Regrouping American Jewish Group Strategy: Nazarian versus Harris

This JTA article -- surveying some American Jewish leaders on the new polling showing that between a quarter and a third of American Jews believe some very harsh things about Israel -- illuminates an interesting divide in the American Jewish establishment. All agree the poll shows a "problem" that needs a response. But in terms of specifics, we're saying a breakdown into two camps.

The first is well exemplified by ADL bigwig Sharon Nazarian. She argues that the problem is that major American Jewish organizations' incessant rah-rah-rahing of Israel ends up driving people away insofar as it doesn't paint a "realistic" picture of the state.:

Nazarian says the traditional mainstream organizational focus on, and lionization of, Israel is becoming a liability and turning people away.

“This narrative about Israel needs to be a more realistic one, one that [brings] attention to the strengths of the state, and to its weaknesses,” said Nazarian, a philanthropist who is president of a family foundation that funds research into education.

The second camp is embodied in AJC chieftain David Harris, who locates the problem in a failure of effective Israel education:

“A main source of disconnect between segments of American Jews and the reality of Israel is deficient education,” David Harris, the CEO of the American Jewish Committee, one of the rally’s sponsors, said in an email. 

Harris pointed to an AJC poll last month that showed only 37% of respondents described their Israel education growing up as “strong,” and to separate data showing that young people increasingly are getting their news from social media “where untruths are rampant,” he said.  

“Clearly, greater efforts at educating American Jews, especially younger cohorts, about all aspects of Israeli society, and connecting them with their counterparts in Israel, are critical for ensuring nuanced understanding about Israel and strengthening Israel-Diaspora relations,” he said. 

Now, nominally these positions can be harmonized. I've written about how our Israel education is failing precisely because it assumes a "never bend, never compromise" posture is necessary in the face of rising anti-Israel sentiment worldwide, when in reality that approach makes it far more likely that young Jews will eventually break. I do not personally relate to the oft-repeated millennial story that goes something like "I was always taught that Israel could do no wrong, but once I visited myself/met some Palestinians/read some new books/watched the news I realized that I had been misled and the story I had been taught was not an accurate one -- and that's why I joined IfNotNow." My Israel education never felt that one-sided. But it makes sense to me that if one was taught that Israel is only a place of virtue and light, that a headlong crash into reality leaves only the choices of denial or existential crisis.

Unfortunately, I do not think that what Harris has in mind with respect to better Israel education is one that gives a more realistic accounting of Israel's strengths and weaknesses as a state. He thinks we need to be more aggressive in instilling young American Jews with a beatific outlook towards Israel, in the belief that such an attitude will make them immune to the lures of the TikTokers and the college activists and the insta videos. 

Again, I think that's a recipe for failure. But my position isn't that important. What is important is how the divide between Nazarian and Harris actually is resolved, because it represents a pivotal decision in how mainline Jewish organizations recalibrate their Israel discourse, education, and programming. Harris is finally retiring from the helm of the AJC after over thirty years in office -- longer than most global dictators* -- and who is chosen as his replacement could make a massive difference in the trajectory of that organization, which has followed Harris down a noticeably right-ward path in recent years. Fresh blood could revert the AJC to a more representative posture aligned with the actual views of the American Jews it purports to represent.

But there's a history of major Jewish organizations tapping leadership well to the right of their membership either to boost fundraising or due to a misbegotten desire to appear "bipartisan" (e.g.: prominent Trump donor Ron Lauder at the helm of the World Zionist Congress, former RJC staffer William Daroff ascending to lead the Conference of Presidents -- it's amazing how little attention this all gets compared to "Jonathan Greenblatt held an obscure non-political post in the Obama administration, ergo, the ADL is basically Our Revolution" discourse). One doesn't see the NAACP tap Thomas Sowell or even Michael Steele to be its top officer, yet I'm having nightmares of reading the press release touting Matt Brooks as the next AJC head.

What I hope is that people like Nazarian will recognize that their diagnosis will go nowhere unless they fight for the right treatments. It is not an accident that there is a growing divide between American Jewish organizations and American Jewish human beings, and simply letting things go on autopilot will not result in a change. Nazarian and her allies need to start working to make sure that the other Jewish groups in the picture start picking leaders and building out staffers in a way that will facilitate the transition. That means elevating a younger, probably more diverse, definitely more liberal (which is just to say, more representative) cadre than the old guard they'll be replacing. But if they don't put in the work, the ship isn't going to turn. 

Nazarian sees the problem correctly. Now it's time to actually right course.

* No exaggeration. There are only five currently-serving heads of state who've have continuously been in office longer than Harris has at the AJC: the leaders of Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Iran, Cambodia, and Uganda. Grand company, that!

We Could Be Done

It's the cry of exasperated parents everywhere: "If you'd stop squirming, it would be over already!"

I just read an article about a renewed surge of COVID cases in central Missouri, in an area where vaccination rates are appallingly low. It both saddened, scared, and infuriated me. Simply put: we could be done with this by now. We have the resources to get everyone vaccinated, and reach herd immunity for the few people who have genuine medical reasons not to be (no, the chain message your great aunt Margaret posted on FB does not suffice as a genuine reason to avoid vaccination).

But we're not doing it. People are still avoiding vaccination, in large part because -- let's not mince words -- one of our two political parties has converted into a death cult on this issue. Even a few years ago anti-vaxx sentiment was associated with crunchy granola types in Southern California* -- now, it's de rigueur among any remotely ambition Republican politician. The result is that people are dying who do not need to die. And while right now the vaccine does protect against the most serious symptoms of the disease, the longer we go without outright crushing COVID, the more likely that one of these new variants or mutants will evade the vaccine altogether.

One year ago, the fight against COVID was a race to minimize casualties while treatments were developed. Today, we have the tools we need to beat COVID, and the only reason we haven't is because some people remain too selfish or self-absorbed to do the bare minimum to keep their community and loved one's safe. It is such a sad, outrageous commentary on the state of the American people.

* Maybe the best pro-vaccine PSAs to run to persuade conservative heartlanders are not from doctors, or politicians, or celebrities, but just images of some stereotypical beach bum hippy complaining that vaccines are like, ruining their chakra and are the White man's medicine, and saying "don't be like them." You don't want to be some pinko commie, do you? Get vaxxed to own the libs!

It's pathetic that this might work, but it'd be worth it if it did.

Israel Has a Right To Exist -- After That, It's All in Play

A new poll of American Jews just dropped, and it has some fascinating details that have everyone chatting.

To be sure, not everything is a bombshell. Much of the poll is pretty old hat: Jews are overwhelmingly Democrats. We like Biden. We detest Republicans. All of this is pretty dog bites man. Orthodox Jews have near polar opposite views from the rest of the Jewish community, which isn't quite dog bites man yet but is approaching that status. Jews think antisemitism is a significant problem, and far and away see it as a bigger problem on the right than the left -- that should be dog bites man, but you'd never know it from Jewish media coverage.

But on the Israel side of things, there were some genuinely notable findings -- most of which center around the surprising robustness of certain very harsh criticisms of Israel. A quarter of American Jews think Israel is an "apartheid state", and only 28% think such a view is antisemitic. A third think Israel's treatment of Palestinians is reminiscent of American racism, and a fifth think Israel is committing "genocide." For each of these, fewer than half of American Jews think the view in question is antisemitic (though majorities disagree with all of them). So these views are still very much a minority, but they're not negligible either -- more Jews think Israel is an apartheid state than plan to vote Republican in 2022, for instance.

The one outlier to all of this was the position that "Israel has no right to exist." Unlike "apartheid", "racism", or even "genocide", that position overwhelmingly was opposed and perceived as antisemitic by respondents -- 84% disagreed with it substantively, and 67% thought it was antisemitic. I'm not sure what makes that position such a glaring red line compared to others, but it is. I've always been a bit perplexed at those who really plant their feet on the "Israel has no right to exist" hill -- trolls and rabble-rousers I get, but there are people who really seem to think that asking one to affirm "Israel has a right to exist" represents some deep-cut barrier to a host of pro-Palestinian politics, when to my ears 95% of the time the demanding ask "do you agree Israel has a right to exist" can be neutralized by saying "yes" and moving on to specific policy briefs. This poll very much backs up my intuition. If you sharply criticize Israel, even say it is an apartheid state, a majority of American Jews won't think you're antisemitic and a non-negligible chunk will agree with you. If you say Israel has no right to exist at all, you're very much on your own.

The other interesting bit of information, to my eyes, was the poll's support for two-states versus one-state solutions in Israel/Palestine and (more importantly), disaggregating one-staters into those who think Palestinians should be allowed to vote in the unified state versus those who don't. Of these three options, two-states maintains strong primary with 61%, while the two one-state options (the poll calls them "annexation" and "one-state", though the more accurate labels would be "apartheid" and "non-apartheid") each get around 20%.

