Blaming the Jews

Bernard Harrison

Description

In recent years Western countries have seen a proliferation of antisemitic material in social media, and attacks on Jews such as that on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018. Much of this has stemmed, not from personal hostility to Jews on the part of this or that individual, but from a resurgence in groups at both ends of politics of the ancient delusion that "the Jews" collectively dominate world affairs and lie at the root of all the world's evils.

In Blaming the Jews author Bernard Harrison, offers a new and unique analysis of this second and far more dangerous form of antisemitism and its persistence as a cultural phenomenon. Questioning the assumption that antisemitism affects or targets only Jews, he demonstrates that, allowed to go unrecognised or unchecked, antisemitism is potentially damaging to us all.

In a world where rhetoric is fashioned on stereotypes and driven by political ideology, Harrison argues it is our responsibility to be vigilant in exposing the delusions of antisemitism and their consequences for Jews and non-Jews alike.

It is often asserted, both by Jews and by others, that social antisemitism has greatly declined in Western societies over the seventy years that have elapsed since the end of World War II. That is broadly—though somewhat patchily—true. What I shall argue in this book, however, is that social antisemitism is by no means the only kind we have to worry about today. As I shall show in what follows—and as many others have noted—antisemitism as a political fantasy concerning the mysterious, demonic, and conspiratorial power of "the Jews" to determine world events has enjoyed a political rebirth since September 2001. All that has changed is that "Zionism"—understanding by that term the State of Israel together with its Jewish supporters (though not, as we shall see, its far more numerous non-Jewish ones)—has taken over, in effect, the role traditionally assigned in antisemitic theory to the world Jewish conspiracy. In that new form, antisemitism as a delusive political theory is once again as active in the political life of the West as it has been at any time over the past two millennia.

Unfortunately, that political rebirth has taken place chiefly on the left. The left has, of course, its own traditions of antisemitic theorizing. These theories were specific to the left and in any case not particularly active or influential during the greater part of the twentieth century. But what the French ambassador's remark exemplifies, as we shall see in what follows, is a straightforward transfer from one end of the political spectrum to the other of what used to be the exclusively right-wing fantasy that the Jews are to be blamed for most of the evils besetting the world and, among other things, for being the main force pushing the world toward war.

In short, I shall argue in this book that those who presently complain of a revival of antisemitism in sections of the British Labour Party, in American academia, and for that matter in the wider drift of liberal opinion in the Western world do not for a moment, pace the BBC, suppose that problem to consist only in the entertaining, by individuals who may or may not happen to be on the left, of private attitudes of "hostility and prejudice" toward anybody who happens to be Jewish.

 

On the contrary, they take it to consist also, and most importantly, in a revival, largely on the left this time, of antisemitic theory: of belief in the ancient fantasy of a collective Jewish threat to non-Jewish interests. 

 

In the minds of the believers, that threat consists primarily in the supposed hidden conspiratorial power of the Jewish community to dominate world events; the commitment of the community to the exercise of darkly demonic powers in the service of purely sectional Jewish interests; and more seriously still, in what believers imagine to be the collective recalcitrance of the Jewish community toward the very moral and political values that believers find most reasonable and compelling. 

The subject of the book is that fantasy: its extraordinary persistence over the centuries; its remarkable ability to transform and adapt itself, like some strange virus of the mind, in order to speak afresh to the concerns and anxieties generated by new historical circumstances; the functions it serves in non-Jewish culture and political life; and finally the reasons for its extraordinary recrudescence in liberal-left circles in the twenty-first century.

