Antisemitism

Issue #14, November 2017 – Antisemitism Dear AJDS members and supporters, This issue of the Australian Jewish IN THIS ISSUE Democratic Society’s newsletter, Just Bodies, Histories, Voices, is focused on antisemitism. This is Antisemitisms / Jordy a broad topic that encompasses many Silverstein different and related phenomena, past and present. It deserves our attention now no Antisemitism in the less than ever, especially since it is largely Palestine Solidarity Movement? / Vivienne neglected in the Left, and concerns many developments within mainstream culture, Porzsolt including the American government openly spouting antisemitic views. Increased violence against Jews can be physical, but also rhetorical. At the same time, it is Being Jewish in ‘Swedistan’ important to define new antisemitism, which stifles criticism of Israel, blames Islamic / Yael W. terrorism as the source of all conflict, allows Nazis to march in our name and defines many non-Zionist activists as self-hating Jews. “It’s a Disgrace for Sweden” / Robert If you’re reading this and wondering about the spelling of ‘antisemitism’ used here, it is Börjesson the one currently preferred by many scholars and institutions. I go along with the Jewish Fear, Love, & reasoning of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), who’ve Solidarity in the Wake of rejected the hyphenated version of the word: “IHRA’s concern is that the hyphenated Charlottesville / Jonah spelling allows for the possibility of something called ‘Semitism’, which not only Boyarin legitimizes a form of pseudo-scientific racial classification that was thoroughly discredited by association with Nazi ideology, but also divides the term, stripping it Jews, Fascists and from its meaning of opposition and hatred toward Jews” (read more of the IHRA’s Antisemitism: a Paradoxical Alliance? / Ann memo at https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/sites/default/files/memo-on- E. Fink spelling-of-antisemitism_final-1.pdf). Antisemitism, Palestine, Antisemitism requires constant redefinition: where is it located? What are its social and the Mizrahi Question / and historical contexts? How does it manifest across the political spectrum? How has Tallie Ben Daniel it been used to provide a platform for Islamophobia? What spaces can we create to challenge antisemitism? And how might we understand Jews along a spectrum defined Jews Against Fascism: an by skin colour; are Jews White, and what is Whiteness? As written elsewhere, “Race interview is not just a matter of skin pigmentation or ethnic background. It is determined by The Israeli Occupation and both individuals and their observers, and the boundaries of who’s in or out of one the Rise of Antisemitism – group or another change constantly” (Emma Green’s in The Atlantic, at Is there a Connection? / https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/12/are-jews-white/509453/). Tony Klug Antisemitism(s) cannot be fully covered in one issue of our newsletter. As such, this Jews and Revolutionary collection of articles is a beginning, and includes predominately Jewish perspectives on Jews: Are You an antisemitism. We are keen to provide more voices from other communities on Antisemite? countering antisemitism therein, as well as writing about Jewish and non-Jewish apologists for antisemitism in Palestine and the Arab world. On the Nakba and the Jewish Left / Robin The views expressed in Just Voices are not official positions held by the AJDS. When in Rothfield the last issue of this newsletter the establishment of the Jewish State in 1948 was described as a cataclysmic event, this was my personal view. Only AJDS statements AJDS Statement on Avi Yemini and the Rise of Far- reflect positions agreed upon at an executive level. The AJDS does not have a Right Racism unanimous position on the subject of 1948 in Israel/Palestine. And more! Thank you to all those who helped and contributed to this edition of Just Voices. Yours, Keren Rubinstein JUST VOICES #14, November 2017 – Antisemitism AJDS 1 Bodies, Histories, centuries. One part he looks at is According to Tamar Mayer, Herzl Antisemitisms the so-called Jewish foot. In the admired the way in which nineteenth century, particularly in Germans had been mobilised By Jordy Silverstein Germany and Austria, Jews were around the nationalist cause and imagined to have a flat foot and to believed that ‘a similar future for walk with a faulty gait. In Austria in the Jewi We’re all pretty familiar, I think, sh nation’ was possible. He with the stereotype of the Jewish 1804 the Jews’ ‘weak feet’ were thought that this could be the cure man who doesn’t play sport. Living given as ‘the reason that the for the ‘problems caused by 2,000 in Melbourne, we see Jewish majority of Jews called into military years of living in exile.’ These sportspeople as the exception. service were released, because the problems materialised, Herzl majority of Jewish soldiers spent believed, in the lacking masculinity The idea is that we’re bookish, introverted, given to being more time in the military hospitals of Jewish men in Europe. As such, studious and sitting around talking than in military service.’ Nazi the reform of the Jews needed to and studying rather than exerting caricaturists drew Jews’ deformed take place primarily at the level of ourselves physically. In both bodies, and showed Jews as having the physical—with a changing of German and Yiddish this is the flat or ruined feet. Over these the body. Mayer writes that ‘[t]he couple of hundred years, Gilman characteristics were to luftmensch, the ‘air person’, who New Jew’s exists in the world of ideas, rather shows, Jews were seen as having mimic those of the gentiles: tall, than the physical world. In his vital feet which disrupted their ability to virile, close to nature and book Unheroic Conduct: The Rise of properly participate in social physically productive.’ The New Heterosexuality and the Invention of institutions such as the army, or Jew was to be embodied by those the Jewish Man, US-based Talmudic the gymnasium, both of which Jews who would live in the Jewish scholar Daniel Boyarin has were central to European society. nation-state, in Israel. They would Jews were not seen as having fit reform their bodies to be described this as ‘a widespread sensibility that being Jewish in our bodies, and thus as not being a substantially different to the bodies proper part of the body politic. of those of us who would live culture renders a boy effeminate.’ This effeminacy is part of an idea of Because they could not participate outside Israel. This was, historians the gender order, wherein in the army, they were not have come to agree, an ironically Ashkenazi Jewish men have been contributing to society. Jewish assimilationist move in the face of seen as inadequate (and Jewish bodies were seen as lacking, and so an experience of being persecuted women, or Jews who have not fit Jews were seen as lacking. They on the grounds that Jews were not into the gender binary, are not could not be considered full a robust national group. As in the seen as worthy of inclusion in the members of the citizenry. antisemitic idea that Jews naturally have flat feet, in this formulation, conversation). When antisemitism clings to the the problems (and resolutions) of biological body like this – when it’s So whether one plays sport, what individual bodies were being seen as inevitable – it’s hard to activities one does with one’s body mapped onto a national group shake. And its thinking moves and brain, have implications for identity. around, getting into everything. how a person is seen. That’s hardly So how does that continue today? surprising – most of us understand Indeed, Herzl – the founder of And what can we do about it? Well this to be the case. Australian modern political Zionism, whose masculinity is saturated with ideas memory is regularly invoked in firstly, I think it’s useful to know of sportsmanship, and one’s place celebratory fashion within the the histories we’re engaging with. When we celebrate strong Israeli in society often sits in relationship Melbourne Jewish community – Jewish bodies, the IDF, or the to this. wrote in the 1890s that he building of a Jewish nation-state in believed the Jewish people ‘must But for Jews, and particularly the mold of European nation- train the youth to be soldiers. But Ashkenazi Jews, this relationship states, we’re working to reform a only a professional army… has long and complicated histories, Jewish body both body politic However I must educate one and – which should be understood and physical body which has been all to be free and strong men, ready – through a history of antisemitism seen by antisemites as lacking. to serve as volunteers if necessary. and the ways that it has been When we participate in furthering Education by means of patriotic scripted onto the Jewish body. these materialities and these ideas, songs, the Maccabean tradition, we are rejecting some historically Sander Gilman, one of the religion, heroic stage-plays, honor, valuable notions of Jewishness in foremost scholars of the European etc.’ In designing a Jewish favour of others. Antisemitism is Jewish body, has written about the nationalism, Herzl was profoundly ways different parts of the body influenced by the ways in which potent, and it’s useful for us to remember that. Bookishness, and a were given antisemitic meaning in nineteenth century German rejection of an alignment of a the nineteenth and twentieth nationalism was being shaped. JUST VOICES #14, November 2017 – Antisemitism AJDS 2 nation with a state and an army, antisemitism in the Palestine Along with extreme nationalisms and a rejection of hard physical solidarity movement. This arises and xenophobia, hard-line bodies, can be useful.

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