Redefining Anti-Semitism
By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK
I wish I could say that I had great success in convincing some of the Jewish teachers I worked with for many years that not everyone they thought was anti-Semitic actually was. They usually responded with a wry smile that implied they were not fully convinced. But they heard me out.
The point I tried to make to my colleagues was that one can criticize the policies of the Israeli government without wishing ill toward the Jewish people. Also, that it was wrong to assume that those harboring a strong dislike for Jewish radicals were motivated by a hatred of Jews, rather than by an abhorrence of left-wing radicalism.
It seems to me self-evident: Contempt for Abbie Hoffman, Bernardine Dohrn, and Saul Alinsky does not imply an animus against conservative radio host Mark Levin and television commentator Charles Krauthammer. Or toward a Jewish cab driver or local deli owner, to say nothing of most Orthodox Jews, who are likely to politically conservative.
Anti-Semitism exists, of course. The newspapers are full of examples, everything from Muslim terrorists to skinheads with swastika tattoos.
But analyzing the phenomenon has become a more difficult task of late. Anti-Semites in the past focused on two charges: that Jews placed their loyalty to Israel above the country where they were citizens; and that Jews, as a result of a sense of alienation from the Christian West, were left-wing radicals, more committed to a transnational Marxist worldview than to the best interests of their own nation-state. It is not easy to make either theory fit these days.
Let us look at the dual loyalty question. I am sure you have noticed the same thing that I have: The fiercest debate over the Israeli government these days is between left-wing Jews and conservative Jews, such as Charles Krauthammer, Jonah Goldberg, and Dennis Prager. Prager devoted a recent column to assembling the statements of liberal Jews on Israel and the recent electoral victory of Benjamin Netanyahu.
He quotes Joe Klein of Time magazine, who called Netanyahu’s election a “shameful and embarrassing” victory, the “public ratification of bigotry,” an indication that a “great many Jews have come to regard Arabs as the rest of the world traditionally regarded Jews.”
Prager also calls our attention to Peter Beinart’s column in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. Beinart, an American Jew, calls for America to “back Palestinian bids at the United Nations,” for protests against Netanyahu and members of his cabinet from “Diaspora Jews,” every time they “walk into a Jewish event outside Israel.” Also to Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson, who called Netanyahu “the Jewish George Wallace.”
I would add to Prager’s list Noam Chomsky, the dean of modern new left historians, a Jew who devotes much of his writing to defending the rights of the Palestinians against what he calls the Israeli “occupation.” Chomsky writes openly of Israel’s “apartheid” policies. Then there’s Ron Kuby, the left-wing lawyer associated with the late William Kunstler. Kuby currently co-hosts a New York City talk show with Curtis Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels.
Kuby emigrated from the United States to Israel as a young man, planning to make it his home. But he tells us he found Israel to be a “terrible racist country in which a small elite of Zionists control a Jewish working class and terrorize the Palestinian population.” He describes his experience in Israel “like being in the United States, except instead of the White establishment it was the Jewish establishment. I found out that the people I had more in common with, the people whose physical company I enjoyed more, were the Palestinians.”
His sympathy for the Palestinians continues to this day, leading him to frequently blast the “war crimes” of the Israeli Defense Force.
I submit that there is not much dual loyalty evident in the above statements about Israel. What of the Jews who host lavish fundraisers for Netanyahu and his Israeli supporters? They exist, to be sure.
Let us put aside for the moment whether there is any difference between their support for Israel and the support of other American ethnic groups for their countries of origin. The point is that the split among American Jews between those who view the Middle East in the same manner as Charles Krauthammer and the editors of National Review, and those who view it similarly to Ron Kuby, is deep and wide. If there is a Jewish conspiracy operating in the world, it is working at cross purposes with itself these days.
I don’t know how anti-Semites work out these contradictions for themselves. Who is the enemy in their eyes? Charles Krauthammer and Jonah Goldberg? They sound the same on the Middle East as Oliver North and former United States Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton. Noam Chomsky and Ron Kuby? Their positions on the rights of the Palestinians are the same as what you would hear from a Catholic liberation theologian or a Quaker pacifist group.
Might the modern anti-Semite be suspicious of the motives of both wings of the modern Jewish community? Of both the Krauthammer and the Chomsky supporters? That makes for a tough row to hoe. How would the argument go? That Krauthammer calls for the United States to take a firm stand against Iran and militant Islamist groups because he is eager to draw us into a war against Israel’s enemies, irrespective of America’s national interests? While Chomsky and Kuby advocate for the Palestinians in the hope that they can advance the cause of Third World radicals and Putin’s Russia and diminish United States’ influence in the world arena? And that both sides believe they are working for the best interests of world Jewry?
I don’t know about you, but such a proposition leaves my head spinning.
Occam’s razor calls for us to choose the simplest and most direct explanation for a phenomenon — the one requiring the fewest assumptions. I say it applies here: It seems to me that it is not some modern version of the Elders of Zion that explains the conflicting ways that Charles Krauthammer and Ron Kuby view the world.
