Author: Andrew Sullivan
Publication: Sunday Times of London
Date: October 20, 2002
A student-written article in the
Yale Daily News last week, the paper for the elite American university,
was typical fare. It was a piece by a precocious first-year student criticizing
what he regards as the anti-Semitism tolerated at the U.N. The response,
however, was far from typical. He'd touched a nerve. In the comments section,
posted online next to the article, a torrent of anger was unleashed. Here's
one respondent's comments: "I recently attended a forum focusing on the
Israeli/Palestinian issue. Both sides made very valid points but there
was a moment of heated exchange when the pro-Israel side initiated the
"anti-semite" slur and completely ended it for me. I am sick and tired
of Jewish people always smearing those that merely disagree with their
views as "evil". I never thought I'd say this but a lot of what the so-called
"white supremacists" are saying are proving to be more accurate than I
feel comfortable admitting." Sympathy for the arguments of "so-called white
supremacists"? At Yale? The comment was not anonymous. Now there's always
scope for nut-cases venting on the web. But the tenor of the discussion
on a Yale website was certainly something new.
Then there was the recent "Not In
Our Name" rally in Cental Park, demonstrating against a potential war against
Iraq. Many of the speeches to the crowd of around 10,000 were full of classic
anti-war boilerplate. Some of them, given that the demo was organized by
such extremist groups as the International Action Center, were predictably
more outlandish, demanding no action whatever against Iraq and condemning
the U.S. for everything from Robert Mugabe to global warming. (One of IAC's
officials has written that "no one in the world ... has a worse human rights
record than the United States.") But around the edges of the rally, copies
of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion," the classic forged document of
nineteenth-century anti-Semitism, were being sold. According to a report
in the New York Sun, this peddling of anti-Semitic tripe was not entirely
accidental. One protestor told the Sun, "There are interest groups who
want Israel to dominate Palestine. If Bush goes with them and is too critical,
he might lose [their] support ... the international financiers have their
hooks in everything." Ah, those international financiers. Remember them?
Then there was this comment from another self-described "peace activist":
"Bush is more Israeli than the Israelis themselves. He is a puppet of the
Zionists [who] control the media, the government and the economy. The Jews'
book 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion' explains how they control the
world and how they make people fight against each other."
America's anti-war movement,
still puny and struggling, is showing signs of being hijacked by one of
the oldest and darkest prejudices there is. Perhaps it was inevitable.
The conflict against Islamo-fascism obviously circles back and back to
the question of Israel. Fanatical anti-Semitism, as bad or even worse than
Hitler's, is now a cultural norm across much of the Arab Middle East and
beyond. It's the acrid glue that unites Saddam, Arafat, al Qaeda, Hezbollah,
Iran and the Saudis. They all hate the Jews and want to see them destroyed.
And if you're campaigning against a war against that axis, you're bound
to attract some people who share these prejudices. That is not to say that
the large majority of anti-war campaigners are anti-Semitic. Of course
they're not. But it is to say that this strain of anti-Semitism, hovering
around the edges of that movement, is a worrying and dangerous sign.
In American history, it's also not
new. One of the major strains in anti-war sentiment in the 1930s in America
was anti-Semitism. The America Firsters saw war as something that would
only enrich the "international financiers" who controlled the banks and
arms industry. European Jews - and their American counterparts - were trying
to snare the U.S. into a European conflict it would do best to avoid. No
surprise then that, alongside the far left, the far right in America is
also now a part of the anti-war movement. Patrick Buchanan's new magazine,
The American Conservative, is full of such anti-war bromides. Buchanan
has long flirted with anti-Semitism, and it must surely somewhat embarrass
the "progressives" fighting a war against Iraq that he is now, as his forefathers
were in the 1930s, their ally.
The biggest faultline around this
issue, however, is now on America's campuses. Earlier this year, a movement
sprung up calling for universities to withdraw any investments in Israel,
just as they once did in South Africa. A petition, begun at M.I.T. and
Harvard, attracted hundreds of signatures from faculty, students and alumni.
Similar initiatives were pursued at 40 other colleges. It was answered
by another M.I.T./Harvard petition opposing divestment, which has garnered
many more signatures. The controversy was further stoked by Harvard president
Larry Summers' statement last month. He claimed that "serious and thoughtful
people are advocating and taking actions that are anti-Semitic in their
effect if not their intent," in reference to the petition. "Where anti-Semitism
and views that are profoundly anti-Israeli have traditionally been the
primary preserve of poorly educated right-wing populists," he went on,
"profoundly anti-Israel views are increasingly finding support in progressive
intellectual communities."
