“WOULD YOU HIDE ME?”

YOUR JEWISH FRIENDS AREN’T REALLY WONDERING HOW YOU WILL BEHAVE WHEN THE STAKES ARE HIGH. THEY ARE ASKING, “WHY HAVEN’T YOU SPOKEN UP WHEN THE STAKES (FOR YOU) ARE SO LOW?”

We’re not there yet. Are you waiting until we are before you speak up?

Would you hide me?

This is a question Sheryl Sandberg asked a friend, as she emotionally recounted in the film October 8. (I’ll write more about this film soon.)

The non-Jewish friend didn’t understand the question. But anyone who hangs around with Jews as much as I do has heard this refrain a lot recently.

The idea that Jews in the United States or Canada or France might be facing a scenario where they would require righteous gentiles to hide them like Anne Frank in an attic will almost certainly strike many people as overwrought.

I admit I flinch a little when I hear it, which makes me question some of my own prejudices and reactions. A core antisemitic stereotype is that Jews are hypersensitive, prone to “crying wolf” and have a “persecution complex.”

Well, you know …

Within the memory of the living generation, a society goes off the rails and systematically kills one in three of the world’s Jews — two in three European Jews — over a span of about five years. Then, less than 80 years later, a movement with the explicit, unconcealed goal of killing the world’s remaining Jews unleashes the biggest mass murder of Jews since that cataclysmic era — and a huge chunk of the world’s population, including Canadians, Americans, French and other “civilized” peoples, sides not with the Jews but with the genociders.

I’d be a bit hypersensitive — except it would not be hypersensitive at all in the context. I’d cry wolf — except there is nothing phony about the cry. I’d have a complex — but it wouldn’t be unreasonable. It would be because of outright, proliferating, genuine persecution.

Even so, Would you hide me?

I have to acknowledge: We’re not there yet.

And that is exactly the point.

The question “Would you hide me?” is less about the belief that the situation in North America could in the near future deteriorate so badly than it reflects, for most Jews, the realization that almost none of their presumed friends have demonstrated anything to indicate that they will stand with their Jewish friends even when the stakes are low.

Here is the paradox.

Let’s say that Jews today have little or nothing to fear — that the idea of needing friends to hide them in garden sheds or under fake floors is outlandish and paranoid.

This assumption would come with the parallel certainty that, by definition, standing with Jewish people in this moment is even less of a danger.

And yet, when the stakes are so low for allies and friends, practically no one is standing with Jews.

On social media, in street rallies, the statements of NGOs, governments and public figures range on a spectrum from overwhelmingly condemnatory of the Jewish state defending its citizens to overtly endorsing the genocidal jihadists who seek the mass murder of Jews.

And then the same people pooh-pooh the idea that Jews have anything to be concerned about.

There is another paradox — and there are plenty of Jews on the wrong side of this one. I shudder to see some of them rejoicing at the arrest, detention and deportation without due process of antisemitic activists (and alleged criminals and other unsavories) in the United States. Once you flush the rule of law for a “good” cause, you undermine the rule of law for everyone. When we yawn at the abrogation of civil rights for some (based, say, on the idea that they are not full citizens), we provide assent to a government to abrogate civil rights for anyone. And the citizenship defence is a particularly egregious one, since history shows that dictatorial governments can denaturalize even natural-born citizens with the stroke of a pen. That’s how German and Austrian Jews became stateless people while the world declared, Well, it’s not like they’re killing them or something.

A government with the power to bypass constitutional safeguard if there is a “good” reason is a government that can bypass constitutional safeguard for any reason.

And let’s not think this is an academic exercise or that it is limited to the kook in the White House. The leader of Canada’s Conservative party, who hopes to be elected prime minister in 13 days, promised precisely this yesterday.

We are seeing on the news every single day right now how much the constitutional safeguards that are written on paper in democratic societies depend on the intent of the people in power to have any legitimacy.

But back to my main point: As I wrote a few days ago, so many Jewish people I know have been less hurt by these overt words and deeds of antisemitic hatred than they have been by the almost total silence of their assumed friends.

The fact that these friends will not stand with Jews (and Israel) when the stakes for doing so are so demonstrably low gives Jewish people every reason to believe that their “friends” would not hide them — indeed that they might point out their hiding places — should the stakes be higher.

At the moment, non-Jews have effectively nothing to lose by standing with their Jewish friends. Nasty comments on social media. Uncomfortable moments at a dinner party. Apoplectic sticks and stones (“Apartheid apologist!” “Genocide excuser!”) from maniacs.

For friends of Jewish people, the stakes are profoundly low.

For Jews, the stakes are intensely high.

If “decent” people cannot be trusted to stand with them when the idea of needing an attic to hide in seems unreasonable, it is extremely hard to believe that these same people would go out on a limb should the need quickly become real.

At the risk of Patsplaining their intent, I think I can say that when your Jewish friends ask, “Would you hide me?” they aren’t really wondering how you would behave if the stakes were life-and-death.

They are really asking, “Why haven’t you spoken up when the stakes (for you) are so low?”

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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, Palestinianism 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.)