Semites and Anti-Semites
By Bernard Lewis
from Islam In History (1973).
In the Economist of 9 November 1968, a reviewer of two books on Jerusalem reminded
the Jewish authors that "the Arabs too are Semites, and have the long Semitic
memory". A few weeks earlier, on 26 October 1968, another or possibly the
same reviewer, discussing a collection of essays by the late Isaac Deutscher,
remarked that "he [Deutscher] might have added that Palestinians, Jew and
Arab, are all Semites, and that both races have a noble heritage of supra-nationalism
from which to work".
Deutscher would not of course have added anything of the kind. Though frequently
misguided, he was a sensitive and a literate man, and would no more have called
a Jew or an Arab a Semite than he would have called a Pole or an Englishman
an Aryan.
The Semite, like the Aryan, is a myth, and part of the same mythology. Both
terms -- Semite and Aryan -- originated in the same way, and suffered the same misuse
at the same hands. Primarily linguistic, they date from the great development
of scientific philology during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when
European scholars made the momentous discovery that the languages of mankind
were related to one another and -- formed recognizable families. The term Aryan,
of Indian origin, was first applied to a group of languages spoken in south
Asia, to which Sanskrit and its derivatives belonged, and then extended to a
larger group of languages in Europe and Asia, more commonly known as Indo-European.
Semitic was applied at about the same time to another family of languages including
Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, and, later, some other languages of the Middle East
and North Africa. The name of course comes from Shem, one of the three, sons
of Noah, from whom, according to the Book of Genesis, the Jews and most of their
ancient neighbors were descended. The term Semite in "this sense seems
to have appeared in print for the first time in 1781, in a contribution by A.
L. von Schlozer to J. G. Eichhorn's Repertoriumfur biblische und morgenlandische
Literatur.
Though these terms were strictly linguistic in origin and use, nevertheless
confusion between language and race seems to have appeared at quite an early
date. The German philologist Max Muller is quoted as saying that one can no
more speak of a Semitic or an Aryan race than one can speak of a brachyce-phalic
or dolichocephalic dictionary. Scholars did in fact speak of Semites, but as
a convenient shorthand for people speaking a Semitic language and having a culture
expressed in a Semitic language. In this sense -- of the speakers of a language,
the carriers of a culture, "Semite" was frequently and respectably
used as a substantive. Scholars have never failed to point out -- repeatedly and
alas ineffectually -- that this linguistic and cultural classification has nothing
to do with the anthropological classification of race, and that there is no
reason whatever to assume that people who speak the same language are of the
same racial origin. Indeed, if one looks at the speakers of Hebrew and of Arabic
at the present time -- not to mention English -- such an assumption is palpably absurd.
Speakers of Arabic include the racially highly diverse peoples of Syria, Lebanon
and Iraq on the one hand, and of the Sudan and North Africa on the other; and
even the small state of Israel, after the "ingathering of the exiles"
from all over the world, shows a diversity of racial type even greater than
that of the Arab world. One may call the Arabs and Israelis fellow-Semites in
the sense that both speak Semitic languages, and that is all. To assume or imply
any further content would be rather as if one were to describe the English and,
say, the Bengalis as fellow-Aryans, and to suggest that they have some common
identity because of that. Racialist mythologies, based on certain false assumptions
concerning Semites, Aryans and other groups, became very popular during the
19th century, when they provided, for those who needed it, an ideological justification
for rejecting Jews, to replace the religious rationalization which was ceasing
to satisfy secularized Christians. If Jews could no longer decently be persecuted
because they were unbelievers, then they might be persecuted because they were
members of an alien and inferior race. Religious prejudice was old-fashioned
and obscurantist; racial discrimination in contrast appeared, to the 19th century,
as modern and scientific. The important thing was of course that the Jews should
be kept down, and that some intellectually and socially acceptable reason should
be found for this. A further advantage of the new, racial dispensation was that
it deprived the Jew of the opportunity, open to him under religious persecution,
of deserting his own side and joining the persecutors. The present, third phase,
in which politics has superseded both race and religion in anti-Jewish action
and propaganda, has restored this option.
Anti-Jewish propaganda in Western and Central Europe had long had racial overtones.
In 16th-century Spain the forced mass conversion of Jews and Muslims gave rise
to a virulent racialism directed mainly against "new Christians" of
Jewish origin and their descendants, and an obsession with purity of blood -- limpieza
de sangre. Racial themes appear occasionally in the 18th century, in the writings
of the French Enlightenment. They became commoner during the 19th century, and
were given a more systematic form in Germany, where the term anti-Semitism was
first used.
