Antisemitism

Memorial for victims of antisemitism

Start at the beginning: antisemitism is wrong. Full stop, no excuses, no qualifications. It's wrong.

Our society has a longer record of antisemitism than we have of anti-Black racism or anti-Indigenous oppression. Europeans persecuted the Jewish community before Columbus and after, before the Atlantic slave trade and after. Anti-Semitic hate has driven some of the most calculated and methodical mass murders in history.

 

Just don't. Don't persecute Jewish people, don't condone or support people who persecute, threaten or murder them. If that makes activism harder, it should be hard that way. Justice never arises from harming innocent people. If rejecting antisemitism makes your narratives complicated, good. Politics today suffers from an infestation of simple, romantic narratives.

Needless to say, Jewish people and Jewish institutions have no more claim to perfection than any other people or any other institution. When Jewish people and institutions behave in ways we perceive as unethical, it helps to filter our responses past the following two questions: first, who exactly committed the unethical act or made the unethical statement? Criticize that person, those people, or that institution. Second, would you feel the same outrage if, say, a Ukrainian or a Maori or an African American had done the same thing? If you can't answer, honestly, in the affirmative, cool down until you can.

While I was composing this post, an incident occurred that illustrates the problem, and like everything that illustrates a problem, it offers possible solutions. A protest march calling for an end to the fighting in Gaza and a ceasefire marched past Mount Sinai Hospital, and one or two participants climbed construction scaffolding in front of the hospital. Some members of the Toronto Jewish community reacted with alarm, and politicians condemned the incident as antisemitic. Organizers and people who spoke for the march denied they had any antisemitic intent.  Context matters here: members of the Jewish community have reason to feel raw and vulnerable, not only because of the events of October 7, but also because of violent incidents of antisemitism in Canada, with shots fired at Jewish Schools and firebombings. Under those circumstances, it makes sense for the peace marchers to back their denial by apologizing and avoiding Mount Sinai Hospital in the future. Toronto has a great many streets, and plenty of ways to get to the American consulate (the destination of the march) without going by one of Toronto's major Jewish institutions.

Making the same proactive effort to avoid expression that read as antisemitism has the same reason, and the same rewards, as avoiding racial or sexist stereotypes. In a time of high tensions, it not only makes sense in political terms; common decency requires it.