May 4, 2024
Groups like the
ADL actually add fuel to antisemitism by conflating it with critiques of
Israel.
Members
of Jewish Voice for Peace join activists shutting down traffic in front
of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, while protesting President Joe
Biden's continued support and funding for Israel's assault on Gaza, on
February 7, 2024, in New York City. Michael Nigro / Pacific Press / LightRocket via Getty Images
In a satirical
Instagram post, musical theater composer Daniel Maté lamented that Jewish
dissenters’ efforts to “increase antisemitism” by denouncing Israel’s abuses of
Palestinians were “not really working.” Rather, he joked, they were sparking
favorable impressions of Jews from the broader pro-Palestine solidarity
movement. He then facetiously suggested a new tactic — to find Jewish
billionaires to make demands of university presidents to shut down
pro-Palestine student groups.
Besides simply
being amusing, Maté’s Instagram actually reveals an important but rarely
examined point: Namely, today’s Jewish dissenters are not only keeping alive a
Jewish tradition of standing with the oppressed but have been far more
effective than mainstream Jewish organizations in the United States at
countering growing antisemitism.
Compare the
overall approaches of the two groups. Consistent with its alarmist tendencies,
Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Director Jonathan Greenblatt recently proclaimed,
“Antisemitism is nothing short of a national emergency, a five-alarm fire that
is still raging across the country.” Shamelessly, however, the ADL and other
mainstream Jewish organizations add fuel to antisemitism by subordinating the
struggle against antisemitism to advocacy on behalf of the state of Israel.
Uncompromised,
uncompromising news
Rather than
educate the public about the dangers of conflating Israel’s actions with Jews
at large, these organizations do the opposite by framing virtually all
criticisms of Israel as antisemitic. Featuring a new Israel-heavy definition of
antisemitism adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance
(IHRA), establishment groups label antisemitic any Palestinian rights advocacy
group which speaks of Israeli depredations, laments that Israel’s creation came
at the expense of Palestinians, calls for boycotts or advocates for an
alternative political system to Jewish hegemony. Depressingly, the U.S. House
of Representatives just passed the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which mandates
that the Department of Education adopt the IHRA definition to enforce
anti-discrimination laws. Moreover, consistent with its prioritization of
Israel advocacy, the mainstream U.S. Jewish groups like the ADL make common
cause with individuals prone to antisemitic conspiracy theories, such as
billionaire Elon Musk, who prove to be sufficiently “pro-Israel,” by validating
dubious claims that phrases such as “from the river to the sea” amount to a
call for genocide of Jews.
Jewish
dissenters, by contrast, situate the growth of antisemitism in the rise of
attacks on other vulnerable groups and urge a united front to “dismantle all
systems of oppression.” Both Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and the Jerusalem
Declaration on Antisemitism (JDA), a document produced by critical Jewish
scholars, reject the conflation of antisemitism with anti-Zionism and critiques
of Israel. Such an approach, they point out, not only shields Israel from
scrutiny, but erases the diverse views and experiences of Jews, demonizes
Palestinian rights advocates and absolves “pro-Israel” reactionaries. At the
same time, JVP and the JDA recognize and condemn all antisemitism, including if
it is found in Palestine solidarity circles. JDA carefully distinguishes
anti-Zionism, evidence-based criticisms of Israel, and boycotts from comments
that employ classical antisemitic tropes in describing Israel, accuse Jews of
dual loyalty and blame Jews collectively for Israel’s actions.
A similar
contrast is found with regard to the post-October 7 setting. Mainstream Jewish
organizations like the ADL and the American Jewish Committee ignore Israel’s
devastation of Gaza, which, to date, has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians,
including 14,000 children, and brought famine to much of the population.
Instead, they feature Hamas’s killings of nearly 1,200 Israelis and taking of
over 200 hostages; denounce any efforts to contextualize those attacks; and,
with minor qualifications, maintain robust support for Israel’s devastating
onslaught that arguably amounts to genocide.
Most
dramatically, the ADL and allies have intensified the weaponization of
antisemitism, especially on college campuses. It accuses student protesters of
making U.S. Jews feel unsafe — avoiding the inconvenient fact that a sizeable
number of the protesters themselves are Jewish — and implore universities to
prevent demonstrations, lectures, films or other works of art deemed hostile to
Israel. The ADL has gone so far to expand what’s coded as antisemitism to apply
to rallies that feature “anti-Zionist slogans,” meaning virtually all protests
of Israel’s Gaza offensive. It and others also continue to make common cause
with the most intolerant figures in U.S. society. For example, at its March for
Israel rally in November 2023, a coalition of Jewish establishment groups
featured the antisemitic pastor John Hagee as one of its speakers.
Jewish
dissenters, on the other hand, have responded with far greater nuance. Writing
in the immediate aftermath, Jewish Currents Editor-in-Chief Arielle Angel
observed that “many ardent anti-Zionist Jews found they could not join
Palestine-solidarity protests because they needed something the protests could
not provide, a space to grieve the Israeli dead.” Nevertheless, they understood
that the October 7 attack was an outgrowth of Israel’s decades-long subjection
of Palestinians, especially in Gaza, to oppressive conditions. Dissenters also
appreciated that Israel would respond with devastating force, which would
further Israel’s moral degeneration. They have, therefore, not allowed their
grief to impede them from robust scrutiny of Israel and mainstream U.S. Jewish
groups.
There has been a
further dramatic divergence in response to the recent surge in campus
encampments aimed at ending the complicity of their universities in Israel’s
Gaza assault and broader subjugation of Palestinians over multiple decades.
Mainstream Jewish groups demand that universities condemn and shut down such
activities in the name of supposedly keeping Jewish students safe. Conversely,
dissenters are enthusiastically joining the encampments to honor the Jewish
legacy of social justice. Across the country, dissenting Jewish students have
held Passover seders, joined by activists with Students for Justice in
Palestine, to uphold the holiday’s commitment to liberation from tyranny.
Ironically, a large contingent of militant “pro-Israel” Jews assumed the role
of modern-day pharaohs by violently invading the UCLA encampment. Among the
many victims of this assault were the numerous Jewish student dissenters.
Sadly, the fear expressed by mainstream Jewish groups of Jewish students being
unsafe came true. Yet the perpetrators were hardline Zionist Jews and the
victims were the Jews of conscience.
Mainstream
Jewish groups predictably reject these alternative approaches, claiming that
they simply justify anti-Israel and anti-Zionist behavior. The ADL’s
Greenblatt, for instance, vows the organization will not allow JVP to use its
“Judaism as a shield,” while Zionist activists Gil Troy and Natan Sharansky aim
to excommunicate Jewish dissenters as “Un-Jews.”
This intolerance
is unconscionable. If we hope to reverse Israel’s escalating path of
destruction and accompanying moral degeneration, reaffirm the proud Jewish
social justice legacy and attach the struggle against antisemitism to a robust
antiracist movement, then Jewish dissenters represent our best hope.
As we Jews
observed Passover in April, two lessons are especially pertinent. One: We are
not free if anyone else is oppressed. Two: We must never allow our own people
to become modern pharaohs.
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