Dave Rich is Deputy Director of Communications at the Community Security Trust. CST is a registered charity.
Writing in today’s Jewish Chronicle, Dave Rich provides what he calls a guide to ‘Jew-hate for the perplexed.’ It is impossible to take seriously the views of someone that believes Naz Shah’s satirical Facebook post (shared via American Jewish scholar, Norman Finkelstein’s website) was tantamount to
Endorsing the mass deportation of its citizens – ethnic cleansing, effectively and denying the legitimacy of Jewish sovereignty in the region.
By using the term ‘Jewish sovereignty‘ he – unwittingly – underlines the reality of Israel as an ethnic-supremacist state, like Apartheid-era South Africa.
Rich divides language used to criticise Israel into two types: he reluctantly concedes that although the first type used to criticise Israel, involving ‘human rights,’ ‘discrimination,’ and ‘inequality’ is ‘inaccurate,’ it is more likely to be legitimate.
The second type, he writes, ‘is the reservoir of antisemitic ideas that lies deep in Europe’s culture.’ As an example, he cites the alleged use of “Zio” by members of the Oxford University Labour Club. Electronic Intifada’s investigation concluded that cases of antisemitism at OULC were fabricated.
Rich claims ‘Zio’ is a term ‘only used by people who are hostile to Zionism’:
Jewish students do not call each other “Zio” as a term of endearment…. “Zio” is a derogatory term used in an abusive and bigoted way.
He dismisses the idea that it is ‘simply an abbreviation of “Zionist” with no further meaning.’ He is correct to observe that the term is pre-dominantly (though not exclusively) used by those critical of political Zionism, particularly on Twitter. But his fixation on the abbreviation of ‘Zionist’ serves to obscure his central argument: that it must never be used in a pejorative way. On this, he is in agreement with Momentum’s Jon Lansman.
Whether from the reactionary right or the ‘progressive’ left, the message is the same: critics of the Zionist project of settler-colonialism should treat the term with undeserved reverence. As we have argued, Zionist is a ‘term of abuse’ because Zionism itself is abusive.
Its defenders have turned a descriptor of a political ideology into a sacred term. They might protest they are simply calling for debate to be conducted in a more ‘civilised’, respectful way, but in putting the term off-limits, they are grouping together robust – and yes, sometimes angry and confrontational – political discourse with racially discriminatory language. Indeed that is their objective: to associate modern anti-Zionism with an ancient and institutionalised prejudice towards Jews.
