Here is Howard Jacobson’s major piece in The Indpendent on contemporary antisemitism.
Here are a number of responses published in the Independent.
Here is Caryl Churchill’s defence of her play against Howard Jacobson’s criticism.
Here is Jacqueline Rose’s defence of Churchill.
This is a guest post by Saul:
In her recent post on the Guardian’s Comment is Free – “Why Jacobson is wrong” – Jacqueline Rose offers (perhaps unwittingly) an important concession to those who, like Engage, have been noting for some time the presence of antisemitism within much (but, by no means all) “criticism” of Israel., but which has more often than not been denied by others.
In this post, she writes,
In 2006, Olmert said of the 2006 Lebanese war: “This is a war fought for all the Jews.” For those of us who reject this claim, it is imperative for Jews to speak out against Israel‘s actions towards the Palestinians. Not to do so is to allow the belief to go unchallenged that Israel‘s worst actions are being conducted in the name of all Jews. It is this belief, rather than criticism of Israel, that fuels antisemitism today and, in fact, weakens the fight against it.
Antisemitism, she tells us is “fuelled” not so much by Israel’s acts and actions, but by its claim to speak in the name of “all Jews”. For Rose, therefore, antisemitism is not only present but, by implication, cannot but attach to “criticism” of Israel. On this point I believe she is 100% right.
Where I part company, however, is her view that Israel’s claim to act in the name of “all Jews” should be taken at face-value and, following from this, her further belief that it is incumbent of Jews to “speak out” against Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.
All nation-states claim to speak for all their “nationals”. The USA speaks in the name of “Americans everywhere”; Britain in the name of all those who share “British values”; Iran in the name of “all Muslims”, and Israel in the name of “all Jews”. This phenomenon is an accepted, if clichéd, part of the rhetoric of national identity and national unity. In most cases, of course, no one takes it at all seriously. Everyone knows that when Bush or Obama speaks in the name of “all Americans” it does not reflect reality; when Thatcher, Blair or Brown spoke in the name of all “Britains”, it only takes a moment’s self-reflection to realise that that is not the case, never has been the case and never will be the case. When it comes to Israel, however, this rhetorical trope comes to be taken literally. When the Prime Minister of Israel (and leader of a particular political party) says that Israel speaks in the name of “all Jews” it is to be taken so seriously that empirical and verifiable evidence be demanded that this is not the case. For Rose, this evidence is to be provided by Jews “speaking out”.
Leaving aside her mistaken belief that Jews are the cause of antisemitism – Jews are never responsible for antisemitism, antisemites are – a paradox lurks at the core of her comments. Her argument appears to identify an unmediated and natural link between Jewish “bad behaviour” (in this case, the Jewish state’s maltreatment of the Palestinians in the name of “all Jews”) and antisemitism (hostility to Jews elsewhere, for example the UK). It is as if she believes that unless Jews behave themselves or conduct themselves to the requisite level of “acceptable behaviour”, then those non-Jews with whom they live will suddenly “turn” on the Jews, will suddenly become, instinctively, “antisemitic”. It is inevitable as night follows day.
The paradox, of course, is that this idea of a natural hatred of Jews by non-Jews, a hatred that can be triggered merely Jewish “bad behaviour” was precisely one of the leading beliefs of early Zionism and which appeared to some (and not only Zionists and Jews) to be proved beyond doubt by the reality of the Shoah.
It is ironic that at the same time that Rose calls upon Israel to “trust” its neighbours Rose herself seems to be unwilling or unable to trust those amongst whom she lives in the Diaspora. The reality is, of course, that non-Jews are not all “latent” antisemites, their hatred buried in a shallow-grave just beneath the surface merely awaiting some Jewish act to bring forth their “natural” aggressive and hostile selves.
It is true that antisemites claim to speak in the name of “all gentiles”, but, who In their right mind actually believes it?
