Observing Israel-Palestine discourse is rather like sitting by the side of a merry-go-round ridden by madmen convinced that they are engaged in a chase. The pro-Palestine riders whirl by, bellowing “genocide”, swiftly followed by their pro-Israel rivals, shouting “anti-Semitism”. Each group is convinced that their hunting cry is both truthful and magical: it cannot fail to allow them to catch and defeat the other riders. Round and round they turn, ever louder, ever angrier, never any closer to each other, indeed never closer to seeing that their slogans are themselves condemning them to an eternity on that merry-go-round.
It is of course easy to understand why the slogans seem like they must deliver victory. It remains impossible to speak or think of Israel except through the prism of the Shoah. The Shoah was both the endpoint of modern anti-Semitism, and a crime so novel that “genocide” was coined to describe it. It is also the ultimate moral measure against which all political projects are now judged. In the end, there is nothing worse than a Nazi. To be an anti-Semite is to be a Nazi. To commit a genocide is to be a Nazi. If only the world could see that Israelis have become Nazis, or that Palestinians have become Nazis, all would recognize at long last who is truly just and truly wicked in this battle. No wonder that we even see attempts on both sides to own not one, but both slogans: “Hamas et al. are the true génocidaires” versus “Zionism is at bottom itself anti-Semitic”.
It remains impossible to speak or think of Israel except through the prism of the Shoah.
Nor could the rival slogans have such staying power if they were merely convenient, if they corresponded to nothing whatsoever within the realities of the conflict. There is undeniably past and present Jew-hatred among Israel’s opponents, whether it be in the form of Islamic eschatology, the stale legacy of Soviet anti-Zionism, or resurgent podcast-grown paranoia about tentacular globalists and Christ-killers. Conversely, Israel has by now its own callous extremists, far too close to the center of power, and more generally has often slipped into a dehumanizing logic of population management.
Nevertheless, the characterization of the Palestinian cause as anti-Semitic, and of the Israeli one as genocidal, are far too exclusively etic to be either sufficient for dialogue or politically triumphant. There are countless activists on both sides ready to refute those accusations as tirelessly as they are made, because they do not correspond to their self-understanding. That self-understanding needs to be addressed directly. Moreover resorting to “anti-Semitism” and “genocide” also allows both sides to cleave to the comfort of rejecting accusations they are certain are false, rather than having to answer very hard questions based on their own emic narratives.
“Anti-Semitism” and “genocide” also allows both sides to cleave to the comfort of rejecting accusations they are certain are false.
Thus it would be better, rather than harping forever on the anti-Semitic aspects of pro-Palestine activism, to address (as suggested by Adam Louis-Klein) the anti-Zionism most activists do overtly and unapologetically embrace. If we understand anti-Zionism as the belief that the State of Israel, at least qua Jewish state, must cease to exist, then we can insist above all on asking how this desired outcome is supposed to be brought about, how pursuing it can lead to anything other than endless violence, and further suffering for Palestinians. It is not necessary to claim that opposition to Israel’s existence must be motivated by Jew-hatred, or to believe that Zionism is sacred, to maintain that anti-Zionism is a purely destructive project, because dismantling Israel is either impossible, or could only be done at the price of great horrors.
Likewise it is easy for Zionists and their advocates to fend off the charge of genocide. They can retort once again that they have never sought to eliminate the Palestinian people, and that their wars and repression have arisen above all from an attempt to stem the anti-Zionist project itself. It is far wiser to grant all this, than to look for the most deranged statements and actions of Israeli politicians and soldiers, and claim they show the very core of Zionism. Once we have dispensed with “genocide”, we can press Israelis and their advocates to answer for the use and abuse of the moral and political framework they do recognize. We can ask whether an understanding of their actions as self-defense, containment and targeted, strategic violence, tempered by humanitarian restraint, has itself led incrementally to making conscionable the killing of tens of thousands of non-combatants, the razing of much of Gaza, and the displacement of millions. And we can ask how all this violence can ever suck the life out of Palestinian anti-Zionism, rather than feeding it with rage and despair.
If there is to be peace, it will not come from one side or the other recognizing, or being forced to recognize, that they are in truth our era’s Nazis, and then giving up in shame. But we may come a little nearer to peace if both parties are pressed to acknowledge, not dark motives they will largely persist in denying, but how their explicit and proud commitments—their royal and righteous road to victory—has locked them into endless strife.
