Legitimate criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitism

[shira]

17. As to the Nazi comparison, that's Holocaust Inversion....a form of Holocaust Denial

One of the cruelest aspects of the new antisemitism is its perverse use of the Holocaust as a stick to beat ‘the Jews.’ Lesley Klaff explains the phenomenon of ‘Holocaust Inversion.’

...What has been called ‘Holocaust Inversion’ involves an inversion of reality (the Israelis are cast as the ‘new’ Nazis and the Palestinians as the ‘new’ Jews), and an inversion of morality (the Holocaust is presented as a moral lesson for, or even a moral indictment of ‘the Jews’). More: those who object to these inversions are told – as they were by David Ward – that they are acting in bad faith, only being concerned to deflect criticism of Israel. In short, the Holocaust, an event accurately described by Dan Diner as a ‘rupture in civilisation,’ organised by a regime that, as the political philosopher Leo Strauss observed, ‘had no other clear principle except murderous hatred of the Jews,’ is now being used, instrumentally, as a means to express animosity towards the homeland of the Jews. ‘The victims have become perpetrators’ is being heard more and more. That is Holocaust Inversion.

...The historian Deborah Lipstadt – author of Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory and successful defendant in the libel suit brought against her and Penguin Books by the Holocaust denier David Irving – has used the term ‘soft-core denial’ to highlight the damage done by Holocaust inversion. The false equivalencing of Israel and the Nazis, she says, ‘elevates by a factor of a zillion any wrongdoings Israel might have done, and lessens by a factor of a zillion what the Germans did.’ And as Anthony Julius points out, the Zionist=Nazi trope not only says to the world that the ‘Zionists are to the Palestinians what Nazis were to the Jews’, but also that ‘the “Zionists” and Nazis share the same Fascist ideology’ and that ‘the “Zionists” were complicit with the Nazis in the Holocaust.’

The ‘anti-Zionist’ writers, Hazem Saghiyah and Saleh Bashir published an article in 1998,Universalizing the Holocaust, which makes clear the moral inversion involved in the Holocaust Inversion. ‘The dissociation between the acknowledgment of the Holocaust and what Israel is doing should be the starting point for the development of a discourse which says that the Holocaust does not free the Jewish state or the Jews of accountability. On the contrary, the Nazi crime compounds their moral responsibility and exposes them to greater answerability. They are the ones who have escaped the ugliest crime in history, and now they are perpetrating reprehensible deeds against another people.’

Holocaust Inversion, then, involves the abuse of the Holocaust memory to issue a moral stricture aimed at Israel and ‘the Jews’, imposing upon them a uniquely onerous moral responsibility and accountability in their treatment of others.

THE ACCUSATION OF ‘BAD FAITH’

Criticised for his Holocaust Memorial Day comments, David Ward hit back by accusing his critics of bad faith: ‘There is a huge operation out there, a machine almost, which is designed to protect the State of Israel from criticism. And that comes into play very, very quickly and focuses intensely on anyone who’s seen to criticise the State of Israel. And so I end up looking at what happened to me, whether I should use this word, whether I should use that word – and that is winning for them.’

This is an example of ‘The Livingstone Formulation’, a term coined by David Hirsh to refer to the practice of responding to claims of contemporary antisemitism by alleging that those making the claim are only doing so to prevent Israel from being criticised; in other words, they are ‘playing the antisemitism card.’ Ward’s statement is a perfect illustration of the Livingstone Formulation because while Ward claims that an ad hominem attack is being made on him by a ‘huge operation out there, a machine almost,’ it is, in fact, he who is making an ad hominem attack on those who question him. Rather than a ‘huge operation’ deflecting criticism of Israel, it is actually Ward who is deflecting legitimate concerns about antisemitism in the form of the Holocaust inversion.

By inverting reality and morality, and by recklessly spreading accusations of bad faith, Holocaust Inversion prevents us identifying the changing nature of contemporary antisemitism and is an obstacle to marshalling active resistance to it.

http://fathomjournal.org/holocaust-inversion-and-contemporary-antisemitism/