Someone sent me an ask about how to avoid antisemitism when talking about what's happening in Palestine, but Tumblr ate it. This is a really important question, because we don't want to fight one oppression while enabling another; we don't want to accidentally foment the conditions that lead to antisemitic violence, and we also don't want to shy away from speaking about Gaza for fear that we're doing so.
Here are my thoughts.
There are a lot of unconscious antisemitic beliefs that people hold, that they may not be consciously aware of. They may have learned these from parents, peers, or society at large. Like any bigotry, a huge part of not being harmful in bigoted ways comes down to learning what unconscious bigotry looks like within you and learning how it is expressed.
Antisemitism is very old, and there are a lot of tropes and beliefs that have developed through the years. Many of these are alive and well, though they may be subtle enough that people don't realize they're carrying them. However, they show up in the way that people speak, especially about Israel and Palestine. Here are some:
1. Jews are overwhelmingly wealthy
2. Jews control the world
3. Jews control a given country (eg the US)
4. Jews are not oppressed
5. Jews are some of the most privileged people in society; more than non-Jewish white people. Jews are white people but even more so.
6. Jews are whiny and complain about their nonexistent oppression too much
7. Jews are sneaky, deceptive, and untrustworthy. They don't speak sincerely or plainly; they have an ulterior motive and are trying to get one over on you.
8. Jews are greedy
9. Jews are really powerful
10. Jews undermine and destabilize movements and countries. (This one connects to 3, 7, and 8).
11. Jews are inherently guilty; a good Jew needs to apologize for being Jewish
12. Jews are bloodthirsty and desire violence against non-Jews
13. A Jew is from somewhere else, and does not belong in the place that they are.
How do these get expressed in the movement? Here are some examples (these are paraphrases and combinations of various things I've seen):
Example A:
"American Jews are complaining about oppression while living in their NYC apartments and taking Ubers. It's ridiculous, so much privilege and entitlement." This one's got 1, 4, 5, 6, and 7.
1: Assumes wealth. Plenty of us can't afford NYC apartments or Ubers!
4, 5, and 6: self-explanatory.
7: Belief that on some level, fear of antisemitism can't really be sincere; we must be talking about it for some other purpose, eg to distract from "real" issues.
Example B:
"The US is funding this genocide because of the influence of Israel and Israel's interests, and the Jewish lobbyists." Employs 3 and 9.
3: The US is doing this because of its own interests; if anything, the US wants to be able to use Israel as a pawn.
9: Imagines Jewish lobbyists as powerful enough to drive US policy. Also forgets how dramatically the US dwarfs Israel in size, money, and power; imagines it's the other way around.
Example C:
"These Israeli first responders are lying about finding mutilated and sexually abused bodies after October 7th. This Israeli girl who was held hostage is lying about having talked to fellow hostages who were sexually assaulted. This Israeli first responder is lying about children having been killed on October 7th."
This is 4, 6, and mainly 7.
7 because it assumes that these people are telling these lies for some nefarious purpose: to garner false sympathy, or worse, to manufacture support for genocide. It cannot be because they are actually telling the truth.
Example D:
"It's suspect if someone talks too much about antisemitism. Or if they correct my misinformation. They are probably a crypto-Zionist. In fact, all of these Jewish tumblr bloggers are crypto-Zionists."
(The first part of this I haven't heard said; but rather it's the unspoken attitude I'm frequently presented with.)
This one has 4, 5, 6, 7 and 10. Mostly 7 and 10.
Beliefs that our goal is to derail pro-Palestine organizing by sewing Zionist beliefs in the movement. That we would be capable of such (9). That it's impossible that we're sincere and we're concerned both about what's happening in Gaza and the everpresent, intangible potent threat of imminent antisemitic violence.
Example E:
"What everpresent threat of imminent antisemitic violence? You're either delusional, too privileged to understand how oppressed you aren't, or lying to some sinister purpose."
The first two (delusional and too privileged) often comes from other Jews, who, yes, can be antisemitic too.
This one has: 4, 5, 6, 7, and 9.
Example F:
"As a Jew I know I am responsible for what's happening in Gaza, and I need to call in my people who deny our privilege and who think they're unsafe."
1, 4, 5, 6, 11. Shades of 10.
Example G:
"Israel is invading Gaza for oil."
8. Also this isn't true.
Example H:
"No Israeli is a civilian. All settlers are guilty, and need to leave."
Technically, it is possible for someone to hold this belief consistently for all settlers worldwide due to stringent decolonial beliefs. However, it frequently is applied only to Israelis. In such an iteration, I think it contains 10, 11, 12, and 13.
Which leads to my next point: Double standards. If something doesn't invoke a particular trope, but views Jewish or Israeli actions more harshly than we'd view the equivalent in any other place or people, to me that's suspect.
For example, relating to the above, if we believe that Truth and Reconciliation is the answer in the US and Canada, but in Israel the answer would be forced displacement of the Jewish population, that would be antisemitic.
Also, if we're able to hold nuance around the idea of refugees to the US and Canada, and understand that they're simultaneously taking part in colonialism while also arriving under duress because they need a place to live, we can extend the same nuance to the idea of Jewish refugees (Holocaust survivors, SWANA Jews, Ethiopian Jews, etc) who have come to Israel.
And, going back to example A, is there any other marginalized group we would say is not actually oppressed because members of it live in NYC and take Ubers? No? Then, it's antisemitic when you say it about Jews.
I also think misinformation about Jewish history and identity is antisemitic. For example, lines of thought that deny our ancestral, historical, cultural, and liturgical connections to the land of Israel/Palestine. One false belief I see a lot is Khazar Theory, popularized by the quack Shlomo Sand. This states that Ashkenazi Jews do not have ancestral origins in what's now Israel/Palestine, but rather descend from a mass conversion of Turkic peoples in the Kingdom of Kazaria. It is not, in fact, true.
Something else along these lines is back-defining origins and land-connection through current events. For example, a white gentile ex-friend of mine shared a post stating that because the IDF, as well as settler extremists, destroy Palestinian olive trees (an egregious act, in my opinion, as well as against Jewish law), this means we are not native to the land. While I understand the term native is complex and this might have been an attempt to denote our positionality as colonizer in a colonizer-indigenous dynamic, the framing of the post led me to believe that, actually, the post was using these actions to prove that we do not actually originate from the land.
Destroying Palestinian olive trees is an act of great violence against the land, against the Palestinian people, and against our own history, culture, and religious traditions. However, it does not change the historical fact of our origins or ancestry, nor the fact the our religious traditions are deeply intertwined with the seasons, climate, and agriculture of Israel-Palestine, even when that puts them out of sync with the seasons and climate of wherever we live in Diaspora.
I hope this is helpful. This is a really hard time for so many of us, and I know it can feel like derailing to focus on antisemitism right now, and to focus on the potential of future violence when the people of Gaza are experiencing actual extreme levels of violence right now. But if we truly believe that none of us are free until all of us are free, then fighting antisemitism has to be part of our collective liberation. We cannot and should not fight genocide by engaging in oppression. Speaking up for Gaza and Palestine does not have to mean fomenting conditions that put Jews in danger of bigotry and violence. The world we're building is one where seeing your trees destroyed, or your family killed, or your home receding into the distance as you are forced to leave is but a distant memory. For Palestinians, and for Jews, and for everybody on this Earth.
