So, on to our second speaker
for the motion, Einat Wilf.
And Einat has been
a member of the Israeli Knesset,
first Labor and then the Independence
Party between 2010 and 2013 and she has written
extensively on Zionism.
Einat the floor is yours
for 10 minutes.
Thank you.
So, we seem to all agree that Antisemitism
is bad.
Of-course.
Educated, knowledgeable people are unlikely
to be seduced by it because we know where
it leads: Nazism, Auschwitz and the Gas Chambers.
But Anti-Zionism does not appear to be in
the same category.
It appears to be good.
We heard here that it is about supporting
Palestinians.
About fighting for human rights.
Educated, knowledgeable, well-meaning people
might support it.
But the Antisemitism we all acknowledge as
bad, when it started looked nothing like where
it led.
In fact, when you compare the beginnings of
Antisemitism with Anti-Zionism, the similarities
are striking.
Antisemitism began by creating a new collective
designation for the same people, which rendered
them different.
In secular 19th century Europe, it was no
longer Jews, but Semites (and it never was
intended to mean anyone but Jews).
In the Soviet Union, which claimed to not
notice different peoples and religions, Jews
were designated as Zionists.
And today, in the West, in the UK?
Zionists.
Zios.
The designation is then described as having
essential, immutable and loathsome qualities
– In Christian Europe we were Christ killers.
To the Nazis, we were an impure race.
To the Soviets, we were capitalists and imperialists.
And today?
The State of Israel is the ultimate violator
of human rights.
It is described as “born in sin”.
It is guilty by its very nature of the crimes
of Racism/Apartheid/Ethnic Cleansing/Nazism/Genocide.
The designation of the group and ascribing
of essential evil qualities is always given
the aura of rationality and respectability
by relying on the greatest source of authority
of the given era: religion in pre-modern times,
science in the modern era, human rights in
our own.
The aura of the greatest authority is necessary
because the collective transformation of the
Jews into a loathsome other, requires that
one be willing to twist reality, if not outright
ignore it.
It is only by appealing to the authority of
religious doctrine that all Jews living in
the 12th century could be collectively designated
as the killers of Christ, over a thousand
years earlier.
It is only by appealing to the authority of
a perverted “science” that the very Jews
who contributed to European society could
suddenly be considered as endangering its
racial purity.
And it is only by appealing to a perverted
version of “human rights” that Zionism
and Israel could be designated as its greatest
violators.
It is only by perverting the idea of “human
rights” that those who were actually ethnically
cleansed from every part of the Arab world,
could be accused of ethnic cleansing.
It is only through this sort of perversion
that the people who repeatedly said yes to
partitioning the land into a Jewish state
and a Palestinian state, could be described
as those who stand in the way of a two-state
solution.
And it is only through this perversion, that
in an age when the idea of the nation is still
tied, for almost all states, to the idea of
a common history, language, ethnicity, and
remnants of religion, Israel is singled out
as uniquely deviant.
But why go to all that effort to single out
a group and distort reality?
Because we humans have a primal need for scapegoats.
And for whatever reason my people have been
the designated scapegoats for so many and
for so long.
For medieval Christianity, we stood between
a brutish and nasty world and salvation.
For Germany, for Europe, we stood between
them and glory.
For Stalin, we stood in the way of Communist
utopia.
And today?
Why bother fighting colonialism and its aftermath?
Easier to designate Zionists as colonialists
and blame them.
Why do the hard work of fighting racism in
its many manifestations across all societies?
Easier to designate Zionism as Racism and
Apartheid and blame it.
Why acknowledge the tremendous difficulties
of living up to the ideals of human rights?
Designate Zionism and Israel as its greatest
violators and blame them.
But the problem with human scape-goats, is
that unlike ancient animal ones, humans might
resist their sacrifice.
And we can’t have that happen, can we?
So, action must be taken to reduce their resistance.
How?
Strip them of their defenses.
Push them to the margins.
Step by step take away that which protects
them.
But it must be done gradually.
Antisemitism did not start by stripping Jews
of their citizenship, confiscating their assets
and pushing them into ghettos.
It started by slowly pushing Jews out of the
positions they were able to attain after several
decades of European emancipation.
It operated by making it more and more difficult
for Jews to feel comfortable in European society.
Antisemitism also lured Jews into dropping
their defenses, preventing them from organizing
against the coming danger.
Telling them that if they were the good kind
of Jew – for example, those who fought for
Germany in WWI – they would be spared.
They were not.
Note how Anti-Zionism operates now: its main
targets are the two places where Jews have
organized most effectively for their defense:
The State of Israel, and the pro-Israel lobby
in the US.
The legitimacy of both is relentlessly and
uniquely questioned.
Jews, now designated as Zionists, are increasingly
pushed out of certain spaces.
Jewish Students in the US are slowly pulling
out of universities known for their virulent
anti-Zionism.
Liberal activist Jews are finding they are
increasingly unwelcome in progressive circles.
Jews here in Britain are finding they can
no longer be in the Labor Party – their
traditional political home - wondering if
they might one day have to leave the country
altogether.
Anti-Zionism also lures Jews to give up their
defenses: why don’t we all live together
in a single state.
Yes, we know that nowhere in the Arab world
have Jews ever been treated as equals and
were violently ethnically cleansed when they
dared raise their heads.
Yes, we know that binational states, certainly
in this region, but not only, descend into
bloody mayhem.
But we assure you – this one will work.
Just forgo your insistence on having your
own state where you control your defense.
Anti-Zionists also insist on their respectability.
They will try to convince you that the fact
that the targets of this new form of virulent
hatred bear a striking resemblance to those
who were targets in previous times is sheer
coincidence.
They will insist that the fact that the charges
against this group appear like variations
on the ancient themes of Antisemitism, is
sheer coincidence.
They might even convince you they are fighting
Antisemitism – but the old, easy to identify
kind, which we already know is bad.
And this is where it all comes together:
In the past, waves of Jew Hatred and Antisemitism
did not arise from something those who were
hated actually did.
It arose from a crisis in the world of those
doing the hating.
And in an age of crisis, especially a crisis
of identity, when we are no longer sure who
we are, what we stand for, we desperately
need certainties, and there are few greater
certainties in this world, than that the Jews
did it.
And so, the Zionists are designated as a collective
group, which happens to coincide with the
group previously known as Semites and Jews.
They are then ascribed the most loathsome
qualities of our time by appealing to the
great authority of our era, and then they
are slowly subject to a process designed to
strip them of the means of resisting their
ultimate role as scapegoats for the crisis
of the era.
And when that process would be complete, the
scapegoat could finally be sacrificed in the
vain hope that in doing so a better world
would emerge.
It never does.
And this is why the topic of this debate is
not just another topic.
It raises the very specter that we might be
a society on the precipice.
Which is why I am here today.
In the hope that some of you are here will
see the deep insidious undercurrents.
So that this time we will not have to wait
to see where Anti-Zionism leads, and only
then look back in hindsight and say, ah, yes
that rising wave of Anti-Zionism was indeed
the new form of Antisemitism.
