How To Be a Non-Antisemitic Anti-Zionist

I've long maintained that is perfectly possible, in concept, to be anti-Zionist without being antisemitic (under reasonable definitions of both "Zionism" and "antisemitic"). The simplest way of doing this is through a sort of principled anarchism which objects to anybody having a state. In that case, "anti-Zionism" is not really a specific identity so much as it is the application of a general principle objecting to the existence of states to a particular state that happens to be Jewish -- and the principle doesn't operate materially differently with respect to Arab, or Japanese, or Mexican states.

Concept doesn't always (or, in my estimation, even often) translate into practice of course. And it is not a form of "censorship" or "cheating" to insist that if one wants to radically oppose the manner in which most Jews believe in their collective liberation, it might actually require hard work and difficult, nuanced judgments demanding deep knowledge of and attentiveness to Jewish histories and experiences. Saying that there can be non-antisemitic anti-Zionism doesn't compel the conclusion that it should be easy to do it.

That said, if you want a sketch on what non-antisemitic anti-Zionism might look like in the wild, you could do worse than reading this post by Jewdas (a British-based Jewish anarchist organization) commenting on the aftermath of the Chicago Dyke March fiasco.

I put this post forward not because I "endorse" it. I'm not an anti-Zionist nor an anarchist, I don't find the existence of Israel to be an embarrassment (though I certainly find a decent chunk of its actions to be so), and I have my share of objections to the "New Diasporism" model they are promoting -- not the least of which is my skepticism that the model adequately accounts for patterns of antisemitism in practice.

But what I can say is that theirs is a principled position that can be argued against on the basis of principled reasons. It is not a ticket good for the Jewish ride only (that brand of anti-Zionism can jump in a lake). It takes Jewish experience and Jewish communal life seriously, and offers a serious accounting of alternatives to collective living through a state. I might not find their alternative compelling or persuasive, but that's a far tamer and more prosaic objection than I'd level at the standard-issue forms of anti-Zionism that, say, justify expelling Jewish marchers because they have a Star of David on their rainbow flag.

Trading Pluralism for Peace

United Torah Judaism is an Israeli political party representing the Ashkenazi ultra-orthodox. It is currently in Netanyahu's coalition, and was a major force in the scuttling of the Western Wall deal that has provoked an unprecedented backlash against Israel from the American Jewish community.

With that in your head, consider this passage

Peace in exchange for Reform Judaism. This was effectively the deal that Moshe Gafni, a veteran ultra-Orthodox politician, proposed earlier this month at the annual Haaretz Conference on Peace. Asked by the newspaper’s editor-in-chief Aluf Benn why, despite his dovish views, he insisted on aligning his party, United Torah Judaism, with the political right, Gafni dropped a political bombshell. “We will join the left when the left breaks its ties with the Reform movement,” he promised.

Like Zachary Braiterman, I just put this up as something to ponder. If the choice really is between insuring Jewish pluralism in Israel such that non-Orthodox Jews no longer face discrimination, and securing a genuine pro-peace majority in the Knesset -- what's the next move?

I don't purport to answer, I just ask (though admittedly one of the reasons I ask is to disturb the easy and comforting presumptions that fighting ultra-Orthodox domination over Israeli religious affairs necessarily goes hand-in-hand with fighting right-wing anti-Palestinian policymaking. That linkage may be broadly correct in the US, but it might not adequately describe Israeli politics).

Court Upholds Masuku Hate Speech Finding

Here's a blast from the past. Back in 2009, I started following the case of one Bongani Masuku, at that time International Secretary of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). Masuku was under fire for a bevy of antisemitic statements, virtually all of which were in the context of Palestinian solidarity work, but which kicked off when he stated that he wanted to "convey a message to the Jews of [South Africa]." Other highlights included:

• Referring to Zionists as "belong[ing] to the era of their Friend Hitler"
• Contending that "every Zionist must be made to drink the bitter medicine they are feeding our broathers (sic) and sisters in Palestine," and
• Expressing his view that "Jews are arrogant, not from being told by any Palestinian, but from what I saw myself."

Lovely. In any event, various South African Jews complained and received a judgment from the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) that Masuku's comments constituted antisemitic hate speech -- a ruling which caused COSATU to go absolutely ballistic. Since Masuku refused the SAHRC's order that he apologize, the case headed off to Equality Court in December 2009 -- and that was the last I heard of it.

Until today. The Equality Court issued its verdict, and it found against Masuku on all counts (you can read the opinion here). It unequivocally found that its comments were hate speech, were functionally targeted at Jews, and were unprotected by freedom of expression.* It again ordered him to make an unconditional apology, as well as (with COSATU) paying full litigation costs. It even went out of its way to specifically reject the expert testimony offered in support of Masuku as "partisan" in character and unreliable.

From what I can tell, this is probably not the last stage -- there still can be more appeals, and one doubts that COSATU or Masuku have come this far just to give up and apologize to the damn Jews. But right now, this is a major win for the South African Jewish community, and a huge loss for all those who seek to excuse even naked antisemitism by draping it in the cloak of "criticism of Israel."

* As I have observed previously, South Africa has very different standards regarding free speech compared to the US -- the former allows proscriptions against hate speech, the latter does not. In general, I prefer the US model, but insofar as this is a South African court applying South African law that debate is not germane.

Suppose You Said "The Weather in Tel Aviv Was Terrible...."