Hatred of the Jews has many parallels, and yet is unique. In some respects
it resembles the normal hostility which one may find among people for neighbors
of another tribe, another race, another faith or from another place, or the
attitude which majorities sometimes adopt towards minorities. There are many
examples all over the world of minority groups, often of alien origin, who play
some specific economic role, and arouse hostility in consequence. Such are the
Lebanese in West Africa, the Asians in East Africa, and the Chinese in South-east
Asia. Hostility to Jews often arises or is aggravated by similar causes, but
nevertheless anti-Semitism -- in its persistence and extent, its potency and results,
is without parallel. The one other persecution that is at all comparable, the
massacre of the Armenians, is of a different order. The persecution of the Armenians
was limited both in time and in place -- to the Ottoman Empire, and to the 19th
and 20th centuries. It was in reality a struggle between two different peoples
for the same country. It was not associated with either the demonic beliefs
or the deep, almost physical hatred which inspire and direct anti-Semitism in
Central and Eastern Europe and sometimes elsewhere. It may perhaps be described
as an outstanding example of normal conflict. The uniqueness of anti-Semitism
lies in the peculiar relationship of the Jews to Christianity, and in the role
assigned to the Jews in Christian beliefs concerning the genesis of their faith.
Some years ago, an American Secretary of State made a very revealing remark.
Speaking of Arab hostility to Israel, he observed that it was not really surprising,
since the Jews had murdered Muhammad. They did not, of course, but it is quite
obvious what he had in mind.
What then is the relevance of all this to the Arab-Israel dispute? How far
is this dispute a racial problem? Before attempting to answer this question,
I should like to clarify two important points. The first is the meaning of the
term race. This word has been used and misused in many ways in our time, and
much misunderstanding has been caused by unrecognized differences of definition.
It is not my purpose here to define the nature of race or of racial identity,
but it may be useful to explain what I mean by the word in the context of the
present discussion. Race, then, is a quality, possessed or ascribed, which is
or is believed to be involuntary, immutable, and hereditary, and thus (essentially
different from such forms of identity as religion and nationality, which can
be adopted or relinquished at will. (I speak of course of the Anglo-American
term nationality, not of the German Nationalitat or the Russian Natsionalnost,
both of which are racial in content.)
My second point is that I am here concerned only with the racial aspects of
the problem; not with the rights and wrongs of the Arab-Israel conflict, and
not with those aspects, by far the most important, that have nothing to do with
race at all.
The argument is sometimes put forward that the Arabs and their friends, in
opposing Israel or Zionism, cannot be anti-Semitic because the Arabs themselves
are Semites. This argument is doubly flawed. First, the term Semite has no meaning
as applied to groups as heterogeneous as the Arabs or Jews, and indeed it could
be argued that the use of such terms is in itself a sign of racialism. Secondly,
anti-Semitism has never anywhere been concerned with anyone but Jews. The Nazis,
who may be accepted as the most authoritative exponents of anti-Semitism, made
it quite clear that their hostility was limited to Jews only, and did not include
the other so-called Semitic peoples. On the contrary, the Nazis found and still
find no difficulty in simultaneously hating Jews and courting Arabs; they made
a considerable and on the whole successful effort to cultivate the Arabs, and
won the friendship and support of many Arab leaders, including some who still
hold high office.
Jews and pro-Jews have often tended to identify enmity to Israel or to Zionism
with anti-Semitism, and to see Nasser as a new but unsuccessful Hitler and the
Fatah as the present-day equivalent of the S.S. This is a false equation. The
Arab-Israel conflict is a political one -- a conflict between peoples over real
issues, not a matter of prejudice and persecution. It is not necessary to assume
that Arab hostility to Israel is a result of anti-Semitism -- there are other adequate
reasons by which it can be explained.
Nevertheless, since Israel happens to be a Jewish state inhabited largely by
Jews, and since there are people who hate Jews independently of the Palestine
conflict, anti-Semitism may sometimes be a factor in determining attitudes -- on
occasion even in determining policy and action. How far and in what circumstances
is this so? It may be useful to examine this question in relation to some of
the different groups involved.
The first and most important of the opponents of Israel are obviously the Arabs.
