Destroying hostage posters: the embodiment of mob antisemitism

Destroying hostage posters: the embodiment of mob antisemitism

On October 7th Hamas terrorists infiltrated Israel, targeting, and inflicting such savagery on Israeli civilians that, for a moment, it felt like the world gasped in horror and expressed sympathy for its victims.

That collective, sympathetic gasp was so fleeting it barely lasted a day until the Jewish victims were blamed for the massacre they endured. We Jews barely had time to mourn our people before we had to begin rhetorically defending ourselves.

While anti-Israel and antisemitic incidents have steadily increased over the past few years, anti-Jewish rhetoric has now exploded into an unapologetic blast of illogical, threating, and violent antisemitism that no longer tries to hide behind the veil of anti-Zionism. Now, American soil-that earlier felt solidly secure- is quaking under my feet, reverberating from the hate I feel closing in on me and my fellow Jews.

Not surprisingly, social media has glaringly revealed increasing and pervasive Jew hate since the October 7thmassacre, capturing narratives, images, and scenes of deeply illogical and virulent antisemitism: the DSA celebrating the massacre in NY’s Time Square on October 8th, professors at ivy league universities admiring the savagery of the attacks, the accounts of Jews who felt unsafe at a Dave Chappelle show as he spent his comedy hour vilifying Israel,

 and American University students marching in support of Hamas, an Islamist terrorist group that contradicts everything they purportedly value.

 One of the more striking manifestations of Jew hatred to appear now on social media is footage of people  tearing down posters of the Israeli hostages- a cultural phenomenon that encapsulates the deeply rotted, unapologetic and illogical nature of contemporary antisemitism.

The footage looks like this:

An individual or a couple of people quietly rip the poster off the wall. Whether the photographed face of the hostage is of a smiling teenager, giggling infant, contented grandparent, or a group ensemble of an entire family, the perpetrators callously crumple and squash the poster in their hands, throw it into the trash or drop it to the ground- as if the photo of that innocent face deeply offended the people forced to look at it.

Often the perpetrators will smirk and smile as if they have done something devilishly but innocuously wrong. Sometimes they will tear the poster down with determined anger. Others will look around, ensuring no one is observing them, then quickly grab the ripped poster and shove into their pockets, like thieves in the night.

When questioned why they are ripping down posters of innocent hostages, the offenders’ responses always lack remorse, and never suggest a hint of shame.

In the context of the actual violence of October 7th, of the consistent stream of rockets launched at Israel from Gaza, of the fact that 200+ people are still in the captive hands of Hamas terrorists, of the fact that many of the terror victims in Israel can still not be identified due to the barbarism in which Hamas levied their massacre, of the fact that medical teams are still learning of the sheer savagery of Hamas’ onslaught -from the pervasive rape of girls and women of all ages to the torture inflicted on the mutilated bodies- the tearing down of posters seems so comparatively benign, like a mischievous but naughty prank.

And even in the context of global antisemitism that is vociferously being expressed now- of the thousands of people marching through the streets of North America, Europe, and the Middle East, shouting for the eradication of Israel and death to Jews, and the equally loud silence of those watching this all unfold- the tearing down of posters seems like the least of Jews’ problems.

And yet, the tearing down of hostage posters is searing in its lack of decency, and it sadly encapsulates what Jews may have always known or have just come to realize: there are many who want to eradicate our faces-willfully supporting terrorist actions that otherwise would be abhorrent to them-like rape, kidnap, murder. The only conclusion I can reach then is that they support those actions not because they are criminally minded people but rather because those actions are targeted at Jews.

The phenomenon of tearing down posters also reveals, in both a symbolic and literal sense, the demise of rational society:

People destroy the hostage posters in what they claim is solidarity with Palestinians. But the utter absurdity of the action, highlights something equally malignant in our current cultural climate- the unwillingness to honestly look at issues and the willing deference to mob mentality.

