Antisemite Antifascists – Thoughts on Israel and Ukraine

The 7 October 2023 was a historical tragedy like the 24 February 2022. The Hamas terror attack on Israel, which had 1400 mostly civilian Israelis murdered in the most brutal way (and many people abducted as hostages, their fates largely still unknown), was a singular pogrom against Jews not seen since the Holocaust.

Many forget that Nazi Germany’s Holocaust largely took place on the territory of today’s Ukraine. Israel was founded because of the Holocaust, to prevent it from repeating. The ancestors of many Israelis fled Ukraine from pogroms and antisemitic persecution (often instigated by russians). Over many centuries, Jewish history was linked to Ukraine like to no other place in the world except the Holy Land itself.

The Hamas terror attack was organised by Iran, same terror regime which actively helps russia to kill Ukrainian civilians with Shahed drones. It is quite likely Iran collaborated with russia in organising the Hamas pogrom. Since the events of October 7th, russia demonstratively sides and even meets with Hamas terrorists, russia openly calls for destruction of Israel, it even tried to organise a pogrom of its own (in Dagestan). Hamas wants to kill all Jews and have the territory of Israel for themselves. russia wants to destroy everything and everyone Ukrainian and have the land as its colony. russia’s openly genocidal war on Ukraine is waged by the means of terror against civilians, by same sadistic brutality one can see on the video footage from the 7 October Hamas attack, by taking countless Ukrainian hostages, including thousands of children, many of whom are tortured and killed.

Yet, this is where the superficial similarities between Hamas attack on Israel and russia’s attack on Ukraine end. The histories and all the circumstances are way too different. But there is one more thing which I believe is common: it is the same people who defend Hamas’ pogrom on Jews and russia’s colonial war on Ukraine with the same rotten argument “the other side is to blame, it started the conflict”. I am talking about a certain kind of anti-colonialists and anti-fascists. And I think their latent or even open antisemitism plays a role in both cases.

First of all, some disclaimers:

1. I am both Jewish and Ukrainian. I practice neither though, having emigrated to Germany in 1993. Both these languages and cultures which were supposed to be my native (Yiddish and Ukrainian) were denied to me by russian colonial occupiers.
2. I really despise the current Israeli government of fascist criminals and criminal fascists. But if you are free of antisemitism, you must accept that Jews are human and some Jews can be fascists and criminals like everyone else (and only individually answer for that).
3. Israel’s right to exist is for me non-negotiable. But I also oppose the illegal and often brutal occupation of Palestinian land and I hope for a peaceful two-state solution.

The anti-colonialists and anti-fascists got many things wrong, likely intentionally. Right now, they (including Greta Thunberg, how disappointing…) paint Israel as the colonial-fascist regime which oppresses Palestinians and robs them of their land. Some even started to equal Israel to Nazi Germany and the fate of Palestinians to the Holocaust. It is of course fact-free and history-ignorant nonsense, and it wades deep into outright Holocaust denialism and antisemitism. But I also believe people who say such things don’t really care about Palestinians anyway. Why do I think that? Because as tough as the situation of Palestinians is, there are other Muslim peoples who suffer much, much more, for many years, and right now.

For example Uygurs, whose culture and even existence is being systematically erased by China. Another example, closer to the matter at hand: Chechens. This Muslim nation is centuries old, it has its own language, while Palestinian Arabs only perceive themselves as a nation since mid-20th century (due to the partition of British Palestine in 1948). Chechens however are being brutally colonised, oppressed and killed by russia since the 18th century. In the 1940ies, Stalin committed a certified genocide in Chechnya by murdering and deporting hundreds of thousands. After the collapse of USSR, russia violently suppressed Chechen attempts of independence, laid to waste Chechen cities and villages, while killing, raping and torturing hundreds of thousands civilians, and it still continues to terrorise the nation ever since, using local sockpuppets like ramzan kadyrov.

Did you ever hear these same Palestine-concerned anti-colonialists to even mention the plight of Chechens, or, heavens forbid, support the Chechen fight for independence from colonial oppression? The perpetrators are russian imperialists, who successfully convinced everyone that Chechens deserve nothing better because they were all terrorists (some of allegedly Chechen terror attacks in russia were in reality organised by putin and his secret service). Nobody in the enlightened West cares about Chechens, certainly not in a positive sense. If anything, Chechens are evil and we almost thank russians for oppressing them. Instead, some anti-colonialists busy themselves all day denying or justifying the Palestinian terror while decrying the imaginary “genocide” of Palestinians committed by Israel. Why? Because here, the accused perpetrators are Jews.

Antisemitism exists not just on the far-right, but also on the self-described left. And just like the far-right, this misguided anticolonial antifascist left feeds on the old myth of “Jewish Capital” controlling the world. And who started this myth over a century ago, incidentally? russia did, with the Protocol of the Elders of Zion.

In October 2023, I was at a local anti-AfD rally (to little avail, AfD basically won the state elections). At the end of the event, I got into a debate with a middle-aged man from the “Federation of Antifascists” stand. I suggested that his organisation should also denounce russian fascism, and it swiftly escalated with him shouting, accusing me of wanting to murder him personally. To him, NATO and USA were the real fascists, russia was the victim who merely overreacts in self-defence. Now, NATO may stand for the most toothless and harmless military organisation in history, but certainly not for any fascism. On the other hand, putin’s russia ticks all definition boxes of fascism, including the Führer-cult, racial superiority ideology, war of aggression, and genocide.

And still, he and his fellow antifascists consider USA (and by extension, the US-led NATO) as a demonic fascist source of all evil. Where does it come from? Can’t be from US history and politics alone. Colonial crimes were also committed by other European empires (including by the russian empire), Nazi Germany committed the by far worst crimes imaginable, and russia’s current war in Ukraine puts into perspective every unjustified war USA ever started. Yet these anti-fascist anti-colonialists hate USA, not russia. Why?

Is that old “Jewish capital” legend against the reason? There are only two countries in the world which antisemites associate with a Jewish elite conspiracy: USA and Israel. And those are the only two countries this certain kind of anti-fascist anti-colonialists unconditionally hate and want to see destroyed. Next to Israel, the other country which the Great Satan USA now supports with weapons is Ukraine. As it happens, Ukraine’s president is Jewish, and russia was since Stalin the enemy of these evil USA and Israel. Maybe you really need a heavy dose of antisemitic paranoia to imagine Ukraine as an American puppet regime of Jewish Capital-Nazis which the eternally anti-fascist russia bravely fights against ever since 1939 ahhh, pardon, 1941.

Now, I am no fan of USA either, but exactly because everything I abhor about USA is what russia has already implemented as its state foundation: racism, militarism, colonialism, ruthless capitalism, religious fanaticism, homophobia, sexism, etc etc. And yes, also antisemitism. US antisemitism played a big role in the fascist America First movement of 1930ies (think of Hitler-fan Charles Lindbergh!) and it is a real problem among the MAGA far-right today. In russia, antisemitism is nothing less but a cherished part of national culture and identity. That’s why the US fascists around Trump are so anti-Ukrainian and pro-russian: they want USA to be a white-christian-fascist dictatorship like russia.

But USA is certainly not just Trump and MAGA. And Israel is not all just Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, maybe you saw the mass protests on the news. It’s peculiar that people who keep insisting that russia is not putin often have very undifferentiating views about USA and Israel. If you don’t care who governs Israel or whether Trump or Biden is elected as US President because you think they are all same and fascists anyway, then you are not an antifascist. You are pro-fascist. Or maybe actually just a fascist with a socialist touch. National Socialist?

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