Guest Blog: Anti-Semitism and Free Speech

Here's another response to South African media reporting from guest blogger Mike Berger.  This time Berger deals with the Cape Time's coverage of the University of St Thomas' decision to reverse their 'disinvite' to Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

The media have been agitated of late by the Ahmadinejad debacle at Columbia and now Tutu and the University of St Thomas in Minnesota, USA. As most of you know he was disinvited by the President of the University, Father Pease, because of concern that Jewish groups would be “upset” because of Tutu’s past negative comments on Israel, including a speech which could be interpreted as a comparison of Israel with Nazism and Hitler.

Well after the obligatory uproar, the decision was reversed - at least in part because Abe Foxman of the ADL wrote to Pease urging him to let Tutu speak. Ever poised to put the boot into Israel, the Cape Times (Friday, 12 Oct) weighed in with a report by Hans Pienaar, from which the part played by the ADL was conspicuous by its absence, and a Insight(sic) article by Ms Taylor on centre page who could not forbear to mention Israeli brutality and occupation. This was too much and I sent a letter to the Cape Times a shortened and expurgated version of which appeared today (Monday 15 October). The unepurgated version follows:

“I fully support the decision by Father Dennis Pease to allow Desmond Tutu to speak at St Thomas University in Minnesota and was dismayed at his rejection in the first place. While Archbishop Emeritus Tutu may not always be right, his occasional mistakes mainly come from the heart and not from malice, which is not necessarily true of those who ride on his coattails when it suits their agendas. I equally support the Cape Time's right to beat the anti-Israel drum at every opportunity, though I question the wisdom and morality of that stance. But it does behove those who do so to put all the facts on the table, not only those which serve their purpose, and to be careful with simplistic accusations. In this connection it may well be that certain excessively (though, in my book, understandably) vociferous Jewish groups objected to the Tutu invitation, and Pease (as in "appease"?) was too ready to yield to such pressure - if indeed that was the case. But what is incontrovertible is that the Anti-Defamation League of the USA, a Jewish group which monitors anti-Semitism pretty rigorously, urged Father Pease to allow Tutu to speak which undoubtedly contributed to his changed position. This key item of information did not appear in the report by Hans Pienaar (Cape Times, 12 October) or in the Insight (sic) article provided by Tristen Taylor. Taylor also lost no time in sticking it to Israel for its alleged brutality and occupation of Palestinian lands, forbearing to mention the terror groups and countries devoted to Israel's destruction - for reasons which have nothing to do with so-called occupation but everything to do with xenophobia, anti-Semitism and power struggles within the region. The patently false myth of Israeli intransigence and brutality and Arab-Palestinian victimhood and innocence, consistently promoted by elements within the West and by large segments of the Muslim media, is a major source of instability in the world, an effective recruiting tool for vicious extremists of all stripes and an on-going excuse for Islam to avoid addressing the issues of modernisation and democratisation in a globalised world. It is time that such people stepped back from these comfortable simplicities and acquainted themselves with the full truth. Perhaps it will set them free.”

The events and others like it do raise questions regarding free speech and anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism and all that. That’s a big topic and one well worth spending some time on, but not here. So a shortened version (from my own narrow perspective) runs something like this.

It is better to err on the side of free speech, even if unpleasant, hurtful, dishonest, malicious or simply erroneous. Free speech is one of the bedrocks of democracy and it constitutes a line which generally demarcates free, imperfect societies from authoritarian or totalitarian dictatorships. The answer to rubbish or lies is to answer back – as we are trying to do. Beyond the basic principles embodied in free speech, is the very real pragmatic consideration that attempts to limit it cause more harm than good in an open society. It looks like defensiveness and guilt and can readily be portrayed as bullying – which sometimes it is. So let’s steer clear of that route.

Anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism: The lazy way is to always equate the two. The lazy way is often right and there is no doubt that a good deal of ASism masquerades as AZism. Even more than that, the two are closely related and one can readily morph into the other under propitious circumstances.

But, ASism can exist independently of AZism, and vice versa. So what are we to make of an extended article (27 pdf pages) by the author, Steven Beller, published in Patterns of Prejudice, Vol. 41, No. 2, 2007, entitled, “In Zion’s hall of mirrors: a comment on Neuer Antisemitismus?” As you can gather from the title it is a review of a book, written in German and consisting of series of essays dealing with the issue posed at the top of this section.

