A Newsletter With An Eye On Political Media from The American Prospect
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A NEWSLETTER WITH AN EYE ON POLITICAL MEDIA

Who Are the Real Antisemites?

The actual hatred and the actual threat festers on the right.   

Antisemitism is all the rage these days (in every sense of the word).
The vast majority of its current discussion is devoted to, as The New
York Times calls him, "Kanye West, the rapper and fashion designer who
now goes by Ye
<[link removed]>."
Mr. Ye is quite possibly the world's most famous antisemite at the
moment. When I plugged in his (original) name with "anti semitism,"
Google returned well over a hundred million hits. This is unfortunate
for a number of reasons. He is, after all, an influential fellow and he
is making some terrible statements and feelings kosher, so to speak, for
some of his admirers
<[link removed]>.

But let's face it: He's also nuts. His Jew hatred is part of his
nuttiness. (Alas, paired with "mental illness," he only gets about
four million hits.) Jews, and those who love us (or care about hatred in
general) have far bigger problems than Mr. Ye. One of them is Donald
Trump. Another is the entire "MAGA" movement that currently rules
the Republican Party that is quite possibly going to take over the
world's most powerful government. A third, though it is impossible to
separate from the first two (which are, of course, impossible to
separate from each other), is Tucker Carlson (who has been supporting Ye
<[link removed]>)
and the alleged "news" network that broadcasts dog-whistle Jew
hatred
<[link removed]>
nightly to cable's largest audience.

One problem with gauging the amount of antisemitism in any society at
any time is our inability to define it properly. The most common
definition employed is this one
<[link removed]>,
which is employed by, among others, the U.S. government and is
implicitly designed to include criticism of Israel. Two hundred or so
scholars of Judaism did not like it for that reason and so came up with
this one <[link removed]> as an alternative, but it
has yet to gain much traction among most Jewish organizations or the
mainstream media.

Most media reports rely on figures supplied by the Anti-Defamation
League (ADL) to determine the scope of antisemitism in any given time
and place. The problems with this are also extensive. Some of them are
specific. The ADL classifies what it considers to be overly harsh
criticism of Israel, opposition to its existence as a Jewish state, as
well as support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement as
ipso facto antisemitic. It includes such statements (and other such
manifestations, such as campus demonstrations) in its statistics.

But they are no such thing. You may disagree with them-I usually
do-but it's nonsense to lasso them in with hatred against all Jews.
"Israel" does not equal "Jews." (That's one reason why my new
book, We Are Not One: A History of America's Fight Over Israel
<[link removed]>, to be
published on November 22, has the title it does.) The ADL's definition
of antisemitism defines virtually every Palestinian in the world into an
antisemite, together with most global human rights organizations
<[link removed]>, the members
of the United Nations Human Rights Council's Commission of Inquiry on
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
<[link removed]>,
and even "proud Jewish" ice cream impresarios who say they "love
Israel" but don't want to support the occupation
<[link removed]>.
It also defines not only the (left-wing) members of Jewish Voice for
Peace <[link removed]> as antisemites, but also
the huge ultra-Orthodox, intensely anti-Zionist Satmar sect of
Hasidim-whose anti-Zionism is rooted in Masechet Ketubot (111a) in the
Talmud ("They shall be taken to Babylonia and there they shall remain
until the day that I recall them, said the Lord
<[link removed]>.").

Somebody who tweets under the name, believe or not, "Groovy
<[link removed]>" put the
issue nicely in response to some antisemitic jerk: "Israel, the
country, is oppressing Palestine. Not Judaism, which is a religion that
consists of people who have been disenfranchised and oppressed for all
of history just for existing. It's really not that difficult to
comprehend and even less difficult to not be anti-Semitic."
The best definition/discussion of antisemitism I've seen is available
from my friends at T'ruah: the Rabbinic Call for Human Rights. You can
find that here <[link removed]>. Spoiler alert from
this T'ruah tweet
<[link removed]>:

[link removed]

The ADL, AIPAC, and the American Jewish Committee, among many, many
other Jewish organizations, would have you believe otherwise. They do so
(yet again) for multiple reasons. The first is that they are in the
business of raising money to expand the size and influence of their
organizations, and panic over the issue is good for business. And before
you accuse me of antisemitism (or in my case, self-hatred) for saying
so, I'll add that this is true of almost all organizations. (During
the 25 years I spent at The Nation, I often had reason to repeat the
slogan "Bad for the country, good for The Nation.") I taught adult
education classes for seniors at both the Jewish Association for
Services to the Aged (JASA) and the 92nd Street YM-YWHA (Young Men's
and Young Women's Hebrew Association, now just called 92NY), and I
promise you, there is no fear greater among Jewish seniors than that of
a "second Holocaust." These are what one Jewish professional quoted
in my book call the "guilt and gelt generation," and they are the
backbone of these groups' membership.

