Israel Is Not ‘The Jews’ & It does not speak for Jews

(If you receive this by email please click on the title to access the latest version. I often continue to edit and correct typos after publishing the first version)

Photo by Kristina Flour on Unsplash

+972 Magazine¹ has just published another excellent article, When ‘never again’ becomes a war cry’. I found out from the article, to my great dismay, that Prof. Deborah Lipstadt is Biden’s ‘antisemitism envoy’, whatever that is…

I studied Deborah Lipstadt’s work extensively when I did my honours degree in politics, focusing on genocide studies. Lipstadt’s psychology is trauma-driven, and her loyalty to the ‘tribe’ guides everything she writes and does. She is well published and decorated, but is not a proper scholar, because she is driven by her emotions. Emotions are not in themselves a barrier to good scholarship, but Lipstadt has been blind to the profound way that her fear of antisemitism biases her work. She has been instrumental in weaponising the holocaust and antisemitism specifically for the purpose of silencing criticism of Israel.

My Honours supervisor at Macquarie University in Sydney, the late Dr Colin Tatz, was himself a devout Zionist who ferociously silenced all criticism of Israel. He openly demonised fellow academics who criticised Israel, and called them ‘antisemites’. He told us not to speak to them and not listen to them. No one did anything about this at the Univeristy, because Tatz was practically a saint. He was known for his fight for Aboriginal rights, and for his courageous resistance to Apartheid in his native South Africa. When it came to Israel, however, he chose to side with the coloniser. I remember him telling us, and I quote, ‘You must always remember that all criticism of Israel is veiled antisemitism’. The implication was that criticism of Israel had no intellectual merit, and we would do well to just turn our backs to it. But it is people like Tatz and Lipstadt who have always been intellectually dishonest.

Tatz’s uncompromising instruction was familiar. It chimed with the same position with which I grew up. When I was a child, anyone who was not completely in love with Israel risked being called an antisemite. We heard it at home, at school, and in the media. I was the only student among Tatz’s cohort who was born, raised and indoctrinated in Israel. On a couple of occasions I meekly, and sheepishly questioned him. His response was always that I was not fair to Israel, because I expected it to be more just or moral than other countries. I knew there was something wrong with this argument, but I was young and insecure, and still too indoctrinated to challenge him.

Lipstadt, and the late Tatz are among the worst when it comes to denying the human rights of Palestinians. They knew that Israel was a settler-colonial state. They understood that the creation of an exclusively Jewish state could only have come at the expense of the non-Jewish indigenous people of Palestine. But they still supported Israel, and sacrificed the Palestinian people. I find unpicking their narrative tiresome, but necessary.

As Prof Ilan Pappé once told me, and as I discovered myself over the years, many Zionists and supporters of Zionism know the truth about Israel, its purpose and its history. Their support of Israel is not based on ignorance. They choose to be apologists for settler-colonialism, because they believe Jews should be allowed to do whatever is necessary to survive. Their double-standard is eye-watering. ‘The Jews’, allegedly represented by the state of Israel, are allowed to do whatever they want, including commit genocide, in the name of Jewish survival. But Palestinians are not. People like Lipstadt and Tatz are cut off the same cloth as those who thought that slavery and colonialism, or discrimination against black people, or women were justified.

Zionists often start by denying historical evidence and facts. But when this fails and they are pushed to the corner, they admit that settler-colonialism is essential for Jewish survival. The rationale is that because Jews have suffered so much through history, they have earned the right to do whatever they want to survive. First, it is questionable whether it is morally right for people to do anything, without any regard for their impact on others, in order to survive. People are criticising the Palestinians right now for precisely this reason.

But more importantly, there is a false narrative that Israel is essential for Jewish survival, and that without Israel all Jews face imminent annihilation, indeed another holocaust. Israeli and pro-Israel propaganda routinely compares the Palestinians to Nazis. This is also what you are taught in Israel, and what Israel is trying to convince the world. The message is the Palestinians are not angry with Israel because of anything Israel did to them, but that they ‘hate Jews’. Israeli Jews and many Jews around the world believe that all non-Jews are antisemitic. A few years ago after a talk I gave, I was approached by a member of the audience. She asked me with genuine anguish to tell her if she was an antisemite because she felt upset about Israel's treatment of the Palestinian people.

I remember a chat with my father’s world class, super-educated heart surgeon before I left Israel in 1991. When I told him one day that my husband and I were moving to Australia permanently, he took me aside and said, ‘I don’t know how you can do this. I could never live anywhere where there is one antisemite alive’. One of my nicer economics lecturers at Bar-Ilan University said, ‘You can’t leave. It is not safe. You are making a big mistake’. My fellow flight attendants at the airline I worked for before I left Israel, warned me that I would never make any friends, and that ‘they’ would always find me… These were well educated and well-travelled people, and they all voiced the same narrative that indoctrinated us all. Israel expected me to live permanently by the sword, and believe I was always under existential threat, because I was Jewish. As a twenty-seven year old with little understanding of Israel’s politics, I decided that I would rather take my chances ‘out there’, than stay in such a place.

The fact that Lipstadt is in Biden’s ear is disturbing. She teaches that the Armenian genocide in 1915, inspired and served as a blueprint for the Jewish genocide. She reminds us that a short time before the invasion of Poland, Adolf Hitler said “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” I suspect, albeit cannot prove, that Biden knows precisely what Israel is doing. I believe that the US has written off the Palestinians, hoping the world will forget about them soon enough. Hitler was right. Humanity is good at forgetting victims.

Like Israel, Biden is looking for ways to legitimise Israel’s open genocide against the Palestinian people, and the US Administration’s support for it. The US also supports the dehumanisation and demonisation of the Palestinians. The annihilation of the Palestinians is then spun to look not only as defensive, but as virtuous. All genocides have always been supported by this kind of narrative. Lipstadt teaches that.

Jews have no monopoly on victimhood, and either way, human suffering does not need to be compared. Everyone’s suffering should matter to them. It is what we do as a result of suffering that matters. We can use it to inflict suffering on others, or we work to recover, and to prevent further human suffering. Zionism and Israel have chosen the former.

Even more importantly, Israel is not ‘the Jews’. Israel is a self-appointed spokesperson for ‘all Jews’ that I and many others unequivocally reject. Israel has tried to drag all Jews into its pit of culpability. Israel would love it if we did suffer antisemitic attacks in our own countries. Then it could smugly say, ‘You see? We told you so! Jews are only safe in Israel’…

My problem was never with the Palestinians, or anyone else. My problem was always with Israel. I did not fear for my life there. I feared for my soul. This is why I left. This is why I renounced my citizenship in 2001. I will not carry Israel’s burden of guilt, and I will not collude with its crimes against humanity.

There is no reason for anyone to hesitate about supporting the Palestinian people. Objecting to settler-colonialism and genocide is the right choice.

1. +972 Magazine is published from within Israel. The editors and writers are Israeli Jews and Palestinians who are all taking a risk in the current atmosphere in Israel. The name of the magazine comes from the international dialling code to Israel.