In general it is true that the Arabs are not anti-Semitic -- not because they themselves
are Semites, a meaningless statement, but because for the most part they are
not Christians. Anti-Semitism in its modern form is the response, of the secularized
Christian to the emancipated Jew -- but with theological and psychological roots
going back to the very origins of Christianity. In Islam, the Gospels have no
place in education -- and the processes of secularization and emancipation have,
barely, begun. This being so, we shall not be surprised to find that Christian
Arabs have often been anti-Semitic, and indeed played a leading part in introducing
European-style anti-Semitism to the Arab world. That characteristic expression
of Christian anti-Semitism, the blood-libel, has appeared from time to time
in the history of the Middle East, as well as in Europe. When it did, it was,
until recent years, almost invariably Christian in origin. The most notable
case among many in the 19th century was the famous Damascus affair of 1840,
when Jews in that city were accused of the ritual murder of a Franciscan father.
The accusers were his fellow monks and the French consul.
This does not of course mean that Jews under traditional Muslim rule lived
in the inter-faith Utopia invented by modern myth-makers. Jews, like Christians,
were in both theory and practice second-class citizens. This situation was however
by no means as bad as the modern associations of this term would suggest. As
members of a protected community, they enjoyed limited but substantial rights,
which were at most times effectively maintained. In return, they owed -- and gave --
loyalty to the state, and accepted certain disabilities which were not normally
very onerous. They were expected to keep their place, and the rare outbreaks
of violence against Jews or Christians almost always resulted from a feeling
that they had failed to do so. They have conspicuously failed to do so in recent
years.
The spread of anti-Semitism in the Arab lands in modern times has been due
to three main causes. The first, chronologically, is European influence. A few
Arabic translations of anti-Semitic tracts were published as early as the 19th
century. Others followed, including the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which
first appeared in Arabic in Cairo in about 1927. There are now more versions
and editions in Arabic than in any other language. There are also numerous other
works, translated, adapted, and even original, dealing with the iniquities of
the Jews through the millennia and the universal Jewish conspiracy against mankind,
and including the old charges of blood-lust, ritual murder and the like, as
well as the standard modern myths of power and money. There are even writings
which defend and justify the Nazi persecution of the Jews. Some contemporary
Arab comment on the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem is significant in this respect.
From 1933 onwards the spread of anti-Jewish propaganda among the Arabs was
no longer left to chance or to private enterprise. Nazi Germany made a truly
immense effort in the Arab countries, and won many converts. This work was continued
by Nazi emigres after the war. In a sense, the final destruction of the Jewish
communities in Arab countries was a long-term result of the Nazi effort.
The second factor is the Palestine question. As we have seen, Arab hostility
to Israel has in its origins nothing to do with anti-Semitism as such. But Israel
is Jewish, and there are Jewish minorities in Arab countries. In a time of crisis,
the ready-made themes, imagery and vocabulary of anti-Jewish abuse that were
offered to the Arabs proved too tempting to resist.
Jews in Arab countries had in general been indifferent or hostile to Zionism.
They were converted, like others, by persecution. The first outbreak in modern
times occurred in Baghdad on 1 and 2 June 1941, during the last hours of the
pro-German Rashid Ali regime. According to official sources, 110 Jews were killed
and 240 injured, 586 business premises sacked, and 911 houses destroyed. Unofficial
estimates are higher. The next wave came in November 1945, with riots and attacks
on synagogues and Jewish shops in Egypt and Syria, and a massacre in Libya,
where 130 Jewish dead were officially counted and so many houses, shops and
workshops destroyed that much of the community was left homeless and destitute.
A third wave followed in December 1947, with massacres of Jews in Aleppo and
Aden. In the latter, official estimates gave 82 dead, a similar number injured,
106 shops sacked, 220 houses destroyed or damaged.
These events, with lesser outbreaks in some other places and increasing pressure
almost everywhere, began the liquidation of the ancient Arab-Jewish communities
and incidentally contributed greatly to the creation of Israel. The armed struggle
in Palestine in 1947-48, the proclamation of Israel, and the subsequent Arab-Israeli
conflict completed the process. It has sometimes been argued that the outbreaks
of violence against Jews in Arab countries and the subsequent flight of Arab
Jews from their homes were due entirely to Zionism and the Arab reaction against
it. This explanation has some plausibility, and there can be no doubt that the
Palestine problem is an important element in the growth of Arab hostility to
Jews. But it is not a sufficient explanation. In two countries with large Jewish
minorities, Iraq and Yemen, the governments of the time not only permitted but
positively facilitated the transfer of their Jews to Israel; other Arab governments
too have shown more interest in the departure of their Jews than in their ultimate
destination. The first post-war pogrom, in November 1945, was touched off by
demonstrations on the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, and might be explained
by concern for the fate of Palestine, then under consideration. The same cannot
be said of the earlier massacre in Baghdad. At the beginning of June 1941, Hitler
ruled Europe, and Stalin was still his loyal helper; America was neutral, and
Britain was strictly enforcing the 1939 White Paper in Palestine. Zionism -- which
was in any case rejected by most Iraqi Jews -- could hardly have seemed a serious
threat, and one needs great faith to believe that the Baghdad mobs in June 1941
were moved to fall upon their Jewish compatriots because of a problem 600 miles
away and a threat six years in the future.