Saul
Engage 
February 26, 2009 at 3:36 pm
“Seven Jewish Children is not a diatribe. Instead, it offers a set of voices in pained dialogue with each other about how to tell a child an unbearable history. Its central refrain is “Tell her”, “Don’t tell her”. It therefore stages for its audience the vexed question of how adults, in the very words they use, can best fulfil their responsibilities towards the next generation at a time of historical crisis. What story should be told? War hardens language as well as hearts. In this context, to allow the speakers such anguished uncertainty is a gift. In its final scene – which is shocking, as Churchill herself describes it – the crude rhetoric of war has won. This is a tragedy.”
Nonsense. Caryl Churchill is the anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian Prosecution. She is not entitled to thereby represent the Defence in its own behalf, at least not without escaping the charge of hypocrisy -that is, wearing a mask.
She, as does Rose, appears to fulfil Marx’ ironic injunction, quoted by Edward W. Said in his preface to Orientalism:
“They cannot represent themselves, they must be represented.”
Howard Jacobson is, in my view at least, superior both as author and advocate to either Caryl Churchill or Jacquelin Rose. For my part, the pro-Israel Defence would and should politely decline both ladies’ services.
By all means hold a debate, where both parties may represent themselves. But for the Prosecution to represent the Defence for it is hypocrisy, not merely in the technical sense of “wearing a mask”, that is “the mask of the classical actor”, but “wearing the mask of fair or disinterested representation”.
That is not Tragedy: that is polemic through the medium of drama i.e. art as propaganda. And it is unfortunate a professor in an academic English department blesses it.
February 26, 2009 at 4:16 pm
Jacqueline Rose invents ingenuous and not so ingenuous argument against Israel.
Whenever one of her arguments like the one she made in her book on Zionism that Herzl and Hitler attended the same opera in Vienna is rebutted she claims that she wasn’t speaking literally.
Moreover, she never extends the claims she makes about Jews’ that they were traumatized by the Holocaust to herself. It’s only those people she disagrees with that are the problem.
Her notion that Israel claims to speak for all Jews is also specious as Saul has shown. However, it should also be pointed out that Ms. Rose does something worse than speak for all Jews she speaks about all Jews.
Her penchant for generalizations is invalidates much of what she says.
February 26, 2009 at 4:22 pm
“In this context, to allow the speakers such anguished uncertainty is a gift.”
This truly is the egoism of the author: the assumption that her poetic creations are indistinguishable from the reality they purport to represent. As though how and why Churchill represents that reality is separate from her (quite explicit, actually) pro-Palestinian Christian and Muslim nationalist, anti-Israeli and/or Zionist agenda. As a thorough-going Saidian post-modernist, Rose above all knows the political circumstances in which literature or art is composed. And, with regard to that she analyses as “Zionist”, professedly so or otherwise, she is at pains to remark it.
If “Zionist” representations of Palestinian Christians and Muslims are acceptible as art or history only with qualification, why are pro-Palestinian Christian and Muslim nationalist representations of Israeli, Palestinian or “Zionist” Jews not open to the same criticism?
Tragedy allows even the villain the fairest possible say, their case to be presented as sympathetically as possible. But in a situation where the Defence has a voice, it can object to any Judge, or Critic (for Krite^s means “Judge”), that the Prosecution is misrepresenting, again by omission as well as commission. The Prosecution’s Tragedy is not nec
February 26, 2009 at 6:11 pm
Nice post Saul. Good to see you posting above the responses.
February 26, 2009 at 11:57 pm
Yet again someone blames the victim: explicitly Rose (as Saul notes), who very much should know better, as a psychologist. Isn’t her approach a version of projection? What _is_ her problem with Jews, Jewishness and Israel? And if Zionism is a psychological disorder, what does she make of Islamism and Jihadist thought? And if she doesn’t reach the same conclusion for those doctrines as she does for Zionism, to say the least, her analysis is seriously flawed.
At least this time she doesn’t _quite_ “speak-as-a-jew”.
March 9, 2009 at 1:16 am
The problem seems to me to be this: why, if a critical attitude towards Israel is anti-semitic, do so many Jews subscribe to such an attitude? It is indeed strange; it is hard to find records of African Americans defending slavery, or of black South Africans defending apartheid. The answer seems to me simple. Those Jews who criticise Israel are people who are broad minded enough to respect justice and human rights above narrow group loyalties. Every people has such individuals. The Jews should be proud to boast so many.