300px|miniaturadaimagem|direita|Exemplo de instrumentalização do antissemitismo em cartum de Carlos Latuff
A exploração de acusações de antissemitismo, especialmente para combater o antissionismo e as críticas a Israel, é por vezes chamada de "instrumentalização do antissemitismo" (termo ).Exemplos ilustrativos: : "The weaponizing of antisemitism against US critics of Israel was evidenced in 2019 when Florida's upper legislative chamber unanimously passed a bill that classifies certain criticism of Israel as antisemitic"
Alegações de "instrumentalização" do antissemitismo surgiram em vários contextos, incluindo o conflito árabe-israelense e debates sobre o conceito de novo antissemitismo e a definição de antissemitismo da IHRA.
Acusações de antissemitismo feitas de má-fé foram descritas como uma tática difamatóriaExemplos de críticas como táticas de difamação:
: "Delegitimizing Solidarity: Israel Smears Palestine Advocacy as Anti-Semitic" : "THE LOBBY'S MODUS OPERANDI... Yet because [former U.S. President Jimmy Carter] suggests that Israel's policies in the Occupied Territories resemble South Africa's apartheid regime and said publicly that pro-Israel groups make it hard for U.S. leaders to pressure Israel to make peace, a number of these same groups launched a vicious smear campaign against him. Not only was Carter publicly accused of being an anti-Semite and a 'Jew-hater,' some critics even charged him with being sympathetic to Nazis." : "...if the UN were to endorse the IHRA WDA, the harm would be exponentially greater... human rights defenders and organizations challenging Israel's violations would be fully exposed to smear campaigns based on bad-faith allegations of antisemitism" : "Smearing one's opponents is rarely a tactic employed by those confident that justice is on their side. If Israel's case requires branding its critics antisemites, it is already conceding defeat." e comparadas a "jogar a carta racial"Exemplos do termo "carta do antissemitismo":
e, quando usadas contra judeus, assumem a forma de rotulá-los como "judeus que odeiam a si mesmos".Ver:
: "To draw this equation between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, Israel's supporters have sought to make the argumentative leap that criticism of Israel as the Jewish state is anti-Semitic precisely because Israel is the home of all Jews for all time. However, this argument does not work since there are many anti-Zionist Jews who reject Israel's attempts to speak in the name of Judaism. The traditional response to this problem has been to label anti-Zionist Jews as 'self-hating Jews,' which requires a suspension of rationality and sound judgement." : "There have long been efforts to identify anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism in an effort to exploit anti-racist sentiment for political ends; 'one of the chief tasks of any dialogue with the Gentile world is to prove that the distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is not a distinction at all,' Israeli diplomat Abba Eban argued, in a typical expression of this intellectually and morally disreputable position. But that no longer suffices. It is now necessary to identify criticism of Israeli policies as anti-Semitism—or in the case of Jews, as 'self-hatred,' so that all possible cases are covered." : "Chomsky (1989) shows how Zionists have endeavoured 'to identify criticism of Israeli policies as anti-Semitism—or in the case of Jews, as "self-hatred"' (1989, 433), a point echoed by Butler (2012)."
História Em 1943, o futuro primeiro-ministro israelense David Ben-Gurion chamou um tribunal britânico de antissemita após este "ter implicado líderes sionistas no tráfico de armas". Christopher Sykes disse que o incidente deu início a "uma nova fase na propaganda sionista" na qual "ser antissionista era ser antissemita".: "The Perlmutters deride those who voice 'criticism of Israel while fantasizing countercharges of anti-Semitism,' but their comment is surely disingenuous. The tactic is standard. Christopher Sykes, in his excellent study of the pre-state period, traces the origins of this device ('a new phase in Zionist propaganda') to a 'violent counterattack' by David Ben-Gurion against a British court that had implicated Zionist leaders in arms-trafficking in 1943: 'henceforth to be anti-Zionist was to be anti-Semitic'. It is, however, primarily in the post-1967 period that the tactic has been honed to a high art, increasingly so, as the policies defended became less and less defensible." O teórico da propaganda Noam Chomsky escreveu que, embora Sykes tenha rastreado as origens do antissemitismo como arma até este episódio, foi somente "no período pós-1967 [após a Guerra Árabe-Israelense de 1967] que a tática foi aprimorada até se tornar uma arte elevada, cada vez mais, à medida que as políticas defendidas se tornavam cada vez menos defensáveis". Em 1973, após a Guerra do Yom Kippur, o ministro das Relações Exteriores israelense, Abba Eban, escreveu: "Uma das principais tarefas de qualquer diálogo com o mundo gentio é provar que a distinção entre antissemitismo e antissionismo não é uma distinção. O antissionismo é apenas o novo antissemitismo."Dencik, Lars. "13. Antisemitisms in the Twenty-First Century: Sweden and Denmark as Forerunners?" In Antisemitism in the North: History and State of Research, editado por Jonathan Adams e Cordelia Heß, 233-268. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110634822-015. "Writing in 1973 in the publication of the American Jewish Congress, Congress Bi-Weekly, the Foreign Minister of Israel, Abba Eban [...]" Sobre a declaração de Eban, Chomsky disse: "Essa é uma posição conveniente. Ela elimina apenas 100% dos comentários críticos!"Citado por by Menachem Wecker, "In Defense of Self-Hating Jews", Maio de 2007, Jewish Currents, online em
