WHIPLASH WARNING

PROGRESS CAN TURN ON A DIME. JEWS LEARNED THAT. WHEN YOU COME TO THEM FOR SUPPORT — AND YOU WILL — CONSIDER THIS: WHEN JEWS NEEDED ALLIES, WHERE THE HELL WERE YOU?

They’ve been there for us. Where the hell are you?

Martin Luther King said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." That may be so. In the various fights for human rights, we often see two steps forward, one step back. Yet we assume progress is inevitable.

Jewish history has been more disorderly. The arc of justice, for Jews, has not been so predictable. Time and again, it has been two steps forward, 10 steps back.

Rarely in human history have Jews been more integrated or accepted than in Germany in the 1920s. Or in France before the Dreyfus Affair of 1894. Or in the so-called “Golden Age” of Spain before the Jews were ethnically cleansed or forcibly converted after 1492.

Despite the cyclical nature of Jewish history, most North American Jews probably believed that the cycle, for them, had ended, that America (or Canada) was, finally, the Promised Land that Diaspora Jews had longed for.

I cannot count the number of my Jewish friends — my age and older — who have told me that they dismissed their parents’ and grandparents’ warnings that the idyll of North American (and European) life since 1945 could yet prove temporary.

And then, since 10/7, they have seen with their own eyes how instantly that acceptance and comfort can be swept away.

And I will say this again: It is not the comparatively small number of overtly hateful and even violent people who have shaken the faith of most of my Jewish friends. It is the breathtaking, staggering silence from almost every one of their non-Jewish supposed friends.

In one of my most popular posts ever (read it again, or for the first time, here), I answered the question, “Why are Jews freaking out?”:

Because — even more than the litany of horrors from genuine haters, what is really making Jews freak out is the unbelievably blaring silence from the people they thought would come to their aid.

People like you.

That’s why Jews are freaking out.

Because you’re not.

Maybe you think Jews are overreacting. Hypersensitive. Have a “persecution complex.”

They don’t.

They are reacting just fine.

You’re not.

As I wrote in that post, let’s assume things are not as serious as some Jews think. That would mean there is little (or no) danger in you standing with them right now. It really only takes an occasional word or two of support. A social media post even.

The message you are sending with your silence is that you will not stand with Jews when the stakes (for you) are incredibly low.

Can you see how they might think you won’t be there when the stakes are high?

It seems the altruistic argument isn’t having much effect. The idea that non-Jews should stand with Jewish people because it is the right thing to do doesn’t seem to have a ton of takers. I guess that’s why self-interest has often been the case that’s made.

I have always detested Rev. Martin Niemoller’s poem about “first they came for the Jews” and all that. It warns that, if you don’t say something when they come for the Jews, “they” might eventually come for people you actually give a damn about. Not a real uplifting idea of human goodness, is it?

But maybe it’s the only way.

So here goes.

Have you given much thought to the fact that, for all our social progress, your cause, your people, might still face an existential moment when you desperately need allies?

All the progress we have seen in gay rights, feminism, racial equality, acceptance of gender differences — everything most of us view as signs of societal progress — can be ripped out from under us in an instant — as October 7 and its aftermath taught Jewish people?

You might feel like society has finally seen the light, as we do when we see the thousands of cheering allies lining the streets for our Pride Parades, or putting Black Lives Matter posters in their shop windows.

Take it from your Jewish friends: Don’t take it for granted.

The day might come when you need allies and they are nowhere to be found.

And when you come to the people who have, arguably, provided more dependable allyship to more groups and causes than any other single demographic — Jews — how will you explain your behavior?

It is sometimes said that Jewish people stand with everyone but no one stands with the Jews.

Has this sad truth ever been more true?

Today, arguably the only demographics reliably standing with Jewish people and Israel are evangelical Christians and political conservatives.

And seeing these theological and political alliances, how have anti-Israel and anti-Jewish voices responded? By condemning Jews and the only reliable friends they have, blaming Jews for being in cahoots with the enemies of progress for accepting the open hand of allyship from groups many progressives view as our enemies.

I hope you are never faced with the choice between depending on strange bedfellows or having no bedfellows at all.

