I have long been anti-Israel because I saw (and stlll see) it as an apartheid state – conquering Palestinian lands by force and terror, maintaining a virtually enslaved labor force, imprisoning Palestinians without due process, murdering Palestinians in landgrabs by the so-called Israeli settlers, and of late continuing to commit genocide in Gaza. Netanyahu and his right-wing government and its many supporters are, to put it simply and bluntly, evil (as evil as Hitler and the Nazis). And increasingly that seems equally true of the larger, supportive or compliant, population of Israel, reminiscent of the “good Germans” under Hitler.
Yet I’ve always honestly believed that this opposition to Israel did not make me antisemitic in the sense of condemning/despising/opposing Jews simply because they identified themselves as Jewish (whether in religious or secular terms).
That seems to be changing as a result of the often violent police and institutional repression of campus protests against Israel and for the Palestinians. Though I admit that changing realities and critiques about these campus protests are complicated, as are the reasons for my increasing antisemitism.
Let me try to explain.
I think the current wave of campus protests against Israeli genocide are a good thing and may eventually lead to some relief for Gazans and other Palestinians. Yet they have also provoked severe opposition from many sides, and in turn have themselves turned violent and are losing their focus on Israel and Gaza. Or said differently, losing any effectiveness they might have had for helping the victims in Gaza.
It also seems that some of the protesters have turned from being anti-Israel to becoming antisemitic. For reasons which may, perhaps, be similar to mine.
For it seems to me that it is Jewish leadership individuals and groups, and those they influence in the university and the media, in city, state, even national leadership who have increasingly made opposition to Israel automatically seem opposition to Jews and Judaism. And that deliberate and politically calculated conflation of antisemitism with anti-Israel views is in its turn leading me and others to an expand our opposition to Israel into opposition to Jews on many fronts.
I personally am mystified by and deeply troubled by the equation that many Jews make between their identity and support for Israel. I leave it for Jews to explain this, but what I’ve read is that it is a growing identification, a recent development in Jewish identity. Yet increasingly a dominant position and passion among many diaspora Jews.
So as Jewish groups and a growing number of non-Jewish folks push blatant propaganda in opposing campus protests, my support for those protests leads me to oppose them. — with the exception of those like Jewish Voice for Peace who call for opposition to Israel’s policies and practices, and with those (hopefully many) Jews who do not equate their Judaism with unequivocal support for Israel.
It’s for me a troubling shift in thinking since the vast majority of the very small number of Jews I know as colleagues, acquaintances, friends, public figures…are good folks whom I respect and often admire. As I admire so many of the achievements of Judaism over centuries – its intellectual achievements in sciences and humanities, especially its literary and philosophical greats, its opposition to racism and work for justice, its great achievements in music and the visual arts – that admiration remains strong. To name (in no particular order) some of those Jews who’ve influenced me and evoked my admiration: Abraham Joshua Heschel and his daughter Suzanna, Leo Strauss, Louis Greenspan, Chaim Potok, Eli Wiesel, Philip Roth, Einstein and Oppenheimer, and perhaps especially Freud and Marx. And let me not forget Hannah Arendt and her many important books. And others like Franz Kafka, Stephen Spielberg, Woody Allen, Isaac Deutscher, Eric Hobsbawm, Tony Judt, Arthur Koestler, Bernard Lewis, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Simone Weil, and Saul Bellow. My much admired Jewish colleagues at Regis shall remain unnamed because of their privacy.
I realize, of course, that readers of this post may well not recognize all of the names I’ve listed as, for me, admirable Jews. But let them stand for the many, for the people and their history. And let them stand against the many today whom I blame for my tendency towards antisemitism.
Still, I don’t any longer believe that it is simply appalling to think anti-semitic thoughts and to express them in non-violent ways. Too many of the schmucks and shysters running the present show need to be criticized. And I ask understanding (and forgiveness) any friends who find themselves offended by what I write.
As the Psalms often pray, may peace come to Jerusalem/Israel, even if slowly like melting snow.
Yet, to return to the point of this essay, what seems the growing and very dangerous identification of so many Jews and Jewish groups with Israel makes my admiration leave center stage to be replaced by my growing antisemitism.
I hope all this changes, but I suspect it won’t for a long time.