The reaction against Zionism and the response to European anti-Semitism both
had their effect. But what finally sealed the fate of the Arab Jews was the
third, and in many ways the most important, factor -- the general worsening of
the position of minorities, both ethnic and religious, in the Middle East. In
a time of violent change, the old tolerance has gone, the new equality has proved
a fraud. All are insecure, some are persecuted -- and the Jews, as so often, suffer
in an acute and accelerated form the ills of the society of which they are a
part.
From the outpouring of official and private anti-Semitic propaganda in Arabic -- not
only in books, but also in newspapers, magazines, films, radio and television -- one
might gather that the Arabs were going through a wave of anti-Semitism similar
to that of the Nazi period. Such an impression would be mistaken. Unlike German
anti-Semitism, or that of Poland or Russia, this anti-Semitic literature in
the Arab countries does not rest on any real popular feeling, and has no roots
in the past; indeed, it is doubtful whether one can really speak, even now,
of anti-Semitism among Muslim Arabs -- though of course there are always exceptions.
Even across the battle lines, personal relations are still possible between
Jews and Arabs, of a warmth and sincerity inconceivable to many Westerners.
The anti-Semitic literature is overwhelmingly foreign in content and style --
even the anti-Jewish cartoons have to use German and Russian stereotypes. In
the Arab lands anti-Semitism is not, as in Europe, exploited by politicians,
but is created by them. It has, so to speak, been switched on; it could as easily
be switched off.
This does not of course mean that there has been no antagonism to Jews in the
Arab countries in the past, or that Arab hostility today is purely political
and ideological. Those Arab experts who know some Arabic are aware that it is
only in the last few years that Arabs have begun to refer to their adversary
as "the Zionists". Previously the enemy was al-Yahud, the Jews, and
to a large extent remains so now, except in public and in print. But this is
not racial, nor does it resemble Christian anti-Semitism. It rests on no theology
of guilt, no scriptural condemnation, no assumption of racial distinctness and
inferiority. Rather is it the anger of a dominant group at a formerly tolerated
minority which has signally failed to keep its place in the proper order of
things. The Jew -- in the East even more than in the West -- has defaulted on his
stereotype An important factor in the Arab response to Israel is surely a sense
of shock and outrage at the appearance of the Jew -- familiar, tolerated, and
despised -- in this new and strange role, as soldier, administrator, and ruler.
Such resentments are by no means directed against Jews only. They also touch
other communities which have somehow offended against the proprieties of the
traditional order, and at the present time offer more of a threat to the Christian
minorities -- emancipated, assimilated and affluent -- than to the few remaining Jews
in the Arab East.
All this has nothing to do with anti-Semitism in either its religious or its
racial form, but belongs rather to the category of normal conflict. European
opponents of Israel -- the Russians, the Poles, the East Germans and the rest -- are
quite a different matter. The Soviet Union no doubt has good political reasons
for its present policy towards Israel. Unlike the Nazis, the Russians would
be perfectly capable of changing sides if they thought it desirable. Indeed,
for a brief period some 20 years ago they supported Israel against Britain,
and it was arms from the Eastern bloc which enabled the infant state to withstand
the Arab armies in 1948. Since then, however, the Soviet Union has turned the
other way, and has, with its satellites and followers, pursued a policy of unrelenting
hostility to the Jewish state.
While this policy can be explained on political grounds, certain features are
noteworthy.
One of these is the violence of the language used both to Israel and about
Israel, in both diplomatic and propaganda utterances. Even by the standards
of communist political vituperation, the invective used in condemning Israel
and Israeli actions is remarkable. One may observe striking similarities both
in argument and in expression between East Germany and West Germany, in the
condemnation of Israel -- in East Germany by the official press and radio, in West
Germany by the two groups of extremists -- of the right, the neo-Nazis, and of
the left, both old and new. Their hostility to Israel and the manner in which
they express it are of course not the only points that these groups have in
common.
