When Jewish Educators and Artists Must Pass a Political Test to Belong
In the past week, Jewish participation in ordinary professional and cultural life has repeatedly become conditional on a declaration about Israel.
In Italy, more than 70 Jewish early-childhood educators canceled a study visit to Reggio Emilia after being asked to distance themselves from Israel’s actions in Gaza. The mayor later said the statement was an open document for discussion, not a condition of entry, and that the city did not require political examinations. Israeli educators were welcomed; the American delegation stayed home. A bridge can be described as open and still feel unsafe to cross.
In Geneva, a queer film festival dropped Tell Me Everything, an Israeli film about a family during the AIDS crisis, after organizers asked its director to explain his views on Israel’s government and the war. The film’s subject was unrelated to the conflict. In London, comedian and writer Harry Deansway says he was expelled from a writing group after identifying himself as a Zionist and explaining that he supports Jewish self-determination while opposing policies that cause Palestinian suffering. The group’s organizer said his beliefs supported a massacre; the venue later disputed that its cancellation of his literary event was political.
These cases deserve scrutiny on their own facts. But the recurring question is unmistakable: Must a Jewish artist first prove political innocence before being allowed to make art?
In Dublin, Jewish community leaders say the Herbert Park Hotel canceled 70 rooms reserved for delegates attending an international conference on combating antisemitism. The hotel’s reported cancellation and its motive require a full explanation. But the allegation itself, that a venue withdrew from hosting a conference after learning its purpose, should trouble anyone who believes antisemitism must be confronted openly.
These are not all the same incident, and not every disputed decision proves antisemitism. We must be precise. But precision should not become an excuse for silence when a pattern emerges: Jews and Israelis are questioned about Israel, treated as representatives of a government, and made to defend their belonging before they can teach, write, screen a film or gather.
It seems important (yet, at the same time, an artifact m of the current cultural trap) to affirm that criticism of Israel’s government is not inherently antisemitic. But this criticism is often used as a fig leaf for antisemitism. We must notice and name and protest when criticism of a state becomes suspicion of a people.
When people are asked to disavow an identity before they may enter a room, that room is not yet a place of dialogue. Jewish safety is the right to participate without being treated as a proxy, suspect or exception. The alternative is a public culture in which identity becomes grounds for exclusion, an intolerable degradation of human rights.
Warnings about such things pervade world history, and while it has often been Jews who are targeted first, the return to conditional acceptance of any group is also a bellwether for the health of society.
The time for corrective response is now.
