Reflections on Anti-Semitism

Alain Badiou, Eric Hazan, Ivan Segré, David Fernbach

• Publisher: Verso
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9781844678778
• eBook ISBN:
  9781781685341
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Civil Rights in Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Since the inception of the "War on Terror," Israel has become increasingly important to Western imperial strategy and ever more aggressive in its policies towards the Palestinians. A key ideological weapon in this development is the cynical and unjustified accusation of "anti-Semitism" to silence protest and dissent.

For historical reasons, this tactic has been deployed most forcefully in France, and in the first of the two essays in this book French writers Alain Badiou and Eric Hazan demolish the "anti-Semitism is everywhere" claim used to bludgeon critics of the Israeli state and those who stand in solidarity with the banlieue youth.

In "The Philo-Semitic Reaction," Ivan Segr? undertakes a meticulous deconstruction of a rampant reactionary trend that identifies Jewish interests with the "democratic" West. Segr?'s aim is to uphold a universalist position and to defend Jewish tradition from Zionist ideological distortion.

The Philo-Semitic Reaction

The Treason of the Intellectuals

Ivan Segré

Introduction

The West presents itself, in the charming words of the editor of Le Nouvel Observateur, as the universal civilization. I prefer to call a cat a cat, the West the West, and as for universal, I leave it an enigma for the time being.

– Benny Lévy, Le Livre et les livres

Meanwhile, let us remind young people that for several decades the political use of the word ‘West’ was confined to the racist far-right, actually serving as the name of one of its most violent groupings [i.e. Occident].

– Alain Badiou, Polemics

Giving my book the title The Philo-Semitic Reaction, and subtitling it ‘The Treason of the Intellectuals’, meant opening a perspective of expectation. The start of the twenty-first century had seen the birth of an important ideological current in France, represented in particular by the historian Alexandre Adler, the sociologist Emmanuel Brenner, the cineaste Eli Chouraqui, the philosopher Alain Finkielkraut, the lawyer William Goldnagel, the linguist Jean-Claude Milner, the philosopher Robert Misrahi, the political scientist Pierre-André Taguieff, the sociologist Shmuel Trigano and the philosopher Yves-Charles Zarka. The launch of the Second Intifada in September 2000, and the perception of a renewal of anti-Semitism in France, led these intellectuals to produce a number of publications, documentaries, accusations and justifications in support of the twin slogans of the ‘struggle against anti-Semitism’ and the ‘defence of Zionism’. Their detractors referred to these intellectuals as ‘communitarian’ or ‘communitarist’, accusing them of exacerbating an identitarian particularism – in the event, a Jewish one. We know, moreover, how Julien Benda justified the title of his famous work:

Like the ancient prophet of Israel, the modern intellectual teaches: ‘Deploy your zeal for the Lord God of hosts.’ This has been for half a century the attitude of those men whose function should have been to oppose the realism of peoples, yet who, with all their power and in full awareness, have worked rather to inflame; an attitude that I venture for this reason to call the treason of the intellectuals.¹

It would seem self-evident, then, that my argument would undertake to renew that of Julien Benda, in other words to display the betrayal of universalism that guides the thinking of these ‘communitarian’ intellectuals. And as their object is in fact to ‘inflame’ a Jewish particularism, this treason of the intellectuals would seem to be what it literally is for Benda, i.e. a return to the ‘ancient prophet of Israel’, to a particularist form of divinity (or of thought). Yet this is precisely not my argument, as my concern in this book is to refute the claim of this thought to be ‘communitarian’. This is also why this adjective is systematically placed in quotes. What I maintain, in fact, is not just that this ideological current is reactionary rather than communitarian (here in its proper sense), but also that it actually involves the betrayal of a Jewish particularism – i.e. a treason of the intellectuals understood in a strictly opposite sense. And I shall show, by means of detailed examination of a selection of representative texts of this so-called ‘communitarian’ current, that what I have called the ‘philo-Semitic reaction’ is the cornerstone, in contemporary France, of a broad ideological operation aiming to impose the slogan of ‘defence of the West’.

