A feather in our cap

The American Jewish Committee has just released the results of their 2009 Annual Survey of American Jewish Opinion to the acclaim of David Harris, Executive Director of the AJC, in his Jerusalem Post blog.  Slagging off ‘surveys sponsored by right-wing or left-wing groups...

These ideologically-driven organizations always magically find polling outfits, construct questions, and present data that somehow undergird their preconceived views...

Enter AJC's Annual Survey of American Jewish Opinion. No doctrinal axe to grind, no effort to tilt the questions, no desire to withhold "inconvenient" results.

Last year, the AJC reduced the sample size for their survey from 1000 to 800, implausibly claiming the same 3 percentage point margin of error.  At the same time, they also reduced the question set from 38 questions to 15, unconscionably interrupting the time series I had so laboriously constructed for several questions. 

This year, they have retained the reduced sample size but reintroduced some of the old questions, along with a few new ones.  Lest anyone accuse me of cherry picking, I’d better go through all 21.  I might just mention in passing, though, that both Harris’s blog post and the AJC press release claim that ‘there's little difference in attitudes towards Middle East matters among the various generational cohorts’.  If they can disaggregate the responses by age, it’s a variable they must have collected, but have declined to report.  So while there may be no desire to withhold inconvenient results, they have actually withheld some significant results, which can only make you wonder what else they have kept to themselves.

The poll begins with three new questions,

1. How would you characterize relations between Israel and the United States today? Are they very positive, somewhat positive, somewhat negative, or very negative?

2. Do you approve or disapprove of the Obama Administration’s handling of US-Israel relations?

3. Do you approve or disapprove of the Netanyahu government’s handling of Israel-US relations?

Like so many questions in AJC and other opinion polls, whatever little information you may be able to extract is ambiguous, contingent upon how you believe respondents interpreted it.  When the survey went into the field, 30 August to 17 September, it was already clear that Israeli PM Netanyahu had absolutely no intention of humouring Obama’s insistence on a freeze in settlement construction.  In that context, some may have felt Israeli defiance was a positive development, some that Obama’s humiliating retreat was positive, some that it was positive that he put on a show of confronting the Israeli government in the first place.  Others might have thought the very same things evidenced negative relations, whatever that means.  A wide variety of other aspects of the relationship could have struck respondents as positive or negative, depending on factors they were not asked about.  For what it’s worth, 81% said relations were positive, 54% approved of Obama, and 59% of Bibi.

A fourth new question was slightly less ambiguous than most AJC questions,

4. Do you agree or disagree with the Obama Administration’s call for a stop to all new Israeli settlement construction?

If we assume that respondents believe that new settlement construction has nothing to do with expansion of the matrix of control over the population of the West Bank and is simply an effort to provide accommodation for younger generations born in the settlements, then it’s possible that the 51% who disagreed just think it would be unfair to force the Jewish settlers to live in more crowded conditions than they’re accustomed to, or to move their young families into ‘Israel proper’. It goes without saying that the AJC neglected to ask how American Jews felt about the restrictions on issue of building permits to accommodate the natural increase among Palestinians in the West Bank, in Jerusalem, or in ‘Israel proper’, nor about the home demolitions and evictions. 

Of course we know that settlement expansion is not just about natural growth. According to the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics’s Statistical abstract of Israel 2009 (Table 2.4), 31% of the population growth in ‘Judea and Samaria’ of 14,000 in 2008, was due to migration – 700 immigrants and 3900 internal migrants.  The ICBS itself attributes only 69% to ‘Natural increase’.  In 2007, migrants accounted for 37% of the increase.  Since the data don’t disaggregate the areas of the Jerusalem District occupied in 1967, I have excluded it.

Yet another new question asks,

5. As compared with one year ago, are you more optimistic about the chance for a lasting peace between Israel and the Arabs, less optimistic, or do you think the chance for a lasting peace is about the same as it was one year ago?

This is even less informative than a typical AJC question without considering it together with a question about how they felt last year.  We don’t know what the 2009 sample thought about the long term prospects for peace last year, but we do know how the 2008 sample answered a question the AJC has been asking since 2006,

10. Do you think there will or will not come a time when Israel and its Arab neighbors will be able to settle their differences and live in peace?

It’s a different sample of course and it’s kind of bodgy to compare percentages of percentages, but since that’s all the AJC has given us to work with, it turns out that 38% last year said that they thought there will come such a time and 56% that it will not.  Among this year’s sample, 43% said there will and 51% there will not.  So 13% more of this year’s sample said there will come a time and 9% fewer said there won’t.  So you might expect some 22% to say they feel more optimistic and 78% to say they felt the same.  In fact, only 12% were more optimistic, 23% less optimistic, and 65% the same as one year ago.  They are not the same people, but if the samples were truly as representative as the pollsters claim, it shouldn’t matter.  Of course, it’s possible that people discerned that they were more optimistic, while still thinking peace unlikely, and vice versa.  Ultimately, the two variables aren’t strictly compatible.  It’s not that the answers are inconsistent with each other, it’s that the respondents can make very fine measurements of their level of optimism.

Closely related to these two questions is Question 9, asked every year since 2000, except 2008,

9. Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? “The goal of the Arabs is not the return of occupied territories but rather the destruction of Israel.”

It is, I suppose, mildly encouraging that with 75% agreeing, this has fallen to its lowest level since 2001, seven points below the proportion who agreed in 2007 and below the 78% average over the nine observations.  That means that 28% of the sample who believe ‘the Arabs’ aim to destroy Israel also think that they will someday settle their differences with Israel and live in peace.  Anyone familiar with Zionist discourse will find contradictions like this unsurprising.  Furthermore, as I mentioned in 2007,

What this question does above all else is invite the respondent to buy into racism. By refusing to specify whether ‘the Arabs’ are ‘the moderate Arab states’, the PA, the Palestinians in general, Arabs in general, or whatever, the question’s framers force the respondent to accept the racist presupposition that ‘the Arabs’ are of one mind. They are duplicitous in pretending to demand the return of the territories occupied in 1967, but in reality, they are bent on Israel’s destruction, a second Holocaust. Again, we can’t really tell much about those who disagreed without knowing why they did so. But it’s pretty clear that those who agreed were prepared to accept those assumptions.

Just imagine a poll asking,

Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? “The goal of the Jews is not the establishment of a viable Palestinian state but rather the annexation of all of historic Palestine.”

The AJC would be among the first to excoriate the pollsters for their blatant antisemitism.  And rightly so.

