Stephen F. Eisenman explores the conflict over the Mideast war in US academia, where accusations of anti-Semitism are leveled at faculty perceived as pro-Palestinian. Debates on Zionism and anti-Zionism expose further divisions, prompting complex discussions on Jewish identity, oppression, and dissent.
By Stephen F. Eisenman
Crisis in academia
My friends in academia tell me they are experiencing the most repressive environment of their lives. The campuses of Harvard, Yale, University of Pennsylvania, Cornell, Northwestern (where I taught for almost 25 years), and others have been riven by conflict over the Mideast war. Faculty deemed too sympathetic to Palestine have been tarred by trustees, senior administrators, other faculty, and some students as naive at best and anti-Semitic at worst. A few professors have lost their jobs or been subjected to student petitions demanding their ouster. University presidents have been hounded by pro-Israeli, often Jewish trustees, to loudly and publicly condemn criticism of Zionism or Israel, and take additional measures to quash protest.
Pro-Palestinian student organizations have also come under fire, either for insufficient zeal in condemning Hamas brutality on October 7, attributing the attack to a long history of Israeli provocations, or demanding a ceasefire before the Israeli government is ready. A few groups, including Jewish Voices for Peace, and Students for Justice in Palestine have even been banned from campuses. Students from these groups have been pilloried by trustees and administrators, doxed, hounded, and in a few cases assaulted. Some Jewish students too have been attacked or subjected to verbal abuse for their vocal support of Israel. The hurt and anger on many campuses right now must feel overwhelming.
To be called anti-Semitic is powerful and professionally annihilating. That’s especially true for university professors whose stock in trade is reason. Anti-Semitism arises from libel, trades in stereotypes, and occludes independent thought. It is, as the German Social Democrat August Bebel purportedly said, “the socialism of fools,” meaning that it attributes the suffering of the working class to a small and secretive cabal of wealthy and powerful Jews. For that reason, anti-Semitism is especially reviled by a professoriate that is often liberal or left in its politics and strives to achieve a historical understanding of economic and political oppression. Finally, anti-Semitism was central to the formation of the German Nazi regime; it was the only consistent faith of Adolf Hitler, the greatest criminal the world has ever known.
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In an unusual intervention, President Isaac Herzog of Israel, recently sent a letter to American college presidents alluding to the Holocaust. By calling upon them to “publicly and unequivocally” reject “calls for the elimination of a whole country, Israel,” Herzog suggests that current criticism of Israel, which sometimes includes expressions of anti-Zionism, is both anti-Semitic and eliminationist, that is, potentially genocidal. This goes far beyond even the overly capacious definitions of anti-Semitism propounded by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (HRA), and the influential Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The latter has written: “While anti-Zionism is indeed antisemitism, anti-Zionism is much more socially acceptable than classic antisemitism.” Both clauses are lies, plus the comma in the middle. At its most expansive, anti-Zionism is a rejection of the idea and reality of an exclusively Jewish state on the land of historic Palestine. More commonly, it signifies rejection of the radical expansionism of the current Israeli regime, and its policy of secluding Palestinians behind walls and checkpoints, a system that is plausibly called apartheid. Without skipping a beat, the ADL repeats the demonstrable untruth that anti-Zionism (as anti-Semitism) is widely endorsed. In fact, the mainstream media and elected politicians generally endorse or accept Israeli expansionism, and the HRA and ADL definition of anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism. And they repeat the ADL canard that we are experiencing a wave of anti-Semitism unequaled in U.S. history. Not only is this historically blinkered, it overlooks the genuine danger posed by far-right extremists and gun-rights advocates who have perpetrated or enabled actual murderous violence against Jews and others, such as at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, and in Highland Park, Illinois.
Who’s a Jew?
One of the things Jew take pride in — no offense to Catholics — is that they have don’t have a pope. No Jew can excommunicate another Jew: Not your local rabbi, not the President of Israel, not even Sarah Silverman. Though Jews have historically described themselves as “the chosen people” – meaning chosen by God to receive the covenant of Moses – Jewishness today is far less exclusive. (I set aside Hasidic Judaism, which like all fundamentalism, is ethnocentric.) In fact, bars to membership in the Jewish faith are low, especially in the U.S. I’ve had several conversations here in rural Florida like the following:
Him: [Whispered] “So, your name is Eisenman? Odd to meet a Jew here, of all places!”
