Progressive except for racism against Jews

Progressive except for racism against Jews: Towards an understanding of the ‘hidden’ phenomenon of Left AntiSemitism by Philip Mendes

Since the October 2023 Hamas death squad massacre, it has become apparent that a global alliance exists between some progressives and homicidal Islamic fundamentalists. The progressives incite hatred towards Jews (often coded as ‘Zionists’) within institutions such as universities, trade unions, human rights bodies and social media, and the Islamists exploit this wider societal prejudice to enable and execute their terror attacks.

This pattern of collaboration is starkly evident in progressive responses to the Bondi terror attack. Some progressive groups unequivocally condemned the attack, and urged serious measures by government and civil society to protect Jews and prevent further terrorism. Others censured the attack in principle, but then pivoted to prioritizing the ‘free speech’ rights of the hate speech perpetrators and the protection of entry visas for further potential anti-Jewish racists at the expense of the Jewish victims. Others refused to condemn the attack at all, either framing it as justified retaliation for Israeli actions in the Middle East (i.e. a legitimate ‘globalisation of the Intifada’), or alternatively as a ‘false flag’ operation organized by the Jews themselves.

What this analysis reminds us is there is not only an openly AntiSemitic grouping or faction within progressive movements today, but that this faction (albeit often hidden or obscured) has existed throughout the 150 years or more or progressive politics. Yet, despite decades of researching Left attitudes towards Jews, it took me a long long time to recognize the existence of this organized AntiSemitic phenomenon, as opposed to perceiving  a few isolated bigots on the far fringe of the Left.

As a young left-wing activist involved in groups such as the Rainbow Alliance, People against Nuclear Disarmament and particularly the Australian Jewish Democratic Society (AJDS) in the 1980s and early 1990s, I mostly held to the oft-stated principle of ‘no enemies to the Left’. My framing of AntiSemitism almost exclusively incorporated forms of prejudice from the far Right as in the Tsarist-initiated pogroms of the late 19^th and early 20^th century Russia, and the Nazi Holocaust from 1939-45.

To be sure, I had some awareness of the malevolent impact of Stalinist AntiSemitism in the period from 1948-53 particularly via the Slansky Trial and Doctors Plot, and had no illusions about the Soviet Bloc’s long-term support for violent anti-Israel groups and regimes. But mostly, I did not directly associate those events and concerns with the mainstream Left in Australia.

However, in 1990, an invitation from the Australian Institute of Jewish Affair’s Without Prejudice journal to contribute to a Symposium on the ‘Australian Left and the Jews’ forced me to seriously consider my thinking on the topic. At this time, I didn’t necessarily associate harsh criticisms of Israel and Zionism or even inflammatory arguments for the destruction of Israel with AntiSemitism, unless they incorporated specific anti-Jewish racist tropes or language.

Nevertheless, I did write the following:

Rationally argued opposition to Israeli Government policies or to the manner in which Israel was founded at the expense of the Indigenous Palestinians does not constitute anti-Semitism in itself. Anti-Semitism is, however, present when this criticism is extended to include stereotypical descriptions of Jewish behaviour, when deliberate attempts are made to diminish the extent of Jewish suffering in the Holocaust by comparing Jews to Nazis or by alleging Jewish collaboration with the Nazis, and when campaigns against Israel are carried out with such relish and such obsessiveness that they cannot help but create an environment in which anti-Semites and anti-Semitism thrive (Mendes 1991: 30-31).

The case studies that I provided highlighted specific incidents and events where local political anti-Zionism had morphed into overtly racist AntiSemitism: the Australian Union of Students extreme anti-Israel motions and campaigns of 1974-75; Community Radio station 3CR’s propagation of anti-Jewish racism, and associated exclusion of Jewish voices; blaming the victim allegations that Zionists (i.e. Jews) had collaborated with the Nazis to perpetrate the Holocaust; and the strange case of the Libyan-funded Robert Pash whose earlier far Right alignments had not prevented his embrace by some Left groups. I also referred to Labor Party identity Bill Hartley’s vocal promotion of anti-Jewish stereotypes.

But overall, I implied that AntiSemitism had limited or marginal influence within the contemporary Australian Left, and in contrast to other more mature Symposium contributors such as Sol Encel, Rodney Gouttman and Bill Rubinstein, failed to place my contemporary case studies of Left Antisemitism within a wider historical or political analytical framework (Mendes 1991).

About three years later, however, I acted to fill this gap in my knowledge by preparing historical studies of Left attitudes towards Jews both globally and in Australia. My global study clarified beyond doubt that there had been an organized movement of AntiSemitic thought within the socialist movement from the beginning. It was not just that leading early socialists such as Karl Marx, Bakunin, Proudhon and Beatrice Webb propagated AntiSemitism. There was additionally a major current of thought within early international socialism which precluded expressions of sympathy and solidarity for Jews oppressed by pogroms and other forms of violence. To be sure, there was a counter philo-Semitic movement within the global Left which gradually became larger and more influential (Mendes 1995b).

Nevertheless, an AntiSemitic faction still persisted even beyond the revelations of the Holocaust. Globally, I noted a number of later forms of progressive AntiSemitism including most notably: manifestations of Holocaust denial; allegations of Zionist-Nazi collaboration; and harmful discrimination against Jews within the international women’s movement.

But then reflecting the time of writing – at the height of the Oslo Peace Accord which seemed likely to result in the final resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – I concluded optimistically as follows:

The degree of Left hostility to Jews should not be over-stated. Many of the most intransigent critics of Zionism and Israel are associated with marginal political groupings which have become even less significant since the downfall of the Soviet Union. Whilst their virulent AntiSemitism may have infiltrated and influenced mainstream Left political parties and organisations to some degree, the majority of Western social democrats still appear to be reasonably sympathetic to Jews and to the State of Israel…most of the Left today display little interest in Jews. The Jewish/Zionist question has been bypassed by other more pressing international conflicts and debates. Jews are neither friend nor enemy anymore – just forgotten (Mendes 1996: 121).