As to their funders, many are right-wing Republicans. That's why AIPAC
is funding so many MAGA election deniers this cycle and seeking to
defeat so many progressive Democrats in local primaries
<[link removed]>. As a
result, these groups are far less exercised about the consistently
voiced antisemitism of the (now ex-) president of the United States
<[link removed]>,
the national Republican Party
<[link removed]>,
the most famous Republican congresswoman
<[link removed]>,
or the candidate for governor of Pennsylvania
<[link removed]>
or Arizona
<[link removed]>
than they are about either Ilhan Omar-who is not an antisemite, as
antisemites do not make statements like this one
<[link removed]>-or some
dumbass college student somewhere, who may or may not have said
something genuinely antisemitic, but hardly deserves mention in a
"both sides" comparison with those above.

Another reason for the intense focus on criticism of Israel rather than
that of Jews generally is that since 1967, most Jewish organizations
have enthusiastically participated in what the Jewish scholar and rabbi
Shaul Magid has termed the "Zionization of American Jewry
<[link removed]>"
as "the ticket into the club of Jewish peoplehood." The intense
focus on support for all of Israel's actions-often combined with the
sacralization of the Holocaust
<[link removed]>-has
had the effect of hollowing out the presentation of the actual content
of secular American Judaism to young people who, in recent years, have
been leaving organized Judaism in droves
<[link removed]>.
Playing up the threat to Israel and equating its criticism with
antisemitism has become just about the only way that these organizations
know how to reach American Jews. Malcolm Hoenlein, longtime executive
vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish
Organizations, explained in February 2022 that while many people liken
the contemporary threat of antisemitism to "1933, 1938"- that is,
Hitler's Holocaust-"it's not 1938 because of the State of
Israel. I think that is the big difference." But Hoenlein saw a silver
lining in the fact that "antisemitism is going to awaken a lot of
young people to a sense of community because they feel vulnerable, they
feel alone
<[link removed]>."

[link removed]

Ironically, some Israelis, most especially Bibi Netanyahu, participate
in this same sort of rhetoric. American antisemitism is also good for
Israel. It plays up the idea, long a mainstay of Zionist ideology, that
Jews are not safe anywhere but Israel and that the creation of the state
has rendered diaspora Judaism unnecessary and slightly ridiculous. As
the great Israeli historian Zeev Sternhell once observed,
<[link removed]>
Zionist ideology, with its doctrine of shlilat ha'golah-the negation
of the diaspora-"at times resembled [that] of the most rabid
anti-Semites."

Netanyahu, Trump's fellow aspiring autocrat, not only prefers Trump to
Democrats, but agrees with the notion that (the often antisemitic)
right-wing Christian Zionists, not the (mostly liberal) American Jewish
community, constitute Israel's "best friends" in this country, and
so is cool with the forms of antisemitism that reinforce this idea.
What's more, it turns attention away from the fact that Israel, which
was founded as a refuge for endangered Jews around the world, has,
through its treatment of the Palestinians and the feelings this
inspires, itself made the world a far more dangerous place for Jews.

Take a look at The Forward's recent deep dive into alleged incidents
of antisemitism at George Washington University
<[link removed]>.
If you take Israel out of the equation, there's not much there at all.
And yet countless Jewish organizations are treating the phenomenon as a
crisis, raising money from frightened parents and grandparents and
seeking to bully universities into banning all activism on behalf of the
Palestinians. This is happening at CUNY, and especially at Brooklyn
College
<[link removed]>,
where I teach, as you can see here
<[link removed]>. (Believe me, Jewish life at
CUNY-again absent criticism of Israel-is the least of the problems
experienced by my criminally underfunded and underappreciated gem of
American public education.)

I've got a lot more to say about all of the above, which is one of
many reasons you should order my most excellent book
<[link removed]>, but
here are two more quick points that require clicking:

* On the anniversary of the "Tree of Life" massacre
<[link removed]>,
let us take note of the fact that, "both sides" BS
<[link removed]>
notwithstanding, "the data show the epicenter of antisemitic attitudes
is young adults on the far right
<[link removed]>."

* If you want to see an almost beautifully pristine example of the
successful "working of the refs
<[link removed]>,"
take a look at the way the ADL bends its institutional knee to the
dishonest promoters of antisemitism at Fox News
<[link removed]>.


Music next week, I promise. In the meantime, here are 32 seconds of
thematically appropriate live performance
<[link removed]>.

~ ERIC ALTERMAN

Become A Member of The American Prospect Today!
<[link removed]>

Eric Alterman is a CUNY Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn
College, an award-winning journalist, and the author of 12 books, most
recently

**We Are Not One: A History of America's Fight Over Israel** (Basic
Books, November 2022). Previously, he wrote The Nation's "Liberal
Media" column for 25 years. Follow him on Twitter @eric_alterman
<[link removed]>

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