Israel has escaped accountability for apartheid because its friends have wielded the antisemitism charge against critics. But the Amnesty International report is a sharp blow to that strategy. Now global civil society is likely to become the major factor of changing the status of Zionism internationally.
The Israeli historian Shlomo Sand has ventured into a territory– Judeophobia– that is nowadays mostly occupied by ardent Zionists intent on proving that Jew hatred is eternal and that the state of Israel is the only place where the Jews can feel safe. In today’s Europe, argues Sand, Judeophobia has been largely replaced by Islamophobia, while erstwhile Antisemites have become admirers of Israel, particularly of its way of “dealing with the Muslims”.
On a visit to Tel Aviv, scholar Yakov Rabkin finds that the extreme nationalist appeals of Meir Kahane, once ostracized in Israeli politics, are now mainstream. Kahane grasped the brutal logic of settler colonialism and had the courage to make it explicit. Time proved him right.
Yakov Rabkin travels to Iran where he meets with local Jews. He writes, “One should not idealize the life of Jews in Iran who have had their share of challenges. But their life stands in contrast to a well-oiled campaign to besmirch the history of Jewish-Muslim relations in order to suit a political agenda, the agenda of those who argue that there is no safe place for Jews except Israel.”
Racism surely played a role in western misconceptions of Iran’s plans. Iran is somehow deemed inferior to Western powers, which are thought to be rational and responsible in spite of their record of two world wars and innumerable colonial wars, including recent unwarranted attacks on Iraq, Libya and other Arab countries.