Like with the harsh Israel criticism, 20% is definitively a decisive minority, but it isn't a negligible one.  It can definitely exercise influence. And in some ways the two-staters are in a more awkward position because they have 20% dissidents hitting them from both sides -- those who want apartheid and those who want to abolish a Jewish state. The "center" (in quotes because the Jewish "center" is really just mainstream liberalism) can hold, but it will need to fight, because it is being squeezed from both ends. The left-wing one-staters have been dismissed as a fringe phenomenon, and they're not -- they're not the "silenced majority" either, but they're very much present and we can't put our heads in the sand about them anymore. The right-wing one-staters, for their part, are already inside the tent, but there's denialism about what they're actually asking for (explicit apartheid) -- we also need to stop being ostriches about who they are and what they stand for.

Finally, of relevance to my "pick your stick" post from a few months ago, the survey has some interesting data on the subject of foreign aid  to Israel. The short version is that strong majorities support continuing aid to Israel, but a substantial majority also favors conditioning aid so that it cannot be used to expand settlements. Peace Now recently became the first pro-Israel group to endorse the prospect of imposing aid conditions, and this poll suggests they have solid backing behind them (while falsifying the notion that American Jews want to cut Israel off outright).

Are Progressives Being Excluded from the Anti-Antisemitism Movement?

The majority of the commentary on the "No Fear" rally against antisemitism -- my own included -- has focused on the presence/absence of progressive Jews from the event, and the degree to which the event was or wasn't a welcoming space for progressive Jews who are passionate about fighting antisemitism.  My commentary has generally taken the view that progressive Jews should have shown up, and critiqued modes of thinking that basically guarantee that our presence will be viewed as a loss or sacrifice. That said, clearly there is purchase to the concerns that events like the No Fear rally are not welcoming spaces for progressive Jews who do not want to check either identity at the door. Ron Kampeas' coverage of the rally provides some striking examples. These include:

• A Biden official facing jeers by Trumpist attendees who claimed the election was stolen and that the Biden admin was funding terrorists. Those persons were apparently especially furious when it was noted that Biden made the decision to run for President after watching the White Supremacist rally in Charlottesville and Donald Trump's tepidly ambiguous reaction to it.
• Loud boos at the mention of Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, dwarfing the more muted reaction to Marjorie Taylor Green.
• A couple who were accosted by a fellow attendee "in a Kahane shirt" who told them that their "No to occupation, No to antisemitism" sign meant that they should be standing with the Netorei Karta (the rally organizers had insisted that Kahanists would not be welcome at the rally).

To that we might add the (successful) efforts by conservatives to remove language suggesting J Street would be welcome, and the ambivalent on-again-off-again status of an "inclusivity" message declaring  that the rally would not tolerate "expressions of racism, Islamophobia, misogyny, classism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia or any other hate," which drew the ire of right-wing participants. All of these together surely can be said to create a manifestly hostile environment for a progressive Jew who very much cares about fighting antisemitism, but finds herself clearly unwelcome when she tries to join the space.

So, it is perhaps high time to ask: are progressives (especially progressive Jews) being squeezed out of Jewish anti-antisemitism movements?

The question is deliberately framed as a mirror to the far-more commonly investigated question: "Are Jews being excluded from the progressive movement?" There, too, we have a bevy of examples of Jews who try to show up in progressive movements and are subjected to a host of hostile responses -- sometimes microaggressions, sometimes very macroaggressions -- that are clear in signaling to them "you are not welcome".

Now, in both cases, it is possible to traverse the question by denying the "excluded" persons have any business in the object movements to begin with. The Jews who complain about being locked out of the progressive movement are not, we're told, actually progressive; the progressives who express discomfort about how inclusive the anti-antisemitism movement is do not, it is said, actually care much about antisemitism -- and so it is perfectly natural and appropriate that they aren't welcomed with open arms. The smarmy response to Jews who say they're uncomfortable in progressive spaces is to tell them their discomfort proves they aren't really progressive (who but a reactionary would be uncomfortable in a progressive space); the smarmy response to progressives who say they're uncomfortable at an antisemitism rally is to declare that their discomfort proves they don't care about antisemitism (who but an antisemite would be uncomfortable at a rally against antisemitism?).

But while I don't deny that there are persons who fit that critique, in both cases we would do better to accept in principle that the people claiming exclusion are genuine in their desire to be included, and that it is a problem insofar as they do not feel included. The Jews who seek inclusion in progressive spaces and find it wanting are not Fifth Column infiltrators; the Jews who want to stand up against antisemitism but feel as if their presence is undesired are not self-hating bigotry apologists. Accepting that, we can start to think about what progressive spaces are doing wrong if (many) Jews who are very much progressive don't feel included there, and likewise what anti-antisemitism events are doing wrong if (many) progressives who are very much committed to fighting antisemitism don't feel welcome there.

One thing I have noticed moving around Jewish spaces is that, when they think about big-tent inclusivity, they almost always mean for that to be inclusive of more conservative Jews. It is taken for granted that progressive Jews are already included as much as they need to be -- it is conservatives who need to be given sops and accommodations to ensure that they feel welcome. At one level, I understand why this is -- most Jews, and most Jewish professionals, are Democrats, so it seems weird to them that the events and structures they create could be inadequate for other persons who like them are left-of-center. In classic "a liberal is someone who won't take his own side in an argument" fashion, they assume that the only accommodations that need to be made are ones for the Jewish right, and that "accommodations" for the Jewish left are not actually about expanding the tent but rather are self-serving entrenchments of the already-prevailing orthodoxy. The ironic result is that Jewish progressive values are under-represented in Jewish communal programming in large part because they are assumed to be so omnipresent that they needn't be made explicit, and the result often is that many Jewish progressives do not see themselves as included in these spaces.

For example, I was at the conference of an anti-BDS group a few years where the overall tenor was very much standard-issue middle of the road Jewish content. Pro-Israel, nominally pro-two states, mentions of the occupation but without any detail, not wild about Bibi but overwhelmingly placing the blame for the current situation on Palestinian actors. Towards the end of the event, one person stood up and chided the conference organizers for operating under the assumption that "everyone here is a liberal". He said that there may be (likely are) people in attendance who do not support a Palestinian state, who do not think "Judea and Samaria" are occupied, who do not oppose the settlement project, and such persons were treated as invisible by the tacit assumption that everybody in the room held liberal views.

The conference organizers were clearly chagrined at their failure to be inclusive. But when I heard this critique, it triggered two thoughts. Thought number one is that while I had no problem with conservatives attending this conference, there was no foul in a Jewish-adjacent organization articulating value positions that are overwhelmingly popular among most Jews. If that makes them "uncomfortable", so be it. Thought number two was that the objector -- and the apologetic conference organizers -- clearly could not fathom that there might be persons who also felt uncomfortable with the tenor of the conference from the left. The rah-rah Zionism, the overwhelming emphasis on Palestinian culpability, the failure to significantly mention violations of academic freedom targeting Palestinian or pro-Palestinian persons -- there are plenty of persons (including plenty of BDS opponents!) who would've found the tone of the conference more than a bit squirmy. Now, to be sure, my response to them would be in large part identical to my response to the squeamish conservatives -- "so be it". There is no foul in a conference primarily made up of Jews having a tone that aligns with the views of most Jews. But it was noteworthy that while everyone immediately understood the "failure" of being inclusive towards the right, the idea that a Jewish conference might fail in being inclusive towards the left was unfathomable.

It's time to start fathoming. Identifying the problem leaves plenty of space for debating how to resolve it -- my posts above, for instance, advocate Jewish progressives adopting a kick-the-door-down mentality where they show up and change the tenor by being there and being vocal (this, incidentally, is also the advice one sometimes sees for how to resolve Jewish exclusion from progressive spaces -- show up, do the work, and make your presence known, and the tenor will change). Of course, this advice falters when the groups try to show up and find the doors locked, and I think there are plenty of good arguments suggesting additional tactics and accommodations are necessary. The ongoing issue where liberal Jews are policed to the letter while conservative counterparts are allowed to run wild is an obvious arena where changes must be made.

But the fact is, right now there are many Jews who are serious and committed to the fight against antisemitism for whom events like the No Fear rally are not welcoming spaces -- when they show up, they're told they're fake Jews, they're self-hating, they're anti-Zionists, they have blood on their hands, they are the enemy. That is a form of exclusion -- as toxic as when Jews try to attend a progressive rally and are told they are baby-killers, they are monsters, they are imperialists, they are settlers. It is dangerous, and we need to start thinking seriously about how to end it.

How To Be United as Jews

With the No Fear rally now in the rear view mirror, I've been contemplating a paradox from the perspective of liberal Jews who are very much part of the communal tent and so can and should be part of any mass Jewish action.*

Imagine two universes where there is some idea for a big Jewish event. In Universe A, the original promoters of the event are on the Jewish left, in Universe B, they're on the right. In both cases, though, there is a desire for the event to be a "big tent" -- to include Jews of a wide range of backgrounds and ideologies.