Preface
Introduction
I. Varieties of Antisemitism
1. Hamas Addresses the Jewish Question
2. "Profiting" from the Holocaust
3. Questions of Definition
II. Why the Jews?
4. The Disease Metaphor
5. An Obstinate People
III. Is Israel "illegitimate"?
6. Accusation and Narrative
7. Narrative and Reality
8. The Legacy of 1967
9. Is "Anti-Zionism" Antisemitic?
10. Israel, the Left and the Universities
IV. Judaism Defaced
11. A Primitive Religion?
12. Mitzva and Moral Theory.
13. What's Wrong With Universalism?
V. Antisemitism as a Problem for Non-Jews
14. Jew-Baiting on Campus
15. Defamation Disguised
16. Judgement Unhinged
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Religious Intolerance
• Jewish Studies
• Philosophie et théologie
• Persecution
• Politics
• Religion
• History
• Conflict

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 06 octobre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253052490
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

BLAMING THE JEWS
STUDIES IN ANTISEMITISM
Alvin H. Rosenfeld, editor
BLAMING THE JEWS
Politics and Delusion

BERNARD HARRISON
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.org
2020 by Bernard Harrison
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Harrison, Bernard, 1933- author.
Title: Blaming the Jews : politics and delusion / Bernard Harrison.
Description: Bloomington, Indiana : Indiana University Press, [2020] Series: Studies in antisemitism Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020007441 (print) LCCN 2020007442 (ebook) ISBN 9780253049902 (hardback) ISBN 9780253049919 (paperback) ISBN 9780253049926 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Antisemitism-History-21st century. Arab-Israeli conflict-Influence.
Classification: LCC DS145 .H376 2020 (print) LCC DS145 (ebook) DDC 305.892/40905-dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020007441
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020007442
1 2 3 4 5 25 24 23 22 21 20
For Alvin H. Rosenfeld
Antisemitism frequently charges Jews with conspiring to harm humanity, and it is often used to blame Jews for why things go wrong.
-INTERNATIONAL HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE ALLIANCE (IHRA) DEFINITION OF ANTISEMITISM
CONTENTS
Preface
Introduction
PART I . Varieties of Antisemitism
1. Hamas Addresses the Jewish Question
2. Profiting from the Holocaust
3. Questions of Definition
PART II . Why the Jews?
4. The Disease Metaphor
5. An Obstinate People
PART III . Is Israel an Illegitimate State?
6. Accusation and Narrative
7. Narrative and Reality
8. The Legacy of 1967
9. Is Anti-Zionism Antisemitic?
10. Israel, the Left, and the Universities
PART IV . Judaism Defaced
11. A Primitive Religion?
12. Mitzvah and Moral Theory
13. What s Wrong with Universalism?
PART V . Antisemitism as a Problem for Non-Jews
14. Jew Baiting on Campus
15. Defamation Disguised
16. Judgment Unhinged
Selected Bibliography
Index
PREFACE
A DECADE AGO, RAEL JEAN Isaac published a review of an earlier book of mine on antisemitism. Her review was generally approving, though it also contained some sharp and well-deserved criticisms, with which I now find myself wholly in agreement. Isaac s (2009) review concludes:
Harrison focuses on today s left wing, and does a fine job of showing how it has come about that the anti-racist liberal left finds itself currently up to its neck in the oldest form of racism. But at the end of the day we are left with the larger question-one hopes Harrison will one day turn his formidable analytic talents to it- Why, over time, do so many different roads, left, right, religious, anti-religious, lead to anti-Semitism? If nothing else it speaks to the poverty of the human imagination that it comes back endlessly to the same imaginary demons and, impervious to reason or logic, sinks into the same familiar collective madness.
The present book is my attempt, more than a decade later, to do what Isaac asked of me: to answer the above taxing but entirely legitimate question. I have returned, in this new book, to many of the issues of contemporary antisemitism that dominated the first. But this time, I have tried to set them in the wider context of a new account of what antisemitism is, of the functions it serves in non-Jewish politics and culture, and of why it has enjoyed the protean power it has displayed over the centuries to continually re-create itself in an extraordinary variety of political and religious contexts.