Me: “Don’t get excited, I’m not very observant.”
Him: “Oh, but you celebrate the Sabbath, no?”
Me: “Nope.”
Him: “The High Holy Days?”
Me: [I shake my head]
Him: “Keep kosher?”
Me: “Sorry.”
Him: “Um, well, do you like bagels?”
Me: “Pumpernickel, garlic, onion – all good.”
Him: It’s always good to be with a Lantzman!
Me: [I nod in agreement.]
The rule that to be a Jew, you must have a Jewish mother is only followed by the Orthodox. For the rest of us, fathers count. And even if no parents are Jewish, and you say you are a Jew, who am I to tell you otherwise? If you are brave or stupid enough to want to join perhaps the most historically oppressed minority in the world, mazel tov!
So, to hear a prominent Jew like Herzog of Israel or Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL, tell Jewish protestors, (like the kids in Jewish Voices for Peace), that they are anti-Semitic – essentially, that they are not Jews — is not only chutzpah, it’s un-Jewish, the actions of a shonda. Since when is fervent Zionism a litmus test for being Jewish? What pope made that rule? Who the ___are you to tell me I am or am not a Jew?
When anti, anti-Zionism becomes anti-Semitism
Anti, anti-Zionism becomes anti-Semitism:
1) When it denies the Jewishness of any Jew opposed to Israeli policy or the existence of Israel as Jewish state.
2) When it describes the one-state solution – Jews and Palestinians living together in a single, democratic state – as un-Jewish or even eliminationist.
3) When it ignores or denies the anti-Zionism of great Jewish thinkers and writers, including Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, and Philip Roth.
4) When it conceives of Judaism as a tradition of agreement rather than of dissent. Why do we ask the Four Questions at the Passover seder? To argue over the answers!
5) When it denies the opportunity of young people to struggle, make mistakes, forge new understandings, and challenge their elders. The meaning of the story of David and Goliath is not that a smaller man defeated a larger one, but that a young, hippie musician was forced to take up arms (a slingshot) when his father-in-law Saul, was too cowardly or lazy to take on a bully.
A Jew who in the face of an onslaught of cruel and offensive attacks, challenges Israel’s war of retribution in Gaza, is a mensch, a righteous person of any gender. A non-Jew who similarly demands a ceasefire and negotiations for a permanent settlement, should be considered צַדִּיק (Tzadik) the Hebrew word for a righteous person who sublimates base instincts, such as revenge, to strive for peace and reconciliation.
Stephen F. Eisenman is Professor Emeritus of Art History at Northwestern University and the author of Gauguin’s Skirt (Thames and Hudson, 1997), The Abu Ghraib Effect (Reaktion, 2007), The Cry of Nature: Art and the Making of Animal Rights (Reaktion, 2015) and other books. He is also co-founder of the environmental justice non-profit, Anthropocene Alliance. He and the artist Sue Coe have just published American Fascism, Still for Rotland Press. He can be reached at: s-eisenman@northwestern.edu Via Counterpunch
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Views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
Comments
16 responses to “When Anti, Anti-Zionism Becomes Anti-Semitism”
A group that got kicked out of every European country , many more than once , one has to think ” How smart are these people ” ? They get their own country – and now I ask ” How smart are these people”?. Middle ages they let a bunch of narcissistic , psychopathic, sociopaths write books on the Torah and come up with some rules of their own. When they get their own country those rules will rule. Well, their stupidity is on show for the world to see. They seem to think that extermination and ethnic cleansing a fun thing for the world to watch. As I watch, I feel anger , like hot coals in a fire getting blown on , a white heat. From hero worship to a loathing. The clarity is now crystal clear for the peoples of the world to see who owns and controls countries. Worse, much worse than this, remember those fellas from the middle ages, they imbued an ethos, a contagion, the white fella caught it and thinks he is the chosen two. . The EuKISUS , that axis of evil, has an ethos that has been on show for the world to see of, lie, cheat, steal, sanction, destroy, kill and genocide. Where will this end ? Look to history.
