Opinion // French Parliament Resolution on anti-Semitism: A Victory That’s Entirely a Defeat
There is no doubt that the negation of the right to national self-determination of the Jews in Israel, and any attempt to abolish that right, are anti-Semitic by their very essence. After all, the idea of the self-determination of Jews as a national collective is the national and improved reincarnation of the principal of individual Jewish emancipation.
Both the civil emancipation of the Jews in modern Europe and the national auto-emancipation of the Jews in Palestine/Land of Israel was intended to include the Jews in their capacity as human beings equal to others in modern society, at first as individuals in other nations and thereafter, when that failed, as a member of the family of nations.
On the other hand, one of the fundamental characteristics of modern anti-Semitism is the aspiration to abolish the equal rights of Jews in all their accepted political forms, and to distance the Jews from the family of nations. This manifests itself by annulling the equal civil rights of the Jews, like the anti-Semitism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, or by annulling the equal national rights of the Jews, like the anti-Semitism of the late 20th and early 21st century.
Because of this, if the essence of Zionism in our time amounted to insistence on the national self-determination of the Jews in Israel, it would be proper simply to equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.The catch is that the dominant practical and political significance of contemporary Zionism – as the State of Israel presents it today as an occupier and settler beyond its borders – is far from expressing the mere right to legitimate national self-determination. On the contrary, everyone sees the essence and purpose of Zionism in the early 21st century as both increasing the civil oppression and subjugation of the Palestinian people and the incessant robbery and plundering of their land in the name of Judeo-Christian biblical theology.
The truth is that the pure historical core of the original political Zionism, when it emerged, was identified with the just aspiration of the Jews to realize their right to national self-determination in the Land of Israel – no less, but also no more. Moreover, today as well there is a minority of nationalist Jews in and outside of Israel who support what the political philosopher Chaim Gans has called “egalitarian Zionism.” This means adhering to the principle of non-hegemonic Jewish national self-determination, the realization of which involves, among other things, the division of the land.
But this is a small, negligible minority, which unfortunately is not only unable to restore the just, original meaning to Zionism, but is sometimes even condemned by the Zionist majority as “post-Zionist” or “anti-Zionist.”
The outcome therefore is crystal clear: The equation that is firm and valid in the Israeli Jewish consciousness, in the eyes of the world and as reality on the ground (that is, in the territories) states that Zionism in our time means continuing to settle the territories and tightening Israeli Jewish control between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea.Thus there is no other option but to recognize this clear and painful fact: If the real and essential manifestations of contemporary Zionism clearly involve atrocious injustice – the violent control of another people and their land – contemporary anti-Zionism is therefore the most just political phenomena of our time.
And on this point, the decision by the French parliament to adopt the baseless claim of President Emmanuel Macron that “anti-Zionism is one of the current forms of anti-Semitism” is revealed in all its inanity. Its potential damage is great, because if one of the just political phenomena of our time – opposition to the oppression and subjugation of the Palestinian people, which are, to our great shame and pain, the essence of contemporary Zionism – is equated with anti-Semitism, and if this distorted equation becomes more deeply entrenched in international consciousness, anti-Semitism could also be increasingly perceived by the world as a just phenomenon. It might be given a tailwind and even moral validity.
And thus not only in the short term does the French decision do serious harm to the rights of the Palestinian people, but in the long term it presents a tangible risk to the Jewish people, by encouraging and legitimizing anti-Semitism.
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