Screenshot from the Campaign’s website’s News section. (Source)
The Campaign Against Antisemitism is a British group founded in 2014 purportedly to—well campaign against antisemitism—but spends an awful amount of its time defending Israel against criticisms of its brutal acts against Palestinians, primarily by equating criticism of Israel with antisemitism (the obviously unacceptable hatred of Jews for being Jews). Israel itself has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the last two decades making that same conflation stick, expressed most basely as “Israel = Jews”.
“If you criticise Israel like you criticised Apartheid South Africa,” goes the trope, “this is really just a cover for your Jew hate.” It’s a powerful deflection, even if it makes no sense. No one called us “anti-white” for opposing Apartheid in South Africa or “anti-British” for opposing the UK’s part in the war on Iraq or Afghanistan. But here we are—Same issue but a different excuse.
Manifestations might include the targeting of the State of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity. However, criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.
“Good,” you might be tempted to think, “that means criticism of Israel for doing bad things that states do is okay.” No. Read further for the qualifiers that are still considered to be expressions of antisemitism:
Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination (e.g. by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour).
The State of Israel was undeniably exactly that—a racist endeavour. Israel’s founding involved the ethnic cleansing of 415 Palestinian villages, often with gross acts of genocide, and for the last 75 years Israel has continued its brutality while maintaining two separate systems of law for Jews and Palestinians living on the land. Only Jews can “return” to Israel, the indigenous Palestinians including Palestinian refugees scattered around the world or displaced inside the country, and relatives of Palestinian citizens of Israel do not have the right to return to their actual homes or land seized by Israel.
Palestinian citizens of Israel are often termed diminutively by Israel as “Arab Israelis” or “Israeli Arabs”. The difference between these Palestinian citizens of Israel and the Palestinians that live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip—including the over 800,000 Palestinians that fled from their homes in what is now Israel to avoid being murdered by Zionist terror groups—is simply that they live on different sides of an Israeli-defined border. In 1967, Israel additionally militarily occupied the West Bank and Gaza, where it instituted military rule.
Gaza is still viewed as occupied territory by international bodies, as it has no control over its borders—land, air or sea—no control of important and exports, and Israel controls most of its electricity, almost all of its drinkable water, and connections to the Internet and global phone lines.
Gazans have no real freedom as a result. Couple this with the history of the last 20 years of relentless Israeli bombings that flatten entire neighborhoods, wiping out entire families, and life in the densely-populated Gaza Strip is as harsh as life can be.
Other amendments to the definition of antisemitism
In addition to the Campaign Against Antisemitism defining criticism of Israeli Apartheid as “antisemitism”, it has other caveats embedded in its definition which are regularly deployed to present honest criticism and protest of Israel’s actions as unreasonable Jew hatred:
Applying double standards by requiring of Israel a behaviour not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
This seems fair enough until you see how it is actually deployed—as whataboutism. Any criticism of Israel is typically deflected by avoiding the question or point being made, and instead bringing up other genocides, other wars, other Arab countries—as if the people criticizing Israel are not also concerned with state or human wrongdoing in other situations. There is no special treatment.
Other elements of the Campaign’s definition of antisemitism include “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis”—even when it literally employs them. Mouin Rabbani, writing in 2002 in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs about the Jenin Refugee Camp Massacre during Israel’s “Operation Defensive Shield” noted:
General Shaul Mofaz (Photo: IDF)
“….on the eve of Operation Defensive Shield, a senior Israeli military officer [General Mofaz, later to become Israel’s Defence Minister] was quoted by the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot as stating that in view of the character of the upcoming Israeli operation, the Nazi campaign to subdue the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in 1943 required careful study as an example of successful urban combat.”
“Distasteful as it may seem,” General Mofaz told the Israeli newspaper, “we studied the tactics used by the Germans in attacking the Warsaw Ghetto and applied them”. (Source)
As a side note, one of the other parts of the Campaign’s definition includes “Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the State of Israel”, which is ironically exactly what Israel has done with Gazans and HAMAS to justify its carpet bombing everywhere in the Gaza Strip. A considerable effort by Israeli leaders, evidenced by many public statements, have blamed all Gazans for the acts of HAMAS on October 7. Writing in New York Mag in October, Jonah Shepp wrote:
What feels different about this war is that Israel’s leaders are unusually willing to make the implicit explicit and acknowledge that, yes, they are punishing Gazans for Hamas’ crimes. When defense minister Yoav Gallant ordered a “full siege” on Gaza on October 9, cutting off water, fuel, and electricity, he said: “We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.” Energy minister Israel Katz then responded to international calls for aid by saying there would be no lifting of the siege until Hamas released the hostages it had taken.
