One thing we understand: “In any case, Israel does not exist, this state was created from scratch after the Shoah to please the Jews.” This comment is not that of a convinced anti-Semite but of the boss, apparently good in all respects, of an SME in my neighborhood. And he continued: “And then, in this story, it was they who started it. The Palestinians are only responding to the dispossession of their lands.”
This man, who has no Islamist sympathies nor does he support La France insoumise (LFI), is not alone in making such comments. For several days, I have been hearing comments like this. I also read about it on social networks, from the “pen” of anonymous people who do not seem affiliated with any party. My meager sample is in no way representative. However, I do not believe it is absurd to hypothesize the widespread penetration of such an opinion in French society.
Is she anti-Semitic? Here, there is no direct insult or devaluation of the type historically practiced by the far right, no ideologically structured anti-Zionism specific to the far left, no cliché about the supposed wealth of the Jews. This view does not actively combat Israel, it merely suggests its illegitimacy.
However, claiming that the existence of Israel is a pure artifice, which is moreover based on dispossession, is one of the new faces of what we could call, to imitate a phrase from Gilles Kepel, an “anti-Semitism of atmosphere”. Believing that “Israel does not exist” is not only historically fallacious. Since the end of the 19th century, Jewish immigration to the region of Palestine has been continuous and recurrent, to the point of leading, after the Shoah, to the constitution of a state. But above all, it is a deeply discriminatory point of view. There is a universal right to self-determination of peoples, a principle derived from international law according to which each people has or should have the free and sovereign choice to determine the form of its political regime. This principle applies just as much to today’s Palestinians as it does to Israel’s Jews. If Israel is an artifice, it is to the same extent that any state is one. Nobody maintains today that “France does not exist” on the pretext that a very long time ago it did not exist. To claim this with regard to Israel is to imply that Jews, as Jews, do not have this right. This is an anti-Semitic position.
Taken in its pure state, this anti-Semitism has a dimension conspiracy theorist. By considering Israel as a political aberration, he believes that the Jews benefit from a preferential regime and, therefore, that they maneuver behind the scenes to advance their plans. Without even using the concept of “global Zionist conspiracy”, he conveys its spirit. But, like other forms of Jew-hatred, it harbors at its heart a central stereotype, according to which the Jew is necessarily dominant. Here, it will be the financier, there, the cosmopolitan, there, the Israeli settler. Consequently, from this perspective, the Jew cannot, in essence, be conceived as a victim.
Hence the conclusion of my SME boss: “And then it was the Jews who started it. The Palestinians are only responding to the dispossession of their lands.” Regardless of the historical truth, it is not possible that the Jew did not “start it”, since the Jew is always guilty. Incidentally, LFI’s euphemization of the atrocities committed by Hamas serves the same purpose. Because, in order not to consider the Jews massacred in recent days as victims, there is only one possible intellectual solution, to present their massacrers as resistance fighters whose “war crimes” are only accidents.
We cannot probe the heart and kidneys. It is difficult to know whether atmospheric anti-Semitism is due to ignorance or ideology. Some, in this case, know very well what this position means and take it deliberately. In doing so, they willingly use what is called “dogwhistle” (“dog whistle”) or “foot call”, the use of coded or suggestive language to seduce some without arousing the suspicion of others. This is the technique that the rapper Médine seems to have recently used. By calling the essayist Rachel Khan, who is Jewish and whose mother escaped the Holocaust, “ResKHANpée”, he propagated a message whose meaning was clearly anti-Semitic, while being able to claim that the words he used were harmless . Others, like my SME boss, may not be aware of the implications of what they are saying, which is all the more worrying.
Because, usually, atmospheric anti-Semitism remains underground, to be mulled over far from the echo chambers. Since the attack on October 7, he has exhibited himself in bistros, on transport, and on social networks. However, like other anti-Semitisms, it is not only detestable, it carries the germ of indifference to injustices and suffering which, themselves, have nothing of an atmosphere.