On Antisemitism by Judith Butler

Author:Judith Butler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, ebook
ISBN: 978-1-60846-762-4
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Published: 2017-04-20T04:00:00+00:00

Part III:

Fighting False Charges

of Antisemitism

Two Degrees of Separation:

Israel, Its Palestinian Victims,

and the Fraudulent Use of Antisemitism

Omar Barghouti

“A conquest may be fraught either with evil or with good for mankind, according to the comparative worth of the conquering and conquered peoples,” wrote Theodore Roosevelt.1 From the onset of Zionist colonization of Palestine, the conquering European settlers saw the place as a “land without a people,”2 reducing the indigenous Arab population of Palestine to what I call “relative humans”3 who are not worthy of equal rights, those accorded to “full” humans.

That degree of separation between the colonizers and the indigenous people of any colonized territory was the norm. Zionism, however, took it to the next level. By presenting Jews as superhumans, “the Chosen people,” it has added a second degree of separation, so there is now one between Jews and the rest of the human species and another between that and the “relative humans.”

Since the Nazi genocide in the 1940s of millions of Jews, among other human groups that were seen by Germans at the time as relative humans, the Zionist movement and, later, Israel have used the charge of antisemitism in many ways that are not related to actual anti-Jewish racism or discrimination.

With time, Israel focused on abusing the uniqueness of the Holocaust and using the charge of antisemitism to establish a doctrine of exceptionalism, which not only justifies and normalizes the Zionist ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinians and the settler-colonial project in Palestine, but also shields Israel’s regime of occupation, settler colonialism, and apartheid from accountability before international law.4 With this exceptionalism, Israel has become a state above the law, placed “on a pedestal,” as Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu once said, above all other states.5

With the 2015 election of its “most racist government” ever, Israel has effectively dropped its already-thin mask of “democracy” and “enlightenment” and descended into a deeper-than-ever racist abyss.6 This and the rise of worldwide grassroots support for the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement have exposed Israel’s system of injustice and reasserted Palestinian rights, encouraging much more ethically consistent, courageous critiques and a steady erosion in its world stature.7 A BBC poll in 2014, for instance, showed Israel competing with North Korea in popularity around the world, including among Europe’s largest nations.8

Israel’s failure in the last decade to stop the accelerating loss of its international grassroots support base has prompted it to defiantly pump more money into re-branding and expensive propaganda campaigns aimed at whitewashing those policies and structures.9

When this strategy proved to be futile, Israel resorted to its weapon of choice—trying to bully dissenters, opponents of its grave human rights violations, and people of conscience who stand in solidarity with Palestinian rights by labeling them as “antisemites.” The formula is simple: to maintain Israel’s impunity and exceptionalism, those who dare to question must be bullied into silence, and there is no better “silencer” than the epithet of antisemitism.

Unprecedented criticism of Israel’s regime and society, however, has started to come from unexpected corners of late.

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