Book: OFF-WHITE: THE TRUTH ABOUT ANTISEMITISM
Author: Rachel Shabi
Published by: Oneworld
Price: Rs 499
The mounting death toll of Palestinians in the face of the Israeli army’s relentless pounding of and aerial bombings on Gaza had loaded the Global South’s sentiments in favour of Palestine. The Israeli action was justified as a response to the war Hamas started by killing 1,200 Jews and taking away some 200 hostages from Israel. But the subsequent heavy loss of Palestinian lives during the military operation in Gaza made the anti-Israeli narrative stronger.
‘Anti-Semitism’ was employed by influential Jews to counter that sentiment from spreading in the Western world, especially in campuses. Chants of ‘Intifada’, the long-used slogans in Palestinian solidarity marches, were conflated with calls for genocide of Jews to mislead the people. Heads of leadinguniversities in the United Kingdom and the United States of America faced threats of the freezing of grants as they failed to prevent such sentiments from circulating in campuses. Some of them resigned under pressure.
It became a “Gotcha” moment, a stick for the Right to clobber the Left, says Rachel Shabi, a British journalist of Iraqi-Jewish origin, in Off-White. Shabi says that the Left liberals’ failure to understand the Jewish trauma related to anti-Semitism allowed the Right to use it as a tool to silence pro-Palestinian voices.
Anti-Semitism was linked to being critical of Israel, confusing people and making them afraid to ask questions lest they be misconstrued, says Shabi. “People are worried that spurious claims (of anti-Semitism) might one day be made against them,” she observes in her book. But she blames the Left for allowing the Right to dominate the narrative on anti-Semitism. Shabi acknowledges that it was absurd to compare and debate the “hypothetically calling for a genocide of Jews” amidst a catastrophe unfolding in Gaza. Shabi, who has covered the Israel-Palestine conflict for years, never found the issue to be at the “front and center” of the debate. It rose to prominence with the triumphs of right-wing governments in Israel, Europe and America.
Shabi argues that anti-Semitism is a manifestation of racism as the Holocaust was also about race. Off-White narrates the sustained persecution of Jews over centuries in Europe and points out how anti-Semitism “absolutely racialized” them. “The hooked noses, curly dark hair, beady dark eyes, dirtiness, smelliness” are stereotypes that circulate even today, she reminds us. Shabi uses the broad brush on racism to include Blacks and all those who are discriminated against, including people coded as White — the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller (GRT) people along with Jews — to justify the title of her book. She argues that anti-Semitism and racism were tools used by White rulers to hold on to power.
Shabi expresses affront at the Judeo-Christian mythology, which tried to paper over the close and creative history of the Judeo-Islamic alliance. Perhaps she should have added the atrocities perpetrated against Jews by Christians.
Critics say that the book, while trying to be even-handed by talking about the Palestinian misery at the hands of the Israeli government, is partisan: it is essentially an attempt to justify why Jews continue to be traumatised by the use of anti-Semitism even today. Nonetheless, Shabi brings fresh perspective to the debate on a prominent wedge issue as she wants people to understand anti-Semitism better. But she fails to convince us how the issue is relevant in the fight between two Semitic people. Nor does she explain why the support for a Palestinian homeland is fast shrinking among Jews.