Commenting on the ongoing controversies regarding the epidemic of anti-Semitism that has seized Britain’s Labor party, Howard Jacobson writes that, to address the phenomenon properly, one must first acknowledge that anti-Semitism is a hatred unlike others:
To assert that anti-Semitism is unlike other racisms is not to claim a privilege for it. Hating a Jew is no worse than hating anyone else. But while many a prejudice is set off by particular circumstance—the rise in an immigrant population or a locally perceived threat—anti-Semitism is, as often as not, unprompted, exists outside time and place, and doesn’t even require the presence of Jews to explain it. When Marlowe and Shakespeare responded to an appetite for anti-Jewish feeling in Elizabethan England, there had been no Jews in the country for 300 years. Jewishness, for its enemies, is as much an idea as it is anything else. . . .
[Today], in the matter of the existence of the state of Israel, all the ancient superstitions about Jews find a point of confluence. . . . [I]t is axiomatic to Labor that Zionism is a racist ideology—from which it follows that anti-Zionism cannot be called racist; we will not fix anti-Semitism, in the Labor party or anywhere else, until we fix Israel. I don’t mean fix its problems, I mean fix the way we talk about it.
The mantra bedeviling reasonable conversation about Israel is that the Jews have only one motive in labeling anti-Zionism anti-Semitic and that is to stifle legitimate criticism of Israel. This assertion defames Jews, the majority of whom, in my experience, take issue not with the idea of legitimate criticism, but with what in any given instance “legitimacy” amounts to. Criticism is not an inviolable concept. It can be moderate or extreme, truthful or mendacious, well-intentioned or malign. To complain when it is unjust is not to shut down debate. It cannot be exorbitant to argue that what will determine whether criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic is the nature of the criticism. . . .
It should not be automatically assumed that, when it comes to Israel, Jews are incapable of arguing honestly, an assumption that itself edges dangerously close to the racism that is being denied.
Read more on Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/22/be-clear-antisemitism-is-a-hate-apart