The hostile environment for Jews in academia
Jake Wallis Simons, the previous editor of the Jewish Chronicle, in discussing his new book, put it succinctly – in the aftermath of WW2, the conclusion of non-Jews was to resolve to avoid nationalism and its dangers, and for Jews it was to realise that nationalism, having their own state, was their only hope. Dave Rich has made a similar point about the predilection of antizionists to appropriate symbols of the Shoah – such as the horror of draping a statue of Anne Frank in a keffiyeh. For Jews that anyone could do such a thing is a visceral shock, but of course the difference is this. When Jews see Anne Frank they think – that would have been me, or my daughter or sister dying in the gas chambers. Non-Jews (or at least a sizable number) just miss this, and thus they can somehow transform the specificity of the Holocaust, a programme to murder Jews, into some sort of progressive universalism.
The unanimity of the progressive movement that Israel is committing genocide sits right in the middle of the argument that Jake set out. The logic of the non-Jewish universalist view of the Shoah was that the individuality and specificity of the nation state, although the state itself might be practically unavoidable – a necessary evil, is something that needs to be both critiqued and diluted. Ethnic nationalism is a bad thing. Yet Jewish particularism, in the modern form of the Jewish nation state sits there as both a provocation and rebuke to this march to universalism. Just as the Jews were always a provocation and rebuke to Christian Europe, with their stubborn refusal to accept the universalist message of Christ as King Messiah. Who can really doubt that the trace lines of the deeply embedded Christian racism and hatred against Jews in Europe has somehow just disappeared. Of course it has not and the Gaza War has been the perfect opportunity for its malevolence to resurface in elements of western society. The Jew the Christ killer becomes the murderous genocidal Jew. The accompanying transgressive excitement of turning the tables on the Jews just an added bonus. No longer the victims of genocide (and who isn’t sick of hearing about the easy wins of the Jews in the oppression Olympics), but of course its new perpetrators. It’s a heady brew, and a brew which resolves the fault line that Jake précised for us. Jewish nationalism and its weary refusal to accept a universalist solution to man’s predicament, can just be sublimated into an easy labelling of the Jews as beyond saving. Jeffrey Herf may well have had it right in saying many who shout genocide and place all the agency on Israel and none on Hamas are unaware of the latent pools of hate their words trace a line to, and don’t have any specific antisemitic intent. Yet it still brings us closer to a full circle back to the Christian demonisation of the Jews which was at the heart of the Shoah. And of course, Hamas are laughing. Laughing at how easy it was to manipulate the Christian Western elites, the media, and academia in to replaying their hatred of Jews. Who needs a long march through the institutions – Hamas captured them all in a flash of their hateful eyes even before the bodies of October 7th had finished burning. Laughing as their real attempt at genocide is turned into a rally cry against the genocidal Jews.
But it is still hard. It’s hard for me as an academic to see those who purport to scholarship and debate running from it. Last week I attended the British Educational Research Association (BERA) Conference. I was saddened by how much it felt like a hostile environment. The mantra of Israel’s genocide so firmly embedded in sessions and keynotes. No mention of course of Hamas, or of the hostages. No real space for debate or alternative views. I was due in fact to give a talk about antisemitism in teacher education, in which I had planned to discuss some of the elisions between historical antisemitism and antizionism. But when I saw the programme, I could see how little appetite there might be for this. I thought about just not presenting, but in the end I went ahead with a somewhat diluted version, with the references to antizionism largely taken out. A cowardly act perhaps. Well, I took my place, as we so often do, as a good little Jew, not making too much of a fuss. The kind of Jew who if they don’t mention Israel might be accepted in a place like BERA. Hoping for toleration. As Jake put it, the lesson of the Shoah for Jews was that the universalist appetites of the nations when applied to Jews, are now, as they have always been, uncertain and contingent.