Is It Enough Yet? Part I

I ask this question in regards to two different Op-Eds in the New York Times.  On October 6, 2024, we have Bret Stephens piece:  "The Year American Jews Woke Up."  Stephens had been a conservative writer at the Wall Street Journal, but as an anti-Trumper he left and went to the Times.  Then, on October 13, 2024, we have the article by Dr. Feroze Sidhwa:  "What 65 Doctors, Nurses and Paramedics Saw in Gaza."  Dr. Sidhwa worked as a trauma surgeon for approximately two weeks in Gaza.  Both articles merit discussion.

After recounting various antisemitic incidents across America over this past year, Stephens makes a very important assessment of what it means to be a Jew in America.  "At some point, an awakening of sorts occurred.  Perhaps not for every American Jew, but for many.  I've called them the Oct. 8 Jews - those who woke up a day after our greatest tragedy since the Holocaust to see how little empathy there was for us in many of the spaces and communities and institutions we thought we comfortably inhabited.  It was an awakening that often came with a deeper set of realizations.  One realization:  American Jews should not expect reciprocity."

Stephens discusses the history of American Jews supporting many progressive causes, only to see those same progressive individuals and organizations turning on us after October 7, 2023.  A second realization:  "'Zionist' has become just another word for Jew."  "Anti-Zionists" claim that they have nothing against Jews, but rather the political idea of Zionism, reflecting a return to the land of Israel for the Jewish people.  Stephens makes it clear that the attacks on "Zionists" have become indistinguishable from attacks on individual Jews.  At that point, "the distinctions between anti-Zionist and antisemite blur to the point of invisibility."

A third realization:  "This isn't going to end anytime soon."  In part because American politics has moved "towards forms of illiberalism."  Stephens is referring to a move away from classical liberalism; something this writer has discussed many times, and particularly in the July 17, 2016 post "Classical Liberalism."  Stephens:  "Unless this changes, the American Jewish community is on its way to living how the European Jewish community has for decades:  apprehensive, suspected and under ever increasing layers of private and state protection."  

Stephens then discusses the current "grand theory of "settler colonialism," a label which the antisemites place on the Jews (settler colonialists).  Stephens:  "Zionism, which since the days of the Maccabees has been the most enduring anticolonial struggle in history, is now the epitome of what college activists seem to think is colonialism, the only solution to which is its eradication."

Noting that the college educated are often the worst offenders, Stephens tells us:  "When people argue that education is the answer to bigotry, they often forget that bigotry is a moral failing, not an intellectual one - and few people are more dangerous than educated bigots."  Where Stephens and I diverge is on his apparent emphasis on the right-wing, and the unnamed Trump, moving us away from classical liberalism - towards illiberalism.  But that has been going on for some time, well before Trump came on the scene.  

Citing a book discussing where German Jews had gone wrong politically, we are told:  "They had, in tolerant Prussia, lost their instinct for danger, which had preserved them through the ages."  That is a discussion which my conservative friends and I have frequently had.  When will American Jews wake up?  Many are so consumed by their hatred of Donald Trump, that they have remained blind to all the dangers of the radical left, and of radical Islam.  

Stephens:  "Are we going to be proud Jews or (mostly) indifferent ones?  And if proud, what does that entail?  It's an open question that each of us will have to answer for ourself."  For Stephens:  "To be a Jew obliges us to many things, particularly our duty to be our brother's, and sister's, keeper.  That means never to forsake one another, much less to join in the vilification of our own people."  Finally, it means "to embrace - often as a thoughtful critic, but never as a hateful scold - the great, complicated, essential project of a Jewish state.  To imagine we can do without it is to forget how close we came to extinction before it was born." 

So, is it enough yet?  Have my fellow Jews seen enough antisemitism and outright Jew hatred to awaken from their slumber?  Have they seen enough to realize that, no matter how much they may detest Donald Trump, the problem is far wider and deeper than Trump.  I don't expect them to recognize Trump as the best President for Israel and the Jewish people.  But maybe they will awaken to the fact that the these college protesters, and their anti-Israel professors and administrators, are on the Left.  That most of the mainstream media is on the Left.  The same applies to Hollywood.  It is a mistake to assume that these Leftists are on our side.

I have said in the blog that antisemitism, whether from the Right, the Left or Radical Islam - is all bad.  I made it a point of criticizing Tucker Carlson twice, for his apparent antisemitism, because he is such a prominent voice on the Right.  It's past time for my fellow Jews on the Left to criticize those on the Left, such as Bernie Sanders and members of the Squad, for their anti-Israel and anti-Jewish/antisemitic comments. 

My Chabad Rabbis teach that this is not the time to shrink from one's Judaism.  This is the time to be a proud Jew.  Put a mezuzah on the entry to your home.  Wear your yarmulke (kippah) in public.  And go to services.  And, as I have advocated previously, speak out for Israel and against antisemitism everywhere - on social media, in print media and at every opportunity you have.  As a friend said to me, if we don't speak up now, Never Again will happen again.