Pushing Back: Responding to Accusations of Antisemitism
In this article I share reflections on my experience of being accused of antisemitism in the course of expressing views on Palestine within an internal professional platform. I discuss the issues emerging from such allegations and how they mirror wider contexts. I describe some dilemmas about ways of responding and the tortuous processes that can develop in the process of ‘pushing back’.
I am a systemic family therapist, supervisor and trainer and I have always been deeply interested in politics. Being married to an Israeli Jew and, having lived in Jerusalem for a year, my focus gravitated towards what was then euphemistically described as the ‘Israel/Palestine conflict’. Subsequent visits to Palestine and encounters with mental health professionals there were transformative to my understanding of the realities of life under military occupation and its toxic impact on the emotional wellbeing of Palestinian families. For the past seven years I have been involved with the UK Palestine Mental Health network which draws attention to these processes and which acts in solidarity with Palestinian colleagues. I have given many presentations to clinicians in the UK and elsewhere on the impact of colonial oppression on mental health, including in Gaza where I consult with a trauma team. In the course of this, I have invariably faced either anxieties that what I discuss might ‘create offence’ or direct accusations of bias and one-sidedness. These worries would be unlikely to surface in relation to therapeutic work with any other vulnerable or oppressed group. However, even though concerns were sometimes raised that exploring such matters might ‘fuel antisemitism’, I had never been accused of it personally and I have always considered myself to be absolutely scrupulous about how I use language.
When it did occur I was already aware of how many people, especially in the Labour party, had been so accused, including – and this is something that continues to shock me – a large number of Jews. In exploring what meanings we can attach to this anomaly it is useful to look at connections with wider systems phenomena. In our work as systemic therapists we of course explore patterns within familial and other intimate relationship worlds but we are also concerned with how social discourses and power relations infiltrate and influence interactions. In relating my own story I will explore the intersection between the ‘intimate’ level of communication with my professional colleagues and the wider political agendas surrounding them. I pay particular attention to language use and its consequences. First, I briefly set the scene by describing a repeating pattern within the political context of Israel/Palestine which has proved particularly toxic and which has echoes with my own narrative.
A number of meticulously researched reports from prominent human rights organisations including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem and the UN Special Rapporteur have appeared in the last two years which evidence Israel’s human rights abuses, war crimes and practices of apartheid. They describe a reality which Palestinians have known for decades from lived experience. These findings have been accompanied by growing awareness within civil society of Israel’s abuses and increased support for Palestinian solidarity movements which attempt to hold Israel to account and to fill the lacuna created by the lack of action by successive governments in the western world. At the same time we witness ever more vigorous attempts both from the Israeli state and its adherents in other countries to neutralise opposition. This has usually involved employing the language of either terrorism or antisemitism. Even as we witness increasing acts of violence towards Palestinians from Israeli settlers and from the army which aids and abets them, even as Israeli politicians’ rhetoric intensifies in its overt racism, so do parallel attempts to close down space for protest intensify in turn. The extraordinary thing is how successful this strategy continues to be in silencing critical voices and how rarely it is confronted or exposed. One reason for the success of this silencing is that the means used – accusations of antisemitism – are loaded with such deep evocations of Jewish suffering that they tap into collective feelings of guilt and defensiveness which can divert from the matter of pursuing justice and equal rights for all in the land of Palestine.
An example of this pattern is that precisely at a time of unparalleled suffering for Palestinians, with escalating assaults, murders, land seizure, home demolitions and ethnic cleansing, under a coalition about which even Israel’s apologists in the USA sound more than a little queasy, what do we find being urged on the United Nations but that it adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism? https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/antisemitism-ihra-definition-what-controversial-why Just when the racism which sits at the heart of all settler colonial projects is proudly and overtly proclaimed by Israel’s new coalition members, those of us in the solidarity movement will be contravening one example of antisemitism from the IHRA definition should we too name it. “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour.”
It is thus possible to feel as if we are inhabiting a parallel universe, where processes of seeking justice and holding Israel to account are repeatedly deflected back onto those who attempt to do so, invariably through allegations of antisemitism.
