Anti-Semitism and bad faith

I recently came across a work which captures perceptively the essence of many arguments I have had with many anti-Israel activists since 7 October.

“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words.”

The same work portrays how such activists often grossly underestimate contemporary anti-Semitism: “How frivolous discussions about the rights of the Jew appear to him.”

Except these passages were first published just after the second world war. Their author, Jean-Paul Sartre, the most famous French existentialist philosopher, included them in his Anti-Semite and Jew (first published as Réflexions sur la question juive).

Those who have read Sartre will be familiar with his concept of bad faith. This refers to a form of deception where people feel obliged to use coded language when they go against consensus views. For example, they know the public generally dislikes anti-Semitism so they use euphemisms and misleading language to get their point across.

As Sartre says in relation to anti-Semitism in another astute passage: “They delight in acting in bad faith since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert."

Anyone who has followed the anti-Israel movement since 7 October, and indeed before, will recognise this description. Its supporters in the western media and the Middle East have produced masses of material claiming that Israel is intent on genocide and child murder. The huge volume makes it impossible to counter every claim. It is after all much easier to produce distorted stories than it is to gather the material to rebut them.

This huge propaganda machine, which goes far beyond Hamas itself, promotes anti-Israel stories with a kind of mania. Often this involves outright fabrication. It includes the output of what is sometimes called “Pallywood” – the media industry dedicated to producing fake or highly misleading output. It of course also determinesd that images of dead or injured Palestinian fighters are kept off western television screens and social media. Such images would undermine the narrative that this is a “genocide” rather than a war between Israel and those forces avowedly intent on destroying it. 

It is also common to see the mistranslation of Hebrew phrases in pro-Hamas propaganda. “Gaza city” (the city of Gaza in the middle of the Gaza strip) and the "Gaza envelope" ( the area inside Israel which surrounds the Gaza strip) have both been translated as “Gaza”. In each case the mistranslation gives a highly misleading impression of what was said in the original quote. Similarly there are many  instances of Israeli figures supposedly calling for the annihilation of Palestinians when in reality they were calling for Hamas’s destruction.

Then there is the common propaganda approach of wrenching points out of their proper context. Mehdi Hassan, a British journalist and co -founder of the Zeteo media company, is one of the most sophisticated exponents of this method. I was in the audience when his Al-Jazeera Head to Head television programme featuring Benny Morris, a noted Israeli historian, was recorded. Typically Hassan would read an apparently damning quotation from an article by Morris and then the historian would complain it had been taken out of context. But, rather than let Morris explain the background, Hassan would insist he had the whole paragraph and that the Israeli historian was being dishonest. As if the subtleties of a complex argument by an academic could be put across in one isolated paragraph. This was the worst kind of gotcha journalism rather than a probing interview. It was also reminiscent of Sartre’s comments about anti-Semites not feeling the need to use words responsibly.

Of course not everyone who goes on anti-Israel marches or who feels sympathy for the Palestinians is anti-Semitic. On the contrary, there are many who get involved in such activities in good faith. But it is hard to maintain such a principled stance in the midst of a movement dedicated to the idea that Israel represents absolute evil. That helps explain why the explicitly anti-Semitic placards and chants common at such protests are rarely challenged.

This lack of principle is also apparent in the reaction to those holding up a “Hamas is terrorist” sign at anti-Israel marches in London. It is sadly unsurprising that Mark Birbeck of the Our Fight campaign and Niyak Ghorbani, an Iranian pro-Israel campaigner, face hostility from Islamist activists on such marches. But it is arguably more shocking that the supposedly enlightened elements on such protests do not defend their right to condemn the Islamist group. The slogan on Birbeck and Ghorbani’s banner should be uncontroversial to any objective observer.

Bad faith looks set to remain a serious problem in relation to anti-Semitism but its importance is likely to lessen. Activists still often use coded language to indicate their dislike of Jews because they know the general public is wary of anti-Semitism. But, as long as it goes unchallenged, overt anti-Semitism is likely to become increasingly acceptable with at least a section of the public.