They rip the hostage posters because they will not look at the faces of the victims; they refuse to. They must tear them down because they cannot acknowledge the counterargument of their antisemitic indoctrination-which is that the Israeli hostages are innocent victims-not violent oppressors-the antithesis of the idea the perpetrators have been served and have willfully swallowed.

As such, the destruction of hostage posters is a manifestation not only of racism and hate but also of intellectual cowardice and cognitive impotence; it is akin to a petulant child putting his hands over his ears when he is told no.

The perpetrators do not have the courage to see or recognize that supporting Hamas is not only morally wrong but also senseless: it is senseless because supporting Hamas does not help the Palestinian people, who suffer under Hamas’ regime-just like tearing down a photo of a kidnapped Jewish baby will not help a Palestinian child have a better life.

In the same sense, when masses of people chant “free free Palestine” have they really considered who they should be freeing Palestinians from? Do they really care?

Those who scream on the streets “One solution…Intifada…From the river to the sea”  are calling for the violent eradication of the Jewish people in Israel; they are calling for genocide while they  protest a supposed genocide. Refusing to accept a Jewish presence in Israel rather than insisting on the dismantlement of Hamas, they are perpetuating violence against Palestinian people because they support a terrorist group who inflicts violence on its own people. Hamas is a terrorist group who siphons all its people’s resources to grow murderous conflict, fill their own pockets, and indoctrinate their youth with hate, while intentionally using its civilians as human shields and pawns in an endless crusade against Jews.

 Those who destroy hostage posters or march in protest against Israel refuse to recognize the graveness and immorality of their ideological error. Instead, they willingly have joined a mob with blood lust. They are no different than the brown shirts in Germany in 1939 or white supremacists in the  American south herding around a lynching tree in 1959. Arming themselves with empty academic words, and intellectual theories that are intellectually non-sensical, they lack and pervert historical context. When they tear down the posters of Israeli hostages, they are expressing their unwillingness to see their own shame, their indoctrination, their mistake head on. They are merely a mob and they are loud.

While the perpetrators try to erase the victims of Hamas terrorism from American consciousness, Jewish Americans will not forget the faces of our abducted people. We will not forget our dead or our survivors, the thousands of casualties of Hamas brutality. We will always remember those who spoke out against the antisemitic mob and we will forever be grateful. And if this conflict winds downs and the dust settles, we will remember those who screamed for our blood in our streets and neighborhoods, on our soil, who tried to eradicate our right to exist -whether in social discourse or in actuality. And those who stayed silent to watch this bloody mob overtake the American airwaves of cultural consciousness, we won’t forget their silence either.

We need counter voices. If you have been silent, speak up. Do not be intimidated by loud cowardice. Now is the time.

Bio: Elana earned her PhD in English Literature from Fordham University in 2015 with a dissertation that focused on Jewish American literature and its approach to Zionism and Israel. For 12 years, she taught literature, composition, and film at St. Johns University and Fordham University, where she was awarded numerous fellowships. Following her degree, she was a Connected Academic Fellow in the Modern Language Association.

Elana also writes fiction, most notably children’s fiction, and lives in New Jersey with her husband and three children, as a member of a vibrant Jewish community that is dedicated to Israel and other Jewish causes.

MOBS, WOKENESS & RHETORICAL IRRESPONSIBILITY

By Elana Dushey

Last week, my cousin’s 14-year-old son was enjoying a school trip with his Jewish day school in New York City. The weather was beautiful, the students were having fun, and then someone called my cousin a “fucking Jew”. That same day, a Jewish man was beaten by pro-Palestinian protesters in Times Square in broad daylight, and Jewish diners in LA were attacked by a group of identifiably pro-Palestinian men.

Earlier that week, John Oliver unpacked the Israeli/Gazan conflict and accused Israel of war crimes.  It was an egregiously irresponsible accusation that neither provided sound logic nor context, and it neglected to mention the many crimes Hamas committed against Israelis and Palestinians. I bring up Oliver because he is one of many celebrities whose commentary on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is especially dangerous as it brazenly distorts facts, utilizes faulty logic, effectively demonizes Israel and is read/seen by millions of people  A couple of weeks since the conflict erupted, anti-Semitic violent attacks in the US have risen exponentially. Did Oliver and anti-Israel voices like him entirely cause that to happen? Obviously not. Are they blameless? No. They are culpable.

