Let's begin by defining anti-Semitism as a prejudice against Jews. Prejudice against Jews is often based on stereotypes but also sometimes on religion. Among Christians, the most frequent religious-based argument is that Jews are Christ-killers.
A recent article by Mohamed Elmasry, president of the Canadian Islamic Congress, which I received by email from the Congress, has taken a slightly different tack: he argues that Israel, and by the same token, all Jews are naturally cruel because their holy book is itself blood-soaked.
This charge, finding all Jews guilty because a variety of passages in the Bible demonstrate cruelty, as well as being anti-Semitic is also un-Islamic. The Koran identifies various Old Testament patriarchs as prophets of Allah, and it respectfully refers to Christians and Jews as "people of the Book." So Elmasry serves well as a contemporary example of an anti-Semite.
CUPE OD has called the new barrier Israel is building the apartheid wall.
However, in recent letters to the editor in the Globe and Mail, a number of people have chosen another candidate for the dubious distinction: the Ontario Division of the Canadian Union of Public Employees. Why?
CUPE Ontario Division (CUPE-OD) has called for a boycott of Israel for its mistreatment of Palestinians. OD has called the new barrier that Israel is building an apartheid wall. (Perhaps it should be more correctly termed a land-grab wall.)
Those who oppose CUPE-OD's position offer several reasons, including these three:
#1 Israel is only defending itself against terrorism.
# 2 With all the crimes against humanity occurring in the world today, picking on Israel is suspect.
# 3 CUPE-OD's call for a Palestinian right of return would, if implemented, destroy the Jewishness of Israel.
Let's take a look at these arguments.
Israel pleads self-defense in its actions in the Occupied Territories and in building the wall because of attacks from the Territories. The aggressor-as-victim is an old argument. However, as Ha'aretz journalist Gideon Levy pointed out, when there was relative quiet between the intifadas, Israel took the opportunity to expand settlements on Palestinian land, not to make peace. It is not anti-Semitic to reject the self-defence argument.
The charge that CUPE-OD is selective in its condemnations fails to recognize what else is happening in Canada. The major Jewish organizations are doing everything they can, politically and financially, to support Israel, its political position in the world, and its actions with respect to the Palestinians. There is even a multi-party pro-Israel caucus in Parliament. Those making this charge want the field to themselves, with no one to speak on behalf of the Palestinians. They do not hesitate to speak and act on behalf of Israel but they imply ulterior motives to those supporting the Palestinians.
What, then of the argument about the Palestinian right of return? Clearly, calling for such a right is not in itself anti-Semitic. But if the implementation of such a right would undermine the Jewishness of Israel, does that fact make its advocacy anti-Semitic? Such a contention confuses anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism. Zionism itself was a minority position among Jews until the Holocaust, and horrific though the Holocaust was, it does not give Jews the right to favored treatment over the existing inhabitants of Palestine/Israel.
Attitudes toward Israel do not neatly divide people into anti-Semites and all others. Some anti-Semites favour Israel, wanting all Jews to be sent there. Then, there are the Christian Zionists, who hope and pray for the coming of Armageddon, an event which they foresee as a new Holocaust, involving the slaughter of two-thirds of the Jews and the conversion to Christianity of the rest in an Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates. They support Israeli settlement activity and Israeli aggressiveness, and the Israeli government welcomes their support with open arms, although their beliefs are arguably anti-Semitic.
CUPE-OD's call for a boycott does not make it anti-Semitic, only anti-imperialist. It is gutsy for CUPE-OD to take the kind of stand that they have taken in support of an oppressed people, in the face of the storm of criticism that I am sure they knew they would be getting.
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