Since the political use of the word ‘Occident’,^* particularly under Vichy France, had been disqualified by its historic compromise with Nazism, reactionary thought had to renew this use in such a way that the ‘defence of the West’ would appear – ‘after Auschwitz’ – as a rampart against Nazism or its contemporary avatars. It was necessary therefore to integrate the ‘struggle against anti-Semitism’ into the value system of an ideological current that was historically hostile to Jews. Such at least is my premise. The question then is the following: Is this the act of a reactionary line of thought which, having taken note of the criminal paths onto which political use of the word ‘West’ led, has subsequently worked to reconceive its identity, to the point that the words ‘Jews’ and ‘Israel’ no longer denote an alterity to subjugate and destroy, but rather ‘the stranger, the widow and the orphan’? Or is this simply a well-concealed operation of seduction that needs to be exposed, so that the ‘defence of the West’ will appear today just as it was yesterday, i.e. basically an imperialist vision of the world, a xenophobic ideal of society, and a policing concept of knowledge?

In order to reply to this question, I have examined the texts produced by these ‘communitarian’ intellectuals in the early twenty-first century – the period following the 2000 Intifada and the perception of a revival of anti-Semitism in France, but also, and above all, following ‘9-11’, the Bush era in the United States, and finally, the appearance of a line of political argument in France, one of whose slogans has been to struggle against the ‘new anti-Semitism’ and another to ‘put an end’ to May 1968, to ‘progressivism’ and its sociological and philosophical representatives. My interest in these ‘communitarian’ intellectuals is thus readily understandable: they are, more than any others, in the vanguard of a contemporary philo-Semitic reaction, and their intellectual, social and institutional vocation is to present an authorized discourse. Examining the discourse of the ‘communitarian’ intellectuals thus means taking cognizance of what the most reactionary thought today authorizes, sometimes recommends and more often demands, in terms of the ‘defence of Zionism’ or the ‘struggle against anti-Semitism’. And it means showing its ridiculous character.

* ‘Occident’ was the name taken by a fascist student group in the 1960s, some of whose members were later to hold ministerial posts.

1

The ‘Communitarian’ Ideology (Critique of Recent French ‘Communitarian’ Thought)

There has always been a certain imperial triad. In first place, the conquering soldier. In second place, the trader opening up markets. In third place, the missionary who converts. Whether the task is to convert to Christ-the-King or to preach the ‘rights of man’, it is unworthy of a philosopher to occupy this third position.

– Alain Badiou, Polemics

The Zionist intellectuals are those who rebel against the ghetto, deeming it chilly and alienating, but equally reject Western-style assimilation.

– Eli Barnavi, Sionisme, sionismes

In an article posted on the internet in autumn 2003, the Swiss intellectual Tariq Ramadan proposed a ‘critique of the (new) communitarian intellectuals’, targeting ‘the works of Pierre-André Taguieff’ which he presented as ‘highly revealing’ for this current of thought, in particular ‘his polemic’ La Nouvelle judéophobie, published in 2002, and ‘above all’ Alain Finkielkraut, whose book Au nom de l’autre. Réflexions sur l’antisémitisme qui vient ‘revealed’, according to Ramadan, ‘a communitarist attitude that falsifies the terms of debate’. Ramadan equally cited, as examples of those ‘French Jewish intellectuals who had up till now been viewed as universalist thinkers’, but who ‘had begun, on both the national and the international level, to develop analyses increasingly governed by a communitarian concern that tends to relativize the defence of universal principles of equality and justice’, Alexandre Adler, Bernard Kouchner, André Glucksmann and Bernard-Henri Lévy. In actual fact, according to Ramadan, ‘whether on the domestic level (struggle against anti-Semitism) or on the international stage (defence of Zionism), we are witnessing the emergence of a new attitude’, which he denounced as follows: ‘the political position they adopt responds to a communitarian logic, whether as Jews, as nationalists, or as defenders of Israel’.

