Are the Anti-Gaza War Protests an Example of Anti-Semitism?

There is much talk everywhere about anti-semitism.  As a Jew, I experienced anti-semitism in my youth in the statements and actions of everyday people.  It is hurtful, and so I welcome any discussion that educates the public about anti-semitism and the baseless nature of its "causes."

But the cause of all the tumult today has little if anything to do with anti-semitism.  Anti-semitism is a bias against Jews for attributes supposedly descriptive of Jews or the Jewish people—rich, elite, manipulators, Christ-killers, controllers of the world.  All of these are easily disproven, which I shall address later in this post.  

But first I must address what is commonly referred to as anti-semitism today: being against the State of Israel, or more exactly, against Israel's conduct of the Gaza War against Hamas.  This is not anti-semitism.

First of all, there are many Jews in this country and around the world, myself included, who are very much against the way Netanyahu and his ultra-right nationalist supporters have turned a legitimate initial defensive response to Hamas' vicious attack on Israeli citizens on October 7 into an all-out war, out of total proportion to that attack, killing tens of thousands of innocent civilians and destroying vast areas of Palestinian occupied territory.

I and my fellow Jews who have opposed the war are not  anti-semites.  We are not even anti-Israel.   We are, however, very anti-Netanyahu and the ultra-right coalition that keeps him in power.

It is unfortunate that many well-intentioned supporters of a Palestinian state and opponents of the war have been led by provocateurs to turn that opposition into an opposition to the State of Israel, rather than the current leaders of Israel.  It's as though people who are against Donald Trump and MAGA were turned into haters of America instead.  Wouldn't that be unwarranted and ridiculous?

Yes, there has been some violence against Jewish students as part of these protests, but that violence has not been against them as Jews, but as supporters of Israel and the Gaza war.  This, again, is not anti-semitism.

But, there has also been an up-tick of violence against Jews, whether in synagogues or elsewhere.  This is clearly anti-semitism, and it is very worrying.  But whether the perpetrators are white supremacists taking advantage of the tumult or people against the war is not known; from the reports I've read, I suspect the former..

What of Trump's assertion of anti-semitism against Columbia and other universities and his assertion that he is the best friend Jews ever had?  As I've just shown, actions against these protests has nothing to do with anti-semitism; they are more actions against free speech.  This is just a ruse for him to attack liberal institutions and withhold funding for liberal issues that have nothing to do with anti-semitism.

As for his claim that he is the Jews best friend—how ludicrous.  Here is a man who as President has cozied up to white supremacists who are known to be anti-semites, as well as Blacks such as Kanye West.

And now to the supposed attributes of Jews that are the underpinning of anti-semitism:

  

* Rich - while it is true that a somewhat greater proportion of Jews are well-off relative to the rest of the white population, a large proportion of Jews are low-income  (31%).

* Elite - while it is true that a larger proportion of Jews are college graduates than the rest of the white population, Hindus and several Protestant denominations have as high or higher rates. The Jewish rate is a function of how Jews view the importance of education, mainly because as an historically oppressed people, education was an avenue to improve their lives. 

* Manipulators - The human race is full of people who manipulate others. This is not an attribute that can be attributed particularly to Jews.

* Christ-killers - While the Temple priests considered him a rebel and according to the New Testament urged Herod to crucify him, the Jews as a people, while mostly not considering Jesus the Messiah, were not involved in the process and so were not his killers.

* Controllers of the world - This charged is based on the so-called "Protocols of the Elders of Zion."  This fraudulent fabrication, which originated in Tzarist Russia—a very anti-semitic society—purports to show that Jews plan to dominate the world.  It would be laughable were it not still in this day a document that moves many to become anti-semites.

But even if these specific "causes" of anti-semitism are debunked, the real cause of anti-semitism is that it's been around so long that it's in some people's blood.  They heard it from their parents, and so they believe it.  As the song in Rogers & Hammerstein's South Pacific says, "You've got to be taught before it's to late, before you are six or seven or eight, to hate all the people your relatives hate, you've got to be carefully taught,"

Anti-semitism, just like racism, will be with us until the leadership of this country and its cultural institutions decide it's time at long last to have a national discussion of these issues, to show people the baselessness of these attitudes and their lack of humanity.

 

Trump/MAGA in Denial of the Historic Fact of Racism

Trump has taken an aggressive stand against any acknowledgment of racism or other society--sanctioned discrimination in our history as well as any efforts to address these issues.  He has, not surprisingly, missed an opportunity to do something good for this country.

First of all, for him to deny, by not acknowledging or letting anyone that the federal government funds speak to these matters, is classic denial.  These things have happened in our past and are still happening today.  And they have a grave impact on our country in many respects.

So eradicating any discussion of these issues creates a situation where they fester and become even stronger than when they were discussed.  Blacks and others may have used DEI efforts to fight the establishment, but by denying them a voice it actually makes the situation, the alienation and anger, worse.

Yes, there are problems, as I wrote in my post, "Pluralism or DEI?" with the way DEI has been implemented.  But there were important reasons behind DEI that affect the welfare of our country.  Instead of throwing out all DEI efforts, what Trump should have done was repurpose the DEI efforts into a broader effort to instill Pluralism in our society.

The need to acknowledge the past and work towards improving the present and the future in terms of discrimination is vital, but it needs to be done within the context of pluralism, where everyone has a seat at the table, all voices are heard and respected.  We are all one; we are all children of the same God or the creation miracle of the Universe—however one wishes to see it.  