This practice may have been effective in stifling debate but it is a dangerous one because its irresponsible and unsubstantiated use can cheapen and debase a racism with such a dark and terrible history and which is also resurfacing in disturbing ways in the present. It risks evoking the cynical assumption that accusations of antisemitism simply go with the territory and can even be accepted as a badge of honour. Richard Falk, an eminent Jewish-American academic and an outspoken critic of Israel’s human rights record, wrote “I felt I must be doing a good job when the Weizmann Institute in Los Angeles listed me in 2012 as the third most dangerous anti-Semite in the world on their list of ten. I trailed only the Supreme Guide of Iran and the Turkish Prime Minister, Erdogan.” (Wall St International 7 October 20210)
If advocates for Palestine feel bullied by the constant scrutiny and the imputation that any protest against Israel is driven by antisemitism, there can be the risk of less sensitivity to language that may indeed be antisemitic. This can lead to the denialism referred to by Martin Forde in his report into the Labour party where he identified processes both of instrumentalising antisemitism on the one hand and the dismissal of any hurt or offence caused to Jewish members on the other (www.labour.org.uk/fordereport). Given the risks of this kind of polarisation, I consider that it is ethically incumbent on those accused of antisemitism to take it very seriously, to request evidence where possible and, if none is forthcoming, to challenge its casual use and reveal it for the insult that it is. In requiring evidence I have needed to ask myself whether, if I were accused of white on black racism, I would respond quite the same way. After all to demand evidence of someone experiencing racism can in itself be a racist practice. The answer is that I do not think I would, or at least I would have asked the question differently because of the sad predictability that, in this intensely politicised domain, accusations of antisemitism so frequently arise when we speak about Palestine whether or not we actually refer to Jewish people.
My story, related briefly here, is extremely minor compared to the pain and humiliation caused to those who are publically accused and who have to mount campaigns to defend themselves. An account of it can be found in greater detail on the House of Lords Conduct Committee website. In the Committee’s report, all names are anonymised and I am referred to as KL. https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/402/conduct-committee/news/157034/conduct-committee-publish-report-on-the-conduct-of-lord-mann/
Because these details are available in the public domain, my case offers an opportunity to share a personal account both of experiences of silencing and of efforts to push back. It hopefully demonstrates what a small story can illuminate about larger processes.
To summarise, in June 2020 after I had posted on an internal professional google group some reflections on Palestine and Black Lives matter, a member of the group who objected to my views decided to send the entire transcript of the exchanges (including contributions from other members) to Lord Mann, the Government’s Independent Adviser on Antisemitism and President of the Parliamentary All- Party Committee on Antisemitism. He took it upon himself to write to our Chief Executive complaining that the words used were ‘offensive and inflammatory’ and that statements were made which contradict the IHRA definition of antisemitism. Full details can be found on the link above but a flavour of the letter is conveyed from a few sentences. Lord Mann complained that in introducing the Middle Eastern conflict, I equated it ‘with contemporary anti-racist issues’ and that I failed to apologise for making such a comparison. He alleged that I had contravened the IHRA definition of antisemitism, firstly by ‘holding Jews collectively responsible for the actions of the State of Israel and secondly by stating that I ‘appeared to equate Jews with privilege, an age-old antisemitic trope.’ I can readily agree that such statements, if I had made them, would be antisemitic. However, given that my words were distorted out of all recognition, I wrote to Lord Mann, asking him in what capacity he had decided to intervene, itemising the allegations he had made, and asking him either to provide evidence for these claims or to withdraw them.
I took up his distortions as follows: He claimed that when I wrote: “might offend the sensitivities of Jews”, I was holding Jews collectively responsible for the actions of the State of Israel. He was referring to a passage where my exact words were: “With regard to Palestine I am wearily familiar with anxieties being expressed (some by our own professional organisation) that naming what is being done to Palestinians might offend the sensitivities of Jews (this is offensive to Jews in my opinion)” I was thus specifically rejecting the idea that diaspora Jews are implicated in Israel’s human rights abuses and consequently might be offended by their mention.
In relation to his second point I replied: “You persist in assuming that I write of Jews in general when I write of Israel. Of course, equating Jews with privilege is antisemitic but if you are unaware that Jewish citizens in Israel are privileged over Palestinian Arab citizens you have clearly not read the July 2018 Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People.”