This article of Tariq Ramadan’s was rejected by a number of French daily papers before appearing on the internet, when it immediately aroused indignation.¹ The author was actually criticized for linking up with an old anti-Semitic tradition by drawing up a list of Jews, or supposed Jews, who had taken up public positions allegedly oriented by the defence of ‘Jewish interests’ to the detriment of national – or in this case, republican – ones, accusing them of a ‘dual loyalty’, on the one hand to their ‘adopted’ country (in this case France) and on the other to their unshake-able ‘country of origin’, i.e. to Israel and the Jewish people. But what precisely did Tariq Ramadan mean by ‘communitarian’? In the article in question, he justified his position in the following terms:

The recent war in Iraq had a revealing effect. Intellectuals as different as Bernard Kouchner, André Glucksmann and Bernard-Henry Lévy, who had taken up courageous positions over Bosnia, Rwanda and Chechnya, curiously supported the US–British intervention in Iraq. We might wonder why their justifications so often seemed unfounded: to eliminate a dictator (why not earlier?), for the democratization of that country (why not Saudi Arabia?), etc. The United States certainly acted in support of its own interests, but we know that Israel supported the intervention and that Israeli military advisers were involved with the troops, as noted by British journalists who were present in the operations (Independent, 6 June 2003). We know that the architect of this operation in the Bush administration was Paul Wolfowitz, a well-known Zionist, who has never hidden his view that the fall of Saddam Hussein would offer Israel greater security as well as definite economic advantages.

According to Ramadan, the curious support of ‘French Jewish intellectuals’ for the US–British intervention in Iraq was explained by their support for the state of Israel. But beyond this, support for Israel was its ultimate origin, the proof of this being that the ‘architect’ of this military intervention was Paul Wolfowitz, a ‘well-known Zionist’, while American ‘interests’ are only introduced here by a concessionary ‘certainly’. Yet it seems just as rational, in terms of the American ‘interests’ at stake in Iraq, or more widely in the Persian Gulf, to envisage an exactly opposite hypothesis here: in other words, that the argument of ‘greater security’ for Israel was a rhetorical camouflage, while American political orientations were essentially based on exclusively national considerations that had nothing to do with Israeli national interest or the Zionist project. Suggesting that the positions taken on the Iraq intervention by ‘French Jewish intellectuals’ could be explained by their support for Israel, then explaining the intervention itself in terms of Israeli strategic interests, Ramadan thus informs us of what he understands by a ‘communitarian’ position, i.e. support of or identification with American foreign policy, on the understanding, it seems, that the United States is in the hands of the Jews, or at least those of the ‘well-known Zionist’ Paul Wolfowitz. And if I can accept Ramadan’s thesis – having myself noted and criticized a ‘communitarian’ drift on the part of a certain number of French intellectuals – this is with the qualification that I see this drift as having a quite different significance, since for me it is not a matter of denouncing the betrayal of ‘universalism’ to the benefit of Jewish particularism, but rather something quite different – America not yet being, as I see it, in the hands of Jews.² I should also explain that, if my own ‘list’ is not exactly the same as that suggested by Ramadan, the reason is the five authors I focus on here – Raphaël Draï, Shmuel Trigano, Alexandre Adler, Alain Finkielkraut and André Kaspi – by dint of their writings and in some cases their institutional responsibilities, seemed the best examples of ‘analyses increasingly oriented by a communitarian concern that tends to relativize the defence of universal principles of equality and justice’. But the prejudice that ascribes to this current of thought a ‘communitarian’ orientation, more precisely a Jewish or Zionist one, will be all the more confounded.³

