Rafael Behr reviews Denis MacShane's Globalising Hatred: The New Anti-Semitism in yesterday's Observer. Coming upon this passage, I had a stray thought:
[M]any left-leaning, liberal intellectuals seem to think that anti-Israel rhetoric is one of the more reasonable bits of the jihadi agenda - that on Zionism, at least, the terrorists have a point. Except that, by Zionists, al-Qaeda means Jews and its reason for hating them is that they are conspiring to control the world. Any complicity with that notion was anti-semitic in the Thirties and it still is.
My thought was as follows. Two things that are more or less well known amongst those who take an interest in these things are: (a) that it is common for there to be code words for racist and other types of prejudice, since the prejudiced don't always want to say what they think right out loud and yet do want to be understood by others who share their particular prejudice or hatred; and (b) that amongst a certain class of anti-Semite 'Zionists' is just such a code word for referring disparagingly to Jews. Therefore, critics of Israel who aren't anti-Semitic could refrain from using the word 'Zionist' in their arguments with others, and for labelling Jewish supporters of Israel. They could, especially, refrain from using the word in a way that seems to signal their scorn.
Here it might be said that many Jewish supporters of Israel are happy to call themselves Zionists, so demonstrating that the word is not necessarily tied to any anti-Semitic connotation or intent. No, it isn't. But context makes a difference. Those identifying themselves as Zionists obviously don't use the word pejoratively. Others do, some of them in an odious way. And it is not as if there aren't alternatives. A critic of Israel could refer to his or her opponents as 'supporters of Israel' or even, if it comes to that, 'apologists for Israel'. The boycotters could say 'opponents of the academic boycott'. And so on. Just a thought.