Ben Cohen has become an important fighter against hatred. He recently brought attention to serious problems in Hungary in an article for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
Ben acquaints us with an anti-Semitic article in the pro-government newspaper "Magyar Hirlap." Using information written earlier this year by Karl Pfeifer, the veteran Austrian Jewish journalist, in the Vienna daily "Die Presse, we are told about an article by Zsolt Bayer, a Hungarian rabble-rouser with close ties to the ruling Fidesz party.
Bayer made a reference to "a stinking excrement called something like Cohen," followed by an expression of regret "that they" -- meaning the Jews -- "were not all buried up to their necks in the forest of Orgovany," the site of a pogrom during the Hungarian "White Terror" of 1919-20. Online reader comments on its coverage of Pfeifer's piece didn't hold back. Pfeifer, a Holocaust survivor, was called a "gas-chamber deserter." Contributors invoked the imagery of classic anti-Semitism -- "Jewish scabs," "Jewish lice" -- along with its contemporary variants, including this choice line: "The Israeli Jewish occupiers...bring only conflict and ruin, while sucking our blood like parasites and draining our vigor."
Ben Cohen placed the article in a broader national context, by pointing out that there was no action taken against the newspaper from Hungary’s Media Council. This action against the newspaper should have been automatic since Hungary's new media law, which went into effect on July 1, is empowered to impose fines of nearly $1 million upon those publications and broadcasters deemed to have "insulted" a particular group, along with an amorphous entity defined as "the majority." If a publication violates "public morality," it faces a fine. If its news coverage is judged "imbalanced," ditto.
As an explanation for this inaction, Ben quotes from Hungarian-American scholar Eva Balogh’s explanation as to why Bayer could write such an article: "Despite his venomous writing, the old Fidesz leadership never disassociated itself from Bayer. Yearly there is a Fidesz birthday bash which is proudly attended by the founders, among them Zsolt Bayer. A few years ago after a particularly outrageous anti-Semitic attack, [Hungarian Prime Minister] Viktor Orban made a special effort to be photographed with Bayer as they were amiably enjoying some private jokes. It was Orban's way of saying, 'Bayer is our boy, we stand by him.'"
Who is our hate fighter Ben Cohen? He was born in London, obtained a BA in Philosophy from Manchester University, and an MSc. in Political Theory from the London School of Economics. Ben spent several years as a producer and reporter for the BBC; prior to moving to New York in December 2004. He then worked as Associate Director of Communications at AJC.
Ben writes and speaks widely on the subjects of antisemitism, anti-Zionism and Middle East politics. He has been especially vocal in countering the "Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions" (BDS) movement and the comparison between Israel and apartheid South Africa. He contributes regularly to the Huffington Post, Pajamas Media and other outlets, and was the founding editor of Z Word (recently merged with The Propagandist) an online resource dealing with anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.
Ben Cohen was one of the first (Jan. 13, 2009) to draw attention to the troubling situation of hatred in Turkey. Quoting from an email sent by a Turkish Jew, he informed the world about how the Prime Minister in Turkey encouraged hatred against Israel in his speeches which became obvious anti-Semitic propaganda among the general public. Indeed, Prime Minister Erdogan will at times forget to substitute the word “Jewish” with “Zionist” or “Israeli”:
The e-mail note described people around the clock besieging the Israeli consulate in Istanbul shouting their hatred against Israel and Jewish people. On the streets the people are writing such graffiti as: “Kill Jews,” “Kill Israel,” “Israel should no longer exist in the Middle East,” and “Stop Israeli Massacre.” The week-end before, some people wrote, “We will kill you” on the door of one of the biggest synagogues in Izmir resulted in the closing down of synagogues. Near Istanbul University, a group put a huge poster on the door of a shop owned by a Jew: “Do not buy from here, since this shop is owned by a Jew.”
An official statement was given by the minister of education stating that [January 13] at 11am in all the high schools and primary schools the students will pay homage to the women and children dead during the [Gaza] war and furthermore. The Turkish daily Hurriyet reports: “Turkish school students stood for a minute of silence at 11:00 a.m. (0900 GMT) in accordance with a direction issued by Education Minister Huseyin Celik. ‘This show of respect damns not only the cruelty in the Palestine, but also shows solidarity with the Palestinian people,’ the directive said.”
In an article for the Huffingtonpost, Ben Cohen explores the meaning of anti-Semitism in the context of anti-Semetic remarks made by some celebrities. He gives us the example of Oliver Stone who in his interview with the Sunday Times, diminished the significance of the Holocaust and revived the hoary claim of Jewish media control in order to make his ultimate point: that "Israel has f***** up United States foreign policy for years."
Ben notes that Stone quickly apologized for his remarks, prompting the question of whether it is fair to call him an anti-Semite. Mel Gibson drunkenly assailing a police officer encourages the mistaken view that anti-Semitism is a particularly vicarious type of rudeness that can be overcome through the exercise of self-control.
In order to generalize from these incidents, Ben asks us to consider an understanding of what anti-Semitism is - and what it isn't. Will a timely apology annul the offense? If anti-Semitism is boiled down to a matter of insult, then yes, it probably will. But the problem is the confusion of appearance with essence.
