The poisoned word: How Palestine solidarity is branded as antisemitism

Why is support for Palestine so often seen as “antisemitism”? And why so few mentions of “Islamophobia”?

Words have a unique power: to spread truth — or to wildly distort it.

Take “Jew”, for instance. In a subtle way, that word has absorbed something queasily dark from history. When my sisters and I were children, Jewish musicians who’d fled the Nazis were frequent honoured guests in our home. In this blessed way, we escaped the itchy ambivalence towards Jews that had poisoned many Christian hearts over the centuries.

But sour knowledge crept in. As a small child, I saw a weird change come over the face of a man I admired when he referred to Bellevue Hill and Rose Bay, two wealthy Sydney suburbs, as “Bellejew Hill and Nose Bay”. The sudden strangeness of his smile made something twist sickly inside me.

“Let us pray for the perfidious Jews,” we heard every Good Friday at the most solemn moment of the Christian calendar. Then, repeated throughout the Christian world, the Jewish mob’s terrible, prophetic words: ‘His blood be on us and our children.’

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A-ha! See? There it is in black and white — the admission of guilt. And punishment called down on their own heads — forever.

So the first time I heard the word “Yid” – spat out contemptuously by a wealthy Catholic girl – I knew instantly what it signified. The loathing of centuries coalesced into one ugly, poisonous bullet of sound.

Years later, I had a flash of insight into the hatred that had obliterated countless Jewish lives a generation before. I heard and saw that venom distilled into the one short syllable that named a hated race.

In a Viennese café, an elderly woman at the next table struck up a conversation. She was charming: friendly and intelligent, with warm blue eyes and a quick laugh. Her English was excellent. She invited me to sit with her, called for more coffee and ordered a plate of delicious pastries. Then she settled back to talk of her beloved city.

I could hardly believe my luck.

Soon, however, the conversation began veering towards one delicate, uneasy topic. My companion started reminiscing about her girlhood.

And... the War.

“Oh,” she trilled, her laugh suddenly hard and bright. “What a lot of Jews there were then. So very many.”

A warning note. My heart quickened. But ever the courteous foreign visitor, I stuttered, “Oh... is that so?”

“Yes. Very many Jews.” She shrugged. “Some Austrians even thought there were too many Jews.”

She leaned towards me confidentially. I saw that my politeness had subtly encouraged her. Despite the warning flutter in my stomach, an urgent craving seized me: to glimpse the inner writhings behind that well-bred, smiling face.

The woman needed little prompting. I listened, gulped and responded with feigned surprise. No, really? You don’t say! So the hatred she’d nurtured all those years came slithering out.

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Jews had got what they deserved. Thanks to Hitler, their very own national hero, after many centuries, fine, upstanding Austrians had got their pure nation back.

But what was happening now? Could you believe it? Many of those who’d run away to the U.S. to save their skins were coming back as tourists and strutting around looking up their old haunts.

“That just shows the sort of people they are,” she sneered. “Gross and insensitive. Ignorant and stubborn as mules.”

She took a neat bite from a pastry, then looked straight at me:

“Would you come back after what happened? I certainly wouldn’t.”

With a strangely mirthless tinkle of laughter, she leaned closer:

“They actually pretend to be Americans. They think they can fool us. But... we know the truth. We can see through them. Do you know what they really are?”

She paused dramatically, then very slowly, her face broke into a smile. A ghastly, sly, crocodile smile. Completely mesmerised, I couldn’t tear my gaze from her eyes. I’d thought them warm, but they hardened as I watched, till they stared out like cold, blank stones. When she spoke again, I was shocked by the mocking sugary-sweetness of her voice, vicious as acid.

What… are… they… reeeally? Would you like to know?

They are nothing but oooold Jeeewwwws.

“Jeeewwwws.” Slow, lingering, sibilant with bile. Tongue playing mockingly with the word; lips pursed into the shape of a tiny, malicious kiss.

Hearing that word again as it comes hissing across time, the memory fills me with fear. And weirdly, with something almost like frantic pity for the woman’s mad blindness. She’d lived through history’s most hideous bloodbath, but had apparently learned nothing. How ugly and twisted her mouth looked as she said that word. All the foulness that had been flung at it over the centuries seemed concentrated there.

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‘Jew’. I stare at the word as I write it and see it emerge from the Austrian woman’s tight, painted mouth. It looks and sounds poisoned. It has absorbed so much loathing over the centuries that the three letters fused together seem corroded, eaten away by hatred.

Strangely, it even sounds more acceptably “polite” to say “He’s Jewish” than “He’s a Jew”. Subtly sidestepping the baldness of that itchy, uncomfortable, loaded word.

Tragically, I’ve even heard a Jewish friend stumble over it when admitting who she was. Her awkwardness shocked me. What did it say about the wounds Christian society had inflicted on the Jewish psyche over the long centuries?

And now, the Gaza war. Though not Jewish myself, I’m a regular supporter of Jewish Voice for Peace, passionate advocates of justice for Palestinians.

Daily, their Zoom call proclaims: ‘Power Half-Hour for Gaza: Channel grief and outrage into action to stop a genocide’:

...we are overwhelmed with sorrow and outrage yet we are steadfast in our commitment to Palestinian liberation.

There are no words to describe the devastating pain of the past year in which the Israeli military has killed over 70,000 Palestinians – probably more like 300,000 – in Gaza, including more than 20,000 children. Many more will perish due to lack of medicine and medical treatment, food, water and shelter.

The International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court have both declared that Israel must stop the genocidal acts being committed against the Palestinian people. And yet the U.S. Government is actively supporting the Israeli military as it wreaks devastation on the over 2 million Palestinians in Gaza.

Join us as we take collective action to demand an arms embargo on Israel, an immediate end to the genocide and to stop starving Gaza. All are welcome. All are needed.

But who knows how it will all pan out? So what awaits us after our world has finished this oh-so-human cycle of storm and quaking and weeping? Then... the next likely one?

Will history have repeated itself? What will have happened to all those frantic people who recently fled from the Middle East to Europe, desperate to save their lives? Unwanted, suspect and resented, will they have suffered familiar old terrors like those who went before?

Then years later, will an Australian traveller once again meet a delightful woman in a Viennese coffee shop and find herself listening with spine-creeping horror as soft words coil, then freeze into iron?

Coming back as tourists. Strutting round looking up their old haunts. But... we know the truth. We can see through them. Do you know what they really are?

They are nothing but ooooold Mew…slims.