Discussing Israel on Jan/Feb: How to Avoid Anti-Semitism (Jonathan Horowitz)
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and do not reflect any position of Premier Debate. This article also was written before any Jan/Feb tournaments, so any reference to positions or rhetoric possibly used in debate is purely hypothetical and not targeted at a specific debate, debater, or team.
Introduction
On the January/February topic, one of the many potential affs that people could run is an Israel aff. I will start this post off with a warning (that will probably not be heeded): DON’T DO IT! There are a bunch of reasons why you shouldn’t (mostly because there are many, much better, less problematic affs out there) but because somebody is going to do it, we need to talk about Israel and anti-semitism.
What is anti-semitism?
Anti-semitism is anti-Jewish hatred.1 Originating in European Christianity, antisemitism is the form of ideological oppression that targets Jews. Like all oppressions, the ideology contains elements of dehumanization and degradation via lies and stereotypes about Jews, as well as mythology. The myth changes and adapts to different times and places, but fundamentally it says that Jews are to blame for society’s problems. Once this mythology was established, it followed Jews throughout Europe and was exported to the Middle East, North Africa, and the Americas through colonialism and imperial conquest.2 Modern-day anti-semitism is modeled on historical European anti-semitism and today, even in non-European places, much of the way that anti-semitism is manifested is through the European model. It is also important to note that anti-semitism is real, and there are many ways in which it manifests. Most visibly, a month ago, a gunman went into a Pittsburgh Synagogue and killed 11 Jews. However, there are also a lot of micro-aggressions that happen based on anti-semitism, including in the debate community. That’s a topic for another post. This is a quick definition that does not fully define the way in which anti-semitism functions in the world but it works for our purposes. If you want more info please read the many resources at the end of this post or contact me.
Anti-Semitism and Israel
Israel is a complex case because it is the only country that is majority Jewish in the world. One can criticize Saudi Arabia or the United States, for example, without explicitly criticizing all Muslim nations or all Christian nations. That’s impossible with Israel. Israel’s identity is intrinsically tied to its Jewishness and so critiquing Israel, on some level, can mean critiquing Jews generally. This does not mean that any criticism of Israel is anti-semitic. Israel is still a nation-state and has done many harmful things since it was founded. For example, Israel is currently brutally occupying the West Bank and Gaza and denies Palestinians basic human rights in both places. The criticism is trickier than the average state because of Israel’s unique place in the world and the history of anti-semitism. When you are criticizing Israel you may also, unwittingly, tap into a deeper power of anti-semitism and anti-Jewish hatred that has killed millions of people. The important part is to make sure that you do your homework so that you don’t end up accidentally creating an anti-semitic case. That’s bad. The simplest heuristic I can give you to figure out if you’re being anti-semitic when discussing Israel is if you can replace the word “Israel” or “Zionist” with the word “Jew” and it a. makes sense and b. sounds like something Hitler would say then you are probably being anti-semitic. For example, saying “Zionists run US foreign policy” is anti-semitic because replacing “Zionist” with “Jew” would make the statement anti-semitic.
What are the traps?
So maybe you’ve decided, despite my warning, that you still want to do an Israel aff. I can’t really stop you but I will ask that you don’t fall into any of the following traps:
1.] Singling out- One of the historic ways in which Jews were prosecuted in Europe was by being singled out for blame or isolated from other groups. The word, ghetto, for example, comes from Italian and ghettos were first used on Jews during the Renaissance to separate Jews from the Christian majority. This singling continues in many forms today. Most notably that Jews are played against other oppressed groups (i.e. “The Woman’s March is anti-semitic!” Which is BS). When it comes to Israel, the singling out comes from calling Israel things like “the worst human rights abuser on the planet” or “the reason why US foreign policy is bad.”
2.] Disproportionate influence – The idea of a “mass Jewish conspiracy” or Jews working behind the scenes to help themselves and harm others has a long and ugly history. Many anti-semites today use the idea of a “Jewish conspiracy” to inspire followers and help maintain white supremacy. The idea is that somewhere behind the scenes, the Jews control the strings and are creating problems for non-Jews. This is false. First, Jews make up .01% of the world population. We are only the majority in one country in the world and don’t make up more than 2% of the population of any other country in the world. Second, Jews have historically been used as middlemen between the true elites and the commoners. For example, in Medieval Europe Jews were commonly tax collectors or bankers. In these jobs, Jews would have to collect money from people. If things went bad, and they often did, then instead of the true oppressors, the lords who collected the taxes or the owners of the bank, the Jews were blamed and killed. This still exists today through Jewish lawyers who don’t own the wealth but work for the people who do.
This trope definitely exists when it comes to Israel. John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, two widely carded authors, for example, used this trope when they said that the Israel lobby controls US foreign policy. Many others use this trope to talk about how AIPAC is the most powerful lobby in Washington and everybody needs to bow to them. This shows how people believe that Jews pull the strings of US foreign policy and not non-Jews. The primary reason for Republican support of Israel has to do with the Cold War. The US wanted an ally in the Middle East during the Cold War and Israel was a good ally. It was good foreign policy for the US to be pro-Israel but it was not based on some altruism towards Jews.
