[Mb-civic] The thread of anti-Semitism - James Carroll - Boston Globe Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

  The thread of anti-Semitism

By James Carroll  |  April 3, 2006  |  The Boston Globe

IS CRITICISM of the state of Israel anti-Semitic? What is striking about 
this question is how it clings to discussion, like an impossible loose 
thread. Most observers, including defenders of Israel, answer in the 
negative, acknowledging that authentic concern for the plight of 
Palestinians under harsh occupation motivates much of the criticism. 
Objections to the land-grabbing character of the separation barrier, to 
intrusive settlement blocs, to unilateralism that eschews negotiations, 
to the embrace of a nuclear arsenal -- all of this reasonably informs 
arguments made against Israeli government positions (by Jews as well as 
non-Jews). But recent developments, including European critiques of 
Zionism as mere colonialism, American talk of a ''lobby" that carries 
echoes of ''cabal" (a word derived from kabbalah), and the return among 
Arabs of rhetoric calling for the outright elimination of Israel, 
suggest that contempt for Jews and the Jewish state can involve more 
than meets the eye.

Disputes enumerated above are just part of the story. Hostility to the 
very presence of Jews in the region between the Jordan River and the 
Mediterranean goes deep into the unconscious of Western civilization, 
and it is only recently that pins of that antagonism are being removed. 
One way to understand this is to review the history of a Christian 
theology that required the exile of Jews from the Holy Land precisely as 
a proof of religious claims. In his ''City of God," completed in about 
the year 427, St. Augustine argued that because Jews, as custodians of 
what Christians designated the ''Old Testament," are living witnesses to 
the ancient promises that are fulfilled in Jesus, they should be 
''scattered" from what he called ''their own land," to give such witness 
throughout the Christian world. It seems no coincidence that in 429 the 
Roman emperor, a Christian, abolished the patriarchate of Israel, ending 
Jewish sovereignty in Palestine until 1948.

The Augustinian principle of witness-scattering evolved into an 
understanding of Jewish exile as a proper punishment for Jewish 
rejection of Christian claims. It was only when a Muslim army took 
control of Jerusalem in 638 that Jews were permitted to return to the 
city of their temple. When Crusaders made war against Islam, laying 
siege to Jerusalem in 1099, they attacked Jews and Muslims both. Jewish 
presence in the holy city was an affront. Meanwhile, ''wandering" Jews 
throughout the Diaspora constructed an imagined homeland, always looking 
toward ''next year in Jerusalem" and faithfully praying for rain in the 
Galilee, even if they lived in the Rhineland.

In the late 19th century, coinciding with the rise of Zionism, some 
Christian evangelicals began to think positively about a Jewish return 
to the Holy Land, but only as a prelude to an End Time conversion. The 
DNA of mainstream Christianity remained infected with hostility to any 
notion of Jewish homecoming. When Theodor Herzl, founder of the Zionist 
World Congress, asked Pope Pius X to support his program in 1904, the 
pope replied that he could never sanction it. ''If you come to Palestine 
and settle your people there, we will be ready with churches and priests 
to baptize all of you."

Vatican reserve toward the State of Israel was overcome only in 1994, 
with Pope John Paul II's formal diplomatic recognition. His journey to 
Jerusalem in 2000 was very different from Pope Paul VI's insultingly 
brief pilgrimage to the Via Dolorosa in 1964. John Paul II's visit, 
lasting several days, was expressly an honoring of Jews at home in 
Israel, a culminating repudiation of the Christian theology that 
depended on Jewish exile. The establishment of the Jewish state was a 
triumph for Christians, too.

Remarkable as was John Paul II's achievement, and welcome as it was in 
Israel, what astounds is how overdue it was. Antagonism toward Jewish 
presence in Palestine dominated the Western imagination for 1,500 years. 
It should be no surprise, therefore, that contemporary suspicion of that 
presence, even when attached to reasonable objections to Israeli 
policies, shows itself with a visceral edge. Now the dark energy of this 
tradition has been efficiently tapped by many Muslims, even though its 
underlying theology is irrelevant to Islam. Any appropriation, including 
by Palestinians, of what has proven across centuries to be perhaps the 
most lethal impulse to which humans have ever succumbed must be roundly 
condemned.

Anti-Semitism, with its racial overtones, is a modern phenomenon. 
Contempt for Jews and Judaism is ancient. Such impossible threads weave 
invisibly through attempts to reckon with Israel's dilemma, forming a 
rope that trips up the well-intentioned and the unaware, even as others 
use it, as so often before, to fashion a noose.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/04/03/the_thread_of_anti_semitism/
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