Truth, lies and genocide: how Netanayhu and Trump pervert the fight against antisemitism

The far-right is running riot

The original report from 1992 on concentration camps in Bosnia, whose existence propagandists have been trying to deny ever since

In Jerusalem and Washington, we are seeing how the far-right in power is rewriting language so drastically that words have lost their moorings to meaning.

Once to be against antisemitism meant to be against bigotry. Of course it did. Meanwhile, to be against Holocaust denial meant you were against the denial of all genocides.

Or so we once thought. But that’s all old hat now.

According to the new dispensation

• To be against the hatred of Jews, you must support the hatred of Muslims.

• To be against antisemitism, you must accept that the far-right parties of Europe are better friends to Jews than actual Jews who experience actual racism.

• In the name of fighting Holocaust deniers, you must welcome the deniers of the genocidal murders of Muslims.

In Trump and Netanyahu’s world truth becomes lies, racism becomes anti-racism, and hypocrisy becomes the highest virtue. All of this when Jewish people are living in genuine fear in Europe.

I am grateful to the editor of the Jewish Chronicle for allowing me to write about this scandal – not all of his readers would have approved. (You can read the piece here).

I want to expand on it by showing how Trump’s backing is creating dangers for Palestinians and Europeans – and for Israelis too.

Before disengaging from the Middle East, Trump wants to see Netanyahu’s vision realised. Iran and its proxies will be defeated. Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, America and Israel will be freed to make money for each other and, naturally, for the remarkably avaricious Trump family.

Meanwhile, because Trump is attacking liberal democracy at home in America, he will egg on Benjamin Netanyahu’s attack on the checks on his power in Israel.

In this moment of reactionary triumphalism, propaganda about antisemitism is pushed out with barefaced audacity.