In an article at New Matilda, Michael Brull lays out a number of criticisms of leading Australian Jewish organizations. He is concerned about the way they deal with critics of Israel. I don't know enough about recent disputes among Australian Jews or the specific cases Brull cites to be able to assess what he says, but after a few preliminary remarks I want to focus on just one of his complaints; it raises a quite general issue that can be judged beyond the Australian context.
By way of preamble here, let me say that I think there are some rules of thumb on whether a piece on anti-Semitism today deserves to be taken seriously. First, does the writer acknowledge that there's a problem - acknowledge that anti-Semitism not only still exists but has been growing, and more particularly that some criticism of Israel is indeed anti-Semitic? Second, does she take her distance from it, or rather pass it over in silence, attempt to minimize or make light of it, offer excuses for others who deploy plainly anti-Jewish tropes in what they say about Israel? Third, does the writer accept that, as with every other kind of racism, anti-Semitism is not just a matter of attitudes - though it is importantly about attitudes as well - but takes in symbols, themes and practices? A person can make a racist remark without its being backed by an attitude of hostility. They can make use of racist themes, or engage in racially discriminatory practices likewise, without such attitudinal backing. Like any other form of racism, anti-Semitism is an ensemble of attitudes and symbols, themes, practices.
Michael Brull is put out by the fact that some who purport to speak on behalf of Australian Jews should see 'comparisons [with] and references to Nazis... [as] a typical manifestation of anti-Semitism'. One commentator, Brull says, 'thinks he's able to identify someone as anti-Semitic if they make comparisons between Israel's conduct and the Nazis'. Likewise if they carry placards saying 'Stop the Holocaust in Gaza'. (Brull also seems to jib at charges of anti-Semitism in response to 'anti-Zionists portray[ing] Israelis and their Jewish supporters as "inherently evil oppressors"' - but I let this pass because I want to focus more narrowly on the Nazi analogy). By coincidence, Antony Lerman has been writing on Comment is Free this week about just the same issue. This is the view he expresses:
[T]he accusation that a parallel can be drawn between the Nazis and Israel's behaviour in Gaza is very extreme. Whether making Holocaust analogies in the Israel-Palestine conflict helps or hinders understanding the plight of the Palestinians in general, or that of the people of Gaza specifically, is highly debatable. It implies the ultimate in man's inhumanity to man and as such should be used sparingly to preserve its effect. I would personally argue that using such an analogy in this crude fashion should be avoided. But political cartoons are often very offensive, and offensive – even when it involves comparing Israelis with Nazi[s] – does not automatically mean antisemitic.
Well, one way of deciding if use of the Nazi analogy is anti-Semitic or not is to consider whether the analogy is delivered with any malice - and I mean malice, specifically, towards Jews. I won't deny that it's not always easy to know whether a criticism is malicious or not. If a woman has slapped her child across the legs and you think it's wrong for her to have done so, your saying that it was wrong doesn't have to be malicious. But it may also be that you bear her ill-will independently of this incident. If you say that she's behaving just like her step-father did towards her, when that is the most odious comparison you could give her because her step-father systematically abused her as a child, with both sexual molestation and terrible beatings, then the chances are that your criticism isn't entirely well-motivated.
Things stand roughly like that, I would suggest, with the Nazi analogy and Israel. To say to Jews that what they are doing is just like what the Nazis did to them is to appeal to the comparison that is most hateful. That, at least, I take it I don't need to explain further. Ok, now... (1) Are those critics of Israel who make use of the Nazi analogy for Israel's policies and actions in the habit of using it to apply to the policies and actions of other countries? Did they, for example, say it about the killing of civilians in Iraq that resulted from bombing or other military actions by the US? (2) Are Israel's actions as often compared by these same critics with non-Nazi cases? Do they say 'This is just like the US in Iraq'? (3) Are the discrepancies, as well as the intended parallels, clearly noted by them - that is, the discrepancies between, say, the 'Holocaust' in Gaza and the Holocaust in Europe? Because anyone who isn't either a total idiot or an ill-intentioned hate-monger knows very well that there are discrepancies embodied in the Nazi-Israel analogy of an order of magnitude that I will not here insult my readers by reminding you of.
I suggest that the answers to each of these three questions is the wrong one. That is to say, these Nazi-analogy critics don't generally apply their favoured analogy elsewhere than in the Israeli case, they don't often use potentially apt comparisons between Israel and other cases that would be less hateful to Jews, and they use the analogy precisely to magnify the parallels and minimize the discrepancies between Israel and Nazism. I submit, therefore, that there are strong grounds for seeing a certain malice in use of the analogy, and as this malice is aimed specifically, aimed by the very particularity of its shape, at Jews, it is hard to know what else to call it but anti-Semitism.