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PARTISAN REVIEW
about the translation of the conspiracy theory and the adaptation of its
categories to the State of Israel - what I myself referred to in my talk as
the taking of ideas that had been directed against Jews in the Diaspora
and transposing them to the Jewish State among the nations. It isn't
merely - I don't think we're ready to use the past tense here - it isn't
merely that Israel is now seen as the center of a vast conspiracy to take
over the world in conjunction with other forces; it's that Israel's exis–
tence and policies were treated in the UN and elsewhere in a way that
was strongly reminiscent, to anyone with ears to hear and eyes to see, of
the way that Jews and Jewish communities were talked about by anti–
Semites in the Diaspora.
In other words, all the supposedly characteristic vices of Jews were
now translated into the language of international politics and applied to
Israel. Jews had been attacked by anti-Semites for being greedy, clannish;
Israel was seen
to
be aggressive, grasping - in other words, greedy - and
clannish, in the sense of the Zionism-is-racism libel. This meant that
when Israel behaved as any other nation was expected to behave, in ways
that were taken for granted in the case of other nations - that is, assert–
ing a right
to
self-defense, or trying to look after its own - it was at–
tacked just as Jews in the Diaspora had always been attacked, for exhibit–
ing what is after all a universal human trait. A trait, moreover, that is re–
garded as a virtue in other peoples. This double standard, this tendency
to put anything Jews do in the worst and harshest possible light, has
been behind a good deal of the anti-Israel propaganda that still circulates
in the universities and much of the media, and in other such forums.
Edith Kurzweil:
Thank you . Now to the questions. You may also ad–
dress last night's speakers, who are in the audience .
Question:
Can an anti-Semite be converted into a non-anti-Semite?
Robert Wistri ch:
I don't know of any studies on this question, and
therefore we have no research on it. From my experience, I admit to
being, on a personal level, a great believer in persuasion. But I must add
that, on this issue, I'm a skeptic, if you're talking about a serious anti–
Semite, somebody of the type I was characterizing earlier. If we're
talking about a more trivial level of hostility, then I assume that as with
other forms of fairly banal prejudice, it may be accessible to some kind of
reasoned argument.
Question:
Do other groups invent us to hate?