The last question concerning the prospects for peace, which has featured in the last three iterations of the survey, is,

11. Do you think that Israel can or cannot achieve peace with a Hamas-led Palestinian government?

The proportion saying Israel cannot achieve peace with Hamas has risen by 11 percentage points from 2008 to 79%, the highest level in the three years the question was asked.

I assume that the reference to a ‘Palestinian government’ is just lazy shorthand for a Hamas majority in the Palestinian National Authority, a strictly administrative body whose mandate under the Oslo accords to police designated areas of the West Bank on the occupier’s behalf was to have expired in 1999.  Still, by calling it a government, the question invites the respondent to think of the PA as a separate country that can treat with Israel on the basis of some sort of equality.  And it is an important component of Israeli propaganda to represent Israel and the Palestinians, who are always assumed to be just the minority of Palestinians who happen to reside in the West Bank and Gaza, as adversaries.  When couched in these terms, liberals can comfortably demand evenhandedness in treatment of the two sides, recognise that each has hurt the other, that each has suffered at the other’s hands, and that each ought to be willing to make painful sacrifices and compromise in the interests of peace.  Explicitly recognising that Israel is the coloniser and the occupier would undermine such conceits and raise the spectre of recognising the Palestinians’ right to resist.

By asking whether Israel ‘can achieve peace’, the question further demands that the respondent accept that peace is Israel’s objective, that it is something Israel aspires to and is exerting itself to bring to fruition.  There’s no point in reciting the litany of offers of peace, including recent ones from Hamas, that Israel has ignored or rebuffed.  I think it will suffice to mention the siege imposed on the suffering people of Gaza and the shower of white phosphorous and whatnot that Israel treated them to earlier this year with the explicit aim of annihilating Hamas and the ‘infrastructure of terror’, like schools, hospitals, prisons, government buildings, warehouses, factories, farms, orchards, mosques, houses, power plants, and so forth, to evidence just how hard Israel is trying to achieve peace with Hamas.

Harris writes that American Jews, ‘understand that if peace with the Palestinians is to be achieved, it will require two states’.  Now understand is another one of those ‘factive verbs’, like recognise, that presuppose the truth of the content of the that clause.  So if American Jews understand that ‘it will require two states’, then it must really require two states.  Apart from deploying a slimy rhetorical trick, therefore, Harris reveals his own preconception and ‘doctrinal axe to grind’.

Four questions bear on the respondents’ view of the two state ‘solution’.  The first, an old standby, but a casualty of last year’s cull, returns this year.

6. In the current situation, do you favor or oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state?

This year, 49% favoured a Palestinian state, three percentage points more than in 2007 and below the average of 52% over the eight years they were asked, while 41% opposed it, two points less than 2007 and just over the 40% average.

But as I wrote in 2007, the last time they asked,

What’s interesting about the question, however, is not the numbers, but the wording, ‘In the current situation, do you favor or oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state?’ Without additional information, the answers to such a question don’t tell us very much. Some respondents may favour establishment of a Palestinian state from the Jordan to the Mediterranean. Others may favour a series of disconnected bantustans whose borders, airspace, port, communications infrastructure, etc. are under Israeli control. Some of those opposed may prefer a single democratic secular state throughout historic Palestine, or the annexation of the West Bank and Gaza to Israel and the expulsion of the remaining non Jewish population. So it is not at all obvious that favouring establishment of a Palestinian state is necessarily a progressive view, or that opposing it is not. In fact, even if it were safe to assume that all respondents understood the question the same way, as something like the Geneva initiative, with a return to more or less the Green Line and a ‘symbolic’ gesture towards justice for the refugees, that is a long way from progressive. As I’ve discussed before, it entails accepting that ethnic cleansing and terrorism are acceptable nation building strategies, that territory can legitimately be acquired by force of arms, that refugees deserve permanent exile and statelessness, that it’s ok to privilege one group over another on the basis of religion or ethnicity, and other positions that are prima facie anti progressive.

To understand what the opinions about the establishment of a Palestinian state mean, I would have liked to see answers to questions about the refugee issue, about Israel’s status as a Jewish state, whether a Jewish state can be democratic, the status of the Israeli Arabs, ‘targetted assassinations’, checkpoints, the boycott of Hamas and the siege of Gaza, the bypass roads, the future of the ‘large settlement blocs’, (In 2005, the last time they asked the question, 36% opposed dismantling any West Bank settlements, the highest ever and up seven points from 29% in 2004.), the construction and route of the wall (In 2006, 73% supported ‘the Israeli government's decision to build the security fence separating Israelis and Palestinians?’, up from 69% the previous year.), among other things. In particular, I’m interested in the proportion of US Jews who subscribe to views that I would define as Zionist, that is, who believe that a state that privileges Jews is acceptable. But I wasn’t really expecting them to ask that. I think it is clear from the phrasing of other questions, the ‘destruction of Israel’ question in particular, that those framing these questions simply assumed that it went without saying that all respondents do hold such views. It would be frightening, but not really surprising, if they are right.

Question 7 has been part of the AJC questionnaire since 2000, apart from last year.

7. In the framework of a permanent peace with the Palestinians, should Israel be willing to compromise on the status of Jerusalem as a united city under Israeli jurisdiction?

This year, 37% said yes, one point less than in 2007 and below the nine year average of 40%, while 58% said no, above the average of 55%, and 6% weren’t sure.

As I wrote last time,

Like most of the questions in the AJC survey, there are problems with the wording. To begin with, it rests on the assumption that ‘a permanent peace with the Palestinians’ is conceivable without a capital of the Palestinian state, whatever its configuration, in al Quds. And that already betrays further assumptions – that ‘the Palestinians’ means the PA; that anyone purporting to represent ‘the Palestinians’ could negotiate sovereignty over Jerusalem, that ‘peace’ means simply the end of all resistance. Furthermore, the question assumes that it would be a compromise for Israel to relinquish sovereignty, when not even the US recognises Israel’s annexation of Jerusalem. Anyway, the answers to this question do shed a little light on the Palestinian state question.

Specifically, if all of the 41% who oppose establishing a Palestinian state and all of the 1% who weren’t sure and all of the 9% whose response the AJC has not tabulated, presumably refusals, also said Israel should not compromise on Jerusalem, that means that a minimum of 7% of those who favour a Palestinian state want that state to exclude any part of Jerusalem, suggesting that the Palestinian state they envision falls short even of the miserly Arab peace plan or the Geneva initiative. 

The next question, which the questionnaire included from 2001 until 2005 and again this year, asks,

8. As part of a permanent settlement with the Palestinians, should Israel be willing to dismantle all, some, or none of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank?

