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When antisemitism accusations are exploited for political purposes, especially to counter criticism of Israel,[1] it may be described variously as a weaponization of antisemitism, instrumentalization of antisemitism, or playing the antisemitism card.[2] Such accusations have been criticized as a form of smear tactics and an "appeal to motive".[3][4] Some writers have compared this to playing the race card.[5][6] When used against Jews, it may take the form of the pejorative claim of "self-hating Jew".[7][8][9][10]
Suggestions of such actions have been raised during phases of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict,[11][12][13] in the adoption of various organizations' controversial working definitions of antisemitism,[14][15][16][17] during the 2014–20 allegations of antisemitism in the UK Labour Party,[18] at the 2023 United States Congress hearing on antisemitism,[19] and during the 2024 Israel–Hamas war protests on university campuses.[20]
Critics have argued that the charge of weaponization amounts to an antisemitic ad hominem attack whose use fails to address the issue at hand, antisemitism.[21][22] The charge has also been criticized as a "testimonial injustice", rooted in presumption rather than evidence.[23]
In The Fateful Triangle, Noam Chomsky writes of counter-charges of antisemitism in response to criticism of Israel, "The tactic is standard", and, citing Christopher Sykes, said it could be traced to 1943.[24] He adds that it is "in the post-1967 period that the tactic has been honed to a high art, increasingly so, as the policies defended became less and less defensible".[24]
In the early 1950s, American journalist Dorothy Thompson, who had been a strong critic of Adolf Hitler, was called antisemitic after she began to write against Zionism, having witnessed Jewish terrorism against the British and the Nakba against the Palestinian Arabs.[25] Israeli historian Benny Morris said John Bagot Glubb was subject to a "tendency among Israelis and Jews abroad to identify strong criticism of Israel as tantamount to, or as at least stemming from, anti-Semitism" (though Morris also said Glubb's anti-Zionism was "tinged by a degree of anti-Semitism").[26] Glubb wrote in his 1956 memoirs: "It does not seem to me to be either just or expedient that similar criticisms directed against the Israeli government should brand the speaker with the moral stigma generally associated with anti-Semitism".[27][26]
In 1975, Harold R. Piety, associate editor of Dayton, Ohio's Journal Herald, wrote that the charge of antisemitism was leveled in the early 1970s against organizations such as Christian Science Monitor, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning American Friends Service Committee, U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright, and American columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak. Piety argued that this was solely due to their criticism of Israel, and that the "ugly cry of anti-Semitism is the bludgeon used by the Zionists to bully non-Jews into accepting the Zionist view of world events, or to keep silent".[28][29]
According to Cheryl Rubenberg, in the 1980s, journalists Anthony Lewis, Nicholas von Hoffman, Joseph C. Harsch, Richard Cohen, Alfred Friendly, authors Gore Vidal, Joseph Sobran, and John le Carré,[30] and American politicians Charles Mathias and Pete McCloskey[31] were among those pro-Israeli groups called antisemites. In 1989, Rubenberg wrote of Mathias and McCloskey, "The labeling of individuals who disagree with the lobby's positions as 'anti-Semitic' is a common practice among Israel's advocates."[31] U.S. politician Paul Findley wrote in his 1985 book They Dare to Speak Out: "In its latest usage, the term anti-Semitism stands stripped of any reference to ethnic or religious descent, signifying nothing more than a refusal to endorse all policy decisions of the government of Israel ... It has been a powerful factor in stifling debate of the Arab-Israeli dispute."[32] In 1987, journalist Allan Brownfeld wrote in the Journal of Palestine Studies, "One cannot be critical of the Israeli prime minister, concerned about the question of the Palestinians, or dubious about the virtue of massive infusions of U.S. aid to Israel without subjecting oneself to the possibility of being called 'anti-Semitic'".[33]
In 1992, American diplomat George Ball wrote in his book The Passionate Attachment: America's involvement with Israel that AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups "employ the charge of 'anti-Semitism' so carelessly as to trivialize it", and that when doing so to stifle criticism of American policies in the Middle East, the user "implicitly acknowledges that he cannot defend Israel's practices by rational argument".[34]
International Israeli advocacy groups have charged prominent individuals expressing pro-Palestinian sentiment with antisemitism, including the Nobel Peace Prize winners Jimmy Carter and Desmond Tutu.[35][36]
Chomsky and the academics John Mearsheimer, Stephen Walt, and Norman Finkelstein have said accusations of antisemitism rise after Israel acts aggressively: following the Six-Day War, the 1982 Lebanon War, the First and Second Intifadas, and the bombardments of Gaza.[11][12][13] Chomsky argued in 2002: "With regard to anti-Semitism, the distinguished Israeli statesman Abba Eban pointed out the main task of Israeli propaganda (they would call it exclamation, what's called 'propaganda' when others do it) is to make it clear to the world there's no difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. By anti-Zionism he meant criticisms of the current policies of the State of Israel."[37]
