Calling out Antisemitism

Thank you, American people, for reminding me why I moved to this frustrating, crisis-ridden country in the first place.

We’ll start with your right wingers. Vice President Vance blamed “us” for the Republicans’ losses in the midterm elections. Even President Trump was a bit more subtle, suggesting that a combination of high gasoline prices, as a result of the Iran war, and the electorate’s short-sightedness were at fault. Not that he was calling American voters idiots, exactly…

Vance, however, went straight for the old antisemitic trope. Israel was the main cause of the spectacular upset. Suddenly, we all grew hooked noses and backs bent from counting our money bags. Forget the statements previously issued by the oval office that the war was entirely Trump’s idea. Now, Israel’s prime minister was the devil, complete with horns, sitting on Trump’s shoulder and urging him to bomb Iran. (Not that Vance was calling Trump an idiot, exactly…) Of course, in politics, when times are tough, the tough find a scapegoat. Israel was just begging for the job.

It would be a bit less disconcerting if this were not the man responsible for negotiating a settlement with the Iranians – one that supposedly would protect us Israelis from nuclear annihilation.

And then there is your left. The boycott in Philadelphia of Jewish-owned restaurants in the name of “free Palestine” was more antisemitism, disguised as anti-Zionism. It would have been hard to see it in any other light, as some restaurant owners had no ties to Israel, whatsoever. Rabbis are coming out as anti-Zionist and American Jews are once again caught in a bind. Does every American Jew have to constantly signal their political stance vis a vis Israel? Does it matter, or is antisemitism now fashionable enough that left and right can both claim to have invented it for the new era?

Did someone mention complexity? No one wants that. You cannot see the massacre of Jews on Oct. 7, 2023, and the killing of thousands of innocent Gazans in the same frame. You cannot ache for those displaced on both sides of the border. You cannot see the regressive dictatorship of Hamas in the same light as the awful racist dictator-wannabes trying to manipulate Israel’s election results. Right to exist? Too many of you seem to believe that only one side has a right to exist. For Jews, both in the US and Israel, “Free Palestine” becomes a threat, rather than a promise for a brighter future for both sides.

To quote a famous Jew: Everything looks worse in black and white.

To be fair, our own government – our own narrative – is complicit in conflating Zionism with Judaism (and from there, it’s a short step to Zionism = racism). Like the Holy See and Saudi Arabia, we not only hold on to one particular faith, but claim to hold the candle of that faith for followers the world over. So we would like you to presume that all Jews not only support the Jewish state, but rely on it for their very identity, unless informed otherwise.

Israel, for you Americans, is code for something else that is broken in your own system

Non-Zionist rabbis, by the way, are not a big deal. We have a country full of them, right here in the Zionist state. That is why “Zionist,” for Israelis, is a code word for non-Haredi and non-Arab. When political leaders claim they will only sit with Zionist parties in a government coalition, they mean, to the exclusion of a large handful of parties – some that give Arabs equal rights, others that reject a secular government in a Jewish country. What they mostly have in common is that neither is subject to the draft, which is an intractable problem for a country at war on nearly every border. There is a clear but subtle difference between this definition of Zionism (admittedly exclusionary) and yours (painted with broad strokes).

Now that the elections in Israel are over and a minority bloc is trying to form a government, Zionism will be set aside for pragmatism. We’ve already been told that some compromise will be required on campaign promises in order to meet the main goal of forming a government that shuts out the overtly criminal element – putting change, which was their one-word platform, above the need to preserve Zionist purity.

Looked at from another angle, I would ask you to question why a war thousands of miles away from you was a main issue in your midterm elections. Why not protest the slaughter in Sudan, the repression of minorities in China or the expulsion, in your own country, of thousands of immigrants? Do you not even care about the tens of thousands killed in Iran protesting the government’s draconian religious policies? Is that just internal Iranian business to you?

Israel, for you Americans, is code for something else that is broken in your own system. Rather than ask how Israel somehow connived to get your president to commit to a stalemate of a war, why are you not asking how supply chains have become so stretched that blocking one narrow strait can send the entire world into a tizzy? Why are you not asking how come you are still so dependent on fossil fuels that a repressive, anti-Western theocracy and a handful of tribal extremists can hold global supplies for ransom? To be fair Bibi did try to warn you.

To you on the right, I would say: “Please check the disarray in your own ranks. Could extremism and incompetence have contributed, in any way, to the election results? Could your secretary of war’s holy mission have contributed to the debacle, or was your president so high on the arrest of Venezuela’s president Maduro that he thought he was on a roll moving on to Iran? Do you actually think Bibi could take down your entire party?

To those on the left, please check your news sources, as well as your prejudices. Yes, people are still getting killed in Gaza even during the ceasefire, and that obviously needs to stop. But do you care that neither Hamas nor Israel is meeting the conditions of that ceasefire, or that demilitarization of their group is an existential must for us? Do you care that a new government might reign in Jewish terrorism in the occupied West Bank, that it might be able to negotiate a long-term ceasefire where the previous one dragged its heels?

It is short of your goals of a free Palestine, but it could go a long way toward easing the lots of several million people. Are you willing to give it a chance; are you patient enough to find ways to nurture trust between all sorts of Jews and Arabs?

I have not lost complete hope in you, Americans. I do know there are plenty of you who will go to eat in a Jewish-owned restaurant to protest the protests, who understand the dangers of blaming groups, be they recent immigrants or Semites of various stripes, for the failings of the system. I know there are even not a few of you who can see the complexity of our situation, who can place it in a broader context. I am hoping that you not only exist, but that you find your voice.

I’ll put it another way. I support your right to oppose my government’s policies and actions. I support your right to oppose the war with Iran, and to demand cuts to the billions spent in arming us. I do not support you right to question my right to exist, nor do I support any sort of anti-Jewish comments, protests boycotts or actions. I hope you understand.

In the meantime, I’ll be right here, where I can see, as we say in Hebrew, “who is against who.” I’ll keep working for my own vision of what’s right and wrong, while keeping my grasp of the complexity of our “situation.” I will use my right as a citizen of this state to push for a better version of that state. If you don’t like it, or don’t like me, that, as we also say in Hebrew, “is your problem.”