As with the Jerusalem question, this one rests on the assumption that there is some conceivable permanent resolution to ‘the conflict’ that would leave Jewish settlers in occupation of a portion of the sliver of territory east of the Green Line.  This is of course consistent with the principal partition proposals, which envisage land swaps to compensate the Palestinian state for the land Israel would annex in the West Bank for the facts on the ground.

A significant proportion – 37% — want to retain all of the settlements.  To be honest, it wouldn’t surprise me if some of these actually believe that position is consistent with establishing a Palestinian state.  It’s virtually inconceivable that any of the 8% of American Jews who told the AJC that they were prepared to countenance dismantling all of the settlements were among the 41% who oppose partition.  Another 52% said it would be ok to dismantle some of them.  That’s a larger proportion than the 49% who said they favoured establishing a Palestinian state, so even if I’m wrong about the ones who would dismantle all the settlements, there are still some in the sample who think Israel should be willing to dismantle some settlements even though they oppose partition.  Which makes you wonder why they want to dismantle settlements.  I can only speculate that they may harbour some resentment towards some particular group of settlers, perhaps because they’re too secular, or not secular enough?

One of the ironies of positions that Israel should retain control of all of Jerusalem, or all or some of the settlements, is the assumption that after the UN allocated 55% of historic Palestine to the Jewish state in the 1947 partition resolution and after Zionist forces captured and annexed an additional 23% in 1948, it is Israel that would be compromising if it were to relinquish control of part of what it annexed in 1967.  Those who, like Nobel Peace Laureate Barak Obama, say, ‘Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided’, are comfortable with Israel conquering territory by force and annexing it permanently. 

The last question about the partition agreement is brand new,

12. Should the Palestinians be required or not be required to recognize Israel as a Jewish state in a final peace agreement?

On the face of it, you’d think this was evidence of Harris’s assertion that the AJC has ‘no desire to withhold "inconvenient" results’, because this requirement, supported by a whopping 94% of the sample, is a true showstopper.  And yet, when he writes in his blog

The most decisive response: 94 percent of those surveyed believe that the Palestinians must recognize Israel as a Jewish state in the context of a final peace agreement.

you’d think he didn’t even realise that this requirement was a serious, probably insuperable, obstacle to any kind of agreement with the Palestinians.  Not that it’s contentious or anything – it was, after all, one of the principal demands of The Quartet whose Road Map peace plan has enjoyed so much success.  Furthermore, as I’ve argued before, partition of Palestine actually presupposes the existence of a Jewish state because ultimately the whole point of creating a separate Palestinian state is to preserve the Jewish character and Jewish majority in Israel. 

But to recognise Israel as a Jewish state implies accepting the legitimacy of Israel’s foundation as such, which required the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous inhabitants to establish the required sustainable Jewish majority, effectively relinquishing the refugees’ right to return.  It is certainly not out of the question that some unrepresentative quisling Palestinian administration, like the current Abbas regime, might be prepared to humiliate itself even further by selling out the refugees and the Palestinian Israelis to retain control of some rump Palestinian state and the lucrative perks that go with being the big fish in a small pond.  But that’s not a position widely favoured among Palestinians.

The 29 September AJC press release announcing the results of the survey quotes Harris,

“AJC surveys have consistently shown that American Jews yearn for Arab-Israeli peace, and back compromise through negotiations, but remain skeptical of Arab intentions, and disheartened by a tough environment in the Middle East, especially with Arab refusal to recognize Israel’s very legitimacy,” Harris said.

In reality, the questions in this year’s survey, as in previous iterations’, provide evidence for only one of these assertions – that American Jews are sceptical of Arab intentions.  If you assume with Harris that establishing a Palestinian state has some prospect of delivering peace in historic Palestine, then all we can say with any confidence is that less than half of American Jews favour that, and most of them wouldn’t even go that far if it doesn’t involve the humiliation of the Palestinians by forcing them to accept the legitimacy of their dispossession.   And many don’t yearn for peace enough to support withdrawing from the territory conquered in 1967.  I think what he means is that they yearn for ‘calm’, the media euphemism for a situation where Israel persists in building settlements, restricting movement, demolishing homes, shooting protesters, committing extrajudicial executions notwithstanding ‘collateral damage’ and Palestinians don’t react.  Their yearning for peace extends to Israeli Jews.  And if that’s what he thinks, he may be right, but the AJC survey hasn’t asked any questions that would support it.

Only 8% of the sample, the lowest proportion in the six years they’ve asked, were prepared to compromise to the extent of dismantling all of the settlements, which can only mean that they reject withdrawal behind the Green Line.  Over the six years they’ve asked, the average proportion was 11%, peaking at 15% in 2005.  As in each of eight previous surveys, a majority won’t even consider ‘compromise’ on part of Jerusalem, with an average of 55% rejecting it.  And hardly any of them would compromise on recognition.  So it’s not at all obvious how he arrives at his conclusion that American Jews ‘back compromise’. 

In 2000, 59% said they supported the Israeli government’s handling of ‘negotiations with the Arabs’.  Between 2001 and 2004, majorities of between 60% and 63% agreed ‘Regardless of their individual views on the peace negotiations with the Arabs, American Jews should support the policies of the duly elected government of Israel’.  Then in 2007, 55% said they thought ‘negotiations between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas cannot lead to peace in the foreseeable future’.  And that’s all we know about American Jews’ views on negotiations from the Annual Survey of American Jewish Opinion.  On this basis, I couldn’t claim that ‘AJC surveys have consistently shown that American Jews back compromise through negotiations’ without significant embarrassment.

On the whole it would appear that David Harris is unconcerned with presenting data that somehow undergirds his preconceived views.  His preconceived views are independent of and impervious to his own data.

Moving right along, the survey goes on to ask three questions about the most pressing issue for American Jews, for Israel, and well, for everybody,

13. Do you approve or disapprove of the Obama Administration’s handling of the Iran nuclear issue?

A plurality of 49% approve, 35% disapprove, and 15% aren’t sure.  As usual, there’s a hidden agenda.  To answer the question requires respondents to accept that there is some Iran nuclear issue.  The Iran nuclear issue is not that Iran has built uranium enrichment facilities, including one it has just announced it is constructing near Qom, in strict accordance with their obligations as a party to the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty, that the IAEA and the US ‘intelligence’ community can find no evidence of any intention to develop a nuclear weapons capability despite the most intrusive inspection regime anywhere and despite imminent threats of attack by both the global and the regional superpowers.  No.  That wouldn’t be it.  The Iran nuclear issue is that the fanatical mullahs, determined to exterminate all Jews even at the price of their own obliteration, are on the verge of producing two deliverable nuclear warheads with the inadequately enriched uranium it has stockpiled.  It goes without saying there is no India nuclear issue and no Pakistan nuclear issue, at least not yet, much less an Israel nuclear issue or a US, UK, or France nuclear issue.

