Essay in Expressen, October 2024 

Who is an aAntisemite?

 In connection with the re-release of my book The Lost Land, a prominent Christian Democrat, Lars Adaktusson, told me in a post on X (formerly Twitter) that, "inspired by the anti-Semitic BDS movement, I had added another chapter to [m]y lifelong vocation of vilifying and demonizing Israel". BDS stands for Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions, and is a Palestinian boycott movement against Israel's occupation and colonization policies, with a notable presence of Jewish and Jewish-Israeli representatives. The fact that it has nevertheless been classified as anti-Semitic not only by Israel but also by countries such as the United States and Germany is based on a definition of anti-Semitism that I find deeply problematic.

To be called an anti-Semite (yes, that's how it may be interpreted) by a well-known Christian Democrat may say more about today's Christian Democrats than about me, but it is not uncommon nowadays for Jews to be accused of anti-Semitism (i.e. Jew-hatred). Preferably by representatives of nationalist parties with roots in neo-Nazism, which today seamlessly combines historical anti-Semitism with support for Israel's ethno-national occupation and colonization policy, and which sees in Israel's ethno-nationalist state a role model. Preferably also by representatives of theologically anti-Jewish "Christian" parties and movements who see in the return of the Jews to the Holy Land (especially the holy places on occupied land) the prelude to the return of Jesus and the conversion of the Jews to Christ.

I am not saying that Jews are immune to anti-Semitism, nor that there are no anti-Semitic elements in the criticism of Zionism and Israel, but it is also clear that in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, accusations of anti-Semitism have been used as a political weapon to demonize criticism of Israel and support for the Palestinian cause.

But you don't have to hate Jews to show solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza, for example by wearing a traditional Palestinian shawl, keffiyeh, or displaying a Palestinian flag. Nevertheless, both have come to be perceived as expressions of anti-Semitism and in some places have led to police action. Swedish Jews have said in interviews that they feel unsafe when meeting people wearing a keffiyeh around their neck. "For me, the keffiyeh symbolizes my Arab origin and reminds me of my grandfather and grandmother," writes Kholod Sagir in an article in the Sydsvenska Dagbladet. "But how should I react when it seems to be perceived by some as a threat and makes other people feel unsafe?"

It is unclear to what extent these kinds of experiences are part of the material forming the basis of a report on antisemitism in Sweden after October 7, recently published by the Segerstedt Institute at the University of Gothenburg. However, the fact that it is mainly based on "experiences" is already clear from the subtitle. Nowhere in the report are there any concrete descriptions of the events on which the experiences were based on, let alone any attempt to investigate the matter further. Of course, no one can question a person’s experience, two people can experience the same thing in wholly different ways, but it may nevertheless be appropriate to point out that what the report is based are subjective statements about perceived antisemitism.

It also tends to make make far-reaching conclusions on a limited basis of facts. When the report states that the number of hate crime reports with anti-Semitic motives increased by more than 450 percent after October 7, 2023, it sounds undeniably dramatic, but what it means in terms of numbers is an increase from 24 reports in the fall of 2022 to 110 reports in the fall of 2023. These figures are in turn based on a survey by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention, BRÅ, which again is based on the complainant's experience of the event as formulated in the police report. How many of these reports have been investigated further, if any, is not revealed in the BRÅ report and consequently not in the report from the Segerstedt Institute.

This, in my view, weakens the empirical substance of the report's claims of a sharp increase in anti-Semitism after October 7, 2023. Experiences of anti-Semitism may be very real, and in some cases even traumatic, but they do not provide a basis for any valid assessment of what actually happened and why. Especially as the increase in reports clearly coincides with the outraged protests against Israel's war in Gaza and it is suspected that what may be perceived as Jew-hatred may be intended as criticism of Israel.

