Fear and loathing: too often Judeophobia is discussed in abstract terms. Lucy Michaels brings the anguish that some Jews feel into sharp focus

New Internationalist, Oct, 2004 by Lucy Michaels

IT has only been in recent months that I've found the courage to speak to some of my Jewish and non-Jewish friends within the Palestine solidarity community, and the broader anti-globalization/anti-war movement, about the difficulties I have experienced as a Jew within that movement. And to name that experience: anti-Jewish racism, or Judeophobia.

The first time I joined the struggle for Palestinian rights was at a rally in Trafalgar Square in 2002. Here was a place that I could be anonymous yet stand up in solidarity for what I believed in. I watched in horror, however, as the reactions unfolded to an Israeli-Jewish peace activist who took the platform. 'The occupation is terror!' she said. 'It breeds despair in the hearts of young Palestinian boys and girls. But the suicide bombings are not helping the Palestinian struggle. Whoever is sending these kids--Hamas, Islamic Jihad, or Tanzim--plays into the hands of Sharon.'

At this, a group of young Muslim fundamentalists, some of them with empty toilet rolls strapped around their stomachs like dynamite, surged forward throwing bottles at the podium and chanting, 'Scud, Scud, Israel! Gas, Gas, Tel Aviv!' and in Arabic--'Death to Jews'. I was even more horrified to see that woman struggle on with her speech, unsupported. No-one sitting on the platform raised a finger to challenge such blatant racism. When she stepped down, the Chair took the microphone from her, commenting: 'Well not all of us agree with the last speaker ...'

The overwhelming feeling that I got from the mainstream British Left that day was not so much solidarity with the Palestinians as virulent hostility towards Israel, and by extension towards anyone who didn't express shame to be Jewish or utterly reject a Jewish state.

The notion of racism against the Jewish people has been so exclusively linked to the Shoah (Holocaust) that its more subtle and everyday manifestations often pass people by. Of course Jews are not being carted off to the gas chambers, and thankfully in Britain actual racist attacks on people and buildings are rare. However, there are instances, especially around the Israel/Palestine issue, where attitudes and expressions of Judeophobia often surface. Criticism of Israel's policies is not Judeophobic. The way in which it is conducted, however, sometimes is. Judeophobia is present in careless and inflammatory language; in 'black and white' attitudes that polarize the debate; in gross insensitivities to Jewish concerns and collective memory; in the level of hatred expressed towards Jews and Israelis; and, on top of it all, in a blanket denial that the problem of anti-Jewish racism exists.

Holocaust fatigue

Perhaps predictably, a lot of the tensions revolve around the Holocaust, and the failure to realize how deep and unresolved a pain it is for my community. My grandfather tells vivid stories of how, as a young Jewish British sailor transporting Holocaust survivors from Odessa to Marseilles, he gave his coat to the starving and penniless Otto Frank, Auschwitz survivor and father of Anne Frank. Her diary was my companion in my own adolescence. This bright young woman, so enchanted by and prescient about the world around her, died horribly of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp aged 15 because she was Jewish. I grew up conscious of the possibility that if I had been born 40 years earlier in Europe, that would have been me. Of course I get emotional when I feel disrespect around this very real pain.

In certain circles on the Left, talking about the Holocaust elicits nothing but groans and sighs--it's called 'Holocaust fatigue'. There are various stock responses which seem to dismiss the whole experience out of hand--'Yes it was terrible but it was used by Zionist leaders as an excuse for the foundation of the illegitimate Jewish state of Israel on land stolen from the Palestinians.'

Yet within those same circles, very deliberate comparisons are made between the current situation in Palestine and the Holocaust: a banner equating a Star of David with a swastika and cartoons of Israeli soldiers in SS uniforms. I have been to Palestine several times over the last couple of years and seen the appalling situation with my own eye. It is a massive over-simplification to say that the Israelis are repeating history and have 'become the Nazis', yet some Palestine solidarity activists constantly make that comparison. It is as though Jews must be collectively punished for the behaviour of the Israeli state by the use of inflammatory symbols and language, and a widespread denial of our experience of persecution. It taps into a profound trauma that immediately and inevitably puts me on the defensive--which is ironic because I don't support Israel's policies towards the Palestinians.

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Shades of Zion

Five million Jews live in Israel today; many have a deep emotional connection to the place they were born in and call home. This connection to the 'land of Israel' has been a profound part of our consciousness throughout history. A connection that I too have felt through my upbringing as a Reform Jew. I remember, as a 16 year old, feeling the weight of what it means to be Jewish, and my responsibility for the continuity of the Jewish people, when for the first time I put my palm on the cool stones of the Western Wall, all that remains of the Second Temple in Jerusalem.