Perhaps even more noteworthy is the fact that the Soviet Union has on two different
occasions broken off diplomatic relations with Israel. This is a step which
the Soviets have not taken since early times, even with their most dangerous
and avowed enemies. They were careful to maintain diplomatic relations for as
long as possible with Pilsudski's Poland -- even after the murder of a Soviet ambassador
in Warsaw; with Fascist Italy, and with Nazi Germany, even after the Anschluss
with Austria and the German occupation of Czechoslovakia. Nor have they found
it necessary in more recent times to break off diplomatic relations with states
which are opposed to them, or which they accuse of being imperialist puppets
or communist heretics, in Europe, Asia, Africa or the Americas. They did not,
for example, break off relations with Yugoslavia in 1949, with China or the
U.S.A. at any time, or with the new anti-communist rulers of Indonesia and Ghana.
Only with Albania, in 1961, did the Soviet Union break off relations, under
extreme provocation, and then only de facto, not de jure. Most of the satellites
retained their diplomatic relations, and a few years later the Soviet Union
tried unsuccessfully to restore them. They have however twice broken off diplomatic
relations with Israel. The first occasion was in 1953, at the time of the "Doctors'
Plot" in Moscow, when a small bomb was exploded in the courtyard of the
Soviet Embassy in Tel Aviv. There was never the slightest suspicion that this
was anything but an irresponsible private operation. Diplomatic relations were
restored after a while, but were broken off again in 1967, this time by almost
the whole Soviet bloc. This disparity is very striking, and leaves one wondering
what peculiar characteristic of Israel, lacking in other countries, has twice
required a rupture of diplomatic relations. The vocabulary and iconography of
Soviet anti-Zionism, with their covert and sometimes overt appeals to old-fashioned
racial and even religious prejudice, may suggest an answer.
A third group of opponents of Israel and Zionism are the non-communist supporters
of the Arab cause in the "free world". Because these lack the obvious
motives, whether political or ideological, of the Arabs on the one hand and
the communists on the other, they are the ones most frequently accused of being
moved by anti-Semitic motives. Often, this accusation is an injustice. There
are many who support the Arab cause out of a sincere conviction that it is a
just one; others who support it for good practical, personal, political or commercial
reasons unconnected with any kind of prejudice. The fact must however be faced
that there are some -- what proportion would be difficult to say -- for whom the Arabs
are in truth nothing but a stick with which to beat the Jews.
In England and in other English-speaking countries, there has never developed
a tradition of intellectual anti-Semitism such as has at different times flourished
in France, Germany, and Russia. The attempts by Goldwin Smith and E. A. Freeman
to launch German-style racial anti-Semitism in the 19th century, like the later
attempts by. Belloc and Chesterton to import the French clerical variety, had
little or no success. This is the more remarkable in that English literature
offers what is probably a richer gallery of mythic Jewish villains than any
other literature in Europe -- a gallery that begins with Chaucer's murderers of
St Hugh of Lincoln, and includes such varied figures as Shylock, Barabas the
Jew of Malta, Fagin, Melmotte, Svengali, the sophisticated stereotypes of Graham
Greene and T. S. Eliot and the penny-plain stereotypes of John Buchan and Agatha
Christie.10 Prejudice against Jews has of course always existed, and has on
occasion -- very infrequently -- amounted to a factor of some political importance.
But it has never in modern times reached the point when anti-Semitism could
be openly avowed by anyone with serious intellectual pretensions or political
ambitions. Anti-Semitism is on the whole furtive, disguised, and hypocritical.
Where openly expressed, it is usually a lower-middle-class phenomenon -- the petty
snobbery of the provincial golf club, whose members can find no other way of
giving themselves status. In the working class it conflicted with the standards
of brotherhood and internationalism, to which all paid at least lip service
and often much more. In the upper middle class, the intellectual and professional
classes and the upper class, its open expression conflicted with accepted standards
of good taste. In the English-speaking countries in particular, therefore, the
Palestine conflict provided a heaven-sent (if that is the right word) opportunity
to be anti-Jewish with a good conscience inside oneself and a good appearance
towards others. This was a political conflict, not a racial prejudice, and an
anti-Jewish position could be justified on the highest ethical and political
grounds. I stress again -- this is not true of all pro-Arabs, perhaps indeed not
of any great number of them, but it is certainly true of some, for whom the
Palestine problem and the sufferings of the Arabs provide perfect cover for
prejudices which they would otherwise be ashamed to reveal.
