Jewish World
Through 2,000 years of exile, Judaism survived because rabbinic sages reshaped it into a portable religion rather than one anchored to a specific land. But what happens once a Jewish state is reestablished? Judaism is changing once again, Shmuel Rosner and Camil Fuchs argue in #IsraeliJudaism: Portrait of a Cultural Revolution—only this time, from the bottom up.
The book, published in Hebrew in 2018 and English in 2019, is based on a survey of beliefs and practices among 3,005 Israeli Jews. The survey was commissioned by the Jewish People Policy Institute, where Rosner is a senior fellow; Fuchs was the project’s statistician. A book based on a survey could easily become an indigestible mass of statistics, but Rosner and Fuchs have produced a highly readable (and superbly translated) analysis of what this data actually tell us.
What they tell us, the authors say, is that a “new Judaism” is emerging in Israel—one that values Jewish tradition, though not strict adherence to halacha (Jewish law), and that views national identity as a crucial component of Judaism. For instance, 73 percent of Jewish Israelis say being Jewish includes observing Jewish festivals and customs. And 72 percent say being a good Jew includes raising one’s children to serve in the Israel Defense Forces, while 60 percent say it includes raising one’s children to live in Israel.
This fusion of religious and national identity characterizes 55 percent of Israeli Jews, whom Rosner and Fuchs infelicitously dub “Jewsraelis.” The rest divide roughly equally among people whose identity is primarily Jewish (17 percent), primarily Israeli (15 percent), and primarily universalist (13 percent).
Israeli Judaism necessarily differs from both the Diaspora and pre-state versions, since its national components, like army service, aren’t possible outside a Jewish state. Moreover, Judaism is present in Israel’s public square to a degree impossible elsewhere, from public-school classes on the Bible (since it’s part of Israel’s cultural heritage) to the country’s complete shutdown on Yom Kippur. Unsurprisingly, this produces fierce arguments over what Judaism’s public component should look like, including efforts to dictate it through legislative or executive action.
Yet the book rebuts the popular narrative that Israelis are becoming increasingly religious and religious coercion is growing. It notes that the ultra-Orthodox, religious Zionist, and traditional communities are all losing members to less religious groups, largely negating the effect of their higher fertility rates. While the book doesn’t try to explain this trend, years of polls showing that most Israelis would have preferred halachic solutions to the Jewish state’s problems (for instance, conversion) make me suspect that the religious establishment’s unwillingness even to consider such solutions is a contributing factor. Precisely because “Jewsraelis” love their state, they have little use for a version of Judaism uninterested in supporting the national project.
This drift toward secularism means religion is largely losing the battle for the public square, on everything from LGBT issues to commercial activity on Shabbat. And attempts to reverse this through state coercion have largely failed, the authors conclude, because dictates that the public doesn’t accept mostly get ignored.
In general, they argue, economics prevails: “Whatever the public wants, the public gets.” So, many stores now open on Shabbat even though it’s technically illegal in most municipalities, because it’s profitable. Indeed, 70 to 80 percent of secular Israelis go shopping on Shabbat, and around 90 percent travel or go to the beach, despite official restrictions on Shabbat commerce and public transportation. Laws or no laws, “Israelis, all in all, do what they please on Shabbat,” the authors write.
Yet restaurants and hotels increasingly keep kosher, because that, too, is what the public wants: The new Israeli Judaism remains strongly traditional despite its rejection of halacha. Fully 64 percent of Israeli Jews keep kosher at home. Almost all attend a Passover seder, and 64 percent read “the whole Haggadah.” On Shabbat, 65 percent light candles and 68 percent make Kiddush. The vast majority of Israelis bar-mitzvah their children, and even among the “totally secular,” 78 percent have their sons (though often not their daughters) read Torah at the ceremony.
Indeed, though half of Israeli Jews define themselves as secular, around two-fifths of secular Jews are what the authors term “somewhat traditional secular”—by American Jewish standards quite traditional. For instance, 59 percent keep kosher at home; by comparison, a 2013 Pew Research poll found that only 31 percent of Conservative Jews in America (and 7 percent of Reform Jews) do so.
Overall, almost 90 percent of Jewish Israelis think being Jewish is important, feel Jewish to a very great extent, and expect their children and grandchildren to be Jewish. That’s precisely why arguments over the state’s Jewish identity are so heated, Rosner and Fuchs write: “What is at stake is something that is important to them.” And since 70 years isn’t very long in a nation’s life, it’s unsurprising that this issue remains unresolved. Nevertheless, they say, the “Jewsraeli” compound of tradition and nationality clearly exerts “the strongest gravitational pull.” As one example, even half of ultra-Orthodox respondents said being a good Jew includes raising your children to live in Israel.
Rosner and Fuchs offer important observations on differences between Israeli and American Judaism. As the authors correctly note, these are largely shaped by objective reality. For instance, Israeli Jews observe more traditions partly because doing so is easier in Israel.
But the largest differences stem from the requirements of statehood. Thus while both communities agree that being a good Jew includes being a good person, they often differ on what that entails. As an example, Rosner and Fuchs cite the immigration debate. American Jews, “shaped by the feeling of being a minority in their own country, will say that the most moral thing to do is to offer shelter and security to anyone in need.” But Israeli Jews are “shaped by the feeling of being a majority fighting to remain a majority” and deem it “a key moral imperative to safeguard Israel’s security and character.” Consequently, they think the world’s only Jewish state should focus on absorbing Jewish refugees rather than opening its doors to everyone.
The authors also challenge the idea that Jewish identity can be exclusively about values. In theory, expressing one’s Judaism through helping others rather than observing Shabbat sounds reasonable. But in reality, they found, groups that engage in more traditional practices “are also the ones who give more to charity, and volunteer more frequently.”
In fact, they write, “the more we examine what makes Jews in Israel Jewish, what keeps them aware of their Jewishness, and what connects them to the rest of the Jewish people, we find this almost always involves action” (emphasis in original). “Customs or rituals, daily routines, or annual calendars… A robust Jewish sense of self almost always comes together with action: Jews study, celebrate, and congregate.”
But that has always been true. And indeed, what Rosner and Fuchs term a “new Judaism” is in many ways a return to Judaism’s roots. The Judaism of the Bible also fused religious practice and national identity; biblical commandments about Shabbat and kashrut sit alongside commandments about national life, from establishing courts to measures to help the poor to restrictions on the king’s powers.
To take just one example, the Bible required all able-bodied men to participate in “obligatory wars” (as opposed to wars of choice). And despite the inevitable differences between a modern Jewish state and its biblical predecessors, that parallels today’s “Jewsraeli” belief that being a good Jew includes raising your children to serve in the IDF. Both are predicated on the understanding that not only does national survival require an army, but protecting fellow Jews is a moral good.
Zionism, Rosner and Fuchs write, sought not only to rescue Jews but also to rescue Judaism from “exhaustion, paralysis, insignificance, and irrelevance.” Like them, I think Israel’s “cultural revolution” might ultimately revitalize Judaism. But if it does, it will be because it’s less a true revolution than a restoration of Judaism’s original dual nature.
