Anti-Semitism and the Left (Part IIII): Nazism, the Holocaust and False Analogies

This is the final part of a series of four pieces about Anti-Semitism and the Left. The other parts can be viewed here: 1, 2 and 3.

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While the Left’s tendency to single Israel out is, in my opinion, the combination of misunderstood and misused post-Zionism, and a crude anti-colonialism, this does not mean that the Left is innocent of all charges of anti-Semitism. There is a style of thought and argument that is common on today’s Left that seems to betray, if not anti-Semitism, then a certain laziness that can lead to good people standing a little too close to positions they would otherwise reject.

‘Should know better’

The first argument goes like this: given the fact that Jews suffered so much at the hands of the Nazis, then surely they should know better than to persecute the Palestinians. On one level this is an understandable statement. It seems in keeping with our general assumption that humans as a whole learn from the past and are able to draw clear, uncomplicated moral lessons from it. Those making the argument also often feel that it is a fair assertion because, despite Zionism being a late 19^th century movement, the Holocaust was (and is) very much the rationale behind Jewish nationalism.

Anti-Semitism and the Left (Part III): The Question of Colonialism

This is the third of four pieces about Anti-Semitism and the Left. The other parts can be viewed here: 1, 2 and shortly 4.

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In the ‘Introduction’ to Orientalism (1978), his fierce attack on Western perceptions of the East, Edward Said sets out a tripartite definition of Orientalism. The second definition is as follows,

Orientalism is a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between “the Orient” and (most of the time) “the Occident.”

Thus a very large mass of writers, among whom are poets, novelists, philosophers, political theorists, economists, and imperial administrators, have accepted the basic division between East and West as the starting point for elaborate theories, epics, novels, social descriptions, and political accounts concerning the Orient, its people, customs, “minds,” destiny and so on. This Orientalism can accommodate Aeschylus, say, and Victor Hugo, Dante and Karl Marx.

For Said, this Manichaean dichotomy forms the basis of his third definition of Orientalism “as a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient.” Orientalism is, in other words, the cultural side of Western hegemony. It manufactures “the Orient” so as to allow the Western powers to dominate the East.

Orientalism is a classic text in the canon of anti-colonialism (as well as the seminal text of post-colonialism). It does well to demolish many of the crass stereotypes about Arabs and Muslims that have abounded in the West.

Revolutionary Portraits: Edward Said, by Gary Stevens

Anti-Semitism and the Left (Part II): Post-Zionism

This is the second of four pieces about Anti-Semitism and the Left. The first part can be viewed here: 1 and the next piece shortly here 3. 

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The first source of the Left’s focus on Israel can be located in the political-intellectual discourse known as ‘post-Zionism’. This is, in essence, a rejection of the Zionist mythology that has traditionally dominated Israeli political culture and Western views of the Jewish state.

The late 1980s and 1990s saw a flood of work emanating from Israeli universities that systematically dismantled much of the dominant Zionist narrative. While post-Zionism has become prevalent in many areas, it is the disciplines of history and sociology that have seen the most radical and influential developments.