Examining the question: What is and isn’t antisemitic?

Peter Beinart: I think it’s critical to be able to make a distinction between bigotry against a group of people and criticism or condemnation of a state. People might have very legitimate criticisms of the People’s Republic of China, it doesn’t mean that they’re bigoted towards Chinese people. Or if they have serious criticisms of Saudi Arabia or Pakistan, it doesn’t mean that they are anti-Muslim. Even if you say that you think the ideology of the state of China, or the ideology of the state of Iran or Saudi Arabia is immoral, and you don’t believe that China should be run by the Communist Party. Even that does not make you necessarily an anti-Chinese bigot, which is why I think that it is not only not antisemitic to criticize Israeli policies, it’s not inherently antisemitic to question the legitimacy of a Jewish state. 

If you believe in the principle of equality under the law, that states should not favor one religious or ethnic or racial group over another, it’s not bigoted to say that you believe that principle of equality under the law should apply to Israeli Jews and Palestinians, just as you want it to apply in the United States.

There are people who say that, but this argument is something we hear so often that it has a certain superficial plausibility. Would someone say that if you are a constant critic of human rights abuses in Nigeria or Zambia or Kenya, that you’re anti-Black? All states, regardless of their racial, religious or ethnic composition, are fair game for criticism. The ideologies of those states and the political systems of those states are fair game for criticism. The criticism may be well-founded or not well-founded, but it’s not inherently bigoted unless you can show that it is emanating from a hostility to Jews as Jews.

I think, unfortunately, a lot of people are afraid to enter into this debate. They’re afraid to speak out when they see concerns about what Israel is doing to Palestinians, because so often those critics are indeed called antisemitic, and people don’t want to be called antisemitic. It’s a terrible thing to be accused of, given the horrors that have been done by antisemites historically.

There is a very, very deep divide among American Jews, particularly along generational lines, in which many younger American Jews are really appalled by how Israel treats Palestinians, particularly what Israel has done in Gaza. And they have even more basic questions about the nature of the state. The irony is that American Jews have been raised to believe that our safety depends on the principle of equality under the law. That’s what most of us believe in America. And yet we’re also supposed to believe that we need to support a state in Israel, which is based on a principle of Jewish supremacy. A principle in which Jews have superior legal rights to Palestinians. Most of the Palestinians under Israeli control can’t even become citizens of the state in which they live. And so, more younger American Jews are facing that contradiction and asking questions about the nature of a Jewish state. And that’s very upsetting to many older American Jews and many more conservative political Jews, but it’s not antisemitic. It is a deep ideological divide that has opened up among American Jews.

The number of Israelis who are Jews who are upset about what Israel is doing to Palestinians and Gaza is growing, but it is still a minority of Israeli Jews. Most Israeli Jews who oppose the war are doing so not primarily because they’re concerned about what’s happening to Palestinians. They simply want the hostages to come back, and they don’t want their brothers and sons to have to continue to fight in the war. It’s been very difficult in Israel, since Oct. 7, to speak out about Palestinian rights and about Palestinian humanity, which makes me even more admiring of those people who do.

I think that most people think it’s legitimate to criticize Israel. The real debate has to do with whether it’s legitimate to question the idea of a Jewish state itself, the idea of political Zionism, the idea of a state that’s based on legal favoritism of Jews over Palestinians. That’s where the real divide is. And I think for many Jews, the ideal of a Jewish state is a kind of ultimate refuge for them, and that they believe it’s what keeps Israeli Jews safe. And for them, a world without a Jewish state would be a world in which Israeli Jews were radically unsafe, and even Jews around the world were radically unsafe. I disagree. I think that Israeli Jews are made less safe by this system of legal supremacy, because when you deny people basic rights, you inflict terrible violence on them, the violence of oppression, and that violence makes everybody less safe. I think that the reason American Jews and British and Australian Jews are safer than Jews in Israel is precisely because we live in states that are not based on legal supremacy. Because equality under the law actually allows for politics that are less violent than systems of oppression.

On the right, what we’re seeing is that antisemitism is rising in tandem with other forms of bigotry, Islamophobia, anti-immigrant, anti-Black, anti-LGBT and these bigotries do generally travel together. These are people who basically want these countries to be homogenous and hierarchical, and they want their group to be on top, and everybody who’s not like them, they want to be at the bottom. On the left, what we are seeing, including among these terrible, terrible incidents, people who were killed because they were at pro-Israel events, is a failure to recognize that it is illegitimate to take out your hostility against Israel on Jews. It’s also illegitimate to take your anger against Israel in violent ways, even against people who are clearly supportive of Israel. Violence is illegitimate in a political conversation and action in the United States, period, and Jews are not responsible for what Israel does any more than Chinese Americans are responsible for what Beijing does. But the Jewish organizations have to make that distinction, as well. And part of the problem is that establishment American Jewish organizations constantly conflate being Jewish with being a supporter of Israel.

Yes. And in fact, Netanyahu has a long history of being strongly allied with some of the most antisemitic leaders in the world, right? I mean, Viktor Orban, for instance, in Hungary, who’s been very blatantly antisemitic in the way he talks about George Soros, is probably Netanyahu’s biggest defender in Europe. People find that hard to believe, but it’s not actually a contradiction. There’s a long history of antisemites supporting Zionism and supporting Israel, because after all, if you don’t like the Jews in your country and you wish they were not there, it’s very attractive to think that they might all go to a country of their own.

Again and again, I hear from people who are estranged from their families, from their communities, from the rabbis and who are in immense pain about what’s happening. Many of the people I talk to are people who just simply can’t believe that the people they love, the people they look to often as religious and communal leaders, are not speaking out in the face of what is the mass slaughter and starvation of an entire people. There are more child amputees in Gaza than in any place on Earth, even though there are only 2 million people. There’s an estimate now, by an academic at the University of London, that 4% of the population of Gaza has been killed since Oct. 7, which is the largest percentage of any population that has been killed in a military conflict in the 21st century. And so, the people I talk to are often saying, “How can it be that people who speak in our name as Jews, when we were raised to believe that Judaism is about the idea that all human beings are created in the image of God? How can it be that our leaders are silent or even supportive of this?”

It’s among young people. There is a tremendous, I would say, a kind of moral and spiritual uprising that is happening among young American Jews who feel betrayed by their communal establishment and their leaders and institutions, and they are creating new institutions, and it’s going to transform American Jewish life. There are so many Minyan Jewish prayer communities that have emerged for young people in New York City alone just in the last couple of years for people who want to live committed, serious, meaningful, engaged Jewish lives, but not have to check their ethics at the door. And it’s those kids who give me hope. 

I think one of the great fears is that there’s so much bad faith use of claims of antisemitism to try to shut down legitimate questions about Israel and Zionism, that it produces a cynicism about the entire conversation. That actually is extremely dangerous. It makes me very angry, to be honest, to see Jewish leaders who simply don’t have any good arguments to defend the starvation, slaughter and the oppression of an entire people. And because they don’t have any good arguments, they rely on this legacy of the suffering and oppression of previous generations of Jews. And they take this legacy, which we should take with great care, a kind of sacred inheritance, and they use it in the most promiscuous ways to try to intimidate and slander good people who are simply outraged because they can’t bear to see another Palestinian child being murdered or starved to death. It’s a disgrace. And I worry that we’ll make it harder to tackle the very real problem of antisemitism, because as liberal democracy fails, antisemitism, like Islamophobia, anti-Black racism, anti-trans and LGBT, it is rising, particularly on the right, and we need to take it seriously in fighting it. But this is doing the opposite.