“No one can deny this anti-Semitic surge”: invited to the 38th dinner of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF), Monday May 6, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal wanted to be firm, affirming that no “anti-Semitic act must go unpunished.” The head of government recalled that in the first quarter of 2024, 366 anti-Semitic incidents had been recorded in France, an increase of 300% compared to the first three months of 2023. Faced with this explosion, and while the government launched a conference on Monday to combat anti-Semitism, Gabriel Attal promised to “demonstrate exemplary firmness” with each anti-Semitic act recorded.
A necessary message, as 25% of French people of Jewish faith surveyed by Ifop for the French branch of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) indicate that they have been victims of an anti-Semitic act since October 7. According to this survey, published on May 5, 92% of French Jews believe that anti-Semitism is present in France (+7 points compared to 2022), and 73% of them identify rejection and hatred of Israel as the main cause of this hatred. During the launch of the Conference on the Fight Against Anti-Semitism, the question of anti-Zionism was raised in certain testimonies of French people of Jewish faith who were attacked, such as this young woman insulted as a “dirty Jew” and a “dirty Zionist” in the public transport. “Saying our attachment to the existence of the State of Israel must not be a subject of insult or aggression, as has so often been the case since October 7,” argued the president of the Union of Jewish Students of France (UEJF), Samuel Lejoyeux.
The Minister responsible for the Fight against Discrimination Aurore Bergé, for her part, recalled that “everyone is free to criticize the Israeli government and the policies it pursues”, but that this “has nothing to do with hatred of Israel and the call for its destruction. “Some have replaced ‘dirty Jew,’ this insult, which is a crime, with ‘dirty Zionist,'” she added. Alexandre Bande, doctor of history, speaker at the Shoah memorial and co-author of the work Political history of anti-Semitism in France. From 1967 to the present (Robert Laffont, 2024) analyzes for L’Express the use of the word “Zionist” over the decades, and the way in which it has become, for some, “the justification of a certain hatred towards the Jews of France”.
L’Express: These last few weeks have been marked by controversial pro-Palestinian mobilizations in certain universities, following which students reported being insulted as ‘dirty Zionists’ or during which slogans such as ‘Zionists, get out of our universities’ appeared. Can you redefine the word Zionism, and how its use has evolved over the past few decades?
Alexandre Bande: The term “Zionism” was invented by the Austrian writer Nathan Birnbaum in 1890, then was taken up and popularized by an Austrian journalist, Theodor Herzl, from 1897. At the time of the Dreyfus affair, the latter became particularly aware of the rise of anti-Semitism in France and Europe. It refers to the idea that, for the persecuted Jews scattered throughout Europe, the solution would be to create a nation state, a common territory in which the Jews could anchor themselves. When the question of “where” arises, the idea of returning to the Holy Land, the territory of Jerusalem and the region of Palestine appears. Etymologically, the movement was named in reference to Mount Zion, one of the hills of Jerusalem.
The term is evolving. Until 1948, the date of the creation of the State of Israel, Zionism was not really considered as an ideology: it was rather a current of thought favorable to the birth of a Jewish, Hebrew state, which particularly targets Palestine. After May 14, 1948, Zionism remained a current of thought, with the idea that this territory must exist, on the one hand, but also be populated and developed. Then, after the various Israeli victories, notably in 1967, then in 1970, and the shift of borders, Zionism became for some a political movement which advocated the maintenance of Israeli influence on these new territories. When we talk about Zionism, there are therefore different cursors: some will defend the very existence of the State of Israel, others will refer to Zionism of the 1950s-1960s and link this notion to the defense of Israel facing the aggressions suffered, others facing the existence of Israel’s current borders, up to more radical visions, such as the messianic vision carried by some of the most religious and radical Zionists for the founding of the ” Greater Israel”, which would correspond to the biblical borders and which would include all of the Palestinian territories, and even beyond.
When does the notion of “anti-Zionism” appear?
This term is obviously concomitant with the birth of Zionism: hostility towards the idea that Jews could have a state has always existed. But just like Zionism, this term is polysemous, evolving, depending on who uses it and the context in which it is used: being anti-Zionist does not mean the same thing in 1899, in 1910 or today. Historically, several categories of the population have declared their hostility to the idea of a Jewish state in Palestine, starting with the Jews themselves, notably liberals and democrats. There was also, from the beginning, an anti-Zionism of the Jewish left: in Russia in 1897, the Bund was founded by the activist Vladimir Medem, who sought to unify all Jewish workers within the framework of a unified socialist party, and which considers that it is not necessary to build a specific Jewish state. Ultra-religious Jews, also, consider that the creation of a State on a territory which is not that to which the original territory corresponded in the biblical texts is an insult to God.
