Jewish author of book on anti-Semitism says Israel’s judgments are harsher than other countries’ judgments

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You draw parallels with structural racism. What do you think are the similarities and differences?

This is not a comparison of the severity of the phenomenon, nor is it a comparison of the degree of cruelty of racism against black and indigenous peoples. What is very clear to me is that these phenomena are similarly structural in that they constitute a kind of collective imagination. Anti-Semitism is an ancient hostility based on stereotypes and prejudice in some conspiracy theories, on the shelf of human evil. And it is used whenever there is a need to find the culprit in a particular fact or situation that is multifactorial and complex, caused by a variety of factors.

And why did you decide to write it now?

This book was born out of a need to understand how this phenomenon has lasted so long and why it has come back with such force during this period of Middle East conflict. The oldest concept of anti-Semitism is religious anti-Semitism. Since the 19th century, racist anti-Semitism has been on the rise. What has happened more recently is that the state of Israel, founded in 1948, has become a regional power, and the virus of anti-Semitism has taken on a new discourse. A great appeal of our time is the call for the universality of human rights, and it is no surprise that Israel is suing the world at the Hague International Tribunal for human rights violations, violations that are often considered to be even less severe than those committed by other countries. This country was the victim of a very serious terrorist attack, and immediately after that, Israel began to come under heavy attack. What we’re witnessing is a kind of resurgence of old prejudices, old stereotypes, old conspiracy theories.

In your book, you criticize the use of the word “genocide” in relation to what happened in Gaza. However, the United Nations Human Rights Committee classified what was happening as genocide based on four facts, including the deliberate creation of living conditions calculated to cause the destruction of a people. Do you disagree with this understanding?

I think there was some exaggeration on the part of Israel, and I have doubts about the issue of proportionality, especially over time, but I don’t think there is a clear characterization of the ultimate goal of extermination. And just by analyzing the position of the United Nations Human Rights Committee in relation to other countries that commit persistent human rights violations, one can see that an unequal double standard is being used against the state of Israel. This does not mean that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s foreign policy cannot be criticized. What appears to me to be happening is a transfer of this political responsibility from the rulers to the people of Israel and the Jews of the Diaspora. The judgment of social networks, and especially of the press against certain ideological biases, is much harsher with respect to Israel than with other countries that violate human rights.

To this day, much of the criticism of Zionism relates to the expulsion of Palestinians from their territory, which became the state of Israel. But you claim that anti-Zionism is almost always anti-Semitism. why?

The two main characteristics of anti-Zionism, which is anti-Semitism, are intentional or negligent factual errors and double standards. An example of this is when they say that Israel is a unique hypothesis for creating a nation-state in the Middle East. During the historical era of European post-colonialism in North Africa and the Middle East, it was incredibly common for nation-states to be established as a practical solution to fulfilling the right to self-determination of those peoples. Another example can be seen in attacks on Israel’s recent actions. When France and the United States respond violently to terrorism, their criticism never questions the legitimacy of the nation’s existence. But when it comes to the conflict between Israel and Hamas, the first thing people immediately say is, “In fact, they have illegally occupied that territory and created a diaspora of Palestinians.” Unconscious hostility transforms into harsher judgments that are condemnable. And elites in Brazil and other countries tend to be more tolerant of anti-Semitism than other forms of discrimination against minorities.

Is this generosity left-wing or right-wing?

At this point, anti-Semitism is plural. The European right is still very anti-Semitic today. However, after the Six-Day War of 1967, the Soviet Union also began to profess this belief. Since then, there have been yellow signs that Israel will be a preferred ally of the United States and an arm of North American imperialism in the Middle East. The Soviet Union even installed chairs in its universities to demonstrate that Zionism itself is a form of racism, a narrative that fascinates many on the left to this day. There is an intellectual elite that embraces the theory that the very creation of the State of Israel was a product of a colonialist movement. It’s incredible how this story conforms to university environments in North America and Brazil, and not to mention in Europe. It is a phenomenon in which anti-Americanism transforms into anti-Semitism.

Do you think there are anti-Semitic practices in President Lula’s government?