• In Universe A, the event initially starts off as a creature of the Jewish left, and so the efforts to reach out and be inclusive mean reaching out to the Jewish right. Such outreach, I believe, would be interpreted by the Jewish left as diluting or tainting the message -- these "outreach" efforts would viewed as "sops" to the Jewish right, taking the event and making it more right-wing.
• In Universe B, the event initially starts off as a creature of the Jewish right, and the efforts to reach out and establish a big tent mean reaching out to the Jewish left (this was the story of the No Fear rally). Here, the Jewish left would view the genesis of the rally -- that it originated on the right -- as corrupting and suspect, they wouldn't want to participate in what they think is a right-wing stalking horse.

Do you see the paradox? If the supposed-to-be-united event begins as a left-wing event, efforts to expand the tent will be viewed as converting it into a right-wing event. And if the supposed-to-be-united event begins as a right-wing event, efforts to expand the tent will be viewed as laundering a right-wing event. Either way, the perception is that the supposed-to-be-united event is right-wing!

Now, perhaps part of the problem here is that a "united" event may end up over-representing the Jewish right as a purported sop to "unity", even though most Jews are not on the right. But even accounting for that, it is a problem when Jewish liberal groups feel as if "unity" events inherently are conservative events -- for many reasons, but one of the largest is that it discourages liberal Jews from showing up and taking their rightful place in the Jewish big tent, even though we very much belong there.

Something needs to be done to fix this, but I'm not sure what.

* This mean I'm not talking about left-wing Jewish groups that self-consciously hold themselves out as dissidents or gadflies, and intentionally separate themselves from such "united" gatherings. Whatever the merits or demerits of that approach, the groups I have in mind do not intend to adopt it.

Haters, One-Staters, and Non-Participators: Why Liberal Jewish Groups Should Attend the "No Fear" Antisemitism Rally

The Forward has a very good article on the genesis of the "No Fear" Antisemitism rally, and how its development -- particularly around Israel politics -- alienated some progressive Jewish groups who now are not participating. Their absence stands out, as the rally looks to be one of the largest confluences of Jewish communal action in my lifetime.

The short version is that the earliest manifestations of the rally had mostly right-wing supporters. As it grew, there was a concerted effort to bring in more moderate and liberal elements of the Jewish community. But the early right-wing focus still had its stamp in terms of tightly linking antisemitism and anti-Israel activity together, in a way that rested uneasily with groups like APN's or J Street's critical approach to Israel policy. From there out, there was a push-pull dynamic as the rally sought to adopt more inclusive postures to bring in liberal Jewish groups, only to be reined back by its original conservative stakeholders who wanted to retain a narrower and more conservative hardline. A declaration that "haters and one-staters" aren't welcome drew ire from right-wing groups that, actually, are maybe a bit bi-national curious. Rally organizers posted, withdrew under right-wing fire, and restored a message saying the rally "will not tolerate expressions of racism, Islamophobia, misogyny, classism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia or any other hate" (ironically, the placating alternative for the right was to be even more "All Lives Matter" in tone -- replacing the specific listing of hatreds with a generic opposition to "all hatred").

Having read the article and some of the surrounding commentary, my conclusion is that the liberal groups who declined to sign on have made a mistake. They should be there, they should be vocal there, and it is not a good thing that they're staying away.

Before I explain why, though, I want to make one thing clear: the reason liberal Jewish groups should join the No Fear rally is not to "prove" they care about antisemitism. They do not need to prove that to anyone, and a mewling, "we can be just as gung-ho about this as any Conference of Presidents member" would only underscore the notion that they have something to prove.

Rather, the reason these groups should participate is more straightforward: when the Jewish community is coming together in united action like we are here, it is important for liberal Jewish groups to stand up and take our place. On the subject of antisemitism, specifically, we should not be "proving" that we can follow the leader. We should be using this forum to articulate a bold and uncompromising progressive Jewish vision of what fighting antisemitism means. 

We should be ensuring that the antisemitism that takes the form of Soros conspiracies and "cultural Marxism" and "needle Nazis" gets just as much attention as antisemitism which styles itself as "anti-Zionism" -- not because the latter isn't important, but because the former is too, and if we don't speak out against it, no one will. We need to call out the antisemitism that says Jews of color are not "real" Jews and that liberal Jews are self-hating traitors and that the American Jewish community is "disloyal" if our political choices don't match the preferences of right-wing Christians, because if we don't speak out against it, no one will. I dread to think how many times Ilhan Omar's name will be heard next week, and while that might be unavoidable, we can make damn sure Jim Hagedorn and Kevin McCarthy and Paul Gosar receive their name-checks too. Our voice is part of the Jewish community consensus, and so it is important that it be heard when the Jewish community comes out to speak.

It's important that it be heard, and it's important that it be heard as coming from inside the tent -- because that's where we are. Liberal Jews are not a beleaguered set of lone wolves overwhelmed by the right-wing majority. We are the majority, and we don't do ourselves any favors when we act as if we're on the outside looking in. "We are here and this is ours" indeed.

For example, one of the early boundaries the No Fear rally put on its participants is that "haters and one-staters are not welcome." So, appropriately enough, APN is busy tagging participants in the rally whose views on Palestinian statehood range from "strategically ambiguous" to "public opposition" and asking them if they support a two-state solution. The tacit critique here is one I've leveled before -- it cannot be that the Jewish community redline is that "one-staters" are only permitted if they think Palestinians shouldn't have rights in the state. But this APN's criticism isn't one that works from the outside -- what grounds do they have for complaining that rally participants are not adhering to rally standards when they refuse to attend at all? From the inside, APN could have seized the mantle of the No Fear rally by being vigorous and unapologetic about what "No haters or one-staters" means. From the outside, it's just gotcha sniping, and it isn't going to make much of an impact.

To be sure, some Jewish groups on the left take a self-consciously different approach. Groups like INN and JVP are gadflies; they intentionally hold themselves apart from a broader community they think is damaged and diseased, in order to critique it. They don't want to claim a spot in the big tent, they want to tear down the tent and replace it with a new one. Without going into the merits and demerits of that orientation here, I'll just say that this approach has never been one shared by groups like J Street or APN. They've always held themselves out as operating inside the tent (in spite of concerted efforts -- often, disgustingly, successful efforts -- to draw them out of the tent).

If you are part of the tent, yes, it does mean you may be sharing a stage with some terrible groups like ZOA. Believe me, I understand how that rankles, even as I understand the importance of a big tent. But I daresay liberal Jewish groups need to start thinking about these events a bit more like Rorschach: we're not stuck in a rally with them, they're stuck in a rally with us.

It is not hard to articulate a progressive Jewish vision that resonates with most Jews -- most Jews are progressive! So we need to have the confidence that we can deliver such a message such that, when ZOA-types get on stage, they're the ones who seem awkwardly out of place, they're the ones who have  to stumble through a transition following the crowd responding to a popular, progressive Jewish vision. I've remarked before that right-wing Jews are a 25% minority who act like they're a 75% majority; but it's also sometimes the case that, when it comes to claiming our spot in the Jewish communal tent, liberal Jews are a 70% majority that often has the neurosis of a 25% minority. We need to get over it, and now is the time to do it.

Attend the rally, sponsor the rally, be loud and proud in presenting a liberal Jewish vision for fighting antisemitism. Be confident that most Jews will be proud to hear from you. And the minority that isn't -- well, they're stuck in here with us, whether they like it or not.

Toxic Analogies About Israel Run Rampant on the ... Right?

There is a serious problem in the conversations swirling around campus about Israel. People treat backing Israel as if it were akin to being an avowed racist or bigot. Why, they openly analogize holding the view that America should support Israel to having opinions like "Some racial groups are less intelligent than others" or "Transgender people have a mental disorder."

And by people, I mean the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and RealClearEducation, in their 2020 survey on "tolerance" in higher education. When creating a set of questions designed to elucidate students' willingness to permit hateful speakers on campus, the list included a hypothetical speaker who favors "the U.S. backing Israeli military policy" right alongside proponents of the aforementioned "some racial groups are less intelligent than others" and "transgender people have a mental disorder" (the other positions were "Black Lives Matter is a hate group," "All White people are racist," "Abortion should be completely illegal", "Censoring the news media is necessary," and "Christianity has a negative influence on society.").*

For what it's worth, while FIRE and RCE may think these opinions are of a kind, students very much hold them apart. Of all the issues surveyed, students were by far least likely to oppose allowing a speaker who thinks the US should support Israeli military policy on campus (just 14% registering "strong" opposition). By contrast, over 70% of respondents would strongly oppose allowing a speaker who thinks some racial groups are less intelligent than others on campus, and around 50% strongly oppose those who think transgender people have a mental disorder (a similar percentage, incidentally, to those who would strongly oppose permitting a speaker who says all White people are racist, suggested that the censorial instinct towards views perceived as hateful does not track simplistic left/right divides). 

Those findings perhaps can raise an eyebrow amongst free speech absolutists, but they do show that students are not cavalierly clumping in Zionists with hardcore bigots, and they also seem to show that students' departure from free speech absolutism of students is not resulting from the miming of leftist shibboleths either. 

