Volume 4 No 1 - Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

122 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 4:115
affirmative action. 25 Nonetheless, it was challenged in the Israeli Supreme
Court successfully in the case of Ka’adan in 2000. 26
There are discriminatory or arguably discriminatory practices in virtually
every state. One can point to many other democratic states where
charges of discrimination are made and sometimes succeed in the courts.
Yet only Israel is called an apartheid state, and this despite its willingness
and ability to confront charges of discrimination head on and combat discriminatory
practices and policies.
D. CONNECTION TO ANTISEMITISM
While these assertions of rights that are not rights and wrongs that are
not wrongs is directed first against Israel, they have an impact on the Jewish
community worldwide. Demonization of Israel, the Jewish state, quickly
becomes demonization of the Jewish people for actual or presumed support
for the demonized Jewish state.
Anti-Zionists will make a distinction between Zionists and Jews. Jews
who join anti-Zionists in their denunciations of Israel are, to anti-Zionists,
perfectly all right. Yet, that is a distinction without much of a difference.
Zionism is the expression of the right to self-determination of the Jewish
people. The number of Jews who are prepared to join the anti-Zionist movement
is by the very nature of anti-Zionism—the refusal to accept for the
Jewish people a right that every other people has—inevitably small.
Natan Sharansky has decried the three “Ds”—demonization, double
standards, and delegitimization of Israel. While all these are at present with
the phenomena discussed here, there is a fourth element at play. The problem
is not just that universal standards are applied differently to Israel. It is
rather that whole new categories of rights and wrongs are developed to
apply only to Israel. Rights are created that only Israel has to respect;
wrongs are created that only Israel inflicts.
Is this antisemitism? To answer this question, one has to consider how
the meaning of antisemitism has itself evolved. Antisemitism is a term that
was developed by the perpetrator community but has since been adopted by
the victim community. The term antisemitism was originally developed by
antisemites. Antisemitism means literally being opposed to Semitism. Semitism,
to Wilhelm Marr and his League of Anti-Semites, was something
wrong. They saw themselves in the right by opposing it.
The trouble with this opposition was that the Semitism that they
opposed—a Jewish conspiracy to take over Germany and the world—did
25. Judgment of President Barak, para. 24.
26. Ka’adan v. Israel Land Authority, CA 6698/95.