Two weeks ago I wrote an article about the Israeli bombardment of Gaza, an operation that preceded the current ground offensive there. The bombardment was a declared effort to destroy Hamas’ capability of shooting rockets into neighboring Israel, the practice of which indeed, Hamas has prolific experience.

I criticized Israel for what I described as disjointed objectives and means: their goal to destroy Hamas through the medium of bombing Gaza, I claimed, would not be met, and their actions would serve only to empower Hamas as literally hundreds of bodies piled up in the apartment buildings the IDF razed. I further criticized the US and other Israeli sympathizers for stating that the responsibility for the dead Palestinian civilians rested solely on Hamas’ shoulders. While that might be a tenable position in an academic debate, I suspect it is not on the streets of Gaza.

Finally, I made a reference to the fact that around the world, moderate Muslims are infuriated with the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, the ghettoization of Gaza, and now, the lopsided bombing of the latter. Would the latest events there set off a spate of violence around the world, from Damascus to Paris, I inquired?

Perhaps in Paris. In an article titled “France Wary of Strife Spreading From Gaza” published last Wednesday, the Washington Post discussed an increase of anti-Semitic violence that included a burning car being crashed into a synagogue in Toulouse. This week, vandals threw nine Molotov Cocktails at a synagogue in suburban Paris. Anti-Semitic graffiti- “We must kill the Jews”- was found on the wall of a social center in the Puy-en-Velay, and in Schiltigheim, Molotov Cocktails were thrown at an Israeli community center.

Apparently, the violence is even more widespread: an internet search returns additional reports of synagogues and schools vandalized in Chicago, California, Florida, and set on fire in Brussels and London.

To review my opinions on violence: no excuses. Not for Hamas, not for American or French Anti-Semites, and not for the Israeli military. Still, I reject the American storyline. I found an editorial on The Examiner which asserted that “under cover of criticizing Israel, antisemitism has become trendy”. On the surface, I agree with the article, particularly given some of the language (“Jews back in the ovens”) used in the latest acts of vandalism. But there is another level to these dynamics that needs to be explored.


Anti-Zionism vs. Antisemitism

Noam Chomsky, in his book Fateful Triangle, describes the origins of what he calls the “special relationship” between America and Israel. In his exploration of the many influences, he discusses the efforts of Zionist lobbyists, including the Anti-Defamation League, which he asserts specializes in suppressing criticism of Israel in America, under their mandate to fight antisemitism. Broadly, Chomsky argues that Anti-Zionism (the criticism of Israeli policies) is made out by Israeli advocates, both inside and outside of Israel, to be synonymous with antisemitism. That is, to criticize Israel is to be inherently anti-Semitic. In America, we’ve seen this philosophy in action elsewhere in varying degrees: to oppose affirmative action was to be a racist, to support immigration reform was to be a xenophobe.

But in few quarters has the rhetoric been as compelling as that from the Jewish lobby, and I believe that much of it was originally conceived in earnest. Since WWII, American Jews have been traumatized by the Holocaust and believed that it could happen again, anywhere. During WWII, the US stayed out of Europe as long as possible and famously denied access to Jewish refugees immediately before the war. It seemed to many survivors and their children that a homeland where Jews would finally be safe from persecution was a humanitarian entitlement thousands of years overdue. That it had to be in the heart of the Arab world, on one of the most contested pieces of geography on earth, seems to be a separate, divided issue.

What has been the impact of this attempt to combine anti-Zionism and antisemitism? In America, I believe it has resulted in the curtailment of objective discussion and criticism of Israeli policies for fear of being labeled a bigot. From talking to Israelis and friends I know who have lived and studied in Israel, the American media appears to be far less critical about Israeli policy than even that of Israel, where there is legitimate disagreement among citizens over the appropriate way to handle the Palestinian détente. American politicians have learned to criticize Israeli policy at their own peril, and American citizens have little access to see it from any other perspective. If they question, they might be labeled anti-Semites, just like to question the Iraq War in 2002 and 2003 was to be designated unpatriotic- “you’re with us, or you’re against us”.

The Examiner asserted that the recent violence was antisemitism disguised as anti-Zionism. I think that in many ways, the recent anti-Jewish violence is a result of the pro-Israel propaganda effort to make antisemitism and anti-Zionism indistinguishable. If, in common terms, “Gentiles” are conditioned to believe that one is the same as the other, then it follows logic that to object to one is to object to the other. Without making excuses for the reprehensible acts of vandals, I believe that this paradigm nonetheless explains why some legitimate Palestinian sympathizers have chosen to voice their anger in this way.


What Israelis and Americans tell me

In graduate school, I met a lot of Israeli students, and found myself incapable of steering clear of the Israeli/Palestinian topic. In the late 90s, I had met Israelis who believed vehemently in Israeli defense policy, and I expected the same out of my new friends. But I got something different when I asked their views- they had broad, informed opinions and did not deny the Palestinian plight, but in fact sympathized with it and agreed that Israel should remove itself from the occupied territories.

Conversely, I rarely meet Americans who feel this way. Jewish Americans often argue bitterly about the necessity of Israel as a safe-haven for the world’s Jews and that it be defended at all costs. Non-Jews often see it simply as a fight against terrorism, a fight in which there are “good guys” and “bad guys” and the American government and media have hammered this scenario home. Of the Jews I do know who are critical of Israeli policy, they render their opinions with a sense of acquiescence: the Zionist lobby feels stifling, immovable. One of my friends, a scholar completing his PhD in foreign policy told me recently: “I’ve steered clear of this topic. If I were to make this my career focus, I’d spend my whole life fighting critics trying to discredit me as a self-loathing Jew.”


The recent Israeli invasion of Gaza has taught me more about how Americans see Israel than anything else. What is remarkable is that those opinions are in fact where much of Israel’s power to make war stems from; Israel gets its weapons from the US, is the recipient of more foreign US aid than any other country, (10% of the US 2008 foreign aid budget), and is supported by the US as an advocate and patron in the world media, at the UN, and beyond.

Because Americans are unable or unwilling to look at Israel with as objective an eye as even Israelis themselves, America stays locked into its thoughtless support for Israeli policies that stir up anti-Zionist (and anti-Semitic) sentiment worldwide and label the US firmly as an impediment to the peace-process instead of an unbiased facilitator.

Instead of thinking about Israel emotionally and distorting it into a fiction about the purity of democracy fighting the evil of terror- or accepting the proposition that to criticize Israel is to be anti-Semitic- Americans must demand objective, analytical thought on Israeli policies and arm themselves with the information needed to battle ideologues who continue to subvert open debate.


Further Reading: Le Monde (French) Washington Post The Examiner Ha'Aretz Critical Op-Ed Anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews Fateful Triangle