Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld, a renowned expert on antisemitism, has just
published a new book titled “A War of a Million Cuts: The Struggle against the
Delegitimization of Israel and the Jews; and the Growth of the New Antisemitism.” The book has been endorsed by many important
people including former US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton, Czech Minister of
Culture Daniel Herman, former Dutch Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal, former
Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi di Sant’Agata, and former Swedish
Minister of Development Alf Svensson, among many others.
The forward was written by former Spanish President Josne Maria Aznar,
who stated the following about this important study: “For years, people of good
faith genuinely believed that the narrative against Israel could be countered
with better public relations. Despite all efforts in that front, the
de-legitimization campaigns have increased in number and extended in their
reach. This book of Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld shows clearly how much and how. The
truth is that Israel today is still at war. Apparently a different war for it
is of an ideological nature but it can indeed become as lethal as traditional
wars. This book is a good analysis of the arguments and means used by those who
want to suppress Israel through its de-legitimization. As such, it is an
excellent contribution to better understand the indirect attacks against
Israel.”
In the beginning of the book, Gerstenfeld noted that the traditional
definition of antisemitism as “hostility toward or discrimination against Jews
as a religious, ethnic or social group” fits the classic religious antisemitism
of medieval Christendom and the nationalist antisemitism of the Nazis but this definition
does not fit the new antisemitism of our times.
He quotes former Canadian Justice Minister Irwin Cotler as stating:
“Traditional antisemitism denied the Jews the right to live as equal members of
society but the new anti-Jewishness denies the right of the Jewish people to
live as an equal member of the family of nations.” Thus, the definition of antisemitism should
consist of Nathan Sharansky’s three D’s test, which means that the
demonization, double standards and delegitimization that Israel faces is a form
of antisemitism.
This notion was recognized by the European Monitoring Centre on Racism
and Xenophobia: “Such manifestations could also target the State of Israel,
conceived as the Jewish collectivity.”
According to them, justifying the killing of Jews, dehumanizing and demonizing
Jews or the State of Israel, Holocaust denial or minimization, accusing the
Jews of being more loyal to Israel than their countries of origin, and
dehumanizing Jews by accusing them of being power hungry or controlling the
media are merely some of the examples that they had considered antisemitic. However, in 2013, this definition was removed
from their website. According to
Gerstenfeld, “This may have been because when applying this definition, it
becomes evident that the European Union from time to time commits antisemitic
acts.”
Proof that anti-Israeli sentiment overlaps with antisemitism could be
found during the Second Lebanon War.
For example, during a demonstration in Amsterdam during the war,
Moroccan demonstrators chanted: “Jews, the army of the Prophet Mohammed is
coming.” This is considered antisemitic
based upon the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia definition
for it amounts to justifying the killing of Jews in the name of an extremist
religious ideology. In Finland, leftist
and Islamist groups held marches during this period of time with signs equating
the Star of David with Nazi symbols, which represents the antisemitic theme
that the Jews are the embodiment of everything evil.
While for medieval Christians, the embodiment of evil was deicide, the
killing of Jesus; in our times, the Nazis are considered the embodiment of evil
and thus, comparing Israel to the Nazis is antisemitic. Evidently, 51% of Germans are antisemitic
based on the fact that 51% of Germans agree that “what the State of Israel does
today to the Palestinians is in principle no different from what the Nazis did
to the Jews.” 41% of Hungarians, 42% of
British citizens, 49% of Portuguese, and 63% of Poles believe that Israel is
carrying out a war of extermination against the Palestinians. To the contrary, only 19% of Belgians, 21% of
Danes, 19% of Swiss people, 14% of Germans, 18% of Austrians, 38% of
Hungarians, 15% of Italians, 21% of Spaniards, and 18% of British citizens
still believe that the Jews are responsible for the death of Jesus.
A continuation of the antisemitic theme that the Jews are the embodiment
of evil is the modern day blood libel, which accuses the Jewish people and
Israel of being blood thirsty. For
example, in 2005, the Guardian published a cartoon depicting Michael Howard, a
Jewish leader of Great Britain’s Conservative Party, as a blood thirsty
vampire. Another example was the 2009
accusation that the IDF was killing Palestinians in order to harvest their
organs and in 1983, Israel was accused of poisoning Palestinian school girls in
the West Bank, even though subsequent investigations found that the girls were
not poisoned at all and that the girls had faked their illness following
receiving instructions from their leadership.
Another theme of the new antisemitism is the idea that Israel and the
Jews seek to control the world. For
example, many interviews in both the BBC and the Japanese media speak about the
negative influence of the Jewish lobby.
According to Malcolm Hoeneim, “They do not understand and therefore
ascribe negative connotations to what is consistent within American democracy,
which offers minorities a say if they choose to get involved.” The fallacy that the Jewish people lust for
power is also common within the Arab media.
Algerian cartoonist Bendib “designed a monkey with a Star of David on
its breast sitting on top of the globe on which small figures of the Pope and
an Arab are drawn. The monkey says:
‘Jerusalem: From New York City to Kuala Lumpar, undivided eternal capital of
Israel. Everything else is
negotiable.” He also drew a picture of
God holding a big bag of money with the names of the Jewish organizations ADL,
AIPAC and ZOA.
The fundamental belief behind all antisemitism is that the Jewish people
and the State of Israel are subhuman.
While the Nazis preached that the Jewish people were genetically
inferior and Christian antisemitism taught that the Jews were born in sin as
the Gospel of John declared that the Jews had the devil as their forefathers,
today this translates into the belief that “Israel was born in sin by driving
out the Palestinians.” This theme is
widespread in both Islamic and leftist circles: “Yet in the eyes of the
accusers, all other states have the right to exist, even the most brutally
criminal ones such as Syria, Iran and so on.”
