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Edmonton Journal
November 25, 2011.
The Ideas Cafe <http://blogs.edmontonjournal.
The difficulty of speaking about Palestine
*By **Laurie Adkin
I recently attended a panel discussion about the Palestinian Authority’s
attempt to win recognition of Palestinian statehood at the United Nations.
Three academics had been invited to contextualize and analyze the meaning
of this action. The event was sponsored by the University of Alberta’s
department of political science and the local Palestinian Solidarity
Network. A few days later, a letter appeared in *The Journal,* authored by
Joseph Mandelbaum, in which he accused the department of “complicity in the
spread of misinformation,” and, by implication, of legitimizing
anti-semitism.
My intention in writing this is not to refute point-by-point Mr.
Mandelbaum’s claims, but to place his accusations within the context of a
broader campaign to discredit and silence critics of the actions of the
state of Israel. This campaign has created an environment in which it is
difficult for anyone to say anything critical of the Israeli state without
being accused of anti-semitism. It particularly targets university
professors, and has a chilling effect on academic freedoms as well as on
political debate.
As a professor of politics I have for many years introduced students to the
work of the brilliant Jewish-American historian, George L. Mosse, who
showed how anti-semitism was constructed within Nazi discourse on the
foundation of beliefs that were pervasive in Europe at the time. I have
also taught students to identify the elements of islamophobic discourse,
which bears many similarities to anti-semitism.
In recent years, French scholars have debated whether a “new anti-Semitism”
has taken hold among marginalized youth from North African backgrounds who
strongly oppose Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories. The
American anthropologist, Paul Silverstein, identifies instead a
“generalized *anti-zionism*” that has grown out of an identification of the
1990s generation of North African youth with the Palestinians – as fellow
victims of imperial states.)
Organizations in the United Kingdom such as Engage argue that
“contemporary” anti-semitism may take the forms of criticism of Israel or
of “anti-zionism.” The European Union Monitoring Centre on Racism and
Xenophobia and the British All-Party Parliamentary Group against
Antisemitism (the model for its Canadian counterpart), have adopted a
definition of anti-Semitism that includes certain criticisms of Israeli
policies. The advocates of this broadened definition of anti-semitism range
from right-wing Zionists to leftist Jewish intellectuals who fear that some
of the condemnations of Israel they are hearing are associated with radical
Islamism, or, that such criticisms may fail to differentiate between
Israeli state and civil society. It is not hard to imagine why Jews might
fear that criticisms of Israel conceal anti-semitic attitudes or why they
might fear a conflation of Zionism with Jewish identity.
So where does this leave people who do not question the veracity of the
Holocaust or the history of anti-semitism that preceded it, who fully
comprehend the desire of European Jews – following the Second World War –
to create a safe homeland outside of Europe (and who know the sordid
history of the refusal of the American and Canadian governments to accept
Jewish refugees), but who also know that the State of Israel was founded on
the forcible expropriation of the land of the Palestinians who were driven
into exile? This is an historical injustice that cannot simply be
“disappeared” by the “fact” of the state of Israel — an injustice
compounded by many more injustices committed over the last 60 years (many
of which have been opposed by Jews inside and outside of Israel). So long
as there are millions of Palestinians in need of their homeland, we cannot
avoid the necessity to speak of Palestine.
The Palestinian Solidarity Network organizers and the academics who
addressed the forum made no anti-semitic statements: no hatred of Jews was
expressed, no conspiracy of Jewish world domination advanced. No one
attributed the actions of the State of Israel to some collective Jewish
character. On the contrary, the organizers explicitly stated that they
would not tolerate anti-semitic or any other racist interventions. The
speakers recognized the existence of differences within Israeli civil
society, as well as within Palestinian communities. It is notable that Mr.
Mandelbaum offered no evidence of anti-semitic statements having been made
at this event. Rather, his characterization of the panel discussion
(“demonization of Israel,” “degeneration of academic debate”) is based
solely on his equation of criticism of Israeli policies with hatred of Jews.
As examples of “hateful” speech, Mr. Mandelbaum pointed to the
characterizations of Israel’s “security wall” as an “annexation wall” and
of its blockade of Gaza as a form of “collective punishment.” Similarly, we
may not speak of the violent, colonial foundations of the state of Israel,
or compare Israel’s domination of the West Bank and of Gaza to South
African apartheid without being accused of anti-semitism. The strategy
employed by Mr. Mandelbaum – and by organizations such as Campus Watch (a
right-wing Zionist organization founded in the United States to identify
and harass university scholars who make public statements critical of
Israel) - is to equate informed criticism of the actions of the State of
Israel with anti-semitic hate speech, thereby eliminating any possibility
of legitimate criticism.
Regrettably, the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Antisemitism
(CPCCA), co-founded by Conservative MP Jason Kenney and Liberal MP Irwin
Cotler, has played a role in this campaign, urging the government of Canada
to accept a definition of anti-semitism that includes criticism of the
State of Israel (viewed as a “Jewish collectivity”). The CPCCA believes
that “singling Israel out for selective condemnation and opprobrium . . .
is discriminatory and hateful,” and constitutes a form of anti-semitism.
And therein lies the problem: What constitutes “selective condemnation and
opprobrium”? Who decides? Leaving aside Canadian academics, what about the
many Israelis who also oppose the actions of their governments? Their
voices, too, are apparently ruled beyond the pale of legitimate democratic
debate by those who are framing this new definition of anti-semitism.
Meanwhile, the branding of Palestinian solidarity with the mark of
anti-semitism deflects our attention from the larger, global framework of
human rights and international law within which most of the world (outside
of North America) comprehends the roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
– that is, the framework created by multiple reports by human rights
organizations, the resolutions passed by the United Nations, the Geneva
Convention, the decisions of the International Court of Justice, and even
the Supreme Court of Israel itself (which has ruled that the country’s
“security wall” violates international law).
What is at stake is the environment for political debate about such
important questions as our country’s policies towards Israel and Palestine.
The costs of speaking are increasingly high – although they pale in
comparison to the enormous suffering of the victims of this conflict. The
necessity to speak has never been greater.
*Laurie Adkin is an associate professor of political science at the
University of Alberta. *
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