The day after the recent Israeli election, I had an upsetting encounter with an acquaintance who posted the above photo on social media, with the caption “Why is it so hard for people to learn??” Despite my gut telling me to ignore it, I felt compelled to say something. I politely suggested that not only was it offensive to draw a parallel between Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and Adolf Hitler, but inaccurate. Unfortunately, his ensuing comments made it increasingly clear that he – a Canadian who is neither Jewish nor Muslim – held anti-semitic beliefs, despite his protestation that he wasn't anti-semitic just because he believed Netanyahu to be a mass murderer and Israel to be a “fascist state”.
Calling Israel a fascist state is utterly ridiculous; quite the contrary, it has a democratic spirit that would make many other countries jealous. Netanyahu's Likud party won a mere 30 seats out of 120. With roughly 75% voter turnout, and 10% of Israeli-Arabs voting (an increase from 3% last election), the top three parties were the right-wing Likud, the centre-left Zionist Union and a united list of Israeli-Arab parties. That is from a field of over two dozen political parties in Israel from right across the political spectrum. As such, coalition governments are the norm in Israel; by definition, parties of differing philosophies make compromises and negotiate with each other in the interest of the country.
Another definition of fascism is the “suppression of opposition and criticism...and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.” Netanyahu is not perfect; nor is the State of Israel. Mistakes are sometimes made, sometimes despite best intentions or by soldiers in the stress of war. But one cannot accuse Israel of any attempts to suppress opposition; it has a powerful judicial system that keeps the military, politicians and governments in check. And how can one seriously think Israel seeks the annihilation of the Palestinian people? Let's be honest here: with Israel's military and technological superiority, it could wipe them out quickly and easily. Instead, it devotes vast resources to defence technologies (Iron Dome) and in planning missions that attempt to limit civilian casualties (roof knocking, targeted attacks instead of blanket bombings, etc). But no, this friend believes that Israel is killing huge swaths of Palestinians when he says “really? Do a head count of the Palestinian territory and school houses”, unaware, perhaps, that Palestinian population has doubled over the past 40 years, not shrunk.
His
rebuttal, when confronted with the population chart, was a graph
illustrating the “loss of Palestinian land 1946 to 2000”, which
was the moment I truly realized that this person wasn't merely
vilifying Netanyahu. He was demonizing the Israeli state and
denouncing the Jews' right to their homeland. He trotted out the
argument that Israel was “stealing” land.
He attempted to minimize the crimes of the Holocaust by stating that the Catholic church has killed more people than Hitler (while also claiming to abhor the atrocities committed). While this fact is true, it goes back centuries, whereas Hitler's reign was little more than a decade, during which time Hitler's Nazis reduced the world's Jewish population by about a third. 70 years later, there are still approximately three million fewer Jews than in 1939. But that wasn't enough for this “friend” (in quotations because I have since unfriended this person): he had the audacity to accuse me of cherry-picking by implying that I lack outrage against atrocities committed by China, or those killed in “other” genocides (again, implying that Israel is genocidal) throughout human history. Unsurprisingly, he made no reference to anyone killed by ISIS, Boko Haram, Syria, or any other Muslim group. It seemed like he had checked off the final checkmark in the list of defences of an anti-semite.
Or so I thought...Until Netanyahu's heritage got called into question, with various claims that he has little or no Middle Eastern blood and is actually European; that, as he spent time in the United States and speaks un-accented English, he is American; that he is a member of the American Republican Party. If this person believes that Netanyahu's bloodline is not indigenous to the land, then it's same to assume that he believes the same about other Jews, whether they were born in Israel themselves, or returned there after centuries of exile.
Although I am no stranger to anti-semitism on the Internet, I was saddened to personally see this new face of anti-semitism. Someone with no “dog in this fight” who, for some reason, blindly accepts the Palestinian narrative and blames only Israel (and thus, Jews) for the troubles in the Middle East. Someone who, despite all evidence to the contrary, believes that Israel is following in the Nazis' footsteps in desiring the destruction of its enemies instead of peaceful co-existence with them. Someone who believes, despite the fact that nobody called themselves “Palestinians” until the 1960s, that these people have been robbed of “their” land over the course of decades. Someone who doesn't care to learn that “Palestinians” never had a homeland, but were offered one in the 1947 partition plan that the Arab world voted against. someone who forgets that Israel annexed/occupied land only after being attacked by the people living there. Someone who ignores pre-WWI history and the persecution of Jews around the world; the expelling of Jews from their ancient homeland (one whose borders extended far wider than the borders of the modern State of Israel). And someone who cares not about the contributions made to the world by the people of Israel, whose ancestors returned to a barren land after centuries of exile to start their lives anew; they worked tirelessly to return the land to fruition and continue working to this day in the pursuit of Tikkun Olam.