3.] Dual Loyalty – Jews have been repeatedly accused of dual loyalty, being loyal to themselves/the Jewish community instead of to the greater nation. Anti-semites would use this language to alienate Jews and make them seem “other” as Jews could not be trusted thus allowing for oppression. We see this trope today through Victor Orban’s scapegoating of George Soros in Hungary. This matters in the Israeli context because some will say that Jews are more loyal to Israel than to the United States. For example, a few weeks ago, Donald Trump also called Israel “your country” to a roomful of Jews showing how we are not “truly” loyal to the United States but instead to Israel. This means that when Trump turns on Jews, the idea that we are not truly Americans or fully Americans will become his rallying point.
4.] The Wandering Jew– Related to Dual Loyalty is that for 2,000 years the Jews were a diasporic people. Even today, the majority of Jews live in the Diaspora. This led to the criticism that the Jews did not have a land to call home so that Jews would work together in every country for their benefit and against others. Throughout history and throughout the Jewish liturgy in both the Tanach (kinda like the Old Testament but not really) and the Talmud (the most important Rabbinic text) called the land that constitutes modern-day Israel home. While the prayers Jews say every day were probably metaphorical in nature many people acted upon them to build or rebuild communities after a tragedy. For example, there were no less than 3 attempts to establish Jewish sovereignty over parts of modern-day Israel/Palestine in the 16th century. As much as Jews have a home or have a center, Israel is that center. This means that Israel cannot be a colonial state because it would say that Jews do not have/are not allowed to have a home. That spits in the face of thousands of years of tradition and culture of the Jewish people.3
However, it’s also important to note that even if Jews deserve to be in Israel that does not mean that Palestinians do not deserve to be. That land was not abandoned for two thousand years and the people who lived there deserve to have their land. Israel’s increasing control of the West Bank and Gaza, continual deprivation of Palestinian rights in those places, and expansion of Jewish-only settlements constitute a settler-colonial measure that harms Palestinians. Within the Green Line, Israel is not settler-colonialist; outside of the Green Line, it is. A quick note here on Israel and authoritarianism: Israel is what is known as a Herrenvolk Democracy. A Herrenvolk Democracy is a democracy that is only available for certain people who meet a specific condition. However, once you meet that condition, it is a full democracy. The two best examples of Herrenvolk democracies are the United States pre-1964/1965 and South Africa during Apartheid. If you were white you participated in a full democracy. If you were a person of color, you did not. In Israel, if you are Jewish you participate in a full democracy. If you are Arab in the West Bank/Gaza, you do not.4
On Zionism
Since it will be discussed ad infinitum on Israel it needs to be talked about here. Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people should have a homeland, ideally in the Land of Israel/Palestine. It’s important to note that the definition of Zionism does not involve a Jewish state and whether Jews have a unique state is irrelevant to general Zionist discourse. Over the course of the last 70 years, for the obvious reasons, Zionism has morphed into the belief that Jews ought to have their own state. However, in pre-state Palestine, there were debates between Zionists on the necessity of a Jewish state. In modern times the debate has boiled down to three sides. On one side are the Zionists who believe that Israel necessarily needs to exist as a Jewish state. On the other side are the anti-Zionists who think Israel either should not exist or should not be Jewish. And on the other side are the non-Zionists who don’t particularly care about Israel’s Jewish character one way or the other and focus on making Israel more democratic. The lines between the anti-Zionists and non-Zionists get blurred for a bunch of reasons but the basics are correct. This proves quite clearly that anti-zionism is not necessarily anti-semitism because saying that Jews do not deserve a unique state is not problematic. However, to say that Jews do not deserve to live in the Land of Israel or that Jewish Israel should be vanquished from the Earth clearly is anti-semitic because it devalues the lives of the Jewish inhabitants of Israel. As someone once told me, “Advocating Jews clear themselves from the land is obviously bad, advocating prioritizing Israel as democratic is more important than necessarily ‘Jewish’ is probably not so bad.”
Moreover, many anti-Zionist and especially non-Zionist claims are about whether there should be a One State or Two State solution. Many One Staters are defined as either anti or non-Zionists because they want to get rid of the uniquely Jewish nature of the State of Israel. Based on the definition of Zionism provided at the top this is clearly not anti-semitic because one can oppose a uniquely Jewish Israel and still be fine as long as you concede that Jews deserve equal rights in any future hypothetical state, which most anti or non-zionists do (and those that don’t are terrorist groups like ISIS and no debater will be advocating for ISIS takeover). Basically, critiques of Zionism are totally legitimate but they need to be carried in a way that talks about the uniquely Jewish character of Zionism and not about Jews in general. Again referring to the heuristic about whether if you replace the word “Zionist” with the word “Jew” and it sounds like Hitler would say it, it’s probably anti-semitic. I.e. “Zionists rule the world” is quite clearly anti-semitic.
Other Important notes:
There are some miscellanea that people should be aware of when discussing Jews, Jewish ancestry, and Israel.
