ما هي معاداة السامية؟

“Under Construction” — the remaining four paragraphs of this article require translation into Arabic.

Recently, Jewish American political commentator Peter Beinart published a piece in the New York Times entitled “Has the Fight Against Antisemitism Lost Its Way?” (Beinart article on antisemitism) Beinart shows how antisemitism has evolved over the last 40 or 50 years. He decries the so-called “New Antisemitism” that targets not simply anti-Judaism but also any who criticize the modern State of Israel. While the fight against antisemitism has traditionally been a fight against bigotry and discrimination toward Jews, now the charge of antisemitism is lodged against those who critique Israel for its own discriminatory policies against its Christian and Muslim Arab citizens and those it holds under military occupation. 

Those who level the charge of antisemitism in this way, writes Beinart, “have made the fight against antisemitism into a vehicle not for defending human rights but for denying them. Most Palestinians exist as second-class citizens in Israel proper or as stateless noncitizens in the territories Israel occupied in 1967 or who live beyond Israel’s borders because they, their forebears, or their descendants were expelled or fled and were not permitted to return.”  Those who want to divert attention from Israel’s human rights problems, maintains Beinart, are not friends of the Jewish people. Rather, they enable their Jewish brothers and sisters in their sin against their fellow human beings with whom they share a land. 

The charge of antisemitism is sometimes “weaponized” by those who will stop at nothing to prevent responsible pushback on Israel for its historic and ongoing abrogation of the rights of Palestinians. This is wrong, and not only because it helps perpetuate an unjust political and social situation.  It is a disservice to Jews and to all who fight racism, because when you intentionally conflate standing up for human rights with wanting to hurt the Jewish people, you are making antisemitism into something that it is not. This damages the fight against authentic antisemitism.

Authentic antisemitism – hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews – has not gone away. Far from it. It continues to exist and like all forms of racism, it should be opposed wherever it is found.