Conflating Israel and Jewishness

Three stories reveal the problem--on both sides--of failing to separate Israel and Jewishness in discussing antisemitism.

On Saturday (the day before the Colorado attack), Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker posted an online message, timed to the end of Jewish Heritage Month, about the importance of fighting the rise of antisemitism, making no mention of Israel, Zionism, or Gaza. He was bombarded with comments about apologizing for genocide, etc.

On Monday, Juliet Kayyam wrote about the Colorado and D.C. attacks in The Atlantic. Despite the attackers' attempts to make it about Israel and Gaza, they chose Jewish targets because they are Jewish at Jewish events, with no connection to Israel. Two key quotations:

Pervasive anti-Semitism is what enables attackers to believe that they are striking back at Israel by trying to kill any Jew, anywhere. This hateful mindset assigns responsibility for specific Israeli policies to Jewish people all over the world. Jews thus stand condemned purely for being Jewish.

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Public discourse must maintain a strong distinction between what Israel does and who Jews are. To do otherwise is to side with this terror.

Jonathan Greenblatt reveals the conflation from the other direction. Discussing recent instances of graduation speakers criticizing Israel for the war in Gaza that did not mention Jews or Jewish people, Greenblatt called the comments "blood libel" that "must be stopped once and for all," presumably by expelling, denying diplomas to, and perhaps deporting or disappearing those who engage in such speech. The party line for years has been that criticism of Israel, Netanyahu, the Israeli government, etc. is not antisemitism, even under the IHRA definition; it is permissible to criticize that nation and government as one would any other. Greenblatt's comments remove the mask--it is antisemitic for students to engage in, and for universities to tolerate and permit the expression of viewpoints which differ from their own about Israel, its government policies, and its prosecution of the war.

Greenblatt has shown himself to support censorship when it silences voices he does not like, so this is not surprising (nor that he would say it on Fox News). But it creates several problems for Jewish people. It continues to give cover to Trump Administration censorship of opposing views, which will back-up on Jews (although perhaps not the Jews Greenblatt cares about). It lends cover to non-Jews to define who is "really Jewish" by their positions on Israel. (Non-Jewish Colorado Republicans have already leveled that charged against Governor Jared Polis, who is Jewish). And it undermines Kayyam's arguments. If, as Greenblatt says, criticism of Israel is inciting blood libel, then one cannot fault critics of Israel and the war for targeting Jews generally, since they have become one and the same.