Originally published in the January 2020 issue of Commentary
Zionism seems like a binary proposition: You’re either for or against the existence of a Jewish state. But a third option has become increasingly popular, one I would call conditional Zionism. It holds that a Jewish state has a right to exist, but only if it meets certain conditions.
This position is spreading rapidly among liberal American Jews. In an essay in Haaretz in August, for instance, Abe Silberstein argued that Israel must be coerced into creating a Palestinian state because otherwise, the only alternatives are perpetuating the status quo or a one-state solution—and any moral Jew would have to deem the latter “infinitely preferable,” even though it would probably end Jewish statehood. In other words, the Jewish state’s right to exist depends on satisfying Palestinian (and American Jewish) demands.
This position is also common among non-Jews. For instance, in a September essay for Mosaic on whether a Catholic equivalent to Protestant Zionism was possible, Gavin D’Costa concluded, “If the Israel-Palestinian dispute were to be resolved tomorrow, with the full agreement of both parties and with international support, I believe official Catholic Zionism would emerge quite quickly.” In other words, the Church might someday accept a Jewish state, but only if Israel satisfies Palestinian (and Western) demands.
Ostensibly, such positions could be dismissed as simple anti-Semitism based on Natan Sharansky’s famous 3D test (demonization, delegitimization and double standards). The relevant criterion here is double standards since no other country’s existence is deemed conditional on its behavior, even when said behavior is far worse than Israel’s. For instance, China has occupied Tibet for almost 70 years and currently holds a million Uighurs in detention camps, and many people want these policies stopped. But nobody says a Chinese state has no right to exist without such changes.
Nevertheless, dismissing conditional Zionism as anti-Semitic poses one obvious problem: Any rationale for a Jewish state, whether religious or secular, rests on the Jews’ claim to be a distinct people with a distinct religion, language and culture. And that very heritage deems the Jewish people’s right to remain in its land conditional on its moral behavior. This isn’t a minor detail; it’s a core element of Jewish theology.
It’s stated repeatedly in the Bible. It’s included in the Shema prayer, Judaism’s closest approximation to a credo, which observant Jews recite twice daily. It’s the reason given by the rabbis of the Talmud for both the first and second exiles (they attributed the first to murder, idolatry and forbidden sexual relations, and the second to baseless hatred). Indeed, it’s precisely because this is so fundamental that it still seems self-evident even to secular Jews who have abandoned almost every other vestige of Judaism, or a Catholic Church that has downgraded the Hebrew Bible in favor of the New Testament (the main reason Christian Zionism is a Protestant phenomenon is because Protestants give greater weight to the Hebrew Bible than Catholics do).
So does that mean conditional Zionists are right, and Israel’s right to exist depends on satisfying Palestinian demands? Not at all, because there’s a crucial distinction between modern conditional Zionism and the biblical version: Neither the Bible nor the talmudic Judaism it engendered ever insisted that Jewish morality requires the Jewish polity to commit suicide.
Indeed, another fundamental principle of Judaism is that following God’s laws leads to life, not death (see Deuteronomy 30:19 or Leviticus 18:5). Consequently, the Talmud allows almost any religious commandment (except murder, idolatry and forbidden sexual relations) to be violated to save a life. It also declares that if someone comes to kill you, “rise up and kill him first.”
For the same reason, national self-defense is considered one of the principal responsibilities of a Jewish leader, and possibly even a religious obligation. The Bible itself merely states that some wars are obligatory without defining which wars fall into this category. But one interpretation, adopted inter alia by the great medieval Jewish scholar Maimonides, says it includes wars of self-defense.
Obviously, this doesn’t mean anything goes. Even in wartime, the Bible sets limits on an army’s behavior—the original laws of war. But Jewish tradition utterly rejects the idea that morality requires national suicide. On the contrary, it views defending the Jewish commonwealth as a positive moral good.
So what does all this have to do with the Palestinians? It’s very simple: Even if you accept the (false) premise that ceding the West Bank would actually satisfy Palestinian demands, the fact remains that Israel isn’t there solely or even primarily because of the settlers, who have repeatedly proven incapable of preventing territorial concessions (see the Oslo Accords, the disengagement from Gaza, the far-reaching offers made by prime ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert). It’s there because, based on bitter experience, most Israelis see no way to leave without committing national suicide.
Withdrawing from parts of the West Bank under the Oslo Accords led to the lethal terror of the Second Intifada, which ended only when the Israeli army retook control of these areas. Withdrawing from Gaza resulted in 14 years (and counting) of almost nonstop rocket and mortar fire on southern Israel; a similar outcome would be far deadlier in the West Bank, which, unlike Gaza, is in easy range of Israel’s main population centers, economic hubs and international airport. Withdrawing from southern Lebanon in 2000 enabled Hezbollah, a terrorist organization, to acquire a missile arsenal greater than that of many national armies, aimed straight at Israel.
All this has convinced most Israelis that barring a radical and unforeseen change in Palestinian behavior, ceding the West Bank would be militarily suicidal. And since a one-state solution still looks demographically suicidal, that leaves some version of the status quo as the least bad option—not only for Israel, but even for the Palestinians, as I’ll explain in a subsequent column.
So is conditional Zionism anti-Semitic? That depends on the conditions. But nowadays, the key condition usually involves suicidal Israeli concessions to the Palestinians. Thus today’s conditional Zionists require one nation, of all the nations in the world, to destroy itself for another’s sake. And yes, that’s anti-Semitic.
This article was originally syndicated by JNS.org (www.jns.org) on October 30, 2019 © 2019 JNS.org
When Israel barred two U.S. congresswomen from entering the country earlier this month, I initially thought it a stupid decision. But after hearing the reactions from both American politicians and American Jews, I’ve started to think it may have been necessary.
This isn’t to deny the substantial damage it has caused. Pro-Israel Democrats felt betrayed, and even some pro-Israel Republicans were outraged. Most of the organized Jewish community was horrified. And the BDS movement received media exposure it could never have gained on its own.
But nobody would have felt outraged or betrayed had Israel barred, say, white-supremacist politicians. Thus the underlying message of these reactions was that unlike white supremacism, advocating Israel’s destruction is a legitimate opinion, entitled to the same respectful treatment as the view that Israel should continue to exist. Yet no country can or should treat its own erasure as a legitimate option.
To understand why this was the issue at stake, a brief review of the facts is needed. When Israel originally agreed to allow a visit by Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), it knew they enthusiastically supported BDS, a movement unambiguously committed to eliminating the Jewish state. It also knew they would use the visit to tar Israel in every possible way.
However, it assumed that they would at least pay lip service to Israel’s existence by following the standard protocol for official visitors—meeting Israeli officials and visiting some Israeli sites. On that assumption, and since the law banning entry to prominent BDS supporters permits exceptions for the sake of Israel’s foreign relations, Israel decided to admit them “out of respect for the U.S. Congress,” as Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer said at the time.