Matthew Abraham, professor of rhetoric at the University of Arizona, wrote that accusations of antisemitism against those criticizing Israel's violation of Palestinian human rights have increased since the beginning of the Second Intifada in 2000. Abraham wrote: "Israel’s supporters have sought to make the argumentative leap that criticism of Israel as the Jewish state is anti-Semitic precisely because Israel is the home of all Jews for all time. However, this argument does not work since there are many anti-Zionist Jews who reject Israel’s attempts to speak in the name of Judaism. The traditional response to this problem has been to label anti-Zionist Jews as 'self-hating Jews,' which requires a suspension of rationality and sound judgement."[8]
Philadelphia Inquirer opinion writer Abraham Gutman wrote in 2021 that claims by Israel's leaders to represent all Jews worldwide had equated criticism of Israel with prejudice against Jews. He wrote that this had led to weaponization against pro-Palestinian voices "sometimes in ridiculous ways", including by Marjorie Taylor Greene.[38] Nick Riemer of the University of Sydney wrote in 2022 that anti-Semitism "provides the excuse for a heavy-handed and highly irrational assault on fundamental democratic liberties".[39] During the Israel-Hamas war, Bernie Steinberg, a former executive director of Harvard Hillel, wrote in a 2023 opinion essay in The Harvard Crimson that pro-Israeli activists should stop the "weaponization" of charges of antisemitism against pro-Palestinian activists: "It is not antisemitic to demand justice for all Palestinians living in their ancestral lands."[19] Marshall Ganz, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, criticized the "weaponization" of antisemitism, writing in The Nation that the "tactics are remarkably similar to those used by Senator Joseph McCarthy".[40] Daniel Levy, a former Israeli negotiator, said at the Palestine Expo conference that "the accusation of antisemitism is being weaponised and abused".[41]
Many politicians and media[who?] have reacted to the April 2024 Israel–Hamas war protests on university campuses by accusing the protesters of antisemitism, even though many of them are Jewish.[tone] Organizers and rights groups have disputed the charge.[42][43]
Various writers have argued that charges of antisemitism raised in discussions of Israel can have a chilling effect,[44][45] deterring criticism of Israel[44] due to fear of being associated with beliefs linked to antisemitic crimes against humanity such as the Holocaust.[46] Mearsheimer and Walt wrote in 2008 that the charge can discourage others from defending in public those against whom the charge of antisemitism has been made.[47] in 2019, Joshua Leifer, an editor of Dissent magazine, wrote that campaigns that consider anti-Zionism antisemitic aim to shift criticisms of the Israeli government "beyond the pale of mainstream acceptability".[48] In his 2005 book Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, Finkelstein wrote that use of "the anti-Semitism card" attempts to displace "fundamental responsibility for causing the conflict from Israel to the Arabs, the issue no longer being Jewish dispossession of Palestinians but Arab 'opposition' to Jews".[49]
Rhetorical accusations of antisemitism put a burden of proof on the person against whom the charge is raised, putting them in the "difficult" position of having to prove a negative, according to Mearsheimer and Walt.[50] They wrote that accusations of antisemitism resonate with many Jewish communities, "many of whom still believe that anti-Semitism is rife".[51] They argued that, by stifling discussion, weaponization of antisemitism allows myths about Israel to survive unchallenged.[52]
Finkelstein wrote that some of what is claimed to be antisemitism is in fact "exaggeration and fabrication" and "mislabeling legitimate criticism of Israeli policy".[53]
A presumption that all Muslims are antisemitic has been "increasingly deployed by Zionist groups to eliminate critical debate inclusive of Palestinian experiences", according to Mitchell Plitnick and Sahar Aziz.[54] In 2020, Ronnie Kasrils compared claims of antisemitism in Britain to rhetorical strategies employed against the anti-apartheid movement by supporters of the South African government.[55] Finkelstein noted the parallels to Communist parties' denunciations of principled criticism during the Cold War as "anti-Soviet".[49]
In 2021, Atalia Omer of the University of Notre Dame wrote that weaponization of antisemitism is bad for all involved, including Israel and the broader Jewish community.[56]
In 2004, Joel Beinin wrote that the "well-established ploy" of conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism exposes Jews to attack by suggesting they are responsible for the Israeli government's actions.[57]
