Today’s Times carries a comment piece about the resolution adopted at last month’s annual conference of UCU, the British universities’ lecturers union, calling for an academic boycott of Israel.
Entitled ‘This boycott is not just wrong, it’s anti-Semitic’, its authors, Anthony Julius and Alan Dershowitz, argue the call is not just ill-judged in strictly political terms, something for which they make a convincing case. They also argue it is motivated by anti-Semitism, a claim for which they do not make out a convincing case, despite it being the main burden of their piece.
They base their claim that the call for a boycott stems from anti-Semitism on the following account of this particular form of social pathology:
‘Anti-Semitism’ they write ‘consists, first, of beliefs about Jews that are both false and hostile and secondly, of injurious things to or about Jews, or done to them, in consequence of those beliefs’.
The ‘false and hostile belief’ about Jews on which, so our authors claim, the call for a boycott of Israel is based -- and which, in their eyes, renders it an instance of anti-Semitism given their understanding of this pathology -- is that Zionism, the project to create a Jewish state within the historic homeland of the Jews, is an aggressive ‘racist ideology’.
Those who believe this about Zionism are unwilling to regard it as simply the expression of a simple and legitimate natural desire of Jews for national self-determination, a desire whose legitimacy which the advocates of the boycott apparently seem willing to recognise in the case of all other peoples besides the Jews.
Our two authors are right that it is mistaken to believe Zionism is an aggressive racist ideology. They are also right that action against Israel, taken or proposed, on the basis of this false belief is both hostile and injurious to Jews, since half their entire number live there, and most of the remaining half are ardent supporters of that state. .
Despite this, they fail to show that those here who call for an academic boycott of Israel on the basis of sharing that false belief about Zionism, are thereby guilty of anti-Semitism.
This is because, in the case of many, if not the majority of advocates of such a boycott in this country, that belief about Zionism, while being false, is not based on any prior hostility on their part towards Jews. Thus, it does not satisfy all of the first condition that our authors state a belief must do in order to qualify those harbouring it for being said to be guilty of anti-Semitism, according to their own account of what that consists in.
In saying this about those British supporters of an academic boycott of Israel, I do not wish to deny many anti-Zionists are virulently anti-Semitic. Nor do I wish to deny many of today's most zealous advocates of such a boycott of Israel, and of other still more militant forms of action against that state, are guilty of anti-Semitism. Many most certainly are.
But not all British advocates of an academic boycott of Israel can or should be called anti-Semitic. And to accuse them of it does not help Israel’s cause, let alone that of truth or justice.
Only those advocates of an academic boycott of Israel deserve to be so called whose opposition to Israel, or to its policies towards the Palestinians, stems from a prior hatred on their part towards Jews, and from a wish Jews would simply vanish from that particular region of the earth, if not from the face of it altogether.
Among such advocates of a boycott of Israel who harbour such sentments about Jews are many Muslims and some non-Muslims who have been taught or otherwise led to believe the Jews to be an evil and malign people. Those who think this include many radical Islamists, not least the members and supporters of Hamas and other radical Islamist groups.
In this country, however, by no means all who support an academic boycott of Israel can be remotely thought to support one because they share this low opinion of Jews. Not all of them, perhaps not even the majority, oppose the existence of a Jewish state in Israel. Many simply support the boycott because they think that Israel has become expansionist in holding onto the occupied territories and believe the boycott will pressurise Israel into withdrawing from them.
Our authors are right that those who think Zionism to be a racist ideology are wrong to think this about it. They are equally wrong, therefore, to support action taken or proposed against Israel on the basis of this false belief of theirs about Zionism.
But not all who do believe Zionism to be a racist ideology can or should be considered anti-Semitic on account of so believing. Many of those who have this belief in this country, perhaps the majority, at worst are merely 'useful idiots'.They are dupes of genuine anti-Semites who have succeeded in misleading these innocents into acquiring false beliefs about Zionism and about what motivates Israel’s current policy in relation to the occupied territories.
Why am I so confident that this is so?
My answer is a lifetime spent in British academia working alongside leftist colleagues. Experience has shown time and again they can be counted on to be wrong on practically every moral and political issue that ever comes along -- be it the environment, animal rights, the family, capitalism, nuclear deterrence, or Israel. You name it, they have adopted a mistaken politically correct opinion on the matter.
On the issue of Israel, however, as on so many others, it is only their heads, not their hearts, they can be accused of having located in the wrong place. Their belief that Zionism is a racist ideology, while certainly false, is not held by the majority of British supporters of an academic boycott of Israel, out of any prior hostility towards Jews. Only when it is, can such a belief be considered anti-Semitic. Otherwise, while both false and harmful to Jews, such a belief is not hostile to Jews, however injurious to them its being held might be.
Of course, in having their unfavourable attitude towards Zionism and towards Israel that they do, these naïve leftist British academic advocates of a boycott do stand open to the charge of a serious moral failure. But that moral failure is not their being guilty of anti-Semitism, and it doesn’t help to claim they are.
The moral failing of which they stand open to being charged with is that of intellectual laziness. That laziness issues in a smug moral self-righteous that allows them to think that, in any moral controversy, they are always only ever to be found on the angelic side of the underdog. In reality, however, their views on the issue of Israel, as on practically every other serious issue, are jejune, and cannot withstand five minutes serious intellectual scrutiny.
In believing as they do about Zionism, these useful innocents have been gulled by genuine anti-Semites who have managed to propagate the erroneous notion that Zionism is an aggressive and racist ideology. These genuine anti-Semites have managed to persuade the innocents of this erroneous notion, and perhaps, even to persuade themselves of it. They have done so because of their prior hatred of Jews, or at least those who have settled in or support Israel. They have propagated that belief because they believe its widespread propogation will help them to evict Jews from the territory of Israel by discrediting Zionism.
Rather than simply go in for name-calling, what those who understand that Zionism is neither racist nor aggressive should be seeking to do is disabuse these useful innocents of their misconceptions about the nature of Zionism. Part of what is involved in doing that consists in explaining to them exactly why Zionism is no more aggressive or racist an ideology than is Judaism itself.
Only anti-Semites think Judaism is a racist and aggressive ideology. Few British advocates of the academic boycott of Israel do. The task is to convince these latter to think the same about Zionism.
Calling them anti-Semites for thinking what they currently do about Zionism is not a constructive first step in helping to disabuse them of their errorenous convictions on this matter.
It simply muddies the waters and will only intensify their opposition to Israel.
For many of them know they aren't. In hearing themselves accused of anti-Semitism, all they will think is that Zionists can offer nothing better in defence of Israel. Supporters of the Jewish state can and must be able to do better than that on its behalf in the battle of ideas.
Perhaps, in both being eminent and distinguished attorneys, our two authors have of late become accustomed to a little bit too much court advocacy for their own good, and in not enough serious and rigorous argumentation.