language that fulfills the criteria of both the European Union's "working definition" of anti-Semitism and the US State Department's definition of contemporary anti-Semitism.

Although such anti-Zionist Jews are a bizarre fringe group in the US, England, Canada and Germany, they are, nonetheless, attracting growing attention from mainstream media because of their support for campaigns to boycott Israel and their comparisons of Israel with Nazi Germany and the former apartheid regime in South Africa.

In his carefully worded manifesto, Rosenfeld, director of the Institute of Jewish Culture and Arts at Indiana University and a leading Holocaust scholar, poses the pressing question: Are these "Progressive Jews" contributing to the new anti-Semitism? Perhaps the most astonishing achievement of his essay is the didactic purpose it serves for a non-Jewish audience. Charges of anti-Semitism and vulgar anti-Zionism among Jews have been written off by non-Jews as an internecine Jewish matter. However, major German and European media outlets, as well as university forums and politicians, which seem unable to resist the temptation to offer a bully pulpit to hard-core anti-Zionist Jews, could benefit from a sober reading of Rosenfeld's essay. A vicarious need among many German journalists to vent anti-Israeli hostility through anti-Zionist Jews, who inoculate the press from the charge of Jew hatred because of their Jewish backgrounds, helps to explain the staying power of this unsavory phenomenon.

Rosenfeld's essay has been translated into German and his ideas have been discussed, attacked and praised in a number of German newspapers. The ongoing legal dispute between the German-Jewish journalist Henryk M. Broder and Evelyn Hecht-Galinski over whether Hecht-Galinski is a Jewish anti-Semite jolted the German media.The recent release of the media watchdog organization CAMERA's book, Israel's Jewish Defamers: The Media Dimension (2008), which includes a new essay by Rosenfeld, adds more insight into "the Jewish Jew-haters."

Professor Rosenfeld, is there Jewish anti-Semitism? Isn't that a contradiction in terms?

On the face of it, Jewish anti-Semitism does sound like a contradiction in terms, but unfortunately the phenomenon exists and has a long history. Some even claim to find reference to it as far back as the Bible and interpret a verse such as Isaiah 49:17 as an example: "Your destroyers and they that make you waste will come forth from among you." Isaiah was a farsighted prophet, and while I claim no direct line of continuity between ancient and medieval Jewish enemies of the Jews and the people that Henryk M. Broder has rightly been exposing as implacably anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic, some of the parallels are chilling.

Jewish intellectuals like Tony Judt, Noam Chomsky and Alfred Grosser strongly deny being anti-Semites. They claim they are simply formulating severe critiques of Israeli policy that have nothing to do with anti-Semitism. What do you think of that claim?

In and of itself, criticism of Israeli politics and actions need not be anti-Semitic. Like all countries, Israel is far from perfect and should not be exempt from criticism, even sharp criticism. But too often what passes as criticism of Israel is no more than a code term, or rhetorical cover, for what is sometimes transparently a form of verbal aggression - an impassioned denunciation or vilification of the state itself and even its right to continued existence. If one attends carefully to the language of some of the people you name, one finds that it has an edge to it - an extra note of enthusiasm, anger, bitterness: an overwrought quality - that goes well beyond what one normally thinks of as political commentary or criticism. Something perverse is going on here, something that one almost never finds when critics turn their sights on other countries, unless that country happens to be America.

The current legal dispute between Broder and Evelyn Hecht-Galinski, the daughter of Heinz Galinski [former head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany and the Berlin Jewish Community] caused widespread media attention in Germany. Hecht-Galinski equates Israeli policies with Nazi Germany and argues that a "Jewish-Israel lobby with an active network extends around the world and, thanks to America, its power has become great." Do you view Hecht-Galinski's statements as anti-Semitic? And what is her motivation for waging a campaign against Israel in the German media?

I don't know Evelyn Hecht-Galinski, so I have no idea what motivates her. What I do know is that anytime I come across someone who draws links between Israel and Nazi Germany, I become more than just a little uneasy. And when such bogus links are made by commentators within Germany, then it's time to pay special attention and ask what in the world is going on. For these analogies are not only without foundation by the facts of the real world but manifestly foul, clear expressions of bad faith or ill-will.

When such people also allege a concerted effort by a "Jewish" or "Israeli" lobby to exert control around the world, then the game is up. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad just spouted this despicable stuff, which could have been taken right out of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, before a large gathering at the United Nations. Remarkably, he received sustained applause for it. Had they been in this audience, would Hecht-Galinski, Grosser, Judt and Chomsky have joined in the hearty reception for the vicious words of the Iranian president or walked out on him?

I would be heartened to read of their disapproval, but to date have seen nothing by any of them that expresses contempt for this horrific assault. And yet to just let it pass, as if it doesn't matter, is dismaying, and a sign that the most extreme anti-Semitic rhetoric no longer registers as serious or somehow is viewed as acceptable. That's a deeply worrisome development, abetted by some of the aggressive words of anti-Zionist Jewish intellectuals.