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Opinion

Calling Emma Watson antisemitic makes it harder to fight bigotry

Making hyperbolic accusations only emboldens those who insist that supporters of Israel use allegations of Jew-hatred in order to silence criticism of the country’s government

January 6, 2022 09:20
Emma Watson
3 min read

If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a thousand times, and quite often from perfectly good people. That this or that accusation of antisemitism is likely to be false because the charge is so often used simply to silence the critics of the Israeli government. Then, painstakingly (if you’re even given the opportunity) you can explain why using this trope or that characterisation is in fact as anti-Jewish, as are those other tropes and characterisations about black people or the Irish or gay people. Criticism of Israel as a country, its government and its policies are not antisemitic. That’s not the problem here.

So that’s our stage. That’s where we find ourselves. At which point this week entered two characters. Our first is the popular actress Emma Watson. Ms Watson has millions of fans worldwide. Far more people the world over can name her than can tell you who the current prime minister of Israel is. She has 28.8 million followers on Twitter. Mr Bennett has 470,000. When you tell her fans that Ms Watson is a thing, many of them are likely to assume that this is a good thing to be.

Anyway Emma Watson is an activist thespian in the George Clooney tradition. Finding herself with both absurd amounts of fame and money at a young age, and probably being all too aware of how absurdly easily it was gained, she too is in permanent paying-back mode. Her causes are many. She has promoted education for girls in places where men prefer the women to be chattels. She is active in the movement to save the planet. She has campaigned against bullying. Stopping briefly to do some acting and meditating, she has pursued her many causes with a high level of commitment.

If such a person had not supported the Palestinian cause (ie the desire of Palestinians not to live under Israeli occupation and to have their own state), then the Palestinians could justifiably have felt left out. She supports just about everyone else.