I am a Zionist, and I am pro-Palestinian, and as such I believe both Israelis and Palestinians are entitled to peace, prosperity and freedom. I am also a mother and a humanist.  I am deeply grieved by the fact that Palestinians and Israelis are dying. We who are watching the conflict from aboard are heartbroken and angry, which means that those who publicly comment on it have an obligation to present the situation with an unyielding use of facts and sound logic. Yet, Oliver, and pundits like him, do the contrary. Behind a posture of humanitarian concern (solely designated for Palestinians it seems), they incite not only hate toward Israel but also violence toward Jews, and they are doing so with egregious equivocations and skewed logic. In short, they are spewing propaganda and endangering Jews.  

 If you haven’t seen Oliver’s bit from May 16, I will provide his key points because they echo much of the anti-Israel propaganda currently being disseminated:

 1: Israel has a stronger military than Hamas and can inflict more damage on the Palestinians than the Palestinians can inflict on Israelis- as if strength is an indicator of immorality .

 2: Israel has had to bomb civilian buildings, which has caused the death of Palestinians. Oliver minimized the fact that the IDF forewarns Palestinian civilians to evacuate the building prior to Israel destroying it in an effort to avoid casualties, as if that is standard procedure in military campaigns in other nations; it is not.

But Oliver did not mention that Hamas has aimed thousands of rockets at Israeli civilians, that Hamas launches those rockets from within civilian occupied buildings to maximize its own civilian casualties, that 17 Palestinians were killed by Hamas’s own rockets, and that Hamas is an Islamist terrorist group, who took leadership of Gaza by throwing their political opponents off of roofs.

In rhetorical negligence, Oliver did not ask what Israel should do instead? Should Israel allow itself to be bombarded by thousands of rockets because many of those rockets don’t hit their targets – though some do, despite Israel’s defense mechanism the Iron Dome? 

             Oliver’s monologue is one example of many where egregiously irresponsible rhetoric about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict vilifies Israel and excuses/ ignores Hamas’s culpability.  More disturbingly, anti-Israel rhetoric like Oliver’s is not only blindly accepted but applauded. What is most astounding is that within the schema of woke politics that pervades American discourse now, and which is supposed to locate and identify discrimination, anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism continue to go unchecked.  And whoever says now that anti-Israel sentiment is not anti-Semitism, please take a look at AMERICAN JEWS who are being attacked by mobs of pro-Palestinians just because they are Jewish.  

Anyone is welcome to criticize Israel, as Israel’s relationship with the Palestinians is certainly not beyond reproach, and vice versa. There is much that needs to be worked on by both sides to create peace. But promulgating propaganda with unsound information will not help Palestinians or Israelis and has dangerous consequences for Jews.  Part of the reason that propaganda repeatedly goes unchecked in our cultural climate is because intersectionality has created a framework that oversimplifies issues and polarizes people into groups of good or bad, based on race, privilege, and socioeconomic status. It has created groups of oppressors and the oppressed, and assumes power and strength are always immoral.

Furthermore, social media (which does not require claims to be supported) has devalued the necessity of civil and informed debate and replaced it with memes and tribal alliances.

Put another way, millions believe the vilifying lies about Israel because 1) Israel is strong, 2) because people are willingly not educated enough about the complexity of the conflict, and 3) most disturbingly, people also believe those lies because they are lies about Jews. It is certainly not the first time in history incendiary lies about Jews were propagated and believed-which highlights the irony and hypocrisy of intersectional discourse, especially the way it allies the oppressed against the oppressor. Please look at the plethora of violent and oppressive campaigns launched at Jews historically. Recognize the fact that Israel is the only Jewish country in the world and is surrounded by multiple Muslim countries that want to destroy it, and tell me that the willingness to believe anti-Israel and anti-Jewish propaganda is not partially or fully engendered from anti-Semitism. Yet, Jews are still demonized and often it is through “woke” and intersectional narratives.