Some are easy to detect. The openly fascist and racialist groups still active
in various parts of the world are almost without exception pro-Arab -- and their
literature makes their real sentiments and purposes abundantly clear. Some Arabs
have disdained the support of such tainted allies; others, including both governments
and revolutionaries, have made good use of it.
In more respectable circles, it is by no means easy to distinguish between
those who are pro-Arab and those who are merely anti-Jewish. There are however
some symptoms which, though not infallible, are a fairly good indication. One
of the characteristics of the anti-Jew as distinct from the pro-Arab is that
he shows no other sign of interest in the Arabs or sympathy for them, apart
from their conflict with the Jews. He is completely unmoved by wrongs suffered
by the Arabs at the hands of anyone other than Jews -- whether their own rulers
or third parties. He shows no interest in the history or achievements of the
Arabs, no knowledge of their language or culture. On the contrary he may speak
of them in a way which is in reality profoundly disparaging. No one in his right
mind would claim to be an expert on, say, France or Germany without knowing
a word of French or German. The claims to expertise of our self-styled Arabists
without Arabic rest on the assumption that Arabs are somehow different from -- and
inferior to -- French men and Germans, in that what they say and write in their
own language can be safely disregarded. In the same spirit, some so-called pro-Arabs
explain away the more extreme statements of certain Arab leaders by attributing
the quality of what they say to the inevitable vagueness and violence of the
Arabic language. Arabic is one of the noblest instruments that the human race
has ever forged for the expression of its thoughts. It is a language rich in
poetry and eloquence, two arts whose practitioners are not always to be taken
as saying exactly what they mean or meaning exactly what they say. But that
is only one side of Arabic. It is also a language which has been used with remarkable
clarity and precision. As a medium of philosophical and scientific literature,
its only peer, until modern times, was Greek, At once poetic and accurate, Arabic
was for a very long time one of the major, languages of civilization.. To offer
such excuses for the utterances of individual Arabs is an expression not of
sympathy but rather of ignorance and, ultimately, of contempt. If anyone had,
tried, in the '30s, to excuse Hitler's speeches by saying that this was the
only way in which one could speak in the German language, would he have been
accepted either as an expert on Germany -- or as a friend of the German people?
A second characteristic of the anti-Jew as opposed to the pro-Arab is his tendency
to harp on Jewish power and influence, which he usually greatly exaggerates,
and to complain of Jewish double loyalty. There are about 450,000 Jews in Britain.
The anti-Jew proceeds on the assumptions (a) that they are all as rich as Rothschild,
as efficient as Marks & Spencer, as clever as Isaiah Berlin, as articulate
as Bernard Levin, as resourceful as John Bloom; (b) that they are all working
together for Israel; (c) that they are committing some offense in doing so.
In fact of course the great majority of Jews in Britain, as elsewhere, are
as ignorant, inept, and inert as anyone else. Like others again they are sharply
divided, some for Israel, some, no doubt fewer but not unimportant, against
Israel, and the great mass at best sympathetic but inactive. The question of
double loyalty takes different forms. In democratic and open societies, like
Britain and the U.S.A., Jewish double loyalty is in the main a problem only
for Jews and anti-Jews, not for the great mass of the population who are neither
the one nor the other. Most non-political Englishmen and Americans find it normal
that Jews should sympathize with Israel, and are indeed slightly puzzled or
even disturbed when they do not. As citizens of a free country, Jews have the
same rights as anyone else to be pro-Israel, pro-Arab, or pro-whatever they
please. A selective restriction of this right, imposed on Jews but not on others,
on support for Israel but not for other foreign causes, would put them, in effect,
in a separate and inferior category of citizenship. This line of thought has
won little support in free countries.
In countries with an authoritarian tradition, like Russia or Poland, or a centralist
tradition, like France, the position is different, and opposition by a group
of nationals -- Jews or others -- to a foreign policy pursued by the government is
regarded as a form of dissidence verging on treason. In France, some have seen
Zionist Jews as a modern equivalent of the Huguenots and the Ultramontanes;
the resemblance is remote, and its effect very limited, though it has already
caused some concern to French Jews. In Poland and Russia, where this kind of
argument is more familiar, the pressures and penalties to which the Jew is subject
are incomparably greater. Russian and Polish Jews must not merely refrain from
supporting Israel; they must actively oppose her. The point was well made -- in
private -- by a distinguished Polish Jewish writer during the 1967 war. "I
agree," he said, "that a man can have only one country to which he
owes allegiance -- but why does mine have to be the United Arab Republic?"
