To know what an anti-Semite is, one would also need to know what anti-Semitism is. To know what an anti-Zionist is, one would also need to know what a Zionist is. It is on these questions of definition that so many of the debates sparked off by the massacre of 7 October and the bombardments of Gaza are drifting off course, but this is not the only one, for take the French students who are occupying Sciences Po or their faculty in solidarity with the people of Gaza.
They are “anti-Semitic”, many people say about them. Many people – not necessarily Jews, far from it – who feel solidarity with the Israelis and are therefore shocked by these demonstrations. “Pure slander”, these students reply, arguing that Jewish students are demonstrating with them and that, unlike the anti-Semites, they have absolutely nothing against Jews in general, whom they in no way accuse of all the evils and crimes attributed to them by the anti-Semitism of past centuries.
This is true. Even if you looked hard enough, you would not find a single person among the pro-Palestinians at Sciences-Po who thought that numerus clausus should be established against Jews and that the ghettos or extermination camps should be reopened, but these students and those who encourage their movement are, on the other hand, numerous in number who call themselves “anti-Zionists”.
By this, as it could be understood, they mean that they condemn the policies pursued by Israel, but apart from the fact that since the 1970s many anti-Semites have been hiding behind the label “anti-Zionist”, what does this term mean today?
At the beginning of the last century, anti-Zionists were all those European Jews, the overwhelming majority, who wanted to be recognised as full citizens in their own country and who saw Zionism, the idea of creating a Jewish national home in Palestine, as nothing else than an absurd utopia. This was true both of the Jewish urban middle classes and of the powerful Jewish workers’ movement in Central Europe, the Bund. At the time, being anti-Zionist was certainly not being anti-Semitic, but once the utopia has come true and there has been a Jewish state for more than seven decades, anti-Zionism cannot be anything other than a desire to destroy it, either by driving the Israelis out of Palestine or by creating a bi-national state in which the Jews would be a minority.
We know that, as Albert Camus said, “to name things wrongly is to add to the misfortune of the world”, and here we see the confirmation of that. By dressing up in the garb of anti-Zionism to condemn the bombing of Gaza and the colonisation of the West Bank, we quickly end up – albeit unwittingly – denying Israel the right to exist. It is no longer denouncing a parliamentary majority, a government, war crimes and the violation of international law, but a State as such which, on the maps and in words, is disappearing “from the river to the sea”, from the Jordan to the Mediterranean.
And by seeking to destroy a state, it is not intended to lay the foundations for a just peace, but to precipitate a new century of war. Rather than self-proclaiming ‘pro-Palestinian’ or ‘pro-Israeli’, one must be pro-peace, in favour of the coexistence of two states, and understand that it is wrong to support Israel by justifying the collective punishment of Gazans, and we do not defend the Palestinians by playing down the horror of 7 October.
