In what can only be described as a transparent act of self-promotion, Israeli Prime Minister, Bibi Netanyahu, has sought to re-brand the Charlie Hebdo attacks as acts of anti-semitism. His manoeuvres in word and deed were aimed at insinuating Israel into the tragedy, co-opting the narrative and, by means of the usual orthodoxies, exempting Israel from any criticism of its policies.
A day after the attacks on the magazine's offices but a day before the hostage-taking at the kosher market, Netanyahu identified the attack on Charlie Hebdo with attacks on Israel. You are victims of terrorism just as we are victims are victims of terrorism.
After the murders at the market, Netanyahu followed up with a punch from the other side, this time branding the attacks as evidence of a rising tide of anti-semitism in Europe. Eo instante the entire incident got metamorphosed by Netanyahu's propaganda machine as more perennial persecution of Jews.
Charlie Hebdo and Israel are simply not in pari materia. The satirical weekly was not in the business of corralling an entire population in Gaza or stealing land in the West Bank. The two are neither geographically nor morally equivalent.
Although it might astonish some, a Palestinian shooting back at Israeli-Jews is engaging in some form of self-defense or protest against a material harm. Professed Muslims shooting up the cartoon staff of a weekly for insults to the dignity of the Prophet are defending nothing but their own subjectively entertained abstractions.
The staff at Charlie Hebdo were victims. Israel is a powerful and proactive party in a conflict over land but it is not a “victim”.
It is quite fair to say that the post-war survivors of Nazi genocide who emigrated to Palestine were victims. But that does not make them “victims for all purposes.” It does not make them the victims of Palestinian reprisals in what has become a war over land.
Had Netanyahu said: the French press is the victim of Islamic terrorism "just as" Israel is the victim of Palestinian counter-attacks, the analogy would have broken apart of its own weight. To ensure the foisting of his petard, Netanyahu replaced the word “reprisal” with the word “terrorism.” Poof! As if pulling a rabbit out of a hat, the matter now becomes “self-evident.” Not so.
The essence of terrorism consists in murderous acts against people who have done nothing wrong with respect to the perpetrator. The victims of terrorism are victims in the true sense because they themselves have done nothing culpable and are not even engaged in co-belligerent hostilities.
The enemy soldier on a battlefield, the police forces of an occupying power, the officials, ministers and kings of an enemy state are not truly “victims” of terrorism because they are responsible parties engaged in an actual conflict. The act which murders them in bed or blows them up is called “terrorism” simply because it is not done in accordance with the accepted “rules of war” but the officials so-killed are victims only in the sense of being “subjects” of the deed.
Adding the phrase “of terrorism” to the noun “victim” has the intended effect of “proving” that the person called a “victim” was truly a victim. After all, anyone who suffers from terrorism must truly be a victim! QED.
Netanyahu's analogy was not rendered less spurious by the fact that Palestinians may engage in reprisals. While it is true that reprisals are often taken against non-combatant "innocent civilians," the reprisal is pay-back for a prior act by the opposing party, which was itself unlawful; for example, collective punishment against non-involved civilian. Reprisals do drag the conflict into a never ending spiral of revenge in which both parties end up engaging in murderous acts which become less and less justifiable with each iteration. But "attack vs. attack" or "reprisal vs. reprisal" or "terror vs. terror" are simply not the same as "innocence vs. guilt."
Israel is not a victim of anything. Period. Netanyahoo’s attempt to piggy Israel onto the back of Charlie Hebdo was as ludicrous and contemptible as if he had thrown himself into the Charbonnier’s grave, crying for the funereal sod to be cast over himself.
As if that were not bad enough, Netanyahu then attempted to brand the entire affair as a symptom of a yet another new wave of ever rising anti-semitism in Europe.
Once against equivocations. What did he mean by “in Europe”? Did he mean by Europeans in general or by Islamic terrorists acting within the borders of Europe? From Netanyahoo’s perspective you can take your pick because he comes out on top either way. It is a perfectly convenient and exploitable ambiguity.
Given the by now established usage, "anti-semitism in Europe" gets quickly metamorphosed into "European anti-semitism." The call for "measures to combat anti-semitism" just as quickly shifts focus from measures aimed to prevent or deflect specific crimes of hate to measures aimed at suppressing any allegedly "anti-semitic" criticism of Israel or disagreement with Zionist orthodoxy.
This entire canard gets built upon the fact that in the course of the event four Jews were killed. But there is, as yet, no evidence that they were killed because they were Jews.
Let us go back to what ought to be obvious. The killing of a Jewish person is not ipso facto or a priori an anti-semitic act. As anyone else, Jews can be killed in a variety of circumstances from a variety of motives. For an act to be truly anti-semitic, it must be motivated by some kind of hatred or animus against Jews, as a designated group or characterized class, and that animus has to be vented against or taken out on a particular person seen to be representative or symbolic of the group.
The murder of Charbonnier, et al. was not an anti-semitic act not only because none of the victims were Jewish but more importantly because none were killed for any reason having anything to do with Jews. In fact, the motivation for their murder was plainly and simply that they had supposedly insulted the Prophet. They were killed because they were regarded blasphemers.
The murder of the hostages in the kosher supermarket is more problematic. The issue here turns on whether the market or the hostages seized therein were chosen on account of their ethno-religious affiliation — in other words was hatred of Jews the reason for choosing to attack the market in the first place?
It could be argued that a Jewish market was chosen because the perpetrators regarded Jews as “disposable” and of “no account;” and, to this extent, the motivation would fall under the umbrella of anti-semitism.
But there is, as yet, no basis for that conjecture. Between the Charlie Hebdo murders and the assault on the market, the perpetrators made a video explaining their actions. At no point does the video resort to anti-semitic screeds or justifications. If the perpertrators’ motives were anti-semitic and if they were going about publishing their motives, it makes no sense to think that they would “hide” exactly that which they were making public.
It is simply quite possible that the choice of a kosher market was happenstance.
Moreover, what gets lost in the wash of sophistries, is that between the Charlie murders and the assault on the market, the perpetrators also blew away a policeman -- a policeman who was a Muslim. This fact hardly gets mentioned at all and certainly not by Netanyahu & Cie. Does his murder bespeak a rising tide of islamo-terrorist anti-islamism?
Whether anti-semitism exists in Europe, these murders have little to nothing to do with it. What Bibi is attempting to do is not only to associate Israel with the victimization of the Charlie Hebdo staff, but to re-brand the entire incident as proof of “anti-semitism” which can then be exploited to Israel’s advantage by characterizing any opposition to Israeli policies as murderous terrorism and genocidal hate.
Netanyahu's incredibly swift initial response to the massacre, in which he all but explicitly identified Israel as a co-victim was evocative of the same Israeli response which followed on the heels of 9-11. Within hours of the Twin Towers collapsing, the Israeli consul in New York, Simon Perez in Tel-Aviv and Ehud Barack in Moscow (where it was 4.0 a.m.) were on American television repeating the same, coordinated line: now you know what Israel has been suffering; join us in our war against terrorism.
There is a broader gambit at issue here as well. Over the past decade, Israel has also made it a policy to insinuate itself into Europe itself as a kind of special status part of the European Union. It has done so for economic and geopolitical reasons with the ultimate aim of getting people to think of an attack on Israel as an attack on Europe itself. Of course, the Europe Israel wants to be a part of is, is a Europethat will tow the line of the Jewish State.
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