Kenneth L. Marcus, while warning in 2010 against denying or minimizing antisemitism, also cautioned against overuse of the "anti-Semitism card", paralleling concerns raised by Richard Thompson Ford with the broader misuse of "the race card": that it can be dishonest and mean-spirited, risks weakening legitimate accusations of bigotry, risks distracting socially concerned organizations from other social injustices, and hurts outreach efforts between Jewish and Arab or Muslim groups.[6]
Some scholars have said that the charge of antisemitism is becoming less effective as more people become aware of its political usage.[58][59]
In the 1970s, the concept of "new antisemitism" emerged, with cultural critics identifying a novel form of antisemitism disguised as critique of Israel and Zionism.[60]
Sociologist David Hirsh has criticized the charge of weaponization in discourses about Israel, arguing that accusations of "playing the antisemitism card" are often made in bad faith.[61][23][22] He coined the term the Livingstone Formulation, after Ken Livingstone, to refer to the charge of weaponizing claims of anti-semitism. In 2005, Livingstone argued that he was being subjected to weaponized charges of antisemitism after he compared a Jewish journalist to a concentration camp guard. Hirsh criticizes the rhetorical formulation as containing within it "a counter-charge of dishonest Jewish (or 'Zionist') conspiracy".[22] He also observes an inversion within the argument, in which antisemitism that has nothing to do with Israel is rhetorically defended by the claim that charges of antisemitism are misapplied to all criticisms of Israel. He terms this "crying Israel", as opposed to "crying antisemitism".[62] He writes: "The Livingstone Formulation does not allege that Jews often misjudge what has happened to them, it alleges that they lie about what has happened to them. It is not an allegation of error, or over-zealousness, perhaps explicable by reference to the antisemitism of the past. It is an allegation of conspiracy."[63] He later compared the concept's invocation in discourses about antisemitism, writing: "The Macpherson principle says that if a black person says they have experienced racism you should begin by assuming that they are right. The Livingstone principle says: if Jews complain about antisemitism on the left then you should begin by assuming that they are making it up to silence criticism of Israel or to smear the left."[64]
In 2010, Kenneth L. Marcus wrote that although Mearsheimer and Walt described such accusations as "the Great Silencer", they had not themselves been silenced but had received a wide audience for their book and appearances. Marcus also wrote that many pro-Israel commentators who had condemned what they viewed as antisemitism in anti-Zionist rhetoric had also taken pains to say that many criticisms of Israel were not antisemitic.[65]
Dov Waxman, Adam Hosein, and David Schraub write that people—generally Jews—who raise charges of antisemitism are frequently accused of being disingenuous, and that charges of antisemitism are bound to be contested because "antisemitism today is not always easy to identify or even define".[10] They add that charges of bad faith may be dissipated by clarifying, when antisemitism is alleged or denied, which of the many potential understandings of antisemitism is being invoked, and that "it is reasonable to insist that persons who encounter a Jewish claim of antisemitism at least adopt a presumptive disposition towards taking that claim seriously and considering it with an open mind. Jewish claims of antisemitism are not themselves sufficient to determine whether or not something actually is antisemitic, but these claims should not be ignored or dismissed out of hand. Thus, when a Jewish person experiences an incident as antisemitic this incident should be investigated as potentially antisemitic. A claim of antisemitism does not need to be the end of a conversation, but it should be the start of one".[10]
In 2019, Hadar Sela, criticized the BBC in The Jerusalem Post for "amplification of antisemitic tropes" in its alleged use of the Livingstone Formulation.[66] Lesley Klaff in 2016 called the charge a "denial of contemporary antisemitism [that is] commonplace in Britain."[67]
Jon Pike argued in 2008 that the charge of weaponizing antisemitism is an ad hominem attack that does not address the allegation of antisemitism: "Suppose some discussion of a 'new antisemitism' is used in an attempt to stifle strong criticism. Well, get over it. The genesis of the discussion and the motivation of the charge [don't] touch the truth or falsity of the charge. Deal with the charge, rather than indulging in some genealogical inquiry."[68]
Speaking not just of antisemitism but "bad faith" claims responding to discrimination allegations more broadly, David Schraub in 2016 called the charge "a first-cut response that presents marginalized persons as inherently untrustworthy, unbelievable, or lacking in the basic understandings regarding the true meaning of discrimination."[23]
In 2016, Terry Glavin described the formulation as a device deployed to shield left-wing antisemites from scrutiny.[69]
In 2020, the EHRC investigated antisemitism in the UK Labour Party and found that agents of the party had committed "unlawful harassment" by "suggesting that complaints of antisemitism are fake or smears", asserting in their report that "this conduct may target Jewish members as deliberately making up antisemitism complaints to undermine the Labour Party, and ignores legitimate and genuine complaints of antisemitism in the Party."[64]