I write quite a bit on the claim that one "can't criticize Israel without being called anti-Semitic." Among the observations I make is that this statement, as framed, is self-evidently absurd: particular criticisms in particular contexts phrased in particular ways may be called anti-Semitic, but nobody labels all "criticism" anti-Semitic tout court. For example, if someone said "the weather is terrible in Tel Aviv", nobody would characterize that as anti-Semitic.

Consequently, I had to save this tweet by David Ward -- a former LibDem MP who has become rather notorious for anti-Semitic remarks in the past -- giving his cheeky little view on anti-Semitism charges.

Apparently weather was quite poor in Tel Aviv today - damn it just been anti-Semitic again - just can't stop can I!

— David Ward (@DWard) June 27, 2017

Actually, David, you were doing fine until the second half of the sentence. But keep on trying!

Goodbye, Sitemeter

From almost the beginning of this blog, I had a Sitemeter account to track my visitors.

It was great -- I could see who was coming to my site, and where they were coming from. Often, it was the easiest way of alerting me to somebody linking to my blog. It also gave me a sense of the ebbs and flows of The Debate Link's traffic (it never really recovered from the clerkship hiatus, alas -- though the general slump in the "blog market" didn't help matters). And since I've had it for so long, it provided a steady tick-tick-tick of this blog's progression -- like pencil marks tracking a child's growth.

Sadly, Sitemeter is being permanently shut down July 1st. The tracker was clearly in rough shape -- I couldn't even see the widget on my blog's footer anymore -- but the core of it still did its job until I finally uninstalled it last night. It's being replaced with SiteCounter. We'll see how that goes, but seeing as how I hate all change, I expect to dislike it (Blogger also has an internal stat counter, but I'm also finding it unwieldy. Because again, change).

Even more sadly, there's no way to import the data over to my new tracker. So I'll just put the final tally here for posterity.

Starting from December 13, 2004 (so just six months after The Debate Link launched) through June 27, 2017, The Debate Link has had:

665,042 visitors
961,698 page views

Thanks, Sitemeter. And thanks to all 665,000+ visitors, too.

Travel Ban Case Going to the Supreme Court

The United States Supreme Court has agreed to hear the challenges to President Trump's travel ban memorandum. Lower courts had enjoined the ban, finding (in various cases) that it exceeded authority under the INA and/or it was motivated by impermissible anti-Muslim animus. The Supreme Court has maintained the injunction for those persons who have a significant connection to the United States (i.e., those with family members in America, an employment offer, students at American universities), but stayed the injunction for those who have no such connections. Justices Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch dissented because they would have lifted the injunction across the board.

In terms of tea-leaf reading, I would characterize myself in the "this is not a great sign" camp. Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch's votes are pretty well-assured at this point (not that any of them were really up for grabs to begin with). For the rest, the decision to maintain the injunction for those with close family connections could signal that the Court might try to do some fancy footwork on standing to knock out claims by John Q. Random Muslim while otherwise rejecting the ban as applied to those with a significant nexus to America. But maybe not.

On the merits (and I'll focus only on the constitutional issues rather than the INA claims), I've already written quite a bit about the efforts by some to act as if it's somehow unfair to use straightforward evidence of discriminatory intent to prove discriminatory intent (though I will also take this opportunity to link to this excellent post by Leah Litman, Helen Murillo, and Steve Vladeck). With Roberts and Kennedy as the swing vote, this becomes all the more pressing.

Over the years, we've seen a growing trend whereby many people -- including federal judges -- view discrimination claims as basically mean. By that, I'm saying that they view the claim "X law or Y decision unlawfully discriminates against me" as basically saying little more than "X or Y was done by assholes."  At which point the listener thinks: "What a mean thing to say about someone else! How uncivil, to call them an asshole!" "Discrimination", as a concept, ceases to have analytical content which we look over and check against a particular fact pattern. Instead, it is taken as a sort of slur or insult, at the very least bad manners, which should rarely if ever be heard in polite society.

In conjunction with this, the federal judiciary has for years been pushing the burden of proof in discrimination claims towards a singularity where the only way to win such a case is when either (a) the provision specifically says it is targeting group X or (b) the person or organization responsible for the provision admits that it's goal is to target group X. This, conveniently, allows virtually all of those "mean" discrimination cases to be tossed out -- I mean, who could be stupid enough to admit that their goal is to explicitly target a particular outgroup?

Well, the President of the United States, apparently. And so we return to familiar ground: Sure, Donald Trump admitted that his purpose in passing the travel ban was discriminatory. But it's just so rude to act as if that's proof of some sort of illicit discriminatory motive! How could one, in Chief Justice Roberts famous words, "tar [him] with the brush of bigotry", just because his statements and actions give every reason to think that said "brush" is wholly and entirely warranted?

Anyway, I suspect that this will be the operative issue for Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kennedy -- whether they'll be able to resist their deep, deep instinct that it's just impolite, just too uncivil, too gauche, to say that the President of the United States is a discriminator. My tone might illustrate why I'm in the "this is not a great sign" camp.

I'll say one final thing. If the Supreme Court does uphold the travel ban, I am quite confident as to the historical trajectory of the precedent:

• In 20 years, the case will stop being cited.
• In 40 years, the case will be viewed by the legal profession as an embarrassment; a naked capitulation to panicked racism and bigotry.
• In 60 years, the case will be denounced as an obvious mistake -- so obvious that it scarcely needs mentioning that we'd never, ever repeat it in today's enlightened age.
• And in 75 years, the courts will do it all over again.

