Today’s Antisemitism and Today’s Politics
What follows is my sermon from Shabbat evening services about antisemitism and in particular anti-Zionism.
Effy’s Café, a popular Israeli restaurant on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, was recently vandalized. Graffiti was spray painted on the sidewalk. It read “Form line here to support genocide. Israelism is terrorism. Israel is ethnic cleansing.”
We live in an age when anti-Zionism, when opposition to Israel’s legitimate defense of its citizens is the same as the antisemitism of ages past. Such graffiti misrepresents Israel’s policies. They distort its actions. On college campuses Jewish students are accosted. This is antisemitic hooliganism. Don’t buy the arguments “We are not opposed to Jews, only to Israel.” Why is it that only the Jewish state is not only denied the right to defend its citizens but denied the right to exist? The chant “From the river to the sea,” means the end of Israel as a Jewish nation. Professor Ron Hassner, who is protesting Berkley’s failures to protect its Jewish students from such violent protestors with a sit-in—he has not left his office in over a week—argues that anti-Zionism is the worst form of antisemitism because its goal is to rob Jews of their only home.
Two weeks ago, the literary magazine, Guernica, named for Pablo Picasso’s famous anti-war painting and founded twenty years ago partly in response to the Iraq War, retracted an article written by an Israeli author. In this piece Joanna Chen struggles with Israel’s military response to October 7th and worries about the future of peace with her Palestinian neighbors. Chen is a translator of both Hebrew and Arabic poetry. She did not serve in the IDF. Instead, she worked with Road to Recovery, an organization that helps transport Palestinians to and from their needed medical appointments. She is not your typical Israeli. Then again, like every Israeli, she writes about her fears after October 7th. She mourns the murders of friends, some of whom were likewise devoted to Israeli-Palestinian co-existence. She reaches out to her Palestinian acquaintances and shares these exchanges in her article. It is an angst filled essay entitled “From the Edges of a Broken World.”
And yet soon after the article was published, the magazine had an open revolt among its staff. Fifteen resigned in protest. One called the article “a hand-wringing apologia for Zionism and the ongoing genocide in Palestine.” Another wrote that the magazine’s decision to publish the piece made it “a pillar of eugenicist white colonialism masquerading as goodness.“ Tell that to the hundreds of thousands of non-European Jews who fled Arab lands (approximately 750,000) and then made Israel their home. In our upside-down world the victims are the oppressors. And the murdering terrorists are the heroes. Antisemitism! The magazine retracted the article and removed it from its website. In its place we read, “Guernica regrets having published this piece, and has retracted it. A more fulsome explanation will follow.” That was posted on March 4th. There has been no follow up to date.
I share this example because it is emblematic of our current times. Guernica is not a magazine meant only for Palestinian writers although it often features them. It claims to provide a space for writers of every identity and culture so that the pressing issues of the day can be aired. But that is not where we are at anymore. The magazine has a liberal bent and an anti-war bias, but this example illustrates what is the quagmire of today’s antisemitism. We are trapped by narrative and belief. We only believe what we believe and never what they believe. Gone is the art of discourse. Lost forever is debate.
There is only my narrative versus your narrative, my beliefs versus your beliefs. How else does one explain the fact that the sexual violence committed by Hamas terrorists is ignored or even denied by many feminist groups? It does not fit into their narrative that Israel is the oppressor and Palestinians are the victims. This is what we saw on display at the Academy Awards when Jonathan Glazer spoke as if the occupation was the singular cause of the continuing war and bloodshed between Israelis and Palestinians. It’s not so simple. No narrative box fits perfectly for every situation. No amount of Instagram posts or TikTok videos will fix the misunderstandings. We can share all the memes we want, but they will only further entrench both sides. We convince only ourselves and not the people we actually need to talk to. We push the very people who desperately need to talk face to face farther apart.
That seemed like Joanna Chen’s primary lament. She was struggling to reach across the divide, but our world has become about building walls around each and every thing, and each and every person, and each and every feeling. I only want the magazine I read, or write for, or work for, to publish things that affirm my feelings and my beliefs.
And this brings me to Senator Schumer. I know this is going to make me unpopular, but can we just relax about his speech. Of course, it makes me uncomfortable that my Senator castigated Israel and its leaders on the Senate floor, but we are spending so much time and energy arguing about whether or not he should have given this speech that we avoid talking about the content of his words. I read his speech in detail. He spoke about his love for Israel. He spoke out against antisemitism in general and Hamas’ evils in particular. He spoke about the pain of October 7th and the ongoing suffering among innocent Gazans. He then said in effect, “The goal of US policy is peace between Israel and its neighbors, most especially the Palestinians. And there are four obstacles to achieving this: Hamas, radical right-wing Israelis, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”
I am not going to parse his arguments at this moment, but I think we should engage his ideas. We should debate the content of his arguments. Yes, I am uneasy that he proclaimed them so publicly. Yes, I am uncomfortable that he laid bare the divide between the two nations I love and most especially that he urged for Israeli elections, but our arguments about propriety and statesmanship avoid the debate. Given that Israel is the recipient of US aid Americans can debate whether aiding Israel is in American interests. Americans are allowed to criticize Israel when they feel it falls short of meeting American values. I strenuously disagree, but it is not illegitimate for the US and its leaders to offer pointed criticisms of Israeli policy.
If we believe in free speech, then we must believe it for our elected officials. We have a voice. It is heard every November. Until then, let’s argue even with those with whom we disagree. Let’s not confuse our friends—however uncomfortable they may make us sometimes feel—with our enemies.
This Shabbat is called Shabbat Zachor, the sabbath of remembrance. It is the Shabbat immediately preceding Purim. On Purim we recall the antisemitic wrath of Haman and our victory over his hate. On this Shabbat we remember Amalek, our ancient enemy who attacked the weak and frail Israelites who marched in the back.
Sometimes I think things seemed clearer in the ancient world. Friend and foe were more obvious. Of course, the world was equally dangerous, but those lines appeared clearer. Perhaps that is the benefit of hindsight. Then again maybe our current predicament is different. We are so trapped in our silos that we can no longer even give countenance to those with whom we disagree. We refuse to engage with those who profess ideas we find abhorrent. We appear to be forever playing defense. But our tradition, both the Jewish and American, is about engaging, and debating, ideas. We use our words as weapons. We use our pens as our armaments.
When I was traveling in Madrid, I saw some graffiti scrawled on a wall near the apartment I was renting. It read, “Free Palestine.” And someone had come along and added, “From Hamas.” And then someone else had come along later and crossed out Hamas and wrote, “From Israel.” That seems like the perfect metaphor. There is plenty of wall space left for the debates and the arguments to continue.
Violence must be met with a vigorous defense and if necessary, an armed defense. But I am going to continue fighting words with words.
Addendum: Professor Ron Hassen ended his two week sit-in on Saturday, March 23.