A non-Jew such as myself would have found it difficult to even address these questions without an immense amount of sympathetic help from friends and colleagues, Jewish and non-Jewish. Those from whom I have learned most include Edward Alexander, David Conway, Anthony Julius, Lesley Klaff, Michael Krausz, Matthias Kuentzel, Deborah Lipstadt, Kenneth Marcus, Cynthia Ozick, Alvin Rosenfeld, Abigail Rosenthal, Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, and Kenneth Waltzer. The critical comments of my wife, Dorothy Harrison, who read the final version of the manuscript in its entirety, led me to excise a number of tediously overwritten passages, which must once have seemed good to me but no longer did so when seen through her eyes. Others from whose advice the book has gained much include Jonathan Campbell, Amy Elman, the late Ilan Gur-Zeev, David Hirsh, Alan Johnson, Peter Hacker, Menachem Kellner, Michael Leffell, David Patterson, Steve Rich, Leona Toker, Stephen Riley, Alan Tapper, and Elhanan Yakira. Any remaining errors, from which they and many others have not succeeded in saving me, are entirely my own.
Katelyn Klingler did a splendid job of ridding the manuscript of a host of typos and minor infelicities. To her, to those mentioned above whom I have consulted in person, and to the many more whose books and essays have helped me see new complexities or turn new corners in the discussion, my heartfelt gratitude is due.
BLAMING THE JEWS
INTRODUCTION
Left-wing anti-racists should think more about the fact that anti-Semitism is both a form of racism and a prejudice with its own specific characteristics.
-Dave Rich, The Left s Jewish Problem
I
In recent years, Western countries have seen a sharp increase in both the incidence of antisemitic material on the web, social media, and elsewhere, and in actual attacks on Jews. In 2015, according to the Guardian newspaper, antisemitic incidents doubled over the previous year, reaching the highest level ever recorded in Britain. One of the incidents reported by the paper concerns a leaflet found among Israeli produce in a supermarket. It showed an image of the Israeli flag with the caption The flag of Zionist racist scum, and it read, Deny the Holocaust? Of course there was a holocaust. What a pity Adolf and Co didn t manage to finish the job properly! Another involved an identifiably Jewish man, cycling to synagogue, knocked off his bicycle, and when on the ground kicked, by a group of youths. 1
Also in Britain, 2016 saw a series of accusations of antisemitism in the Labour Party. This began with a highly publicized row among members of the Oxford University Labour Club, with allegations of a poisonous atmosphere, including constant reference to Jewish students as Zionists or Zios. In the words of the Independent newspaper, the club
became embroiled in an anti-Semitism row following the resignation of one of its chairs after the club decided to endorse Israel Apartheid Week in February.
Co-chair Alex Chalmers, a student at Oxford s Oriel College, issued a strongly-worded statement on his Facebook page at the time in which he said he was stepping down from his position because a large proportion of both OULC and the student left in Oxford have some kind of problem with Jews.
Despite highlighting the benefits he received during his time with the OULC over the past two terms, Mr Chalmers said the club was becoming increasingly riven by factional splits. He added: Despite its avowed commitment to liberation, the attitudes of certain members of the club towards certain disadvantaged groups was becoming poisonous. 2
In due course, as a result of the dependence of modern political life on social media, which lend extraordinary volume and publicity to the kind of remark formerly confined to sympathetic ears in smoke-filled rooms, the row spread to the Labour Party itself. By the middle of 2016, up to twenty Labour members, including one MP [Member of Parliament] had been suspended or expelled due to alleged anti-Semitism and the party had conducted three different enquiries into anti-Semitism within its ranks. 3
In the United States, concerns about campus antisemitism echoing those voiced at Oxford have been heard for a number of years in connection with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, aimed at delegitimizing Israel, that unites left-wing faculty with left and pro-Palestinian student groups. In the U.S. more than 1,000 scholars on more than 300 college and university campuses across the country have endorsed an academic boycott of Israel. 4 In faculty members hands, the debate remains largely academic. But in the hands of students, the debate often becomes angry, violent, and threatening to Jews, as we shall see at more length in chapter 14 .
Professors who use their university positions and university resources to promote campaigns to harm or dismantle the Jewish state and who encourage students to do the same, can contribute to the creation of a hostile and threatening environment for many Jewish students, who report feeling emotionally harassed and intimidated by their professors and isolated from their fellow students. Moreover, in light of the fact that no other racial, ethnic or religious group is currently being subjected by faculty to such pervasive harassment and intimidation, Jewish students experience this flagrant double standard as a kind of institutional discrimination that