A few days before the visit, however, the proposed itinerary arrived and proved that assumption wrong. Far from paying lip service to Israel’s existence, the trip literally erased the country from the map.
It was billed as a trip to “Palestine,” not, say, “Israel and Palestine.” It didn’t include visits to a single spot in pre-1967 Israel, aside from the unavoidable landing (for those too lazy to take the longer route through Amman) at Ben-Gurion International Airport. And even that was billed simply as “arrive in Tel Aviv,” with no hint that Tel Aviv belonged to a country other than “Palestine.”
Nor did the trip include meetings with any Israeli officials; Omar’s subsequent claim that she, unlike Tlaib, did plan to hold such meetings is patently false. According to her own story, she planned to spend Friday, Aug. 16 and Saturday, Aug. 17 in Israel before joining Tlaib’s trip on Aug. 18. But official meetings are always arranged in advance. And as of Aug. 15, when Israel nixed the visit, she hadn’t yet approached a single Israeli government or defense official (though she did contact one Arab Knesset member). Did she really think she could just show up at the last minute, on the two days when Israelis aren’t in their offices (Israel’s work week is Sunday through Thursday), and magically arrange meetings?
Finally, the trip was organized by Miftah, a Palestinian organization that supports terror and regularly spouts anti-Semitic blood libels, including accusing Jews of poisoning wells, drinking Christian blood and organ theft.
In short, this was a trip that literally negated Israel’s existence. Yet all the outraged reactions either ignored this fact or, worse, treated it as unexceptionable. The pro-Israel lobby AIPAC exemplified the former approach, tweeting, “Every member of Congress should be able to visit and experience our democratic ally Israel firsthand”—just as if Tlaib and Omar hadn’t deliberately shunned experiencing Israel. Leading pro-Israel Democrats epitomized the latter approach.
“The decision of the Israeli government to deny entry to Israel by two Members of Congress is outrageous, regardless of their itinerary or their views,” declared House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who had just returned from leading 41 Democrats on his own congressional trip to Israel. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) opined, “No democratic society should fear an open debate.” Congressmen Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) said the “close relationship enjoyed by the United States and Israel should extend to all its government representatives, regardless of their views on specific issues or policies.” Former Vice President Joe Biden said, “No democracy should deny entry to visitors based on the content of their ideas—even ideas they strongly object to.”
In other words, even some of the most pro-Israel voices in Congress insisted that wiping Israel off the map is a legitimate opinion, one Israel must accept just as it accepts disagreements over government policy. It shouldn’t “fear an open debate” on whether or not it should continue to exist. It shouldn’t “deny entry to visitors based on the content of their ideas,” even if the idea in question is its own destruction.
This is simply ludicrous. For Israel to deny entry to advocates of its own dissolution should be as uncontroversial as denying entry to neo-Nazis. And it’s deeply worrying that even Israel’s genuine friends in America evidently think otherwise.
Yet Israel can’t expect its overseas friends to treat this view as illegitimate if it doesn’t do the same itself. And allowing entry to people like Tlaib and Omar would do the exact opposite: It would send the message that their desire to destroy the Jewish state isn’t beyond the pale, but merely a legitimate political disagreement.
Perhaps U.S. President Donald Trump’s crude intervention made this the wrong moment to take a stand. Because Israel’s decision came just hours after he tweeted that admitting Tlaib and Omar would show “great weakness,” it was widely perceived as a capitulation to Trump rather than an independent decision on a crucial issue of principle.
But on the flip side, this was by far the most blatant, controversial and high-profile case Israel is ever likely to encounter. Thus barring Tlaib and Omar sets a clear precedent, whereas failing to do so would have completely erased a crucial red line.
And because the world will never be more pro-Israel than Jerusalem is, holding that line is essential. If Israel wants the world to treat its eradication as an illegitimate aim, it must first do so itself.
This article was originally syndicated by JNS.org (www.jns.org) on August 28, 2019. © 2019 JNS.org
Jewish tradition holds that the Second Temple was destroyed by baseless hatred. Since we’re currently in the annual three-week mourning period for the destruction of both Temples, which culminates in the holiday of Tisha B’Av, it’s a good time to consider a particularly counterproductive bit of baseless hatred: that between the Orthodox and Conservative movements.
Orthodox Jews tend to view Conservative and Reform Jewry as indistinguishable, lumping them both together as “non-Orthodox.” But in reality, there’s a yawning gap between them. The Conservative movement officially maintains that Jews must follow halachah (traditional Jewish law), including by observing Shabbat, kashrut, the Jewish holidays and so forth. The Reform movement rejects the very idea of binding halachah. Thus on the fundamental issue that has preserved the Jewish people for millennia—the binding nature of halachah—the Conservatives are formally on the Orthodox side of the divide.
Admittedly, most Conservative Jews don’t practice what their movement preaches, so one could legitimately ask what value this formal commitment to halachah has if most of its members ignore it. Moreover, this failure to produce and sustain observant communities has led many Jews raised in committed Conservative homes to switch to Orthodoxy (I’m one of them), and if the most observant continue leaving, I wonder how long even a formal commitment to halachah will survive.
But right now, the Conservative movement still contains a traditionalist faction that’s committed to observing halachah as the movement defines it. And because of this commitment, traditionalist Conservatives have far more in common with Orthodoxy than Reform.
Granted, Conservative interpretations of halachah diverge from Orthodox ones in nontrivial ways. But that strikes me as a less serious problem, because radically divergent interpretations of halachah have been common throughout Jewish history.
In the Second Temple era, for instance, the schools of Hillel and Shammai routinely disagreed about matters both great and small. In one famous case, Hillel even accepted a convert who rejected the Oral Torah—a gross deviation from mainstream Judaism that had led Shammai to spurn the would-be convert. Yet despite such disputes, their adherents would still marry each other’s children.
In the 17th century, Chassidim and non-Chassidim fought viciously. Yet in modern-day Israel, despite ongoing disagreements, their commonalities have united them into a single haredi political party.
Sephardi and Ashkenazi interpretations of halachah still differ enough that Israeli bakeries typically obtain dual kashrut certification to ensure that everyone can eat their products. Yet Sephardi-Ashkenazi “intermarriages” are common.
What enabled all these divergent groups to remain one Jewish people despite their halachic differences was that all agreed on the basic principle: There is such a thing as Jewish law, and it’s binding on all Jews, just as American law binds Americans or German law binds Germans. Exactly how that law should apply to real-world situations is something Jewish scholars have wrangled over throughout history. But that doesn’t negate their fundamental commitment to halachah, just as Americans’ legal wrestling over constitutional interpretation doesn’t negate a shared commitment to the Constitution.
Obviously, most Orthodox Jews (myself included) find some Conservative halachic rulings to be untenable. But how many Orthodox Jews have never encountered an Orthodox ruling they find untenable? (My personal bugbear is the Israeli rabbinate’s growing practice of retroactively invalidating conversions, which violates centuries of tradition.) The truth is that any movement that grapples seriously with the challenge of applying halachah to modern life will probably produce some rulings that others find untenable.
