Uber-academic Rex Murphy speaks on the issue of critizing Israel:
Some of Israel's critics are more equal than others
By*REX MURPHY
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Saturday, April 27, 2002 –*Page*A19
Is it possible to criticize Israel and not be anti-Semitic? It's a question for the sandbox and six-year-olds. The answer? Yes.
It's possible to criticize Jean Chrétien and not be anti-Liberal. It's possible to criticize Svend Robinson and not be anti-NDP. And it's possible to criticize Israel, or Israeli policies, or Ariel Sharon, and not -- emphatically not -- be anti-Semitic.
A slightly tougher or more honest set of questions might be: Can one scrutinize Israel with a moral microscope but put on a blindfold before turning to the Palestinians -- and claim to be fair? Is news of an Israeli atrocity seized on with great eagerness while, say, a Passover butchery of civilians is, if at all, brought into the discussion only reluctantly and with much moral throat-clearing? Do you wait up at night for the bad news about Ariel Sharon but put out a "do not disturb" sign for any bulletins of Yasser Arafat's duplicity?
If the answer to these questions is "Yes," then the wonderful theoretics of criticizing Israel and anti-Semitism are, while diverting, perhaps not as much to the point as one would like to believe.
Do you find it easy to call Israel a "terrorist state" and find it difficult to talk about terrorist suicides? Do you talk of Jenin as the site of a "massacre" but withhold that term from any description of the suicide-terror campaign?
If you have done these things, you may not be anti-Semitic -- but you do have a problem setting up the moral context for a discussion of the Middle East.
The real conundrum for those agonizing over their criticism of Israel and whether this might be construed as anti-Semitism is a question that, so far as I can tell, no one wants to ask: Is it possible to be anti-American and not criticize Israel?
Professional anti-Americans really don't have much field of manoeuvre when it comes to Israel. America is Israel's sponsor, its friend and ally, so obviously Israel cannot be right, ever.
If Israel is under the protection of the imperialist, globalist, capitalist hegemon, why then -- pass me the old res ipsa loquitur, the thing speaks for itself -- Israel must always be wrong. The Israeli side of the current agony in the Middle East is, unfortunately for Israel (and for any serious discussion of the problem), being forced to carry the burden of a considerable store of anti-Americanism.
It hasn't been easy to be full-throttle anti-American since Sept. 11. The jingoism of the anti-capitalists has been muted. The silence has been purely tactical. In some circles -- this is a sea change -- anti-Americanism isn't even polite.
But Israel is a wonderful proxy for the anti-American crowd. Israel would "behave" if only America would tell it. Mr. Sharon would rein in the army if only George W. Bush, who holds the leash on Mr. Sharon, would pull it. So here is the real dilemma for those who sense discomfort in criticizing Israel and worry out loud whether their criticism might be, or might feed, the great ugliness of anti-Semitism.
It is that their position on Israel is pre-determined by their commitment, their vocation, of anti-Americanism. They are prejudiced against Israel by the logic of their movement. They are, as it were, pro-Palestinian by default. They take sides and wake up to find themselves sharing parts of the landscape with some very scary people who really are anti-Semitic.
The French, who can be a very delicate bunch when it comes to "theorizing" the world, have awakened in just such a place. Jean-Marie Le Pen doesn't agonize over anti-Semitism. But he is the second-place finisher in the first round of a presidential election in the most subtle country of Europe. But there's nothing subtle about Mr. Le Pen, who has offered the observation that the Holocaust is only a "detail" of history.
The French, and the left in particular, are horrified. They are protesting en masse. How did this happen? How did he get out of the box? It might be that the habit of exercising superior moral scrutiny of other nations, such as the U.S. and Israel, left some in a torpor as to conditions much closer to home.
It might also be that relentless condemnation of Israel, unaccompanied by any nuance that the Middle East is much more than a story of victims and oppressors, has made it easier to lift the quarantine that has been on the very idea of anti-Semitism since the death camps of the Second World War.
Is it possible to criticize Israel and not be anti-Semitic? Of course it is. Sometimes, it is necessary to criticize Israel. But not from habit or ideological reflex. Because then it's remarkably similar to an ancient and pernicious prejudice. And that quarantine on anti-Semitism that the world thought it had laid down forever is closer to breach.
--- Globe and Mail