The problem is that one has increasingly come to be conflated with the other, which in turn is due to the fact that according to the definition of anti-Semitism (IHRA, International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) adopted by a number of countries in the world, including Sweden, there is a great deal that cannot be said about the State of Israel without risking being labeled as anti-Semitism. For example, that Israel is a racist state, which I myself now consider it to be.

A few years ago, I was one of the signatories of the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, JDA, where we tried to draw a clearer line between antisemitism and criticism of Israel - in an effort to curb the political misuse of the term and the risk that it would thereby be watered down to meaninglessness. If a boycott movement against the Israeli occupation can be labeled anti-Semitic, or the claim that Israel is a racist state, what is left to call the anti-Semitism that hates Jews as Jews?

It is true that the line between anti-Semitism and criticism of Israel has become increasingly difficult to draw, that anti-Semitism has too easily disguised itself as anti-Zionism, and that hatred of "Zionists" has too often become a euphemism for hatred of Jews. But it is also true that there has been a deliberate policy by Israel to blur the line. When the report says there has been an "Israelization" of anti-Semitism, it refers to the former, not the latter.

An example of the latter is when the report's main author and director of the Segerstedt Institute, Christer Mattsson, claimed in an interview in Dagens Nyheter that the Gothenburg Book Fair in 2023 had been guilty of "structural anti-Semitism". That year, the book fair had Jewish culture as its theme and the structural anti-Semitism turned out to consist in the fact that the fair's Jewish cultural program allegedly had an anti-Israel bias. "By anti-Semitism, Mattsson does not mean anti-Jewish," the DN reporter clarified, "but simply critical of the country and the state of Israel." Mattsson's statement in turn echoed a statement by Israel's ambassador to Sweden, Ziv Nevo Kulman, who had expressed dissatisfaction that Israel had not been invited as an official partner and had seen in this "a pattern of structural anti-Semitism".

This is what can happen when the concept of anti-Semitism is watered down to the point of meaninglessness and the label "structural anti-Semitism" can be applied to a book fair that has turned itself inside out to give preference to Jewish cultural expressions, with appearances by a number of Jewish cultural personalities - including from Israel. The "structural anti-Semitism" was that the Book Fair had made a distinction between Jews and the State of Israel, a distinction that the State of Israel is actively working to erase.

The absence of the problem of anti-Semitism as a political weapon is consistent throughout the report. It might otherwise have been interesting to examine the extent to which there is a connection between Jews' experiences of anti-Semitism in the wake of October 7 and the importance of the State of Israel for their Jewish identity. It is not unreasonable to imagine that Jews for whom Israel means a lot in this respect are more likely to perceive criticism of Israel as criticism directed at themselves as Jews.

This has not been made less likely by the fact that criticism of Israel has been shown to be just that, a criticism in which unmistakably anti-Jewish stereotypes and conspiracy theories have crept into the picture of the actions of the State of Israel. There is also no doubt that such conflation has become increasingly common as Israel's actions in Gaza have sparked outrage and protest around the world. In the growing torrent of open and crude Jew-hatred pouring out of the troll factories and basements of 'social media', the conflation of 'Jews' and 'Zionists' is deliberate and systematic. In the outrage of what a state that calls itself Jewish actually says and does, the market grows for the pure fantasies and imaginations about Jews and Jewish power that throughout history have been able to thrive and spread and occasionally explode in expulsions, persecutions and massacres.

Nevertheless, with the advent of the State of Israel, a situation has arisen in which anti-Semitic fantasies about the imaginary power of Jews are fed by the exercise of very real power by a state that calls itself Jewish. Unlike the imaginary Jew-haters of anti-Semitism, Palestinians do not necessarily have to hate Jews to hate the power that occupies, expels and massacres them (although in the worst case, one can lead to the other).

None of this is allowed to problematize the report of anti-Semitism in Sweden after 7 October, which I fear may rather contribute to reinforcing the climate of incomprehension and intransigence that today characterizes the discussion on Israel-Palestine, and which I assume the report intended to counteract.