The cover of the April 2024 issue of The Atlantic is an homage to Yiddish-theater posters from another era. Among the collage of graphics, it declares boldly that “Anti-Semitism Threatens the American Experiment Itself.”
The writer Franklin Foer, in The End of the Golden Age, an opus in 8 parts, makes the assertion right up front: Anti-Semitism on the right and the left threatens to end an unprecedented period of safety and prosperity for Jewish Americans — and demolish the liberal order they helped establish.
This is some serious hyperbole.
I began this essay 3 weeks ago, as soon as this April Atlantic arrived. I’ve spent all this time parsing and pondering, weighing my words and trying not to write what might be more inflammatory. Weighing words matters, but not if it ultimately leads to silence on issues of life and death.
In the 3 weeks since that issue, more deaths in Gaza, more Israeli assaults on civilians, including children, more U.S. dollars approved to arm an already overmatched Israeli military, more students arrested on U.S. campuses, reminiscent of 1968 anti-Vietnam War protests, complete with disruption of these peaceful protests by college administrators (threats of expulsion, and in Harvard’s case, a sprinkler system in 30-degree weather to flood the tent city there) and by heavily armed police, and threats to call in the national guard (Kent State anyone? Jackson State? South Carolina State?). And Netanyahu is comparing these students of conscience to the college student branch of the Nazi party in the 1920s.
How dare I be silent.
Foer takes offense at student walk-outs in support of Palestinians and against Israel after the events of October 7, citing the fear of Jewish students and elevating the walk-outs nearly to the level of holocaust, asserting any objection to Israel’s disproportionate response to Hamas (34,000 Palestinians dead; 1,400 Israelis) and its ongoing settlements and land grabs to be indicative of anti-Semiticism rather than simply anti-Zionism (1) or anti-genocide. To be clear: to be anti-genocide is not to be anti-Jewish, which even many Jewish thinkers will say, though the lobbyists are relentless in working to convince our leaders otherwise.
Foer goes further, reacting to far-right Christian Nationalism, which is certainly on the rise and to be abhorred. He equates the Occupy Movement with the Tea Party, in his mind equally illiberal, equally villainous on right and left. But the equivalency of radical right and radical left has always fallen short, since a win on the right is a win for racism, militarism, individualism, capitalism, authoritarianism and further inequality; but a win on the left is a win for community, sharing, the common good and a peaceable kin-dom — all that stuff the Hebrew scriptures put forth as desirable. It is my life’s work to denounce the far right and defend at every opportunity the left – the actual left, what’s called in the U.S. the “radical left,” which is actually mainstream and not radical at all in other forward thinking countries.
Foer notes with disdain that “Even as Israel’s shocking victory in the Six-Day War, (2), 22 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, filled American Jews with pride and confidence, a meaningful portion of America’s left turned on Israel,” and took offense that “after Israel captured the Gaza Strip and the West Bank in 1967, many came to view the Jewish State as a vile oppressor.” Neither of which is surprising, given the hell-ish colonialism and displacement/disappearance the Palestinians have had to endure for more than a century as Zionists continue to claim the land only for themselves and continue to seek means and opportunities to annex more and more — illegally, but with US resources (3).
“(But) back then, the debate was over the borders of Israel, not over the fact of its existence,” he writes, refusing to accede that current protests are similarly about one and not the other.
He criticizes the BDS movement (4) as unnecessarily spreading to “not just the military but also symphonies, theatre groups and universities.” Yes, that’s how boycott works.
And he dabbles in anticipatory fear: “(T)here’s a reason so many Jews bristle at the thought of anti-Zionism finding a home on the American left: Zionist can start to sound like a synonym for Jew. (5) … Knowing the historical echoes, it’s hard not to worry that the anger might fixate on the Jewish target closest at hand—which, indeed, it has.”
Start to. Might. Can. That’s a lot of potential danger.
In short, according to Foer and prevailing propaganda, any criticism of Israel’s domestic and foreign policy, anything short of full-throated support, in fact, is the beginning of a slippery slope to the next holocaust. (6)
Thus saith Zionist lobby groups and so many politicians and media outlets afraid of loss of popular support, afraid of the loss of a privileged place in American foreign policy — the unquestioning support not of Israel’s existence, but of Israel’s expulsion and elimination of Palestinians and ongoing illegal expansion.
