I'm fed up being called an anti-Semite

http://argument.independent.co.uk/regular_columnists/deborah_orr/story.jsp?story=111165

It's a mesmerising, awesome sight when a private conversation
goes rogue, and starts crashing about in open society, leaving terror
and destruction in its wake. A comment which recently escaped
from a party thrown by the newspaper proprietor Lord Black of
Crossharbour (to thank God, as we all do, for the continued
existence of Boris Johnson) has proved particularly explosive. The
French ambassador, Daniel Bernard, remarked to Lord Black that it
was amazing that the world was in danger of World War Three
because of "that shitty little country, Israel". Lord Black told his
wife, the journalist Barbara Amiel, about the conversation.

She quoted it without specific attribution in an article suggesting
that anti-Semitism was once more becoming "respectable". Mr
Bernard, who was quickly identified, does not deny the words, but
says he was merely pointing out that it was amazing for such big
troubles to be generated by such a tiny place. In the same article,
again without naming names, Ms Amiel also alleged that the
society hostess Carla Powell had made overtly and aggressively
anti-Semitic statements at a lunch party. This time the remarks are
denied most emphatically, so it is hardly fair to repeat them.

Now the 60-year-old diplomat fears for his job, and the Italian
socialite fears for her placements. Which surely offers a little
reassurance, because if anti-Semitism really was once more as
commonplace in the "upper ranks" as it was for much of the last
century, no one would be turning a hair.

Any naysaying idiot who doubts this would be well advised to do
nothing more arduous than read a few early editions of Agatha
Christie. Anti-Semitism is casually rife in the Queen of Crime's
English drawing-rooms. I mention this because it was in the course
of teenage Christie-reading that I first came across English
anti-Semitism at first hand. A quarter of a century on, my shock
and disgust has not abated.

So I am rather mortified to learn that, according to Ms Amiel, I too
have been peddling anti-Semitism. Ever since I went to Israel on
holiday, I've considered it to be a shitty little country too. And I was
under the impression that even Israelis thought this. I mean, if they
thought Israel was small but perfectly formed, surely they wouldn't
be so hell-bent on making it bigger and better, come what may.

Whoops! Now, I stand accused of both anti-Semitism and
anti-Zionism, which we are constantly, patiently, told are exactly
the same thing. No they're not. They're two different things.
Anti-Semitism is disliking all Jews, anywhere, and anti-Zionism is
just disliking the existence of Israel and opposing those who
support it.

The former should have been unspeakable throughout history, but to
the world's unending shame and misery, is not even yet. The latter
might faintly, possibly, with the wisdom of hindsight, have been an
almost tenable point of view prior to the creation of Israel. But it is
utterly redundant now. Israel cannot be dismantled.

This may be an academic rather than a practical distinction, and
one which has no connection with holding the honest view that in
my experience Israel is shitty and little. What's more, the daily
trauma it undergoes in defending its right to exist is the main thing
that makes the place so shitty. QED. I'm not going back there for a
holiday in the foreseeable future, because I don't find it a congenial
place to spend time. But I defend Israel's right to exist, within the
terms of the Oslo Accords, all the same.

And I do have some trouble with the context of M Bernard's remark.
Whether you think it little and shitty or not, this is not the time to be
suggesting Israel might be the catalyst for World War Three. You
do not have to be anti-Semitic to view the television pictures being
beamed from the Palestinian Authority, or the rhetoric being
broadcast by the Israeli government, with mounting dread and a
heartfelt wish that this was not happening.

But you do have to bear in mind that the debate around Israel has
suddenly moved beyond hysteria. There is a feeling now that
anything could happen. In the Arab world, and beyond, extremists
and not-so-extremists really do blame Israel and the Jews for all the
ills of the world. They really do believe that the Jewish people intend
to achieve total domination of the planet, if they haven't already.

They still consider the Holocaust to have been faked to gain
sympathy for Jews and their wish to have their own country. They
now believe the 11 September atrocities to have been engineered as
part of a grand Zionist plan to excuse the bombing of the
Palestinian Authority into the Middle Ages.

There is some truly repulsive and scary anti-Semitism out there,
and it is growing. It is frightening to right-thinking Jew and
right-thinking gentile alike. But paranoia must be avoided. Ms Amiel
sees anti-Semitism at every party she attends in London because
suddenly so many people seem hostile to Israel that every tiny
slight is a great big deal. But she is falling into a trap.

As a passionate Zionist she is hyper-sensitive to criticism of Israeli
policy and action, without being able to see that you can make
criticisms, or even express vehement disagreement, without being
an implacable enemy. Like an abused adolescent who has
subsequently been therapy-validated up to the gills, she demands
nothing less than unconditional acceptance, under all
circumstances. Anything less is betrayal. And the country she
supports so emphatically could now, in the wake of American
action in response to 11 September, be judged to be behaving in
the same way.

Ignorant hate-filled Palestinians stunned the world by dancing in the
streets on the day that the twin towers collapsed. But was the
behaviour of the Israeli government in the hours after the disaster –
immediate incursions, a huffy fall-out with Jack Straw because he
said "Palestine" – so very much more attractive?

This, some say, is a question that only an anti-Semite would ask.
But actually, I'm getting fed up with being called an anti-Semite.
And the more fed up I get, the more anti-Semitic I sound. If the likes
of Ms Amiel continue to insist that everyone with a word to say
against Israel is an anti-Semite, she is going to find one day that
the world is once more divided neatly between anti-Semites and
Jews.

That sounds like an anti-Semitic threat. It's not. It's the last thing I
want. However, potential, but conditional, sympathisers are
alienated so much by Zionist rhetoric that they start singing from
what sounds like the same songsheet as the anti-Semite
conspiracy theorists. Which I think is what has happened to the
French ambassador. The only people who will be lathered into
apoplexy by Mr Bernard's remarks are the very people who need to
be keeping the coolest of heads right now. But Israelis, and the
most committed of friends of Israel, are very far from doing that.

All the same, it is very wrong to suggest that Israel might be
responsible for the start of World War Three, even it it isn't
anti-Semitic. It was obvious that Ariel Sharon would borrow the
justifications of George Bush to mount his own war on terrorism.
Indeed it was one of the reasons why the declaration of the initial
war against terrorism was wrong, even though Osama bin Laden
was wrong, even though Russia was wrong, and so on. Wars
always set a bad example, but we never seem to learn that. When
the last war comes, we'll all be responsible. But at least our
self-destruction will free us of anti-Semitism.