The JTA headline says it all: "After welcoming far-right politicians, Israel’s antisemitism conference is hemorrhaging speakers."
The Israeli government, spearheaded by Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli, decided to use this conference as a high profile inauguration of Israel reversing its longstanding boycott of far-right political parties in Europe. Title notwithstanding, Chikli has always evinced pure contempt for diaspora Jews, so it is unsurprising that he'd raise this particular middle finger to Jewish safety around the world.
I first learned about folks pulling out of the conference from David Hirsh's announcement that he was doing so. Hirsh is one of the world's leading scholars on Contemporary Left Antisemitism and an incisive critic of the global BDS movement, so his departure is no small thing. He has been joined by figures including German antisemitism czar Felix Klein, French Jewish philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy, and British Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis.
As of right now, ADL chieftain Jonathan Greenblatt is still on the speakers list, which certainly checks out (the decision to platform the European far-right was harshly criticized by Greenblatt's predecessor, Abe Foxman).
I consider the decision by Hirsh and his colleagues to be a brave and inspired one. The only thing I'll add is that I know Hirsh does not consider this to be an example of "boycotting Israel" and it does a disservice to his record and his choices to present it as such (whether as praise or condemnation). Much like with Natalie Portman, we should respect Hirsh's own understanding of what he's doing -- and what he's doing is not claiming that the mere presence of Israelis or an Israeli connection makes a conference tainted beyond salvation, but rather saying that the particular choices of this particular conference and its particular roster of speakers mean he cannot take the stage. Of course, it's possible to make "particular" choices that are so expansive in who they lock out that they are tantamount to a nationality-based sweep. But that's not what's happening here.
There is no reason for diaspora Jews to endorse the Israeli government's clear decision that it cares more about allying with Europe's far-right than actually standing with the world's Jewish community, and as immiserating as that choice by Israel is for someone like me, I'm glad people like Hirsh are recognizing it for what it is and are responding accordingly.
UPDATE: Greenblatt has backed out too. Good on him.
I think Israel is well into finishing this slightly subtle maneuver where they take the old "all criticism of Israel is antisemitic" maneuver and turn it into "only criticism of Israel is antisemitic." So you can be a neo-Nazi and speak in good standing at our antisemitism conference, so long as you don't question how many Palestinians we blow up in Gaza or how many houses we bulldoze in the West Bank.
ReplyDeleteAnd the inevitable impact of that is, I think, going to be a sharp decline in the portion of diaspora Jews who identify as Zionists. After all, I'm a Zionist because I think Jews crucially need a safe place to go if and when the next set of pogroms occurs. But if Israel doesn't consider people like me Jews, and is going to side with actual neo-Nazis against us, well, we're going to start to question whether Israel in its present state really needs to exist. After all, I believe in a homeland for all Jews, not only those Jews who uncritically support Israel's right wing governing coalition.
This is a really incisive point I hadn't thought of, and you should publish it somewhere before someone (me) steals it.
ReplyDeleteSteal away! :) I’m an interested observer, not an expert. And if it’s a useful idea, it’s a lot more likely to be picked up if you publish it than if I do.
ReplyDelete(Sorry for the belated comment; been busy)
ReplyDeleteYour post is generally very good, David, but I wonder if there might be a connection you don't realize with an earlier post of yours: https://dsadevil.blogspot.com/2025/03/how-to-handle-leopard-chow.html
After all, you've supported Israel for your whole live, or at least your whole time as a blogger, and now Israeli leopards are eating your face.
Alex: I agree with most of your comment, but I don't like the "well, we're going to start to question whether Israel in its present state really needs to exist"-part. Don't get me wrong, I'm anti-Israel myself, but whether *any* country "needs to exist" doesn't depend on what it has to offer to any specific people in *other* countries.
Raphael,
ReplyDeleteI think that represents a significant stretch of the "leopard" case, and it's interesting to flag how. In the US context, "leopard chow" is not all Americans or even all persons who "support America" or have an affinity for the "idea" of America. It's people who voted for Trump or otherwise directly supported him and his political movement. Yet in the Israel case, your analogy is not to persons who voted for or otherwise support Bibi (and Chikli and that whole gang), but rather extends outward to anyone who "supported Israel." At that level of culpability, you didn't need this post to deem me "leopard chow", you could get there by flagging any post where I expressed admiration for elements of the American experiment now that the American leopards are eating my face. Virtually all Americans are "leopard chow" under that telling -- but that's not how the leopard meme is understood to operate.
That elision is I think a very common one in the Israel context. Where for other countries we talk about supporting or not supporting particular policies or politicians (and, where we're unhappy with the prevailing policies, backing alternative or dissident factions), for Israel everything is always deemed to be endemic to the country itself, such that anyone with any affinity for it -- the governing class and the dissidents alike -- are grouped together and deemed equivalent (and equivalently complicit).
Raphael, I think this point is somewhat unique to Israel, which has, in its modern incarnation, been established as a homeland not just for Israelis, but for the Jewish diaspora. The premise is that, if and when the shit inevitably hits the fan for diaspora Jews, Israel gives us a place to escape. Thats the entire premise behind the Zionist project— that Jewish history demands a homeland. It’s a project that’s always been in tension with the notion of Israel as a liberal democracy. And from my perspective is rapidly stretching to its breaking point.
ReplyDeleteAnd that’s why Israel’s domestic politics are breaking the Zionist project. When the Israeli government aligns itself with German neo-Nazis to the exclusion of diaspora Jews, it’s nothing less than a betrayal of the Zionist project. It’s declaring that if a Jew objects in any way to how the government treats Palestinians, it will side with the neo-Nazis against you.