If Islamic State terror is not Islam, why is Israeli war not Judaism?

Israeli war is as about as representative of the Jewish faith as Islamic State terror is of Islamic values. Terror committed by both Israel and Islamic State should be equally loathed. Unfortunately, they are not. When the so-called Islamic State torched a helpless young Jordanian pilot, the whole world understandably reacted with disgust. An almost universal outpouring of grief commenced, from Muslims, Jews and atheists alike. So why then do some people find it hard to muster even a hint of outrage at murder committed in the name of Israel? Worse still, why do they defend it?

Over two thousand civilians were killed, one quarter of them children, in last summer’s “resumption of violence” in Gaza (Jonathan Freedland’s words, not mine). If 500 children had been slaughtered by Muslims armed with zeal and hell bent on territorial expansion, defending a religious state drunk on supremacy, you can bet the language used by the Guardian’s executive editor would have been a little more suggestively charged. Maybe he would have used his new favourite term “fascist death cult”, which he exclusively attaches to terror perpetrated by those who purportedly claim to represent Islam. In the world of white liberalism only certain people are black enough to make it into the death cult. 

Five hundred innocent children left the world last summer in a haze of disintegrated concrete. Tens of thousands more were left to breathe in the aftermath. Disabled and mentally scarred they watched the dust settle, until another day an Israeli leader wishing to win an election decides to mow the lawn.

But something was unique about this war and it wasn’t just an increase in body count. New technology had enabled Palestinians to bypass a media sieve that all too often refines terror committed by Western allies. News now came direct from source, the victim. Uploaded to Twitter and Facebook shock was shared socially. The smartphone stripped us of any defence of pleading ignorance. Of course, the BBC tried its hardest to sell us a narrative of equals. But even the heaviest of make-up failed to hide the bodies as they mounted up; fractured and limp, children were plucked from the rubble, limbless.

Some people tried to bury their heads in the sand, making a conscious and cowardly decision to remain mute. As much as I find silence a guilty party in aiding ascents of terror – 1930s European fascism is testament – there were much more worrying acts afoot. Loud and proud voices unmoved by images of bloodied children armed themselves with myths of supremacy, cheerleading death from the comfort of their centrally heated homes. Industrialised violence and mass murder are perfectly rational if they exterminate future terrorists: an operative word for Palestinian children.

The Jewish community, just like their Muslim brethren, should never be held accountable for the actions of a militant few. Jews in London should not have to be asked to apologise for hawks in Tel-Aviv. Therefore it goes without saying that synagogues should not be attacked and no Jew anywhere in this world should have to suffer any form of malicious hate; the Jews have suffered enough for a lifetime.

Judaism is a lot wiser and a lot older than the state of Israel. Jewry is not a homogeneous, monolithic ball of perpetually defensive machismo. A people rich in humour and philosophy cannot be whittled down to brute force and occupation. Or can they? Zionism would like to think so. Zionism wants you to subscribe to the idea that the only safe place in the world for a Jew is Israel, a heavily fortified war zone, but a war zone nevertheless. Grab yourself an AK-47 and join the party.

Someone who hopes you buy the notion that Israel is a synonym for Jew is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Bibi sees himself as a modern-day Moses; ironically he’s more Pharaoh. Last Sunday Netanyahu proclaimed proudly that he would go to Washington just like he marched on Paris, “not just as the prime minister of Israel but as a representative of the entire Jewish people.” Netanyahu is an opportunist who manipulates fear of anti-Semitism to recruit new settlers to a brand of neo-colonial nationalism that should have never made it out of the 1960s. The state of Israel is no stranger to such exploitation; it was founded on it.

Let me be clear: nowhere in the Torah does it state thou shalt occupy your neighbour, imprison his children, cover his wife in white phosphorus and run over Rachel Corrie. There are more Jews living in America than there are in Israel. Equally, nowhere in the Quran does it say you should chop the heads off aid workers or people who write or take pictures for a living. There are 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide and maybe just a few tens of thousands Islamic State fighters. Politics manipulates religion in order to rally the troops. Religion takes a back seat to the driving force of political ideology.

Last week on BBC’s Question Time, Jonathan Freedland aided the conflation by giving credence to an audience member’s unsubstantiated accusation that parliamentarian of 27 years George Galloway fuelled a rise in anti-Semitism because of his vocal opposition to the Gaza war. With very little in the way of defence is it any wonder that defenders of the indefensible have no option but to fall back on slander and defamation as ways to shut down debate? By equating earnest criticism of inhumane action carried out by the state of Israel with attacks on Jews, apart from trying to silence debate, journalists like Freedland are implying that Israel and Jews are somehow the same. They are not. More worryingly, the British government is currently considering censoring comments critical of Israel, deeming them anti-Semitic.

Judaism the religion, hijacked by politicians, risks being totally absorbed by the divisive ideology of Zionism. Members of the Jewish community who blindly pledge allegiance to Israel in the face of overwhelming evidence of its barbarity, in order to tribally justify crimes against humanity as noble self-defence, are not only on the wrong side of history but playing a very dangerous game; one that will only aid the rise of abhorrent anti-Semitism.

After every Israeli war comes a spike in anti-Semitism just as there is always a spike in Islamophobia after al-Qaeda terror. Therefore, is it not imperative that all of us, Muslims, Jews, atheists alike, be vocal in opposition to brutality, no matter who holds the butcher’s knife? Are we not members of one global community?

Hypocrisy needs to be highlighted. All racism needs to be vehemently challenged. But in a world of war on terror some forms of racism are useful in the service of imperial hegemony, and therefore made acceptable. Today, Islamophobia is anti-Semitism, in the same way that the Iraq War is the Vietnam War. Targets, locations and generals may change but key tenets never do. If you understand racism only through the prism of yourself or one dimension, you fail to comprehend it for what it really is: an exploitative tool working to divide and rule on behalf of a system built upon spurious and unjust economics.

From slavery to the Holocaust to today's imperial misadventures, the cancer of racism remains steadfast in its principles. If you recoil in horror at the thought of the Holocaust but defend genocide in Gaza, then there is something seriously flawed with your understanding of racist oppression.

This weekend’s wholly unjustifiable attacks in Copenhagen hammers home the increasingly urgent need to bridge a gap, widening each day, between two Abrahamic religions that are ultimately at root brothers.

My son straddles both the Jewish and Muslim faiths; therefore it is personally imperative for me to build a better, less polarised worldview; clawing back Judaism from Zionism is part of that mission. Embrace and celebrate our intricate and beautiful differences, always, but we would do well to remember that under every skullcap and taqiyah lies a human being, of one race. All forms of racism are wrong, all forms of racism are evil. In the spirit of "never again", whether in our own communities or not, let’s oppose all racism against all people. 

 - Charles B. Anthony is a writer, researcher and op-ed columnist specialising in social, political and cultural commentary.