No, Ms. Kheiriddin, You’re Quite Wrong

Over at Conservative propaganda rag “National Post”, we have Tasha Kheiriddin trying to turn the lack of attention on the civil war going on in Sudan into “why criticizing Israel’s actions is antisemitic”.  

First, I invite Ms. Kheiriddin to inspect the news - particularly North American sources, and consider how much coverage the Sudan war is getting.  If it wasn’t for BBC’s World Service, I wouldn’t even be aware of it, coverage here has been so sparse, but then again, there are numerous armed conflicts going on in various parts of Africa.  

But, Ms. Kheiriddin seems to think that we can’t “walk and chew bubble gum” at the same time.  Apparently, unless we’re condemning the horrors happening in Sudan just as loudly as what we see happening in Gaza, we must be criticizing Israel because it’s a Jewish state.  

This is utterly incorrect.  Most “left-leaning” people I see online are responding to what we are seeing Israel doing in Gaza because it is being covered in real-time in front of them, every time they look at the news.  What do they see in this coverage? Civilians being forcibly displaced by a vastly larger military force, homes and livelihoods being bombed out of existence from the air, and Israeli politicians making statements like “clearing out Gaza is the solution” - which sounds like something between ethnic cleansing (see Rwanda), and Hitler’s “final solution” (yeah, I said it - sue me - we’ll come back to this point in a minute).

You will find that most “leftists” who are criticizing Israel’s actions in Gaza are doing so through the lens of “the State is not its people”.  In other words, Israel’s politicians and political government are accountable for their actions quite apart from the people.  Just as Hamas is an organization and exists as a separate entity from the civilians of Gaza, the STATE of Israel is not “the Jewish People” per se.  That distinction is important, because it separates the civilians from the belligerents in conflict. 

Is it “anti-Semitic” to criticize Israel’s actions in Gaza?  If the narrative was being framed in terms of ethnic and religious identity, perhaps it would be.  However, most writers I see, myself included are talking about the actions of the state and its politicians.  For example, does the fact of Netanyahu being Jewish exempt him from criticism for engaging in a cynical political game of condemning Hamas on one hand, while feeding it on the other?  I would argue that has nothing whatsoever to do with his being Jewish, and just makes him one more cynical politician willing to play any game as long as it gains him political advantage at the polls. 

More to the point, the construct of antiSemitism is built around the idea that discrimination based on someone being Jewish is wrong.  It is not a blanket exemption that anything done by someone who is Jewish from criticism of any sort.  Even if we broadly agree that Israel is a “Jewish State”, that is no blanket exemption from criticism when that state chooses to act in ways that are unacceptable.

This is no different than the clear statement that Hamas isn’t beyond reproach simply because it is Palestinian (I think the world has been clear about that).

Now, I’m going to come back to my earlier statement about ethnic cleansing in Gaza.  I was not joking when I said it echoed the language of Hitler’s “Final Solution”.  Consider the following from a former Israeli defence minister: 

Combined with Israeli government documents that have been published in numerous other places, it’s pretty hard to ignore the eliminationist tone of these statements.  It’s just as difficult to ignore the similarities to Hitler’s “Final Solution”, especially when the tactics of the IDF have clearly been designed to push the 2.5 million inhabitants of Gaza towards the border with Israel.  

Is it “antiSemitic” to say this?  I suppose that those who connect their identities to the very idea of the state of Israel might argue that it is.  I draw a different line, because the State can never be held up as exempt from the norms of international law and convention.  A state that engages in collective punishment, or ethnic cleansing, must be held accountable, regardless of matters of faith, ethnicity, or even long standing historical horrors like the holocaust.

Ms. Kheiriddin is engaging in the most scandalous of rhetorical tactics - she is using unrelated events to deflect criticism away from the situation in Gaza, and to then insulate the State of Israel from criticism by labelling its critics as antiSemitic.  The intellectual dishonesty of that sleight of hand is beyond stunning.