{"id":6707,"date":"2009-02-18T12:06:36","date_gmt":"2009-02-18T19:26:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=6707"},"modified":"2009-02-18T12:06:36","modified_gmt":"2009-02-18T19:26:24","slug":"is-there-a-firewall-between-anti-semitism-and-criticism-of-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=6707","title":{"rendered":"Is there a "firewall" between anti-Semitism and criticism of Israel?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Allen Hertz, writing in the Jerusalem Post<\/a>, says no. He’s not <\/em>arguing that all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic. He’s arguing against the idea that the two activities (“anti-Semitism” and “anti-Israel”) can be hermatically sealed off from each other. The big focus of his argument is disproportionality and bias — even criticisms which may individually fair and valid can still, taken together, be demonstrative of anti-Semitism when they are disproportionate to the alleged offense, or when they articulate a standard that other countries are not held up to.<\/p>\n

For example, imagine 20 people arrested for robbery, 10 White and 10 Black, and we charge all 10 of the Black persons but only one White. It might be true that all of the Black defendants are fairly and objectively worthy of prosecution. But that wouldn’t make the prosecutions just, even if taken individually and isolation from the other prosecutorial decisions they are, because the distribution is all askew. Since 2003, the UN directed more of its human rights actions towards Israel than<\/a> any other country, and more than Sudan and the D.R. Congo (ranked #2 and #3, respectively) combined<\/em>. The former was busy carrying out a genocide which has a six-figure death toll, whereas the latter was embroiled in a civil war whose casualty rate has easily crossed into the millions. Even if every one of its criticisms were meticulously fair, the distribution <\/em>is still worthy of concern — why Israel gets taken in for so much more criticism against countries whose behavior seems objectively worse, or whose situation seems objectively more dire.<\/span><\/p>\n

Similarly, one can articulate a defensible moral principle that, applied fairly, would represent a valid critique of Israel. But if the principle is only applied against one party, but not others similarly sitauted, that’s problematic as well too. For example, it is a defensible moral principle to say: countries engaged in counter-insurgency operations are morally responsible for the safety and wellbeing of the civilian population in these territories. And this would be a moral principle that Israel is not fulfilling. But neither is Sri Lanka in its operations against the Tamils. Neither is Sudan in Darfur. Neither is either Rwanda or the Congolese government in D.R. Congo. If Israel seems to be the only country asked to meet this obligation, or comes in for far heavier criticism when it fails to do so, it’s fair to wonder why that is.<\/p>\n

What makes this difficult is that it has to do with net effects and the broader distribution of our arguments. A UNHRC report heavily critical of Israel might not be identifiably anti-Semitic taken in isolation, but it’s not in isolation — it’s part of a pattern wherein the UNHRC criticizes Israel far more frequently than any other country or in accordance with any reasonable standard of priorities. The problem is that it is impossible for any one person to change the pattern, and this raises the question of what happens when we concede that system-wide Israel is being unfairly and disproportionately “targeted”, but we also believe that our individual crticism is fair, valid and important (the criminal justice system prejudicially targets Black men, but what do we do when we have a Black man, arrested due to the functioning of that system, whom we never the less have good evidence showing that he is a murderer? Individual justice here clashes with systematic justice).<\/p>\n

It’s a difficult question. I’m not sure how to answer it. But it does indicate that at some level it is inadequate, in my view, to simply frame the question “is this individual criticism anti-Semitic, is that specific report anti-Semitic”, when often the issue is not individual acts, but how when combined together and viewed as a whole they comport with our general articulations of moral principles and ethical priorties.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Allen Hertz, writing in the Jerusalem Post, says no. He’s not arguing that all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic. He’s arguing against the idea that the two activities (“anti-Semitism” and “anti-Israel”) can be hermatically sealed off from each other. The … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anti-semitism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6707"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6707\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}