Crying antisemitism drowns out the real problem

This article is a response to Deborah Stone’s article Lived experience, paranoia and slippery antisemitism.

Dear Deborah,

Like you I am worried about rising antisemitism, but unlike you I am unwilling to accept that criticism of Israel's status as a defined Jewish state is itself antisemitic.

The idea of defining a state in this way—which applies equally to the Islamic Republic of Iran—marginalises the 25% of Israelis who are not Jews. And the examples given in the IHRA definition include a prohibition on calling Israel a racist state. It is ironic that in a country in which it is very frequent to hear supporters of Indigenous Australians define ours as a racist state, it is somehow improper to state this of Israel​.

My grandfather, Aaron Patkin, was a leading Australian Zionist; he died when I was six, so I only know of his views second hand. But I understand why he came to this position after the Holocaust.

Eighty years later Zionism has become for some people a sort of ethnic superiority which denies equal claims to recognition by Palestinians. If we are unable to talk about this within the Jewish community we are doing a great disservice to both Palestinians and Israelis.

It is particularly depressing to hear Israeli spokesmen deny that there is a Palestinian nation, when this was the jibe thrown at Zionists who argued for a Jewish state. Maybe the first step is to stress what the two peoples share, rather than to support a situation where one is apparently to be kept permanently under the yoke of the other.