That's Funny, This Story About Anti-Semitism Keeps Repeating Itself

One more post on the expulsion of Jewish marchers carrying a rainbow flag with a Star of David on it from a "Dyke March" in Chicago. In a statement, the March organizers defended their actions, in part, by saying that the Jews in question "repeatedly expressed support for Zionism during conversations with Chicago Dyke March Collective members." On this, I could not agree more with Jaz Twersky:

It is not reasonable or fair to interrogate every Jew about their views on Israel just because they're Jewish https://t.co/9wpaSvo2Rv

— Jaz Twersky (@WordNerdKnitter) June 25, 2017

But this also made me think of a passage from Steve Cohen's seminal "That's Funny, You Don't Look Anti-Semitic." (this is from the 2005 introduction, recounting reactions to the original publication in 1984):

That's Funny You Don't Look Anti-Semitic did create ripples. It managed to split the JSG [Jewish Socialist Group] whose then dominant leadership thought it might offend the Socialist Workers Party. It resulted in some pretty dreadful correspondence over many weeks in journals like Searchlight and Peace News. A pamphlet was written denouncing me as a "criminal".  

There was a particular review—in Searchlight—one sentence of which I will never forget. Every Jew on the left will know that terrible syndrome whereby, whatever the context and wherever one is, we will be tested by being given the question "what is your position on Zionism?" Wanna support the miners—what's your position on Zionism? Against the bomb—what's your position on Zionism? And want to join our march against the eradication of Baghdad, in particular the eradication of Baghdad—what's your position on Zionism? And we all know what answer is expected in order to pass the test. It is a very strong form of anti-Semitism based on assumptions of collective responsibility. Denounce Zionism, crawl in the gutter, wear a yellow star and we'll let you in the club. Which is one reason why I call myself an Anti-Zionist Zionist—at least that should confuse the bastards.  

Anyhow this particular review, noting that my book actually did attack Zionism, said "It is not enough to trot out platitudes, as he does, about being against Zionism and in support of the Palestinian struggle". So I'm not allowed into the club even though I fulfil the entry requirements. I'm not allowed in because I recognise and oppose the existence of anti-Semitism on the Left—and this therefore renders all support for Palestinians a "platitude". Well it ain't me who's here confusing anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.

Wanna support the miners--what's your position on Zionism? Want to be a gay person--what's your position on Zionism? There's nothing new under the sun here. The story didn't change from 1984 to 2005, and it didn't change from 2005 to 2017.

As should be obvious, I don't think one should have to "attack Zionism" to be part of the club (though I've always loved Cohen's "Anti-Zionist Zionist" descriptor -- "that should confuse the bastards" indeed!). The point, rather, is that the Zionism or anti-Zionism rarely is the point. The point is the tight regulation of Jewish political activities, under which Jewish access to progressive political spaces is always provisional. Having a Star of David shouldn't be a license for an interrogation on one's views about Zionism, and if the issue does come up Jews should not have to engage in ritual self-abasement to pass the test. When those requirements are in play -- and for Jews, they're always in play -- antisemitism is alive and well.

Who Could Have Known That Characterizing All Jewish Political Agency as a Conspiracy Could Lead To Antisemitism?

I briefly posted last night about the exclusion of queer Jews carrying a rainbow flag with a Star of David on it being excluded from a Chicago gay pride parade. The march was not the main Chicago Pride parade but a smaller "Dyke March" which claimed to be specifically interested in fostering greater inclusion and diversity.

The Windy City Times (a gay periodical in Chicago) now has some more information on the exclusion. While the march organizers have yet to issue a statement, defenders of the expulsion of Jewish marchers have unsurprisingly seized upon the "pinkwashing" claim as their best gambit. Given that one of the expelled marchers is an officer with the LGBT group A Wider Bridge -- an organization often unjustly accused of pinkwashing on the basis of little more evidence than "they work with queer Israelis" -- I expect we'll hear plenty more contentions that a rainbow flag with a Star of David is actually best thought of as a propaganda arm of the Israeli government seeking to downplay the occupation.

I've written quite a bit about why pinkwashing is an absurd charge, and one that is only intelligible through antisemitic notions of Jewish conspiracy whereby any actions Jews take is presumed to be part of some sort of plot. This shows the inevitable endpoint of that analysis: If you're a Jew, and you're open about it, the presumption is you must be an agent of Israeli hasbara unless you engage in public self-flagellation demonstrating the contrary. A Star of David suffices to show you're in on the plot. A Star of David with a rainbow is enough to infer your true objectives. What else could you possibly be doing at a gay pride parade other than serving as an agent of a foreign power?

Simply put, when you can't conceptualize Jewish political action but through the lens of some sort of conspiratorial effort to prop up Israeli policies in the West Bank and Gaza, it's utterly unsurprising that simply carrying a Star of David will become sufficient proof of "pinkwashing". "Pinkwashing", as a concept, merges entirely into a politics of antisemitic exclusion precisely because it is predicated on being unable to hold multiple thoughts in one's head at the same time -- the Star of David is a Jewish symbol and it's on the Israeli flag! Jews may be proud of Israel's relative protections of LGBT rights and sharply critical of its policies towards Palestinians!

