Contesting Anti-Semitism
Human Rights, Israel Bashing, and the Making of a Non-Problem
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3043422 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Josh Kaplan (0000-0001-7466-5142, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2010 |
| Volume | 83 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 429-448 |
| Publication date | 2010-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Anthropological Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0003-5491 • E-ISSN: 1534-1518 |
| Publisher | Project MUSE (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1353/anq.0.0126 |
| OpenAlex | W2047011014 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 5 |
Contesting Anti-Semitism:Human Rights, Israel Bashing, and the Making of a Non-Problem Josh Kaplan Introduction: Making Human Rights Issues Legible Discussions of anti-Semitism have largely taken two sides in recent years: those who believe it is a growing problem and those who believe that claims of anti-Semitism are a distraction from the Israel/Palestine conflict. In close connection, it has become increasingly common to define anti-Semitism no longer simply in terms of prejudice against Jews as such, but instead as forms of bias or hostility toward Israel (which, it is suggested, may reflect such prejudice).1 A key defining feature of anti-Semitism debates today is thus that many of the claims turn on evaluations of Israel's behavior (or indeed, evaluations of the way Israel is evaluated and criticized). Such definitions and claims are not simply reflections of reality, of course; their very articulation and dissemination has consequences for how the subject of anti-Semitism is perceived and deployed, including how the international politics of Israel/Palestine are [End Page 429] being waged on the discursive terrains of anti-Semitism and human rights. In this essay, I begin to examine these politics by analyzing some of the strands of argument about contemporary anti-Semitism, including prevailing definitions and views, and how these are predominantly read as either/or. I am interested in how it comes to seem "obvious" that either anti-Semitism is a serious issue (and therefore also a human rights issue) or that it is a non-problem, a means of diversion from the "real" issues (Palestinian rights, Islamophobia). In the first part of this essay, I trace some of the lines of argument, presumptions, and practices contributing to why anti-Semitism appears as a non-problem and, crucially for our purposes here, not a human rights problem—at least to certain audiences and publics.2 Besides the assumption that anti-Semitism is a sort of smokescreen for diverting attention from Israel's human rights record, assumptions about the source of anti-Semitism—e.g., that it is an effect of the Israel/Palestine conflict, particularly Israel's transgressions in it—may inflect not only the way anti-Semitic incidents are viewed (as Israel's fault, as forms of protest),3 but also the way data on the subject is collected and how the presentation of that data is received. Further, pervasive media and human rights frames can make it seem, on the one hand, as if anti-Semitism is an exclusively "Jewish" issue, and not of universal concern, and on the other, as if Israel (and therefore Jews) is perpetrator and perpetrator only, and therefore not an object of rights violations. Although my focus is on how anti-Semitism appears as a non-problem, the material I present could likewise be analyzed for other effects: in particular, how it is part of the constant international politics of Israel/Palestine that claims of anti-Semitism can be interpreted as lending ammunition to the justification of some of Israel's more controversial actions in the West Bank and Gaza (Kaplan n.d.). In the second part of the essay, I continue to develop the theme of how anti-Semitism appears as a non-problem by way of addressing the controversy over the relationship between criticism of Israel and anti-Semitism, or "Israel bashing." My aim here is not to provide a new formula for deciding when a given action or practice is anti-Semitic or not. One need not take a position on that matter to begin to untangle some of the more difficult threads in this question, including how some of the more influential attempts to deal with the distinction between anti-Semitism and criticism of Israel might also contribute to the prevailing perception that anti-Semitism is not a serious problem—that claims of anti-Semitism are [End Page 430] typically not substantive but political, a way of dismissing accusations of Israeli human rights violations. Indeed, the very attempts to combat anti-Semitism, including the definitions employed, the tone and timing of claims-making, and the political positions of the actors assumed to make them, often play into such a perception
Argument (complex analysis) · Human rights · Militarism · Political science · Politics · Prejudice (legal term) · Sociology · Subject (documents) · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Law · Political Conflict and Governance
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0.2 |
| Citation span | 2011 - 2016 (6) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |