Accusations of anti-Semitism controversialise support for the Palestinians to such an extent that supporters are silenced, writes Farid Esack.
Human rights activists and academics such as myself are increasingly being accused of anti-Semitism when we speak in support of the Palestinian struggle and the international BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel) campaign.
Last year organisers of my BDS speaking tour at French universities came under immense pressure to cancel. The Israeli lobbyists failed.
For the past few weeks I have faced a relentless onslaught in the German media without any right to reply. The accusations include the really galling claim that BDS SA, an organisation on whose board I serve, has called for the killing of Jews.
Locally, in an unprecedented attack by the Israeli ambassador and embassy of Israel, the governing party of our country, the ANC, was accused of anti-Semitism, for its support of the Palestinian people and the ANC’s discouraging of visits to Israel.
These accusations, some of which are part of a multimillion-dollar Israeli government-funded operation, are orchestrated to narrow the parameters of what is possible and even permissible to say in support of the Palestinians in their struggle for justice. The logic of this effort is simple; controversialise support for the Palestinians to such an extent that one silences it.
I do not for a moment believe that those Israeli lobbyists who make these deceitful claims of anti-Semitism take them seriously. Instead, this lobby recognises the usefulnessness of this tool for quashing dissent. Unfortunately, like the infamous Nazi murderer and propagandist, Joseph Goebbels, they believe that if you tell a lie often enough, people will begin to believe it.
For example, neither I nor anyone on the staff or board of BDS SA has ever made any statement that could be reasonably remotely interpreted as anti-Semitism.
Throughout my life I have consistently opposed all forms of racism. By “racism,” I mean both racial prejudice and the way that it is silently employed by power; the idea that any human character trait or quality - good or bad - can be attributed to a particular race or ethnic group and the tendency by those in power to exploit these ideas. In fact, the very idea of particular forms of racism is unadulterated BS.
Racism can take various forms - and to the extent that many Jews (and others) view themselves as a race, anti-Jewishness can also be described as racism.
This form of racism has been a particularly deep-rooted and insidious evil for much of European Christendom’s history.
Sadly, below the surface, anti-Jewishness is still alive and well in Europe. And here I am speaking of “Old Europe,” not the Europe of recent - mostly Muslim - immigrants.
While in Muslim societies anti-Jewishness never reached the barbaric levels that it did in Europe, where it culminated in the murder of approximately six million Jews, a number of Muslim societies were - and in many cases, are - also guilty of anti-Jewish discrimination.
As a Muslim, I have expressed my remorse and anger at this, have regularly condemned it as an activist and have examined it as an academic. About 10 years ago, I also spearheaded a campaign against Muslim anti-Semitism.
When a people - any people - ascribes particular human characteristics or responsibilities as peculiar to themselves because of their “blood lines” or skin pigmentation, be they Afrikaners of apartheid South Africa, Jews who support the current politically constructed Israel as a divinely chosen state, then these are also forms of racism.
Assigning specific roles to people based on the idea of bloodlines is also racism. Examples of these are: “white people are created to care for black people”, “East Asians are a ‘model-minority’”, “all white people are devils”, “the Irish are dumb”, or “Jews are the chosen people”.
The horrors of the Nazi Holocaust, as is the case with all other human disasters, were uniquely horrendous. However, to elevate one form of racism - in this case anti-Semitism - to a class of its own, with a special place in hell reserved for anti-Semites, is actually another manifestation of white privilege.
It is also about Europe projecting its peculiar anxieties and the consequences of its unique crimes against the Jewish people, on the whole world.
Those who are genuinely concerned about anti-Semitism as an extension of their opposition to all forms of racism, must guard against elevating this form of racism as a crime worse than others. This is particularly pertinent when in their daily lives in today’s world, Jews do not experience discrimination along the same lines as, say, black people throughout the world. including African Americans.
If you step out of your own little communal bubble then you will notice that currently in South Africa levels of Islamophobia and, even more so, racism against black African people are far higher than anti-Semitism. In other places, particularly Europe, it is even worse.
All forms of racism matter and each must be evaluated for the effect it has on a people.
Some Jews are desperately trying to make the current state of Israel synonymous with Jewish identity and to make this notion a rigid form of orthodoxy. For them, to criticise the state of Israel means to criticise all Jews. Increasingly, younger Jews reject this synonymisation.
* Professor Esack is a board member of BDS South Africa and teaches in the Department of Religion Studies at the University of Johannesburg
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Newspapers.