There is a second obvious anti-Zionism, which was declared from the start of the emigration of Jews to Palestine at the beginning of the 20th century, which is Arab anti-Zionism. There were then very violent movements of hostility towards the arrival of the Jews, which led to real pogroms in the 1920s and 1930s. And the last anti-Zionism, which we too often forget, was at the forefront. era that theorized by the European nationalist extreme right, with totally uninhibited anti-Semitism. This ideology then considers that the creation of a Jewish state would be a tragedy, since it would provide a sort of starting point for this famous “Jewish plot” which would ultimately reign over the world.
How has this anti-Zionist movement evolved since the creation of Israel in 1948?
From 1948, the birth of Israel immediately generated anti-Zionism which was verified by the entry into war of all its neighbors. At the beginning of the 1950s, we found anti-Zionism mainly in the Arab world. Then the term was widely recovered during the rebirth of the European extreme right at the end of the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s. People like Paul Rassinier, who questioned the existence of the gas chambers and the toll of victims of the Holocaust, are among the first to criticize the existence of Israel, against a backdrop of anti-Semitic overtones: according to them, the toll of the victims of the Shoah would be false, and Israel would thus have succeeded in its “great plot” and its ” great scam” by taking advantage, after the Second World War, of erroneous information to create his state. At the same time, the anti-Zionism of the Soviet communist world is also based on a certain distrust towards the Jews, with a whole series of clichés and clearly anti-Semitic illustrations: power, “the Jewish conspiracy”, money, hooked fingers , the pronounced nose… We are already seeing the installation of real anti-Semitism, under the cover of criticism of Israel.
The Six Day War, in 1967, was then a very important event in the development of anti-Zionism: it freed speech and hardened the view of certain supporters of Israel on the Israeli state. In the decades that followed, with the Yom Kippur War, Sabra and Shatila, the Gulf War, then the events of the 2000s, the “Protective Edge” operation of 2014 for example, were each time accompanied by surges of anti-Zionism all over the world.
But beneath this often legitimate criticism of the State of Israel and its policies, we have also seen the emergence of positions that may be clearly anti-Semitic. This is how we find the “anti-Zionist” list of Alain Soral and Dieudonné – notorious anti-Semites – during the 2009 European elections, and how we hear anti-Semitic slogans in the streets of Paris in 2014 during the famous “day of anger” or that we witnessed anti-Semitic violence following a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Sarcelles the same year. All anti-Zionist positions are obviously not anti-Semitic, but it can also be dangerous to brush aside the possibility that by criticizing Israel, we are also trying to fuel an anti-Semitic discourse. The real problem, which we are particularly aware of now, is that of essentialization: by criticizing Israel, some come to criticize Jews as such. They would all be supporters of Israeli policy, all the “same people”, people we should “be wary of”. And this is where we can slip into anti-Semitism.
The Ifop survey reveals that 51% of French Jews aged 18 to 24 have the feeling of being “often, as Jews, accused or made responsible for the actions of the Israeli government”. No less than 35% of French people aged 18 to 24 surveyed believe that it is “justified to attack a Jew for his support for Israel”. What do you think ?
It’s extremely serious. When I tell you about the dangers of essentialization, this is exactly what I think of. Contemporary anti-Zionism is always polysemous, and some use it as a simple criticism of the State of Israel. But there is also a tendency, in recent weeks in particular, to consider that all Jews provide political support for Israel, without being able to consider that the Jewish community is precisely extremely divided in its relationship to the world, to politics, to religion. Anti-Zionism can quickly turn into anti-Semitism, particularly when we demand, under the cover of criticism of Israeli policy, the disappearance of the State of Israel, or when we criticize Israel using clichés such as “conspiracy, relationship with money, desire to establish one’s authority through power and interpersonal relationships”. Some people will completely differentiate between intelligent criticism of a state’s posture and the treatment of people in Gaza by using the word “anti-Zionist.” But others also know very well what they are doing when they shout “dirty Zionist”, as if to replace “dirty Jew”, especially because the first of these attacks is not punishable by law. What we can hear behind it would be that every Jew is pro-Israeli, and that we can specifically attack Jews to criticize Israel… Which is extremely dangerous.
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