Rachel Shabi: Anti-Semitism has been weaponized and misunderstood

Rachel Shabi is a British journalist and author. She contributes to and has written for, among others, the Guardian, the Times, Prospect, and the New Statesman. In her book “Off-White: The Truth About Anti-Semitism” (Oneworld), she shows how anti-Semitism has been politically instrumentalized by right-wingers, used to stifle criticism of Israel, support for the Palestinian cause, and demonize the left not without some unfortunate collaboration from the latter. And with the irresponsible blessing of the liberal center.
 
Your identity is intersectional. Does this give you a “privileged” point of observation for discussing the problems that you tackle in your book?
 
My family's Iraqi. I was born in Israel, and I grew up in the UK. And I suppose that does put me in a sort of insider outsider role in a lot of contexts, across those regions, but also across conversations, within the left and around these subjects, as a left wing writer who has skin in the game but has also reported quite extensively from Israel and Palestine. There's been less understanding around anti-Semitism, more confusion and, more perception of a hierarchy where racism against one racialized minority is seen as more important than others. And, of course, we've seen the way that it has been misused and abused in order to shut down any kind of protest against the atrocities in Gaza.
 
There is a point that you make in the book about the self-perceived Europeanness of Israel.
 
Once Jews from the Middle East arrived in the nascent Israel and became the majority population there they were disadvantaged and discriminated against, Arabized and whitewashed. The reason there was so much discrimination against Jews from Arab countries, Arab and Muslim lands is that Israel wants to be this European construct. Its pioneers came to it with ideas of European superiority and applied that, of course, primarily to Palestinians, but also to Jews who were not European. And in recent decades, especially, we've seen Israel really play into that and make it seem as though Israel is the last border of Europe before the so-called savage and barbaric Middle East. We see Israeli leaders playing on that again and again in their assault on Gaza. And of course, far-Right islamophobes who are pushing a clash of civilizations narrative just lap this up. This affects the left as well, we don't apply a rigorousness to our analysis. So because Jews outside of Israel are primarily European, there's an assumption that Israel is the same. And then it fits very neatly into this almost sort of left wing blood and soil, colonial appraisal, this seeps into mythologies that you see floating around social media about Israelis having higher cancer rates, which is not true, but still is pushed forward because, presumably, they have white skin that can't cope with a with a hot Middle Eastern sun.
 
How much is the left paying the price of not grasping the essence of anti-Semitism as a conspiracy of power in the first place?
 
When we look at that left in a European context or a Western context particularly, there is low literacy, and there is the start of a conversation around the legacies of colonialism and empire and slavery. And we don't attach to that the legacy of anti-Semitism, even though it's the same origin story, which is Christian Europe trying to find different ways of racializing people in order to control and hang on to power, hence the invention of the conspiracy theory of anti-Semitism. And I think it's one of those rigours of analysis that I think the left lacks. We had the previous American president, Joe Biden, repeatedly saying, well, I try to make Benjamin Netanyahu stop, but he wouldn't. Despite being the most powerful leader in the world, he wouldn’t, with one phone call, make Israel change tack. That, to me, is opening up the floodgates for conspiracism. We don't have anywhere near sufficient analysis of the geopolitics of a situation where Israel is quite simply a client state. It's not directing American foreign policy: it is a part of American foreign policy.
 
On the one hand we have the presumed eternity, almost an ontology of anti-Semitism; and on the other, its own historicity. How can we make sense of this dichotomy?
 
The entire parameters of that conversation are European. Of course, Zionism was colonial in terms of the effect it had on Palestinians and in Palestine. It was at the same time conceived as a response, amongst others, to endless European anti-Semitism and persecution. That's why it came from Europe in response to European anti-Semitism. I'm not saying everything was delightful and rosy in the Middle East, but in those times it was just incomparable. There was no anti-Semitism of that nature, and we can see that Zionism did not have much appeal, certainly initially, to Jewish populations across the Middle East, because there was nothing to flee from.
 
In the book, you effectively criticize the political imposture of the adjective ‘Judeo-Christian.’ Why?
 
It is a European framing that's imposed on Jewish people regardless of where they are. I just don't think that's the way one would analyze any racism. And this is the issue that I would take up with these very siloed conversations we're having about different forms of racism in that there is a generalized understanding and awareness now that racism creates race and not the other way around. That's the origin story of racism. That's also the origin story of anti-Semitism, of creating a racialized minority of Jews. The legacy of colonialism and slavery is embedded in our structures, in our institutions, in our societies, in a way where we can see clearly that people of color are facing the consequences of it, whether that's in the workplace, within housing, within healthcare, within education or just on the streets. Anti-Semitism is just an available reservoir of prejudice that is embedded in our societies, particularly European ones, in the same way that racism is. And it can be activated in moments of crisis by political actors in the same way that other racism can. That's got nothing to do with it being eternal.
 
When it comes to your own experience of the last two years, how difficult has it been to see culminating these two sides of your own self, your Jewish identity and your political beliefs?
 