* Interestingly, though just two of the eight questions asked deal with positions that we might expect would generate greater opposition from conservative students -- the anti-Christianity and anti-White ones --  both of those questions, and only those two questions, were dropped when FIRE/RCE actually generated their "tolerance" scores.

My Advice To Law Students: Become an RA!

Many law professors have been going around giving their advice to new law students, particularly those who don't come from a lawyering family and don't necessarily have a ton of familiarity with how law school operates. All the advice is useful, but here's one tip I haven't seen promoted before: become an RA (research assistant), preferably for a professor who does work you're interested in and whose class you either have already taken or plan to take. It almost certainly will not and should not be a full-time gig; ideally, it should be for just a few hours each week.

Now, as a law professor, obviously this advice seems to be a bit self-serving. And maybe it is (though I already have an RA, so it doesn't do me any good for more people to want to be RAs). But I think it's good for students too, for at least two non-obvious reasons:

(1) It gives you an advisor. I attended an undergraduate institution where every student was assigned a faculty advisor. When I got to law school, I just kind of assumed the same policy would be in place. Spoiler: it isn't. Nobody is your advisor, and there isn't any obvious opportunity to find someone to answer the generic advising questions that you'll have over the course of your law school career: "Should I do law review?" "If I work at a firm, am I stuck there forever?" "Is it bad if I take a class that sounds interesting but doesn't have any 'real world' applications?" Being an RA gives you ready-access to a professor and is easily converted into an advising relationship. In general, if you ask if you can run through some general questions in the ten minutes following your RA meeting, they'll be more than happy to oblige.

(2) It is of massive help in writing letters of recommendation. I will confess: it is very hard to write letters of recommendation for students whom I only "know" because of their presence in my doctrinal classes. Even if they perform well, I have basically two data points about them: (a) their exam performance, and (b) the one time they were cold called (which probably happened in the second week of term and has long since faded from my memory). It's really difficult to take that and write a letter that doesn't seem horribly rote and formulaic. By contrast, professors get to know their RAs personally and can speak about their capabilities in a much more specific and intimate fashion. It is very likely that the professor whom you RA for will become your strongest letter writer, even if they didn't give you your highest transcript grade.

All of this exists on top of the more obvious reasons to become an RA (enjoying research, being interested in the subject matter, resume line, etc.). But becoming an RA is the easiest and fastest way to develop a close relationship with one your professors, and that benefit is of incalculable worth as you move through law school.

Seeing an Israeli or Palestinian Flag is Not a License for a Tantrum

There's a picture circulating on social media of a Starbucks displaying a small chalk drawing of a Palestinian flag and the following message:

We've come a long way but there's still work to be done. We stand in solidarity as allies.

As far as messages go, that's pretty banal. And the flag is nothing more than a flag.

But boy are some people throwing a tantrum about this.

Moments like these I'm glad I can search through my archives and find my already-shared thoughts on how to respond to such a "controversy" involving the public display of Palestinian (or Israeli, for that matter) flags. Because, perhaps unsurprisingly, we've already had moments where people have alleged that the mere presence of an Israeli or Palestinian flag is unbearably "political", represents tacit endorsement of oppressive or hateful politics, has no place in a public setting that holds itself out as open to all, and can and should be justifiably extirpated for their comfort.

What did I say to people who pushed that view? Oh right: "Suck it up." 

When you treat the existence of symbols of Israel or Palestine as an offense, what you're doing is treating the existence of Israel or Palestine as an offense. Some people are at least forthright about that; they are open that when they object to a food truck because it has a Hebrew name and sells Israeli food, it's because they object to Israel existing, period. Good for them for being honest, I guess. But others do a song and dance about how that's not the problem, but this is political, it's politicizing, it's taking sides, they have no problem with Palestine or Palestinians or Israel or Israelis but this is just so gosh darn controversial and people will get upset!

Nobody is fooled. Nobody should be fooled. If you're sitting in North America and the mere sight of an Israeli or Palestinian flag sends you into paroxysms of anxiety and panic, you have not uncovered an objective political crisis, you have uncovered your own need to develop better self-soothing techniques. Period. If you see a store and there's a small chalk drawing of an Israeli or Palestinian flag and an anodyne message about how we're "allies" but there's more "work to be done", and you feel some sort of way about it, do us all a favor and sort yourself out privately and quietly. Stop making your neurosis our problem.

The fact is, nobody is helped by throwing a tantrum about this. Well, I take that back -- some people are helped: the people who promote a narrative where displaying even the most basic symbology of Israel or Palestine is tantamount to an act of war against the other, where public acknowledgment of -- the existence of -- Israel or Palestine alone is the front line of a maximalist, eliminationist battle. The people pushing that narrative are very aware of what they're doing when they set off the sirens. Sometimes their target is a barista in Canada, sometimes it's a food truck in Philly; sometimes it's a café in San Francisco, sometimes it's a camp in Washington. Every time one mans the barricades over this -- even (especially?) if it's because "well, that's what they're doing" -- that's the narrative one reinforces. And fear and antagonism get retrenched, and just co-existence gets a little further away.

Again, some people at least have the honesty to own their desires on that front. But don't pretend like it's doing anything else.

For the rest of us, we have another option: we can Just. Not. Do This. That's a choice! We can choose not to throw a tantrum! We're not obliged to! Really, we're free to just ignore this and move about our day! I cannot tell you how liberating it is to not feel the need to set off klaxons every time one sees anything that expresses affinity for Israel or Palestine in a manner that doesn't come attached to a six-paragraph essay assuring everyone that its overall political agenda is identical to one's own. And better still, the more one normalizes that the mere existence of an Israeli flag is not a tacit means of threatening Palestinians, or the mere existence of a Palestinian flag is not a tacit means of threatening Israelis, the easier it will be to get to a world where Israel and Palestine do exist, side-by-side, and the presence of one is not viewed as a threat to the other. If that's your goal, and not the maximalist eliminationism narrative above, then ceasing viewing basic Israeli or Palestinian political symbols as threats is a prerequisite for getting where you say you want to go.

In short: just behave like a normal, well-adjusted adult, and I assure you your life and the lives of everyone around you -- including the people you think you're "helping" -- will get so, so much better.

Academic BDS Comes to China

The Guardian has an interesting article about a scientific journal editor, David Curtis, who stepped down from his post after his attempt to implement a boycott of Chinese academics was rebuffed by his publishers. The direct precipitation of his resignation appears to be a mix of two things: first, that he was prevented from publishing an article he co-authored raising the specter of a China boycott, and second, that he had of his own accord begun implementing a policy of rejecting all submissions by Chinese academics due to "the complicity of the Chinese medical and scientific establishment in human rights abuses against the Uyghurs." (The latter decision was denounced by the journal higher-ups as a violation of policies forbidding national origin discrimination).

It is not clear whether the figures involved in the call to boycott Chinese academics are involved in the BDS campaign against Israel. I can imagine them being sympathetic; I can also imagine them being people who thought BDS against Israel was absurd precisely because we should be starting with more serious violators like China and decided to put their money where their mouth was (a quick google search didn't reveal any particular links between Curtis and BDS, whether favorable or critical).

I have been banging the drum about the likelihood that BDS (or BDS-style tactics) will at some point stop "singling out" Israel and make itself apparent as part of activists' toolkits addressing other countries and controversies. And indeed, this particular iteration seems highly reminiscent of the earliest days of anti-Israel BDS (not only because it is originating in the UK). The flat ban on submissions by Chinese academics is identical to how academic BDS began -- the earliest significant academic BDS "move" was a decision by a British journal editor to demand the resignation of Israeli colleagues from her editorial board because "I can no longer live with the idea of cooperating with Israelis as such." Nowadays the BDS movement has made gestures at moving away from pure nationality-based discrimination in favor of allegedly targeting only "institutions, not individuals"; I suspect if the China BDS movement gains legs it will begin making a similar pivot (though, as with the Israel case, I also suspect that the new standard will often be honored primarily in the breach).

But what does the potential emergence of a China academic BDS movement mean for the future of the Israel academic BDS campaign? The core personnel are going to be different -- partially because different people have different interests, partially because the Israel BDS movement has more than its share of tankies who think the entire Uighur issue is western imperialist claptrap. Nonetheless, there will likely be some overlap, and the fact that BDS is being promoted in other cases will do more to legitimize it as a legitimate option even as there may be disagreements about whether a BDS style campaign is properly applied to this or that case. So in that sense, any successful mainstreaming of the China BDS campaign will likely help bolster the Israel one even if the principal actors are different people.

