Michelle Berkon, from Jews Against the Occupation '48, gave the following speech at a rally against the adoption of the Groups of Eight (Go8) definition of antisemitism, called by Students Against War at the University of Sydney on March 3.
* * *
I’ll begin with a reminder, for the Zionists in the audience, of what antisemitism is. I grew up surrounded by adults with blue numbers tattooed on their forearms. My primary school teacher relentlessly picked on the three Jewish kids in her class.
My high school refused to discipline a girl who punched me in the nose because I was Jewish. When I was in my 20s, a man beside me on the bus lamented audibly to his friend that it was a pity Hitler didn’t burn us all. I know what antisemitism is. And I know what it is not.
It’s distressing to see swastikas and hateful graffiti on synagogues. But let’s not confuse that with the cynical weaponisation of that distress by the Israel lobby and opportunistic politicians. And in whose interest is it to fan the flames of antisemitism? It’s not mere rhetorical flourish to say that Israel thrives on it, even cultivates it. For Zionists, the more the better.
Clearly, the adoption of the Group of Eight (Go8) definition of antisemitism is not only an assault on academic freedoms crucial for our society, but a pathetic capitulation to an agenda that sacrifices democratic rights and the safety of minorities to protect the interests of a foreign state.
But why? Why is Israel such a big deal? Why does Australia snivel and grovel? For the same reason that Charles Windsor is our nominal head of state and Lydia Thorpe was pilloried for eschewing respectability politics and demanding rights and justice for First Nations peoples in this colony. Australia and Israel do indeed have shared values.
We need to keep front and centre the issue of settler colonialism here and in Palestine. From the moment Britain realised that the Christian evangelical idea of Zionism would not only give them a foothold in West Asia, but also enable them to divert poor Jews escaping European pogroms from its shores, Zionism has been the advance guard for imperial interests. The move to formally entrench Zionist hegemony in our universities must be understood in these terms.
The conflation of Judaism and Zionism, upon which the IHRA and Go8 definitions of antisemitism are founded, is merely the mechanism through which this project is justified. This fallacious garbage rests on the idea of Israel as the “Jew among nations”. In other words, a powerless, innocuous, endlessly persecuted victim of bigoted ignoramuses.
This conceptualisation of Israel is itself an imperialist construct. The imperial powers, supported by colonial middle powers, that set up the UN in the aftermath of WW2, wanted to ensure that it would be a mechanism for continuing and expanding their interests. The Nazi genocide was “exclusivised” as the basis of international humanitarian law to protect European imperial powers from accountability for past genocides, and to ensure impunity for future ones. The Go8 definition is just another brick in the wall.
One ominous aspect of the Go8 definition is that, unlike the IHRA definition, it says criticism of Zionism may be antisemitic. Criticism of anything can be antisemitic.
If you criticise capitalism in terms that reflect classic antisemitic tropes such as a world-devouring Jewish octopus, of course it’s antigenic. If you describe Zionism as a Jewish cabal conspiring to dominate the world via the military-surveillance-ecocide complex, that’s antisemitic.
The tail-wagging-the-dog metaphor is a classic antisemitic trope. Plus it flies in the face of historical analysis, as does all racism.
However, to criticise and refute Zionism in terms that accurately reflect its nature as a settler colonial, supremacist, apartheid, genocidal project is simply fact.
As a Jewish person with a solid grounding in our history of social justice struggle, I unequivocally call for Zionism to be officially declared a racist ideology, for Zionist speech to be outlawed as hate speech, and for the Israeli flag to be banned as a symbol of racialised hatred and oppression.
As a non-legally binding guide, the Go8 definition doesn’t appear to have teeth, but it does. Even if allegations of racial discrimination, harassment, or vilification are ultimately rejected, the disciplinary processes, threats of legal action, cancelled events, suspension of programs, and so on, amount to a war of attrition, like the legal cases against Jake Lynch by the Israel-funded law firm Shurat ha-Din.
However, unlike its IHRA counterpart, the Go8 definition requires proof of an actual adverse impact. No doubt there’s a WhatsApp group right now conspiring to legitimise “trauma by flyer” as a reason for failing to attend class or submit an assignment.
Zionist Jews will, of course, be protected, for a while. They’re the Praetorian Guard. But they should take a crash course in intersectionality with Pastor Niëmoller, because fascism is never kind to minorities.
Obviously, anti-Zionist Jews are not protected at all, but then we wouldn’t want to be protected by a state that exposes other minorities to harm.
Yet, whether or not the definition will protect Jews is beside the point. Jews are not the intended beneficiaries of the rising McCarthyism in our universities, nor of the repressive legislation being passed like wind in our parliaments. Universities are merely weaponising Jewish historical victimhood, already cynically cultivated to justify the Zionist project, to protect their lucrative and prestigious contracts with Israeli corporations and academic institutions.
Just as Zionism is inherently antisemitic, so is the Go8 definition. Suggesting that it’s inherently Jewish to support a settler colonial, supremacist, apartheid state currently committing genocide is egregiously racist. It makes sense only if you are a Zionist, in which case you’ve internalised the antisemitic tropes that spawned this malicious political ideology in the first place.
The Go8 definition of antisemitism is to be reviewed in 12 months. We need to organise. Free Palestine from the River to the Sea.
[Michelle Berkon is a member of Jews Against the Occupation '48. This piece was first published in Pearls and Irritations.]