Summers' argument was a simple one:
why has Israel been singled out alone as worthy of divestment? Supporters
cite its continued occupation of the West Bank. There's no question that
Israel's policies in that regard are ripe for criticism, and to equate
criticism of that with anti-Semitism is absurd and despicable. Similarly,
it's perfectly possible to argue against Israel's domestic policies without
any hint of anti-Semitism. But to argue that Israel is more deserving of
sanction than any other regime on earth right now is surely bizarre. Israel
is a democracy; it is multi-racial; Arab citizens of Israel proper can
vote and freely enter civil society; there is freedom of religion and a
free press. An openly gay man just won election to the Knesset. In any
other Middle Eastern country and the Palestinian-controlled areas of the
West Bank, he'd be in jail, executed or crushed under a pile of rocks.
There is simply no comparison with apartheid South Africa, where a tiny
ethnic minority denied the majority any vote at all. Compared to China,
a ruthless dictatorship which is now brutally occupying Tibet, Israel is
a model for democratic governance. And, unlike China's occupation of Tibet,
Israel's annexation of the West Bank was undertaken as a defensive action
against an Arab military attack. Or compare it to any other country in
the Middle East, from Syria's satrapy in Lebanon, to Mubarak's police state,
to Iraq's barbaric autocracy or Iran's theocracy, and it's a beacon of
light. To single Israel out for condemnation and divestment, while ignoring
all these others, is so self-evidently bizarre that it begs an obvious
question. What are these anti-Israel fanatics really obsessed about? Where
are the divestment campaigns for China or Zimbabwe?
The answer, I think, lies in the
nature of part of today's left. It is fueled above all by resentment -
resentment of the West's success, resentment of the freedom to trade, resentment
of any person or country, like Israel or Britain or the U.S., that has
enriched itself by means of freedom and hard work. Just look at Israel's
amazing achievements in comparison with its neighbors: its vibrant civil
society, its economic growth, its technological skill, its agricultural
miracle. When you think about all Israel has achieved, it is no surprise
that the resentful left despises it. So, for obvious reasons, do Israel's
neighbors. If they had wanted, the Arab states could have made peace with
Israel decades ago, and enriched themselves through trade and interaction.
Instead, rather than emulate the Jewish state, they spent decade after
decade trying to destroy it. When they didn't succeed, rather than seek
reasons for their own backwardness and failure, rather than engage in the
difficult task of reform and renewal, the Arab dictators and their pliant
propaganda machines simply resorted to the easy distractions of envy, hatred
and obsession. Al Qaeda is the most dangerous and nihilist manifestation
of this response. Hezbollah is a close second. But milder versions are
everywhere. And what do people who most want to avoid examining their own
failures do? They look for scapegoats. And the Jews are the perennial scapegoat.
Now that the Jewish people actually have a country to themselves, the anger
and hatred only intensifies.
This attitude isn't restricted to
the Middle East. In the West, parts of the left, having capitulated to
moral relativism and bouts of Western self-hatred, have seized on Israel
as another emblem of what they hate. They're happy to have Saddam get re-elected
with 100 percent of a terrified vote, happy to see him develop nerve gas
and nuclear weapons to use against his own population and others. They're
happy to watch Syria's rulers engage in regular massacres; or the Saudis
subject women to inhuman subjugation. This they barely mention. After all,
these countries form part of the "oppressed" developing world. But Israel's
occasional crimes in self-defense? They march in the streets. Telling,
isn't it?
Ask the average leftist today what
he is for, and you will not get a particularly eloquent response. Ask him
what he is against, and the rhetorical floodgates open. That tells you
something. Similarly, ask the average anti-war activist what she is for
with regard to Iraq, what exactly she thinks we should constructively do,
and the stammering and stuttering begins. Do we just leave Saddam alone?
Do we send Jimmy Carter to sign the kind of deal he made with North Korea
eight years ago? Will pressuring the Israelis remove the nerve gas and
potential nukes Saddam has in his possession? Will ceding the West Bank
to people who cheered the destruction of the World Trade Center help defang
al Qaeda? They don't say and don't know. But what they do know is what
they are against: American power, Israeli human rights abuses, British
neo-imperialism, the "racist" war on Afghanistan, and on and on. Get them
started on their hatreds, and the words pour out. No wonder some have started
selling the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Central Park.
This negativism matters. When you
have a movement based on resentment, when you have a political style that
is as bitter as it is angry, when your rhetoric focuses not on those who
are murdering partiers in Bali or workers in Manhattan, but on those democratic
powers trying to defend and protect them, then your fate is cast. A politics
of resentment is a poisonous creature that slowly embitters itself. You
should not be surprised if the most poisonous form of resentment that the
world has ever known springs up, unbidden, in your midst.