Last month Prime Minister Anthony Albanese appointed Jewish lawyer and businesswoman Jillian Segal as Australia’s first antisemitism special envoy. While largely welcomed, Palestinian rights supporters have argued that the definition of antisemitism – taken from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) – could ‘chill political expressions of criticism of Israel as well as support for Palestinian rights’. According to The Conversation ‘Supporters of the IHRA definition argue such criticism is permissible, but not when it uses antisemitic tropes or dehumanisation’. Sound straightforward enough? Apparently not: ‘The debate is highly contentious…’ the authors conclude. You can make your own mind up about the definition here.
What is of more concern is the reason the government found it necessary to install an antisemitism special envoy in the first place. In the two-month period following the October 7 attack on Israel, The Executive Council of Australian Jewry reported a 738 per cent rise in antisemitic incidents compared to the same period the previous year. This year the data indicates a 591 per cent rise, with as many incidents since October 7 as there were for all of 2023.
One hopes that Jillian Segal’s appointment will quell – and this is where my opinion may differ from IHRA critics – cases of antisemitism dismissed as stemming from ‘ignorance’ rather than ‘malice’, that have no doubt contributed to these shocking numbers. It should go without saying that ignorantia juris non excusat, however, the distinction between ‘ignorance’ and ‘malice’ is frequently made, and the former used to dismiss or excuse cases of antisemitism when it comes to ‘hot button’ issues like the Israeli-Palestinian war.
Put differently, while Hanlon’s razor ‘never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity’ is a useful one, things become a bit more complicated when ‘ignorant’ actions performed in the name of a cause are dismissed or not adequately addressed.
Such cases should invite us to interrogate the cause itself, in this case the pro-Palestine movement, and ask whether such a movement might have a particular tendency to create idiots. Before I do this, however, I note that the distinction between ‘ignorance’ and ‘malice’ recalls philosopher and political thinker Hannah Arendt’s concept of ‘banality of evil’. A brief look at what Arendt meant by ‘banal’ may prove useful here.
In 1961 Arendt attended and reported on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, the principal organiser of the systematic deportation of millions of Jews to extermination camps from 1941. Throughout the trial, Eichmann presented not as a hateful fanatic, but as a man of unsettling mediocrity. His apparent lack of malice led Arendt to conclude that his defining characteristic was a lack of critical thinking, seemingly explained in part by the fact that he was a ‘joiner’ and his defence that he ‘feared to live a leaderless and difficult individual life, in which I would receive no directives from anybody.’
Banality, in the sense that his actions were motivated by a complacency that was wholly unexceptional, seemed to explain Evil understood in the context of a ‘dilemma between the unspeakable horror of the deeds and the undeniable ludicrousness of the man who perpetrated them’.
It turned out that Eichmann was far from unexceptional… He was an exceptionally antisemitic braggart. Recordings made while he was in hiding in 1957 but only made available in 1998 revealed his ‘I was just a cog in the machine’ line as a ruse. Four years before the trial, Eichmann admitted his role in the extermination of Jews and stated, ‘Every fibre in me resists that we did something wrong.’
While Arendt was incorrect to use Eichmann as an example of the Banality of Evil, the upshot of the concept and her book – that totalitarian regimes have a unique ability to crush individual moral conscience through relentless propaganda, a blurring of the lines between truth and lies, and the constant creation of enemies both real and imagined, remains relevant for us today.
We are not living under a totalitarian regime, however much of the ‘pro-Palestine’ movement bubble is deeply ideological and views the world through a Manichaean ‘coloniser/colonised’ lens. This Good vs Evil divide dehumanises those on the ‘wrong side’ and a blind faith in the authority of the ‘right side’ replaces critical thinking, along with common sense and decency.
This could be why we are increasingly finding ‘clowns’ that seemingly cannot distinguish between identifying as ‘pro-Palestine’ and choosing not to buy a Hyundai (one of the companies on the Palestinian-led boycott list) for example, and identifying as ‘pro-Palestine’ and refusing to serve a Jewish customer or displaying an antisemitic sign at a store.
Indeed, a lot of the pro-Palestine movement seems deeply confused. The fact that when the war is mentioned many LGBTQI+ supporters reach robotically for words like ‘systemic’, ‘colonial’, and ‘oppressor’ without blinking makes one think, or rather, makes one wonder if they think. As Benjamin Netanyahu put it in his recent address to Congress, protesters holding up signs proclaiming, ‘Gays for Gaza’ may as well be holding up signs saying ‘Chickens for KFC’. Such ideological crudity – a willingness to go along with a movement blindly – also recalls those who attend protests chanting ‘from the river to the sea’ without knowing which river and sea the slogan refers to.
Arendt stated of Eichmann’s trial that ‘everybody could see that this man was not a ‘monster’, but it was difficult indeed not to suspect that he was a clown’. While off the mark when it came to the man in question, Arendt found the idea that a ‘clown’ could commit evil as, if not more disturbing than the actions of a ‘monster’ and insisted that moral choice remains even under totalitarianism. In short, ‘banality’, ‘stupidity’, ‘ignorance’, and above all a lack of critical thinking are to be taken very seriously, indeed.
When ‘ignorant’ antisemitic acts are committed in the name of a pro-Palestine movement, the Manichaean nature of that movement’s apparatus cannot be ignored. In light of a number of recent incidents, MPs David Davis and Julian Leeser have called for the government to stand up to antisemitism. This must involve not only standing up to monstrous behaviour, but acknowledging the pro-Palestine movement’s tendency toward idiotic decisions. Jillian Segal’s appointment is a welcome one, let us hope that quarrels over definitions do not prevent her from being able to do her job.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author, not their place of work.
