The Houthis’ official slogan contains the phrase “Death to Israel” alongside “Curse on the Jews,” lest anyone mistake them for mere critics of Benjamin Netanyahu’s policy decisions. The possibility of such confusion is very much on the minds of the “Jewish writers, artists, and activists” who signed an open letter, recently published in a New York-based literary magazine, complaining about the “widespread narrative that any criticism of Israel is inherently anti-Semitic”—which then went on to accuse the Jewish state of possessing “genocidal intent” and to defend Hamas apologetics. But, notes Phoebe Maltz Bovy, supporters of Israel are not advancing such a claim. Rather, the blurring of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism begins elsewhere:
Anti-Zionism isn’t anti-Semitism, goes the mantra. The problem is, anti-Semites themselves aren’t in on this distinction. Somewhere along the way—in France, maybe?—they realized that they could tack on an “it’s because [of] Palestine” to any anti-Jewish act, however unrelated to the Middle East. It gave plausible deniability, and made it seem as if being mad at local Jews for existing was a humanitarian geopolitical gesture.
And every Jewish target turns out to be an Israeli one, if you look real hard. . . . Not all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitism, but all anti-Semitism these days calls itself criticism of Israel.
Perhaps this is made clearest, notes Bovy in another post, by the use of the word “settler.”
We’re living in a moment when much of the left has embraced the idea that social justice is the global struggle against “settlers,” [and] classifies everyone across the globe as either home, displaced from home, or invading someone else’s house.
In Israel, according to anti-Zionist understandings, all Jews are settlers. Not just Jews living in the settlements [in the West Bank]. An Israeli Jew in Tel Aviv is, by the understandings of those who think Israel itself it illegitimate, no matter its borders or leadership, a settler.
To test her analysis, Bovy asked her social-media following if there is some place Jews would not be considered settlers; she discovered that “a lot of people are stumped.”
Read more on Canadian Jewish News: https://thecjn.ca/perspectives/the-perfect-crime-phoebe-maltz-bovy-on-the-elusive-purely-antisemitic-act/