Hamas' assault on Israel on October 7 was unconscionable to say the least. Kidnapping over 100 hostages, raping, torturing, decapitating babies, and killing over 1,200 Israeli citizens is brutal. It was the single worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust. It is difficult to see how Israel could not militarily respond to such brutality. Seeing the surge in pro-Palestine protests and anti-Semitism as a result of current events has gotten me thinking about anti-Semitism a lot lately.
Jews being oppressed, stigmatized, and murdered simply for being Jewish is sadly nothing new. Jews have contended with the ire of the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Romans, the English Expulsion of 1290, the Spanish Inquisition of 1492, the pogroms in the Russian Empire, and most notably the Holocaust. The Holocaust was actually a major impetus for the modern state of Israel to be created shortly thereafter. Israel was to be a safe haven for Jews because Jews were hoping "Never Again" would mean never again. Oh, how October 7, 2023 changed that notion!
Anti-semitism has come in multiple forms. It has come from Christians and Muslims. It has religious and secular varieties. Some have hated Jews on ethnic grounds as opposed to religious. Whether it is blaming Jews for the cruxifixction of Jesus (spoiler: it was the Romans), Jews control the media (which is hard to believe given the pro-Palestine tilt of many major media outlets), Jews are an inferior race (as argued by Nazi Germany), or Jews are money-obsessed, there is no shortage of libel and hatred that has been directed at the Jewish people over the centuries.
You would think with Jews having endured so much, the political Left would be sympathetic to the Jewish plight. After all, the political Left over the past century in the Western world has operated with the stated intent of helping out the marginalized and disenfranchised. I would have thought this would especially hold for those who identify as woke or "progressive." If one were to be consistent with this goal of helping out the marginalized, that would include wanting to help out the Jews. Yet what I have seen in recent weeks makes me think otherwise, especially since the Left has a history of anti-Semitism that dates back to the Enlightenment era.
Most universities could not muster the decency to condemn the barbarism of Hamas on October 7. Reports of pro-Palestine protests, which has a lot of allies on the Far Left, have been perturbing. Some have yelled "Intifada," which is an armed rebellion that entails violence against Jews. Others chanted "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free," which if you look at a map of the region, means wiping out Israel and advocating for ethnic cleansing. Black Lives Matter in Chicago blamed Israel for Hamas' attack and cheered it on. It is not only anecdotes that have me worried. It is not that anti-semitic incidents increased 400 percent since October 7 when antisemitism was already on the rise. It is also the polling data in response to current events.
The Harvard CAPS/Harris poll released in mid-October asked some questions about opinions on the conflict between Israel and Gaza. When looking at the cross tabs data, I was able to see the data broken down by political ideology. I found out that liberals are more likely than conservatives to believe the following:
- Hamas' attack was targeted against the Israeli military, and not citizens (35% vs. 18%)
- Hamas comprises of militants and not terrorists (29% vs. 15%)
- Hamas murdering Israeli civilians is justified by Palestinian grievances (36% vs. 16%)
- Hamas' attack is not indicative of increased anti-Semitism (52% vs. 36%)
- Hamas and Israel have fairly equally just causes (48% vs. 26%)
The Far Right and The Far Left do not agree on much. One thing they have in common is hating Jews (e.g., Allington et al., 2023). Those on the Right in the U.S. that express anti-Semitism tend to go with more traditional forms of anti-Semitism. The Left is pernicious with how it expresses it. Why? Criticizing Israel is not inherently anti-Semitic. Israeli citizens do it with the vigor of a national pastime. Conversely, those on the Left are more likely to use anti-Zionism as their guise for their anti-Semitism (ibid.), even down to having token Jewish friends and allies sympathetic to the Palestinian cause giving them cover. This tactic of using anti-Semitism to masquerade as anti-Zionism originates from the Stalinist Zionology that intensified after the Six-Day War of 1967.
If the the uptick in anti-Semitism the past few weeks were a reminder of anything on this topic, it is that the overlap between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism in the Western world is astoundingly high. What we are seeing on the Far Left is beyond criticizing the Israeli state beyond normal or reasonable standards. Examples of when legitimate criticism of Israel crosses over into anti-Semitism including holding Israel to double standards and singling out Israel in a disproportionate matter (especially while ignoring or downplaying actual human rights abuses), opposing Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state or to live in the land, or the very flawed analogies of comparing Israel to Nazi Germany or an apartheid state. It has resulted in 95 percent of the antisemitic attacks in the U.S. that were motivated by Israeli policy were carried out by those on the Left.
You can read my piece on when criticism of Israel turns into anti-Semitism here. You can also read Woke Antisemitism: How a Progressive Ideology Harms Jews by David Bernstein for more on the history of how "progressives" turned to anti-Semitism. I want to get into the heart of the matter in the near future. How did so many on the woke Left embrace anti-Semitic tropes to the point where they can sympathize with a genocidal, terrorist organization intent on wiping out a historically marginalized people? In an upcoming piece, I plan on going through a list of theories as to why so many on the Far Left abandoned human rights, democracy, and equality in favor of making Jew-hatred en vogue.
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