Opinion: Conflating Criticism of Israel with Antisemitism Endangers All
Photo: Jewish Voice for Peace
Israeli leaders and Zionists everywhere have, for decades, strived to, and have been successful at equating Israelism (American Jews with an unquestioning emotional and political attachment to Israel) with Judaism; that is, to make them one and the same. The converse then became true: to criticize Israel is now considered to be anti-semitic, or if you are Jewish, you must be a self-hating Jew.
One needs to look no further than the crackdown, often violent, against college students across the country last year, who protested Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza. The equation of anti-Israel as antisemitism is false and extremely dangerous to all Jews, to Judaism, and to Israel. The placement of the Israeli flag on bimahs in synagogues attests to the acceptance of the Israel=Judaism equation by many Jews. It is offensive to me and puts a target on each synagogue that does so.
This equation allowed countries to disregard the rights of Palestinians in 1948 in the creation of the State of Israel, which began a now 78-year-old apartheid state, replete with occupation, oppression, dispossession, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. The cost to Palestinians has been and continues to be beyond horrific. There isn’t enough space in this column to document the oppression and atrocities Palestinians have endured for 78 years and continue to endure.
The cost to Jews has been to make Israel less safe, to make Jews everywhere less safe, and to make antisemitism harder to combat. What happened on October 7, 2023, when Israelis were attacked by Hamas, and recently when Jews were attacked at Bondi Beach in Australia, and other synagogues were recently attacked, are the blowback of that equation. To understand how October 7, or the shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, or at Bondi Beach, could have happened is not to condone those attacks.
The genocide in Gaza, now called a “cease fire”, continues in the form of starvation, lack of medical care, lack of water, electricity and shelter, Palestinians are being killed in both Gaza and the West Bank. Just a few weeks ago, Israel told Doctors Without Borders to get out of Gaza . Israel has destroyed over 2500 structures in Gaza since the “ceasefire” began. In the occupied West Bank, Palestinians are having their homes leveled and replaced with Israeli “settlers”, who, seemingly, with the blessing of the Israeli government, shoot and kill Palestinians. 37,000 Palestinians have been displaced in the West Bank since October 7.
This didn’t even begin in 1948. It began soon after Theodore Herzl promulgated his plan for a Jewish State in Palestine. In 1936, it was the British who aided Jewish refugees with the point of their rifles to take Palestinian land. It has not stopped; only the owners of the guns have changed. As long as Israel continues its genocidal and ethnocidal actions and being Jewish is equated with being Israeli, there will be more Bondi Beaches around the world. And as Israel loses more and more credibility and more and more support, Judaism and Israel become less and less safe.
The current genocide against Gaza and murder in the West Bank did not start the hostilities between Israel and Palestinians on October 7, 2023. To continue to promulgate that sleight of hand can only be due to ignorance of the history or deliberate manipulation of the truth. That our local Daily Hampshire Gazette would not print this opinion piece speaks to the power that the equation holds. To print someone’s anti-Israeli opinion could result in the newspaper being attacked for being antisemitic, as we learned when they printed the news story about a proposed boycott of Israeli products at the River Valley Coop, and were attacked for printing the story.
Gerry Weiss, a psychotherapist, is a resident of Amherst and was a member of the Amherst Select Board from 2004 to 2010 and a member of Town Meeting for 19 years.
Gerry, thank you for this article and for getting it out in the Indy. You make such an important point!
Thanks to the Indy for printing Mr. Weiss’ cogent and compact statement of why opposing the criminal conduct of present – and past – Israeli governments does not amount to anti-Semitism. It is sad that, thanks to the criminal activities of the present, and some past, U. S. administrations that we have to be constantly re-educated on this terrible history.
From the time that I was a young boy attending Sunday school at my Synagogue, the importance of Israel was a key part of my education. I still recall giving nickel and dimes to support the planting of trees on the land. There was little to no discussion of the Palestinians who occupied the land prior to 1948. I guess they were collateral damage in the quest to create a Jewish homeland. As Gerry’s note points out, little has changed in the succeeding years.
I appreciate these replies. John, I too put my nickels and dimes the little “blue box”, thinking I was doing a noble thing, never knowing those trees were being planted on stolen land. What has changed since 1948, are the incredible levels of oppression and violence toward Palestinians, who have dared to not accept the occupiers and the racist apartheid government.