In their yearning for peace, only 56% support ‘the United States taking military action against Iran to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons’ (Q14) and just 66% support Israel doing so (Q15).

The next two questions seem designed to undermine confidence that the respondents possess any grasp on reality whatsoever.

16. Do you think that anti-Semitism around the world is currently a very serious problem, somewhat of a problem, or not a problem at all?

Ninety-nine percent said they thought antisemitism was a problem, 56% a ‘Very Serious problem’.  Now there are cases in the US of nazi hooligans attacking Jews, and doubtless of landlords refusing tenants and employers refusing jobs to Jews because they were Jewish.  But I doubt if there’s been a case of the police harassing anyone because they were Jewish in living memory.  Nor of denying admission to university or any of the other manifestations of racism.

According to the Anti Defamation League’s 2008 annual audit of antisemitic incidents, they had declined for the fourth consecutive year, and the vast majority of incidents involved remarks or graffiti.  And the ADL has a very low threshold for perceiving antisemitism.  They were impelled, for example, to write to Garry Trudeau on 1 June to complain about the last frame of this 31 May cartoon.

I assume, without much confidence, that Abraham Foxman’s noxious ADL excludes expressions of antizionism and mild criticisms of Israel from their enumeration of ‘incidents’, as Britain’s Community Security Trust claims to in its reports on antisemitic incidents.  Of the 1352 incidents their audit enumerates, 37 involved actual assault, that is, if we accept the ADL’s claims that these were unambiguously racially motivated, about 1 assault for every 162,000 Jews in the US. 

And as if that weren’t ample evidence of profound and delusory paranoia,

17. Looking ahead over the next several years, do you think that anti-Semitism around the world will increase greatly, increase somewhat, remain the same, decrease somewhat, or decrease greatly?

Only 10% expect antisemitism to decrease, while 45% anticipate an increase, 15% greatly, despite the ADL’s claims that it is declining.

The survey then asked about party affiliation and religious denomination.

18. In politics as of today, do you consider yourself a Republican, a Democrat, or an Independent?

Sixteen percent of the sample claimed to be Republican, 53% Democrat, 30% Independent, and 1% Not sure.    

19. Do you think of yourself as . . .

Orthodox        9

Conservative   24

Reconstructionist        2

Reform            27

Just Jewish      36

Not sure          1

Without the original dataset, you can’t crosstabulate these with any other variables, so I don’t find them especially interesting.  In any case, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, crosstabulating variables with a sample of 800 results in very high margins of error.  Or to put it another way, you have to be less confident that the estimate really represents the population it’s supposed to.

For example, Harris claims,

The gap in perspectives between self-identified Orthodox and Reform Jews is astonishingly wide. For instance, while 59 percent of Reform Jews approve of the Obama administration's handling of U.S.-Israel relations, among Orthodox Jews the figure drops to only 14 percent.

Only 9% of the sample – 72 respondents – said they were Orthodox, and they are supposed to represent the views of all the Orthodox Jews in the US.  I suspect that the margin of error – the confidence that 14% of American Orthodox Jews have the same views as those ten respondents – is higher than the estimate itself.  If Harris were honest, he would mention something about that.  If you think crosstabulations like this are of any interest, the press release reports some.

Not to leave anything out,

20. How important would you say being Jewish is in your own life?

Although I don’t really know what the question might have meant to respondents, 84% said it was important, a slim majority of 51%, very important.  Those estimates are lower than the averages over the six years they’ve asked of 88% and 55%, respectively.  The 15% who said it wasn’t very important represent the highest level so far.

Finally, what struck Harris as ‘The saddest figure’,

21. How close do you feel to Israel?

As I wrote in 2007,

...without knowing respondents’ motivations – without asking why – we don’t know whether those who feel ‘very distant’ from Israel oppose any discussion of dismantling settlements and favour immediate forcible transfer of all Palestinians from ‘Eretz Yisra’el’, or object to the existence of a Jewish ethnocracy...

Encouragingly, the proportion who felt Very distant remained steady at 8% since last year, although the 22% who felt fairly distant represented a one point decline from 2008, but 30% distant is well above the ten year average of 26%.

It might be kind of interesting to go through Harris’s blog post in detail, refuting every claim, but I’ll confine myself to two more points.  The 29 September AJC press release announcing the results of the survey quotes Harris,

While ideologically-driven Jewish groups of the left and right assert that a majority of American Jews share their views on the Middle East, it just isn't true. The AJC survey results reveal very clearly that, in fact, the bulk of American Jews hold largely centrist views, at times tilting to the left, at other times tilting to the right. [my emphasis]

It may provide some insight into what he means by ‘left’ and ‘right’ to consider a couple of paragraphs from his blog post.

The problem for the right: A plurality of American Jews, by a margin of 49 to 41 percent, supports the establishment of a Palestinian state in the current situation.

In addition, a majority of American Jews, 54 percent, supports the Obama administration's handling of U.S.-Israel relations. 32 percent do not.

Clearly, there are American Jewish organisations, like the Zionist Organisation of America, so far to the right that Obama’s insincere and ineffectual pleas for negotiations offend them. 

If Harris reckons a 49% plurality of American Jews supporting some kind of Palestinian state is a problem for the right, he must consider it some kind of left wing position.  Since, as I mentioned before, the main rationale for partition of Palestine is to preserve Israel as a Jewish state, it takes a long stretch to perceive supporting it as left.

In any case, the AJC survey doesn’t really provide scope for respondents to express unambiguously left wing positions.  They could, of course, say they felt very distant from Israel, but we can’t be sure of the extent to which that category may be polluted by ZOA supporters and their ilk.  Surely the positions majorities adopted on Jerusalem and recognition of Israel and settlement construction and bombing Iran and, perhaps above all, the Arabs’ goal, do not betoken centrism – these are extreme positions.  Beyond that, insofar as the sample truly represents the views of American Jews, they are deeply confused if they think, as some do, that a Palestinian state that accommodates Jewish settlements and foregoes all of Jerusalem is a recipe for peace.  And whether the paranoia about antisemitism is clinical, or arises from their uncritical consumption of ADL fear mongering, it strongly suggests we accept their opinions cum grano salis.

