In a fine piece, Joseph Massad debunks anti-Semitism. It’s worth reading in full and certain enlightened on some aspects of the history of anti-Semitism and how it might have influenced Western perceptions of the Arab world.
0 thoughts on “Massad on anti-Semitism”
Joseph Massad on holocaust deniers:
“All those in the Arab world who deny the Jewish holocaust are in my opinion Zionists.”
I’ll try that one out the next time I have a holocaust-denying Cairo cab driver.
But his general point about Arab Holocaust-deniers internalizing European anti-Semitism is still a valid one. I think that a lot of Westerners who are rightly appalled by Arab anti-Semitism forget that the Holocaust, an essential frame of reference in the West when discussing not only anti-Semitism but also Jews in general, is largely absent here. People simply don’t have the exposure to the history of the Shoah that any European or American is likely to have.
Prof. Massad makes a number of good points. My problem with his essay, though, is that after all his fine discussion of how the term “anti-Semitism” wasn’t invented as Zionist propaganda and was intended specifically to refer to Jews, he tries to redefine it as something Israeli Jews direct toward Arabs. He ends up engaging in precisely the sort of revisionist definition as the people he criticizes.
The point he may be trying to make – and it’s both a valid and a crucial one – is that the racism currently directed against Muslims and Arabs is often drawn from classic anti-Semitic themes. For instance, I cringe whenever I see someone cherry-pick Koran verses to “prove” that Islam is a barbaric religion, because this is precisely what people have been doing to the Talmud for hundreds of years. The fact that such racism bears similarities to classical anti-Semitism, though, doesn’t make it anti-Semitic; it simply proves that there are common threads to racism (and that racists sometimes borrow them unconsciously – I doubt Bat Ye’or realizes that she’s reinvented the Protocols of the Elders of Zion). The difference between anti-Semitism, anti-Arabism and other forms of prejudice doesn’t lie in the nature of the stereotypes; it lies in the identity of the targets.
I have a fundamental problem with attempts to redefine the word “anti-Semitism,” which (by curious coincidence) seem to vary directly with the intensity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. By now, the term “anti-Semitism” has a well-understood meaning. The “Semite” in “anti-Semitism” has nothing to do with the modern linguistic usage of the term and everything to do with its late 19th-century Central European usage. There are quite a few common English terms – e.g., “Caucasian” for “generic white” – that don’t follow modern ethnographic usage; “anti-Semitism” is unremarkable in this regard and would ordinarily generate little comment. It’s a powerful word with extensive historic connotations, though, and I get the impression that many of the attempts to redefine it are disguised attempts to deprive Jews of its power or even to direct that power against Jews. I don’t claim to know what’s in Prof. Massad’s mind, but his last sentence raises some doubt as to his motivation.
It’s a powerful word with extensive historic connotations, though
Or maybe I should say “a word with rhetorical power that is relevant to an ongoing conflict, making control of that rhetorical power a weapon in that conflict.”
BTW, I also hold Daniel Pipes and his cohorts to blame for misuse of rhetorical power, given that they are also redefining “anti-Semitism” in a manner that obscures and denigrates actual anti-Semitism.
Joseph Massad on holocaust deniers:
“All those in the Arab world who deny the Jewish holocaust are in my opinion Zionists.”
I’ll try that one out the next time I have a holocaust-denying Cairo cab driver.
Yeah, that was a bit much…
But his general point about Arab Holocaust-deniers internalizing European anti-Semitism is still a valid one. I think that a lot of Westerners who are rightly appalled by Arab anti-Semitism forget that the Holocaust, an essential frame of reference in the West when discussing not only anti-Semitism but also Jews in general, is largely absent here. People simply don’t have the exposure to the history of the Shoah that any European or American is likely to have.
Prof. Massad makes a number of good points. My problem with his essay, though, is that after all his fine discussion of how the term “anti-Semitism” wasn’t invented as Zionist propaganda and was intended specifically to refer to Jews, he tries to redefine it as something Israeli Jews direct toward Arabs. He ends up engaging in precisely the sort of revisionist definition as the people he criticizes.
The point he may be trying to make – and it’s both a valid and a crucial one – is that the racism currently directed against Muslims and Arabs is often drawn from classic anti-Semitic themes. For instance, I cringe whenever I see someone cherry-pick Koran verses to “prove” that Islam is a barbaric religion, because this is precisely what people have been doing to the Talmud for hundreds of years. The fact that such racism bears similarities to classical anti-Semitism, though, doesn’t make it anti-Semitic; it simply proves that there are common threads to racism (and that racists sometimes borrow them unconsciously – I doubt Bat Ye’or realizes that she’s reinvented the Protocols of the Elders of Zion). The difference between anti-Semitism, anti-Arabism and other forms of prejudice doesn’t lie in the nature of the stereotypes; it lies in the identity of the targets.
I have a fundamental problem with attempts to redefine the word “anti-Semitism,” which (by curious coincidence) seem to vary directly with the intensity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. By now, the term “anti-Semitism” has a well-understood meaning. The “Semite” in “anti-Semitism” has nothing to do with the modern linguistic usage of the term and everything to do with its late 19th-century Central European usage. There are quite a few common English terms – e.g., “Caucasian” for “generic white” – that don’t follow modern ethnographic usage; “anti-Semitism” is unremarkable in this regard and would ordinarily generate little comment. It’s a powerful word with extensive historic connotations, though, and I get the impression that many of the attempts to redefine it are disguised attempts to deprive Jews of its power or even to direct that power against Jews. I don’t claim to know what’s in Prof. Massad’s mind, but his last sentence raises some doubt as to his motivation.
It’s a powerful word with extensive historic connotations, though
Or maybe I should say “a word with rhetorical power that is relevant to an ongoing conflict, making control of that rhetorical power a weapon in that conflict.”
BTW, I also hold Daniel Pipes and his cohorts to blame for misuse of rhetorical power, given that they are also redefining “anti-Semitism” in a manner that obscures and denigrates actual anti-Semitism.