(Jewish Group) A Dishonest Fallacy: Israels Occupation Isn't Why anti-Semitisms Spiking

[Behind the Aegis]

THIS IS THE JEWISH GROUP!!!

Identifying anti-Semitism and working out how to challenge and overcome it is no easy task, but in more than two decades of work and study in this field I’ve come up with one simple rule: Don’t mimic the anti-Semites you're fighting.

At least, you’d think this is a simple rule; but British writer and activist Tony Klug fell straight into this trap when he wrote recently in Haaretz (If Israel's Occupation Doesn't End, Anti-Semitism Worldwide Will Rise to Sinister Heights) of an acquaintance who, he claimed, said to him: "I thought an anti-Semite was someone who hated Jews, not someone whom Jews hated.”

I first heard Klug use this line two months ago, at a conference on Zionism and anti-Semitism held in London by the Pears Institute for the Study of Anti-Semitism. You can hear Klug make the comment here, followed by some laughter and applause. (Full disclosure: I am an Associate Research Fellow of the Pears Institute, on its Advisory Group and spoke at the same conference as Klug, but I had no role in the planning or organization of that conference).

However, this wasn’t the first time I’d heard the line itself, because for many years it was one of David Irving’s favorite jokes. He would tell it in his speeches to audiences of anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers, and he usually got a much bigger laugh than Klug did.

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This advice could apply to so many groups!