Declining to withdraw the allegations relating to antisemitism Lord Mann subsequently ignored my emails. I will return to further details of my case in discussing the processes which unfolded, but, looking back on the experience, I remember vividly the shock and astonishment I felt when what was a relatively brief and entirely respectful exchange of views between fellow professionals about a difficult subject should lead to an intervention from someone in Lord Mann’s position. Reflecting on why a colleague might have done this I have thought about the power dynamics at play. The fact that I am a senior clinician and my detractor was much more junior and was at that time holding an opinion somewhat at variance with the majority on the discussion platform may have lead them to feel disadvantaged and thus keen to draw in a powerful figure to support their position. This gives rise to further questions about the meanings we attach to feelings of discomfort in such a forum, how these feelings are acted upon, issues of power and disempowerment, and processes of silencing and being silenced. It also led me to reflect on how my identities as an activist and as a therapist intersect and where congruence or tensions arise in the process. I will return to these questions.
After my initial reply I had to decide how to take up Lord Mann’s intervention. Many people would advise treating such accusations with contempt and ignoring them. Was it even worth pursuing? His rash intervention was not in the public domain and did not in the end – although he had no way of predicting this – damage my professional reputation. Vast amounts of time can be diverted from the purpose of advocating for justice in Palestine as has happened to devastating effect in the Labour party and, more recently in academic institutions. While the therapist in me had no wish to blame or judge the person who involved Lord Mann, the activist in me – knowing too many examples of interference such as his – was determined to hold him to account. It is easy for activists to get discouraged by discrepancies of power and resources, by the fact that most complaints are likely to be dismissed or to assume that our points of view will always be ignored. These personal experiences are replicated across different contexts, most notably in making representations to government.
Trying to hold Lord Mann to account for his intervention into my organisation pales into insignificance besides the Sisyphean task of demanding that our own government holds Israel to account for any of its actions. We have repeated experiences of having representations dismissed. We can feel despairing when we learn that, even in the midst of the current turmoil and uproar in Israel and intensified violence towards Palestinians, the UK government has just signed a trade deal with Israel which lauds their shared values as ‘freedom-loving, innovative, and thriving democracies.’ and commits the UK to opposing the use of the word ‘apartheid’ and to confronting ‘anti-Israel bias’ in international institutions https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/uk-israel-new-trade-security-agreement-challenge-apartheid-label.
In the face of these profound disconnects, adopting the principle of pushing back against misuse of office seems to be a necessary and indeed an ethical response, especially in situations of such power imbalance. Being involved in a solidarity struggle is an intensely emotional and personal experience. It means being alongside those fighting their oppression and thus being alert to all experiences which connect us, not of course in scale but in process, purpose, and intent. We can all be prey to similar feelings of impotence and despair. Shrugging off a minor attempt at silencing such as I experienced could lead to the kind of passive, fatalistic and quiescent position which is constantly demanded of Palestinians and which they continually reject in order to go on living as dignified, self-respecting persons claiming agency and seeking justice.
Once I had decided not to let the matter rest, I ascertained that Lord Mann’s terms of reference in his advisory post did not extend to adjudicating the internal affairs of professional organisations, and that he is required to abide by the Nolan principles for public office which include objectivity and accountability, I wrote to relevant government departments but received either no reply or dismissive replies. Finally, I made a complaint to the Commissioner for Standards of the House of Lords who decided to investigate. Six months later the Commissioner produced her report, judging that Lord Mann had not breached the code. I appealed against her decision to the House of Lords Conduct Committee and my appeal was dismissed. The Conduct Committee’s report was released in August 2021.
This, I freely admit, is hardly a resounding success story but it provides many illustrations of the workings of power for which I am actually grateful. Since the personal and the political intersect so closely, it has alerted me to the many connecting patterns that emerge when challenging moves to deter and silence Israel’s critics. It provides another personal connection to the emotional experience of Palestinians whose demands for justice and accountability are so cynically swept aside. As the complaint ran its course I noticed many connections with wider issues.