Nevertheless, in a world where personal autonomy increasingly reigns supreme and the very idea that religious tradition could obligate future generations is widely scorned, the Conservative movement’s willingness to publicly insist that Judaism entails religious obligations is no small thing. And its traditionalist faction does take halachah seriously.
As one example, consider its ruling letting people drive to synagogue on Shabbat. Though in retrospect, I think it’s proved disastrous, the ruling was based on a longstanding halachic principle called hora’at sha’ah, under which the normal rules can be temporarily suspended in times of crisis. The “crisis” in this case was that in 1950s’ America, far-flung communities, widespread Jewish illiteracy and the fact that Saturdays were generally workdays meant many people simply wouldn’t be able to pray if they couldn’t drive to synagogue.
In Israel, however, virtually everyone lives within walking distance of a synagogue and is also literate enough to pray alone. Consequently, no such crisis exists, so the movement’s Israeli branch forbade driving on Shabbat.
Now contrast this halachic balancing act with the Reform movement, which scrapped the entire idea of binding halachah and replaced it with personal autonomy. There’s no way to paper over a departure of that magnitude from the halachic framework that has kept Jews together for millennia. But the gap between traditionalist Conservatives and Orthodoxy isn’t so large by historical standards that it ought to be unbridgeable.
Neither side is blameless in this rift. Inter alia, too many Conservative Jews scorn the Orthodox as benighted reactionaries rather than valuing their ostensibly shared fidelity to Jewish tradition; many also seem to prioritize progressive politics over Jewish needs. See, for instance, the American Conservative movement’s opposition to government vouchers for religious schools, despite the importance of Jewish education to Jewish continuity and the fact that its own Jewish day schools are in even worse financial shape than their Orthodox counterparts.
But the biggest barrier to cooperation is that too much of the Orthodox world views the Conservative movement as “non-halachic” and therefore beyond the pale. When some Orthodox Jews won’t call a Conservative rabbi “rabbi” even if said rabbi faithfully upholds the movement’s stated commitment to halachah (a practice sadly not unheard of in Israel, though less common in America), cooperation is obviously impossible.
In a world where the very idea of binding religious obligations is increasingly out of fashion, both sides have an obvious common interest; consequently, greater Orthodox-Conservative cooperation could be mutually beneficial. But even if it produced no benefits, it’s the right thing to do. As long as the Conservative movement remains officially committed to halachah, it remains within Judaism’s age-old tradition. And that’s a common denominator that ought to outweigh any interpretational divisions.
This article was originally syndicated by JNS.org (www.jns.org) on July 31, 2019. © 2019 JNS.org
Three seemingly unrelated incidents occurred last week, yet all share a common denominator: They exemplify the way anti-Israel politics has corrupted the concept of human rights.
Let’s start with best-selling British novelist Richard Zimler’s report that two British cultural organizations recently refused to host him for lectures about his new book, though he has lectured many times on previous books. “They asked me if you were Jewish, and the moment I said you were, they lost all interest,” he quoted his publicist as saying.
It’s not that these groups have anything against Jews per se. They simply feared that hosting a Jew would make them a target for anti-Israel protesters.
Zimler isn’t Israeli, has no relatives or investments in Israel and doesn’t write about Israel. His latest book is set in the Holy Land 2,000 years ago, but its storyline is Christian rather than Jewish (it’s called The Gospel According to Lazarus). So he wouldn’t seem an obvious target, given BDS apologists’ repeated claim that anti-Zionism isn’t anti-Semitic.
Unfortunately, much of the anti-Israel crowd hasn’t gotten that memo. See, for instance, the German courts which ruled that torching a German synagogue wasn’t a hate crime, but an understandable anti-Israel protest. Or the student organizations which demanded that a South African university expel all Jewish students to show its pro-Palestinian bona fides. Or the Norwegian attorney general who ruled that “F*** Jews” isn’t hate speech, but an expression of “dissatisfaction with [Israel’s] policies,” although the speaker never mentioned Israel. Or the dyke marches that banned Jews from holding Jewish pride flags because they remind some people of Israeli flags. And so forth.
So despite deploring the unnamed organizations’ cowardice, I can’t dismiss their fears as unfounded. And that’s the problem.
Human-rights groups and liberals worldwide rush to defend the “rights” of BDS activists; see, for instance, their opposition to anti-BDS legislation on the false grounds that it violates freedom of speech (it actually applies only to actions, not speech). Yet they’ve shown no interest in defending Jewish rights in most of the examples cited above. Evidently, Jewish rights are acceptable collateral damage in the sacred cause of anti-Zionism.
The second incident was the Palestinian Authority’s harassment of Palestinian businessmen who attended the U.S.-sponsored economic workshop in Bahrain on June 25-26. One was arrested, but eventually released under American pressure. Another escaped arrest by fleeing to the Israeli-controlled section of Hebron. And the P.A. raided the homes of several others, confiscating documents like credit cards and passports.
These roughly 15 businessmen traveled legally to Bahrain to participate in what one reporter termed the conference’s “real, unofficial” purpose—closing legal business deals, mainly with fellow Arabs. They explicitly said they represented only themselves, not the P.A, and refused to talk politics, saying only the P.A. was authorized to do that. In short, not only did they commit no crime, they made no attempt to undermine the P.A.’s political positions.
Indeed, the P.A. didn’t even try to pretend that any crime was committed. As one Palestinian security official told Haaretz, there was “no specific charge” against the arrested businessman; the arrest “was a warning. He must understand the implications of this sort of collaboration.”
In other words, this was pure political persecution, which is standard P.A. practice. Palestinian journalists, activists and businessmen have all been arrested for such “crimes” as saying P.A. leader Mahmoud Abbas should resign.
Human-rights groups and liberals worldwide incessantly condemn Israeli violations of Palestinian rights (real or imaginary). They also frequently condemn Israel for utterly fictitious violations of Israeli rights. But innocent Palestinian businessmen arrested and harassed by the P.A. for doing legal business? You won’t hear a peep about that. Palestinian rights are evidently acceptable collateral damage in the sacred struggle against Israel.
The third incident was the estimated 100 fires that incendiary balloons flown from Gaza ignited in southern Israel. That’s an unusually high number for a single week, but incendiary devices from Gaza—courtesy of Hamas’s “balloon unit”—have been wreaking havoc for more than a year. In the six months ending in October 2018, such devices destroyed some 3,000 acres of forest and 4,000 acres of farmland. Since the winter rains ended, additional thousands of acres have been destroyed.
This is a war crime, according to both the Geneva Conventions and the treaty governing the International Criminal Court. Both define “extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly” as a war crime; the latter also lists causing “widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated.” Palestinian arson attacks do both, while serving no military purpose whatsoever.
