How to Criticize Israel Without Being Anti-Semitic
If youāve spent any time discussing or reading about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I guarantee youāve heard some variation of this statement:
OMG, Jews think any criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic!Ā
In the interests of this post, Iām going to assume that the people who express such sentiments are acting in good faith and really donāt mean to cause pain to or problems for Diaspora Jewry.Ā For those good-faith people, I present some guidelines for staying on the good side of that admittedly murky line, along with the reasoning why the actions I list are problematic.Ā (And bad-faith people, you can no longer plead ignorance if you engage in any of these no-nos.Ā Consider yourselves warned.)Ā In no particular order:
Donāt use the terms ābloodthirsty,ā ālust for Palestinian blood,ā or similar.Ā Historically, Jews have been massacred in the belief that we use the blood of non-Jews (particularly of children) in our religious rituals.Ā This belief still persists in large portions of the Arab world (largely because white Europeans deliberately spread the belief among Arabs) and even in parts of the Western world.Ā Murderous, inhumane, cruel, viciousāfine.Ā But bloodā¦just donāt go there.Ā Depicting Israel/Israelis/Israeli leaders eating children is also a no-no, for the same reason.
Donāt use crucifixion imagery. Another huge, driving motivation behind anti-Semitism historically has been the belief that the Jews, rather than the Romans, crucified Jesus.Ā As in #1, this belief still persists.Ā There are plenty of other ways to depict suffering that donāt call back to ancient libels.
Donāt demand that Jews publicly repudiate the actions of settlers and extremists.Ā People who make this demand are assuming that Jews are terrible people or undeserving of being heard out unless they āproveā themselves acceptable by non-Jewsā standards.Ā (Itās not okay to demand Palestinians publicly repudiate the actions of Hamas in order to be accepted/trusted, either.)
Donāt say āthe Jewsā when you mean Israel.Ā I think this should be pretty clear.Ā The people in power in Israel are Jews, but not all Jews are Israelis (let alone Israeli leaders).
Donāt say āZionistsā when you mean Israel. Zionism is no more a dirty word than feminism.Ā It is simply the belief that the Jews should have a country in part of their ancestral homeland where they can take refuge from the anti-Semitism and persecution they face everywhere else.Ā It does not mean a belief that Jews have a right to grab land from others, a belief that Jews are superior to non-Jews, or any other such tripe, any more than feminism means hating men.Ā Unless you believe that Israel should entirely cease to exist, you are yourself Zionist.Ā Furthermore, using āZionistsā in place of āIsraelisā is inaccurate and harmful.Ā The word āZionistsā includes Diasporan Jews as well (most of whom support a two-state solution and pretty much none of whom have any influence on Israelās policies) and is used to justify anti-Semitic attacks outside Israel (i.e., they brought it on themselves by being Zionists).Ā And many of the Jews IN Israel who are most violent against Palestinians are actually anti-Zionistāthey believe that the modern state of Israel is an offense against God because it isnāt governed by halakha (traditional Jewish religious law).Ā Be careful with the labels you use.
Donāt call Jews you agree with āthe good Jews.āĀ Imposing your values on another group is not okay.Ā Tokenizing is not okay.Ā Appointing yourself the judge of what other groups can or should believe is not okay.
Donāt use your Jewish friends or Jews who agree with you as shields.Ā (AKA, āI canāt be anti-Semitic, I have Jewish friends!ā or āWell, Jew X agrees with me, so youāre wrong.ā)Ā Again, this behavior is tokenizing and essentially amounts to you as a non-Jew appointing yourself arbiter over what Jews can/should feel or believe.Ā You donāt get to do that.
Donāt claim that Jews are ethnically European.Ā Jews come in many colorsāwhite is only one.Ā Besides, the fact that many of us have some genetic mixing with the peoples who tried to force us to assimilate (be they German, Indian, Ethiopian, Italianā¦) doesnāt change the fact that all our common ancestral roots go back to Israel.
Donāt claim that Jews āarenāt the TRUE/REAL Jews.āĀ Enough said.
Donāt claim that Jews have no real historical connection to Israel/the Temple Mount.Ā Archaeology and the historical record both establish that this is false.
Donāt accuse Diasporan Jews of dual loyalties or treason.Ā This is another charge that historically has been used to justify persecution and murder of Jews.Ā Having a connection to our ancestral homeland is natural.Ā Having a connection to our co-religionists who live there is natural.Ā It is no more treasonous for a Jew to consider the well-being of Israel when casting a vote than for a Muslim to consider the well-being of Islamic countries when voting.Ā (Tangent: fuck drone strikes.Ā End tangent.)
Donāt claim that the Jews control the media/banks/country that isnāt Israel. Ā Yet another historical anti-Semitic claim is that Jews as a group intend to control the world and try to achieve this aim through shadowy, sinister channels.Ā There are many prominent Jews in the media and in the banking industry, yes, but they arenāt engaged in any kind of organized conspiracy to take over those industries, they simply work in those industries.Ā The phrase āthe Jews controlā should never be heard in a debate/discussion of Israel.