One of the main problems in deciding on what form of non violent direct action to take is that there are many many Jews global wide who do not support the fascist Zionists nor support the fascist apartheid country of Israel. Should the globally wide dispossessed Jews post 1945 have been aided to find a land they could call their own? For me the answer is an emphatic yes. Should these returning Jews (as they called themselves but in reality not so) have been allowed to dispose the Palestinians of their land ? My feeling is a firm NO. Should the UN with firm support have mediated between the Jews and the settled Palestinians as to land settlement by the Jews with a large and well armed UN international ‘army’ have quelled violence on either or both sides? Hindsight is a fine thing but the fact is that this was obviously a sine quo non even at that time . It didn’t happen then but it could and should happen asap.
The white supremists have been thieves, murderers, and liars from their inception in 600AD. Whenever they steal, murder, etc their mantra for hundreds of years has been “we are victims”. Victimhood has been their friend netting them a lot of money. In later years they developed the phrase “anti-Semitic” and use it as a weapon whenever the truth is spoken about them. So if they are caught stealing, murdering, or performing any other illegal activities such as genocide of their neighbors and you mention it, then you are “anti-Semitic”. For sure I am “anti-Semitic” because I’m against murder, stealing, and lying about it. The white supremists have married themselves to being murderers and theives and people who don’t believe that murdering is a good thing are “anti-Semitic”. Oh well.
I have to admit that this recent aggression by zionist (expansionist) Jews has probably made me antisemitic. I lived and worked with Jews fro decades and had no problems but his lack of morals, this endless aggression toward a genocide, is unworthy of the description of a human being. I don’t know who votes for vile, evil men like Biden and Bibi who should both be in a war crimes course, bit enough people vote for them for them to be top politicians for decades. The plan is to steal the land in Gaza.
For a century, the Palestinian people have been subjugated by the Jews (and their U.S.-Western supporters) to a slow-paced Genocide, a hidden holocaust that is suddenly becoming public in Gaza. Western media and Western politicians cannot imagine HAMAS being noble and chivalrous fighters, and Israelis being cowardly child-killing Jewish terrorists, though such is obviously the case. More than 5000 children and babies have been murdered. Jews and their Zionist supporters use what they call “anti-semitism” and the “Holohaox” as trick to crackdown and decent and ant-Israel terrorism.
Jews cannot acknowledge that the vast majority of the world disagrees with them for particularly good reasons, not because of “antisemitism,” but because of the violence they are subjugated the Palestinians to. Arabs are the real Semitic people and Jews are the truly the anti-Semite Zionists.
Many religions have been persecuted and some did not survive. Much that is said about Jewish persecution is part of religious teaching of victimhood. What is most often said as Jews stand at the Wailing Wall? A litany of wrongs done to Jews over thousands of years. The religion has victimhood entrenched.
The religion persecuted today is not Judaism but Islam. The hatred against Muslims is the equal of anything against Jews and the pogroms carried out against Palestinian Christians and Muslims should shame every Jew and every human of conscience.
If Judaism had not been invented no Jew would ever exist. The concept of an atheist/secular Jew is as ridiculous as the concept of an atheist/secular Christian. There can be no such thing.
One can be a lapsed Jew just as one can be a lapsed follower of any religion. That means you do not practice but you still believe in the God of the religion and many of its teachings.
Since an atheist/secular rejects a religion and all of its teachings and particularly its God, there are no atheist/secular Jews and to claim such a statement of logic as anti-semitism is even more ridiculous. The Zionists were mostly atheists but they needed the money and power of Jews to fund their plans to colonise Palestine. They invented the idea of an atheist/secular Jew and they have promoted it. Zionism demeans and debases Judaism and is no friend to Jews but simply exploits them and their religion.
Rosross, excellent and thank you for this insight, which I agree 100%. Also, your dialogue conforms entirely to a fact-based rational approach, even though it would be classified as antisemitic by ADL leader Greenblatt and other prominent Jewish leaders, who are despicable liars and obfuscators, dominating both the US government and our society. A major goal of these despicable creatures is to keep our minds in strait jackets. And for the most part are succeeding. How else can we explain the complicity to war crimes our government gives to the Israeli Jews and to the US Jewish Lobby?