Harris expresses contempt for the ‘ideologically-driven Jewish groups of the left and right’ and the polls they’ve conducted.  I surmise that ‘the ideologically-driven Jewish groups of the left’ must be J Street, whose National Survey of American Jews I analysed in April.  And the only group I know of to the right of the AJC, if you can imagine such a thing, and has conducted any recent polling is the ADL. 

I have to concur with Harris that those are pretty ordinary, ideologically driven and rather bodgy polls.  The ADL survey results only appear to be available in the form of a little slideshow.  The J Street poll is full of loaded and complex questions that by and large can only tell you anything about those who give affirmative responses. 

But it takes considerable chutzpah to criticise others’ polls for the same things your own is guilty of.  Anyway, it transpires that, to the extent that they are comparable, the results are not that different.  For example,

·         54% of the AJC sample approved of Obama’s handling of US-Israel relations, as did 72% of the J Street sample;  55% pf the ADL sample approved Obama’s handing of ‘US policy towards Israel and the Palestinian Territories’.

·         62% of the ADL respondents were as optimistic as last year about prospects for peace; like 65% in the AJC poll, well within the margin of error.

·         49% of the AJC sample support establishing a Palestinian state, like 61% of the ADL sample and 76% of J Street’s.

·         74% of the ADL sample approved the ‘military action that Israel took in Gaza’, as did 75% of the J Street sample.

·         66% in the ADL survey and 69% in the J Street poll thought the ‘military action’ was not disproportionate.

·         49% of the AJC sample, 55% of the ADL sample, and 40% of the J Street sample support a US attack on Iran.

·         58% of the ADL sample and 66% of the AJC sample support an Israeli attack on Iran.

The results of at least two of the three surveys are close on several measures, and where they depart, it’s not always in the expected direction.  So if the ADL is spinning results to support a right wing agenda, how does it come to pass that the ADL reports a much larger proportion than the AJC supporting the purportedly left wing position on establishing a Palestinian state?  Or that the ‘left wing’ J Street admitted that more of their respondents supported Israel’s pogrom in Gaza than even among the ADL’s?

So it would seem that Harris talks out the wrong orifice.  He is prepared to make assertions about what his own poll found that are inconsistent with the very results he’s presenting and promoting.  He lampoons those he seems to perceive as his competitors for the same gaffes he makes even as he does so.  He seems to imagine that he can compensate for his ignorance and hypocrisy with arrogance and bluster.

And guess what!  A few weeks back, the American Jewish Committee boasted,

David Harris, AJC’s executive director, has been elected a Senior Associate Member of Oxford University’s St. Antony’s College for the academic year 2009-10. He will also be a Member of the college’s European Studies Centre.

St. Antony’s is one of the postgraduate colleges of Oxford University and specializes in international relations, economics, politics, and modern history. It is widely recognized as one of the world’s leading institutions in its fields of specialization.

“This is a big feather in our cap,” said Richard Sideman, AJC’s president. “It is yet another sign of the esteem in which our staff is held around the world. For AJC, it means, above all, precious exposure to the world of thinkers and ideas affecting the environment in which we work. This, in turn, will further strengthen the agency’s ability to fulfill its ambitious mission.”

Needless to say, my first thought on reading of this was, ‘What an embarrassment for the fifth greatest university in the world...like Oxford needs its very own Dershowitz’.  But it turns out that a Senior Associate Member is not such a big deal.

Senior Associate Members are normally visitors to the College and the University for periods of up to a year who are pursing [sic] a specific research objective of their own.  They or their academic work must be known to the Governing Body Fellow who is acting as their Sponsor.

If St Antony’s know about the honour they’ve proffered to the AJC, they’re not doing a song and dance about it, because Harris’s name appears nowhere on their site.

Load those questions!

Heading their 17 March press release '49% Say Israel Should Stop Building Settlements As Part of Peace Deal', Rasmussen reported last week on their 'National Survey of 1,000 Likely Voters Conducted March 15-16, 2010'.

At first I thought it was just a headline, but it turns out that what they actually asked was,

As part of a Middle Eastern peace agreement, should Israel be required to stop building new settlements in occupied Palestinian territory?

Leaving aside the little matter of the commonplace that an agreement between Israel and the PA, which is what they mean, applies to the entire Middle East, as the expression 'a Middle Eastern peace agreement' suggests, this is a curious way to frame the question.

All previous versions of the two state 'solution' have explicitly aimed to end the occupation of at least some of the territory that Israel seized in June 1967. Obviously Israel occupies all of Mandadory Palestine, but the likelihood that those drafting the question or those responding understood it that way is vanishingly small.

At least on the face of it, as I read it, the question assumes that the agreement will countenance continued occupation of 'Palestinian territory' – the West Bank and East Jerusalem, since the occupation of Gaza no longer involves building new settlements. So the question becomes not whether the occupation should end, or even whether existing settlements should be evacuated, but only whether new ones should be permitted as part of the envisaged peace agreement.

Taken at face value, it seems preposterous that anyone could imagine even the craven PA would agree to a 'peace' that entailed continuing occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, much less an occupation with ongoing settlement expansion. But 29% of the respondents said they didn't think the agreement should require Israel to stop building and another 22% weren't sure. Even the 49% who thought construction should stop were prepared to accept continuing occupation.

On reflection, however, it's not as farfetched as all that. I'm not aware of any advocate of partitioning Palestine into a Jewish state and a Palestinian state who doesn't envisage some kind of 'land swap', which, as I've emphasised repeatedly, retroactively endorses Israel's cynical construction of facts on the ground for the past four decades and more.

In any case, I think it's clear that what Rasmussen meant and what respondents understood them to mean was whether whether Israel should be required to stop building new settlements as a condition for negotiations to proceed towards the Peace Agreement. So why should they stop building on the areas they plan to annex – in other words, continue to occupy?

It's a bit of a disappointment to learn that Rasmussen would field a survey with such shoddy question wording. I had somehow formed the impression that they were professionals.

In the same vein, they ask,

As part of a Middle Eastern peace agreement, should Palestinian leaders be required to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state?

It's worth noting that acknowlege is a 'factive' verb – one that assumes the truth of its object. So there is no question whether Israel possesses the 'right to exist as a Jewish state', just whether Palestinian leaders should be forced to admit it. It's bad enough when you find these semantic tricks in journalism, although it's common enough that you have to expect it, but to insinuate such a contentious assumption into a survey question like that is truly beyond the pale.

