The Charge of Anti-Semitism

Alex Kane recently published a piece on the Open Zion blog at the Daily Beast, in which he was rather critical of Israel. Money quote:

The [Times] editorial states that a recent report which concluded that Israel has the right to build settlements on occupied land draws “attention to a dispiriting anomaly: that a state founded as a democratic homeland for the Jewish people is determined to continue ruling 2.5 million Palestinians under an unequal system of laws and rights.” Sounds like apartheid to me.

What happened was that Armin Rosen, a media fellow at the Atlantic, cried antisemitism. As it happens, Kane is a staff writer for a website called Mondoweiss, which, according to Rosen, occasionally gives airtime to work of an anti-Semitic nature. But he goes further, branding it as an organization giving the appearance of an "anti-Semitic enterprise," and citing the comments of its editor, who once said, "I can justly be accused of being a conspiracy theorist because I believe in the Israel lobby theory ... certainly my theory has an explanation of the rise and influence of the neocons. They don't have a class interest but an ideological-religious one."

Rosen then goes on to recount a litany of journalistic missteps that, while unfavorable to Israel, could scarcely be interpreted as evidence of anti-Semitic or bigoted intent. Needless to say Rosen's interpretation is based on considerably scant evidence. He finishes his post on this slightly bitter note, that, while restrained, smacks of acrimony:

Publishing anti-Semites, or people who work for websites that traffic in anti-Semitic innuendo or conspiracy theories, empowers ideas aimed at obscuring the humanity of one side of an already-violent conflict. 

Rosen's Atlantic colleague Robert Wright, who concluded that Rosen's condemnation had an air of neo-McCarthyism, submitted these fitting words on the topic:

This tarring of Kane by virtue of his association with Mondoweiss would be lamentable even if Rosen produced a convincing indictment of Mondoweiss, showing that it indeed evinces anti-Semitism. Does he do so? All I can say is that I clicked on the links to Mondoweiss that Rosen provided and--though I didn't read every single post with utmost care--I did reach a point where I could safely conclude that Rosen has a looser definition of anti-Semitism than I do....I'm not saying that everyone who finds any Mondoweiss content obnoxious or offensive does so in bad faith, out of an attempt to silence voices critical of Israel. Still, I do feel that anyone who tries to stigmatize a publication by suggesting that it's anti-Semitic (or racist, or un-American, or whatever) has an obligation to provide clear examples of things in the publication that they definitely consider anti-Semitic and explain exactly how they qualify as anti-Semitic. Rosen doesn't do that.

Moreover, on the point of judging a single writer by his employer:

I guess by Rosen's logic I am now personally responsible for his article--because, after all, it appeared on the Atlantic's site, and I work for the Atlantic. Well, I'm happy to say I disagree. But maybe my connection to the Atlantic at least entitles me to offer an apology to Alex Kane. He certainly deserves one.

Few things are more reliable as an indication of idiocy than anti-Semitism. Wherever it appears in even the slightest undertones it ought to be denounced and condemned, and its adherents rejected by at least the most mainstream publications — like Newsweek, to give a topical example. But I think we do ourselves a tremendous disservice to let the standard slip when it comes to what anti-Semitism actually is.

Like all charges of this sort (racism and bigotry included), there's an impact to be upheld, and an impact that is immediately lost when it it ascribed to apparently innocuous work by a relatively unknown writer on a blog of a relatively respectable publication simply because said writer works for a website whose other writers are unanimously opposed to Israel and Zionism. The currency of the term is wastefully cheapened when it is used out of turn, and without any real and valid justification. What you're really doing here, if anything meaningful at all, is assisting the real anti-Semites, for whom the word will no longer suffice as a description (even, in some cases, as a job description). Rosen owes more apology than he perhaps realizes.