You might recall my post after the attempted synagogue massacre in Michigan, where I wrote that I had basically become numb to such attacks. Even though my baby attends a preschool program very similar to the one that was in session at Temple Israel, I realized that I had mentally "priced in" the possibility of such an assault. It didn't shock me; it barely affected me. I already knew things like that might happen.
There is a common line one hears from more humanitarian-inclined anti-Zionists, condemning attacks like we saw in Michigan on the grounds that they make the Zionist's point (that Jews will never be safe in the diaspora, that our only hope for security lies in an armed fortress of our own). Antisemitism hurts the Palestinian cause. I've always hated this line. For starters, I'm dubious of its truth as an empirical matter. The antisemites, after all, posit that antisemitic terrorism will not harden Jewish resolve, it will cow Jews into submission. Are they wrong? That's an empirical question, not an article of faith. More broadly, antisemitism is one of the most powerful tools of social mobilization the world has ever seen. It is not only not implausible that antisemitism might help those social movements which can successfully harness it, it would be weird if it didn't. The real question is whether anti-Zionists will oppose antisemitism even where it helps their cause. The jury is still out there.
But the more I think about it, the more I think this entire framing -- that antisemitic attacks in the diaspora are what push diaspora Jews to cleave to Zionism -- is slightly off-kilter. For me at least, it is not the attack itself that causes that sort of recoil. It's the response of the public to the attack.
Like a 10/7 in miniature, most people responded to the Michigan assault exactly appropriately -- with horror, grief, and condemnation. Good, and it's good not to overlook the fact that the humane majority was humane.
But there was a small but vocal slice of individuals, often self-styled pro-Palestinian "progressives", who were insistent that the synagogue was a fair and justified target. And then there was another small but somewhat larger slice of individuals who bent over to explain why the first slice could not be called antisemitic -- uncouth, emotional, un-PC, anything but antisemitic -- and were in fact the primary victims of a smear machine which had the temerity to use the dread slur "antisemitic".
Far more than the attack itself, that's the response that makes me despair. I can accept (maybe I shouldn't accept, but I do) that bad things might happen to me as a Jew. But it is a horribly alienating sensation to feel certain that, if something bad did happen to me, a large chunk of political energy will dedicated to explaining why I had it coming, to poring over my social media feeds to find "evidence" that I'm one of the bad ones, and to being aghast and appalled that anyone would be so gauche as to find any of this antisemitic.
The anti-Zionist counterproposal to policing and militarism and wall-building as a response to antisemitism is "safety through solidarity". Yet it is ironic that in spite of this rhetorical commitment, solidarity is the last thing they extend. Josh Yunis had a provocative post the other day, where he observed the following:
Antizionists (including antizionist Jews) like to observe – with a feigned helplessness, as if observing a passing cloud – the “inevitable” correlation between increased antisemitism in the diaspora and the actions of the state of Israel. But if we lived in a world in which antizionists were successfully making the case for their worldview, anti-Jewish hatred would decrease or remain steady in spite of Israel’s actions abroad. Antizionists would be springing into action, forming protective rings around synagogues and organizing multi-faith solidarity rallies after each new anti-Jewish atrocity, in which they proclaim that “in spite of our strong, even visceral disagreement on Israel, we want Jews of all kinds, regardless of their views on Israel and Palestine, to know that they are welcome in our communities.” (Surely by now, they’ve had enough time to internalize this lesson and organize such efforts.)
And yet: when was the last time you saw a self-identified antizionist show up at a vandalized kosher restaurant to help clean up its windows, broken in the name of a Free Palestine? Or clean the swastika graffiti off the wall of a synagogue? What we get instead from this camp is the usual dissembling, in which defenders of anti-Jewish harassment rifle through the dumpster for some kind of receipt that indicts this Jew and that Jew for having failed to sufficiently distance themselves from Israeli crimes.
The most compelling antizionist argument imaginable would be to point at the news and tell Jews, “see, even when Israel does horrific things, you are safe here.” But of course, the reverse has happened. It’s one thing for the movement to be doing the valiant work of trying to keep Jews safe, albeit unsuccessfully; it’s another entirely to not even try. Each new retreat to the same old talking point about the regrettable, but inevitable correlation between Israeli policy and antisemitism is itself evidence of a movement that isn’t really interested in trying. On the contrary, each new instance of anti-Jewish violence is trotted out not as a pained expression of their movement’s failures, of the need to do better – of asking “where did we go wrong?” (such hand-wringing questions are de rigueur for leftist Jews when it comes to Zionism) – but as a barely-veiled threat: here’s what happens when you don’t distance yourself from Israel – and you can expect a lot more of where that came from.
