See, I have never thought Jews were exceptional so being let down was not hard for me. I am Latino and gay. There are members of both of those communities who are pretty abhorrent. But they are still my people. The love may have to come out in this way: “you need to act right!” but it still love nonetheless. I think as a person of color and a gay man, I see why we need each other. I think whiteness has actually hurt the Ashkenazi community because it has led to this idea that Jews do not need each other. We need each other to be better than we currently are.

My love for my people comes out as a progressive Zionist. I want a homeland for my people. No, it was not done perfectly. I ahve read Benny Morris but I know that no state has come about without violence. If we expected Jews to be different, THAT would be racist.

I find your realization of Jews’ humanity interesting, frankly perplexing, and sad. I have found in my expereince that Jews who are ravaged with such guilt not necessarily helpful in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Guilt does not help a situation.

I enter this conflict as someone who knows that Israel has made some terrible mistake but I also know others have as well. We have hurt each other. But I want my people to survive. if others have that right, so do we.

Oh, and in terms of apartheid and SA–other African nations did business with them as well as other “progressive” countries.

Thank you for your note, whose end sets me to thinking further.

I am proud of and deeply attached to my own Jewish heritage, which I construe — to put it briefly — as involving facility and deep respect for literacy and learning, a personal bearing-on of the history sketched in “Last of the Just,” a modicum of Yiddishkeit, and the humane and progressive values that propelled the New Left.

Yet I must bow to my mother’s father, who left me his blue eyes and a certain obligation. He was the latest in a line not simply of rabbis but of Grand Rabbis and Great Rabbis, that stretched unbroken from Padua Italy in 1492 until his youth in Russia at the start of the 1900s. Swept in the heady, conflicting currents of re-emergent Zionism and the Bund, he pondered the deeper issue at 18, and decided that if there were a God, He would be God for everyone, not only for Jews — and so became a Bolshevik rather than a rabbi, was jailed for his part in the abortive ‘05 revolution, and survived to come here … and so on.

It’s from this background that I ponder your remark, “I do sometimes wonder what my left brothers and sisters say and why they do not think about how their words might be construed as not caring for the Jewish people.” Though I am not God, a trace of whatever is holy stirs through me with my grandfather, to ask whether — as your remark invites, in this context — I should care first and without qualification for “the Jewish people.”

To my mind, Ariel Sharon was the planet’s leading anti-Semite until G*d and cholesterol struck him down. From the time of his disasterous provocation on the Temple mount, it was clear to me that no one else could be accounted as having banked-up so much grief and disaster for Jews around the world, for generations to come.

How should I care for Sharon? How should I care for the Jews who taught the apartheid masters of South Africa new tricks in surveillance, clandestine torture, and nuclear technology? How should I care for the Israelis who buried Mordecai in prison for telling some of the truth about Israel’s nuclear weaponry, how should I care for the Jews here who constrain “my country” on its hypocritical course of preparing to savage Iran for aspiring to uranium enrichment while Israel has enough nuclear-tipped missiles to snuff half the Muslims on Earth? Scratch the neocons who prepared Bush-&-Co. to invade Iraq and squander half a million lives and a trillion dollars, and you’ll draw proudly-Jewish blood.

This brief list hardly tells the story, but gives the flavor of my quandry. Who are “the Jewish people” that I should care for, above and without respect for the rest of humanity? Yes, I love Jews because I love the Jews I know, who share my values — but why am I to love Sharon and the rest to whom I refer, just because many other Jews believe they are doing good for “the Jewish people”? You say, so quickly and perhaps glibly, “Of course … I do not talk about the nefarious Jewish lobby controlling US foreign policy, knowing how that plays into ancient anti-Jewish myths.” Dear brother, to turn your back on truths and contradictions for the sake of ostensibly protecting Jews from their persecutors is … how can I say it? No favor to the human spirit, no favor to what I understand as admirable in our heritage, no favor in the long run even to us and our Jewish genes, let alone to a humane future.

