INVERTING ANTISEMITISM AND ANTI-ZIONISM

Why don’t activists see that inflammatory anti-Israel rhetoric leads to violence against Jews? They do. That’s the point.

Translation: “Kill Jews everywhere.”

Words can normalize harmful views. Landing on the wrong ears, inflammatory rhetoric can lead to violence. Demonizing rhetoric — tarring all immigrants as “rapists” and “murderers,” for example — creates a culture of intolerance that can lead to violence. It shifts the Overton window of acceptability and opens the door to inhumanity. Throughout history, dehumanizing language has been the gateway through which evil people have manufactured consent for abrogating rights, enforcing inequality and perpetrating genocide.

As progressives, we recognize this. It is a tenet of our faith, a certitude of our worldview, that violent words have the potential to lead to violent actions.

Except in one instance.

Jews.

In every other cause on the planet, when approaching the experiences of any other group, we acknowledge the role words and tone can take in creating dangerous climates.

Of course, in the current climate, where “By any means necessary” is the prevailing strategy to opposing the presumed sins of Israel, the emotional and physical safety of Israel’s overseas allies is of little or no concern to anti-Israel activists. If Jews in Canada support Israel — indeed, if they do anything short of joining the mobs calling for Israel’s annihilation — well, they should expect what’s coming.

Suggestions that maybe we should tamp down the white-hot hatred against the Jewish state, or maybe calm down with the calls to “Globalize the intifada,” given that Jews and their institutions are not coincidentally being attacked all over the world, are met with gasps of apoplectic libertarianism.

Progressives have accepted a vast range of voluntary limitations on free expression. Sure, we have the right to say all sorts of impolitic things — but knowing the emotional impacts they can have on women, members of minority communities or others, we choose — if we are decent people — to select our words carefully.

This approach is not always as subtle or voluntary as I make it out. Coercion also plays a role.

Try uttering the slightest criticism of progressive orthodoxy around LGBTQ+ issues, feminism, race or other contentious topics and see how far your free speech rights go. Imply the slightest hesitancy around pre-pubescent gender transitioning and you will be accused of basically murdering trans kids.

Let me be clear: The demonizing language employed against trans people, immigrants (including “illegal” migrants) and others, is dangerous and should be treated as such. My previous paragraph is not to suggest we should approach trans issues and people with less delicacy. It is that, when it comes to Jews, we have adopted a diametrically opposite approach.

Try condemning the chants we are hearing worldwide calling for the actual murder and/or ethnic cleansing of Jews (“Globalize the intifada!”; “From the river to the sea!”) and you’ll be greeted with a defense of free speech worthy of James Madison. Social justice jihadis turn instantly into victimized Voltaires.

When a synagogue is firebombed, as one in my city was a few weeks back; when Jewish schools are targeted by shooters, as schools in Canada have been repeatedly in the past year; when statistics and anecdotal evidence indicate that Jews in North America have never been more threatened; activists (if they have any empathy or political savvy) tsk-tsk that antisemitism has no place in our society. But they take no responsibility for the climate they themselves have created and that some extreme individuals view as permission to go on the attack.

But something else must be at play here. There is simply no possibility that those whose core worldviews center on the idea that words have consequences cannot see that hurling the most inflammatory accusations at the Jewish state (and, not incidentally, at Jews in Canada and elsewhere who defend it) almost inevitably leads to antisemitic acts here at home.

They understand the relationship between words and deeds. They know that incendiary words can lead to incendiary devices.

And they’re good with that.

This is no accident. This is part of a grander strategy.

Assailing the Jewish state, for these activists, means demonstrating no restraint. The cause is just that just. To “Globalize the intifada” means to take the battle from the Middle East to the campuses, streets, churches, union plenaries and parliaments of the world. If that results in a few burned synagogues and the odd bloodied Jew, well … By any means necessary.

This might seem like an extreme approach — especially for self-professed, peace-loving progressive activists. On its surface, it doesn’t make sense.

In reality, it makes perfect sense — if we understand the actual structures of the anti-Zionist movement.

We spend a great deal of time arguing over the intersection of antisemitism and anti-Zionism. As I said just yesterday, the construction is not so simple as I hate Jews, therefore I hate Israel. It is a little more complicated and nuanced than that.

Well, it is and it isn’t.

We’ve inverted cart and horse.

Whenever anti-Zionism flares up (when Israel is attacked and defends itself), Jews worldwide pay a price for being associated with the Jewish state.

But Israel is attacked — has always been attacked and is the object of existential, genocidal enemies — because it is a Jewish state.

Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq — all of these states were cut, effectively from whole cloth, in roughly the same era as Israel was. No one questions their legitimacy or right to exist. Only Israel faces that opprobrium. And only Israel is repeatedly attacked with the intent to eradicate it.

Why?

Because Jews.

Israel is not viewed by progressive activists as the world’s embodiment of evil because of settlements or policies or any of the other red herrings that are thrown up to justify the hysterical condemnations. It is viewed as the embodiment of evil because Jews have traditionally been the empty vessel upon which humans have projected their sins — and the Jewish state is both the national embodiment of the Jewish people and the natural inheritor of centuries of projection and vilification of Jews.

Jews worldwide are not targeted because of Israel’s existence. On the contrary, Israel is targeted because of Jews’ existence. At a minimum, it is the Jewish people’s insistence on existing as a self-determined people that sets off the haters.

It is not, fundamentally, the existence or actions of Israel that lead to global condemnations and acts of hate against Jews around the world. No, we’ve got this exactly backward. It is the hatred of Jews around the world that leads to the military and rhetorical assaults against Israel. Global antisemitism is not a byproduct of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a byproduct of global antisemitism.

This is why activists who recognize the dangerous power of words, and who govern themselves accordingly in choosing the language we use when addressing any other group, behave in ways that betray these values and endanger our Jewish neighbors.

It’s not that activists do not see the dangers they are posing to Jews with their inflammatory rhetoric against Israel and “Zionists.” It’s that those dangers are a welcome side-benefit.

That’s the point.

The targeting of Jews worldwide is not an unfortunate, unintended side-effect of anti-Zionist activism. Anti-Zionist activism is a political cover for a racist movement targeting Jews worldwide.

If we understand this, the apparent moral inconsistencies of “progressive” anti-Zionist activists make more sense. Their indifference to the effects of hysterical anti-Israel frenzy on their Jewish neighbors is not an indication that they don’t recognize what is happening, or that it is a lamentable side-effect of their activism. It is among the core goals. For anti-Israel activists, Jew-baiting has always trumped freeing Palestine as a primary motivator.

Of course, this doesn’t answer the larger question: How can progressive activists who have placed antiracism at the core of our ideology and lives succumb to such base racism toward Jews?

That is the subject for much more exploration.

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A personal note …

I started this Substack because I thought my perspective as a progressive, gay, non-Jewish, Zionist Canadian offered something different to the dialogue about antisemitism, anti-Zionism, Palestinians and peace. It actually never crossed my mind that people might give me money for it. When people started generously subscribing and donating, I threw myself into this project more, partly because I am a writer by trade and I am still building my RSPs for some distant retirement. Based on online advice (!) I started making my Saturday posts for “Paid Subscribers Only.” But, I modestly acknowledge, each one is too delicious to paywall. So I am going to assume that, if you like my stuff and want more of it, you’ll give if you can. If not, please share. (Please share regardless!) No more paywalls. But there may be other incentives I could offer. Not sure what. Got any ideas? Do folks want to get together for online discussions or see me compile some of these posts as a book? Let me know. Meanwhile, enjoy! (If that is the right word for these sometimes dark musings.)