Not in My Name

To the Jews Who Believe It Is Only About Israel

I worry about the Jews who march under the banner “Not in My Name.”

Not because I question their sincerity.

Many are sincere.

Some are naïve.

Some are confused.

Some have been misled.

Some are afraid of standing apart from the crowd.

I worry because I suspect they misunderstand the nature of the forces they have aligned themselves with.

Whatever the reason, they share a common assumption:

They believe the hostility is directed at Israel.

They believe it is directed at Zionists.

They believe it is not directed at them.

That assumption deserves closer examination.

Imagine, for a moment, that those accusing Israel get everything they say they want.

Then what?

Do you really believe the hostility will disappear?

Do you believe the crowds chanting against Zionists will simply go home satisfied?

History offers little reason for such confidence.

The history of antisemitism is, among other things, a history of constantly changing accusations.

Jews have been condemned for refusing to assimilate.

Then for assimilating too successfully.

For being stateless.

For having a state.

For living apart.

For living among others.

The charges change.

The target remains.

Consider the slogans.

In the 1930s, Jews across Europe often heard the same message:

“You do not belong here. Get out and go to your Palestine.”

Later, Soviet Jews heard:

“You do not belong here. Get out and go to your Israel.”

Today, we hear a different version:

“You do not belong here. Get out and go back to Europe.”

At first glance, these slogans appear to contradict one another.

They do not.

The destination changed.

The hostility remained.

What was condemned in one generation became celebrated in the next. What was demanded yesterday became denounced today.

The accusation was rewritten.

The demand remained.

Leave.

Go somewhere else.

You are the problem.

This should concern every Jew who believes that hostility toward Israel is unrelated to hostility toward Jews.

For those paying attention, this should be a warning.

And yet many Jews still believe that the current hostility is fundamentally different.

Many sincerely believe it is not about Jews at all.

It is only about Israel.

To those Jews, I want to ask a simple question:

What makes you so certain that the script will not flip again?

Because if the narrative can flip once, it can flip again.

And it will.

One day, perhaps sooner than many imagine, the same people who insist they oppose only Zionists may discover that Zionism is no longer the preferred target.

Perhaps they will decide Israel is acceptable after all.

Perhaps they will conclude that Israelis belong in Israel.

And then the question may change:

Why are Jews still here?

Why are Jewish schools here?

Why are Jewish organizations here?

Why are Jewish communities here?

And then the old slogan may return in a new form:

“Go to Israel.”

At that moment, what will become of “Not in My Name”?

Whom will you stand beside then?

What will you tell your children?

Will you explain that you believed the hostility was directed only at Israelis?

Will you explain that you thought denouncing Israel would purchase acceptance?

Will you explain that you joined those who weakened the one place in the world that exists precisely because history has repeatedly demonstrated how quickly acceptance can vanish?

Or perhaps the familiar explanation will return: that if only Israel did not exist, none of this would concern Jews anywhere in the world, and Jews would be universally embraced everywhere as they always have been.

I do not write these words out of anger.

I write them out of concern.

Because many of the Jews marching today are sincere.

But sincerity does not protect people from history.

History is full of sincere people who failed to recognize the forces they were empowering until those forces turned on them.

The tragedy of the “Not in My Name” movement is that it assumes the story is about Israel.

It isn’t.

Israel is merely the chapter currently being debated.

The deeper story is much older.

The vocabulary changes.

The accusations change.

The geography changes.

The target changes from the Jew to the Zionist and may someday change back again.

But the underlying hostility remains remarkably constant.

That is why I worry for the “Not in My Name” Jews who believe they are exempt.

They believe that by renouncing Israel they have stepped outside the circle of hostility.

History suggests otherwise.

The circle does not disappear.

It expands.

And when the script flips again—as it has so many times before—I fear many will discover too late that they were never standing outside the story.

They were always part of it.

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See Also

Antisemitism Without a Name