RAPHAËL DRAÏ, SOUS LE SIGNE DE SION

Raphaël Draï’s^* book Sous le Signe de Sion. Le nouvel antisémitisme est arrivé (2001) was written – apart from its postscript – before the attacks of 11 September 2001, and focuses on the political situation in the Middle East, more precisely on the ‘Second Intifada’ launched in September 2000 following the failure of the Camp David negotiations, and its repercussions in France, particularly in the media, where Israel, in the view of the author, was the victim of a ‘thrashing’. The main interest of Draï’s text for us, and his own main object, was to provide the French reader with a Zionist perspective on the Israeli–Arab conflict, in a general context that the author sees as very hostile to Israel, if not openly anti-Semitic, given anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are strictly equivalent in his eyes. Draï’s position on what the ‘defence of Zionism’ means will form the starting-point of our analysis, but also a reference point in relation to which we shall display the shifts and slippages other so-called ‘communitarian’ analysts effect on this question. We shall therefore call this the position of the orthodox Zionist.

The first pronouncement of the orthodox zionist

Raphaël Draï expresses the position of the orthodox Zionist on the subject of the Israeli–American strategic alliance with a key phrase in his book, one that we have first of all to situate in its context. On pages 103–4 of Sous le signe de Sion, the author refers to ‘the investment of the Israeli-Arab conflict by the Western imaginary’, and the way in which, following its 1967 victory, Israel was presented ‘as a regional – even world – military superpower, against whom the Palestinians were represented as a population of destitute refugees subject to the pitiless yoke of their conquerors’ – this forming, according to the author, a ‘permutation’ and ‘transformation of roles’ in the Western and particularly the French imaginary, since it meant equating ‘the state of Israel with an illegitimate occupying power, fated sooner or later to be defeated, and the Palestinians with a form of resistance that irresistibly evoked Free France in the face of the Nazi occupation’. This reversal of positions is what the author calls ‘the substitution of Jewish by Palestinian victimhood’, i.e. the way in which the Palestinians came to occupy, in the Western, European and French imaginary, the position which had been that of the Jews during the Second World War – Jews who now as Israelis occupied the position of the Nazis, in other words that of a racist imperialism. And the author adds that this substitution in the victim role ‘was reinforced by all the schemas, slogans and stereotypes of the Cold War, of anti-colonialism and anti-American Third Worldism, under neo-Stalinist influence’. It is here that orthodox Zionist thought finds its key and distinctive formulation. In fact, if progressive anti-Zionism structurally identifies Israel and the United States, in other words reduces Zionism to a form of regional imperialism serving the interests of global imperialism (in the best of cases), there are then two distinct ways of rejecting this anti-Zionism: the first proposes a reversal of values, while the second sets out to refute this identification.

a) The reactionary reversal: this first path consists in validating the identification made by progressives between Israel and the United States, but reversing its axiology, so that imperialism becomes, in the non-progressive and reactionary discourse, civilization (civilization, human rights, international law, economic and social prosperity, etc.). Progressive and reactionary analyses agree in fact about this identification between Israel and the United States, i.e. in their common assumption. This is for example what the book by the Palestinian intellectual Camille Mansour, Israël et les États-Unis. Histoire d’une alliance stratégique (1995), seeks to explain, conferring on this identification the dignity of an argued and logical conclusion, since the main thesis of his book, at the end of his analysis, is that the strategic alliance between Israel and the United States is not ultimately based either, (1) on a coincidence of well-understood interests, or (2) on the ideological and moral issue represented by the ‘memory’ of Auschwitz, or (3) on a ‘communitarian’ American-Jewish lobbying – but on nothing less than a common cultural and ideological identity. And since everyone agrees about this, all that remains is to decide, depending on the ideological option chosen, whether this identity is politically imperialist or civilizing.

b) Refutation of the thesis of a cultural and ideological identity: this second route is precisely that of orthodox Zionism, in this case represented by Raphaël...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• ‘Anti-Semitism Everywhere’ in France Today
• The Philo-Semitic Reaction: The Treason of the Intellectuals
• Epilogue
• Notes