Lander Does For Self

The Jerusalem Post reports on Democratic congressional candidate Brad Lander being harangued at a protest (against a Hindu nationalist event hosted at Madison Square Garden) for being a "Zionist". This was notable because Lander ousted incumbent Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman in part by hitting him from the left on Israel/Palestine, and Lander has been a sharp and staunch critic of the Israeli government throughout his career (even as he still think Israel should exist).

Given that backdrop, there were a lot of crowing comments on the JPost story to the tune of "See? No matter how much you prostrate yourself before the haters, you'll never win." This is true. But the correct lesson to draw from it is exactly the opposite of what the commenters think it is. If the antisemites will be antisemitic no matter what, then the right thing to do is to do the right thing. Why not, if it won't make a difference either way? If Brad Lander thought that positioning himself as a sharp Israel critic would immunize him from antisemitic attack, he was naive and wrong. But I doubt that was his thought process. More likely, he took the positions he took because he thought they were right. So why should he let some antisemitic idiot coerce him into doing wrong?

There's another, subsidiary lesson to this story though, one that relates to the Hasan Piker line that if Jews don't distance themselves from Israel, "eventually someone’s going to come around and take action .. against American Jews." Even viewed as purely descriptive/predictive, the flaw here is the assumption that the antisemite has reasonable demands that Jews can meet. But that isn't the case. To the extent the antisemitic wants anything out of Jews, it is supplication and submission. And for that reason, the sort of person making such demands can never be fully satisfied, and the Jew who tries to accommodate them will be chasing after an endlessly moving target. Criticize Israel? Not good enough, you still call yourself a Zionist. Don't identify as a Zionist? Not good enough, your synagogue still has an Israeli flag out front. Don't attend the synagogue? Not good enough, you still go to Israeli restaurant. Don't patronize the restaurants? Not good enough, you don't cheer the thought of your Israeli family members being kidnapped or worse.

I'm told that the context for Piker's remarks was seeking to advise an anti-Zionist Jew on arguments that might persuade their co-religionists to be less Zionist -- a counter to the notion that Israel would keep Jews safe. The fact that this argument resulted in a massive, furious backlash from the bulk of the Jewish community might seem proof of the seemingly obvious point that Hasan Piker does not actually have a good read on how American Jews. But beyond that, the Lander example is one of many that shows why this logic is so toxic -- it places Jews on an infinite treadmill of appeasement that will never satisfy the antisemite (for he loves to watch the Jew run and sweat). The only thing it accomplishes is the suffocation of Jewish life, a battery of public commentary sequentially explaining why any way that any Jew does anything Jewish is wrong, wrong, wrong.

So again, if you think that taking the "right" stance on Israel/Palestine will satiate those who enjoy watching Jews squirm, you're wrong. It won't. But to reiterate: the lesson to draw from that is not to take a wrong stance. It's to take the right stance because it is right. The haters will hate you no matter what you do, so don't do it for them. Do it for self.