Equating Jews and Absolute Support of Israel is Dangerous

To the Editors:

The Oberlin Hillel celebration of Israeli Independence Day had quite a few signs reading: “Wherever we stand we stand with Israel —Hillel.”
The authors of two articles to the Review last week about Students for a Free Palestine (SFP), both explicitly equate antisemitism with activism that questions the Zionist movement, or is supportive of Palestinian self-determination.
Connecting these authors’ arguments about antisemitism with the stance of Hillel is an ideology that assumes all Jews to be unconditionally supportive of Israel by blurring the lines between Zionism (a political movement calling for a Jewish state in the land of Palestine) and Judaism (a religion and culture connected to the ancient land of Palestine).

This assumption about Jews creates dangerous perceptions with ramifications for many groups:
1. Supporters of Israel: The State of Israel and the organized Jewish community, particularly in the U.S., have consistently tried to show a ‘united front’ of unquestioning Jewish support for Israel. A strategy of this ‘front’ is to create a political culture in which anything seen as anti-Israel can be delegitimized as antisemitic. In the long run this is unproductive for the supporters of Israel themselves because it leads to rigidity of thought, denying that any valid criticism can be made of Israel. Instead of promoting a ‘pro-Israel’ stance that is able to withstand a challenge, supporters of Israel (such as both authors of the letters to the Review last week) come across as overly-defensive and attempting to discredit any challenge to their politics.
2. Jews unsupportive of Israeli actions: The equation ‘Jew = unconditionally pro-Israel’ has consequences for the many Jews (such as myself) who do not fit into this categorization. It is an offensive and manipulative way of making Jewish anti-occupation work seem a contradiction and illegitimate. This is not a coincidence, as maintaining the ‘united front’ mentioned above has been on the agenda of the organized Jewish community for over 50 years. In this effort, powerful Jewish institutions (lobby groups, charitable organizations, schools, congregations, etc.) have actively sought to suppress the anti-Zionist and anti-Israel sentiment of Jews through personal attacks, blacklisting from Jewish publications, threats of being fired or booted from an organization, smear campaigns, violent/death threats, and explicit spying by organizations such as the ADL.
3. Supporters of antisemitism: Equating all Jews with Israel provides antisemitic groups an opportunity to paint every Jew as evil because of Israel’s actions, seen as representative of all Jews. The more the State of Israel and the organized Jewish community successfully put forth this idea, the more groups will consequently enact critique of Israel on all Jews.

Over the past few months, there has been an increase in attacks on Jews all over the world in clear response to the escalation of violence in Palestine. We must all be clear in our condemnation of these attacks.
At the same time, while such attacks are deplorable and clearly the responsibility of antisemitic groups, it is at best politically naïve to see the association these groups make between all Jews and Israel as outlandish given the organized effort by Jewish institutions (and the Israeli government) to do so.

When the Oberlin Hillel, an organization operated and funded on the premise of representing the campus Jewish community, celebrates with signs reading “Wherever we stand we stand with Israel —Hillel” they intentionally spread the idea that all Jews, or any Jew who wants to be in with ‘the’ college Jewish community, “stand with Israel.” This manipulative attempt to generalize about the political stance of ‘the’ College Jewish community not only gives fuel to anti-Jewish hate groups, but also contributes to a rigid and hyper-defensive culture of silence, completely unquestioning of Israeli action.
We must all work to break down this dangerous generalization equating all Jews with absolute support of Israel so as to show that one can oppose the actions of Israel without being antisemitic. The more the organized Jewish community continues to propagate this generalization, the more the critics of Israel will do the same. In an effort to minimize antisemitism and create an environment where the actions of Israel can be openly discussed, I urge the organized Jewish community if it claims to represent Jews, to please attempt to do with responsibility.

–Benjamin Joffe-Walt
College senior