The Zionist experience in Palestine has exposed the Jewish people to a number of modern experiences which were previously unknown. The governance of a state, the construction of an army and the maintenance of a civil society are but a few of the tasks which the Zionist movement has thrust upon the Jewish people. This exposure has come at the cost of state politics, class creation and, in the case of Israel, ongoing violent conflict. Perhaps the most taxing cost of the Zionist experiment is the creation of a new internal Jewish politics, one which does not tolerate challenge to its authority. In the past twenty years, the discourse surrounding the holocaust has reached a point in which any genuine challenge to its position as the single most horrific event in human history is met with attacks and dismissal from the official organs of the Jewish community. The contemporary Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek has placed, at the center of his philosophical platform, a discussion of the Jew in European society and the rise of “Zionist anti-Semitism”. By using the Jew to understand modern European politics, Zizek is able to argue that the intellectual roots of Zionist anti-Semitism and the so-called anti-anti-Semitism lie in European modernity.

Using Lacanian discourse Zizek introduces, perhaps, the foundational tension of the European modernity and Jewish inclusion in Europe:

Insofar as the Jews insist on the unsurpassable horizon of the Law and resist the Christian sublation (Aufhebung) of the Law in Love, they are the embodiment of the irreducible finitude of the human condition: they are not just an empirical obstacle to full incestuous jouissance, but the obstacle “as such,” the very principle of impediment, the perturbing excess that can never be integrated. Jews are thus elevated to the objet petit a (“notre objet a” the title of Francois Regnault’s booklet on the Jews), the object-cause of (our Western) desire, the obstacle which effectively sustains desire, and in the absence of which our desire itself would vanish. They are our object of desire not in the sense of that which we desire, but in the strict Lacanian sense of that which sustains our desire, the metaphysical obstacle to full self-presence or full jouissance, that which has to be eliminated to make way for the arrival of the full jouissance; and, since this non-barred jouissance is structurally impossible, that which returns with increasing strength as a spectral threat the more Jews are annihilated. (Zizek, Slavoj. The Parallax View)

European anti-Semitism has not dissolved with the holocaust rather it has transformed into unfounded critique of the state of Israel. Zizek argues:

Today’s anti-Semitism is no longer the old ethnic anti-Semitism; its focus is displaced from the Jews as an ethnic group to the State of Israel… In this way today’s anti-Semitism can present itself as anti-anti-Antisemitism, full of solidarity with the victims of the Holocaust; the reproach is just that, in our era of the gradual dissolution of all limits, of the fluidization of all traditions, the Jews wanted to build their own clearly delimited nation-state. (The Parallax View. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2006. Page 253-254)

So it is clear that Europe, while trying officially to be inclusive and ‘multicultural’, still harbors classic anti-Semitic problematic among its population. What has been the Jewish response to this episode of modern European anti-Semitism and ultimately, targeted genocide? Unfortunately the response has not been a radical push for inclusion and continued emancipation in European society instead in many sectors of Jewish life there has been an internalization of anti-Semitic understanding of modernity. Take for example the attacks on liberal Jews who openly criticize the actions of the state of Israel in the West Bank. Amos Elon was often targeted as a ‘rootless cosmopolitan’ because of his move to Italia and his political stance. To use another example, Tony Judt is often criticized for his views and the fact that he does not live in Israel. This is a developing plot line in contemporary Jewish history and I plan on exploring it more on this website. Comments and thoughts are also welcomed and encouraged.

The use of the holocaust by the Jewish communities in Israel and the United States is another problematic that has responded to the European model with internalization. Contemporary Jewish identity has been constructed around two opposites, which cannot function without each other, the holocaust and the State of Israel. The American Jewish community, one of the strongest and most secure in history outside of the German Jewish community before the holocaust, have elevated the events that transpired against European Jews to a level of their own identity in the United States. This can clearly be seen in the creation of the US holocaust memorial. The United States gave the Jewish community an opportunity to be included on the National Mall in Washington with a “Jewish Museum” as a gesture of inclusion and acceptance. The Jewish community did not decide to construct a museum of Jewish culture, history or relationship with the United States. The museum was constructed as a memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe.
Zizek’s commentary of this subject is spot on with his account of the need of the holocaust for the Jewish community. He argues:

There is an unfortunate tendency among some Zionists to transform shoah into holocaust, the sacrificial offering which guarantees the Jewish special status. The exemplary figure here is Elie Wiesel, who sees the Holocaust as equal to the revelation at Sinai in its religious significance: attempts to ‘desanctify’ or “demystify” the holocaust is in effect elevated into a unique agalma, hidden treasure, object petit a of the Jews – they are ready to give up everything expect the holocaust…Recently, after I was attacked by a Jewish Lacanian for being a covert anti-Semite, I asked a mutual friend why this extreme reaction. He reply: “You should understand the guy- he does not want the Jews to be deprived of the Holocaust, the focal point of their lives…” (The Parallax View. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2006. Page 259.)

The Jewish people need anti-Semitism and Zionist anti-Semitism is perhaps the most extreme form of internalized anti-Semitic norms. Just as European modernity has constructed the Jew as the ‘other’, Jews use anti-Semitism to consolidate their identity. Gentile society is constructed as the ‘other’ who fundamentally hates the Jews. The eminent French philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, is the most famous figure to put forth this explicit understanding of the Jewish people in modern times with his book Anti-Semite and Jew. The wisdom of Hanna Arendt is particularly useful in understanding the current trend of Zionist anti-Semitism and hyper infatuation with the Shoah in the contemporary Jewish community. Richard Bernstein comments on her thoughts as such:

If Jewish identity is really dependent on anti-Semitism, then those Jews who are concerned to preserve Jewish identity will, overtly or covertly, be complicit in preserving anti-Semitism. Arendt was always sharply critical of those who were tempted by the idea that the anti-Semites were the secret allies of the Zionists. This is the strain in Herzl’s thinking which, despite his other achievements, she singled out for her sharpest criticism. (Bernstein, Richard J. Hannah Arendt and the Jewish Question. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996. P. 48.)