From Antwerp to Warsaw, demonstrators’ placards have ranged from
criticism of Israeli policy (“1,2,3,4, Occupation No More”) to
denouncing Israel itself (“5,6,7,8, Israel is a Terror State”) to the
most wounding anti-Semitism (“Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the Gas”). In
France, which has Europe’s largest Jewish and Arab (mainly north
African) populations, trouble may be no surprise. But its extent—attacks
on synagogues, raids on Jewish shops—has been shocking nonetheless.
Even in Oslo, the Jewish museum closed its doors.
Clearly, Europe’s antipathy towards Israel is more than just loud
protest. Many Israelis think they can no longer count on public opinion
in Europe—and, to a much lesser extent, America—and that where popular
sentiment leads, democratic politicians will sooner or later follow.
They see the rising number and vehemence of demonstrations against
Israel’s wars, and as a result fear “delegitimisation”: the turning of
Israel into a pariah state, outside polite international society.
A global poll in and about several countries, conducted for the BBC
long before the latest strife in Gaza, reported that negative views of
Israel’s influence in the world outweighed positive ones by more than
two to one (see chart 1). In aggregate, Americans saw Israel favorably;
Europeans did not.
But plenty of Americans worry about Israel’s
reputation. Barack Obama has fretted about his country’s “limited”
ability to manage the “international fallout” were a Palestinian state
no longer within reach. Delegitimisation, says Einat Wilf, a former
Israeli parliamentarian and one of the authors of a three-year,
as-yet-unpublished study of the topic at the Jewish People Policy
Institute (JPPI) in Jerusalem, is becoming “a strategic threat”.
The concept of delegitimisation is not new. But it is acquiring new
weight in parts of the world where Israel once felt itself anchored. The
JPPI traces the turning-point to the World Conference against Racism in
Durban in 2001, which brought 1,500 government and non-governmental
delegations together under the auspices of the UN. Its draft
declaration, subsequently amended, condemned Zionism as racism. Since
then, says Michael Herzog, a former defence-ministry official and head
of the JPPI’s project, networks of Islamist and leftist activists have
spread the idea wide.
How wide is a matter of debate. Israel’s supporters paint a picture
of rampant anti-Semitism, particularly in Europe, under the cover of
hostility to Israel. A survey released this year by the Anti-Defamation
League said 34% of eastern Europeans and 24% of western Europeans
harboured anti-Semitic views—implying that the continent houses 165m
Jew-haters. Others are less gloomy. Vivian Wineman, who heads the Board
of Deputies of British Jews, the umbrella body of British Jewry, notes
that spikes in anti-Jewish attacks correlate to bouts of fighting in the
Middle East. His French counterpart, Roger Cukierman, says public
attitudes are driven “by the images of Palestinian babies on television,
which makes [people] very angry.”
Some of the Israeli government’s critics hit back by accusing its
supporters of highlighting rising anti-Semitism in Europe and elsewhere
to deflect criticisms of its own abuses of human rights. “Ninety-five
per cent of demonstrators have nothing against Jews,” says a French
government official and Jewish campaigner for a two-state settlement.
Read more: Israel and the world: Us and them | The Economist