Which brings me back to Palestine, a torment in my belly ever since I shook free from the myth that whatever Jews do in the name of preserving their future is justified, and admirable because of that. I am ashamed that I was lulled so long by the sense of Jewish exceptionalism, I was 48 before I really begain to understand the tragedy and the travesty of Israel vis-a-vis those other Semites. Hey, we’re Jewish, we’re God’s favored people even when we don’t mention His name and mandate. Whatever we do to those Others, directly and indirectly, doesn’t really matter, because they’re not Jewish.
They’e animals, they’re not really human, they send their children to die without regret …

Eh, I can’t torture this line further. My grandfather stirs within me, saying dryly, “Child, do be careful, he may think you don’t care for the Jewish people.” And he leaves me with a question. Does “caring for the Jewish peole” mean excusing everything and anything some of them do “for the sake of our survival”? And if not, then where does one draw the line, when and how does one say, “I care more for humanity, and for my own humanity, than for these butchering zealots”?

Thank you for your honesty about thinking Jews knew better. I have found that sentiment as well and really do not understand it. Jews are human beings who make mistakes. Oppression does not make anyone better, it simply makes them oppressed. People learn very different things from their history of oppression: some which lead them to the left and some to the right.

I think Ashkenazim of a certain age (I do not see this feeling among my Sephardic or Mizrahi family) need to deal with their sense that Jews are supposed to be so different. I think THAT feeling has caused much damage to the Jewish community.

Honestly, I am a progressive who is always told that right-wingers call all criticisms of Israel anti-Semitism but I have not seen it. I have been called naive, silly, living in la-la land and frankly disrespected but never have I been accused of anti-Semitism. Of course, my area of expertise is anti-Semitism, thus I do not talk about the nefarious Jewish lobby controlling US foreign policy, knowing how that plays into ancient anti-Jewish myths.

Thank you for your honesty about thinking Jews knew better. I have found that sentiment as well and really do not understand it. Jews are human beings who make mistakes. Oppression does not make anyone better, it simply makes them oppressed. People learn very different things from their history of oppression: some which lead them to the left and some to the right.

I think Ashkenazim of a certain age (I do not see this feeling among my Sephardic or Mizrahi family) need to deal with their sense that Jews are supposed to be so different. I think THAT feeling has caused much damage to the Jewish community.

Honestly, I am a progressive who is always told that right-wingers call all criticisms of Israel anti-Semitism but I have not seen it. I have been called naive, silly, living in la-la land and frankly disrespected but never have I been accused of anti-Semitism, I do sometimes wonder what my left brothers and sisters say and why they do not think about how their words might be construed as not caring for the Jewish people.

Those who criticize her observations about the quick and profligate recourse to charges of “anti-Semitism” whenever Israeli policies are questioned may indeed see a different landscape East of the Mississippi. But from my perspective in the S.F. Bay Area, she has hardly put this issue sharply enough. The vehemence, vituperation, and sheer bulk of such knee-jerk responses is a major factor in shaping the climates of discussion here, in personal interchanges, in group meetings, in print, and online. One can scarcely make even the most moderate and reasonable critique of Israeli policies past or present, let alone any reference to the moral failings involved, without making oneself a target for such reckless charges. Indeed, it has been quite remarkable to me to see how some people of my generation, with a lifetime’s experience and steeping in progressive culture, can lose their minds completely — i.e., abandon any semblance of consciousness of progressive values, internationalism, or the fact that there are at least two sides to every issue — in response to any critique of Zionism, and go into rabid attack mode. Such conduct does perhaps even more than simplistic anti-Zionism to poison the waters of interchange, and sabotage the kinds of progress that JANIP strives for.

As for Epstein’s other substantive points, I think she passes lightly over one that rings more strongly for me. I think a form of racism is at the core of many Jews’ disappointment with Israel’s conduct over the past thirty years. I’m speaking personally here, but I’m sure this analysis extends to many. Growing up in a radical humanist Jewish family, and going through the era ‘57-’67 when so much of the New Left’s clarity and fervor was generated and directed by Jews with similar backgrounds, I derived what I much later realized was an altogether unrealistic set of assumptions about progressive values and the generality of Jews in this nation. I confess: a key reason for the sharpness of my disappointment and disagreement with Israeli Zionism and its USA support and supporters is that *I thought that Jews were better than that.* I was raised knowing that we had been slaves to Pharoah and had been liberated, and that my door was to be open to all others who were enslaved. How then could I take Israel’s unconscionable material support of the apartheid regime in South Africa? This is only the simplest expression of a paradox that will smoulder agonizingly in my consciousness until I die, unless J*w*h quite reforms the consciousness of those in power in Israel.