As you continue the battle for women’s reproductive rights — the textbook example of how rights and social consensus taken for granted can be snatched back in an instant — and you canvass your networks to stand with you in solidarity, will you reflect at all on your abandonment of Israeli women? Will you recall how you may have refused to “believe all women” if they happened to be Israeli? How you diminished the experiences of mass rape of the living and dead because your commitment to a free Palestine “by any means necessary” allows you to subscribe, in this one instance, to the utility of rape as a legitimate weapon of war?

When you are on the picket line and expect others to respect the line, will you remember how you crossed every line of human decency in condemning the Jewish state and abandoning the Jewish people?

As you throw yourself into campaigns to defend democracy from the totalitarian tactics of a resurgent right, will you experience any cognitive dissonance at having chosen, in this solitary instance, to side with the forces of despotism and tyranny as they muster to annihilate the tiny oasis of representative democracy in the region?

If you are marching and campaigning because reactionary governments are rolling back protections for refugees, slashing immigration numbers, reversing protections for minorities and defunding antiracism programs, will you remember how you dismissed Jewish concerns about their experiences, defined for them what antisemitism is and accused them of having a “persecution complex”?

If you are standing with Indigenous North Americans in their fight for clean water and other necessities of life, will you remember how you undermined and condemned the most successful Land Back movement of all time, how you negated the indigeneity of Jewish people in their land and built an entire ideology on the idea that the people who came later were there first?

If economic demands lead to scaling back programs and even basic accommodations for people with disabilities (or, in some unimaginable act of callousness, simply turn against the idea that they deserve consideration — because Jews know this is also a possibility), will you recall how you accused Jews of being privileged, how you defiled the concept of “Chosen People” to reproach Jews for expecting the minimum protections and accommodations our society grants to all?

As you agitate against mass incarceration, and the criminalization and confinement of those arriving on your shores yearning to breathe free, will you remember the nonchalance with which you responded to the holding of Jewish hostages in Gaza, how you justified almost two years of captivity as “resistance”?

As you desperately fight to save the planet from extinction, will you ponder at all the incongruity of how you stood with a movement that sets forest fires as an act of “resistance” and how you stood with terrorists who launched and perpetuate a war that has polluted water supplies, toxified farms, made soil unsafe due to unexploded ordnances, chemical residues and scorched earth?

How you marched under the banner of peace while goading Palestinians to fight to the death for total victory rather than compromise and coexist? How you mouth words about anti-imperialism and decolonization while making the greatest exemplar of successful decolonization and anti-imperialist statecraft a pariah?

When you come to your Jewish friends asking for their support in each of these entirely imaginable circumstances, how will you explain your behavior in the past two years?

If I were Jewish, I can tell you I would not be amenable to your entreaties. I’m not even Jewish and, as much as my every value stands with you on these issues, my instinct would be to tell you to crawl back to whatever mistake made you.

Your betrayal of Jewish people — who, throughout history have been among the foremost allies advancing causes of justice — is an act of betrayal so heinous that Jews would be justified turning their backs on us.

Now let me undermine my own argument.

Jewish people will be there when we need them to be allies. Because they always are.

This is not to suggest we should take their support for granted — through all evidence suggests that we do — but to point out that Jewish tradition calls them to repair the broken world. And, time and again, they have done so — even when it means standing alongside so many of those who have contributed to the brokenness of the world from a Jewish perspective.

Jewish people are always there at the frontlines, defending the rights of other groups — but so few members of other groups are there when Jewish people need us, despite all our hollow words about solidarity and “Until all of us are free, none of us are free.”

Appeals to altruism do not seem to be working. Asking you to stand with Jews because it is the right thing to do doesn’t seem to be resonating. So self-interest may be the only alternative.

I’m pretty sure that Jews will always be on the frontlines with us for every good cause. And while they may not say it, I will.

When Jews needed allies, where the hell were you?

Some people have generously asked me to make it possible to make one-time contributions to support my work. I have now set up a PayPal link for donations. If you like snappy smackdowns of antisemitism and anti-Zionism and want me to keep it up, any support is deeply appreciated. Click here.