Furthermore, social media has morphed into a digital mob that assigns inaccurate labels to Israel. For the sake of accuracy, let’s unpack some of those labels. 1) The digital mob accuses Israel of being an apartheid state; it is not - Israeli Arabs are afforded the same legal rights and liberties as Jewish Israelis. 2) It accuses Israel of ethnic cleansing – the only area that has been ethnically cleansed is Gaza, but it was cleansed of Jews. 3) It accuses Israel of genocide - the Palestinian population in Gaza grows 3% every year,  the 13th highest growth rate in the world. 4) It accuses Israel of European white colonialism -  how can Jewish Israelis, who are indigenous to Israel, who have maintained a continuous presence in the land for thousands of years, and who are neither ethnically nor racially European or white, be European white colonizers? (Furthermore, about 50 percent of Jewish Israelis are descendants of Middle Eastern and North African Jews, who were refugees from Muslim countries. Many of those countries too have been ethnically cleansed of Jews.)  

Of course, the digital mob is not an abstract ether; it is comprised of millions of people who perpetually share anti-Israel ideas. The result is an unyielding wave of anti-Semitic propaganda that grows and grows and grows. Given the fact that Oliver’s show is watched, tweeted and retweeted by millions of people, we can assume that his 10-minute monologue created millions of anti-Semites and incited those who already were. I’m calling him out on it; I’m praying he won’t have Jewish blood on his hands, and I’m praying for peace.

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Elana Hornblass Dushey earned her PhD in English Literature from Fordham University in 2015 with a dissertation that focused on Jewish American literature and its approach to Zionism and Israel. For 12 years, she taught literature, composition, and film at St. Johns University and Fordham University, where she was awarded numerous fellowships. Following her degree, she was a Connected Academic Fellow in the Modern Language Association. Read full bio here.

BLM, Israel and the Dangers of Intersectionality

By Elana Dushey

In the past month, America has transformed from a landscape of empty streets under COVID-19 lockdown to streets crowded with protesters, vocalizing anger and grief over generations of Black suffering due to systemic American racism. Catalyzed by the murder of George Floyd at the hands of police officers, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement is energized, and the fantasy that racism no longer exists in America is being publicly and collectively debunked. BLM has the soap box and the world is listening.

American racism is not merely a police issue. The fact that racism is rampant in interactions between police officers and Black civilians is telling: it suggests that 21st century American racism is rooted so deeply in the American psyche that the Black body is often unlawfully and immorally viewed as a threat.

But police (and not all police) are not the only Americans guilty of racism; police/civilian racism is symptomatic of the undercurrent of racism in America as a whole. This recognition reveals the imperative for self and collective examination, insisting on a space for quiet reflection, listening, and learning, despite the discomfort that may arise from those findings; at its best, the BLM movement is simultaneously encouraging hyper dynamism and hyper reflection — and, if Americans nurture both equally, we will witness great and constructive change. Like many Americans, I am examining my inner and outer world to determine how I can contribute to an equitable and just America. Because I insist on examining nuance, I concurrently respect lawful law enforcement and support BLM because it is the voice of needed change.

However, for me, as a Zionist, Jewish American, my support of BLM becomes complicated, as BLM’s agenda is repeatedly exploited by the problematic umbrella of intersectionality — an ideology that overlaps categories of identity based on perceived shared experiences of discrimination.

Intersectionality lumps groups of people — despite their historical, cultural, political, and social differences — into an overly simplified binary of oppressed vs. oppressor. Intersectionality may be well-intentioned, despite its intellectual flaws, but when it comes to Israel, intersectionality becomes a veiled and hypocritical discourse to spew antisemitism.

