By Natan Trief
In a year focused on viruses and pathology, we must recognize antisemitism as one of the most versatile and dynamic of viruses. It mutates depending on the societal ill and circumstance, and history has taught us that it always simmers below the surface. Whether hated for their religion, their race, or ethnicity, two thousand years of persecution and pogroms have often escorted the Jewish historical experience. Exiled from their ancestral homeland, no matter where they found themselves, they stood at the mercy of gentile rulers and neighbors. This, of course, changed with Israel’s founding in 1948. Jewish blood would never again be so cheap nor expendable.
Israel’s founding, however, also gave antisemites respectable cover for their odious beliefs. They could now unleash their hatred toward Jews through the veil of harsh and unfounded criticism of Israel. This tactic has increased exponentially with the advent of social media as well as the implacability of the Israeli Palestinian conflict. Israel’s recent May 2021 “Guardian of the Walls” military campaign demonstrated beyond doubt the intimate linkage between anti-Zionism and antisemitism.
After this recent conflict between the terrorist organization Hamas and Israel, Jew hatred has reached a fever pitch. Its manifestations in America combined with the ease of social media dissemination has opened up a new front against Israel as well as the Jewish People. It turns out that when one uses venomous words such as apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide to describe the one Jewish State in the world, it has ill-fated consequences for the Jewish People. We have seen those consequences play out in the streets of New York, Los Angeles and countless other American cities. It seems the century-long vacation that American Jews have enjoyed from the historical Jewish experience has dissipated. For decades, Americans looked across the ocean and lamented the plight of European Jews still suffering from antisemitism in those blood-soaked lands.
The ADL (Anti-Defamation League) has painstakingly documented the explosive surge of antisemitic hate speech during and after Israel’s latest campaign against Hamas terrorists. In the week following the beginning of hostilities (May 7-14th) it documented 17,000 tweets on Twitter alone using some variation of the phrase “Hitler was right.” The New York Times published a guest editorial with the image of a disappearing map of Palestine. In this vile lie of an illustration, it purports to show the integral country of ‘Palestine'’ slowly eliminated by the land-grabbing Jewish State and its “racist system.” Of course, in taking away all agency and accountability from the Palestinians, the true racist system becomes apparent. Moreover, the overwhelming media predilection of referring to Hamas operatives as “militants,” rather than “terrorists,” encourages moral relativism between a theocratic, dictatorial regime and a democratic country. As morality and truth are flipped on their heads, the path is paved for hatred of the alleged perpetrators– Jews.
The working definition of antisemitism as defined by the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) asserts the following as antisemitic: “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor. Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.”
Indeed, the famous Soviet refusenik Natan Sharansky devised his test of “3 Ds” to determine if anti-Israel sentiment veers into the realm of antisemitism: delegitimization, demonization, and double standard.
The instances of these 3 Ds have proliferated in recent days. Interestingly, they have not only originated from non-Jewish detractors of Israel. After the onset of fighting in this latest round, nearly 100 American rabbinical and cantorial students penned an open letter “appealing to the heart of the Jewish community.” Under the guise of Jewish teachings and direct quotes from biblical books, these future spiritual leaders of the American Jewish community claimed that the “racist violence” of Israel “supports violent suppression of human rights and enables apartheid…” They condemn their coreligionists for using their “tzedakah money” to support “those who sow hate and violence disguised in the name of justice and Jewish continuity.”
It is not just that these Jewish student-leaders may have missed the class on milchemet mitzvah (sacred war) or the Jewish moral mandate for self defense, they also display a wanton disregard for facts or context. The nearly 1,000-word document does not once mention Hamas, nor its openly declared goal of destroying the Jewish State, nor the thousands of rockets fired indiscriminately at Israeli civilians. It would be too easy to accuse these rabbinical and cantorial students of ignorance; it reeks of something more sinister. Whether this is an example of auto antisemitism or the oft-described phenomenon of “self-hating Jews” is not for this piece to analyze. In her book on “Jews and Power,” noted scholar Ruth Wisse analyzes the well-attested, traditional Jewish aversion to power, and the preference to pursue the prophetic call of moral righteousness, unburdened by the exigencies of statehood or military.
Whether coming from Gentile or Jewish sources, whether antisemitic or anti-Israel, the impact of this slander is clear. Israel continues to be the one country in the world whose very right to exist is constantly questioned. If that is the case for the one Jewish State, what does that mean for the one Jewish People?
Natan Trief grew up in suburban New Jersey not far from New York City. He graduated from Dartmouth College with a double major in Spanish and History. Before the rabbinate was even a glint in his eye, Natan spent the 10 years between Dartmouth and rabbinical school exploring the world and his place in it. Whether the corporate boardrooms of PepsiCo, the hills, valleys and seas of Israel, or the Mongolian desert, the years were never dull. Read full bio here.