Defining antisemitism
Even defining antisemitism has become a power battle with adherents of the IHRA definition such as Lord Mann taking up quasi-messianic positions on its behalf, urging all public institutions to adopt it and legal scholars, many of them Jewish, pointing out its obvious flaws. Indeed as Jamie Weiner writes: “it is at once comic and depressing to witness distinguished specialists finely weighing the definition’s every syllable and clause, as if parsing a biblical text when it’s actually porridge.” https://jacobin.com/2022/11/antisemitism-israel-palestine-ihra-definition-un. The extreme vagueness of this ‘porridgy’ definition is, however, precisely its point. It states that a speech act may or may not be antisemitic depending on context; this effectively means that those with power are in a position to decide. Allegations of contravening this definition can destroy reputations and cost people their jobs as has happened in the Labour party and in academia but the deliberate vagueness and ambiguity of the definition means that Lord Mann could both accuse me of antisemitism and then, when I challenged him, deny that he had done so, arguing that the definition is only for ‘advice’ and ‘guidance.’
During the House of Lords enquiry, Lord Mann appeared to have convinced the Commissioner that he was not actually accusing me of antisemitism and the only problem was that I had misunderstood him. This personal experience sits within a wider political sphere where the adoption of the definition has been demanded by government, often accompanied by threats, across a wide range of institutions. Critiquing it often evokes a ferocious and disproportionate response. If it were a legally binding definition, it would be subjected to laws of evidence; in its present form, despite the disclaimers made by its advocates, it has been – and continues to be – used to silence Palestinian and pro-Palestinian voices.
Challenging accusations of antisemitism often necessitates mobilisation on a huge scale because the consequences for individuals who are attacked in this way are potentially devastating. A recent case of a psychoanalytic colleague in our network at George Washington University, USA is illustrative. https://usacbi.org/2023/04/usacbi-celebrates-victory-for-dr-lara-sheehi-cleared-of-false-allegations-at-gwu.
Distress and Victimhood
The theme of victimhood reverberates at many levels of system, from individual subjectivity to political rhetoric. In my case there was an emphasis on the distress experienced by the person who complained, implying that my words about Israel/Palestine were an assault on their Jewish identity. This fits a pattern of pro-Israel organisations intervening on behalf of those who feel discomforted by discussion of Israel’s human rights abuses. In my case it was the Government’s Independent Adviser on Antisemitism writing from his House of Lords address but it could equally be the Board of Deputies of British Jews or UK Lawyers for Israel. The latter issues this invitation on its website which deliberately conflates criticism of Israel with antisemitism: If you are worried or concerned about anti-Israel or antisemitic activity, please email office@uklficharity.com and we will help if we can.
Faced with such interventions which can lead many Palestine supporters to feel bullied, silenced and disempowered, how do we avoid in turn dismissing Jewish colleagues’ expression of distress or discomfort in this super-charged context, especially if we hypothesise that these feelings are being politicised? It is understandable that those loyal to Israel may feel discomforted or frightened if they witness calls for the racist structure of the state to be dismantled. Many Jews who are otherwise critical of Israel still see it as a potential place of refuge. How these feelings get taken up and used by those with access to power is therefore crucial.
Criticisms are often made, and have been in my own professional community that activists are obsessed with Israel, the world’s only Jewish state to the exclusion of other countries abusing human rights abuse. This is often described by Israel’s advocates as ‘the new antisemitism’. There are many layers to this critique, including that such arguments sit uneasily alongside simultaneous plaudits to Israel as a beacon of light and democracy. When faced with this criticism on our google group in 2021 I reflected on the impact on our conversations of the disconnect between civil society and UK government policy which, regardless of what Israel does, continues to declare its unconditional support.
“This has a profound effect on public discourse and means that civil society at various levels has to fill the gap, including, I would argue, our professional associations… the disconnect is toxic and dangerous. The relationship between the impunity accorded Israel in the international arena and the feeling that Israel is unfairly singled out for condemnation is deeply intertwined. I suggest that our government’s failure to hold Israel to account actively contributes both to the rage felt on the streets and to the fear among Jewish citizens which has also been powerfully expressed on these pages.
