ABSTRACT
Norman Geras explores the undermining of the long affinity between Jews and the left by a new climate of antisemitic opinion within parts of the left. In particular, he explores how Israel is standardly invoked as an alibi to deflect the charge that there is anything of antisemitism at work. Contra Marx’s genuine universalism, which considered at the level of the global arena points to a commitment to the right to national self-determination, parts of the left now espouse a spurious type of universalism for the Jews, held to be special amongst other groups in being obliged to settle for forms of political freedom in which their identity may not be asserted collectively. Geras distinguishes between reasonable criticism of Israeli policies and the animus directed at Israel today that is, he contends, of a plainly antisemitic character, relying on anti-Jewish stereotypes. He gives examples of four types of ‘alibi antisemitism’ found today on parts of the left, each of which leaves antisemitism ignored, denied or excused: the treatment of antisemitism as an ‘understandable’ epiphenomenon of the Israel–Palestine conflict; as non-existent in the absence of clear and deliberate subjective antisemitic intent; as mere programmatic rhetoric, also understandable and so not to be treated as in earnest; and lastly, as something one is politically obliged to turn a blind eye to. The result of these four forms of complicity, Geras argues, is a moral scandal: the return to respectability of antisemitic themes and ruses within polite society and within the perimeters of a self-flattering liberal and left opinion.