My study of the Australian Left also filled in the historical gaps that I had earlier neglected. I noted the significant presence of AntiSemitism in the early Australian labour movement, as personified by the anti-Jewish views of leading Federal Labor Party figure Frank Anstey and NSW state Labor Party Premier Jack Lang. I also noted the Communist Party’s aggressive defense of Stalinist AntiSemitism in 1953, and later examples of Left AntiSemitism including Community Radio station 3CR, Holocaust denial, allegations of Zionist-Nazi collaboration, feminist anti-Jewish racism, and anti-Jewish responses to the Australian government’s banning of a visit by neo-Nazi Holocaust denier David Irving.

I concluded pessimistically that:

Since 1967, much of the political Left has moved from a sympathetic position to a neutral or uninterested position on Jewish concerns. Some of the Left has adopted explicit AntiSemitic ideas and stereotypes to the extent that one can now speak of AntiSemitism as being a legitimate tendency on the Left (Mendes 1995a: 109).

That conclusion contrasted with the more positive interpretation of my global study (see above), and may have been skewed by my strong familiarity at that time with the views of fringe Left groups outside the mainstream Australian Labor Party and union movement. However, my recognition that AntiSemitism remained a legitimate grouping within progressive politics was almost certainly accurate.

In February 2005, I returned to this debate in a very different political context. The outbreak of the Second Intifada in September 2000 involving the indiscriminate murder of Israeli civilians by Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups had devastated the Oslo Peace Accord. That ultra-nationalist and theological-based violence was philosophically enabled by the formation of the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement in early-mid 2002. The Australian BDS movement was led from the beginning by committed haters of Zionism and Israel who were uninhibited in their use of AntiSemitic stereotypes to advance their eliminate Israel agenda (Mendes & Dyrenfurth 2015: 85-109).

Hence, the paper that I presented to the ‘AntiSemitism in the Contemporary World’ Conference held at Monash University was very different to my earlier contributions above. In that paper, I argued that whilst historically political anti-Zionism and racist AntiSemitism were mostly divergent ideas, they had now significantly converged through the growth of what I termed the ‘Anti-Zionist fundamentalist’ perspective. That view, held mainly but no longer exclusively by the far Left sects, regards Israel as a racist and colonialist state which has no right to exist. Adherents hold to a viewpoint opposing Israel’s existence specifically and Jewish national rights more broadly which is beyond rational debate, and unconnected to contemporary or historical reality.

I highlighted that Anti-Zionist fundamentalism incorporated a number of manifestations including: a pathological and obsessive hatred and demonisation of Israel unrelated to the actual actions and reality of that State; proposals by the BDS movement for academic and other boycotts of Israel based on the ethnic stereotyping of all Israelis; the extension of the denunciation of all Jewish Israelis to all Jews – Zionist or otherwise – who are supportive of Israel’s existence, whatever their actual ideological and political position on solutions to the conflict; stereotypical descriptions of Jewish behaviour, and attacks on alleged Jewish wealth and influence; and deliberate attempts to diminish and trivialize the extent of Jewish suffering in the Holocaust by comparing Jews with Nazis.

I concluded that paper by warning that

Anti-Zionism does become anti-Semitism when critics of Israel shift the analysis from one of objective reality to subjective fantasy. Instead of depicting Israel as a real state with real people – most of whom are either refugees themselves or the descendants of refugees fleeing oppression – anti-Zionist fundamentalists collectively label all Israeli Jews and their supporters as guilty of colonialism and racism. And traditional anti-Semitic prejudices around disproportionate Jewish power, influence and wealth are utilized to justify these stereotypes. The complex debate about the relative merits of Israeli and Palestinian claims is removed from its real national, cultural and historical context, and instead reduced to a mere political conspiracy in which Jews are constructed as inherently evil and immoral oppressors trampling over the rights of innocent Palestinians ((Mendes 2007).

That anti-Zionist fundamentalist view – propagated particularly by the BDS movement – persisted as an explicitly anti-Jewish grouping within the Australian Left from 2002-2023 actively indoctrinating growing sections of Australian society. And then post the October 2023 Hamas massacre, its influence rapidly escalated as reflected in the hundreds of university academics, staff and students who uncritically signed inflammatory anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish petitions and statements. Today, the AntiSemitic faction within the Australian progressive movement is vocal and confident and certainly not hidden. It may be true that the numbers of genuine anti-racist progressives are greater. But to date, the latter have failed to present a loud public voice and campaign that protects Jewish Australians from progressive AntiSemitism.

References

Philip Mendes (1991) “The Australian Left and the Jews’, Without Prejudice, 2, 30-35.

Philip Mendes (1995a) “Left attitudes towards Jews: Anti-Semitism and Philo-Semitism”, Australian Jewish Historical Society Journal, 13(1), 97-127.

Philip Mendes (1995b) “Left attitudes towards Jews: Antisemitism and Philosemitism”, Australian Journal of Jewish Studies, 9 (1 & 2), 7-44.

Philip Mendes (1996) “The Left and Antisemitism Part 11”, Australian Journal of Jewish Studies, 10 (1 & 2), 94-130.

Philip Mendes (2007) “Reflections from Australia: Are anti-Zionism and Antisemitism one and the same?”, Covenant, 2(1), 7-16.

Philip Mendes and Nick Dyrenfurth (2015) Boycotting Israel is wrong: The progressive path to peace between Palestinians and Israelis. New South Press, Sydney.