The March issue of the London Review of Books featured Pankaja Mishra's text entitled The Shoah after Gaza. The author states that the present war in Gaza and the instrumental usage of the Holocaust (and anti-Semitism in general), which Israeli politicians and their allies do on its occasion, is simply a simple way to free the legacy of the Holocaust of moral-political content and its normative possible devalued.
Mishra recalls that in post-war Europe, this heritage, under the slogan “never again”, has become a origin of hope for a fresh ethical-political order based on the ideals of democracy and human rights. Within this framework, concepts of responsibility, collective guilt and crimes against humanity developed to aid reconstruct the “moral balance” in a planet marked by utmost experiences of the Second planet War. This active the inclusion of various forms of commemoration of the Holocaust in the canons of democratic culture, as well as its treatment as a sample, allowing for the final evaluation of projects and political actions emerging in the western world.
Mishra writes in the context of an increasingly bloody retaliatory operation led by the Israeli army in consequence to the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, in which over 1,200 people were killed. According to the latest technological diary data The Lancet The number of victims in the Gaza Strip – counting those who died from starvation – could be up to 186 000. From the outset, Israel's military activities active repeated mass resettlement, systematic demolition of basic infrastructure and blocking the supply of electricity, water and food to an increasingly exhausted civilian population.
As fresh months have shown, reaching to the Holocaust has become a common procedure utilized by those who want to justify the correctness of this operation. An example is comparing the Hamas attack to the Holocaust, the yellow stars of David on the clothes of the Israeli typical during the UN safety Council, or the widespread attribution of anti-Semitism to critics of the Israeli government.
Destruction as an anti-Arab theme
The usage of the Holocaust is not a novelty in Israel's policy towards the Palestinians. Reconstructing the past of this practice Mishra reaches out to Israeli researchers: Edith Zertal and Tom Segev (their books are besides available in Polish translations) who show that during the first years of Israel's existence, the Holocaust was an almost absent and heavy stagnated subject, perceived as not fit for the task of building a young, dynamic statehood, bent forward and determined to cut off from the humiliations that active life in the diaspora. The breakthrough was the 1961 Eichmann trial, which was planned by Ben Gurion as a large spectacle to unite the divided Israeli society around the memory of the Holocaust and make it a base of national identity.
In the following decades, the Holocaust has become an increasingly exposed subject in Israeli public life through institutionalized commemoration practices, its inclusion in educational, cultural and technological programs. At the same time, it has increasingly become part of political discourses, especially those concerning strained relations with arabian countries. In these narratives, the Arabs were frequently portrayed as fresh Nazis, and the threat they would pose to the Israeli state was compared to the Holocaust. This kind of comparison was present in Menachem Begin's discourse, which took over as Prime Minister of Israel in 1977. For years, it has besides been utilized by Benjamin Natanjahu, who says that the Nazi “final solution” was in fact an Arabic idea, which Hitler had given to Mufti Jerusalem, Mohammed Amin al-Husseini.
Reflections on Israel’s actions in Gaza lead Mishra to conclude that it is now not Israel that is the depositary of the moral heritage of the Holocaust. Rather, the guardians of its universalist possible are those who express solidarity with the Palestinians and request justice and equal rights for them.
Restoring Epistemic Justice
Mishra's text provokes questions about what the war in Gaza means for Polish investigation and discussion on the Holocaust and anti-Semitism, past and present. Until recently, these studies and discussions have not seemed to have much direct connection to what we utilized to call the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The exception, although only seemingly, was the issue of Polish Marc 68' and the preceding events related to the Israeli-Arab War of 1967 and the marginal, at least before October 2023, the subject of the alleged fresh anti-Semitism in Poland. However, the events of the last months have not only extracted the "Palestinian case" from oblivion, but besides put its relation with the Polish context in a fresh light.
It is Truism to say that the function played by the Holocaust investigation and anti-Semitism in Poland is not limited to creating an increasingly precise cognition of a peculiar passage of the past. As the past of these studies shows, they are something that triggers violent political responses to subdue their authoritative historical policy. The utmost examples of this have been faced in fresh years, during the governments of the Law and Justice, during which the amendment of the IPN Act attempted to limit investigation on Polish co-participation in the Holocaust (the alleged lex Gross of 2018), were regularly harassed by lawsuits dealing with this subject of researchers and carried out in the media personal assault on Barbara Engelking and led by the Center for the Holocaust Research. This trend is besides happening today, in the context of disputes concerning the Museum of planet War II in Gdańsk.
