By Michael B. Snyder
Invoking the pre-Shoah climate as a comparison with today’s antisemitism is a distinction with a difference requiring that the appropriate gravitas be given to Israel’s existence and stature, both as a target and a Jewish state. In contrast to the 1930s and early ‘40s when Jews faced closed borders in America after first losing their citizenship, possessions and finally their lives without country or hope, Israel was created to provide a safe-haven for Jews as a direct response to the Shoah; such a resolution would have zero probability of being actualized today.
Despite published and verified reports of the murderous Nazi rule, the meager and illusory 1,500 annual quota of Jewish refugees into the United States was not allowed to be met during those years. Nazi actions in Germany and its conquered countries were legal under Nuremberg laws and their progeny, just as American border policies were enforceable US policy, and together contributed mightily to the six million. Inexplicably, the highest percentage of Jews in Presidential election history voted for President Roosevelt -- 85% in 1936 and 90% in 1940 and ’44— despite his inaction. Reliance on laws not made by Jews about Jews were murderous, even as American Jews effectively voted in record force against their European families.
Current data reflects the burgeoning threats to the future of Judaism. For example, more than 60% of students in poll results released in September said that at some point they felt unsafe as Jews on campus or in virtual campus settings; about half of respondents felt the need to hide their Jewish identity at college. In Nazi Germany it was illegal for Jews to attend college; if Jewish students’ rights are not protected in America, protective laws and college policies not enforced will eventually have the same impact as Nazi law.
Today with American Jews at their strongest ever financially and most accepted and ingrained (for now) in its society, and Israel willing and able to defend its borders, people and existence, outrage is expressed at her hard line and declaring the 1967 8-mile-wide border an existential threat. All the while, Israel’s destruction is directly and loudly threated by a regime that America chases to bring to the negotiating table on the heels of a prior agreement verifiably violated. But it’s complicated. America is the guarantor of every agreement with regional neighbors, including the gas deal struck with Lebanon in October; the US also provided $1 billion in military aid over the past year. Despite historical cooperation, antisemitism is empowered by the American administration’s day-to-day actions. We have yet to hear a plausible explanation.
With much respect and kudos to Dara Horn’s People Love Dead Jews, a logical conclusion is that America Hates A Powerful Israel. The message to Jews is clear: we mourned you at your weakest, but powerful, self-governing Israeli Jews determining their own fate are objectionable, as are American Jews who understand the need for the Jewish state. Perhaps because of historic cooperation, America expects compliance with its overreaching wishes, but it is well-settled that America’s leadership and popular press allow and sometimes leads the burgeoning public antisemitic, anti-Zionist position that Israel needs a political attitude adjustment. American Jews are seemingly left with no appealing political choices: 1. an unfamiliar Democratic party where its youth is anti-Israel and its elders will soon age out of stopping that wave; 2. a Republican party considered untrustworthy due to racism and antisemitism as well as being too conservative for the non-religious; or 3. being unrepresented.
Thomas Friedman in a post-Israeli election column in The New York Times may best illustrate America’s position on Israel, albeit he has less influence than the problematic Kayne West (entertainer, 31.8 million followers) or Kyrie Irving (professional athlete, 4.7 million Twitter followers). It should be noted that their combined number of followers is 250% greater than the number of Jews in the world, and 300% more than the total number of Hitler’s manifesto Mein Kampf purchased from 1925 through 1945.
When Israel meets with Friedman’s sensibilities, he writes with a nostalgic fondness of Israel fighting for its existence, winning unwinnable wars, taking in Shoah survivors and even holding an unmet hand out in an attempt to negotiate with those who refuse to reach back. When she is against his politics, he blames Israel for America’s right wing and being a harbinger of wider trends in Western democracies! Friedman believes that Netanyahu’s comeback will “roil synagogues” in America with: “Do I support this Israel or not support it?” as if decisions have not previously been made and broadly declared. At least he recognizes it will haunt pro-Israel students on college campuses... yet not because of antisemitism (see above data), but because it’s a difficult choice for students. In the same column, he calls Mansour Abbas of the United Arab List, part of the outgoing government, a “rather amazing Israeli Arab religious party leader who recognizes the State of Israel and the searing importance of the Holocaust.” “Amazing” is thus defined by recognizing well-established, undisputable facts... something that parties to the Abraham Accords and many other Arab and Muslim-majority countries currently do.
At least there is consistency. The American press labeled three innocent murdered Israelis leaving 11 children fatherless as “occupiers,” their terrorist murderer as an “assailant” not a murderer or terrorist, and included the democratically-elected prime minister designate and the words “right-wing” and “far-right” in the fourth sentence of the article suggesting that made the killer’s actions defensible; the fifth describes that the “attack” (not the murder) occurred on the anniversary of the PLO’s proclamation of in independent Palestinian state that has never materialized. Examples abound.
Israel and American Zionist baiting is well beyond politics and deeply ensconced in antisemitism and hatred despite or perhaps due to the deep political ties and support. Israel is not perfect, yet America challenges and attempts to bully her into a political position that agrees with the current administration by treating her as a despot nation despite its intact democratic principles, including a directive announced the day after mid-term elections that the FBI will investigate the death of a Palestinian journalist during an armed conflict. With each individual mis-step, Israel is called to task both politically and in popular American opinion with unforgiving, hateful and intentional overreaching descriptors of something it is not: not an apartheid state, not controlling America’s future, and not a crippling human rights violator like China, Russia, Iran and others.
In many ways, Israel surpasses America’s perceived personal freedoms, e.g., abortion, religious freedom, and LGBTQ rights, including being the only country to ever save Blacks in a foreign land when she sent troops and planes to rescue Ethiopian Jews moments before their would-be slaughter. The fact she faces a currently unnegotiable problem that began when it was repeatedly attacked from all sides is not going away with tired, impotent venom heard for thousands of years.America’s garbled rhetoric improves nothing except Israel’s resolve, unless one considers that it keeps the memory alive of its inaction around the Shoah... something American Jews should find amazing.
Michael B. Snyder is a publishing contributor at The MirYam Institute, he is an attorney with over 35 years of experience in the areas of children’s rights, human rights and Non-Government Organizations in the United States, Israel and Africa. Read full bio here.