According to Gerstenfeld, a critical element of the new antisemitism is
humanitarian racism: “It can be defined as attributing reduced responsibility
to people of certain ethnic or national groups for their criminal behavior and
intentions, even if these are of major dimensions. Humanitarian racists judge delinquency and
crime differently according to the color and socioeconomic status of those who
engage in them. For example, white
people are held to higher standards of responsibility than people of
color. Israel is frequently blamed for
whatever measures it takes to defend its citizens. Palestinian responsibility for suicide
bombings, rocket attacks, promoting genocide, glorifying murders of Israeli
civilians, and massive incitement including that similar to Nazi-type hatred is
often downplayed if not ignored.
Similarly, many of those who fight Islamophobia in the Western world
remain silent about widespread antisemitism in Muslim communities.”
False moral equivalence is another element of the new antisemitism. Gerstenfeld defines false moral equivalence
as a misuse of comparisons: “It is the fallacious claim that there is no moral
difference between two acts of greatly varying character. It is often employed to stress similarities
between two evils of greatly different magnitude. Sometimes, one of the elements of the
comparison is not evil, while the other is.”
Among the accusations leveled by such individuals is the claim that
Zionism is a form of racism, Zionism is a colonial movement, Zionism is
fascism, the Holocaust and the Nakba are parallel, and that Israel’s measures
taken for self-defense are equivalent to Palestinian terror attacks.
Gerstenfeld noted that most antisemitic campaigns have three stages:
“The first consists of the systematic and extreme defamation of the Jews. The second aimed at gradually excluding them
from society. The third centered on
their annihilation. The total war
against Israel in the twenty-first century already contains elements of all
three phases. We are now primarily in
the first stage; that of extreme defamation.
The assault is mainly aimed at Israel; Jews are a lesser but still
significant target of contemporary antisemitism.” The BDS Movement and attempts to exclude
Israel from international forums are considered part of the second phase, while
elements of the third phase are mainly verbal but they do manifest themselves
in the murder of Jews both in Israel and abroad.
However, while the religious and ethnic antisemitism is widely condemned
in Western society, the new antisemitism is not in the name of political
correctness and many Western countries even fund NGOs that partake in it. As German journalist Daniel Killy remarked,
“The silent tyranny of political correctness often leads to internal censorship
when writing about Israel. This is
combined with the German neurosis about being just. With regard to Israel, this means that one
must be critical of it. Otherwise, one
might be considered pro-Israel because of German history. In addition, a widespread leftist
anti-Zionism prevails among public broadcasts and other media. This anti-Zionism is a synonym for Germany’s
glossy and trendy antisemitism.”
The reality that the new antisemitism has not been widely condemned in
the name of political correctness has led to a dramatic increase in antisemitism
across the globe. For example, 88
percent of French Jews feel that antisemitism has greatly increased in their
country over the past five years. In
Greece to date, people still burn an effigy of Judas and this burning the Jew
ritual was even included by the National Tourist Organization as a good
attraction within the country. Young
Evangelical Christians are being inundated with antisemitic propaganda in the
media and via social media.
Gerstenfeld warned that this threatens future Evangelical Christian
support for the State of Israel in the US.
Biases in Western media outlets also contribute to this atmosphere as
German Christian Democratic MP Hildegard Muller noted the interrelation between
media distortions and the bad image of the Jewish people in Europe.
Following Operation Protective Edge, there was an increase in violence
targeting Jewish institutions and individuals that continues to date. This violence is being fueled by
propaganda. For example, a study of the
eighteen most widely used history textbooks in American high schools found that
youngsters are being educated to be anti-Israel and the distortions are even
worse than in the universities. This
does not even include the widespread incitement emanating from the Muslim
world. According to Israeli Holocaust
scholar Yehuda Bauer, “Today, for the first time since 1945, Jews are once
again threatened openly by radical Islamic genocidal ideology whose murderous
rantings must be taken more seriously than the Nazi ones were two and more
generations ago.” Radical Islamist
propaganda that calls for hating amd slaughtering the Jews is international in
scope, adversely affecting Jews not only in the Muslim world and the State of
Israel but also in the West.
The question remains, how should Israel respond to this phenomena? Gerstenfeld is a strong believer that
Israel’s public relations efforts have not been satisfactory to date. He noted that the Israeli government is
always on the defensive and is never proactive. This has resulted in giving Israel’s
enemies a free antisemitic lunch: “Many countries, organizations and
individuals do not hesitate to attack Israel because they know its reaction
will often be weak or even non-existent.
This leads to a situation where the hate-mongers against Israel believe
that they have little to lose.” Gerstenfeld
believes that a special agency should be developed whose sole purchase is to
address antisemitism and to respond to it professionally.
He noted that he chose the title “A War of a Million Cuts” in order to
clarify that the New Antisemitism is dramatically different from its
predecessors as it contains multiple fronts that require a stronger approach to
confront, while the religious and nationalist antisemitism of the past focused
on the deicide accusation and the inferiority of the Jew respectively. However, Gerstenfeld stressed that Israel
not only needs an agency dedicated to combating this multi-faceted front but
must change the country’s entire public relations strategy: “Offense is the
best defense. Going on the offense
rather than being on the defensive is so important in the propaganda war
because no one can have all the information and answers available for many
claims false or true against Israel. In
irrational environments, sentimental appeals often have a good chance to
convince ones audience. Israel is paying
greatly for its lack of understanding of sentimental appeals and their
power.”