Again, as I've written before, to 'acknowlege' Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state implies endorsing the ethnic cleanisng that enabled Israel to establish a Jewish majority in the first place and relinquishing the refugees' right to return – hardly a strong foundation for a peace agreement. Even so, 75% of those polled agreed that Palestinian leaders should be required to make such an acknowlegement, and 20% weren't sure, even though it's obvious that any leader doing so would certainly not retain a position of leadership for long.

Rasmussen only tabulate the results of three other questions, although from the breakdowns they report in their press release it's clear they asked others. One of these revealed that 73% don't consider a 'lasting peace' within the next decade likely and 58% consider Israel a US ally, while a surprising 32% think it's 'somewhere in between' an ally and an enemy.

Like last year, it's once again thanks to Richard Silverstein that I learned of the latest J Street poll, conducted 17-19 March. A quick look suggests that this year Gerstein | Agne, J Street's pollster, has not lifted their game, asking many questions about the US national interest and such. The only thing that struck me as worthy of comment was the headline of their press release, which proclaims 'American Jews Continue to Support Obama Push for Two-State Solution...', when in fact, they didn't even ask about the two state 'solution' or any aspect of it. But I'll have a closer look in due course and post something if anything comes to light. For my analysis of last year's J Street poll, see 'Across the Potomac'. I also had occasion to compare last year's J Street results with those from the Anti Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee's polls in 'A feather in our cap'.

Meanwhile, Zogby released their latest poll on the subject yesterday. I haven't managed to find the questions or a tabulation of the responses on their site, so I was forced to watch a video of John Zogby presenting the results to the New America Foundation. He claimed he'd selected the most interesting for his slideshow, but I can't say that anything piqued my curiosity. It seems that Republicans think the US should side with Israel, while Democrats think the US should be evenhanded. As if.

Friends like these

 

You might have thought that if it was anybody's job to look after Israel's occupation forces, it would have to be the Israeli taxpayer.  But it transpires that 

Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF) has assumed the responsibility of providing these soldiers with love and support in an effort to ease the burden they carry on behalf of the Jewish community worldwide...with the mission of providing and supporting social, educational, cultural, and recreational programs and facilities for the young men and women soldiers of Israel who defend the Jewish homeland...Providing financial aid to soldiers in need, granting academic scholarships to former combat soldiers, helping bereaved families, and sponsoring fun days for combat battalions are just some of our endeavors...reinforce the significant bond between the Jewish community in the United States, the soldiers of the IDF, and the State of Israel.

FIDF builds sports and cultural centres for the IOF all over Israel and, if I read the map correctly, in the West Bank, as well as providing mobile recreational facilities for those too busy humiliating Palestinians at remote checkpoints or bashing down doors in the middle of the night to get to one of the more permanent centres.

If IOF soldiers carry the burden of occupation and oppression 'on behalf of the Jewish community worldwide'  doesn't that constitute 'Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel', one of the ways 'in which anti-Semitism manifests itself with regard to the state of Israel', according to the EU Monitoring Commission's 'Working definition'? 

Anyone who wants to contribute to this blatantly antisemitic project is in luck.  Next Tuesday, 9 March, FIDF is holding its National NY Gala in the Grand Ballroom of Manhattan's historic Waldorf-Astoria, where

More than 1,300 people will gather together to support Israel’s soldiers and the State of Israel. At the dinner, you will have the unique opportunity to hear from Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi Chief of the IDF General Staff and meet combat soldiers who fight on the frontlines to ensure the safety of the state of Israel.

For just US$180,000, you can book a table for ten, although only $179,678 of that will be tax deductible.  Or if you're too tightfisted to fork over a week's pay to defend Western Civilisation from the barbarian hordes at the gate, you can buy a seat for $1000.  I just can’t help wondering how much of contributions to Friends of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades or Friends of the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution, or even Friends of the Canadian Land Force Command would be tax deductible?

Alternatively, you can join the protest march, assembling at 53rd Street and Lexington Avenue at 5PM on the day - next Tuesday, 9 March.

[H/t to Lou Proyect]

Heil mein Führer

When I got home yesterday, I found this promotional message from Ha'aretz in my inbox. 

Headed 'Property Management – An Occupation In and Of Itself', at first I thought it must be a spoof, an impression further buttressed by the principal's unfortunate surname.  But it turns out that there really is a Dov Fuehrer at Firer Property Management, providing professional services to absentee landlords who 'own' stolen land.  On reflection, I surmise that 'An Occupation In and Of Itself' was just a curiously revealing variation on 'A profession in and of itself'. 

Meanwhile, Ha'aretz also alerted me to the opportunity to 'come home for Pesach' and enjoy a week of five star festivities at the Inbal Jerusalem Hotel for just US$2240 per person, exclusive, I gather, of airfares.  Newsflash: I am home.

Defamation

Mark Elf of Jews sans frontières has been writing a lot about Israeli filmmaker Yoav Shamir’s documentary Defamation lately, attracting a fairly lively discussion.  Mark has written mainly about a short segment filmed at the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs’s annual conference on Antisemitism featuring the English sociology lecturer and infamous Zionist apologist, David Hirsh, who Shamir filmed addressing the conference and in an animated altercation with the noxious Prof. Dina Porath, Head of The Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism at Tel Aviv University.  Hirsh came across as remarkably sensible in the excerpts that made the cut.  But he has since taken exception to the editing, linking to the full text of his talk.  And Shamir has responded.  The point that Hirsh makes is that one of the reasons for contemporary antisemitism is the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, an issue nobody else at the conference had mentioned. 

Some websites have restricted access to Defamation so it can only be viewed in the UK for a few weeks, but I believe this link will work for anyone and will not expire.

Shamir is a young Israeli filmmaker who says that as an Israeli, he had never experienced antisemitism and wanted to find out what it was all about.  He weaves two principal themes through his documentary: He follows the ADL’s thuggish Abe Foxman around as he tours the world bullying the mighty into taking his line on antisemitism.  And he accompanies a group of Israeli high school students on a pilgrimage to Poland they and their classmates carry out annually.  Inculcated from infancy with the idea that ‘everybody hates us’, more than 30,000 kids a year undergo special indoctrination to prepare them for the trip, where they will not be permitted to interact with locals at all, who they are instructed are dangerous to them, as evidenced by the secret service minders who accompany them at all times. 

Before discussing the film, let me just make a few points about antisemitism.  First of all, in my view, antisemitism is just a special case of racism.  It essentialises Jews as a race and discriminates against Jews on that basis.  There are historical reasons that it suited the ruling classes of mediaeval Europe to discriminate against Jews that I won’t go into now.  Suffice it to say that hatred of Jews and other attitudes that support discrimination derive from the discrimination both historically and conceptually, not the other way around.  Understood in this way, it is ironic that the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) specifically excludes cases of actual discrimination in employment, housing, education, and the like from its Annual Audit of Anti-semitic Incidents.

