How to be an anti-antisemite

Antisemitism is everywhere.

U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene endorsed a theory that global

Jewish elites started the California wildfires using lasers in space.

College campuses are brimming with cases of antisemitism and leaders who seem unwilling to stand up to it. At the University of Southern California, Rose Ritch was harassed and threatened to the point that she had to resign as vice president of the undergraduate student government. Her crime was her belief in Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. An online effort by the Black Student Assembly vowed to “impeach her Zionist ass” — and was allowed to succeed.

Prominent Harvard professor Cornel West recently tweeted that pro-Israel forces prevented his getting tenure. A public school board member in Lowell, Mass., recently called a former Jewish employee a “kike” — not behind his back, but live on television. There is desecration of Jewish cemeteries. Perhaps the most chilling example — for audacity, if not for effect — was the Confederate flag tied to the door of the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York. The museum’s main exhibit at the time? “Auschwitz: Not Long Ago. Not Far Away.”

Antisemitism is neither long ago, nor far away. And at a time when there’s an unusually widespread racial reckoning underway in the United States, there’s no equivalent reckoning with antisemitism. Jewish friends of mine are seriously wondering whether it’s still safe to live in this country and — more unnerving still — whether they owe it to their children to raise them somewhere else. What brings them to this point is not just, “Where did all these creeps come from?” It’s “Why doesn’t the rest of America — all the people who aren’t Jews and aren’t creeps — seem to care?” Where are the upstanders?

If you’re not Jewish and not one of the creeps, there’s a different question. What would it mean to be a proactive supporter in the fight against antisemitism in the U.S.? What does anti-racism look like when the racism in question is antisemitism?

First, it means stop assuming that antisemitism is a far-right thing or a far-left thing. Unfortunately, it’s both — although it tends to take different forms — and you’ll have to stand up to those on your own side as well as those on the other. Perhaps comedian Samantha Bee put it best on her TBS show “Full Frontal.” Commenting on footage of antisemitic ranting at a Trump rally, she cracked, “To find antisemitism that rabid, you’d have to go to, well, any left-leaning American college campus.” As an upstander, you’re going to have to stand up to antisemites on both sides and your most important role may be standing up to your own political “side.”

Second, don’t race past antisemitism in a rush to address all forms of hatred. Hatreds, like cancers and viruses, are distinct. All must be called out and fought, but bundling antisemitism as another “flavor” of racism risks papering over the reality. In recent Anti-Defamation League surveys, for example, 23% of Black respondents scored high on antisemitism, compared to 10% of whites. Antisemitism is thus not a specifically white problem, like white supremacism is, nor is it a simply a Christian prejudice. Congress fell right into this error when a bill to address rising antisemitism in the United States was watered down to a milquetoast condemnation of “all hate” — the only way it could pass. The result of this failure to acknowledge antisemitism as a specific phenomenon is that opposition to it is everywhere superficially but nowhere deeply.

Third, don’t keep quiet when criticism of Israel becomes antisemitic. Of course Israel can be criticized for whatever policies its government pursues. You’ll have a hard time outdoing the Israelis themselves in that department. How do you know when criticism has slipped over into antisemitism? When you start hearing the age-old cliches of Jewish conspiracies, Jews controlling world finance, Jews running the media, Jews only caring about Jews. Another clue is completely off-the-scale exaggeration. Whatever wrongs Israel may have done, it has not embarked on a Palestinian genocide and is in no way comparable to the Nazis. Twelve million people are facing potential genocide at this very moment — the Uighurs, at the hands of the Chinese government.

Fourth, when an antisemitic act takes place in your own neighborhood — and, wherever you are, it’s far too late to say “It can’t happen here” — call it out. A swastika spray-painted on a wall, someone yelling “Jew!” from a car. You may not be able to send the perpetrator to jail — the act may or may not be illegal. But they should know some trouble and — in some cases, though not all — public shame.

History shows that a trickle of antisemitism too often becomes a torrent. Whether or not we can reduce the number of antisemites, we can and must have a lot more anti-antisemites.

By Todd L. Pittinsky