It feels essential to me to try to make sense of how the disconnect has been manifested (including on this list) between a moral protest against a dangerously out of control Israeli state and the demand that those who make this protest have to keep defending ourselves against accusations of antisemitism. David Feldman from the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism at Birkbeck warned of how adopting the IHRA definition of antisemitism would put activists in the position of continually having to prove they are not antisemitic. And now we are caught up in this very process.”
My ‘activist self’ is alert to the myriad examples of antisemitism being used as a deliberate strategy to close down debate in this way and to the importance of challenging them. My therapist self, however, is also aware of how they can be expressions of extreme anxiety and fear about where it might lead, especially when there is a groundswell of pro-Palestinian feeling. I find it more useful to engage with the anxiety and fear. Fear, after all, has its traumatic history.
However, elevating the hurt feelings of those who might be offended by the naming of Israel’s crimes above the feelings of those suffering those very crimes is another toxic distortion faced by those advocating for Palestine.
For example in my experience of supporting therapeutic work with families and children in Gaza, I have faced objections that presenting this work to others in my field would leave some members of my organization feeling ‘very uncomfortable’ and ‘marginalised’or that it would be ‘divisive’ in our professional community. I hardly need point out the racism implicit in the suggestion that the very mention of Gaza or Palestinians is somehow triggering but that assumption is rarely far from the surface. It links to the distinction made by Judith Butler between those whose lives are deemed ‘grievable’ and those whose are not (Butler 2016).
The matter of whose lives are recognized as being of sufficient worth to be considered ‘grievable’ or potentially ‘grievable’ takes us to the heart of how the dynamics of victimhood are played out. On the google group already referred to earlier, exchanges during the lethal Israeli assaults on Gaza of May 2021 began with empathy being expressed for Gaza’s bombarded citizens; however it did not take long before counterclaims of victimhood were made about an upsurge in antisemitism in the UK. This undoubtedly occurred and its impact on Jewish collegues was empathized with but the difficult question was never raised of how it might be a side effect of Israel’s actions, as there were similar spikes in 2008 and 2014 when Gaza was also attacked. At the political level, and mirroring our internal discussion, an emergency debate on antisemitism was held in the House of Commons even as Israeli bombs continued to rain down on Gaza. While antisemitic attacks were rightly condemned, not one word was spoken about the slaughter of innocent Gazans and how this might have provided a context for righteous, if wrongly directed rage.
Workings of power
Placing the Palestinian experience in the context of settler colonial racism and drawing some parallels with other racisms as I did in one of my posts was seen by Lord Mann as deliberately provocative. He complained about ‘polarisation’ and claimed that for me to call it ‘racial injustice is not only inaccurate but is also a narrative that divides communities.’ From this perspective, naming injustice or racism is in itself divisive. This is well-worn rhetoric emanating from those in positions of power who highlight political intent in relation to their detractors and then occlude in it relation to their own position.
When the Commissioner asked Lord Mann about the impact on me of his allegations and whether I might have felt silenced by his failure to respond to my emails, he claimed: “Silence is a political term that they’ve used repeatedly…what they’re arguing is that people like me and Zionists are attempting to silence them… that IHRA is an attempt by people like me to silence people like them. Now that is politics. That is straight political argument.” Of course, I do not deny being political but it is revealing that, while Lord Mann described my detractors as Zionist, this position was never defined as political; it was only framed in terms of a Jewish identity which was threatened by what I wrote.
While they obviously could not comment on the political question, neither the Commissioner nor the Conduct Committee mentioned this anomaly. The Commissioner later stated in an email to me that she disagreed with Lord Mann that I was motivated by political rather than personal considerations; however she did not include this observation in the report itself.
A final illustration of the power dynamic at work in my complaint process was that an advance copy of the Conduct Committee’s report turning down my appeal described Lord Mann’s intervention into my professional affairs as “inappropriate and ill-considered”, comments which went further than the Commissioner’s. At the end of a long and wearisome process this at least questioned his entitlement to intervene. But it was not to be. Despite the report being, as the Committee Chair later confirmed, a final version rather than a draft, the word ‘inappropriate’ was removed. Of course I cannot know what deliberations took place between Lordships but I am left surmising that this textual change was important to Lord Mann because it preserved his freedom to continue intervening in the internal affairs of professional, educational and other organisations. Although this episode brought me up against the realities of power, it also reinforced my sense that a multiplicity of small actions has a part to play in chipping away at edifices of power. Kaethe Weingarten, a US systemic therapist and social activist reminds us that because an act is small, that does not make it insignificant or trivial (Weingarten 2023).