On the other hand, the development of "BDS" in the China context, precisely because it offers a comparator case and can falsify the "singling out" hypothesis, also is likely to generate new norms which will serve to modulate and regulate the Israel case as well. While Curtis' proposal is drastic -- no submissions from any Chinese academics, period -- it is supremely unlikely, given China's integration into global academia and knowledge-production, that a BDS movement of that form will gain any traction. Far more plausible is the implementation of considerably more narrow and targeted measures -- particular institutions or projects that are inextricably bound up in human rights abuses that directly (and not just by association) taint the specific academic work emanating therefrom. And particular will likely actually be particular -- it will not be tenable to use sweeping notions of complicity or culpability to drag in every single Chinese university or institution (the main mechanic by which "institutions, not individuals" reverts back to "individuals").

This is part of what I've been saying when I suggest that social movements, BDS including, "moderate as they mainstream." The more BDS becomes a general tool of social activism rather than an Israel-only one-off, the more it will adjust itself to adopt standards that actually can be plausibly generalized to a range of cases, and while extirpation of all Israelis from the global community is at least a conceivable social goal, extirpation of all Chinese nationals (or all nationals of all countries whose governments are implicated in significant human rights abuses) is not.

Put differently, to the extent people start thinking seriously about applying "BDS" to the China case in a manner that is plausible and scalable, the equilibrium that will be set will be one that likely will not countenance flat bars on academic participations by persons of a particular nationality, nor "institutional" proscriptions that amount to doing the same thing, but may accept narrowly-tailored measures targeted at specific wrongdoers. And -- insofar as China would be used as a comparator case to justify measures in other states as well (namely, Israel) -- there is a decent chance that these norms will translate over to the Israeli case as well. It won't happen without a fight, and you can be sure that the old-guard will continue to insist on the more fundamentalist version. But I do think that's the most likely trajectory.

Coming Soon: Abolishing Qualified Immunity for Everyone But Killer Cops

As "qualified immunity" has become a more prominent target for criminal justice reformers, it has been noted by many that Justice Thomas has regularly been issuing calls for the Court to reconsider the doctrine (one which, as he notes, has little historical or textual basis to it). But yesterday, writing on the denial of certiorari in a case called Hoggard v. Rhodes, Justice Thomas gave further color to how his revisiting qualified immunity might look -- and it doesn't exactly bode well:

[T]he one-size-fits-all doctrine [of qualified immunity] is also an odd fit for many cases because the same test applies to officers who exercise a wide range of responsibilities and functions.... why should university officers, who have time to make calculated choices about enacting or enforcing unconstitutional policies, receive the same protection as a police officer who makes a split-second decision to use force in a dangerous setting? We have never offered a satisfactory explanation to this question.

In other words, Justice Thomas is suggesting a path where we keep something like qualified immunity for police officers using violent force, but abolish it for public university officials contending with the judiciary's rapidly evolving and often seemingly arbitrary campus free speech jurisprudence, because police officers have to make "split-second decisions" whereas campus deans have time to "calculate". If ever there was a way to get the new right-wing court onboard with getting rid of qualified immunity, holding out the possibility that one could open up politically targeted harassment suits of hoity-toity college administrators while preserving the authority of the police to maim with impunity is about as tantalizing as one could get.

On the point that police officers are differently situated because they have to make "split-second" choices, I'd note first that a separate distinguishing feature between the deans and police officers is that the alleged constitutional violations of deans typically don't involve killing anyone (and typically can be fully remedied by injunctive relief). I'd note second that judges sometimes have a propensity to describe any police misconduct as involving "split-second decisions" even in cases where they are absolutely making calculated choices under no especial pressure or time crunch.

Eight Good Deeds

As many of you no doubt have heard, a Rabbi by the name of Shlomo Noginski was stabbed the other day outside a Jewish community center near Boston. A suspect has been arrested and Rabbi Noginski is, thankfully, recovering.

At a rally in his support, one of the Rabbi Noginski's colleagues urged people to respond to this horrible attack with eight good deeds -- one for each time the Rabbi was stabbed. I thought it was a great sentiment (if admittedly just a touch macabre), and decided to donate, in Rabbi Noginski's honor,  to eight organizations pursuing justice in the United States and around the world.

Below are the organizations I donated to. I invite you to join me, whether with these organizations or others that pursue projects meaningful to you.

***

The Anti-Defamation League: Still without parallel as a force fighting extremist hate and bigotry around the world.

Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society: One of the premier immigrant rights organizations in America. Their slogan -- "We Used to Take Refugees Because They Were Jewish. Now We Take Them Because We're Jewish" -- makes me swell with pride.

NAACP Legal Defense Fund: With the Supreme Court dealing yet another blow to voting rights in America, the NAACP LDF's work could not be more urgent.

OneVoice: For years, they've been doing the hard, thankless work building grassroots support within both Israel and Palestine for peace and justice based on mutual respect for the rights and dignity of all persons in the region.

Be'chol Lashon: One of many great organizations supporting Jews of all hues and backgrounds, and which works tirelessly to ensure that the Jewish community is an equitable place for everyone in our community.

Harlem Lacrosse: A wrap-around support network for young people in five cities (including Boston) across America -- it's great (and not just because my wife helps run it!).

Operation Hope: The effort to provide economic opportunity to communities underserved by contemporary capitalism is the "silver rights movement" (and not just because my brother helps run it!).

Stop AAPI Hate: The attack on this Rabbi is one instance of a larger wave of racist violence which has afflicted many communities across the country, and we're stronger when we fight it together.

What is "All Lives Matter-ing"?

A trend I've noticed in Jewish discourse recently is an uptick in people complaining about folks allegedly "All Lives Matter-ing" antisemitism. Sometimes, the complaints strike at behavior that seems obviously dismissive or denigrating towards Jewish activism against antisemitism. Other times, they seem to target statements that seem utterly anodyne or even salutary in clearly addressing antisemitism. There doesn't, however, seem to be a clear unifying thread save that the targets usually are not talking just about antisemitism -- they're either talking about antisemitism alongside some other oppression(s), or they're speaking in general terms about "oppression" without mentioning antisemitism specifically.

Does that suffice to explain what it means to "All Lives Matter" something? And if not, what, exactly, does this complaint mean? What is the proper understanding of "All Lives Matter-ing"?

I should start by saying that I'm not wild about the appropriation of "All Lives Matter-ing" in this context at all, for reasons relayed in this post. It often seems used less to illuminate a problem and more as a sort of nyah-nyah gotcha predicated on the wrong and alienating view that well obviously you'd see this is wrong if it were Black people frame that I loathe so much. For the most part, rather than grabbing language from other social movements that may or may not fit our own situation, we'd be better served to develop our own vocabulary that is tailored to our own case.

But to the extent there is a useful "generic" account of what it means to "All Lives Matter" something, what is it? Here's my rough stab at it, which certainly is open to refinement:

To "All Lives Matter" something is to respond to a complaint of an injustice experienced by a particular community by suggesting the complaint is illegitimate or exclusionary unless it is reframed away from focusing on the particular community and instead presented in more universal language.

Under this account, "All Lives Matter" ALMed "Black Lives Matter" because it responded to the particular claim of injustice identified by the BLM slogan by suggesting that this claim, or the campaign around it, is illicit and exclusionary because it is particularly about Black lives and should instead speak of all lives.

The first important feature of my account is that ALMing is necessarily reactive. It responds to something; it chastises another statement or movement or campaign that is already on the table. If it isn't responsive, it isn't an ALM statement. Consider the following sentence:

"We should treat people of all backgrounds with courtesy and respect."

Is that sentence "All Lives Matter-ing"? Not on its own, no. People say sentences like that all the time, with no particular controversy or compunction. There is no general proscription against saying banal universalistic niceties.

However, if one has just heard an account of how, in one's organization, Black employees are consistently denigrated, viewed as inferior, have their views shut down, concluded with a plea that the organization needs to "treat our Black employees with courtesy and respect", responding

"We should treat people of all backgrounds with courtesy and respect,"

with an arched voice and a tone of reproach -- that's All Lives Matter-ing. It responds to a specific account of injustice faced by a particular group by suggesting it's illegitimate precisely because it speaks of a particular group rather than of the universal "all". That, of course, is the original relationship of "All Lives Matter" to "Black Lives Matter" -- the objection was not to any sentence that expresses universalist humanist sentiments, it was to a particular sentence uttered in a particular context where it was expressly presented as a retort to "Black Lives Matter." Absent that reactive character, such a sentence is not All Lives Matter-ing.

Second, "All Lives Matter-ing" does not encompass every situation where someone tries to link different forms of oppression or marginalization together. Again, this is very obvious once one looks at the original context of how ALM related to BLM. After all, say what you will about Black Lives Matter activists who posit links between police violence in Ferguson and Gaza, or Chicago and Colombia, it would be weird to claim that they're "All Lives Matter-ing" themselves. Clearly, the objection to "All Lives Matter" is not meant to encompass any effort at solidarity or inter-group alliance.

If someone says "our experience with misogyny calls us to stand with victims of homophobia," they are not ALMing. If someone says "we oppose worker exploitation in San Juan, just as we oppose it in San Jose", they are not ALMing either. If someone says "we oppose racism, misogyny, antisemitism, and homophobia", they also aren't ALMing unless they're doing so in response to pressure which suggests a statement which solely focused on any one of those would be illegitimate for not mentioning the rest. But of course people are permitted to say, of their own accord, that they oppose multiple forms of oppression -- how weird would it be to argue otherwise? 