Now to the detriment of Black and Jewish Americans, BLM protests/activism have become locations for intersectionality — and thus platforms to vilify Israel and create inaccurate parallels between racism in America and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.  Here are some examples:

In an effort to blame Israel for Minnesota police officer Derek Chauvin’s murderous behavior, a pro-Palestinian group began a widely circulated tweet which claimed that the Minneapolis police department was trained by the IDF- an absurdly illogical connection that can only be attributed to antisemitism.

Protestors desecrated synagogues across the nation, including one in LA-by spray painting “F—k Israel” on its facade.

In a protest in my own town, one of the organizers boldly asserted that American racism is akin to Israeli oppression.

Linda Sarsour’s MPower Juneteenth gathering unabashedly advertised that it was “open to all, minus cops and Zionists.” The audaciousness of such a caveat is terrifying considering the protest was at Gracie Mansion — the official residence of the New York mayor.

Anti-Israel rhetoric is antisemitic. But intersectionality constructs an arena where antisemitism can thrive behind the veil of supposed social justice. Because the rhetorical flaws of intersectionality erase social and historical nuance it also feeds the tribalized discourse that America has fallen prey to. Particularly among liberal circles, the Jewish self-determination has been irresponsibly translated into a narrative of Jewish oppression, and colonialism — a gross misrepresentation. But I am not writing to address those inaccurate accusations against Israel.

I’m writing to discuss how I can negotiate the contradiction of supporting the BLM movement, while recognizing how it is often misused to disseminate false information about Israel. In tribalist fashion, do I abandon my support of BLM because its surrounding discourse has perpetuated anti-Zionism (and antisemitism)?

No, I don’t, because I won’t abandon my Black American brothers and sisters in their cause. Nevertheless, in the spirit of honesty and self-examination, that I hope becomes the zeitgeist of our time, I look at the parallels that are drawn between Black Americans and Palestinians, despite their inaccuracies, and try to learn something:

In Israel, is the Palestinian/Israeli dynamic one in which Palestinians experience racism? Do Israelis view the Palestinian individual as a threat? In the Palestinian territories, anti-Jewish/Israeli hatred is academically and systemically indoctrinated. Martyrdom is encouraged and glorified. Palestinians have consistently launched or attempted to launch terror attacks against Israelis, including via rocket fire, suicide/homicide bombings, car rammings and stabbings. As such, Israel must constantly identify and subdue legitimate and violent threats from Palestinians, while still not succumbing to stereotyping and racism. Does Israel always succeed with this balance? I hope so. But I don’t know.

I do know, however, that Israeli/Palestinian conflict was not engendered from Israeli racism and colonialism, as BDS asserts. The situation, including Palestinian suffering, was borne from a complex historical reality too long to describe here. But in addition to Israel’s involvement, the Palestinian leadership has greatly contributed to the challenges both groups face by exploiting its own people and rejecting multiple opportunities for peace and economic betterment.

Still, to eradicate racism, should Jews look inwardly and question if they view Palestinian bodies differently than they view Jewish and Israeli bodies? Yes, absolutely. That type of self-examination is a constructive result of paralleling Black Americans and Palestinians. But that is where the constructive nature of it ends.

Labeling Israel as the “oppressor” is inaccurate and dangerous — not only to Jews, who have been suffering from an exponential rise in hate crimes, and who have historically/continuously advocated for Black American civil liberties — but it is also destructive to Black Americans, who will gain nothing by the vilification of Israel.

Now is the time to give Black Americans their platform to speak, without allowing other groups to exploit that platform with hate. Let’s hear BLM so we can self-examine and learn to create a better America for Black Americans. We need honesty and accuracy now, not grotesque over-simplifications and the lies of intersectionality. Let us empower BLM to be a model of how to combat social injustice with passion, intellectual honesty and nuanced discourse; we should discuss Israel-related issues, but not in context with BLM.

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Elana Hornblass Dushey earned her PhD in English Literature from Fordham University in 2015 with a dissertation that focused on Jewish American literature and its approach to Zionism and Israel. For 12 years, she taught literature, composition, and film at St. Johns University and Fordham University, where she was awarded numerous fellowships. Following her degree, she was a Connected Academic Fellow in the Modern Language Association.