JEWS PLAY NICE

THE WORLD IS ENRAGED AT ISRAEL. BUT DOCILE JEWS DON’T MAKE FRIENDS EITHER.

You want to debate these people?

The world doesn’t like it when Jews defend themselves. As I wrote this week, Jews have played a special role in the Western imagination, as the definitive scapegoat for human anxieties, guilt, jealousy, rage and every other emotion and problem.

Civilizations have set narratives — I also spoke of gender and race narratives — and we detest it when groups diverge from their set narrative.

But our approach to Jews is almost always different than it is to any other group. In Western civilization, we have always found reasons to persecute Jews, even when those reasons are completely contradictory. (Societies have accused Jews of being communists and capitalists; too rich or too poor; tribal and globalist; genetic inferiors and social supremacists; “rootless cosmopolitans” and hypernationalists; etc. etc.)

Here is another example: We hate Jews when Israelis refuse to go “like lambs to the slaughter” and we hate them when they play nice, like North American Jews do in advocating against the current massive spike in antisemitism.

There is a prevailing narrative among Israel’s critics that, if they would just play nice, their enemies would stop trying to kill them. There is precisely no evidence for this, of course, but that is irrelevant to the purveyors of the narrative. If Israelis put down their arms and were all massacred, as they almost certainly would be, activists around the world would shrug and acknowledge, “Well, I guess we were wrong. Oh well.” Because this is the level of concern most of these people demonstrate for Jewish lives.

Relatedly, imagine if Jewish North Americans started acting like their enemies. Watch how fast university administrators, for example, would respond if Jewish students started using the disruptive, violent, racist tactics the anti-Israel gangs employ.

Instead, since Jews can largely be depended upon to respond through civil channels like complaint mechanisms, lobbying, dialogue and pressure for changed policies, the atmosphere on campus is one-sided because administrators almost always fold in the face of the most disruptive forces.

Jews are figuratively or literally attacked and administrators utter consoling words (if that). Were Jews to respond in kind, campuses would become a battleground of unprecedented proportions. Some would likely become no-go zones for students of every identity.

Of course, that is not how Jews behave. And administrators know this. Jewish students, alumni and donors will write letters, meet with representatives, compose op-eds and withhold contributions. What they will rarely, if ever, do is lower themselves to the debased levels of their enemies, who intimidate, threaten, bully, vilify and terrorize.

I return to the point I made in another recent post. I had to ask myself who my audience is for these posts. If, after thousands of years of anti-Jewish persecution, people are still hemming and hawing over whether they should come to the aid of Jewish people, is another blog post making a reasonable case going to make a difference? Logic and commonsense isn’t going to get people out of positions logic and commonsense didn’t get them into.

Jews and their allies, I think, maybe need to listen less to our enemies. Why engage with people of ill-will, those who will never be anything but enemies? They are provoking us, poking us with sticks, and our reactions are their reward.

Having given it some thought, I concluded that my audience is, as a friend dismissively put it, “my tribe,” or “the choir.” Haters rarely give up their hate. But opinion polls tell us that Canadians and others in the West are overwhelmingly on our side. It is a tiny minority who are terror-supporters, Jew-haters, jihadis and lost souls who think they are making the world a better place when they are too ignorant to know they are encouraging the death and destruction in Gaza by egging on Hamas.

But this minority is noisy and, as fanatics tend to be, deeply devoted to their cause. Reasonable, decent people — those who stand with Jews and Israel — tend to have a range of interests. They have better things to do than stand on highway overpasses waving flags and chanting hate slogans.

Opinion surveys tell us that most people in Europe and North America are on the right side of history. My job, I guess, is to get them to be right louder.

This brings me back to the original thesis. Jews being nice doesn’t change minds, as the growth of maniacal antisemitism in the West indicates. We cajole, plead and encourage people to tone down the incendiary rhetoric that is inciting violence — an incitement that, were it against any other group, progressive people would recognize as a direct cause and effect. Instead, because it is about Jews, the response is to scream louder, accuse Jews of “silencing” criticism, throw more fuel on the inferno and tell the Jews to suck it up.

Golda Meir put it succinctly: “If we have to have a choice between being dead and pitied, and being alive with a bad image, we’d rather be alive and have the bad image.”

The world wants Jews to play a particular role. We hate it when Jews fight back, the way Israelis do. But we don’t seem moved when Jews play nice, persuade, coax, cajole, lobby and wheedle, like North American Jews do, either. In other words, a segment of the world is determined to pick on Jews whether they play nice or whether they refuse to take the world’s shit.

The civilizational narratives that we insist on forcing Jews (and others) into are deeply entrenched and they will take a great deal of introspection, understanding and compassion to change. I really don’t see that happening in my lifetime.

In the meantime, when the Western narrative demands that Jews fill the role our ancestors set out for them as our society’s passive scapegoats, it takes a bit of nerve to contest that entrenched plotline. That’s the revolutionary road Israelis have chosen.

The alternative is to adhere to the older narrative, in which a large proportion of the Jewish people end up dead.

For my part, I’ll side with the ones who refuse to play their assigned role.

Who’s with me?

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.)