One final thing. On twitter, some people questioned if the expulsion of these marchers might be unlawful as a form of anti-Jewish discrimination. I believe that the answer is clearly no, under the precedent set by Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Boston. But there is some irony: Hurley allowed an Irish pride parade to exclude gay marchers from the proceedings insofar as the parade organizers disagreed with the "message" of their would-be co-marchers (the message, apparently, being that there were Irish-American gay people who were proud of that identity). And the same rule that permits an Irish pride parade to be homophobic, allows a Gay pride parade to be anti-Semitic.

UPDATE: I've finally seen a statement by a march organizer, Iliana Figueroa:

"Yesterday during the rally we saw three individuals carrying Israeli flags super imposed on rainbow flags. Some folks say they are Jewish Pride flags. But as a Collective we are very much pro-Palestine, and when we see these flags we know a lot of folks who are under attack by Israel see the visuals of the flag as a threat, so we don't want anything in the [Dyke March] space that can inadvertently or advertently express Zionism," she said. "So we asked the folks to please leave. We told them people in the space were feeling threatened."

First of all, these flags were not "Israeli flags super imposed on rainbow flags." They had a Star of David on a Rainbow background. This is an "everything is critical of Israel" move, where an antisemitic action is reformulated as anti-Israel expression, which then will be lobbed back at Jews accused of being unable to tolerate "criticism of Israel" and/or (ironically enough) unwilling to cease "conflating" Israel and Jewishness.

Second, the "we don't want anything in the space that can inadvertently or advertently express Zionism" -- as applied against a visible Star of David -- couldn't illustrate my above points better if I had written it. The point of "pinkwashing", as an accusation, is to render any organized act of queer Jewish agency that is not torch-and-pitchfork anti-Zionist into the equivalent of an Israeli governmental press release. Once that's the standard, it is unsurprising and predictable that basic expressions of Jewish identity will become illicit as "inadvertently express[ing] Zionism," and the upshot is that Jews are excluded virtually in toto.

Figueroa said that a full statement will be forthcoming "after it finishes crafting one, and that members have asked pro-Palestinian organizations and others to release statements of solidarity with Dyke March as well." Again, note how the easiest move for many groups, when faced with Jewish claims of marginalization, is to shift as quickly as possible onto the "Israel" terrain as a means of delegitimizing the Jewish narrative. This response doesn't remedy the anti-Semitism (indeed, it scarcely seeks to address it) -- it doubles-down on it.

UPDATE 2x: Statement is out, and as predicted "A Wider Bridge" gets exactly the treatment I anticipated. On the other hand, the Human Rights Campaign issued a statement of condemnation.

UPDATE 3x: I wrote a follow-up post: "That's Funny, This Story About Anti-Semitism Keeps Repeating Itself."

Stiff Competition in the Gross Sweepstakes

Which is grosser? Ha'aretz saying the Maccabi Games "make 1936 Berlin Olympics seem liberal"?

Or a Chicago gay pride parade that was specifically presented as being extra-concerned with inclusion kicking out Jewish marchers for having a Rainbow flag adorned with a Star of David?

Man, tough call.

How To Tokenize with Proportions

13% of American Muslims voted for Donald Trump.

That's a minuscule proportion. It is around half the proportion that Hillary Clinton got in Idaho. It is fair to say that Muslims overwhelmingly voted against Trump, just like it is fair to say that Idahoans voted overwhelmingly against Clinton.

13% also translates, roughly, into "1 in 8". And when you think of it that way, it shouldn't be that hard to find a Muslim Trump supporter. Statistically, all you'd need to do is know eight American Muslims, and one of them is probably a Trump voter. And across a population of roughly 3.3 million Muslims, that means there are roughly 412,500 American Muslims who support Trump -- a lot of people! Yet it would be clearly, obviously wrong to use those "lot of people" to try and argue against the above conclusion that "Muslims overwhelmingly voted against Trump."

In short, it is simultaneously true that "Muslims overwhelmingly dislike Trump" and "it is not hard to find Muslims who do like Trump." Likewise, we can simultaneously know that Idaho is exceptionally conservative and know that finding liberal Idahoans doesn't take any herculean effort.

When one doesn't keep those two thoughts in mind, it is very easy to mislead oneself. I've noted that 13% is also the percentage of UK Jews who planned to vote Labour last election, but that still means it should not be remotely hard to find Jews -- quite a few Jews -- who are loud-and-proud for Jeremy Corbyn. If one is a Corbyn fan, one can (accurately!) think "look at all the Jews I know who support Corbyn" and then (inaccurately) conclude that the stories of widespread Jewish consternation over Corbyn are ginned-up nonsense. Same with Black Republicans -- they're simultaneously rare and not that difficult to find, and so it is easy for conservatives to dupe themselves into thinking they have no race problem by pointing out all the Black Republicans out there.

Ditto when one sees big crowds of angry constituents in a deeply conservative or liberal representative's town hall meeting. One can see those and think "wow -- even here people are turning against [Insert Party]!" But even in the most electorally lopsided districts, there are still going to be quite a few members of the other side -- certainly enough to pack an auditorium, if they're feeling motivated.

Or take this article, "To Understand White Liberal Racism, Read These Emails." It is about angry emails sent to school administrators regarding the decision by Seattle school teachers to wear "Black Lives Matter" t-shirts. The article observes that these emails came from one of the whitest, most affluent" and "staunchly liberal neighborhoods" in the city, places "dotted with rainbow yard signs that say 'All are welcome.'"

