The apology from the very special speaker

In Francesca Albanese’s fantastical, simplistic world, we now discover that anti-Semitism is hatred of Jews. Yes, them, of all people. “I sincerely apologise. I misunderstood the term ‘Muselmann’ (Muslim) used in Nazi camps for prisoners on the brink of death, erroneously deducing that the term ‘anti-Semitism’ originally meant hatred towards all Semitic peoples. In reality, it was coined specifically to denote hatred towards Jews.”

It is not every day that a very special UN rapporteur makes amends. Albanese did so after insinuating that anti-Semitism was not a specific hatred of Jews but of ‘Semitic peoples’ in general, and that the term, when it was coined, would have referred to anyone who was not European and came from the Middle East. A UN Special Rapporteur is not required to be a philologist. She is required, however, not to use history as fodder for a pre-determined argument. The lexicon of human rights thrives on distinctions: between occupation and genocide, between criticism of a government and hatred of a people, between analogy and inversion. When those distinctions are blurred, the result is a vocabulary that can mean anything and therefore means nothing at all.

It would have been encouraging if her substantial following had welcomed the apology that followed such a misstep. However, that was not the case. Her supporters forgive Albanese everything, including such a moral and political blunder. Within the pre-packaged narrative of the pro-Palestinian stance, anti-Semitism is treated as an elastic concept – so malleable that no draft bill can define it, yet flexible enough to absorb any criticism of Israel while rejecting any accusation of prejudice. If the term were to revert to its original meaning – hatred of Jews simply because they are Jews – the rhetorical edifice would lose a brick. Better, then, that the earth remain flat.