Donāt depict the Magen David (Star of David) as an equivalent to the Nazi swastika.Ā The Magen David represents all Jewsānot just Israelis, not just people who are violent against Palestinians, ALL JEWS.Ā When you do this, you are painting all Jews as violent, genocidal racists.Ā DONāT.
Donāt use the Holocaust/Nazism/Hitler as a rhetorical prop.Ā The Jews who were murdered didnāt set foot in what was then Palestine, let alone take part in Israeli politics or policies.Ā It is wrong and appropriative to try to use their deaths to score political points.Ā Genocide, racism, occupation, murder, exterminationāgo ahead and use those terms, but leave the Holocaust out of it.
In visual depictions (i.e., political cartoons and such), donāt depict Israel/Israelis as Jewish stereotypes.Ā Donāt show them in Chassidic, black-hat garb.Ā Donāt show them with exaggerated noses or frizzled red hair or payus (earlocks).Ā Donāt show them with horns or depict them as the Devil.Ā Donāt show them cackling over/hoarding money.Ā Donāt show them drinking blood or eating children (see #1).Ā Donāt show them raping non-Jewish women.Ā The Nazis didnāt invent the tropes they used in their propagandaāall of these have been anti-Semitic tropes going back centuries.Ā (The red hair trope, for instance, goes back to early depictions of Judas Iscariot as a redhead, and the horns trope stems from the belief that Jews are the Devilās children, sent to destroy the world as best we can for our āfather.ā)
Donāt use the phrase āthe chosen peopleā to deride or as proof of Jewish racism.Ā When Jews say we are the chosen people, we donāt mean that we are biologically superior to others or that God loves us more than other groups.Ā Judaism in fact teaches that everyone is capable of being a righteous, Godly person, that Jews have obligations to be ethical and decent to āthe stranger in our midst,ā and that non-Jews donāt get sent to some kind of damnation for believing in another faith.Ā When we say weāre the chosen people, we mean that, according to our faith, God gave us extra responsibilities and codes of behavior that other groups arenāt burdened with, in the form of the Torah.Ā Thatās all it means.
Donāt claim that anti-Semitism is eradicated or negligible.Ā It isnāt.Ā In fact, according to international watchdog groups, itās sharply on the rise.Ā (Which sadly isnāt surprisingāanti-Semitism historically surges during economic downturns, thanks to the belief that Jews control the banks.)Ā This sort of statement is extremely dismissive and accuses us of lying about our own experiences.
Donāt say that since Palestinians are Semites, Jews/Israelis are anti-Semitic, too.Ā You do not get to redefine the oppressions of others, nor do you get to police how they refer to that oppression.Ā This also often ties into #8.Ā Donāt do it.Ā Anti-Semitism has exclusively meant anti-Jewish bigotry for a good century plus now.Ā Coin your own word for anti-Palestinian oppression, or just call it what it is: racism mixed with Islamophobia.
Donāt blow off Jews telling you that what youāre saying is anti-Semitic with some variant of the statement at the top of this post.Ā Not all anti-Israel speech is anti-Semitic (a lot of it is valid, much-deserved criticism), but some certainly is.Ā Actually give the accusation your consideration and hear the accuser out.Ā If they fail to convince you, thatās fine.Ā But at least hear them out (without talking over them) before you decide that.
Iām sure this isnāt a comprehensive list, but it covers all the hard-and-fast rules I can think of.Ā (I welcome input for improving it.)
But wait!Ā Why should I care about any of this?Ā Iām standing up for people who are suffering!
You should care because nonsense like the above makes Jews sympathetic to the Palestinian plight wary and afraid of joining your cause.Ā You should care because, unfortunately, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has correlated to an uptick in anti-Semitic attacks around the world, attacks on Jews who have no say in Israeli politics, and this kind of behavior merely aggravates that, whether you intend it to or not.Ā
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a real minefield in that itās a clash between oppressed people of color and an ethnoreligious group that is dominant in Israel but marginalized and brutalized elsewhere (often nowadays on the exact grounds that they share ethnoreligious ties with the people of Israel), so itās damned hard to toe the line of being socially aware and sensitive to both groups.Ā I get that.Ā But I think it is possible to toe that line, and I hope this post helps with that.Ā (And if a Palestinian makes a similar list of problematic arguments they hear targeted at them, Iād be happy to reblog it, too.)
Do go ahead and criticize Israel.
Donāt use anti-Semitic stereotypes or tropes.
Donāt use overly expansive language that covers Jews as a whole and not just Israel.
Donāt use lies to boost your claims.
Do engage Jews in conversation on the issues of Israel and of anti-Semitism, rather than simply shutting them down for disagreeing.
Do try to be sensitive to the fact that, fair or not, many people take verbal or violent revenge for the actions of Israelis on Diasporan Jews, and Diasporan Jews are understandably frightened and upset by this.
May there be peace in our days.