Applying the "staunchly liberal" label to these neighborhoods is entirely justified. The (Democratic) state senator in this part of Seattle was last re-elected with 80% of the vote. That's a crushing margin! But it still means that 1 in 5 voters in the district cast their ballot for Republicans. On the one hand, that's not a lot of people. On the other, that's a lot of people! Certainly, if 1-in-5 school parents have retrogressively conservative views on  race, that'd be enough to make their voices known in a letter-writing campaign.

Now, to be clear, it is entirely possible -- plausible even -- that these emails didn't come from the 1-in-5 Republicans but from the 4-in-5 Democrats. "Democrats" are a wide tent, and there are, indeed, plenty of putative progressives who are on a hair-trigger about race issues and would be prime candidates to send out letters like these. I'm not saying that because these emails were racist, they couldn't have come from liberals. They very much could have.

What I am saying is that we can't say "because this neighborhood is staunchly liberal, these emails must have come from liberals." That's because that conclusion entails a shift from the accurate observation that this part of Seattle is overwhelmingly liberal, to the inaccurate observation that any political or social activity substantial enough to make it onto the social radar screen must be emerging from liberals. It's quite possible for conservatives in a place like Northeast Seattle to be simultaneously a marginal presence and a visible one, under the right circumstances. Ditto liberals in a place like Idaho.

More broadly, this is just a particular example of an obvious point: words with the same meaning can nonetheless communicate very different messages. When we want to erase the minority presence, we talk in percentages (20% is teensy-tiny!). When we want to elevate it, we talk in ratios (1:5 is really common!). Both are right, and in fact both connotations are right: a minority of 20% is a very small minority (as against an 80% majority), but 1:5 people is very common. Keeping both connotations in mind is good deliberative practice. Jumping from one to the other as argumentatively-necessary is very bad practice.

No Lessons Tonight

I have no lessons to offer from the results of tonight's Georgia special election. Mostly, this is because any "lessons" you'll hear tonight will almost invariably be "Democrats should do the thing I already thought Democrats should do", and I doubt I'm so dispassionate as to be able to resist that inflection in my analysis.

To the extent I have a takeaway, well, I get -- and basically agree with -- the argument that these results still show a huge swing in the Democratic direction compared to previous House results. Taking a district where Republicans were winning over 60% of the vote and making it nip-and-tuck is a big deal.

At the same time, Jon Ossoff got roughly the same percentage of the vote in the GA-06 as Hillary Clinton did. By and large, the people who vote for Trump are and continue to be fundamentally fine with Trump. All that's happened, all he represents -- they're okay with it. They like it even. I suspect they revel in it.

So mostly right now I'm just sad. I'm sad because I get the sense that if the median Georgia Trump voter knew that I -- Berkeley-residing, academically-employed, advanced-degree-holding, Jewish David -- was sad, they'd be happy. They like that I'm sad. They like that I'm scared. It's high-time people "like me" (whatever that means) were a bit antsy. It's long past due that I recognized that this isn't my country, it's their country. If I'm unhappy, that isn't a regrettable byproduct of important policy reforms they deeply believe in, and it's not a challenge to try to reach out and make me believe that these reforms can speak to me too. It's not the means, it's the end. It's not part of the job, it's why they took the job.

Maybe I'm wrong. But I certainly don't get the sense that they care. One never sees the "middle-income conservative white Christians need to reach out and heal a divided country" take out of the right-wing press.

So I'm sad. And to be clear: Being sad doesn't mean you stop working. And it doesn't mean you stop believing in other people, or assume there's no hope for change. But you're allowed to be sad. You're allowed your sensibilities.

Epistemic Antisemitism

On Twitter, I flagged this great article on antisemitism in left spaces by Spencer Sunshine and promised to write more about it. Then I got distracted. But it really does deserve at least a little additional comment, because there was a particular passage I wanted to highlight:

It’s almost always deeply frustrating to convince Leftists to sever these ties [to antisemitic actors] — but often it’s achievable. Leftists know these people taint their movement, even though they are often hesitant to be drawn into what seem like endless controversies about anti-Semitism. There is almost always disbelief when you broach the topic, and a tendency to dismiss any documentation that comes from the normal watchdog organizations. And it can also make you the center of unwanted attention; Barrett is running a smear campaign against me in retaliation for exposing him. But Leftists usually change their mind once they understand that these unsavory alliances generate critical media attention. 

Leftist Jews often come to me privately and complain about anti-Semitism they’ve experienced, but feel cowed into being silent about it. But the more people speak out against this from within the Left, the less likely the antisemitic conspiracy theorists are to find a welcoming platform.

The emphasized portion (emphasis my own) is what I wanted to highlight. It goes to what I want to call "epistemic antisemitism". Epistemic antisemitism is the process and practices which discredit Jews as knowers, particularly as knowers of their own experience (e.g., their experiences as victims of antisemitism). The default "disbelief" that comes when Jews say "that's antisemitic" -- and Sunshine soft-pedals here, since it is not usually just "disbelief" but a far more aggressive assumption that the antisemitism claim is (as usual) being made it bad faith -- is a particularly dangerous case. Prejudice yields the injustice, and then insulates said prejudice from critical review. In this way, antisemitism claims can be routinely dismissed across the board.