These are some good things (not too many) in Beller’s essay. He makes the point that there is a gap between the ethnonational modernity of the USA and Israel and the (alleged) multicultural tolerance of post-modern Europe. His heart is with the latter as reflected by his choice of adjectives when dealing with the articles of the various camps in the book. In particular, he regards the Left’s support of Israel in the 1950s and 1960s as anomalous since Israel is a direct contradiction of the (also alleged) universalist commitment in modern socialism. He makes the point that Zionism is a failure if judged by its intention to eliminate ASism and that Zionism is being judged by its own high standards and so forth. He admits to the ugly nature of Islamist ASism and supports Israel’s right to exist – but not to the point where it actually enforces that “right” through the messy and sometimes necessary mechanism of military action.

The general tone is that of the detached ivory tower aesthete, happy in the libraries, artshops and cafes of the intellectual layer of Washington DC-Georgetown society and totally divorced from the rough neigbourhood and necessities of his kinsfolk in Israel. His Utopian morality is applied unilaterally to Israel and rests on the following thesis: Israel has no actual “objective” (his word) right to exist but was kindly granted this by a guilt-ridden world conditional on meeting the moral demands of said global society. This it has signally failed to do, through its heavy-handed military responses, targeted assassinations and landgrabbing behaviour. But even so, Beller asserts, the liberal left (having now expatiated its guilt), still generously grants Israel the right to exist but is entitled to criticise its behaviour and ensure that the rights of the occupied Palestinians are respected. He makes great, though to me somewhat confusing, use of the metaphor “hall of mirrors” to explain the projections of the protagonists of their own shortcomings on the images of their opponents.

It is an essay of intellectual egg-dancing and can be challenged at many pointa. But what sticks in my gullet is the readiness of the smarmy left to grant every (and I mean “every”) leeway to Palestinians and their allies but to hold the Israelis to an impossible standard of behaviour on the sophist claim that they aspire to higher morality. Other things that stick include the pretence that the systematic liberal-left campaign against Israel does not actually constitute a denial of its right to exist (only that it must swim with both arms behind its back while its head is being held underwater) and that targeted assassinations are equivalent to deliberate attacks on Israeli citizens. I could go on, but it’s enough to make me want to make Beller walk, unprotected, through Ramallah (or one of the rougher French Muslim suburbs) wearing a kippa on his head.

But Beller’s essay (despite its many shortcomings) does raise some issues: Could greater Israeli “restraint” have reduced Arab-Muslim hostility and brought peace closer? Would the Western left have been mollified and could such “restraint” have been compatible with Israel’s survival? Is now the time to seek friends rather than instill fear in the Arab-Mulsim world? And what of the polarising effect of the conflict on Israeli society? I believe the answers to the first 3 question are all “no” and the answer to the 4th may be “yes”. I personally would like to see a tolerant, broadminded and inclusive Israel rather than a defensive, belligerent and xenophobic one. I hope history permits the former and Israel should never willingly embrace the latter. But greater understanding of the Israel’s existential predicament and history on the part of the liberal left (as represented by Beller) would contribute towards the kind of Israel he (and I) would prefer. But as it stands, his essay is too one-sided to take seriously in my view but it does need a full reply somehwere.

Comments

[Benjamin]

"including a speech which could be interpreted as a comparison of Israel with Nazism and Hitler"

For those interested here are the comments:
' But you know as well as I do that, somehow, the Israeli government is placed on a pedestal [in the U.S.], and to criticize it is to be immediately dubbed anti-Semitic, as if the Palestinians were not Semitic. I am not even anti-white, despite the madness of that group. And how did it come about that Israel was collaborating with the apartheid government on security measures?

People are scared in this country [the U.S.] to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful – very powerful. Well, so what? This is God’s world. For goodness sake, this is God’s world! We live in a moral universe. The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer exists. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosovic, and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in the end they bit the dust.

Injustice and oppression will never prevail. Those who are powerful have to remember the litmus test that God gives to the powerful: What is your treatment of the poor, the hungry, the voiceless? And on the basis of that, God passes judgment.

We should put out a clarion call to the government of the people of Israel, to the Palestinian people and say: peace is possible, peace based on justice is possible. We will do all we can to assist you to achieve this peace, because it is God’s dream, and you will be able to live amicably together as sisters and brothers.'
The complete speech here:
http://www.thewitness.org/agw/tutu.050802.html

[Steve]

I think its more clumsy than malicious.

The implicit comparison is actually between the evil men he mentions and the Jewish lobby.

[Duext]

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