Last month Harvard Law School professor Noah Feldman published in Time an authoritative outline of the evolution of antisemitic thought and addressed settler colonial studies as part of its contemporary instantiations (Noah Feldman, ‘The New Antisemitism’, Time, 27/02/24). Time is a very important outlet. Antisemitism is a very serious charge. Feldman’s intervention warrants a response.

After summarising the history and main features of medieval and nineteenth century antisemitisms, Feldman focuses on the ‘new’ antisemitism: ‘The core of this new antisemitism lies in the idea that Jews are not a historically oppressed people seeking self-preservation but instead oppressors: imperialists, colonialists, and even white supremacists. This view preserves vestiges of the trope that Jews exercise vast power. It creatively updates that narrative to contemporary circumstances and current cultural preoccupations with the nature of power and injustice. […] The theory of settler-colonial white supremacy was developed as a critical account of countries like Australia and the U.S., in which, according to the theory, the colonialists’ aim was to displace the local population, not to extract value from its labor. The application of these categories to Israel is a secondary development’.

I have been involved in this secondary development for a couple of decades now, and still fail to understand why it is categorically impossible to simultaneously think of Jews as an historically oppressed diaspora and of some Jews (i.e., the current inhabitants of Israel) as oppressors – this is what an historical understanding of developing relations is meant to offer, and this is what an understanding of the history of Zionism in Palestine offers: it registers the successes of Zionism as a settler colonial movement and observes their consequences for its victims.

These ‘borrowed categories do not fit Israel’s specificity very well’, Feldman argues. And yet: the reasons he lists to demonstrate a lack of fit are either about something else or actually confirm a remarkable fit – they may be borrowed but retain purchase. Here are Feldman’s reasons: ‘Israel is a regional Middle Eastern power with a tiny footprint, not a global or continental empire designed to extract resources and labor’, Feldman notes, even if being a regional power rather than a continental one has nothing to do with an ability to monopolise control over Indigenous lands for the purpose of replacing the Indigenous population. Feldman: Israel ‘was brought into existence by a 1947 United Nations resolution that would have created two states side by side, one Jewish and one Palestinian. Its purpose, as conceived by the U.N.’s member countries, was to house displaced Jews after 6 million were killed in the Holocaust. The Palestinian catastrophe, or nakba, of 1948 was that when the Arab invasion of Israel failed to destroy the nascent Jewish state, many Palestinians who had fled or been forced out of their homes by Israeli troops were unable to return. Those Palestinians became permanent refugees in neighboring countries. Instead of ending up in an independent Palestine as proposed by the U.N., those who had stayed in their homes found themselves living either in Israel or under Egyptian and Jordanian rule. Then, in the 1967 war, the West Bank and Gaza were conquered by Israel. Palestinians in those places came under what Israel itself defines as an occupation. They have lived in that precarious legal status ever since despite the 1993–2001 peace process’.

I quote at length because, again, this history, as represented here, is entirely consistent with an ability to monopolise control over Indigenous lands for the purpose of replacing the Indigenous population. Nothing in this summary is negating the operation of settler colonialism as a specific mode of domination in Israel-Palestine. (Feldman also mentions ‘white supremacy’, adding that it also does not apply because, even if ‘Jewish prejudice and discrimination’ do occur, Jews are not white, or were not, which is not a compelling counter argument, as the problem in ‘white supremacy’ is not the ‘white’ bit but ‘supremacy’).

Then Feldman continues on the question of settler colonialism: ‘The upshot is that while a well-meaning person, free of antisemitism, could describe Israel as colonialist, the narrative of Israel as a settler-colonial oppressor on par with or worse than the U.S., Canada, and Australia is fundamentally misleading. Those who advance it run the risk of perpetuating antisemitism by condemning the Jewish state despite its basic differences from these other global examples—most important, Israel’s status as the only homeland for a historically oppressed people who have nowhere else to call their own’.

