They can’t be antisemitic, they’re Jewish!

Author: Barnaby Marder

Logically, it would seem ridiculous to state that a Jewish person can be antisemitic, or, to put it another way, can display antisemitic behaviour. To be Jewish is an ethnicity shared by something like 15 million people worldwide. It’s a small ethnic group compared to many others. But history has always shown us that members of an ethnic group are perfectly capable of, in effect, betraying their own ethnic group by indulging in, or supporting, discriminatory behaviour. Jewish people are no different. What is different perhaps is that the sentence which heads this article is said, in this writer’s experience, far more than if other ethnicities were to be substituted for it.

It is, for example, very rare to hear or read someone saying “so-and-so can’t be racist against Black people, he/she’s Black him/herself”. Yet it is not at all difficult to find public figures who behave in a discriminatory fashion which either directly or indirectly affects members of their own ethnic group. Recently, well-known figures from both Reform UK and the Conservatives have suggested that they might like to see deportations of people who are at present legally entitled to live in Britain. No condemnation has so far come from anyone in the Conservative leadership, several of whose leading figures are of Black or Asian ethnicity, even though such a step would inevitably lead to deportations of people who share their background, and there are senior BAME figures in Reform UK too.

Although many have noted that the Conservatives have, at the time of writing, a party leader of Black African heritage, it has not generally been suggested that this leader is immune to racism against Black people just because she is Black herself. It is not that rare at all for people from ethnic minorities the world over to exhibit behaviour which discriminates against people who share their ethnicity. These are just a couple of examples of internalised prejudice, amongst many which could be shown. Perhaps the salient question is why Jews are supposed to be immune from a phenomenon which is acknowledged amongst members of many other ethnicities.

Antisemitism is no more or less serious, in my view, than any other form of racism. Racism is not only wrong but it is illogical and makes no sense. What is distinctive about antisemitism is its theological root, its conspiratorial logic, and its adaptability across both political left and right. It is, however, many-faceted, and is not by any means universally recognised as racism, as many do not understand that to be Jewish is to be linked by ethnicity, not necessarily by religion. Antisemitism operates as what can fairly be called a meta-prejudice: it blends religious heresy, racialisation, and conspiracy, allowing it to mutate to fit almost any ideological environment. This is what makes it possible for some Jews to internalise or replicate parts of it without necessarily seeing it as antisemitism.

There are disagreements within the Jewish community as to, in some instances, what is or is not antisemitic, but there are many forms of antisemitism which are generally agreed to be such. Antisemitism, like other forms of racism, comes in degrees. It ranges from forms that are not always that far up the scale, for example stereotyping Jewish people in certain ways, all the way up to violence or even murder against somebody because they are Jewish. The latter is very rarely practised by Jews, but other forms of antisemitism are not unusual at all.

First I consider ideological antisemitism: that is, consciously endorsing or repeating antisemitic ideas, for example conspiracies about Jewish power. This can stretch to include Holocaust revisionism, denial or the reversal of blame. Although most Holocaust deniers or revisionists are not Jewish, it is not unheard of for them to come from this background. Well-known examples include Paul Eisen, once a friend of Jeremy Corbyn’s, and the Israeli-born musician Gilad Atzmon, who is a publicly self-hating Jew, though I use this sometimes politically loaded phrase with some caution as there is a history of its misuse. Here, it is justified. Atzmon once said: “I hate the Jew in myself.” This is a manifestation of antisemitism whose roots are essentially ideological and conspiratorial, and which can shade into Holocaust revisionism.

Of a completely different genesis is the antisemitism shown by the fundamentalist anti-Zionist group Neturei Karta. They are a small but international group of strictly Orthodox Jews who believe that the formation of the state of Israel is a blasphemy because, according to them, the Messiah has not yet come. This is theological anti-Zionism, deriving from religious belief, and it is very different from what is espoused by Atzmon and Eisen. Yet Neturei Karta are also well-known to associate with non-Jews of a strongly antisemitic nature, including the Hungarian formerly fascist party Jobbik, which has in recent years taken a more moderate stance. Its members have been seen giving the reverse fascist salute, the Quenelle, at events. It also has members who have been known to say that Jewish people in the 1930s and 1940s in some ways deserved their fate.

Then there is political instrumentalisation: using antisemitic tropes to advance another cause, often under the banner of anti-Zionism. This can take many forms, perhaps most commonly online, though it is not unheard of in physical demonstrations even if that is not the prevailing characteristic of such events. There are any number of ways of advancing a pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist cause which do not employ antisemitic tropes, but it is far from unusual to come across the use of such tropes in online and offline campaigning. These tropes are sometimes conspiratorial in nature, but sometimes they draw on other sources.

While most people employing them are not of Jewish heritage, it is not unusual for some Jewish pro-Palestine campaigners to associate themselves with, or indulge in, them. It is also not that unusual for some, even if a minority, of anti-Zionist Jews to give outright vocal support to, for example, Hamas, whose charter calls for Israel’s elimination and uses explicitly antisemitic language about Jews. Support for Hamas, as opposed to support for and recognition of a state of Palestine, is inevitably an antisemitic act, as they are explicit in their wish to get rid of Jews, even if born in Israel, from what is now Israel and from neighbouring countries, although very few Jews remain in neighbouring countries except in the case of illegal settlements in the West Bank.

The majority of Jewish people identify with some form of Zionism, even though definitions of Zionism can vary greatly, but the Jewish population does have a noticeable anti-Zionist minority. Many anti-Zionist Jews, in my opinion, do not exhibit antisemitic behaviour at all, and are very clear that discrimination against Jews is completely wrong. But there are some who go beyond pure anti-Zionism to condone, or even explicitly support, antisemitic actions. Anti-Zionism can cross the line and become antisemitism when it denies Jewish collective rights, endorses violence, or treats Jews collectively as responsible for Israel’s actions.

One form of antisemitism that is particularly common amongst such anti-Zionist Jews is the lazy assumption that Jews are generally privileged or wealthy, and that antisemitism is therefore not much of a problem, or even a problem at all, because in their view Jews are not oppressed. This is a clear case of stereotyping and should be avoided by socialists and other progressive people. There are not many countries in the world where there are not at least some dangers involved in simply being Jewish. Here in Britain, synagogues, Jewish schools, Jewish cemeteries and other institutions have to be guarded by, mostly, members of the Community Security Trust so that attendees can go about their business safely. That may not be the same as economic discrimination, but it is hardly the situation of a people who are not oppressed.

For the sake of brevity I do not go into greater detail here, but I hope I have given at least some basic illustrations and explanations of why the theory that Jews cannot be antisemitic is, sadly, mistaken. Some forms of antisemitism are less likely to be exhibited by people of Jewish or part-Jewish heritage than others, but the notion that somebody cannot be antisemitic simply because they are Jewish has too many times been proven to be unjustified for it still to be in circulation.

Recognising that Jews, like anyone else, can internalise prejudice isn’t an accusation. It is a reminder that antisemitism has to be judged by ideas and actions, not by ancestry.