The ICC is looking into numerous alleged Israeli crimes against the Palestinians and has even begged Palestinians to provide it with more complaints. Human-rights groups and liberals worldwide incessantly condemn these alleged Israeli crimes, including settlement construction, which, even if it were a genuine crime (it isn’t), is far less destructive than scorched-earth tactics (evacuated settlements could theoretically be given to the Palestinians under a peace deal). But I haven’t heard a peep about the destruction of large swaths of southern Israel, nor has the ICC considered probing it. Environmental devastation is evidently acceptable collateral damage in the sacred fight against Israel.
What all these cases show is that human rights have ceased being an objective standard applied equally to all. Instead, they’ve become a political tool to bash groups that liberals dislike. So Jewish rights matter when targeted by right-wing extremists (whom liberals loathe), but not when targeted by anti-Zionists. Palestinians’ rights matter when targeted by Israel, but not when targeted by the P.A. And Israeli rights never matter, except when violated by Israel.
This problem isn’t unique to the Israeli-Palestinian issue, of course. It’s just particularly blatant there.
Liberals and human-rights groups frequently complain that human rights are becoming devalued worldwide, and they’re right. But their own politicization of these rights is the chief culprit. And until this changes, contempt for human rights will only keep growing.
This article was originally syndicated by JNS.org (www.jns.org) on July 3, 2019. © 2019 JNS.org
Distorting the meaning of language is a seductive but dangerous game. It’s seductive because it provides enormous short-term benefits. It’s dangerous because, as two recent examples show, it can ultimately eviscerate fundamental values.
One example comes from this week’s Israeli election, in which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party actually gained seats despite multiple corruption cases against him. A survey published in February by a Haifa University political scientist explains why: Most voters for Likud and allied parties don’t believe the allegations because they don’t trust the legal system. Fully 65 percent of Likud voters and 75 percent of haredi voters think law-enforcement agencies are simply trying to oust Netanyahu.
On one level, this is shocking. But on another, it’s not shocking at all because the Israeli left has spent decades successfully subverting the concept of “the rule of law” for its own political benefit.
For instance, Israel’s Supreme Court repeatedly overturns government policies not because they violate any law, but because the justices deem them “unreasonable.” Whether or not a policy is reasonable is a question other democracies leave to the voters. But the left has successfully branded all efforts to curb such judicial policy interventions as “contrary to the rule of law,” and thereby managed to stymie proposed reforms: Most legislators don’t want to “sabotage the rule of law.”
Moreover, in almost every Western democracy, the executive and legislative branches choose Supreme Court justices; only in Israel do sitting justices have veto power over the choice of their successors. Yet the left has branded every attempt to align Israel’s judicial appointments system with this Western norm as “contrary to the rule of law,” and thereby successfully staved off change.
Israel is also unique among democracies in treating the attorney general’s views as binding on the government. Thanks to a 1993 Supreme Court ruling, whenever the attorney general opposes a policy, he’s entitled to represent his own position in court rather than the government’s, thereby leaving the government’s position unrepresented and ensuring that it loses cases by default. Letting an unelected attorney general dictate to an elected government is patently undemocratic and preventing any group, even the government, from defending itself in court violates a fundamental democratic right. Yet leftists have successfully branded this, too, as “the rule of law”; consequently, attempted reforms have repeatedly failed.
Finally, there’s the unequal application of laws, as epitomized by a pre-election ruling that disqualified a Jewish Knesset candidate but nixed the disqualification of an Arab party, Balad. The law lists three grounds for disqualification: inciting to racism, rejecting Israel’s character as a Jewish and democratic state, and supporting armed struggle against Israel. Balad, as the court itself has acknowledged, openly rejects Israel’s Jewish character. Several of its MKs have also faced criminal proceedings for abetting anti-Israel terror. Yet the Supreme Court chose to ignore all this, thereby effectively declaring the law a dead letter except when used against Jews.
So here’s how your average rightist voter understands the rule of law today: It means that unelected legal officials—justices and attorneys general—can veto any government decision, thereby making a mockery of democratic elections. It means that laws meant to apply to Jews and Arabs alike are only enforceable against Jews. It means letting justices select their own successors, keeping the court ideologically monochromatic. In short, it’s just a trick for ensuring that the left can continue imposing its views no matter how many elections it loses.
That trick has successfully thwarted all legislative efforts at reform. But the price is that many rightists now distrust and despise “the rule of law” to such an extent that they dismiss pending indictments against a prime minister as just another attempt by the legal establishment to subvert democracy.
This is a tragedy because the rule of law, in its original meaning, is an essential foundation for democracy. Inter alia, it means that the bounds of legitimate action are defined not by the ruler’s whims but by laws whose content is public knowledge; that those laws apply equally to all; and that disputes are settled in court according to those laws rather than by force. In short, it’s a shared framework that protects the individual and enables diverse groups to live together.
The second example is last week’s National Council of Young Israel gala. When a speaker mentioned “the leftist progressive tikkun olam ideology,” the American Modern Orthodox audience booed.
On one level, this is shocking since tikkun olam just means “repairing the world,” and Jews have always believed that Judaism is supposed to make the world better in some fashion. Indeed, the Bible itself says so repeatedly, from God’s promise to Abraham that “through thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed” to Isaiah’s dictum that Israel should be “a light unto the nations.”
Haredi Jews may believe that doing so requires scrupulously obeying Jewish law, while Reform Jews may believe it requires adopting progressive policies. But Jews across the spectrum should be able to say, “Fine, we agree on the goal of improving the world; now let’s argue about the means.”
Yet those boos weren’t actually shocking because Jewish leftists have spent decades trying to conflate tikkun olam with a particular set of progressive policies, such that anyone opposing those policies ipso facto opposes tikkun olam. And as evidenced by that speaker’s choice of words, they’ve succeeded: Even their Jewish opponents now view tikkun olam as a “leftist progressive ideology.”
But by appropriating tikkun olam as their own exclusive property, leftists have discredited the entire concept; many Jews now see it as a stand-in for ideas that they (and many other reasonable people of goodwill) consider destructive. That’s a massive own goal. But it’s also a tragedy for the Jewish people, which has lost a shared moral language that could have been a unifying factor.
The left’s subversion of language has thus wreaked long-lasting harm on both Israel and the Jewish people. And all of us will be paying the price for many years to come.
This article was originally syndicated by JNS.org (www.jns.org) on April 10, 2019 © 2019 JNS.org
It’s easy to see why political polarization is so bitter today in both Israel and America these days: Moderation is a “lose-lose” proposition, winning politicians no credit from their opponents while alienating elements of their own base. This problem exists on both sides of the aisle. But two unusually candid left-wing assessments of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu provide a particularly clear example of how it works and why it’s bad for both sides.
In an interview with Haaretz last month, senior opposition politician Tzipi Livni noted (as I have repeatedly) that Netanyahu built very little in the settlements during his 10 years in office. “Why hasn’t Netanyahu built up until now? Because he gets it,” she said, referring to the Palestinian issue.
Moreover, she continued, “Bibi will not go out and start a war. In that respect, he is responsible.”