Again, attempts at coalition-building wouldn't satisfy the above definition of ALMing at least insofar as they are not done to delegitimize the initial claim of injustice, or to suggest that the initial, "unadorned" protest against it was illicit or improper. One can imagine circumstances where calls for coalition do take such a form, but the mere fact that someone is seeking to draw two cases of oppression together and forge an alliance among those fighting them is obviously not enough (how spectacularly self-defeating if it were!).

With this account in mind, how do the alleged cases of folks ALMing antisemitism fare? As one might guess, it depends.

On the one hand, consider a recent case where the diversity officer for the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators was terminated one day after releasing a statement addressing antisemitism and hate crimes spikes against the Jewish community -- allegedly because releasing such a statement was disrespectful to Palestinians (the statement, for what it's worth, did not mention Israel, Palestine, or Zionism in any way). That case fits the ALM frame I promote above quite well -- the backlash was in response to a statement regarding the particular problem of antisemitism, which was presented as illegitimate insofar as its specific focus on Jews was interpreted as implicitly denigrating the status of other groups unnamed. Where the mere fact that a given organization is talking about antisemitism, specifically, is portrayed as exclusionary and thereby illegitimate, with the proposed correction "talk about all these other groups too" -- that's ALMing.

On the other hand, I recently had a conversation with a Jewish professional regarding how to mobilize against hate speech online, such as Cynthia McKinney's tweet about Zionists being responsible for 9/11, by working with other communities who also experience a glut of hateful and harassing speech on social media. In the course of explaining why I didn't like the (false and hurtful) frame that companies like Twitter "protect every group but the Jews", I proffered an alternative:

"Social media has a hate problem, of which McKinney's tweet is just the latest example. Jews know it, Muslims know it, women know it, people of color know it, the LGBT community knows it -- everyone seems to know it but Twitter."

For this, I was accused of promoting an "All Lives Matter" frame. Now, I'd have been entirely fine with just saying "Cynthia McKinney's tweet was antisemitic, and Twitter needs to show it takes antisemitism seriously." I have no issue with attacking her tweet as antisemitic, unadorned -- it doesn't have to come attached to discussion of any other form of hatred in order to be opposed. But it struck me as extremely weird -- bizarre even -- to tell me that even trying to present this issue in a way that presents a unified front with other groups is a form of ALM. Seriously?  If we ever try to make common cause with other groups (to say nothing of the members of our own community whose identities intersect with other groups), we're now out-of-bounds? That's not standing up for oneself, that's setting oneself up for political failure.

This is part of a worrisome pattern, where any time someone situates the fight against antisemitism as part of any larger struggle or campaign, they'll be accused of ALMing. Woe befall the statement condemning antisemitism that also mentions racism, or the social movement which tries to establish linkages between antisemitism and Islamophobia -- it's All Lives Matter-ing!

The kernel of legitimate worry here is the fear that fighting antisemitism "alone" will be viewed as illegitimate unless it is sanctified by association with these other, supposedly more prestigious, struggles. This worry, of course, is what actuates my own definition of ALMing above (a complaint about X specific oppression is delegitimated  as exclusionary unless it is folded into a larger and non-particular campaign). But when that worry causes one to lash out against any and all endeavors which locate the fight against antisemitism as existing alongside other struggles, all one ends up doing is obliterating the possibility of allyship and solidarity. That it is justifiable to fight against antisemitism alone does not mean it is preferable to fight against antisemitism alone. 

And indeed, while I think Jews are absolutely entitled to talk about antisemitism unadorned, we also should be free to decide that in certain situations it is better to talk about antisemitism as part of a network or relationship with other bigotries -- a larger practice of hate speech online, a larger system of White supremacy, a larger complex of discriminatory dismissal -- without being accused of treating antisemitism as "lesser" for doing so. It can be better because it's better tactics; it can be better because it builds relationships with other communities we care about (or, for some of us, are part of as well!). But the fundamentalist form of the ALM accusation undermines those efforts, and that's a problem. Particularly given how deeply much of our community thirsts for solidarity from other groups that we feel is not forthcoming, it is impossible to overstate how spectacularly self-sabotaging misapplication of the "All Lives Matter" charge can be.

I suspect the root of the problem, to circle all the way back to the beginning, is that often the "All Lives Matter" accusation really isn't about a thought-out analytical account of how to appropriately versus inappropriately talk about antisemitism. Its main motivator is the perception -- at best incompletely accurate, at worst absolutely misguided -- that "ALM" is an accusation people listen to, and so if we can invoke it (regardless of whether it makes sense to do so) people will listen to us too (or if they don't, we can bask in the satisfaction of knowing they're hypocrites). For Jews who feel like we can't get others to listen to us, that promise can be intoxicating -- even though when the "ALM" charge fails to compel others to listen we won't be uncovering a hypocrisy so much as we'll be experiencing the same failures others experience right alongside us.

Nonetheless, if ALM is going to become a generic charge (and again, my own reservations notwithstanding, perhaps that ship has sailed), we have a responsibility to get it right. Getting it right does not mean tossing it out like candy any time antisemitism is mentioned in the same breath as another oppression. It means opposing a very specific move, where people respond to entreaties about antisemitism by viewing them as illegitimate unless they universalize themselves. Does that happen? Absolutely it does, and it's repellant. Is that what's happening every time someone talking about antisemitism is accused of "All Lives Matter-ing"? No, and it's high time we learned to tell the difference.

A Letter to Fellow Jews on Open Discourse, Rigorous Inquiry, and Generosity of Spirit

A few weeks ago, Tema Smith and I began circulating a letter about how leaders in the Jewish community talk about "social justice" concepts -- things like Critical Race Theory, White supremacy, and intersectionality. We were concerned at how often prominent Jewish figures treated these terms in a strawmanned or caricatured fashion -- held out as boogeymen responsible for every stupid column some college sophomore penned at UC-Santa Cruz. This treatment did not reflect the values of open discourse, rigorous inquiry, or generosity of spirit that are essential to fair and productive dialogue (ironically, values that many of the offenders cited in cavalier dismissal of the relevant concepts).

The letter was delayed by the eruption of hostilities between Israel and Palestine in Gaza, but now has been publicly released. I am tremendously proud of the diverse set of prominent Jewish leaders who have signed on. To name just a few, we have:

• Esther Lederman of the URJ
• Rabbi Amy Eilberg, the first woman ordained by the Conservative Jewish movement
• Aaron Keyak, Joe Biden's director of Jewish engagement
• Eric Greene of the Jewish Multiracial Network

As Tema put it, reading the list of signatories makes me feel a part of very good company!

 

In addition, while our letter is not a direct response to the "Jewish Institute for Liberal Values" missive published last month, I will note that we also have several signatories from the original "Harper's Letter" onboard our piece as well, and I daresay that ours represents a more faithful manifestation of the values of that letter in terms of insisting on fair, rigorous, and generous readings of contested social phenomenon.

I reprint the content of the letter below. If you wish to add your name, we still are accepting signatures via this form.

***

A Letter to Fellow Jews on Open Discourse, Rigorous Inquiry, and Generosity of Spirit

We are Jews of a variety of political, religious, and ideological stripes. We hold diverse views but we unite in affirming the indispensable need for rigorous, open discourse in all aspects of Jewish communal life.

We write to note our concern that, in many key contexts and several critical moments, significant portions of our community have not successfully lived up to these values when assessing contemporary social justice movements. Too many Jewish public figures have engendered discussions of concepts like “intersectionality”, “critical race theory”, “white privilege” (or “white supremacy”), and other like terms where they are painted in simplistic, even glib, forms that bear little to no relationship to what proponents of these theories actually advocate. It is especially alarming that these bad faith critiques have accelerated alongside the growing recognition of the impacts of racism in America, including inside our Jewish community.

Unfortunately, we have regularly seen Jewish organizations, public figures, and media outlets level “critiques” of social justice concepts that are almost entirely unmoored from any engagement with their actual content. We have read with dismay too many articles that purport to speak authoritatively on social justice without ever citing or even referencing crucial primary source material, leading to a marked gap between what these concepts are alleged to assert about Jews (and others) compared to what they actually say. Nuance is swept aside to support uncharitable or outright hostile interpretations, and obvious absurdities are presented so that these concepts can be dismissed without further thought. The result is an impoverishment of Jewish communal discourse and a failure of our thought leaders to fulfill the basic obligations of an honest interlocutor.

Ironically, while those who criticize these social justice terms (and their associated political movements) often level their concerns in language of free speech and liberal discourse, they frequently do not display the generosity of spirit and commitment to fair, impartial, and rigorous reading that makes genuine inquiry and debate possible.

