The apartheid myth

[FarrenH]

44. Accusing others of blood libel or other anti-semitic tropes

Every time they criticize a state actor, based on common humanitarian and egalitarian values, for oppressing a people who they are denying self-determination to, is not only lying, but aiding and abetting anti-semites.

When you repeatedly call human-rights activists and commentators antisemites for advocating the advancement of fundamental human rights, you encourage people to take such accusations less seriously or dismiss them entirely, like the boy who cried wolf. You're advancing real antisemitism by encouraging people to ignore it when it happens.

I don't have an antisemitic bone in my body. I know that for a fact. Quite the reverse. In my mental list of historical figures I admire the most, Jews are overrepresented in proportion to their numbers. I grew up a judeophile, if anything.

I grew up under South African Apartheid and know how you can disavow racism but still have subconscious racism persist in your thinking, because you were inured to it growing up. I consciously disavowed Apartheid and racism at the tender age of 13, but still spent decades working subtle and subconscious racism against black people out of my system, because its often hard to recognize in yourself until some situation makes it come to the surface.

I mention this because I know that when confronted with people who disavow antisemitism but criticize Israel, a common reaction I've seen (even from Jewish friends of mine who know me well but are unconditionally supportive of Israel) is to assume and insinuate that even if its not conscious, antisemitism somehow underlies those views.

But I have spent a lifetime purging myself of unconscious bigotry. I would know if there was some fundamental distrust, fear or hatred of Jews that informed my thinking. And I know for a fact that there isn't. There is none. Zero. Zip. Nada. Not even a trace. I was raised Catholic, but by liberal Catholics that admired Jews. I never heard a single anti-semitic trope growing up. Rather my family had a habit of talking about all the virtues of Jewish culture and talking about Jews admiringly. When my aunt married into Judaism and converted that was seen as a great catch by her siblings and my grandmother. I simply wasn't exposed to any form of antisemitism at all growing up and entered adulthood with nothing but admiration for Jewish culture generally. Which only increased when I made close Jewish friends, worked for and with Jews and dated Jewish women in young adulthood.

In short, I know, 100% for a fact, that my views on Israel being an Apartheid state are in no way shaped by a general animosity to, fear of, or distrust of Jews qua Jews. They are entirely shaped by my experience of and antipathy towards Apartheid and recognition of de facto Apartheid when I see it elsewhere.

So when people like you accuse people like me of having an secret antisemitic agenda intended to provoke hatred and violence against Jews because they're Jews, I naturally think "Fuck you, you lying sack of shit. That is a LIE".

Maybe it's a lie you believe. Maybe you've been so inured to a catch-all narrative of victimhood that ascribes even sincere humanitarian and egalitarian concerns to bigotry as a way of rationalizing a situation in which the perpetrators happen to be Jewish and the victims not, but even then its self-deception. Its a lie.

And like the boy who cried wolf, the constant deployment of that lie is ultimately self-defeating. I've seen how similarly motivated left-wing friends sometimes end up dismissing legitimate complaints of anti-semitism out of hand because of suspicion that they're being deployed in a dishonest fashion to rationalize Israel's failings, mainly because they've become accustomed to seeing a barrage of such accusations every time they tender criticism of Israel. That's what you're doing. You're aiding and abetting antisemites