But then, despite all that anticipatory fear, Foer paradoxically acknowledges:
“Americans maintain a favorable opinion of Jews. The community remains prosperous and politically powerful,” he writes, and in the online version, he links to a March 2023 Pew report (7) showing that 6 percent of US adults have a somewhat or very unfavorable attitude toward Jews. “But the memory of how quickly the best of times can turn dark has infused the Jewish reactions to events of the past decade.”
“Americans maintain a favorable opinion of Jews.”
Anticipatory fear, like anticipatory grief, is real and troubling, but it is not cause enough to demonize the very reasonable protests against the more real and more troubling century-long militarism of Israel against the Palestinian people.
……
As for the American Experiment, in this country, queer people and women continue to be targeted by legislative bigotry; Black people continue to be targeted by testosterone-fueled policing and racist gerrymandering; Brown people continue to be demonized, not just at the border, but across the nation, where right-wingers suspect all people of color of being “not from here,” illogically afraid immigrants are simultaneously stealing their jobs and draining the country’s welfare coffers.
I don’t know any people of color who haven’t experienced discrimination, including over-policing and under-resourcing, queer people who haven’t experienced harassment or discrimination, women who haven’t been assaulted.
But Jewish supporters of Zionism are apparently afraid of public discourse — and have the power to coerce institutions to align. That kind of power doesn’t jibe with the demise of the American Experiment and the Golden Age of Jews. If anything the opposite is the case. Jewish leaders in America have a stockpile of political and social power that can upend any criticism of the genocide that is happening in Palestine.
So students are protesting, the valedictorian at the University of Southern California and other speakers have been uninvited — ironically excluding, for the sake of Jewish well-being, the South-Asian Muslim valedictorian, but also Asian filmmaker John Chu and lesbian tennis legend Billie Jean King, who fought her own battles for gender equality a generation ago. Congress continues to parade the presidents of major universities — so far women and people of color — through absurd parodies of serious inquiry as right-wingers try to destroy their careers — succeeding in some cases.
So tell me, for whom is the “American Experiment” working? Whose golden age is it? It seems to me that Jewish Americans are favored by American policy-makers, or at least in these times pandered to by those with stunted theology, unimaginative (quid pro quo?) politics, and inconsistent morality.
The U.S uncritically equating Jews with Zionists and demanding obeisance is an unfortunate fusing that leaves Palestinians here and in Palestine without voice and leaves no room for thoughtful opposition. I am thankful for students who have picked up this banner.
While I find Foer’s history of Jews in America interesting and helpful though cursory, I find his recounting of the history of Israel in Palestine inadequate and conveniently framed. The central theme — the end of the golden age for American Jews — I found unpersuasive, and am honestly surprised that The Atlantic — born 170 years ago as an abolitionist journal — would publish such a thing.
To suggest as the writer does that “anti-Semitism threatens the American experiment itself” is to deny the reality that for so very, very many of us, the experiment was over before it began.
FOOTNOTES:
1. Zionism is Israel’s tenet of biblical ownership rights to maintain a Jewish state in the stolen land of Palestine, a dream which began with the 1896 manifesto Der Judenstaat, and began to take form with Britain’s Balfour Declaration in 1917.
2. There is little reason to be shocked, as Zionists had been courting and amassing U.S. and British support for 30 years prior. Palestinians had expressed a willingness to share the land, but had little understanding of how “diplomatic relations” worked and were not effective in advocating for themselves with Europe or the US. Later it was commented (by Kissinger, I think?) that in various peace talks, “the US was Israel’s lawyer.”
3. After the 1947 UN partition of Palestine, which was supposed to create two independent states, Israel almost immediately began a campaign for more. In the 1948 war, called Nakba or “catastrophe” by Palestinians, more than 700,000 Palestinians (85 percent of the population) were forced from their homes and into refugee camps, never to be able to return. The 1948 war has never really ended, as Israel continues to assault Palestinian towns and neighborhoods, displace or kill civilian residents and annex the land.
4. Boycott, Divest, Sanction — the movement to create economic pressure on Israel to behave better regarding the Palestinians.
5. In fact, AIPAC and ADL among others have already established this false congruence in the minds of much of America, including our political leadership.
6. Important to note that the project to take Palestine away from Palestinians actually began long before Hitler’s march through Europe. According to one Israeli journalist-historian, the holocaust actually provided justification and cover for what had been happening for 4 decades. Read “One Palestine, Complete” by Tom Segev.
7. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2023/03/15/americans-feel-more-positive-than-negative-about-jews-mainline-protestants-catholics/