Just as Jews can reasonably insist that those who speak about, e.g., Zionism, antisemitism, Orthodoxy, “chosenness”, or other weighted terms avoid strawman caricatures of such concepts, basic respect should compel Jewish speakers to seek out genuine knowledge of social justice theories grounded in actual, reputable primary source texts. Sweeping statements that such theories (for example) make crude divisions of the world into “oppressor” and “oppressed” classes, or explicitly identify Jews as White supremacist dominators, must be supported with evidence, not simply stated as if fact. Indeed, it seems apparent that the purpose of framing social justice concepts in such obviously farcical fashion is to avoid a reasoned discourse which might have to engage seriously with the significant normative, analytical, and observational insights such concepts bring to bear on crucial issues of equity. Such evasion is fundamentally incompatible with principles of open inquiry and fearless engagement that characterize Jewish communal discourse in its most robust and authentic form.

The signatories to this letter may take differing views as to the degree to which concepts like intersectionality and critical race theory aid in improving our understanding of Jewish experience. But we agree that any discussion about these concepts must take them seriously and read them fairly, and we are concerned that the attempt by some in the Jewish community to present such theories as inherently offensive, dangerous, or (paradoxically) censorial is in effect demanding the suppression or dismissal of important conversations the Jewish community should be having.

Many inside and outside of the Jewish community, including but not limited to Jews of Color, have been intimately involved in the creation, development, and application of social justice concepts — to the Jewish case and beyond. We urge that the Jewish community commit to including these voices as part of developing our collective understanding of what these concepts actually mean; and avoid speaking on these subjects based on rumor, innuendo, or hyperbolic sentiment. A commitment to such inclusion and to fair readings does not compel any particular conclusion; it does not demand either blind acceptance or knee-jerk criticism. Rather, it is the indispensable foundation on which any informed position on these matters must rest.

We, again, reiterate our view that liberal deliberative values are absolutely essential to the health and vitality of the Jewish community — values which include openness to challenging ideas and refusal to indulge in strawmanning, hyperbole, or other tools of dismissal. Precisely because we commit to these values, we are insistent that we live these values out in all contexts — including when engaging with theories of social justice that may be discomforting or controversial. We are confident that a recommitment to these values in the social justice context will help promote free, sophisticated, generous, and charitable engagement with all those who care about securing an equitable world.

We invite you to sign onto this open letter to add your voice to this call for open discourse, rigorous inquiry and generosity of spirit.

[Signatories]

Antisemitism vs. Illegitimate Anti-Israel(i) Discrimination

One thing I noticed come up a few times in the Moshava Philly saga was folks who (a) agreed that the conduct in question represented illegitimate discrimination against Israelis on the basis of nationality but (b) denied it was antisemitic. That is, they agreed it was wrong, just a different wrong from antisemitism.

I confess I haven't put a ton of thought into making this differentiation myself, particularly in cases (as here) where it seems that the "anti-Israeli" discrimination is inextricably bound up with the fact that the targets are Jewish Israelis, specifically (it is dubious that an Israeli Arab food truck would have faced the sort of pushback Moshava Philly experienced). In concept, it is obviously possibly for someone to have a prejudice against Israelis that has absolutely nothing to do with Jewishness -- it is even-handed hatred towards Israelis of all backgrounds and faiths. In practice, there are very few cases of illegitimate anti-Israel biases which are not linked in some way to its Jewishness (even if, on occasion, the link is that the non-Jewish Israelis are tied too closely with the Jewiness of it all).

But my own views notwithstanding, this got me to wondering: What are the stakes of insisting on this distinction between antisemitism and concededly illegitimate anti-Israeli discrimination? And if we do make the distinction what short-form name should we give to illegitimate anti-Israeli discrimination?

On the latter, the lack of a pithy title is inconvenient to say the least. I've heard "Ziophobia" used a few times, but let's just say not by the people who I'd expect to be invested in rigorously policing the difference between antisemitism and anti-Israeli discrimination. But I'm not sure a better term currently exists out there. Suggestions welcome.

On the former, certainly one often hears people emphatically distinguish between "antisemitism" and "legitimate criticism of Israel" -- an important distinction, to be sure. But this is different, since by stipulation the persons I'm talking about concede the "criticism" in question is not legitimate -- and, in particular, is not legitimate in a discriminatory and thereby morally wrongful fashion (there are plenty of cases where a criticism may be technically "wrong" but does not morally wrong anyone -- free speech must allow for some play in the joints where people are free to be mistaken -- but these cases go further and entail circumstances where by concession the bad behavior generates a valid claim of injustice). Given that, what are the consequences of being sure to say "this is wrong, and discriminatory, and should be opposed -- but we shouldn't call it antisemitic"?

My instinct is that it is part of a broader campaign to disassociate discourse about Israel in any form -- even concededly illegitimate forms -- from claims of antisemitism. In that way, it is an adjunct to the "legitimate criticism of Israel is not antisemitism" contention, albeit different in content. Holding fast to this distinction even in the cases of illegitimate criticism helps build the firewall which blocks accusations of antisemitism in the cases of legitimate criticism (or, perhaps more importantly, in the arguable cases).

And a side-effect -- perhaps desired, perhaps not -- is to prevent this form of discriminatory from accessing the particular moral punch of "antisemitism" as a concept. While nominally there's no reason why "antisemitic" discrimination has to be worse than "national origin discrimination against Israelis", practically speaking it represents a retreat -- it's bad, but not antisemitic bad. 

Part of what the disassociation campaign is doing, after all, is trying to split off discourse about Israel from the broader histories and structures of antisemitism that accentuate its dangers -- tying certain discourses into extreme manifestations of violence and oppression. The goal, in some ways, isn't just about protecting "legitimate" criticism but also about degrading the dangers of "illegitimate" criticism. There are all sorts of cases where we might think someone is being kind of extreme or ridiculous or unfair to, I dunno, Canada, and so we might "oppose" it insofar as we generally oppose extreme unfair ridiculousness, but we also don't view it as a four-alarm moral fire. The goal is to do the same thing when faced with unfairness towards Israel or Israelis -- not so much justify as make it mundane, make it small-potatoes, isolate it from any broader pattern or practice of systemic wrongdoing.

Chauvin Sentenced to 22.5 Years

Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin has been sentenced to 22.5 years in prison for the murder of George Floyd.

No sentence can bring George Floyd back to life, and hence no sentence can in itself create justice. Moreover, no sentence of Derek Chauvin can, in itself, reform the structures of policing that enabled George Floyd's murder. A single sentence, after the fact, does not change anything.

Nonetheless, the criminal sentence is important -- it is important for providing some measure of closure to Floyd's family, it is important as a signal of the seriousness with which we take crimes of this nature, and it is important as a means of communicating to other officers that this sort of behavior will be met with significant consequences. Chauvin faced a maximum of forty years; he asked for probation. The guidelines for an offender without a previous record would have been 12-15 years, but as the sentencing judge noted there were aggravating factors in this case.

Paul Butler said that taking all of that into account, an 18 year sentence struck him as appropriate. Twenty-two and a half years is more than that, but in the same ballpark. It strikes me as appropriate, proportional, and -- as far as can be achieved in unjust circumstances -- just. But my opinion is not especially important, so my main hope is that Floyd's family and community feel the same.

The Coda to the Israeli-American Food Truck Fiasco

(Previous posts here and here)

Eat Up the Borders, which ignited a firestorm of criticism after uninviting an Israeli-American immigrant food truck from its festival, has issued an apology.

It is, I think, a good apology. It provides relevant context, while making absolutely clear that they own their mistake and affirming their absolute intention to keep working with Moshava Philly in the future. While the apology is primarily -- an appropriately -- directed at Moshava and the Jewish community, it also at one point extends its apology to "the Jewish and Palestinian communities." I've seen some people push on this -- why the apology to Palestinians? -- but I don't have any particular problem. Eat Up the Borders made its own mistake, and yet Palestinians are having it imputed to them. To the extent Eat Up the Borders dragged them into a mess of their own creation, it's fine to apologize for that.

More broadly: apologies are important, and we should be encouraging Eat Up the Borders for doing so here. It's hard to apologize, and harder still when you know that many won't accept the apology and many others will be furious that one deigned to apologize at all. Sometimes it's paradoxically more comfortable sitting with obvious, outright antisemitism -- there is a weird sense of relief in finding a situation where everyone knows this was not okay, and there is the temptation to continue sitting in that comfortable position of righteous anger than to transition to the far more precarious, vulnerable, and uncertain posture of trying to grow forward. 

This is a temptation that must be resisted. If we want people to apologize and work to do better, one needs to respond favorably when they earnestly try to do so. Positive reinforcement is good! And this, I'd note, has been the consistent tone taken by Moshava Philly, which has been emphatic that it likes Eat Up the Borders, thinks they do good work, wants to continue working with them, and thinks this was a mistake they'll learn and grow from. If one refuses to allow for that possibility, one cannot hold oneself out as an ally to Moshava Philly.