In all of these activities, the aim is to defend a certain national imagination of the past, emphasizing Polish suffering, innocence and heroism, which is mostly based on negation of facts revealed by studies on Holocaust and anti-Semitism. However, in defending this vision, it is not just the past. First of all, it is an component of a policy whose axis is simply a concept of the Polish Nation (intentionally by the large “N”), its Catholic identity, sovereignty and “good name”. As fresh years have shown, this nationalist, or alternatively nationalist, policy involves limiting women's rights, institutionalised force against LGBTQ minorities, rejecting the regulation of law, racism and marginalising Poland in global relations. Impacting the imagination of Polish history, the survey of Holocaust and Polish anti-Semitism promoted under this policy, they besides indirectly hit fascism urges of this kind of narrative.
All this shows that the peculiar importance of investigation on Holocaust and Polish anti-Semitism is located in at least 3 dimensions. First, in a cognitive dimension that involves the pursuit of historical fact and the simplification of our ignorance about our own past, especially its little boastful chapters. Secondly, in a political dimension in which these studies aid to argue the xenophobic traditions of Polish nationalism and their historical myths. Thirdly, in an ethical dimension in which this investigation can be understood as a pursuit of what has been called epistemic justice in the humanities of fresh years.
It involves giving a voice to those who have been erased from authoritative historical narratives, in an effort to symbolically reconstruct their subjectivity by directing attention to their experiences, suffering and affluence. The combination of these 3 dimensions makes the investigation on Holocaust and anti-Semitism contain a immense normative charge and play the function of an crucial landmark in the contemporary Polish “moral topography”. However, designation of the social and historical importance of these studies besides has the another side: it is the anticipation that they will meet the highest standards of cognitive integrity and moral insight.
Subsidiarity
In my opinion, these standards cannot be met without a serious argument of the kind that Mishra presents. The political instrumentization of the Holocaust, which has been part of the policy of force and oppression against Palestinians for decades, makes it essential to rise the following question: how do Polish investigation and discussions on the Holocaust and anti-Semitism defend themselves against the inclusion of this instrumentalisation in the machine, and how do they defend their authority against undesirable usage of it in a bad case?
The first issue here is to work with actors who may or may not be active in actions that undermine Palestinian rights. This problem is usually overturned by a well-institutionalised discourse that unambiguously classifies the BDS run (which seeks to break relations with Israel) as anti-Semitic and thus effectively blocks any thought over the ethics of organization contacts. It is worth noting, however, that in the case of contacts that are the subject of the survey of the Holocaust and anti-Semitism, this ethics is much more fundamental than in the case of subjects not burdened with specified a large normative load.
The second issue concerns the creation of a kind of public discourse, in which the problem of anti-Semitism is utilized in specified a way that Palestinians are incapacitated and de-instituted in it, and frequently dehumanized and expelled beyond the limits of what can be called the "space of moral obligations." In the book Islamophobia as a technology of power. survey in Political Anthropology I wrote about the fact that 1 of the tools of specified de-institution is the process of incorporating into the definition of anti-Semitism criticism, the subject of which is the policy pursued by the State of Israel.
This treatment results in the cognitive and ethical devaluation of the notion of anti-Semitism and that it is reduced to being an umbrella protecting all, including illegal, activities of Israeli institutions. My argument that it besides leads to the de-institution and de-humanisation of Palestinians, or, in fact, to the racism they target, is that this a priori procedure describes Palestinians as anti-Semites and thus morally disqualifies them as those who may have legitimate political aspirations. For the Palestinians in all their territories, in the occupied West Bank, in Israel's annexed East Jerusalem, and especially in the Gaza Strip, are subjected to oppression and systemic force by the Israeli state. To deny them (and their allies) the right to criticize the state-occupynt is tantamount to denying their subjectivity in the right to survive, freedom and dignity or even to comment on the conditions in which they live.
The problem here is controversial. definition of anti-Semitism, which was created in 2016 by the global Alliance for Holocaust Memory (IHRA) and subsequently adopted by governments of many western countries, including the US, Germany and Poland, as a "non-binding working definition" (it can besides be found on the European Commission's website). It is besides widely accepted by Polish institutions and organizations, which address social prejudice and xenophobia. Its feature is that it combines anti-Semitism with hostility towards the Israeli state—out of the 11 examples of anti-Semitism listed therein, as many as 7 apply to Israel. global forums have repeatedly claimed that this definition is promoted by organisations supported by the Israeli government and utilized to limit freedom of expression and to block criticism of its actions.
From the beginning, it provoked protests by arabian and Palestinian intellectuals, as well as many anti-Semitism and Holocaust researchers. In 2020, this was reflected in the alleged " Jerusalem Declaration. Its authors formulated an alternative, more nuanced definition in which they stressed that the assessment of whether a message or action qualifies as anti-Semitism requires careful analysis of the context. Above all, however, they stated that defining the concept of anti-Semitism must take into account "the protection of the space for an open debate on the delicate question of the future of Israel and Palestine".