To be clear: "epistemic antisemitism" is not solely or, I'd suggest, even primarily a "left" phenomenon. The right is no more willing to credit antisemitism charges when it implicates them and theirs. To the extent "left" antisemitsm gets more attention, it is because most Jews are part of the (broadly defined) left and so exclusion there hits closer to home. It's also because of a sense that the left has the methodological tools that render it theoretically capable of addressing this wrong in a way the right does not (the right doesn't even purport to believe in things like "be appropriately deferential to marginalized groups when they articulate their own experiences).

In any event, if we are to root out antisemitism in our movements, I firmly believe that tackling epistemic antisemitism has to a top priority -- it stands as the guardian shielding all the other forms from challenge. And so it needs to be made crystal-clear that one cannot hold oneself out as an ally of the Jews if one is not willing to listen attentively, respectfully, and open-mindedly when they proffer critiques -- even when those critiques sting, even when they challenge deeply-felt commitments.

The Joys of Social Tragedy

There's perhaps no type of person I'm more contemptuous of than those whose first response to a major social tragedy -- a terrorist attack, a mass shooting, a violent attack on a politician or political activist, and so on -- is gleeful musing on who they're now allowed to hate (or, typically, hate more than usual).

These are the people who get excited about what a suicide bombing "tells us about the Palestinians". They're amped about what a case of "price tag" settle violence "reveals about Zionists." They're positively giddy about what the shooting of Steve Scalise "illustrates about progressives". They can't wait to regale us about what the Manchester bombing "proves about Muslims."

Sometimes there are important social messages that are excavated by a major tragedy. They have real consequences after all, and they can be genuinely illustrative about certain threats various groups face or certain ideologies which have purchase.

My objection isn't to genuine and careful attempts to work through those meanings. Again -- it's to the giddiness that often accompanies it. They're more excited that their prejudices have been (in their minds) verified than they are that something terrible has happened. Their response is virtually never a "genuine and careful attempt" to craft a warranted conclusion from the full body of evidence. It is rather an expression of ideological ecstasy that dances upon graves even as it cloaks itself in the barest veil of solidarity.

It's a sick instinct. It's also an alarmingly commonplace one. I wish people would knock it off.

Blog Bar Mitzvah

The Debate Link turned 13 years old yesterday. It is now, officially, a Jewish adult (in blogosphere years, by contrast, it is a hobbling old man).

As always, thanks to all my loyal readers. Whether you've been around since the beginning or are a new arrival, I appreciate you spending some time in my little corner of the internet.

Haredi, Mizrahi, Feminist ... Labor Prime Minister?

An interesting profile of Dina Dayan, who is running an outsider campaign to be Labor's new leader (more realistically, she's aiming for a seat in the next Knesset).

“I am your fears,” says Dayan, thrusting a finger into the camera as she rips into the Labor Party for “talking about the periphery, instead of letting the periphery talk.” Describing herself as a “Haredi, Mizrahi, un-photogenic woman,” Dayan is explicitly staking her claim as an outsider who represents the disadvantaged groups who Labor elites fear will steal “their” country. To restore the left to power, Dayan says it is time to put the needs of the country’s social periphery into focus, instead of “more of the same for 40 years.”

It's part of an ongoing revitalization of Mizrahi identity in Israel (as well as outside).

Dayan also presents challenges for Ashkenazi Jews such as myself regarding how to relate to particular sort of subaltern challenge. There are, unfortunately, some aspects of her candidacy that should make lefty Jews like myself twitchy:

Dayan says she wants to win the votes of traditional, Mizrahi Israelis who vote Likud—and to do this, has stepped outside of party consensus. She has hired as her campaign team the political strategists behind the infamous text messages sent by the Likud in the 2015 election, warning that “Arab voters are going en masse to the polls.” And her campaign video sympathetically features a picture of the parents of Elor Azaria, the IDF soldier convicted of shooting dead a disarmed Palestinian terrorist in Hebron last year. She later explained: “[Azaria] is the result of a system that abandoned the periphery. His action was a result of distress, ignorance, and neglect, which causes political radicalization. And the left, instead of understanding the problem in depth, prefers to lock itself in its ivory tower.”

The use of the "Arab voters" strategists is, in my view, rather straight-forwardly gross. But with respect to the Azaria bit, I think there are choices in how you read it. Is it an apologia for a man who breached the laws of war (and IDF rules) in gunning down a disarmed combatant? One can say so, and then call it day -- we should have nothing to do with her. But the comment at the bottom suggests something more complicated -- a call to look at disparities in Israeli society that produce figures like Azaria, and a "left" that prefers simple morality plays to actually tackling these problems in depth.

It is not infrequent, when reading the words or views of communities-not-ours, that we encounter such ambiguities -- passages or positions which can be read in a  narrow and self-validating way or which serve as an invitation to imagine a more nuanced or complex orientation. If we don't like the group, our temptation is to choose the former -- a reading which enables us to preserve our pre-existing biases and confirm our instinct that they need not be engaged with further. By contrast, when we like or are sympathetic to the group in question, go the latter route -- demanding context and issuing a plea for understanding.

It seems to me that the latter instinct is a better one -- and one, I hasten to add, that does not close off avenues for critique. I can think that Dayan is too soft towards the violence enacted by persons like Azaria (and the use of the "Arab voters" strategists is suggestive here as well), without going that next step and constructed her as an unmediated apologist for it. It is a symptom of our deliberative degradation that declining to make a complicated question simple along one dimension is frequently presumed to mean that we're committed to simplifying it along another.

