No subject

16, 2002

Does anti-Semitism exist? Of course it does. There are
now, as there have always been, people who object to
our peculiar religion, or our peculiar noses, or both.
People who believe that we are by nature sneaky,
power-hungry, evil. In fact, I would go further and
submit that those Gentiles who believe that Jews are
by their very natures smart, or godly, are also guilty
of a kind of anti-Semitism - because philo-Semitism
ultimately has as little to do with actual Jews as
does anti-Semitism, it's just more pleasant.

Sadly, in face of the fact that anti-Semitism is
undeniable, the fear of it has become one of the
Jewish people's very few unifiers. We have long since
stopped agreeing on how to worship God - or even if
one must believe in God to be a Jew. We don't agree on
how to educate our children, and we certainly don't
agree on how to treat the women among us. Just about
the only two positions over which most Jews are
anywhere near agreement are: 1) the Holocaust
demonstrated, conclusively, that Jews are never
entirely safe, anywhere, and 2) Israel is Good. For
those who might waver in the second proposition, the
first is referenced as corroborating evidence. To
paraphrase Leon Wieseltier, we are left in a position
wherein ethnic anxiety has become virtually the only
proof of authenticity - and since we are, as Simon
Rawidowicz diagnosed, the ever-dying people, our only
hope is to fight back every possible threat. To be
seen as doing otherwise is interpreted as betrayal,
not just of today's Jews, but of all those massacred
in the past. And a threat against any of us, is a
threat to us all. 

Yet, does this mean, can it possibly mean, that any
criticism of any Jew is, by definition, anti-Semitic?
The term assumes baseless hatred, and allows us to
summarily reject anything tainted by it. Yet, if I do
wrong, and someone points it out, isn't the wrong
still mine, even (and this is very important) even if
that someone hates me?

When we conflate criticism of Israel's government with
anti-Semitism, we think that we're being hard-nosed
realists, but the truth is, we're taking the easy way
out. If any and all criticism of Israel comes from a
place of baseless hatred (or, in the case of those few
Jews who stray beyond the Pale and express it
themselves, typical self-loathing) then we need not
consider it. We need not hold it to the light and
examine its contents, weigh the facts and examine our
souls. The accusation of anti-Semitism thus
consistently serves to paralyze thought within the
Jewish community, much as McCarthyism did within
American society half a century ago.

Much as I can't believe that as a loyal American, I am
not allowed to criticize the American government, I
also cannot believe that as a loyal Israeli, I am not
allowed to criticize, or brook criticism of, the
Israeli government. Being in a state of war doesn't
mean that governments are incapable of error, nor does
war itself justify each and every action a government
takes. When we elevate Israeli politicians and
generals to the kind of infallibility that assumes
that any criticism can only be made with evil intent,
we remove them from history, from reality, from the
very normalcy to which Ben-Gurion is said to have
aspired. To say, as many people do, that Israel is
held to a higher standard than the rest of the world,
is equally ahistorical - humanity and Western foreign
policy have never been anything but inconsistent in
judging or supporting friends and foes, and Israel has
always been held to standards higher than some, and
lower than others. The question should not be: Are we
being treated fairly? Are we allowed to be as bad as
the next guy? But: How do we do good? How do we behave
with fairness?

And here I come to a particularly touchy point. I will
agree that some of Israel's critics are flat-out,
flaming anti-Semites, for whom we could not possibly
do any right, because we are Jews. I think, however,
that we, Israelis and diaspora Jews alike, waste our
precious time and all-too-little energy in trying to
sort these out from the non-anti-Semitic critics, and
I don't have that much time to spare - the fish my
people have to fry are far too big to waste even a
moment, to my mind. But the bigger truth is that some
of the people who criticize us from a place of hatred
aren't anti-Semitic - they just plain hate us. 

It is very popular, in Israel and among Jews
elsewhere, to talk about official anti-Semitism taught
in Palestinian schools. The enduring appeal of the
Protocols of the Elders of Zion (and its recent use in
a popular Egyptian mini-series) is cited time and
again. In the wake of the suicide bombing at Hebrew
University, for instance, many Jews, Israeli and
other, pointed out that most of the Jews killed that
time around weren't even Israeli - the target was
Jews, qua Jews, they say. 

And yet. Isn't there a difference between, say, an
American holed up in Montana who blames "the Jews" for
all the world's ills, and a Palestinian - who has been
told over and over and over again that Israel is a
Jewish State, meant for all Jews, everywhere,
eternally - blaming "the Jews" for the ills he and his
countrymen suffer? Is it baseless hatred - or hatred
based in 35 years of my boot on his neck? Why do so
many of us want to believe that the Palestinians
wouldn't notice how badly we have treated them, if no
one were to point it out? Do we honestly believe that
they hate us so much for our peculiar religion that
they would rather die themselves, than see us live?

It is true that this hatred, the kind born of war and
probably found in every conflict ever launched between
any two groups of people, often takes on classically
anti-Semitic expression among Palestinians, and Arabs
generally. It is further true that if Palestinians and
other Arabs hope to ever reach a true reconciliation
with Israel, they will have to begin to respect our
legitimate sensitivities in this matter, recognize
them as genuine (after all, 2000 years of persecution
don't just go away) and find a new vocabulary. To
continue to draw any comparison, for instance, between
Israel and Nazi Germany is not only ghastly and
repellent, it also frees us up to utterly reject
anything else the speaker may have to say.

In all honesty, personally, I don't care if the people
who find fault with Israeli policies are anti-Semitic
or not. I don't care if the Europeans, or the
Americans, or the Palestinians like me - in fact, at
this point, I'd be surprised if the Palestinians did.
I don't even care if my countrymen like the
Palestinians very much - again, I can't blame anyone
who doesn't. As an Israeli, what matters to me, what
must matter to me, is the morality of my country's
actions, regardless of personal feelings of pique. We
need to examine our history fearlessly and honestly,
and find a way to right the many wrongs it seems clear
to me we have committed. Rather than hide behind our
fears, I want to have the strength to do the right
thing.


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