1.] Jews are not necessarily European – While the majority of US Jews are Ashkenazi (of European descent), the majority of Jews in Israel are Mizrahi, meaning Eastern and mostly come from the Middle East and North Africa. This means that the majority of Israeli Jews are actually people of color, so the idea of “white people vs. people of color” is a false distinction. There are also significant populations of Indian Jews and Ethiopian Jews as well as minor indigenous populations of Jews in Uganda, Kenya, and China. There are many Jews who are people of color throughout the world. Sayings things like, “Jews should go back to Poland” is anti-semitic.
2.] Not everybody in Israel/Palestine is either Arab or Jewish. Not all Arabs in Israel are Muslim. There are many different ethnic groups and you should be aware of them.
3.] The idea of Jews as white people has a long and complicated history. I.e. the worst tragedy to befall Jews came from white people defining Jews as not white. Many Jews define themselves, reasonably, as non-white and many others, reasonably, disagree. I don’t have a larger point to make here beyond check your assumptions.
4.] Israel debates get messy really quickly. Before reading any Israel aff you should know about (and not just generally know but have a decent grasp on) the 1948 war, 1967 war, 1979 Israeli-Egyptian Peace Treaty, 1994 Oslo Accords, the Nakba (and who is culpable), Palestinian refugees, two-state solution, one state solution, land for peace, the Green Line, Hamas, Fatah, PLO, Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin, David Ben Gurion, Menachem Begin, Mahmoud Abbas, West Bank, Gaza, Golan Heights, East Jerusalem, Old City, Socialist Zionism, Political Zionism, Revisionist Zionism, Labor Party, Likud Party and there’s more. This also means you need to know both sides on each of these issues. So seriously, you’re not going to do that work while still doing school work/cutting other arguments. Just don’t run the Israel aff.
Jonathan Horowitz is a debate coach and teacher who currently lives in Chicago. He is actively involved in IfNotNow a movement to change the American Jewish community’s support of the Occupation in Israel/Palestine.
Sources:
April Rosenblum, anti-Semitism activist/expert and program organizer, The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere: Making Resistance to Antisemitism Part of All of our Movements, 2007.
- I want to emphasize this source. April Rosenblum’s analysis of anti-semitism was formative for me in how to think about anti-semitism and her section on Israel and anti-semitism is essentially still my analysis on Israel and anti-semitism.
Yotam Marom, Organizer, writer, facilitator, and Director of the Wildfire Project. Yotam is a member of IfNotNow, and his writing can be found at www.forlouderdays.net. “Toward the Next Jewish Rebellion: Facing Anti-Semitism and Assimilation in the Movement.” Medium.com. August 15, 2016 https://medium.com/@YotamMarom/toward-the-next-jewish-rebellion-bed5082c52fc#.a7unf4qc3
Joshua Ladon, writer for the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, “The Dilemma of Jewish Privilege.” The New Republic. 7/27/18. https://newrepublic.com/article/150241/dilemma-jewish-privilege.
Eric Ward, “Skin in the Game: How Antisemitism Animates White Nationalism,” Political Research Associates. 6/29/17. http://www.politicalresearch.org/2017/06/29/skin-in-the-game-how-antisemitism-animates-white-nationalism/#sthash.cMW7p7NX.aLTptZc3.dpbs.
Benjamin Steinhardt Case, Social movement theorist, MA University of Pittsburgh, Great guy, “Decolonizing Jewishness: On Jewish Liberation in the 21st Century.” Tikkun. 4/18/18. https://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/decolonizing-jewishness-on-jewish-liberation-in-the-21st-century
Andrew Kragie, writer for the Atlantic and formerly of the Houston Chronicle, “The Synagogue Killings Mark a Surge of Anti-Semitism.” The Atlantic. 10/27/18. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/10/pittsburgh-synagogue-comes-amid-surge-anti-semiticism/574180/
Dave Scraub, the Darling Foundation Fellow in Public Law and Senior Research Fellow, California Constitution Center, both at the University of California-Berkeley Law School. “’From the River to the Sea’: A Guide to the Perplexed.” The Debate Link. 12/1/18. http://dsadevil.blogspot.com/2018/12/from-river-to-sea-guide-to-perplexed.html
IfNotNow, Liberation Syllabus. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2plQ0oE_CwFYTdzQU9aU2NRMVZoc1E2RUdWMk1mUk13dlFr/view?ts=5b198641
- Full disclosure: I worked on and helped create the liberation syllabus.
Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, “Understanding Anti-semitism an offering to our movement.” https://jfrej.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/JFREJ-Understanding-Antisemitism-November-2017-v1-3-2.pdf
Cherie Brown and Amy Leos-Urbel, “Anti-semitism: Why it is everyone’s concern.” Rational Island. 2018.
- Cherie Brown has written, given workshops, and explained anti-semitism to many people throughout her years as an activist. Her work is considered fundamental to many of the works cited here and her writings are invaluable. Also, I went to a workshop that she ran in February, and it helped formulate a bunch of thoughts that ended up in this piece.