His problem, she charged, is that he’s under pressure from his rightist base on various issues, and sometimes, “he caves in to them. I’ll say it again, it isn’t him. I’ve spent hundreds of hours with him [as justice minister in the previous Netanyahu government, in which she was responsible for diplomatic negotiations]—his actual positions are different.”
What makes this astounding is that Livni and her compatriots on the left have spent most of the past decade saying exactly the opposite—that Netanyahu is responsible for massive settlement construction, that he’s anti-peace. And this has serious real-world consequences.
The first and worst is that this narrative, which Livni now admits is false, has been widely embraced by American Jews and the Democratic Party. That’s bad for Israel as a whole, as it has contributed to growing anti-Israel sentiment among both groups.
To be clear, I don’t think either group’s alienation stems primarily from Israel’s policies, whether real or alleged. Nevertheless, had prominent Israeli leftists told the truth—that Netanyahu was doing very little settlement building, that his “actual positions” are far from his hardline image—it might have slowed the process.
Second, this false narrative hurts leftists themselves since it impedes Netanyahu’s ability to adopt policies they favor. Many such policies, like the dearth of settlement construction, are indeed very unpopular with his base, but he could justify them if they were achieving something important for Israel, like maintaining its bipartisan support in America.
In reality, however, they don’t achieve anything. For instance, despite his restraint on settlements, the Obama administration repeatedly accused him of “aggressive” settlement construction, with full-throated backing from Israeli leftists. That makes it impossible for Netanyahu to justify restraint to his unhappy base, which is precisely why he sometimes “caves in to them.”
Finally, this false narrative hinders his ability to form a broader-based government. Far from being the “right-wing extremist” leftists term him, Netanyahu is a center-rightist, and he desperately wanted the Labor Party in his current government to balance the right-wing parties. But after months of negotiations with former Labor Chairman Isaac Herzog, it became clear that Herzog had no support for such a move within his own party. So Netanyahu ultimately brought in the right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu instead.
Nor is this surprising. Having told its own voters for years that Netanyahu was anti-democratic and anti-peace, Labor would have trouble persuading them that joining the government was justified. But had it instead told the truth about issues like Netanyahu’s settlement restraint and diplomatic moderation, joining the government (and thereby pulling it further to the left) might have been an option.
Two days after Livni’s interview ran, Jerusalem Post columnist Susan Hattis Rolef, who has worked for various senior Labor politicians, published a column lamenting that “in the past Netanyahu could be trusted to block legislative proposals that were blatantly undemocratic,” but today, he “no longer seems to bother himself with acting as a barrier against threats to democracy coming from the direction of his own coalition.”
Here, too, what’s shocking is that Rolef and her compatriots on the left have spent the last decade saying exactly the opposite. Netanyahu has indeed allowed legislation in his current term that he would previously have quashed (most of which isn’t actually undemocratic, but that’s a separate argument). Nevertheless, the claim that he’s responsible for “anti-democratic” legislation didn’t just arise this term; prominent leftists have accused him of that for the last 10 years, even though, as Rolef now admits, he spent most of those years blocking proposals the left considered “anti-democratic.”
Again, the damage is threefold. First and worst, the false narrative that Israel is becoming increasingly undemocratic has contributed to growing anti-Israel sentiment among American Jews and the Democratic Party.
Second, it hurts leftists themselves, by reducing Netanyahu’s ability to adopt policies they would prefer. It’s hard for him to justify killing legislation his base supports unless doing so achieves something useful for the country. But in fact, his years of quashing bills the left disliked accomplished nothing since Israeli leftists still accused his government of being anti-democratic, and American Jews and non-Jewish leftists believed them.
Finally, this false narrative impedes his ability to form a broader-based government. Had Labor joined the government, it would have been able to kill any legislation it considered undemocratic, as coalition agreements usually give every party veto power over issues particularly important to it. But after falsely telling its voters for years that Netanyahu himself was anti-democratic, how could it justify doing so?
Many of the same evils obviously derive from Israeli rightists’ favorite trick of calling left-wing opponents “anti-Zionist,” though most Israeli leftists are no such thing. Inter alia, the false narrative that anti-Zionism is widespread on the Israeli left helps legitimatize anti-Zionism as a normative left-wing position overseas.
But since Netanyahu has led Israel for the last decade, the greatest damage has come from the left’s false narratives about his beliefs and conduct. And in the end, everyone has lost by it. Netanyahu, and by extension the entire center-right, has been unjustly tarred as anti-democratic and anti-peace. The left has forfeited its ability to block policies it opposes and promote those it supports. And Israel as a whole has seen its image overseas undeservedly tarnished.
This article was originally syndicated by JNS.org (www.jns.org) on January 16, 2019. © 2019 JNS.org
Like most pro-Israel commentators, I’m appalled by U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw American forces from Syria. Nevertheless, this is the wrong issue for pro-Israel activists to pick a fight over. Criticizing the decision on grounds unrelated to Israel—of which there are many—is fine. But to imply that U.S. troops should remain in Syria for Israel’s sake is to betray the fundamental tenet of the American-Israeli alliance: Israel will defend itself by itself; it will never ask America to put soldiers in harm’s way for its sake.
It’s worth underscoring just how unique this makes Israel among American allies. America has fought to defend Europe repeatedly. It fought for South Korea in the 1950s, South Vietnam in the 1960s, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia in 1991. And there’s an understanding, often anchored in bilateral or multilateral treaties (such as NATO), that America would fight for many other allies if necessary, like Japan, Canada or Australia.
But with Israel, the agreement has always been that Israel would see to its own defense, while America would provide it with the means to do so. That arrangement suited both sides. For America, it was much less costly in terms of both lives and money than having to defend Israeli militarily (a point I explained in detail here). And for Israel, it satisfied a deeply ingrained lesson of Jewish history: Relying on others for protection always ends badly for the Jews.
In that sense, Trump was right, but only partly so, when he rejected claims that the withdrawal would hurt Israel by saying, “We give Israel $4.5 billion a year. And they’re doing very well defending themselves.” Enabling Israel to defend itself is indeed why America gives it such generous aid ($3.8 billion annually, plus $700 million for missile defense in 2018). If Israel relied on American troops to defend it, that aid would have no justification.
But money alone isn’t enough to enable Israel to defend itself. In fact, it’s far less important than two other critical needs.
The first is a reliable arms supplier—one not only willing to sell Israel top-quality weaponry in peacetime, but also to keep the supplies coming during wartime, when they’re most needed. America is irreplaceable in this regard, as Israel has learned through bitter experience. France, for instance, famously halted arms shipments to Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War. Britain has done so repeatedly, most recently by threatening an arms embargo in 2014 if hostilities in Gaza resumed. This, even more than the fact that most American aid must be spent in America, is why Israel buys little military equipment from either country.
