Jews Need Allies
TW: antisemitism, hate speech, death threats, gun violence.
“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other." This quote from Mother Teresa has been on my mind. These days, the trauma, grief, and pain is profound and unprecedented for people of diverse races, faiths, nationalities, and ethnicities. As an American Jew with family in Israel, I am not the most impacted by the Israeli-Hamas war but I am directly impacted.
I strongly believe that criticism of the state of Israel isn't antisemitic. Caring about Palestinian lives isn't antisemitic. Many Jewish people, including me, oppose human rights violations and abuses against Palestinians. But when Jewish people are vilified or demonized, opposition to Israeli state violence becomes antisemitic and must be condemned.
Antisemitism is now rampant on college campus. Jewish students have been assaulted and threatened at protests. As The Washington Post has reported, a Cornell message board was flooded with anonymous threats: “If you see a Jewish ‘person’ on campus follow them home and slit their throats.” Another poster threatened to “Bring an assault rifle to campus and shoot all you pig jews.”
How did we get here…and where do we go from here? Antisemitism is so ubiquitous and normalized that many progressives don’t recognize their tendency to deny, minimize and even justify Jewish suffering.
Let me be clear: I’m not suggesting that the bias, hate, and discrimination Jews have faced in the past—and continue to face today—is the same as that of other ethnic minorities. Nor am I positing an equivalency between antisemitism, Islamophobia, racism and other forms of oppression.
Jewish people who are being targeted need allies in our organizations, schools, colleges, and communities. And yet, many people on the left--individuals who hold generally progressive views about racial justice--exclude antisemitism from conversations about racial and ethnic oppression. This point has been persuasively argued by David Baddiel in his book Jews Don’t Count.
After all, Jewish people are BOTH religious and ethnic minorities. Premodern anti-Jewish hate was based in religion but one of the distinctive features of modern antisemitism is its racialized character. (Nazism is the most extreme example of this.) The refusal to recognize Jewish people as an ethnic minority is one reason why escalating anti-Jewish hate hasn't been meaningfully addressed on college campuses.
Please join me in calling out and fighting all forms of hate including antisemitism, Islamophobia, racism, and xenophobia. As Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez eloquently declares, “If we cannot consistently stand against all forms of bigotry, we risk standing for nothing at all.”
If I can help you to better support impacted colleagues including Jewish people, please reach out.
#antisemitism #jews #Israel #Palestine #Gaza #progressives #deib #racism #antiracism #islamophobia #HigherEducation #colleges #universities #safety #justice #peace #belonging