No início da década de 1950, a jornalista norte-americana Dorothy Thompson, ex-defensora do sionismo, foi chamada de antissemita após começar a criticá-lo e, como resultado dessas acusações, "ela perdeu amigos, trabalho e influência política".Ver:
American Cassandra: The Life of Dorothy Thompson (1990), Peter Kurth. "Dorothy became so widely identified with the opposition to Israel in America that it was not unusual to hear her described as "a traitor" in the Jewish press. She was "a Goebbels-minded publicity agent," according to Rabbi Baruch Korff [...], "a mercenary, ill-motivated agent for the heirs of Nazism." A correspondent for the Jewish Advocate in Boston went so far as to call Dorothy a "Jezebel," "a haggard witch," a "Lady Macbeth." For her part, Dorothy believed that she had been made the victim of "a campaign of character assassination" unexampled in her thirty years of journalism." (páginas 222-223) — "Her mail, which had once been filled with right-wing frothing about her "Jew-loving" tendencies, was now replete with accusations that she had turned traitor, that she was "anti-Semitic," that she had become, in the words of one hysterical reader, "the apostle of the Hitlerian technique," whose "filthy incitements to pogroms" would no longer be tolerated by New York's Jews. It was an organized campaign, and Dorothy knew it." (página 383) Maguire, Gil (28 de abril de 2015) Obama's role model to journalists – Dorothy Thompson – turned against Zionism and was silenced US Politics". Mondoweiss. Citações: "As Thompson began to increase her criticism of Zionist policies, she was shunned by the Jewish community and by many of her life-long Jewish friends [...]" - "Thompson’s editors warned her that in the American press a hostility toward Israel was 'almost a definition of professional suicide.' Nonetheless, she would not be intimidated and said, 'I refuse to become an anti-Semite by appointment', and refused 'to yield to this type of blackmail.' The campaign against her strengthened and she began to be dropped from other papers. Her once-lucrative speaking career began to dry up because of the organized campaign to label her as an anti-Semite, a label that stuck for the rest of her career." A transição de Thompson para o antissionismo e a defesa dos refugiados palestinos começaram após uma viagem à Palestina em 1945.ver:
A professora Lyndsey Stonebridge escreveu: "hoje, muitos veem o silenciamento de uma ousada defensora humanitária em sua história, e não é difícil entender porquê", mas também que "não pode haver dúvida de que o antissemitismo foi um tema nos escritos posteriores de Thompson".
Em suas memórias de 1956, o oficial militar britânico John Bagot Glubb negou as acusações de antissemitismo por suas críticas a Israel, escrevendo: "Não me parece justo nem conveniente que críticas semelhantes dirigidas ao governo israelense marquem o orador com o estigma moral geralmente associado ao antissemitismo."Sir John Bagot Glubb, A Soldier With the Arabs (1956), p.7: "In the course of this narrative, I have voiced criticisms of the actions of various governments, notably those of Britain, the United States, France, the Arab countries and Israel... Criticism of the Israeli government does, however, require a particular explanation. A number of people, both Jews and Gentiles, are apt to refer to any criticism of Israeli policy as 'offensive anti-Semitism', an accusation implying a definite moral lapse. I wish to defend myself against such a charge. 'Anti-Semitism', I assume, is an emotion of hatred or dislike towards Jews as a whole, whether considered from the point of view of race or religion. I can state categorically and with all sincerity that I feel no such emotion. But it is of the essence of Western democracy to allow free criticism of the government, a right freely exercised against the governments of the U.S.A., Britain, France and other free countries. It does not seem to me to be either just or expedient that similar criticisms directed against the Israeli government should brand the speaker with the moral stigma generally associated with anti-Semitism." O historiador israelense Benny Morris afirmou que isso se devia a uma "tendência entre israelenses e judeus no exterior de identificar críticas severas a Israel como equivalentes a, ou pelo menos derivadas de, antissemitismo", embora Morris também tenha afirmado que o antissionismo de Glubb era "tingido por um grau de antissemitismo".