Exploiting Queer Trust

There's been a lot of commentary -- much good, some not -- about the decision by Jewish Voice for Peace to "target" (their organizer's words) the LGBTQ group Jewish Queer Youth for infiltration and disruption at the Celebrate Israel march last week (I highly recommend JQY's statement on the event). JQY is oriented towards the at-risk Jewish queer community, especially Orthodox Jewish youth who may not have other safe or comfortable venues where they can come out. Accordingly, JVP's decision to target JQY -- and with it, a particularly vulnerable Jewish and queer population -- has been met with withering criticism by much of the rest of the Jewish community.

But I particularly want to highlight this column in Bustle by Hannah Simpson, a transgender activist with JQY who was present at the parade. JVP has defended its actions by noting that the infiltrators were themselves queer Jews. But Simpson explains, in succinct and cogent terms, just how awful JVP's actions were in the context of an organization like JQY and its efforts to provide a safe and welcoming space for at-risk queer youth.

This attack was nothing short of hurtful and terrifying. JVP violated a key tenet of the work Jewish Queer Youth and so many pro-LGBTQ groups do across this country. We welcome new members seeking hope and community through our programming, often before they are “out” anywhere else. We emphasize being open and accepting all who come through our doors. However, thanks to JVP’s violation of this trust, Jewish Queer Youth and other groups nationwide may need to scrutinize new members. Our priority is making our members feel safe, but this attack shows our openness may be abused to put our members in jeopardy.

This is really important. Part of what JQY provides for at-risk queer Jews is a space of trust. A space where they won't be viewed with suspicion, where they'll be welcomed unconditionally. Indeed, one of the more powerful portions of the JQY statement was where it went out of its way to affirm that

We also respect that there are JQY teens with strong feelings against Israel.  Some even choose to peacefully protest the parade. JQY stands with them too. Support is never contingent on point of view. Our JQY guiding Jewish principle is Eilu v' Eilu divrei elokim chaim - both these and those ideas, even when in conflict, are simultaneously the living word of G-d.

Contrast that statement with JVP's fundamental disrespect for queer Jews who don't adopt their views. It is striking.

To clear: JVP's action worked because JQY was built around the principle of not questioning who decided to walk with them. This is, sadly, a very common tactic of reactionary and illiberal militancy: exploiting open society in order to undermine it. The effect -- very often the hope -- is to undermine those open features and replace them instead with a cloistered environment of fear and mistrust. In the context of the LGBT community, it takes features that are desperately needed and leverages them against the queer population for the sake of political theater.

For vulnerable Jews who often lack for spaces where they can simply be queer, Orthodox, political, apolitical, happy, celebratory, among friends, JVP's action was more than just "anti-Israel protest". It took away something very rare, and very precious.

In electing to proceed anyway, either JVP didn't think about that consequence. Or it did.

Red Crescent Chief Complains of Hamas Firing From Their Hospitals

The Secretary General of the Red Crescent revealed that Hamas had deliberately fired rockets from Red Crescent medical facilities during the 2014 conflict, prompting retaliation from Israeli forces. Worse, he said that Hamas forces viewed the Red Crescent as spies or undercover agents, and fired upon staff as they were fleeing the area.

The news isn't exactly earth-shattering -- it's long been reported that Hamas used civilian and humanitarian shields during military operations -- but it is interesting both that this charge is now coming from top officials in the Red Crescent and being reported in Arab newspapers (the source about is the The National in the United Arab Emirates).


UPDATE: Elder of Ziyon gives some reasons to doubt the veracity of these reports. What a world we live in, where the UAE accuses Hamas of war crimes against Palestinians and a Zionist blogger throws cold water on the claims!

Everything is "Criticism of Israel"

The "Livingstone Formulation" (coined by David Hirsh) is the claim -- made in response to allegations of antisemitism -- that such allegations are made in bad faith as a means to silence or squelch all criticism of Israel.

It is an interesting fact about the Livingstone Formulation that the event which inspired it actually had nothing to do with Israel. Former London Mayor Ken Livingstone was accused of antisemitism after he compared a Jewish reporter to a "Nazi war criminal" and a "concentration camp guard". One would think the antisemitic nature of such statements could easily be disassociated from any particular beliefs about Israel, as the controversy had nothing to do with Israel at all. But Livingstone defended himself by declaring that "For far too long the accusation of antisemitism has been used against anyone who is critical of the policies of the Israeli government, as I have been".

In short, Livingstone took a non-Israel related instance of antisemitism and transformed it into a case of "criticism of Israel", then used it to complain about Jews who just couldn't tolerate criticism of Israel. From the get-go, the applicability of the "Livingstone Formulation" did not depend on the antisemitism in question actually being Israel-related.

There are many instances of this. Some are public: The courts which held that firebombing a synagogue was not antisemitic but criticism of Israel, and the guy on my twitter feed who fretted that a contrary decision "Sounds too much like: you can't criticise Israel because it's anti-Semitic." Some are private: The time I sent an anti-discrimination paper out for comments and one reader suggested removing the "Israeli foreign policy examples" (there were none, but there were antisemitism examples -- how was it that they got confused?).

Now consider this flyer, about prominent Labour activist and top Jeremy Corbyn ally Jackie Walker.




