Everyone seems to be talking about it.
More than 350 people showed up at an Anti-Defamation League conference Jan. 28 to talk about it.
CNN’s Paula Zahn invited Berkeley-based Rabbi Michael Lerner on her Feb. 6 show to discuss it.
It was the focus of the New York Times’ second-most-emailed story Feb. 1. On Tuesday, the popular NPR program “On Point” made it the centerpiece of its one-hour show — also featuring Lerner — while the online magazine Slate published a 10-question quiz on the same topic.
The title: “Are you a liberal anti-Semite? Take this quiz and find out!”
Journalists and Jews alike apparently are all trying to figure “it” out — when does criticism of Israel evolve from legitimate to anti-Semitic? Why are progressive, liberal organizations increasingly tolerant of anti-Zionist language and actions? What does the rise of “new anti-Semitism” mean for Jews and for the Jewish state? And are Jews themselves contributing to anti-Semitic rhetoric? Or is such a charge contrary to the Jewish tradition of freethinking?
“To some degree, it’s almost irrelevant who is promoting anti-Semitism,” said Jonathon Bernstein, regional ADL director. “It needs to be opposed no matter who’s doing it.”
Yet despite all the talk, a prominent leftist Jewish organization claims that it’s merely scratching the surface, that, in fact, we’re not talking about it, and are actually doing the opposite — we’re strangling the debate.
Jewish Voice for Peace, a national group based in Berkeley, last week launched a new Web site that illuminates all the ways it sees discussion of Israel’s policies getting swept under the rug.
The Web log, MuzzleWatch, states that it “tracks efforts to stifle open debate about U.S.-Israeli foreign policy.” A photograph of a person with tape across his mouth is the banner image on the site. Both the name and imagery is intentionally incendiary, said Mitchell Plitnick, JVP director.
“The Talmud is nothing but endless debates and discussions, often of two completely opposing views. It is our Jewish responsibility to talk about this,” he said. “The idea is to draw attention to a very serious issue, one in which the debate and discussion is not happening in a sincere or honest way.”
Anti-Semitism veiled as criticism of Israel catapulted into headlines last week when the American Jewish Committee published a provocative and controversial essay entitled “‘Progressive’ Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism,” written by Alvin Rosenfeld of Indiana University. One week earlier, JVP started publishing MuzzleWatch. The site called the essay propaganda and shameful, and added that, “it surfaces the kind of paranoid and narrow thinking that has permeated many parts of institutional Jewry.”
In his essay, Rosenfeld named prominent American Jews — historian Tony Judt, poet Adrienne Rich, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen — and argued that these progressive Jews have enabled the spread of anti-Semitism.
“At a time when the de-legitimization and, ultimately, the eradication of Israel is a goal being voiced with mounting fervor by the enemies of the Jewish state, it is more than disheartening to see Jews themselves adding to the vilification,” he wrote. “That some do so in the name of Judaism itself makes the nature of their assault all the more grotesque.”
MuzzleWatch and Rosenfeld’s essay are at opposite ends of the spectrum. The former argues there must be an open forum to criticize and debate U.S.-Israeli policies, and the latter indicates this criticism slips easily into anti-Semitic territory, which can harm the Jewish state and people.
Which is it?
The American Jewish community hasn’t figured it out yet, said Yitzhak Santis, an expert on Middle East affairs for the Jewish Community Relations Council.
In Israel, an open debate rages in newspapers and coffee shops about the government’s policies on the territories and settlements. Yet in the United States, Israel and its government have become a sensitive topic that some say can be polarizing, inflammatory or offensive.
To joke about that point, Slate.com’s “Are you a liberal anti-Semite?” quiz is written by Joe Lanzmann, who is identified as “the pseudonym of a liberal Jew who fears retribution — though precisely from whom he’s not sure.”
Bernstein said the Jewish community is still determining how much public criticism is appropriate. Certainly, he said, portraying Israel as an occupying force in line with Nazi Germany is misleading, erroneous and vengeful.
Cecilie Surasky, JVP communications director and primary writer for MuzzleWatch, said support has come from a range of Jews, moderate and left, mainstream and secular. Nonetheless, she’s had numerous conversations with rabbis and institutional Jewish leaders who say they support MuzzleWatch but don’t feel comfortable saying so publicly, she said.
“The silencing of debate is a new kind of Jewish political correctness that is destructive to the Jewish people and destructive to American political debate,” Lerner said during his CNN interview Monday, Feb. 5.
Santis wouldn’t comment directly about the AJC essay or the MuzzleWatch site. He said finger-pointing isn’t going to get us very far.
“We as a Jewish community need to figure out how to talk to each other, even when disagree with each other sharply,” he said.
More reading (and listening)
• “‘Progressive’ Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism”
• American Jews and Israel, On Point, NPR
• “Are you a liberal anti-Semite?”
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