The Psychology of the Other, re: "Antisemitism"

I have a general case to make -- though not the time to make it adequately now -- that our (Jews') new national priority must be the psychological understanding of our non-Jewish neighbors, hosts, and enemies. I have been thinking about this mainly in connection with the balagan in Lebanon, but I mention it now because of an interesting illustration of the point that came up in conversation last night with my token Muslim sophisticate Kyla.

We were discussing Israel and antisemitism (what else?), and she protested that it is unfair for anti-Israel sentiment, which pervades the Islamic body politic, to be branded antisemitic. Just because Muslims generally hate Israel, a state built on land forcably taken from Muslims, they don't necessarily hate Jews. In fact many (including Kyla, who has described herself as a "Jew-hugger") take umbrage at the suggestion.

This is significant because Kyla's is very likely a representative voice -- we are thank G!d not at a place where a majority of Muslims identify as antisemites or care to be so identified -- and to this self-identified non-antisemite, the essential gist of what antisemitism is and how it operates has been misrepresented. If antisemitism merely meant categorical hatred of Jews, then of course it would be incorrect to equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism. Not all Jews want to live in the land of Biblical Israel, full stop.

I don't think it is an excessively subtle point that antisemitism arises first as a double-standard systematically disadvantaging Jewish aspirations against those of non-Jews. That is to say: Most if not all modern states are built on land forcably taken from previous residents; and yet, outside of Anarchist discourse, this moral problematic doesn't raise serious question of whether any state deserves to exist. Except for the state of Israel.

This sort of double-standard, which has many permutations throughout Jewish/non-Jewish relations, is not on its surface hateful. But it does beg the question, why should the Jews' national enterprise be treated differently from others'? The answer inevitably has to do with deeply-ingrained Christian and Islamic culural habits of regarding the Jews as a pariah nation, in addition to good old-fashioned racism.

Furthermore, the double-standard propels at least two hateful dynamics. One is that Jewish culture, justifiably paranoid that it will be judged with disproportionate harshness by others, habitually seeks alliance with the most powerful in order to ensure itself disproportionate protection. Consequently Jews, though we are small players, get caught up in and become culpable for the abuses of power by the largest players. Israel's relationships with the U.S. versus Iran, Russia, and China in the unfolding Lebanon catastrophe illustrates this perfectly.

The other hateful dynamic perpetuates through language, and through that ignorance of the Other's psychology. When we protest a double-standard by saying, "that's antisemitic," what the other hears is, "you hate Jews, you nasty Hilter Jew-hater." This is exactly as effective as Black activists telling non-hateful White Americans that it is racist to oppose affirmative action. The accused is hurt, because she thinks she's been told she's being completely bigoted when in fact she means and is trying to be peaceable and fair. In her frustration, she may think that the accuser is trying to abdicate his responsibility by blaming her of something that is patently untrue. Left unchecked, this confusion can breed actual ethnic hatred.

When the afflicted make no distinction between passive versus active discrimination, potential allies feel thrown into an ugly box with the skinheads and the terrorists, which will lead them at worst to sympathize with those hateful radicals, or at best to despair of the whole conversation.