You have to hand it to the United Nations, I guess. It’s hard to think of another body that would organize a special meeting on the subject of rising anti-Semitism with anti-Semites not just in attendance, but making speeches as well.
The Jan. 22 meeting on the subject at the UN General Assembly, organized in the run-up to International Holocaust Remembrance Day, started well enough. The keynote speaker was French philosopher and author Bernard-Henri Levy, who used the occasion to mount a forthright denunciation of what he called “the delirium of anti-Zionism.”
Levy explained that there were three key aspects to the current upsurge of anti-Semitism: the demonization of Israel as an illegitimate state, the denial of the Holocaust, and what he described as “the modern scourge of competitive victimhood,” whereby Jewish efforts to commemorate the Holocaust are scorned as an attempt to belittle the sufferings of other nations.
For good measure, Levy also expertly dispensed with some of the myths that surround the current debate on anti-Semitism, notably the contention that Jew-hatred would go away if only the Palestinians had a state of their own.
But did Levy’s message – essentially, that anti-Zionism, the denial of the right of national self-determination to the Jewish people, is the principal pillar upon which today’s anti-Semitism rests – get through?
Sadly, it didn’t. After Levy left the podium, we were treated to a seemingly endless stream of anodyne statements from the various delegations, with a couple of noble exceptions – Israeli ambassador to the UN Ron Prosor, who had the guts to say that anti-Semitism “can even be found in the halls of UN, disguised as humanitarian concern,” and American ambassador to the UN Samantha Power, who reminded those delegates sitting in the General Assembly that Holocaust denial remains a staple of official media across the Middle East and North Africa.
The lasting impression, however, was left by Arab and Muslim delegates, most of whom pushed the insidious myth that because the Palestinians are “Semites,” they cannot be anti-Semitic. As far as I’m aware, no one countered these remarks by pointing out that first, there is no such nationality or ethnicity as a “Semite,” and second, that the term “anti-Semitism” was devised by anti-Semites to give their loathing of the Jews scientific respectability.
It got worse, though. Imagine a meeting about segregation in the Deep South, with one speaker paying tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and another pointing out that these uncivilized descendants of African slaves bore the lion’s share of the blame for the racism heaped upon them, and you’ll have some idea of what the delegate from the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) – Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the UN, Abdallah Al-Moualimi – had to say on the topic of anti-Semitism.
“Occupation itself is an anti-Semitic act, because it threatens humankind and human rights,” he said. “The persecution of the Palestinian people and the denial of their human rights – this is also an example of anti-Semitism.”
In listening to the denial of the historical nature of anti-Semitism as a form of prejudice targeting Jews, I and everyone else in that room witnessed an act of, well, anti-Semitism.
Nobody walked out or protested (although when I muttered my own disgust, a few people turned around and gave me glaring looks). And this seemed to me to underline Prosor’s point: that not only does anti-Semitism stalk the halls of the UN. but that we expect nothing else.
Why, then, bother trying to engage the UN as a partner in the fight against anti-Semitism? Why agree to meetings in which the imperative of protecting Jews is compromised by the presence of those determined to insult them? Why put up with obligatory mentions of “Islamophobia” – a term that doesn’t refer to bigotry against Muslims but seeks to silence those who offer theological critiques of Islam as a faith – in order to balance out all these references to anti-Semitism?