That possibility Yunis alludes to, of unconditional love and support, stands out because it is simultaneously so obvious and so fanciful. Of course one could do that. And of course it's actually the opposite happening. The energy here isn't actually around promoting solidarity, it's around justifying abandonment -- here's why you should shun synagogues, here's why you must expel Jewish organizations, here's why the Israeli food truck must be kicked out, here's why the Jewish lesbians can't march with us. The fact that I cannot even imagine any of these people "showing up at a vandalized kosher restaurant to help clean up its windows" -- that is what feeds the sense that the diaspora will never be there for us.
One of the first bad October 7 takes I responded to -- less than a week after the attack -- was a truly wretched essay by Gabriel Winant urging progressives not to grieve the Jews slaughtered by Hamas. Winant's argument was not exactly "these were settlers and colonizers and so had it coming." It was rather that grief over dead Israeli Jews is the fuel for Israel's genocidal machine, so we must resist our humanist impulses lest we feed the beast. My basic critique of the argument was that it was terrible causal inference -- the Israeli response to October 7 would not materially change by whether the broader world grieved or didn't grieve, so one might as well do the humanist thing and grieve. But I also wrote:
If there is even the slightest truth in Winant's framework, it is not that Israel transmutes grief into power. It's that Israel transmutes grieving alone into power. The impetus behind Zionism -- I've been in enough of these conversations to speak confidently here -- is not (just) that bad, dreadful things happen to Jews. It's that bad, dreadful things happen to Jews and Jews are the only ones who will ever care. The only people who will grieve dead Jews are Jews; the only people who will rally to the defense of threatened Jews are Jews; the only people who will feel empathy (or anything at all, really) towards frightened or traumatized Jews are Jews; the only people who will erect fortresses to protect Jews are Jews; and so ultimately the only people who can be entrusted to protect and ensure the lives of Jews are Jews. It is not grief alone, but grief alone, that fuels these instincts.
Taken from that vantage point, the scenes of collective global grief over dead Jews represent what might be the closest thing Israelis can get to a non-violent catharsis for their trauma -- the knowledge that Jews aren't actually alone, that others do care when we are pricked and bleed. If you want something that might actually sap the machine of violence and vengeance of some of its forward momentum, that's by far your best bet -- not enforced loneliness, but unconditional embrace and empathy in the moments where it is needed most.
As I said, the contretemps following Michigan felt like a miniature version of what we saw post-10/7. Thankfully, the Michigan attack was largely thwarted and had no casualties other than the attacker, but that also made the alienation from the aftermath come into sharper relief. Once again, we're confronted with the fact that in our moments of intense pain and fear the response from a non-trivial segment of our peers will be to explain why we deserve it, and the response from another segment will be to bend over backwards to explain why the true victims are their friends in the first segment who are oh-so-unfairly being maligned. With regard to Winant, I argued that even if he personally wasn't quite saying "the Jews got what was coming to them," the appetite for his argument came largely from those who "desperately don't want to accede to the overwhelming power of 'Who can begrudge tears for those lost to violence?' [and who want] an excuse, an apologia they can wield to begrudge, begrudge, begrudge." The sheer amount of energy and enthusiasm dedicated to propping up that horrible point is itself proof of the problem.
Again, I don't want to exaggerate the prevalence of these sorts of responses -- they are and remain a distinct minority compared to most people responding with basic human empathy. But if one is looking for a causal chain that ends in "and here's why diaspora Jews still believe in Zionism", I think these responses are more germane than the attack itself.
I'll close with one more thought. When New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani condemned antisemitic remarks from prominent Palestinian author Susan Abulhawa in the wake of the Michigan attack, he took some serious heat from the more irredentist wing of the pro-Palestinian movement who, of course, presented him as a traitor even as they mocked the idea that Mamdani's words would put him in the good graces of the "Zionists" (the possibility that Mamdani might not be doing this for credit, but because he actually believes it, is apparently beyond consideration). There were some Jewish voices that sought to poo-poo Mamdani's words since condemning Abulhawa's obvious antisemitism -- among other things, she's been promoting neo-Nazi "noticer" accounts and said no Israeli or Jew (she specifically clarified she didn't care if the two were conflated) should "feel safe anywhere in the world" -- was "the bare minimum". Arguable, but that's not the point.
The point was that, although Mayor Mamdani clearly has substantial, deep-felt disagreements with many (if not most) Jews on a matter of deep personal importance to him, he was saying that those disagreements do not matter in the context of a larger threat to Jewish safety and equal standing. He was committing himself to the protective ring, he was saying that no matter what Israel does over there he won't compromise on keeping Jews safe here. That's laudable. That's meaningful. I disagree with Mamdani on some important things, he disagrees with me on some important things. But the reality is he's performing the actual hard work of solidarity -- extending even to those who aren't in his political camp, even to those who represent a very hostile audience -- and that really does stand out as deserving considerable credit.
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