A collection of these statements can be seen below. This generalizing of blame was widespread:
Back to the Campaign Against Antisemitism’s conflation game
This morning the Campaign released a “representative poll of 3,744 British Jews” that claimed to find that “only 6% of British Jews are not Zionists”. Their tweet concludes, “If you hate Zionists, you hate Jews.” No organization in any other context would try to claim something so ridiculous. “If you hate America’s War in Iraq, you hate Americans” just wouldn’t work.
My reply to their tweet
I replied to this tweet that conflates a modern day nation state, created by European colonialists, on a religio-ethnic basis with criticism of Israel. Here’s my replies to this tweet, originally split over several tweets due to character limits (link to the thread follows):
When Apartheid South Africa was still a thing, those of us who fought & defeated it never once caught ourselves hating on White South Africans. The system? Sure, it was vile. But the people? How does that make sense? No one called us anti-British for opposing the Iraq war either.
What you’re doing by conflating Israel with Jews is setting up Jews around the world to get targeted by antisemites. Some people won’t be able to tell the difference. Israel spent 100s of millions & twenty years creating this conflation between a modern day nation state & humans.
If the British government does some fascist stuff, I don’t think “wow how much I hate British people”. No I think “The British government are doing fascist stuff.” Israel & you are both trying weaponize Jews & use them as human shields for cover for a fascist & racist state.
You do this because Israel’s actions in Gaza & towards Palestinians in general, are indefensible, as was South Africa’s treatment of black citizens indefensible. This is all you got left. Your last line of defense as Israel goes full Nazi is “They hate Israel because it’s a Jew”.
That Zionists have reached this nadir of morality—this last ditch attempt to defend the indefensible—using Jews worldwide as human shields to create cover so that a genocide can be completed, is beneath contempt. This is conspiracy to commit genocide. You are culpable for this.
The original thread on Twitter
Thread of a reply to the genocide-enabling “Campaign Against Antisemitism”, working hard to draft Jews worldwide as human shields so Israel can finish its genocide in Gaza, where 70% of the 20,000 murdered by AI targeted bombs are women & children, ie. Definitely not combatants. https://t.co/eE4lXJbed1
— Nigel Parry/Pocket of Resistance (@resistanceshows) December 26, 2023
Why does this matter?
Within a few minutes, the Campaign Against Antisemitism had blocked me. Now they can’t see my account. Fair enough, I block people on Twitter too. But the notice from Twitter pointed out that far more than the Campaign merely blocking me had taken place:
The first part of this is the standard Twitter/X ‘you’re blocked’ notification on tweets you’ve already sent to accounts:
You’re unable to view this Post because this account owner limits who can view their Posts. Learn more
The second notice is another, less well known feature of Twitter/X:
This reply was hidden by the original Post author. Learn more
This means that no one on Twitter/X, unless they are browsing my personal account and bother to check out my replies to tweets, or know about one of Twitter’s less well known features (the ‘show hidden replies’ icon) will ever see that response to the Campaign Against Antisemitism’s ridiculous post.
If you follow the “Learn more” link, the help page on Twitter/X actually contains no explanation for this particular message about your hidden reply. For that you have to go to Twitter’s help, and search for “hiding replies”. This is what you get:
“Very much accessible”? Apart from the terrible grammar, is that really a fair characterization of a feature hidden deep in Twitter/X’s help, that most users will likely be unaware of? Here’s the original Tweet with the ‘simple to tap’ icon:
In case you missed it, here it is again, noted with a red arrow:
Clicking on the icon does work and you see the hidden replies but did you know about this four-year-old Twitter feature? If not, how many replies to a tweet that the tweeter simply didn’t like have you missed?
As a web designer and developer since 1995, I know very well that access to information on a website depends greatly on its prominence—among other factors, top of page (“above the fold”) is premium, obviously; is there an image or icon that makes it more visible?; how visible is it?; do people even know what the icon used means?
The ‘show hidden replies’ icon is intentionally opaque navigation, and is notably not identified with any words.
This is not free speech by any stretch. If someone says something in response to one of your tweets, you can functionally prevent all of Twitter’s 500+ million users from seeing it. A fairer way would be to allow accounts to deemphasize tweets, so that they appear further down. As it stands, organizations tweeting genocide deflections can hide a tweet from the main replies— functionally Twitter censorship of resistance and dissent for over 500 million people.
Scottish OG from the time of the First Intifada and the birth of the international movement of solidarity with the Palestinian people • Former Friends of Birzeit University Coordinator • Former Birzeit University Public Relations Officer • Cofounder and Editor of the original Electronic Intifada website • Creator of countless websites for pro-Palestinian organizations around the world via nigelparry.net