In other thoughts: It was notable that, once this story broke into the mainstream, one spotted very few defenders of the decision to expel Moshava Philly. Obviously, they exist and one could find them if one looked, but the usual suspects remained pretty quiet and the slightly-less usual suspects tended to use this as a case of "here's an example of where a 'boycott' goes too far." So that's notable. 

Those who did come out in defense of the expulsion -- JVP's Swarthmore branch was probably the highest-profile case I saw -- really did a sterling job of demonstrating how BDS, at least for that camp of fundamentalist, is about objecting to Israelis existing in any form or capacity. Eater Philadelphia got a quote -- one of the first I've seen -- from one of the persons who initially put pressure on the festival to cut ties with Moshava Philly based on the view that its food was "appropriated Palestinian food that they’re marketing as Israeli food" and therefore "contributes to the marginalization and erasure of Palestinian culture" (as Ron Kampeas notes, when it comes to the food in question, this is both historically illiterate and erasive of Middle Eastern Jewish history).

But the flailing effort to find something -- anything -- that supposedly rendeered their targeting of Moshava Philly something more than just naked national origin discrimination made them look more ridiculous than righteous. A popular move was to claim that "moshava" means "settlement" (it means something like "small village", which, yes, most thesauruses would say is a synonym for "settlement", but not in the sense referred to here). Others poured over social media to find basic statements of pride in being Israeli or love of their country to present as mortal sins (Manny's in San Francisco endured a similar strategy). One "collective", for example, made the shocking discovery that a product that Moshava Philly sold had its origin in a farm which the proprietor began working on "illegally" in 1993 (the intended implication being that it was from an illegal West Bank settlement). Even that six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon tag fell apart when it was discovered that the farm in question was in pre-48 Israel (who knew that BDSers had so much respect for Israeli property law!), at which point they showed their whole self by declaring flatly that "It’s all a settlement: Tel Aviv is a settlement just like Havot Ma’on, or Kiryat Arba." So yeah, that's who we're dealing with.

Ultimately, this story ends on an optimistic note. The festival apologized. The promise to keep working with Moshava Philly was secured, and it appears neither grudging nor coerced. Moshava Philly has been very vocal about how humbled they've been from the outpouring of support they've received. Few, if any, mainstream actors did anything but say "this was wrong". Those are all good things. We can be happy about those good things, and work to build on them -- and it looks like both Moshava Philly and Eat Up the Borders are committed to doing so.

A Buffalo Socialist in the Heart of America

In a significant upset, self-described socialist candidate India Walton has dethroned incumbent Buffalo mayor Byron Brown in the Democratic primary, which makes her almost a shoo-in for the mayor's seat next election. The victory would make Walton the first socialist mayor of a major American city in sixty years.

Occurring on the same election day where Eric Adams looks likely to win the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City, this will certainly spark some chatter about where the future of left-wing politics lies in America. Upstate New York -- the old rust belt -- is a Democratic Socialist's fantasy of where they most want to be competitive, but historically haven't made much inroads compared to their success in upscale, wealthy areas like suburban Maryland. The dissonance between where they were winning and where their ideology says they should be winning was taking a toll, so this probably feels really good for them. It does mean the rest of us probably need to brace for another flurry of "socialist policies can win in the heartland" takes -- but listen, as skeptical as I remain, the one thing which can give that old tune new life is actually winning elections. So they've earned the right to drop another nickel into the jukebox.

In more immediate terms, I know virtually nothing about Walton, or Brown, or Buffalo. But in my uninformed opinion -- and what is the internet for if not uninformed opinions? -- Buffalo is the perfect place to try out a socialist as a mayor. It's a big enough city that one actually has to govern it and engage with diverse stakeholders rather than just grandstand, and it's far enough from the glare of national attention that Walton should be able to do her job more or less as a normal mayor without constant spotlight. That isn't to say she won't face opposition or pushback from various constituencies and power-brokers -- that's part of local politics, and navigating those shoals is part of what it means to be a success at local politics. But it's a good test case. Laboratories of democracy and all that.

So congratulations to Ms. Walton -- I look forward to seeing what you accomplish in your tenure!

What the Israeli-American Food Truck Fiasco Tells Us About (Some) BDSers

Briefly following up on the saga of the Israel-American food truck, and in particular JVP Swarthmore's position that expelling the truck from an immigrant food festival is a righteous example of BDS in action, I want to return to something I wrote a few years back about none other than Natalie Portman. In 2018, Portman refuses to travel to accept her award of the Genesis Prize in Israel because doing so would involve sharing a platform with Bibi Netanyahu. At the same time, she emphatically rejected that she was endorsing BDS, and affirmed her commitment to continue engaging with other Israeli voices and institutions.

Many pro-BDS persons nonetheless insisted that Portman -- her own avowals notwithstanding -- was in fact engaging in BDS. So (part of) my column was trying to explain why it mattered that Portman was so insistent that she was not doing so. Here's what I wrote:

It is one thing to say that a particular politician or a specific company stands beyond the pale, such that they cannot be productively engaged with until they alter their behavior. But when it is every politician, every company, every university, every artist, every film - at that point the message communicated becomes something different. 

The (well, a) problem with BDS, as a movement, is not that there is something intrinsically objectionable to not wanting to share a stage with Bibi or not purchasing a Sodastream. 

The problem is that BDS does not just cover Bibi or Sodastream. It covers the Anti-Defamation League and Jerusalem Open House and A Wider Bridge. It covers Moshe Halbertal and David Grossman and Ami Ayalon. It covers Tel Aviv University and it covers random middle schoolers who have questions about horses. 

It covers every Israeli company and every company that does business in Israel; it covers every Israeli movie, every Israeli actor, and every Israeli theater production.

(I didn't include perhaps the most incredible example I've seen in this ilk: complaints that a newspaper quiz that had a question about Israel's national bird was in breach of the BDS: "This includes any reference to their wildlife." But I digress.) 

Time and again BDS has shown itself to be a train that has no brakes. Vagaries about targeting "institutions, not individuals" - often only honored in the breach regardless - serve as no limit when any every institution is found guilty and any affiliation is implicating. 

Crossed with cousins like "anti-normalization" and "pinkwashing," BDS becomes a systemic and inescapable net ensnaring and excluding Israelis indiscriminately. Too often, it stretches even further and simply serves to exclude Jews-qua-Jews - anywhere, everywhere, in toto.

What's striking about the Moshava Philly fiasco is how it gives lie to so many of the purported limiting constructions of BDS that are meant to explain how it isn't simple antisemitism, xenophobia, or national origin discrimination.

• Some argue that BDS doesn't target Israelis-qua-Israelis, only organizations which have specific ties to problematic Israeli policies and are personally implicated in wrongdoing. But nobody is arguing that Moshava Philly has such ties -- its sin is simply that it serves the food of its own proprietors.

• Some argue that BDS is justified against all Israeli firms insofar as, by being in Israel, they are inherently acting as occupiers of Palestinian land. But Moshava Philly is, as the name suggests, in Philadelphia -- in turns out that even when Israeli Jews come to the, ahem, "real promised land" the taint still follows. It is its Israeli origin, not where it sits or does business in, that generates the contagion.

• Some argue that BDS doesn't object to Jewish presence in modern-day Israel per se, only that which is attributable to the "Zionist invasion" (see PLO charter Art. 6). Yet the term "Moshava" refers to villages the earliest of which were established prior to the First Aliyah by a mix of immigrants and persons who were already living in the Old Yishuv. This makes it all the more striking to witness the word "Moshava", literally "village",  being re-translated to mean "settlement" or "colony" in order to present Moshava Philly as some avatar of colonization -- an ordinary word made sinister by judicious leveraging of its exotic foreignness (we've seen this before). It turns out that when push comes to shove, the projects of pre-Zionist Jews in Eretz Yisrael are going to be portrayed as foreign, colonial impositions too -- because it's Jewish existence, not policy or practice, that ultimately is sufficient to earn the label of invasion.

• Some argue that "Israel" doesn't have a right to exist because only people, not states, have a right to exist. But here we see the view that the entire existence of an Israeli peoplehood -- even purely as culture -- is viewed as corrupt, tainted thievery, hence why the mere existence of "Israeli" food is presented as an affront. The problem, it turns out, is Israelis existing -- anywhere, anyhow, in any context. (I think even JDA would consider this antisemitic, though as always the question is whether any of its backers will actually stand up and apply the document to the case).

One thing I've said before about BDS is that, like other social movements, it will moderate as it mainstreams. People who endorse some forms of boycotts, divestments, or sanctions are a diverse group, and not all of them have any interest in these fundamentalist applications. It is wrong to say that anyone who says they won't buy wine from a West Bank settlement also necessarily endorses barring Israeli immigrant food trucks.

But we should be clear that there is a contingent -- and not a trivial one either -- that does intend to ride the train all the way to the end. For them, the train really has no brakes. And for them, their vision of BDS really is one that is incompatible with Jewish equality -- whether in Israel or abroad. We should be clear-eyed about who they are, and what they represent.