In keeping with the doctrine of balancing rights and responsibilities, nothing that benefits one person should be to the detriment of another.  So to it must be with measures that remediate the discrimination that various groups have suffered in the past and in the present.  By doing something that helps Blacks or women, for example, to move forward, white males should not experience any detriment beyond that caused by the increased competition for positions, offices, etc..  There is enough wealth and opportunity in this country that these two things should be possible to implement at the same time.

Trump is not stupid.  Why did he not take this route?  I believe he chose not to because his base does not want a truly pluralistic society in which all are respected.  They do not want to view people of color or even women as their equal.  And so Trump did not take this route.

Trump has done many things in his first 100 days that have gravely damaged our democracy, but perhaps his actions against DEI are the worst because they go against all sense of decency, against humanity.  And a respect for humanity is perhaps the most essential spirit that underlies the American experiment that began in 1776.

  

The Radical-Right/MAGA Perspective Is Not True to the Intent of Our Founding Fathers

The Radical Right of the Republican Party—whether it's the MAGA movement or radical jurists and historians who may not be MAGA—all hold to the same basic tenet:  that the Constitution and Declaration of Independence are to be interpreted as the words were intended at the time it was adopted.  The theory is called "strict construction" by jurists weighing the Constitution or it's called "self-evident" truths by historians analyzing the Declaration.  They find a difference between what was intended when written and the way the words have been interpreted in modern times.

This theory is contrary to the perspective of liberal thinkers who view the Constitution as a "living" document, meaning that the words retain their essence, but their application changes as the world the words are applied to changes. They find the intent of the Founding Fathers to be different than the Radical Right does.  Are these two ways of looking at our founding documents contradictory or complementary?

First, let's discuss the idea of strict construction.  The Constitution was written to last a long time.  Jefferson may have famously said that having a revolution regularly would be a good thing and that the Constitution should be reevaluated every 20 years, but for most of the Founding Fathers, the Constitution was written in such a way that it could be applied as written for a long time, with appropriate amendments when needed. It was thought to be a flexible document.

And indeed, that's the only way of looking at the Constitution that makes sense.  Literally rewriting the Constitution periodically would create harmful instability.  Jefferson's thought about reevaluating the Constitution is exactly what the courts do—deciding what is covered and what is not; applying the original intent to current circumstances—so there has been no need to rewrite it, except for adding amendments.

If we look at the Founder's intent—and it always comes back to their intent—we see that they were creating a document for the future, not just the here and now.  The question should be how would the Founder's interpret their words applied to the current situation, not how we interpret their words looking at the context in which they lived.  See below.

Next, let's look at the meaning of "self-evident."   Matthew Spaulding, formerly Director of American Studies at the Heritage Foundation, says he is a believer in the self-evident truths proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence and argues that liberals do not believe in the self-evident truths.

On its face, his statement seems incredulous, for who more than liberals, i.e. Democrats, believe fervently in the principle of equality and that all of us, each and every one, has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

What becomes clear in reading Spaulding is that "self-evident", meaning obvious, is determined for him by what the a person would see or think looking around at the world he exists in.  As he sees it, the truth of equality then would not be the concept of equality that we have today.  The meaning of the word "men" would not have the all-inclusive implication we give to that word today.

But while the phrase "self-evident" does indeed mean obvious, requiring no reasoning, he uses the man on the street in 1776 to interpret what the words "equal" or "men" mean.  This is where Spaulding's interpretation is in error.  

John Adams and his fellow Founding Fathers were not the average man on the street in 1776.  The were men of the Enlightenment, the philosophical movement that held sway among learned men in the 18th century.

What did "equal" mean to John Adams?  While Adams said that there were many false notions of equality—words the Heritage Foundation focuses on—he goes on to say that equality "really means little more than that We are all of the same Species: made by the same God: possessed of Minds and Bodies alike in Essence: having all the same Reason, Passions, Affections and Appetites."

This is what the Declaration means when it says that it is self-evident that all men are created equal.  A more modern notion of equality could not be stated, except the reference to God.  (Today, those who don't believe in God would say that we are all the same miracle of creation.)  Clearly, Adams believed that regardless of color, regardless of social status, we are all basically the same when we are born, even as to how we are wired.

As for the meaning of "men,"  those who subscribed to the Enlightenment often used that word as a shorthand for "humanity."  Thus the use of that term by Jefferson in writing the Declaration means that all people are created equal.

In both cases, the intellectual/philosophical justification for the narrow reading of our Founding Documents used by both the intellectual thinkers of the Radical Right and the average Radical Republican or MAGA adherent does not hold water.  It is contrary to the intent of the Founders. And so their whole system of interpretation falls.

The Founding Fathers were not "small" men.  They were great men with huge intellectual capacity.  Some, like Jefferson, were bound to earth by their association with slavery, but their minds soared.  It is that soaring mind that is reflected in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.  And it is their minds and intent that should form the basis for interpreting these documents and applying them to the present.

It's easy to cherry-pick statements from a life of writing to make your point as the Radical Right does.  Conservatives have done the same with the Bible in order to make their arguments.  But when the Founding Fathers' life work or the Bible is looked at as a whole, then the real self-evident truth is revealed.  There is no conflict between looking at the Founders' intent and looking at the Constitution as a living document.