"To oppose Israel is not to be anti-semitic" (presumably that's Walker). Chomsky offers his own blurb of endorsement: "I wholeheartedly support the right of anyone to criticise Israel without being branded anti-semitic."

All of this might make one wonder what it was that Jackie Walker did that brought these terrible, horrible, no-good, clearly unfair accusations of antisemitism?

Well, she claimed that Jews were "the chief financiers of the slave trade." Then she criticized Holocaust Memorial Day for being exclusionary to other victims of mass atrocity (#AllGenocidesMatter). Finally, she questioned the need for security at Jewish schools and institutions, suggesting Jewish concerns about being targeted were exaggerated or embellished.

None of these are Israel-related. Yet Walker recasts the debate as one about the freedom to criticize Israel, and her backers enthusiastically endorse the transformation. Clearly, they have a point: if one can't contend that Jews were chief financiers of the slave trade hundreds of years before Israel was established, what possible space is there to criticize Israel?

There is an element of farce to this. It does not squelch pro-Palestinian advocacy to call efforts to tie Jews to the slave trade antisemitic. Such superficially ludicrous arguments only work because, for all the claims about people who conflate "criticism of Israel" with "antisemitism", there seem to be far more who conflate "criticism of antisemitism" with "intolerance of criticism of Israel". Were it not for that belief -- the cleansing power of anti-Zionism -- we would not see people try to take things that are transparently not about Israel and convert them into it. If everything is "criticism of Israel", then nothing can be antisemitic -- because what is "antisemitism" but the bad faith effort to silence critics of Israel?

Jewish Thoughts on the UK Election

If ever I had sympathy for the plight of "Never Trump" Republicans, it was watching the UK election returns.

Being a progressive, my politics generally align far more with Labour than they would with the Tories. And that would be even without the Conservatives' disastrous embrace of Brexit. Yet like most Jews, I deeply, deeply mistrust Jeremy Corbyn. The last polls of the Jewish vote suggest that only thirteen percent were planning to vote Labour this cycle -- the same proportion, incidentally, as that of Muslims voting for Trump. And even if one thinks that stopping a hard Brexit is the single most important item on the UK agenda -- and I think that's plausible -- the fact that Corbyn himself is at best soft on the issue means that I couldn't even get enthusiastic on that issue.

That said. UK voters don't vote directly for their Prime Minister -- just their local MP. And my sense is that Jewish voters tend to like their MPs (Labour or Conservative) just fine. While several articles in the Jewish press are noting how Labour underperformed in several "bagel belt" districts where anti-Corbyn antipathy might have have saved a few marginal Tory seats, I think it's easy to overstate that story. For starters, for every seat where Corbyn was hurt by the perception that he was tolerant of antisemitism, there may have been another where he was bolstered by the perception that he was standing up to the overbearing Zionists.

But more broadly, I think it's almost certainly true that most people just didn't care about the antisemitism issue. And while that's sobering, it also means that Jewish MPs and their allies actually tended to do fine. Labour critics of Corbynista antisemitism -- like Luciana Berger, Louise Ellman, and Ruth Smeeth -- rode the Labour wave as much as anyone else did. Non-Jewish MPs known for their good relations with the Jewish community likewise saw their margins shoot up as well -- these include Tulip Siddiq, Wes Streeting, and Naz Shah.

Nonetheless, we shouldn't deflect. One of the critical lessons of Donald Trump's success is that all of his supposedly "beyond the pale" characteristics -- the racism, the authoritarianism, the anti-intellectualism -- none of that actually matters. Those of us who had hoped that Election 2016 would be a slap in the face to an increasingly radicalized Republican Party instead watched them learn that they could do all of these things and it was fine. And so, likewise, one of the lessons the left will learn from Corbyn's relative success is that one in fact can completely dismiss and ignore the concerns of terrorized Jews and nobody will care. That's not good. And that's going to have consequences down the line.

It really was an impossible dilemma. Punishing Labour for normalizing antisemitism on the left would mean emboldening isolationist and xenophobic currents rapidly occupying the right -- currents which themselves will invariably lead to antisemitism. Anshel Pfeffer was not wrong in observing that the choice for UK Jews is "Anti-Semitism Today, or Tomorrow?"

All in all, a hung parliament is about the best result I could hope for. While this was certainly an exceeds-expectations performance for Jeremy Corbyn, I admit to being a bit confused at how "getting 55 fewer seats and 800,000 fewer votes than the Tories" counts as "winning". As Matt Yglesias observed, "the left thesis in the US is 'Bernie would've won' not 'Bernie would have lost narrowly to Trump.' That's what Hillary did!" Kept in perspective, I can keep a relatively optimistic view of what happened last night. The main thing Labour successfully accomplished was throwing a serious wrench in Theresa May's efforts to negotiate a hard Brexit. And that is an unambiguously good thing.

Yet More College Student Entitlement

A student at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point is suing her poetry professor and demanding that a court award her an "A" in the class (as well as suspend or fire the teacher).

Man, I am so sick of entitled millennial brats demanding special-snowfl -- what's that?

The student is 59 years old? And her complaint centers around the class being too focused on LGBT poetry?

Ahem. As I was saying: it's about time that someone stood up to PC-culture run amok at our public universities, which are after all funded by taxpayer dollars. Maybe if universities started to treat their students more like customers, we'd see less of these outrageously offensive and triggering classes, and more attention to "improv[ing] a student's welfare".