Given such background, it is not at all surprising to find how many Jews of my generation and political persuasions are agonized by the situation with the Palestineans, and are fundamentally critical of so much of Israeli policy.

But the best known case is Tony Judt, not extreme on other issues, but a one-stater regarding Israel and the Palestinians. The fact that Judt and most others who advocate one state do not support terrorist violence is hardly a defense for a grossly impractical and unfair position. Their opposition to violence is often nominal, with a formulation that equally criticizes Palestinian attacks on civilians and IDF efforts to stop the attacks. And there are many far-left voices, especially in campus communities, who are much more vicious in their anti-Israel sentiments than Judt, Kushner, et al.

And Carter’s best-selling book is so popular partly because of his use of “Apartheid” in the title. Extremists ignore his careful explanation that he’s not talking about Israel proper but only the West Bank. The “A” word, along with his inaccuracies and one-sided tone, tend to undermine Israel’s legitimacy as a Jewish state.

I’d like to raise two points of contention: One is that when we simply condemn “occupation” per se without indicating that it’s Arab violence that prompted the occupation and perpetuates it,
we are engaging in a convenient shorthand that omits the historical context.

Also, in repeating the “squelching dissent” charge as prominently as she does, she’s exaggerating the problem. I believe that dissent IS squelched in some quarters; my understanding is that this is especially true in Jewish communities out West which tend to be overly defensive. But I’ve also experienced this in NY’s Jewish Week newspaper, which admitted to me last year that I’m “too left” for their taste. On the other hand, NJ Jewish News (also a big Jewish community weekly) does publish my views, as does The Forward. And the left tends to be at least as squelching (I’d say more so) of non-PC views it hates.

It is therefore sadly true that we are talking about an old, and not a new variant of anti-semitism. And it makes absolutely no diffierence that some of the people who talk this way are Jews; just as it made absolutely no difference that some supporters of the fascist Right in pre-war Poland were Jews.

Barbara, I hate to tell you this but what you write is nothing new, and I remember similar articles by Arthur Waskow and others in the 70’s. As in the past, all your attempts to engage in a rational discussion of the profound hatred of the existence of Jews as a people - not just as a religion or as a barely tolerated fringe community - are doomed to failure. The only thing that will convince the Right or the Left - or indeed the world - of the right to Jews to have national community is the strength and viabiliity of the Jewish and Israeli community itself. If you are truly interested in such acceptance, then I suggest that you stop making useless attempts to rationally convince the world to your right to national identity - and spend your time building and strengthening that identity itself.

“The larger problem is the determination on the part of many mainstream and rightwing Jewish organizations to squelch criticisms of Israel, and the large number of individual Jews who label any such criticism anti-Semitic.”

This is a claim often made by the far left, but, the fact of the matter is, it does not hold water. Even Abe Foxman from the ADL has stated time and again that criticism of Israel per se is not anti-Semitic. What matters is the content of the critique. Is Israel held to an unfair standard? Are anti-Semitic tropes used to criticize Israel? And so forth. The matter of anti-Zionism is important as well. For many Jews anti-Zionism is equivalent to anti-Semitism. But anti-Zionism is far more than criticism of Israel, it is an ideological negation of Israel’s right to exist in peace and security with its neighbors.

These comments appear contradictory:

“No serious organization on the left adheres to a policy of “anti-Americanism.””

“A large sector of the left tends to divide the world into two categories: US imperialism and its enemies.”

The groups responsible for organizing the largest anti-War in the United States—such as United for Peace and Justice and International ANSWER—adhere to ideologies that can only be described as anti-American. All one needs to do is visit their websites and read what they have to say if you don’t think this is the case.