A few years ago, I flagged a poll of American Jewish attitudes regarding Israel that had some to my mind interesting data. Basically, many of the more strident "criticisms of Israel" -- ones that many mainline organizations had often characterized as antisemitic, like "apartheid" or "genocide" allegations (this was well before October 7) -- were not generally viewed as antisemitic by most Jewish respondents. To be clear, they were not agreed with either. But fewer than half of American Jews characterized such claims as antisemitic, which I found significant.
Yet there was significant outlier to this finding: the statement that Israel has no right to exist. That statement was overwhelmingly rejected and generally thought to be antisemitic. Contrary to what one might have expected, there seemed to be a significant number of Jews who had no problem with (or outright agreed with) statements claiming Israel was genocidal, but who drew a very firm line at denying its right to exist.
I found this a bit of a perplexing finding. It's not that I found the position incoherent, but it didn't seem to track any particular movement or cadre I was familiar with participating in the discourse. For example, the "thought leaders" (if you will) who tended to promote the view of Israel as an apartheid state did not, generally, take pains to affirm Israel's right to exist; in fact, they typically were quite dismissive of that claim as well. Indeed, I'm not sure I can think of any significant organization that occupies that lane of "Israel is an apartheid, genocidal state, and also it's wrong to deny its right to exist", even as statistically it seems that this is a significant quadrant of the political space.
More recent data is confirming this point, and thus deepening my confusion. A recent ADL survey found rising anti-Israel (and antisemitic) sentiments in the American public essentially across the board, some of the more alarmist findings include a third of respondents who wouldn't want to support a "pro-Israel" political candidate, almost 45% thought (at least "somewhat") that Israel was intentionally trying to inflict as much suffering on Palestinians as possible, and nearly a third thought Israel supporters controlled the media. Half of Gen Zers would be fine holding friendships with a Hamas supporter. And yet, here too, "Israel's existence" stands out as an outlier -- almost 90%(!) of all respondents thought that "Jews have the right to an independent country," a statement that may not be identical to "Israel has a right to exist," but probably is substantially overlapping for most people. Again, try to think of a major thought leader or NGO that takes the line "Jews have the right to an independent country" and also "Israel is intentionally trying to inflict as much suffering on Palestinians as possible" -- I don't know who we're talking about here. And yet, this distinction apparently does matter quite a bit.
The apparent distinctiveness of "Israel has the right to exist" or "Jews have the right to a state", which stands apart from even vitriolic criticism of Israeli policies, also can help guide how we interpret some new data on the state of antisemitism on college campuses. Eitan Hersh, who is doing absolutely essential work getting actual hard data to supplement the often "vibes-based" discourse around antisemitism, has released a series of new surveys measuring various components of Jewish (and pro-Israel) experience on campus. The first* of these, exploring the "social costs" of being Jewish as well as being a supporter of Israel on campus, found significant levels of exclusion along all fronts that rose dramatically after October 7. Some questions had nothing to do with Israel ("In order to fit in on my campus, I feel the need to hide that I am Jewish"; "People will judge me negatively if I participate in Jewish activities on campus."). But even the question about Israel -- "On my campus, Jewish students pay a social penalty for supporting the existence of Israel as a Jewish state" -- was tied to this seemingly distinct, outlier position of support Israel's existence, without any comment on particular policies (Hersh wrote that this question was "purposefully worded so that it doesn’t reference support for the current government in Israel or for any particular political view other than the right of a Jewish state to exist in the land"). Given that, the extremely high levels of social marginalization associated with this view -- over 75% say they will experience marginalization just for supporting Israel existing -- is quite alarming.
Hersh also asked a similar question of non-Jewish students: asking whether they "wouldn’t want to be friends with someone who supports the existence of Israel as a Jewish state" (so again, keyed to this seemingly distinct "Israel has a right to exist" position). While there was general uniformity amongst students of all political persuasions, liberal, moderate, and conservative, in how they answered this question (approximately 25% agreeing), the one exception was "very liberal" student for whom almost 50% agreed.
These findings might be worrisome even in taken in isolation. But juxtaposed against the broader polling which suggests that most people (Jews and non-Jews) do seem to view "Israel has no right to exist" as a distinctly problematic, redline position even if they otherwise endorse very strong criticisms of Israeli policy, and they're more worrisome still. It suggests that amongst at least some cohorts of younger Americans, the Israel-related views which trigger social sanction and penalty include even the most bare-bones "Israel has a right to exist position" that is overwhelmingly viewed as problematic not just by stalwart pro-Israel defenders, but even many erstwhile harsh critics. That, to me, is significant evidence that this problem cannot be waved aside as "conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism" -- we have a more fundamental pathology at work here that needs to be tackled.
* The other two studies Hersh released cover how campus Jewish life and identity has altered since October 7 and how political ideology mediates student attitudes about Jews and Israel. All are very interesting, all include data that will challenge anyone's presuppositions and presumptions about where antisemitism "is" on campus and in what forms it manifests. And again, I want to applaud Hersh for giving us some helpful data in a field that is saturated with anecdote and innuendo. There's a role for narrative and a role for theory (I myself am a theorist, not an empiricist), but we're only helped when we have actual, reliable data upon which to tie our theories and narratives to, and I'm incredibly grateful to Hersh and his research partners for taking this project on.
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