Among the signatories of the Jerusalem Declaration are many recognized authorities in the area of Holocaust and Anti-Semitism research. Without the support of the Israeli government and the social and investigation institutions it supports, which enjoys the "working definition" of the IHR, the declaration has nevertheless been marginalised. I am not acquainted with any crucial discussion about it, which would take place in Poland. And without confronting the fact that a certain kind of conceptualization of anti-Semitism leads to the dehumanisation and de-institution of Palestinians, it is impossible to preserve the cognitive, ethical and political coherence of investigation on anti-Semitism and programmes to combat it. all task to combat racism and prejudice against a group that ignores, accepts or perpetuates racism and prejudice against another, in fact undermines and delegates itself.
Vision problems
In the Polish context there are many serious barriers to the perception in Palestinians of people belonging to the "area of moral obligations" in which we ourselves function. 1 origin of the problem is Polish past and related genealogy of certain political slogans and discourses that function in the public sphere.
The first barrier involves the presence in Poland of strong, institutionalised and politicised opposition to research, which exposes the scale of Polish anti-Semitism and participation in the Holocaust. Therefore, any effort to extend the image to Israeli force and crimes on Palestinians is seen as contributing to relativisation or diverting attention from the force and crimes that Poles have done on Jews. These tests are classified as anti-Semitic in effect, if not in intent. The premise of this argument is that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is something distant, without direct and crucial implications for the Polish public debate, and that there can be no motivation another than the anti-Semitism.
The second barrier relates to the past of post-war Polish anti-Semitism, and especially to the 1967-1968 anti-Semitic run culminated in March ‘68.
The global context of this run was the Israeli-Arab Six-Day War of 1967, in which the arabian side suffered a devastating defeat, supported by countries of the cold-war "socialist bloc". In Poland, the politically motivated request of mandatory solidarity with arabian countries was utilized to stigmatize disloyals towards the Polish People's Republic, alleged sympathizers of imperialist Israel and Zionism. They were sought mainly among those with judaic roots, meaning that the hostile and treacherous “Zionist” was simply the codename of “Jews”.
This shameful episode of Polish past has preserved any sets of associations and propaganda slogans as determinants of encoded anti-Semitism, alleged March talk. However, erstwhile explanation patterns developed present to decode this "talk" outside of its historical context are used, they frequently become a rhetorical baton for those who talk of the violation of Palestinian rights by the Israeli state. The problem is besides any thought automation, related to the fact that the basic structure of intellectual legitimacy in post-transformation Poland is anti-communism. This automation makes everything associated with communism comic or scary, and thus is yet delegated. This besides applies to solidarity with Palestinians, which at 1 time was a political dogma.
Another barrier is the widespread Islamophobia in Poland, which is based on the opposite: the “world of Islam” versus the “democratic West” (part of which is to be Israel). It allows the Palestinian origin to be reduced to the spiritual fanaticism of Hamas, and the Israeli war against it to be portrayed as a clash between Western civilization and Muslim barbarism. This picture, taken by leading Israeli politicians, moves beyond the field of visibility Palestinian past and the experience of injustice by the Israeli state. It besides allows you to present them violations of global law as someway understandable and inevitable. In Poland, this approach fits well into anti-Muslim xenophobia, which has developed in conjunction with anti-immigrant and anti-immigrant policies and is besides something that creates an atmosphere of approval to break law (e.g. on the Polish-Belarusian border).
Another barrier is ignorance concerning Palestinian, arabian or Muslim issues, which involves a strong, in any part politically conditioned, separation of academic investigation into judaic and Arabic subjects. This can be seen at the level of organization structures, investigation environments and theoretical paradigms utilized by them. This results in people dealing with judaic issues frequently becoming helpless – and thus susceptible to prejudice and politicized stereotypes – erstwhile these issues meet arabian or Muslim themes.
In summary: the war in Gaza is simply a kind of test for the intellectual, ethical and political credibility of Polish investigation and discussion on the Holocaust and anti-Semitism. Without a fair deal with the "Palestinian issue" and an eye-opening of the Palestinian drama, including its current installment, the normative deposit included in Holocaust investigation and anti-Semitism will be hard to preserve.
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Monika Bobako – philosopher, prof. of UAM, postgraduate of UAM and Central European University of Budapest. She is the author of books: Islamophobia as a technology of power. survey in Political Anthropology and Democracy against the Difference. Multiculturalism and Feminism in the position of designation Policy. He is curious in issues of race and racism, including Islamophobia and anti-Semitism, and the problems of the postcolonial world, especially Muslim societies. Her current investigation task funded by the National discipline Centre is entitled Genealogy of peripheral whiteness. Polish Identities in the position of Erasing Theory.