ADL does not include cases of alleged employment discrimination in hiring, firing or promotion, unless the situation includes evidence of overt anti-Semitism...Such claims involve a different kind of anti-Semitic problem which, while hurtful to the complainant, are nevertheless distinct from overt expressions of anti-Jewish hostility.

In other words, in their view, expression of racist attitudes, even ‘Events which create an atmosphere of fear and intimidation to Jews, including neo-Nazi and white supremacist events, rallies, and speeches’, which may not be explicitly antisemitic, are on the whole of greater significance than actual racist actions, with the exception of assaults, which do count.

When it comes to the relation between antisemitism and Israel, I happen to agree that ‘Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel’ is antisemitic.  In fact, I think that’s the only point in the EU Monitoring Commission’s ‘Working definition’ of anti-Semitism, which I’ve demonstrated itself holds ‘Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel’, I do agree with.  By the same token, when Former Israeli PM Tzipi Livni harps repeatedly on Israel as ‘a homeland for the Jewish people’ and when we read that youth and relief organisations are saying, ‘As the representative of the Jewish people, the State of Israel is leading the relief effort’, it’s no big surprise when the uninformed take them at their word and blame the Jews Israel purports to represent for what Israel does in our name.  Nor does it help when nearly every Jewish organisation and individual Jew takes it for granted that Israel does represent them.

An important aspect of antisemitism is that it’s one of the few forms of racism that has its own special term.  Although it was in fact the antisemite Wilhelm Marr who coined the term, it has turned out to be very convenient for the ADL, the Community Security Trust (CST), and the rest of the antisemitism industry to be able to purport to combat antisemitism without having to pretend to oppose racism more generally.

Another point that I thought was implicit in the film is that Israel has a special interest in exaggerating the extent of antisemitism.  For one thing, it engenders a barricade mentality among Israelis, strongly evidenced in interviews with high school students and with Shamir’s own grandmother.  The Israeli educational system quite cynically exploits the real sorrow and indignation the concentration camp visits elicit from the students to inculcate serious racist attitudes.  One girl said she wanted to kill all the Nazis.  When Shamir pointed out that those responsible for the Holocaust were all dead, she responded that they had progeny.  It hadn’t really occurred to me that perhaps the preeminent targets for Hasbara are actually Israeli kids.

Perhaps more importantly, it mobilises Jews outside Israel – the so called ‘diaspora’ – to support Israel, right or wrong, as an ‘insurance policy’ against the inevitable coming wave of antisemitic violence.  Shamir films a sad, but hilarious, discussion among some members of Foxman’s entourage where they determine that their love for their own country is like love for a husband, but their love for Israel is like the love for a child.  In some cases, fear of antisemitism motivates foreign Jews to immigrate, as intended. 

It’s worth noting that although the Nazis killed millions of non Jews, Israel has appropriated the Holocaust to denote the judeocide alone.  Jews have been uniquely victimised.  It is antisemitic to suggest that anything else in human history was as uniquely horrible as the Shoah.  In fact, Foxman takes his Ukrainian interlocutor to task for intimating a similarity with the death of millions of Ukrainians.  The underlying assumption is that antisemitism lurks in the heart and liver of every non Jew and that it’s just a matter of time before the next Holocaust.  Shamir’s grandmother, who despises the canny, lazy, greedy non Israeli Jews, asks whether we’re just waiting for Hitler to come along. 

Finally, a bit off topic, you often hear it said that Israel is antisemitic because ‘Arabs are Semites too’.  There are two problems with this.  First, Marr coined the term specifically to denote discrimination against and hatred of Jews and it has never meant anything else, whatever problems anyone may have with that.   

More importantly, when they say, ‘Arabs are Semites too’, they effectively create a race of Semites, which would comprise Jews, Arabs, and the peoples who speak Semitic languages in the Horn of Africa.  There are people who hate Jews because we’re Jews and there are people who hate Arabs because they’re Arabs.  Perhaps there are even people who hate Amharic speakers because of that.  There are certainly people who hate both Jews and Arabs but I doubt there’s anyone anywhere who hates Jews and Arabs because they are Semites, per se – speakers of Semitic languages and their descendants.  Since race is not a meaningful biological category, we can only know that a race is a race because of the racism against its members.  And since there is no racism against Semites, as such, there is no race of Semites and it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to try to appropriate the term antisemitism for a form of racism that doesn’t exist.

Returning to the point, I liked the film a lot.  It didn’t evidence very high production values, but I assume that the amateurish interview from behind the handheld camera technique was deliberate. 

There are revealing interviews with rabbis in Crown Heights and Kiev and members of Foxman’s delegation, as well as with the students.  The Crown Heights rabbi points out that it is not the same thing for a mugger to target Jews thinking they are soft targets as to target Jews because they hate Jews.  He also mentions that people like Foxman have a vested interest in exaggerating the threat and fomenting an atmosphere of panic because their jobs depend on it. 

Shamir also interviews both Jews and Blacks in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights district and attends a conference in Israel on antisemitism.  One of the Crown Heights Blacks strongly endorsed what he called ‘The elders of the protocols of Zion’ and his two mates agreed, although they clearly were not as familiar with it as the first guy was.  Even though he was aware that The protocols was a hoax, to all appearances, they really believe that there’s a Jewish conspiracy to control the world, a transparently antisemitic attitude, also articulated by a cabdriver at the very beginning of the film.  There may well be genuine cause for concern if such views are prevalent.  The fear and resentment those interviewees displayed could easily turn nasty.  But the question arises how they came by their opinions.  One reason may be that they haven’t had much social contact with the Jews in their neighbourhood, who are principally, if not exclusively, the notoriously insular Hasidim.

In one of Defamation’s highlights, Foxman may offer some additional insight.  In an in car interview, he confesses that his raison d’etre is actually to instil and cultivate the impression that Jews have great power and influence as a tool to bully his interlocutors to put on a song and dance about how they don’t believe Jews have inordinate power and influence.