‘Misleading’ and ‘antisemitic’ are key here. But there is no condemnation for being Jewish in any of the analyses of Israeli settler colonialism I have read, and they never lead to suggestions that settlers should depart en masse. There is no such misleading. (Besides, the US is also America’s only historic homeland, so is Australia for the Australians, and all settlers also have nowhere else to call home (and interestingly, the Puritans went to Massachusetts because they were ‘persecuted’ elsewhere, while the Australians ended up building a nation out of a widespread system of offshore detention, a significant form of oppression). The problem these analyses focus on is an oppressive occupation – which can be discontinued without mass departure. If anything, these analyses contribute to the task of finding possible solutions to the conflict.

These works argue that Israel can be Jewish without also necessarily oppressing Indigenous Palestinians – these works argue for ending a settler colonial project and reorganising the political life of the polity in accordance with democratic norms (Feldman has just finished explaining how historic antisemitism presumed paranoically that Jews were bent on domination – but his consideration of the question of settler colonialism and his dismissal assume Israel must be, or else it cannot be ‘Jewish’, which is a very antisemitic thing to imply). Feldman then adds:

To emphasize the narrative of Jews as oppressors, the new antisemitism must also somehow sidestep not only two millennia of Jewish oppression, but also the Holocaust, the largest organized, institutionalized murder of any ethnic group in human history. On the right, antisemites either deny the Holocaust ever happened or claim its scope has been overstated. On the left, one line is that Jews are weaponizing the Holocaust to legitimize the oppression of Palestinians.

On the contrary: no sidestepping. Having been oppressed for two millennia, an unavoidable fact, has nothing to do with a recent and current ability to monopolise control over Indigenous lands for the purpose of replacing the Indigenous population. It is the history of Zionism and was its ambition all along: turning the endangered and persecuted into a sovereign collective – and the oppression of Palestinians was always understood as a necessary corollary of its operation. It is an ability to monopolise control over Indigenous lands for the purpose of replacing the Indigenous population – settler colonialism – that did the transubstantiation. And the Holocaust is not sidestepped either: it is actually a crucial element in this story. The Shoah happens in one location (Europe) and at one time, and some of its consequences reverberate later in another (Palestine). These consequences included an ability to monopolise control over Indigenous lands for the purpose of replacing the Indigenous population. Feldman story is told as if Zionism had not been able to create a powerful polity, which is a remarkable sidestepping indeed.

These accusations are easily refuted. But Feldman’s conclusion does not ultimately depend on an observable historical reality: ‘The new narrative of Jews as oppressors is, in the end, far too close for comfort to the antisemitic tradition’. He admits the current oppression of Palestinians, he even considers the recent charges of genocide in Gaza as worthy of consideration – except that they do not apply in his opinion because of intent. ‘The genocide charge depends on intent’, and ‘Israel, as a state, is not fighting the Gaza War with the intent to destroy the Palestinian people’, he contends. Feldman is legal scholar and should do better, even if it is a very difficult defense. Who is doing the killing, not an arm of the Israeli State? Are the bombings not deliberate? Are Gazans not Palestinians? Are they not being indiscriminately destroyed? Can a determination to render Gaza unliveable not be discerned? As for mass starvation, is it not a deliberate policy? In relation to the last question in particular, we have heard similar arguments about unintended consequences in comparable circumstances, and it is not becoming. Finally, are not the Israeli politicians uttering clearly recognisable genocidal statements not currently serving in cabinet positions (a point Feldman readily admits, as if it made little difference)? These are genuine questions, but what is most telling, is that Feldman ultimately worries about what is ‘too close for comfort’ and what is not. He dismisses the matter of genocide on a technicality. And he does not consider an observable and ongoing ability to monopolise control over Indigenous lands for the purpose of replacing the Indigenous population – settler colonialism. Seeking comfort in the face of genocide. And unsupported accusations.