The second is support in the diplomatic arena, where Israel is highly vulnerable. Every time Israel fights, it comes under tremendous international pressure to stop immediately before it can defeat or even damage the enemy. Moreover, it’s routinely threatened with international sanctions over issues ranging from spurious war-crimes’ allegations to the settlements. America’s diplomatic umbrella, especially but not exclusively at the United Nations, is thus critical both to buying Israel the time it needs to fight and to protecting it from sanctions.
This brings us to the second reason why a pro-Israel fight with Trump over Syria seems counterproductive. Though Israel benefited significantly from the American troop presence in Syria, its most pressing needs are diplomatic support in general and support for its ability to defend itself in particular. And on both, Trump remains a vast improvement over his predecessor.
Granted, Israel hasn’t fought any wars since he took office, so there’s no guarantee of how he would act. But there’s no reason to think that he wouldn’t provide the needed support, given his administration’s staunch defense of Israel at the United Nations to date.
In contrast, Israel did fight a war while Barack Obama was president, so it knows what it’s like to be without American support. During the 2014 Gaza war, Obama’s administration famously refused to resupply Israel with Hellfire missiles. It sought to pressure Israel into a cease-fire agreement that met all of Hamas’s demands and none of Israel’s. It issued an endless stream of condemnations of Israel during the fighting, rather than supporting Israel’s right to self-defense against the thousands of rockets Hamas fired at Israeli cities.
Then, in 2016, Obama also stripped Israel of America’s diplomatic protection. The U.N. Security Council resolution against the settlements, which he allowed to pass, laid the groundwork for international sanctions against Israel and even prosecution at the International Criminal Court.
And that’s without even mentioning the minor detail that it was Obama who abandoned Syria to Iran and Russia to begin with. Tehran financed its massive Syrian intervention with the billions of dollars it reaped from Obama’s flagship act of diplomacy, the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. And Moscow entered the Syrian war only after waiting more than three years to make sure that America wasn’t planning to get involved. By the time Trump took office, Russian-Iranian domination of Syria was a fait accompli to which America’s scant 2,000 troops could make little difference.
None of this justifies the Syria withdrawal. It’s a terrible idea, and not only, or even primarily, because Israel benefited from having American troops blocking Iran’s long-desired land route through Syria to Lebanon. It further empowers Russia, Turkey and Iran—none of which wish America (or Israel) well. It also may enable a resurgence of the Islamic State, just as America’s withdrawal from Iraq in 2011 did. Abandoning the Kurds to Turkey’s tender mercies after they have been America’s best foot soldiers against the Islamic State for years is not only a moral crime, but a strategic one, as it will undermine America’s ability to recruit local allies in the future. And America will save little in terms of either lives or money by ending this low-cost, low-casualty mission.
But from a pro-Israel perspective, none of this changes two basic facts. First, there are things Israel needs from Trump more than troops in Syria. And second, asking America to keep soldiers anywhere for Israel’s sake violates a sine qua non of both the Israeli ethos and the bilateral alliance—that Israel defends itself by itself.
This article was originally syndicated by JNS.org (www.jns.org) on January 3, 2019. © 2019 JNS.org
For the second time in two months, a major study has shown that anti-Semitism in Europe is surging, and the far-right isn’t primarily to blame. Yet American Jewish leaders remain fixated on the idea that right-wing anti-Semitism is the principal threat to Jewish life.
Last month’s study by the Joint Distribution Committee surveyed 893 Jewish leaders and professionals from throughout Europe. Inter alia, it found that Jews felt safer in right-wing Eastern Europe than the liberal West by a 20-point margin.
The new study, by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, surveyed almost 16,500 Jews in the 12 E.U. states where most European Jews live. Overall, 89 percent of respondents said anti-Semitism had worsened in their country in the last five years, 85 percent considered anti-Semitism a “very” or “fairly” big problem, and 38 percent have considered emigrating because of it. Additionally, 28 percent always or frequently avoid “wearing, carrying or displaying” anything identifiably Jewish, and 43 percent sometimes do.
But though every single country scored poorly, countries commonly viewed as liberal generally fared worse than those viewed as having “right-wing” governments. The highest proportion of respondents deeming anti-Semitism a big problem was in France (95 percent), followed by Belgium (86 percent), Germany and Poland (85 percent), Sweden (82 percent), Spain (78 percent), Hungary (77 percent), Britain (75 percent), Austria, Italy and Holland (73 percent) and Denmark (56 percent). Thus of the countries perceived by their own Jews as having the worst anti-Semitism problems, all but Poland are considered liberal bastions.
In contrast, the lower end of the scale consisted almost exclusively of countries widely deemed to have populist or even borderline fascist governments: Italy’s coalition of the right-wing League and the populist Five Star Movement, Austria’s coalition of traditional conservatives and the far-right Freedom Party, Britain’s pro-Brexit conservatives, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, and in Denmark—home to some of Europe’s most draconian anti-immigration laws—a minority government dependent on support from the far-right Danish People’s Party.
Moreover, of the seven countries covered by a previous E.U. study in 2012, the proportion of respondents deeming anti-Semitism a major problem declined in only one: Hungary, which registered a drop of 12 percentage points, whether despite or because of being under Orbán’s rule that entire time. France, Germany, Belgium, Sweden, Italy and Britain all registered substantial increases. Britain’s was the biggest, propelled mainly by Jeremy Corbyn’s far-left Labour Party. Close behind were the liberal bastions of Germany and Sweden, up 23 and 22 percentage points, respectively.
In fairness, more specific questions produced murkier results. Some faithfully mirrored the overall pattern: The three worst countries for “expressions of hostility … in the street or other public places” were liberal France, Belgium and Germany (with 91, 81 and 80 percent deeming this a problem); the best were conservative Poland, Hungary and Austria (37, 46 and 46 percent). In contrast, the worst countries for “anti-Semitism in political life” were Britain, Poland and Hungary (84, 77 and 74 percent).
Nevertheless, two questions in particular help explain why liberal countries fared worse overall.
One relates to who actually perpetrates anti-Semitic harassment. Though respondents frequently couldn’t identify perpetrators’ political views, when they could, it was most often a “Muslim extremist view” (30 percent). Next came “left-wing political view” (21 percent), and trailing in the rear was “right-wing political view” (13 percent).
In short, despite the widespread perception that anti-Semitism comes mainly from the far right, in Europe, Muslim and left-wing anti-Semitism are bigger problems. And both are more prevalent in liberal Western countries, simply because the liberal West has much larger (and more influential) populations of both Muslims and hardcore leftists than the conservative, anti-immigrant East.
The second illuminating question showed that “feelings of being blamed” for Israel’s actions were far more common in liberal countries than conservative ones. In Hungary and Poland, only 8 and 19 percent of respondents, respectively, said this happens frequently. In Germany, Spain, Belgium and France, 50 percent or more deemed this a frequent occurrence.
Non-Israeli Jews obviously shouldn’t be blamed for anything Israel does. But it’s hardly surprising that this happens more often in countries where antipathy to Israel is greater to begin with. And since both Muslims and liberals are generally more anti-Israel than conservatives nowadays, countries with large Muslim and left-wing populations are more prone to this problem.