In our time, anti-Zionism has come to have a wider range and relevance, often
quite unconnected with the Middle East, and its problems. In the 19th century,
religiously-expressed anti-Judaism was regarded as reactionary and outmoded,
and gave way, in more modern and secular circles, to racially-expressed anti-Semitism.
In our time racialism in turn has been discredited, and has, for some, been
duly succeeded by an anti-Zionism in which politics takes the place previously
occupied by religion and then race. The change is one of expression and emphasis
rather than of substance, since all these elements have been and still are present.
Even now, if one wishes to attack or discredit a Jew, one may call him an unbeliever,
a Semite, or a Zionist, depending on whether the atmosphere and prevailing ideology
of the society in which one operates is religious, ethnic, or political. In Poland,
I am told, people are dismissed from their posts for having a Zionist grandmother.
Racial feelings can work both ways, and may underlie non-Jewish support for
Israel, as well as non-Arab hostility. One group, the approximate rather than
exact counterpart of the Jew-hating Arabophiles, are those who favor Israel
because they hate Arabs. Such motives were at one time evident in France, where
the war in Algeria gave rise to a quasi-alliance with Israel against the common
Arab enemy, and where the final French withdrawal left a feeling of bitterness
for which the Israeli victories provided some solace. This feeling was however
specific and transitory; it was political and psychological rather than racial,
and is of declining importance. In the English-speaking countries hostility
to the Arabs as such is not a factor, though there are some who include the
Arabs in a generalized dislike of lesser breeds. For these, the choice between
Jew and Arab may present an agonizing dilemma.
Two other groups, among the supporters of Israel, are the inverted and repentant
anti-Semites. By inverted anti-Semites I mean those who basically accept the
anti-Semitic myth of the secret Jewish world power, but see it with respect
and admiration rather than with hatred and fear. A classical example is Benjamin
Disraeli, whose view of the role of the Jews does not differ greatly from that
of the anti-Semites, but is presented in positive instead of negative terms,
with pride instead of hate. The same kind of awestruck belief in Jewish power
can be found in some gentile sympathizers with Zionism -- even, for example, among
some of the promoters of the Balfour Declaration, who saw in it a device to
win "international Jewry" to the Allied cause. This belief still
appears occasionally even at the present day, though it has lost most of its
cogency in view of the manifest inability of "international Jewry"
to do anything against either Hitler or his successors in enmity to Judaism.
Awe for the mysterious power of Jewry has given place to respect for the political
and military power of Israel -- but this is not a racial consideration.
The repentant anti-Semites -- usually vicarious -- are another matter. There can
be no doubt that one of the most important sources of support for Israel in
the period following the fall of Hitler was guilt -- guilt, that is, in the modern
sense, a psychological state rather than a legal fact. The true anti-Semite
is rarely repentant, and feelings of guilt for crimes against the Jews are often
in inverse proportion to the degree of personal responsibility. They were, nevertheless,
a factor of importance, and the response of many Christians to the emergence
of Israel was determined by the feeling that they, their countries, and their
churches were accessories to the Nazi crimes, if not by active complicity, then
by acquiescence or indifference.
Such feelings are a dwindling asset to Israel, and must inevitably die away
as the memory of Nazi crimes recedes into the past. In the Soviet Union, official
propaganda has even tried to conceal the fact that the Nazis persecuted Jews;
to reveal it might arouse sympathy for either the Nazis or the Jews, and both
responses would in different ways be undesirable. In the West one can almost
hear the sigh of relief with which some persons and institutions have, after
more than 30 years of unease, resumed their posture of moral superiority to
the unredeemed and unbelieving Jews.
Finally, what of the Jews themselves? For the Jews are by no means unanimous
in their support for Israel. The universal Jewish conspiracy, whether for Israel
or any other purpose, is of course a figment of anti-Semitic imagination and
has never had any reality. Many Jews are pro-Israel to varying degrees and a
minority of them are active in Israel's support. There is, however, a by no
means insignificant number of others who are active opponents of Israel -- certainly
more than in the past. These Jewish opponents of Israel are of several kinds.
Some, as with non-Jews, are believers in the justice of the Arab cause; some
are moved by internal Jewish religious considerations. Of the remainder, the
most important are supporters of the old and new lefts, whose reactions to this
as to most other problems are determined by political decisions, not necessarily
their own, and by the current position of the ideological hemline. Many in particular
proceed on the fashionable progressive assumption that any cause or any state
which is supported by the United States must be an evil one; Israel, enjoying
such support, must therefore necessarily be in the wrong in any dispute in which
she is involved.
