Oakland, Ca. (Special to Informed Comment; Featured) – On April 15, the venerable Jewish Council on Public Affairs (JCPA) issued an eloquent statement stating their objections to, “the false choice between confronting antisemitism and upholding democracy.” antisemitismhas traditionally been used as a right-wing tool to appeal to a primitive, nativist sense of exclusion. Now the motivations are more varied and complex. Many on the left fail to distinguish between Judaism, the religion; and Zionism; the political dynamic that led to the creation of Israel in the aftermath of the Holocaust, preceded by a 1000 years of pogroms. antisemitism has been convicted felon Donald Trump’s guise and cover for suppressing academic freedoms, and deporting politically active students, faculty and organizers. Thankfully, this consortium of thoughtful Jewish organizations has countered this travesty with a united effort and lucid arguments.
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These organizations represent a broad spectrum of Jewish Americans, and includes the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, National Council of Jewish Women, American Conference of Cantors, Central Conference of American Rabbis, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, Rabbinical Assembly, Reconstructing Judaism, Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association, and the Union for Reform Judaism. The only branch of Judaism not represented in this consortium has been the Orthodox community. While many Orthodox Jews endorse the JCPA point of view, their voices are often suppressed and intimidated in their congregations.
That 10 major Jewish organizations came to agreement on anything is a semantic and polemical miracle, when one considers the diversity of social and spiritual divisions among American Jews. The notion of so many Jews agreeing on ANYTHING is so ludicrous, it’s become a basis of satire and dark humor. The myth that Jews were capable of controlling things by a conspiracy was always as silly as the notion of Jewish space lasers. The notion was fictionalized to support tropes, stir fear and resentment.
The JCPA statement says, “In recent weeks, escalating federal actions have used the guise of fighting antisemitism to justify stripping students of due process rights when they face arrest and/or deportation, as well as to threaten billions in academic research and education funding. Students have been arrested at home and on the street with no transparency as to why they are being held or deported, and in certain cases with the implication that they are being punished for their constitutionally-protected speech. Universities have an obligation to protect Jewish students, and the federal government has an important role to play in that effort; however, sweeping draconian funding cuts will weaken the free academic inquiry that strengthens democracy and society, rather than productively counter antisemitism on campus.” They conclude, “These actions do not make Jews—or any community—safer. Rather, they only make us less safe,” as they bring additional sources of resentment against Jews.
The politics of convicted felon Donald Trump has fueled this misuse of the charge of racial bigotry in numerous ways, and his use of it is disingenuous on many levels. 21st Century antisemitism is more complex and threatening that any time since World War II, as it now comes from both sides of the political spectrum. There’s also an argument that the Israel Likud government under PM Benjamin Netanyahu (Bibi) has fueled antisemitism with its brutal genocide in Gaza. The tragedies in Gaza have prompted many thoughtful Jews to divorce political Zionism from their practice of Judaism. Under Bibi and Likud, Zionism has devolved 180 degrees away from its original, late-19th century ideals. It began as a secular, agrarian movement with no pretense of Jewish supremacism.
Trump’s claim on Jewish support is limited to the far-right fringes in the US and Israel, who fail to recognize that friends don’t let friends commit political-economic suicide. Presidents Carter, Clinton and Obama were those kinds of friends. Trump is happy to encourage Bibi’s path of self-destruction. Supporters and financiers of Israel’s illegal settlement movement don’t mind being used in this manner. Nor do American Jews whose knowledge of Israel-Palestine history is willfully limited to the whitewashed Temple Sunday School myths. Most of them don’t want to know any more than they don’t already know, and are quite stubborn about it.
“Menorah Old Glory,” Digital, ChatGPT, 2024
Counterintuitively, Trump’s 2019 Executive Order, declaring that Jews are a race and nationality was the first salvo in a campaign to USE antisemitism as a cover for attacks on academic freedom. I noted then, “Packaged as an extension of Title VI, the order reads (in the language of this Brave New World), “Discrimination against Jews may give rise to a Title VI violation when the discrimination is based on an individual’s race, color, or national origin.” The semantic and rhetorical problem here is that we Jews have never considered ourselves to be a group with a single national origin; we come in many colors, and from many national origins. This Executive Order also solidified the myth that Judaism and Zionism are one and the same. Outside of the devoted far-right camps of the MAGA-Likud alliance, most Jews object to seeing charges of antisemitism used as a machete to shred the Constitution.
Most significant is the JCPA’s qualified dissociation from Israel’s ruling Likud Party under PM Benjamin Netanyahu, characterizing it as a “foreign government.” It states, “Jews are being targeted and held collectively accountable for the actions of a foreign government.” As a result of Israel’s genocidal acts in Gaza and the West Bank, “Jews are being pushed out of certain movements, classrooms, and communities for expressing a connection to their heritage or to the Jewish homeland.” While Israel is considered the “Jewish homeland,” and a focal point of modern Judaism for many, this also expresses recognition of how Bibi’s MAGA-inspired strategy has alienated many Jews from Israel, and escalated global antisemitism.
The JCPA statement continues, “We reject any policies or actions that foment or take advantage of antisemitism and pit communities against one another; and we unequivocally condemn the exploitation of our community’s real concerns about antisemitism to undermine democratic norms and rights, including the rule of law, the right of due process, and/or the freedoms of speech, press, and peaceful protest. It is both possible and necessary to fight antisemitism—on campus, in our communities, and across the country—without abandoning the democratic values that have allowed Jews, and so many other vulnerable minorities, to thrive.” It concludes, “Our safety as Jews has always been tied to the rule of law, to the safety of others, to the strength of civil society, and to the protection of rights and liberties for all.”
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