Racist attacks against Jewish people, often in public and broad daylight, have increased in tandem with the worldwide demonstrations condemning
Israel’s bombing of Gaza. Support for the Palestinian people, in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem, is more vocal and active than ever before.
But arguing for the equality of Palestinians is no excuse for antisemitism. Antisemitism is a form of racism.
The organization Jewish Voice for Peace defines antisemitism as “discrimination against, violence towards, or stereotypes of Jews for being Jewish.” They endorse the standard, historical definition of anti-Jewish racism. Racism demeans and violates others because of who they are in and of themselves.
Whenever someone attacks a Jewish person, whether overtly or covertly, simply for being Jewish, he is being antisemitic.
That mindset is unacceptable. It is sinful. It deserves to be condemned. Antisemites must be called to account. People guilty of this sin need to confess and repent, person to person, face to face, if possible.
Unfortunately, pro-Israel, pro-Zionist activists have introduced a new, troubling factor into the public understanding of antisemitism. And I am afraid that it is backfiring on the entire Jewish community.
Nowadays the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and other, similar Jewish defense organizations have embraced a new definition of antisemitism that confuses the state of Israel and the policies of political Zionism with the Jewish people.
Israeli Zionism has consistently encouraged this confusion with its claims to represent world Jewry.
Israel defines itself as THE Jewish State for all Jews everywhere. It acts on behalf of the Jewish people.
Therefore, since it is a Jewish state, criticism of Israeli state policy equals criticism of the Jews. (This is not my formulation. Pro-Israel activists have a long history of arguing explicitly for this identification.)
But this argument creates a host of problems.
Logically, this identification of Israel = Jews is an example of something called a category mistake. It’s like identifying an elephant with an orange
and saying they are the same thing. Elephants are in the mammalian-animal category. Oranges are in the fruit-plant category. Any argument that concludes by saying, “Therefore, elephants are fruit like an orange” would obviously be ridiculous.
But this is the same line of illogic followed by pro-Israel activists today when they condemn the recent outbreak of antisemitism. (Watch these two recent interviews with an ADL representative. He implies this same confusion here and here.)
A nation-state, like Israel, is a political entity. Jews are a collective of human beings, made as the Image of God. Criticizing the actions of a nation-state has no logical relation to discrimination against Jews as Jews.
I am afraid that this is where pro-Israel activists, like the ADL, have stabbed their fellow Jews in the back.
Anyone who attacks a Jewish stranger, believing that it is an appropriate expression of anti-Israel/pro-Palestinian commitment is guilty of the same category mistake as their pro-Israel opponents.
While I condemn all racism, discrimination, and violence, I have to point out that the antisemites now attacking Jewish citizens (and their property) are also following the pro-Israel line of argument to its illogical conclusion. If Israel represents all Jews everywhere, then any Jew anywhere can be held responsible for Israel’s crimes.
Yes, that is a thoroughly reprehensible conclusion, but it is no more reprehensible than the Zionist argument which says, “Israel is a Jewish State, therefore those who criticize Israel’s slaughtering of Palestinian civilians are antisemitic; they are also responsible for instigating the current outbreak of antisemitic attacks.”
Perhaps, the pro-Israel purveyors of this New Antisemitism (as it is called) should give themselves an ironic pat on the back.
Their deliberate, cynical conflation of Israel with world Jewry and Judaism has penetrated the collective subconscious of those pro-Palestinian activists who don’t stop to think any more clearly than they do.
The result is more tragedy and manipulation on both sides.
