by Alon Mizrahi on X
This is a war of ideas and approaches, a cultural war, as I’ve had a chance to call it a few times. We fight this war by deconstructing, dismantling, and disarming our rivals’ concepts and arguments. One of the principles of this war is the weaponization of the term antisemitism, and I want to demonstrate what I believe has been done to this term to make it a weapon.
I’m going to also suggest a new term that will make a lot of sense, and you’re welcome to use it (but please do it with a clean conscience. I have no intention of becoming anyone’s instrument of hate). As I’m still kind of new to the whole tweeting in English thing, I’m inviting you to follow me if you haven’t already. This is going to develop into a series of posts to go side by side with my Colonizer Psyche series (see pinned tweet).
– So how has the term antisemitism been corrupted to support this genocide, and Israel’s occupation? And outrageous actions and behaviors by political Jewish leaders? Actually, this, as a philosophical method, isn’t very complicated or new. Binary thinking has for so long been researched, documented, and discussed that there is no need, really, to explain or prove it. White European cultures, especially, have been afflicted with this bad habit, constantly dividing everything into symmetrical systems of complete good and bad, or evil.
Gender studies have given us one of the most commonly cited and familiar examples of this thinking, that of the slut-saint, according to which a woman can only be all sexuality and nothing but sexuality (therefore an object of sexual desire and nothing else), or no sexuality at all (therefore an object of admiration and noble affection, and nothing else). In both cases, no matter if seen as a saint or a slut, a woman is objectified, as if totally created by and exclusively for a man’s gaze, this way or the other (feminist sisters: please pardon me if I have misspoken, I only meant only good). Something very similar has happened to the image of Jews, is my point (not accidentally or spontaneously. I’d add: Such things never occur in political action).
Reverse antisemitism Currently, we have moved entirely into the realm of reverse antisemitism. What do I mean by that? It is not the hatred of non-Jews by Jews, but rather the opposite of antisemitism in meaning. If antisemitism meant, historically, that Jews are bad, or evil, and can only do bad or evil things, reverse antisemitism is the philosophy contending that Jews can do no bad or evil things at all, ever. This is where we are right now, at this bizarre and bloody juncture. But scoring a weird binary opposite was never why we fought antisemitism.
We fought antisemitism to say: Jews are just people. They do good, they do bad, they do it all. So judge them like you would all other people. That’s all. But, Germany and the US being as white and strict as they are, the definition of Jews as normal people just didn’t sit well with them. Such a definition would go against their deep-rooted traditions of binary thinking. Some Jewish leaders, foolishly, were happy to join the trend, as they imagined it would empower them (flattery is hard to resist), or because they really enjoy the satisfaction of being forever in the right and in the good graces of the rich and powerful West. On top of that, there were geopolitical and colonialist needs to consider. And so, in the decades since WW2, and as part of cementing Western presence in the Middle East, the Jewish state was given a more and more permissive license to do as it will, and the definition of antisemitism was expanded accordingly, to silence any criticism of the US-Israeli alliance. This became more and more absurd until, finally, in this current genocide, it has become antisemitic to say killing children is terrible and must stop immediately.
At this point, I don’t think antisemitism, which is actually reverse antisemitism, can be expanded further. It has peaked. Nothing tops an open license to kill as many children as you see fit.
– Though it feels like empowerment at the moment to some very short-sighted (or plain evil) Jewish leaders, they (and we all) should know that being on the bright side of a binary equation may boost your ego for a while, but in reality, anyone looked at through a binary lens is really, actually, hated, feared and threatened. Ask any feminist if she wants to be idolized as a saint, and she’ll tell you.