Well, it's almost impossible. And I think it's almost impossible for a lot of Jewish leftists to navigate that political space. When it comes to shutting down any kind of plea for the slaughter in Gaza to stop with claims of anti-Semitism, it's very hard to then encourage people to have a conversation about anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism has been politically abused and misused, to bash over the head anyone who wants to speak out about Palestine or about Palestinians. And at the same time, just as a point of basic political good hygiene and anti-racist hygiene, we should be talking about anti-Semitism and building awareness of anti-Semitism because it is also in this moment, in a real sense, spiralling. But also, if you cannot be persuaded by the morality of it, then at least just understand that what you're doing is strategically dumb.
 
Coming to the far right, it's almost diabolical this use of anti-Semitism in order to whitewash their own record on the matter. But the liberal center has quite deliberately allowed this to happen. The media, for instance, are definitely over exposing anti-Semitism while neglecting other forms of racism.
 
They're having a field day. They found themselves the perfect wedge to use in a political way. It 's gone far beyond shutting down criticism of Israel. It's gone into shutting down Black Lives Matter, claiming Black Lives Matter is anti-Semitic, claiming diversity, equity and inclusion programs are anti-Semitic. Now it's like whole universities that are being attacked, the center has been unwilling to be rigorous in its analysis of ‘when is this anti-Semitism? When is it actually just criticism of Israel that might make people feel uncomfortable?’ They themselves are not sufficiently aware and informed about anti-Semitism. So it makes it easier for these bad faith actors who are either pro-Israeli or right wing or some combination of both to lobby them and cower them, because the center isn't sufficiently robust in its analysis.
 
What is “new” anti-Semitism and the political leverage that has been made out of it in the last few decades?
 
It had its genesis in the mid 70s for various reasons, geopolitically, that caused Israel to make a shift. So Israeli political leaders made this shift whereby, prior to that point, Zionism and the creation of a Jewish homeland was seen as the solution to anti-Semitism. If Jewish people were seen as regular folk and had their own regular nation, then anti-Semitism was just, poof, evaporate. But they were beginning to get criticism over seizing and occupying Gaza, the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem and Syrian Golan Heights in ’67. And instead of recognising this criticism as legitimate since they occupied that land, they claimed that anti-Semitism had shifted. It was no longer about hatred of Jewish people in the diaspora. It has transposed itself. So hatred of the collective Jew was now hatred of Israel. Since then it has grown and grown as a body of thought. We've seen various Israeli leaders, an entire Israeli ministry, think tanks, academics, various books all in this idiom, all making the case that the new anti-Semitism was, actually, people hating on Israel. And the trouble is that diaspora Jewish communities began to bind their fate with Israel such that being Jewish, was seen as part and parcel of supporting Israel. It was seen as a form of Jewish identity.  We can't have anti-Semitism defined in such a way that it shuts down the very people who are trying to make criticism of Israel and are trying to describe their experiences of Zionism and of Israel, which has been dispossession and occupation and discrimination and now a genocidal war.
 
So, if the left has to rebalance its attempt of judging this incredibly complex issue it has to measure itself against the relative inseparability of Zionism from Jewish identity?
 
It is just the reality that we do have majorities of Jewish people, when you look at the UK, when you look at the US, who do see Zionism as part of their Jewish identity.  So there needs to be a sensitivity around that. Absolutely. But I don't think we need to therefore accept that criticisms of Israel are anti-Semitism. I think it's perfectly legitimate, in a moment where anti-Semitism is so obviously, and constantly, used as a way to shut down any sort of criticism of Israel and while our political leaders are also not acting as they should to halt this genocidal war. We're asking leftists to be able to navigate that in a way that creates a genuine awareness and understanding and learning of anti-Semitism, what it actually is, in order to build a bigger progressive tent and in order just to be morally coherent and consistent. And it's a lot of work.
 
How do you negotiate, in a way, the gravitational pull of universalism, which is part of a heritage of left wing outlook on the world and your Jewish identity and, more in general, the notion of identity itself?
 
I'm not quite sure how to answer. I would say that, when it comes to anti-Semitism, this was not one of the areas that I wrote about. It's not that I particularly wanted to be in this lane, but I'm in it. I'm in it because I'm left wing and Jewish. Those two things coexist for me. And I'm also in it because, my particular heritage as a British, Israeli, Iraqi means that different parts of my identity are being hit by different elements of this larger conversation that we're having.
 
What's your personal reaction to this too-little-too-late hypocritically critical stance that the former owners of the Middle East, France, Britain and their own relative colony Canada have taken towards Israel?
 
The consequences of our political leaders failing to stop this genocidal war will follow them forever. There's no possibility that there will not be devastating, horrendous, far reaching consequences that are going to haunt us and affect us for generations to come. And that's their legacy. They will never be able to walk away from that. So that's the thing about the too late, the too little: it's so performative. The only thing that's going to make Israel stop is direct action right now. Arms sales sanctions Un Security Council.