I’m sick of the power and influence these Jewish leaders have over both Jews and non-Jews. As a simplified summary, Zionist Judaism = Nazi Germany.
Steven, I understand your good intentions to try to correct the self-centered attitude that many Jews live by, but I’m not sure you understand the basic issues.
Aren’t the vast majority of Jews adamant at maintaining the belief that Judaism must prevail, for all time? Isn’t this the basis for the Jewish State?
Isn’t that maniacal drive – i.e., to maintain the survival of a Culture – the Tribe – what’s really behind all the killing that has occurred in the last hundred years in the Jew/Arab conflict?
Can you ask yourself, why should the Jewish Culture survive above all else? In truth, the world doesn’t need the Jewish Tribe nor any other Tribe, and even Jews don’t need the Tribe. Yet, who other than Jews maintain such a demand, that their Tribe must absolutely survive above all? In all other cultures, members intermarry and have children and enhance the melting pot of the human race. What’s with it with you Jews? Get real.
The USA is made up of immigrants from many different nations and regions and religions and the like – broadly speaking, Cultures. Is there any other Cultural member so obsessed with maintaining their Culture, other than the vast majority of brainwashed Jews? Do German Americans, Italian Americans, Amish Americans, Muslim Americans, Black Americans, or any other definable group of people that might have an inkling of political concern or intent, possess such an obstinate drive for survival of their Culture? Is not all this killing because of that drive? If so, can we not call it an unreasonable, or even insane, drive?
One type of organization that meets the criteria of Judaism is “criminal mafia”. This type of organization murders, steals, lies, and will do most anything to maintain what it considers its superiority over others, “its turf”. Judaism certainly is a criminal mafia. Maybe your Jewish next-door neighbor isn’t an active participant in the Mafia activities however your evangelical neighbor is probably not active in sending money for illegal settlements for the mafia either but evangelical certainly do support the mafia.
It should be mentioned that a good share of the “evangelicals” don’t have a clue that some of the money they give to their respective churches goes to Israel for helping with illegal “settlements” on stolen land. It’s very possible that many of these evangelicals wouldn’t donate to Israel if they knew it was happening.
I watched a video a few days ago where a Jewish Rabbi confronted Jewish pro-Israel protestors, and told them Zionists are not Jews, you lie to God, go, go away, you are not Jews the Torah is not for you.
He was very upset and angry that could mis-represent is religion and his heritage.
It is now evident that the essence of Zionism is on display as intentional Genocide. The Jewish Bund was right and running away in surrender to fascism to replicate the same elsewhere is not the way to survive. The Jewish resistance was inspired by the jewish Bund and was the introduction to the Red Army victory over Nazism. Now is the time to re-build the Jewish Bund against Zinoism and Antisemitism. We are the https://Jewish-Socialist-Bund.net/
PHD, most of the white Jews in Israel are not “semitic”, they came from New York, New Jersey, Germany, Russia etc. The Semitic Jews have been living in the middle east in various countries for hundreds of years prior to the advent of the white Jew entrance. The Semitic Jews have been living mostly in peace and in places like Iran and given equal or better status. You and your ilk breath scabs on your noses always claiming, “we are victims”, “you are anti-Semitic”; give us money. Now as occupiers of Palestine you have no legal or moral right to attack Gaza but do it anyway because you have Zionist Washington DC backing you up.
One Holocaust Does Not Justify Another
It is pretty bad when Jewish demonstrators, some of whom had family members killed or taken hostage, are labeled anti-Semitic because they are proposing a ceasefire and end to the vicious assault on Gaza. Humanitarian actions are considered anti-Semitic when they oppose IDF war crimes. If US military aid ended for Israel would the US be then considered anti -Semitic?
Doug the US gives Israel around 30 billion per year in various and sundry packages, in addition Israel has a guaranteed income of about 3 billion per year as an automatic payment called “entitlement”; after all god’s chosen are entitled people. If any of the money flow to Israel was stopped the US would surely be called an “anti-Semitic” state. However, the money will never stop until the Jewish owned treasury can no longer print money and that may happen sooner than later because of decreased bond sales. The bottom line is that white Jews own the US government, and the money flow won’t stop anytime in the near future.