A further dynamic – already alluded to in this paper – is how many of Israel’s most ardent supporters ̶ whether the British government, the leader of the opposition, or indeed Lord Mann – allege that criticisms of Israel have negative impacts on Britain’s Jewish citizens. This, it seems to me, involves drawing upon the same antisemitic tropes of which they accuse pro-Palestinian activists. It also excludes from consideration the many Jews who either adhere to non- Zionist traditions of thought or who regard Israel’s actions as antithetical to Jewish values.
It seems inevitable that at some time in the future the impunity enjoyed by Israel and the licence granted to its allies in the UK to harass and undermine its detractors will be further exposed and no longer tolerated. Meanwhile it also seems clear that pro-Israel supporters who so recklessly and wantonly hurl antisemitism accusations at those advocating for Palestine are not serving the interests of British Jews even as they claim to defend them.
Final reflections
While an ethic of social justice should be a higher order context in both domains, I have given examples of how my activist and therapeutic identities might lead me to different approaches to debates with professional colleagues. Activism requires a steadfastness, commitment and persistence which does not always allow space for holding multiple perspectives in mind. My identity as a systemic psychotherapist always requires this of me. This means being open to the positions taken by those with whom we disagree and exploring the contexts that give rise to different positions. However, I do not consider that engaging with multiple perspectives is at all the same as holding different positions to be equivalent. Bland equivalences of the ‘both sides’ variety are common but corrosive and misplaced. They disregard the impact of the gross inequities of power which exist within the wider context of settler colonialism. Combatting injustice and racism is the responsibility of all therapists and there cannot be one no go area where racist practices which disregard the lives of some citizens are condoned.
It frequently happens that, when those who historically and currently have less power and privilege (Black people, Palestinians among others) speak out – sometimes angrily – the ‘right’ to feel hurt or silenced is claimed by those in more privileged positions who feel uncomfortable at the naming of oppression. The term ‘white fragility’ was coined to convey just this process and it can create a pressure for difference to be reduced to bland, anodyne ‘both sides’/ equalising narratives in which ‘I/thou’ or ‘self/other’ encounters are rarified, sentimentalised, de-contextualised and removed from the harsh realities of a world structured by inequity and inequality in which we all participate with varying degrees of advantage or disadvantage.
While holding individual Jews responsible for Israel’s racist conduct is, in my view, antisemitic, the use of antisemitism allegations to undermine a struggle for justice of behalf of a colonised and oppressed people is simply unacceptable and should be seen to run counter to all of our professional ethics. The Palestinian writer, Ramzy Baroud has pointed out the effrontery in assuming that those who suffer from or oppose Israel’s oppression have somehow to cleanse themselves of the possibility that they could be considered to be antisemitic before they are allowed to articulate their narrative. This is a form of linguistic violence which all of us in the therapeutic field need to be aware of and to challenge.
As the late Denis Goldberg, distinguished veteran of the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa, said of Palestine: “Silence in the face of injustice…makes people complicit in that injustice.”
Gwyn Daniel is a family therapist, trainer and writer based in Oxford and a visiting lecturer at the Tavistock Clinic in London and at the University of Oxford. She is the author of many professional books and articles and she has presented and published on the subject of Palestine. She is a member of the UK Palestine Mental Health Network and a Patron of the Palestine Trauma Centre.
References
https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/07/19/israeli-apartheid-threshold-crossed
https://www.btselem.org/apartheid
https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/03/1114702
Judith Butler (2017) Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? New York Verso
Kaethe Weingarten (2022) Called to repair injustice: Connecting everyday practices to societal phenomena, creating momentum for solidarity and change. Family Process Vol 62 Issue1 pp 6-34
Ramzy Baroud ( 2022) https://balfourproject.org/impunity/
https://www.972mag.com/denis-goldberg-apartheid-palestine