None of this means right-wing anti-Semitism should be ignored. But given two major surveys showing that Muslim and left-wing anti-Semitism are bigger problems in Europe than the far right variety, and that liberal countries consequently have worse anti-Semitism problems than conservative ones, American Jewish leaders’ continued fixation on the far-right is shocking.
Take, for instance, the reaction to the latest survey by World Jewish Congress President Ron Lauder—someone deeply involved in supporting European Jewish communities, and therefore ostensibly familiar with European realities. “How can one be surprised by these results,” Lauder said, “when in Chemnitz, Germany, anti-Semites practicing the Nazi salute were allowed to march while the police stood idly by; when in France, Marine Le Pen, whose father was a virulent anti-Semite was almost elected president; when in Austria and Hungary, the FPO and Jobbik, both of which were originally founded by neo-Nazis, are now the second-largest parties and members of the governing coalition; and when in the U.K., Jeremy Corbyn is the leader of the Labour Party.”
In other words, aside from in Britain—where the anti-Semitism spewing from Corbyn’s Labour has become impossible to ignore—Lauder was concerned solely about the far-right. He completely ignored the two more serious sources of European anti-Semitism.
Since most American Jews lean left, it’s understandable that they would rather focus on right-wing anti-Semitism, which comes from the enemy’s camp, than left-wing and Muslim anti-Semitism, which come from their political allies. It’s also understandable that they’d rather worry about right-wing Hungary and Austria than liberal Germany and Sweden.
But if they actually want to combat anti-Semitism, removing these ideological blinders is essential. Anti-Semitism is hard enough to fight under the best of circumstances. It’s impossible when you ignore the facts.
This article was originally syndicated by JNS.org (www.jns.org) on December 19 2018. © 2018 JNS.org
The narrative adopted by many American Jews these days is that rightist governments enable anti-Semitism, while liberal governments allow Jewish communities to flourish. A corollary of this thesis is that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s open friendship with rightist governments in Eastern Europe has enabled anti-Semitism. Thanks to a poll of European Jews published last week, we now have some facts by which to judge this thesis. And the facts appear to belie it.
The Joint Distribution Committee’s International Center for Community Development surveyed 893 Jewish leaders and professionals from throughout Europe and found that in general, Jews felt safe everywhere. Nevertheless, there was a stark difference between Eastern and Western Europe.
In the east, a whopping 96 percent of respondents felt safe, while only four percent felt unsafe. In the West, 76 percent felt safe, and 24 percent felt unsafe. Thus respondents from places like Poland, Hungary, and Romania—countries routinely accused of having anti-Semitic, borderline fascist governments—felt safer than Jews in liberal countries like France and Germany by a 20-point margin.
Moreover, “Western European respondents were more likely to consider antisemitism as a threat than were Eastern Europeans, and to report deterioration in the situation from earlier surveys,” the JDC’s report said. Nor is this mere subjective perception: Other studies have found that Jews are much more likely to experience physical violence in Western Europe than in Eastern Europe. In 2017, for instance, Hungary’s 100,000 Jews didn’t report a single physical attack, while Britain’s 250,000 Jews reported 145.
Jews in both regions expected anti-Semitism to worsen over the next five to 10 years, with the result that combatting anti-Semitism “ranked among the top three communal priorities” for the first time since the survey began in 2008. Nevertheless, the East fared better than the West on this score, too. “A significant regional difference emerged on expectations of increasing antisemitism with those in Western Europe considerably more pessimistic (75 percent) than those in the East (56 percent),” the report read.
There are two reasons for all these seemingly counterintuitive results, which, as the report noted, are a “reversal of the situation … over the past two centuries.” The first is the politically incorrect fact that violence against Jews in Europe comes mainly from Muslim anti-Semites rather than either the right-wing or the left-wing variety (see, for instance, the shootings at a Jewish museum in Brussels, a Jewish school in Toulouse, and a kosher supermarket in Paris). And in Western Europe, liberal governments spent decades implementing liberal immigration policies that have produced large Muslim populations. Eastern Europe has very few Muslims, initially because decades of Communist rule made these countries economically uninviting and more recently because rightist governments have imposed restrictive immigration policies.
The second reason is more speculative, since correlation doesn’t necessarily mean causality. Nevertheless, as the report noted, the findings are suggestive: “Hostility towards Israel in the general society is perceived to be fiercer in Western Europe; 88 percent of leaders from Western Europe considered that the media in my country regularly portrays Israel in a bad light, as opposed to only 36 percent from Eastern Europe [italics in original]. This might be a contributing factor to the higher antisemitism in the West.” Here, too, objective data seems to support this hypothesis: Whenever Israel launches a major counterterrorism operation, anti-Israel sentiment spikes, and so do anti-Semitic attacks.
Everyone except anti-Semites understands that Israeli actions don’t justify attacks on Jewish citizens of other countries, but rampant anti-Israel sentiment often makes anti-Semites believe that society will tolerate such attacks as long as they can be portrayed as “anti-Israel.” And this belief is hardly unfounded. To take just one example, consider the notorious case of a German synagogue firebombed in 2014. Both the trial court and the appeals court ruled that this wasn’t an anti-Semitic crime, but merely an overly zealous form of political opposition to Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. Consequently, the perpetrators received mere suspended sentences.
In short, hostility toward Israel in the surrounding society encourages anti-Semitic acts among people who already hold anti-Semitic beliefs. And since hostility toward Israel emanates primarily from the left these days, it’s no surprise that such hostility is higher in liberal Western Europe than conservative Eastern Europe. Thus, both of the main contributors to anti-Semitism in Europe today—Islamic anti-Semitism and left-wing hostility toward Israel—are more prevalent in the liberal West than in the allegedly “fascist, anti-Semitic” countries of Eastern Europe.
None of the above implies that right-wing anti-Semitism isn’t a real problem; it obviously is. Nor does it imply that Eastern Europe’s right-wing governments have a clean bill of health on anti-Semitism; they have been responsible for some undeniably problematic acts and statements. It certainly doesn’t guarantee that nationalist parties won’t turn against the Jews tomorrow, as a prominent European rabbi warned last week. The British Labour Party’s swift transformation into an anti-Semitic cesspool shows just how quickly Jew-friendly attitudes can disappear. And it doesn’t mean America’s situation is necessarily analogous; the U.S. is too different from Europe for easy parallels to be drawn.
Yet to pretend, as many American Jews do, that right-wing anti-Semitism is the only kind we need to worry about flies in the face of reality, at least as it has played out in Europe. The European reality similarly belies the claim that rightist governments are, by definition, bad for the Jews. And given that reality, Netanyahu’s close relations with conservative European governments could actually help combat anti-Semitism in those countries by bolstering their positive attitudes toward Israel.
The world is a great deal more complex than the simple “left-wing good, right-wing bad” equation so prevalent among American Jews today. And recognizing that complexity might help liberal Jews be more understanding of their conservative brethren, both at home and in Israel.
Originally published in Commentary on November 26, 2018