To be honest, I didn’t think the interviews with Mearsheimer and Finkelstein contributed much.  Mearsheimer makes the undeniable point that it’s nearly impossible to prove a negative – that, for example, he is not an antisemite, ‘which is one reason that this charge is so effective’.  ‘My arguments are not in any way, shape, or form hostile to Jews or hostile to the state of Israel.  And in fact Steve Walt and I go to great lengths to make the case that we think The Lobby’s policies are not in Israel’s interests or in America’s interests.’  In protesting that he is not hostile to Israel and his concern for Israel’s interests as evidence that he is not an antisemite, of course, he demonstrates pretty conclusively that, if you agree that bracketing Jews with the state of Israel is antisemitic, he is in fact an antisemite.

Finkelstein does not come out of the film looking very good, either.  This could be an artefact of Shamir’s editing.  He filmed the interview in at least four locations – on the boardwalk, presumably adjacent to his flat, in the loungeroom, in the kitchen, and in the stairwell.  When asked about the traditional complaint that Israel is ‘singled out for criticism’, Finkelstein responds somewhat unconvincingly, ‘Listen, I open the radio.  I hear nonstop about Sudan.  I hear nonstop about Tibet.  I hear nonstop about Darfur. I hear a lot.’  He does make the salient point, however, ‘The only place I hear excuses made for is Israel.’  But he goes on to undermine himself with the familiar claim, ‘We do have to remember that it’s the oldest occupation in the world.  I mean forty years really is enough’.  It never ceases to amaze me how intelligent and well informed people draw a line in the sand in June 1967, as if Zionist colonisation of Palestine didn’t go back a lot further than that.  In a 27 January article on the Electronic Intifada, Columbia University academic Joseph Massad attributes the reduction of Palestine to just the West Bank and Gaza, which seems to me to lie at the heart of this misconception, to Oslo.

...By transforming the PLO, which represented all Palestinians in the Diaspora and in Israel and the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem, into the Palestinian Authority (PA) which could only hope to represent Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza, constituting one third of the Palestinian people, the Oslo agreements engineered a major demographic reduction of the Palestinian people...

The insidious part of this process is how the PA, conscious of this transformation, continues to speak of the "Palestinian people," which had been reduced through the Oslo accords to those West Bank and Gaza Palestinians it now claims to represent.

(I strongly recommend, by the way, making a point of clicking the link to ‘How surrendering Palestinian rights became the language of "peace"’ and reading it in full.  Massad really gets some of the stuff I’ve been trying to hammer for years.) 

But beyond that, it always strikes me as a bit rich for an American to claim the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza as ‘the oldest occupation in the world’, as if they weren’t even aware of the US occupation of such colonies as Puerto Rico, Guam, and ‘American’ Samoa, which goes back to the end of the Nineteenth Century.  When I point this out, a lot of people object that those aren’t exactly like the Israeli occupation, sometimes indicating particular differences.  And they’re right.  But once you redefine occupation to mean only an occupation exactly like the occupation of the West Bank, assertions that it’s the oldest become utterly vacuous. 

At another point, Finkelstein tells Shamir, ‘It’s the best thing that will ever happen to Israel if they get rid of these American Jews who are warmongers from Martha’s Vineyard...it’s been a disaster for Israel...it’s a curse.’  So it turns out that at least one of the things that concerns him, like Mearsheimer, is Israel’s interests.  Beyond that, he seems to be suggesting that Israel would be fine if it weren’t for these American Jews, as if warmongers like Ben-Gurion and Jabotinsky, whose work he is intimately familiar with and who he mentions in another part of the interview, needed any prodding.

Shamir attended a meeting with Foxman, Joel Levi, ‘NY Regional Director’, and Bob Wolfson, ‘ADL Regional Director’, about, Foxman says, ‘...what looks like a spike in um antisemitic and racist...um...activities or manifestations.  Now New York seems to be at the centre, or at least getting the attention.  How do you see it?’  Levi responds, ‘There is a wave.  There’s no question about it.’  And Wolfson speculates that it may ‘be attached to the time of the year’ or ‘maybe attached to the Presidential election’, placing the filming prior to November 2008.

It transpires that the ADL headlined the 1 June 2009 press release for its own Annual Audit of Anti-semitic Incidents for 2008, ‘Anti-Semitic Incidents Decline for Fourth Straight Year in U.S., According to Annual ADL Audit’.  In 2008, the ADL recorded ‘1,352 incidents of vandalism, harassment and physical assaults against Jewish individuals, property and community institutions in 2008, representing a 7 percent decline from the 1,460 incidents reported in 2007’ and a 26% decline from the 2004 peak ‘when the League reported 1,821 incidents’. Of those 1,352 incidents, 37 were actual assaults, a category not reported in previous years.   Of course it wouldn’t be the first time that a prominent American Jewish organisation has contradicted its own findings.

It was interesting to learn that in the fortnight prior to Shamir’s visit to the ADL’s main office in Manhattan they had collected a grand total of five reports of antisemitic incidents: someone who thought they had detected antisemitic remarks on a website and another who believed they had perceived ‘antisemitic undertones’ in a newspaper article, as well as a teacher, another employee, and a nursing student who ‘had issues’ taking leave for Jewish holidays.  Another report was a letter from a woman to her congressperson alleging that she was utterly crushed to overhear a cop on duty guarding a big funeral telling someone on the phone that he wouldn’t be free until ‘after this Jewish shit’. 

What I got from Defamation  is that a lot of Jews, including Israeli Jews, exhibit a hysterical paranoia about antisemitism completely at odds with the actual danger.  According to the ADL Audit, the chance of an American Jew being the victim of an antisemitic assault are about 1 in 160,000.  Nevertheless, the latest American Jewish Committee Survey shows that 99% of American Jews thought antisemitism was a problem, 56% a ‘Very Serious problem’, and 45% said it was getting worse. Unfortunately, this seems to be a common enough kind of phenomenon.  Hundreds of millions are more worried about a terrorist attack than about driving down the shops even though they are thousands of times more likely to be killed or injured in a traffic accident than in a terrorist incident.

Shamir also makes it clear that there are organisations, ranging from the ADL to the State of Israel, that have a vested interest in provoking and exacerbating antisemitic attitudes, exaggerating antisemitic incidents, and aggravating the hysteria about them.

Unfortunately, he ends the film on the lame note, ‘Maybe it’s about time to live in the present and look to the future’.

Notwithstanding the useful insights and revealing admissions Defamation presents, ultimately, whatever Shamir’s intentions, it ends up as part of Israel’s rebranding exercise.  Shamir shows that at least some Israelis are talented and caring people.  He goes out of his way to challenge the received wisdom – the very foundation of Zionsim.  And the whole project was sponsored by the Israeli Council for Cinema, among others.  Clearly, Israel must be a true democracy that ‘shares our values’ even to tolerate, much less support, a film like Defamation.