For Ben Cohen, what makes anti-Semitism distinctive is that it's a worldview, a means of explaining why there is injustice and unfairness and conflict in our societies. In quotes from a study by the scholar Robert Wistrich who cited the French monarchist Charles Maurras' admiration for the succinctness of anti-Semitism. "It enables everything to be arranged, smoothed over and simplified," Maurras said.
In keeping with its politically and theologically promiscuous history, anti-Semitism is again perfectly compatible with what would commonly, if incorrectly, be regarded as a progressive outlook, especially if the focus is upon the State of Israel. That is why anti-Semitism remains one of the most furiously contested terms in political debate today. Invariably, those accused of it angrily reject the charge, retorting that they have been unfairly maligned by a crude tactic designed to muzzle what they insist is the horrible reality of Israel.
Ben provides us with the argument of Lee Smith in Tablet that the matter at hand is not the "indiscernible beliefs of individuals," but the way in which these writers, when they write about Israel, are "complicit in the common work of mainstreaming the kind of anti-Semitic language, ideas, and discourse that were once confined to extremist hate sites on the far right."
Ben describes some of the grand myths of our own time - Israel as the ultimate rogue state, U.S. policy as a hostage of the "Israel Lobby," the Palestinians as the iconic symbol of human suffering – and considers these myths as drawing on a much older tradition that, just twenty years ago, most people regarded as a matter for historians, not chroniclers of the present. It was these myths which effectively licensed Oliver Stone's remarks. If there is a lesson to be drawn from L'Affaire Stone, it is that he did not - and this is why his apology is really by the by - act alone.
In a final look at the efforts of Ben Cohen to fight hate, we should look at his comprehensive study on “The Persistence of Anti-Semitism on the British Left” for the Jewish Political Studies Review.
Ben Cohen examined in this study the general pattern of leftist anti-Semitism in Britain that, ominously, continues to develop. He concludes that the organizational alignment of leftist and Islamist organizations, and the ongoing integration of Islamist and leftist attitudes toward Jews, represents a qualitative shift in the nature of leftist anti-Semitism in Britain.
He points out that like other forms of anti-Semitism, left-wing anti-Semitism survived by mutating. Whereas once the Jewish question (or problem) was viewed through the prism of economics, now it belongs to the realm of politics. The orthodox Marxist notion that the Jews - as an economic agent - perform a distinctive function within a system designed for the extraction of surplus value has been replaced by the anti-colonialist notion that the Jews - as a national collective - are integral to the maintenance of American hegemony on a global level.
As a result of this alignment, three points warrant consideration. First, visceral opposition not to Israel's security policies alone but to its very legitimacy means that, as in Islamist discourse, the terms "Jew," "Israel," and "Zionist" are increasingly interchangeable in contemporary left-wing discourse; second, this discourse has been standardized and globalized; third, this discourse is increasingly finding recognition outside the activist margins, for example, among politicians broadly described as "progressive," among prominent academics, and in liberal media outlets.
For the extreme Right, anti-Semitism is based on a dark fantasy about the malign effects of Jewish power, which integrates the financial and the political spheres. In the leftist imagination, the only good Jew is the invisible Jew, one who is assimilated totally by his surroundings; by contrast, Jewish national consciousness is, a priori, reactionary, supremacist, and politically aligned with imperialism. For many on the Left, the concrete expression of this consciousness, the State of Israel, is the last colonial outpost in the world.
Jewish suffering is relativized or denied outright, while the supposed crimes of Jewish nationalism are seized upon with gusto. Moreover, in the collective heart of the modern Left there is a "special corner" for the Palestinians, whose particular narrative of exile has elevated their trials far above those of other unfortunate nations.
Zionism has assumed a global importance for the contemporary Left that not even Marx and Lenin could have foreseen. Consequently, "the extreme left in western societies not only denigrates Israel and Zionism in a systematic manner, but its irrational hostility frequently spills over into contempt or antipathy towards Jews and Judaism as such."
A related tendency is the ascribing of collective guilt for Israel's actions. The consequent claim, namely, that Zionism is the "monster" that fuels anti-Semitism, holds the Jews themselves accountable for prejudice against them. This recasting of Zionism as a causal factor of anti-Semitism, rather than an authentic Jewish response to it, is a uniquely leftist contribution to anti-Semitic doctrine.
Ben highlights the growing intimacy between the Left in England and the Islamists. He sees demography as partially explaining this shift. There are approximately 1.5 million Muslims in the United Kingdom, and the population is growing. But since the end of the Cold War, the Left has been groping for a mass response to the "New World Order"; by allying with the Islamists it may have found one.
Much has changed, but much has stayed the same. The denial of victimhood to the Jews, the plundering of the Shoah to condemn Israel, the conspiratorial portrayal of Jewish power and the inherent illegitimacy of Jewish self-determination, are all constants. However, the anti-Semitism distinctive to the British Left has integrated, ideologically and organizationally, with its Islamist counterpart.