This is not a racial question. In the case of Jewish leftists old and new,
however, there is an additional factor which should not be underrated. This
is the phenomenon of Jewish self-hate -- the neurotic reaction which one finds
among some Jews to the phenomenon of anti-Semitism by accepting, sharing, expressing,
and even exaggerating some of the basic assumptions of the anti-Semite. In
the 19th and early 20th centuries this kind of response could be found, in particular,
among assimilated German Jews, of both left and right. A classical example is
Karl Marx's essay on the Jewish question, now enjoying a new popularity in Arabic
translation. Another is the posture of some German Jewish conservatives, who
adopted the standards and outlook, as far as they could, of the German Nationalist
right, and repeated their accusations against Jews, particularly Jews other
than those of Germany. This did not of course help them in any way when the
Nazis came to power and imposed their own solution of the Jewish problem. Today
the phenomenon of Jewish self-hate is found chiefly on the far left, where hostility
to Israel provides, or appears to provide, an opportunity of freeing oneself
from ancestral and, more immediately, parental bonds, and passing from the minority
to the majority. This may help us to understand some of the tortured utterances
of the claustrophobic or rather claustrophiliac world of Jewish left-wing Marxism,
and the curious phenomenon of Jewish supporters of black anti-Semitism in the
U.S.A. -- the American children of survivors of European ghettoes and death camps,
who accept, or rather demand, a share of guilt for the enslavement of the African
in America, and thus tacitly assert their membership of the dominant even if
guilty majority.
All this -- Gentile anti-Semitism or philo-Semitism, Jewish loyalty or self-hate -- has
nothing whatever to do with the rights and wrongs of the Arab-Israel dispute.
It does however influence and sometimes determine the attitude of important
groups of observers and participants from outside, including journalists, politicians,
officials, and hence even governments. There are several familiar, sometimes
pathetic figures -- the Jew driven one way or the other by tribal solidarity or
the desire to escape; the old-style white racialist, trying to decide which
he hates more, Arabs or Jews; the tormented American WASP liberal, who sees
the Palestine conflict as, ultimately, one between Harlem and the Bronx, and
makes a choice determined by his own personal blend of prejudice and guilt;
the anxious politician, now as in the '30s, seeking to avoid even the appearance
of serving a Jewish purpose, and falling over backwards into other, less mythical,
dangers. The fear of serving Jewish purposes was a not unimportant factor in
the appeasement of Hitler, long after the point when self-interest clearly required
that he be resisted. The advance of Soviet power in the Middle East has been
eased by similar anxieties on the part of some who might otherwise have opposed
it. Race is topical at the moment, and the racialist is the fashionable enemy.
It is therefore good propaganda to present one's problem as racial, and to call
the adversary a racialist. This has given rise to a series of accusations, some
grotesquely comic -- such as the insult "Nazi", hurled by Hitler's allies
at Hitler's victims -- others merely false.
At first sight it might seem that some at least of the accusations on both
sides are true. Have not the Arab governments persecuted their Jewish subjects?
Is not Israel a self-proclaimed Jewish state, to which Jews and only Jews have
a right of entry? Yes indeed. But "Jewish" is a racial category for
anti-Semites and those who have been misled by them, including some Jews. It
is not and never has been such for authentic Jews, nor for that matter for most
Arabs. Legal decisions in Israel have confirmed that a Jew converted to another
religion ceases to be a Jew while a Gentile converted to Judaism becomes a Jew.
This is not a racial definition. Correspondingly, Arab hostility to Jews, whether
directed against the Jewish state or against the Jewish community, in whatever
words and actions it may find expression, is fundamentally not racial in character.
Fortunately -- for the Palestine problem is difficult enough without injecting
racialism -- all this has little real effect on either the Arabs or the Israelis.
The problem is political and strategic, social and economic, national, communal,
and perhaps even religious -- but not, despite all the efforts that have been and
are being made, racial. Neither Arabs nor Israelis are completely free from
racial feelings and prejudices, and both have racial tensions of a sort within
their own societies. But these are comparatively minor and, what is more important,
are not directed against one another. The Middle East has its racial problems,
and in the past these have sometimes caused trouble, but it does not share the
obsessive concern with race that affects its neighbors in Europe, Asia and Africa.
However difficult the Palestine problem may be, it is not as yet poisoned by
the bitterest conflict of our time -- and in this there is some faint cause for
hope.
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