Any time that someone says something bad about Jews as a group, or sometimes even about one Jew, they are accused of being antisemitic. I can say something bad about an Italian without being accused of hating the entire race, and the same is true if I say something about a Catholic, for example. One bad Catholic does not condemn the entire religion. But it is different if you say something bad about a Jew. At least, to a Jew, it is different.

Perhaps that is held over from the Holocaust, or perhaps it is held over from a millennium of Christian persecution. I am not sure. But it is an unfortunate fact.

Clearly, there has always been antisemitism (you know what I mean by “always”). As I heard Rabbi Yossy Goldman, a Chabad rabbi in Johannesburg, once say (and I am paraphrasing him to the extent that he probably doesn’t believe this is what he really said): one of the eternal facets of being Jewish is having to face antisemitism; don’t let it get you down. And if this isn’t what he said, he probably should have. There will always be people who don’t like Jews or who don’t like a particular Jew. So what?

Now, of course it’s a bit different if people really DON’T LIKE! Jews; if they, in effect, hate them and want to get rid of them one way or another. But the two types of antisemitism should not be confused.

And when you look at today’s United States, although it is admittedly in some sort of flux, you don’t see (on any scale worth existential worrying) the type of ANTISEMITISM! that would result in expulsion or containment or death. When you compare the life of American Jews today with the lives of Jews in past times and other societies, where ANTISEMITISM! had really taken root, we come out on top. Still.

Now, that does not mean that there aren’t concerns – the biggest concern is the amount of anti-Israel feeling that the current war in Gaza (or is it a “special military operation” like the Russians in Ukraine?) has stirred up. There are those who are appalled by the amount of death and destruction there on its own, and others who are in the “I told you so” mode, having harped at Israel’s now 57 year old occupation (actual or virtual) of adjoining territories. Of course, many of these people think that if Israel just pulls out, the territories will be able to organize themselves, with workable self-government, sufficient propserity, and a willingness to live in peace with their Israeli neighbors. If only this were the case.

And that of course brings up the question: can you be ANTI-ISRAEL! without being antisemitic? To me, the answer is “of course”, and that is obvious. But everyone does not think that way. There are those who believe that Israel’s actions reflect the positions of all Israelis (they aren’t), and that because most (they make think it is all) Israeli’s are Jewish, they reflect the positions of all Jews, everywhere across the world. And this view is made more pronounced because most Jews do identify with Israel (whether or not they support individual Israeli policies or leaders), and because Israel works hard to make sure this is the case, in part by recent law changes to clarify that Israel is a “Jewish State”.

People now comment that there is antisemitism (and ANTISEMITISM!) both on the right and on the left of the American political spectrum. But this is too broad of a statement. On the right, there are the ANTISEMITES! who would like to eliminate the Jews; this group has always been there, and always will be there, but it has long been minimal and there is no reason to think it will grow. On the left, the positions is largely ANTI-ISRAEL, and not antisemitic. And the ANTI-ISRAEL left generally does not harbor antisemitic feelings, and welcomes Jews who share their ANTI-ISRAEL! views. This is why they talk about being ANTI-ZIONIST!, which of course is what seeps into the general issue mentioned above: Jews who support the State of Israel, but not the current Israeli government nor Israeli military actions.

Now, two more things must added. First, Arabs (and maybe Muslims in general) in this country and elsewhere feel about the Muslim middle east the same way Jews in this country feel about Israel, whether or not they support the policies of one or another government in the region. So it isn’t surprising to find that Arabs (and maybe Muslims) are more anti-Israel than most others. That is just a fact of life and will never change.

Second, there are two forms of being anti-Israel. There are those who would like Israel to stop aggressing against its neighbors and support some form of two state, or an overarching one state, solution. Then there are those for whom that is not an answer, but whose answer involves the elimination of the State of Israel. Within that group, there are those who would let Jews stay as some form of second class citizen of an Arab nation, those who would like to see the Jews all move to Florida, and those who would just as soon produce Part II of the Holocaust. But this entire group, in this country, and outside certain Muslim groups, again is very limited.

There are two areas, and important areas, in the United States where anti-Israel, and therefore to an extent, antisemitic feelings are manifest. The first is American universities (and perhaps even some American high schools), where a number of trends have come together. First, a teaching trend where today’s teachers of the social sciences concentrate on the ills of 19th and 20th century colonialism and its demise, and include Israel as a colonial experiment bound to fail. (This is a major topic, not to be discussed today, and as an academic position, one that was both begun and largely propagated by intellectuals from the Middle East who started out with a position to support.) Second, an era when, in many schools, diversity programs have brought more students from Arab and other middle eastern ethnicities into the student body at the same time when some well funded ANTI-ISRAEL! groups have worked hard to support organizations to attract anti-Israel students and to give them a common set of principles to espouse.

Combining these two factors, along with the existence of what is happening in Gaza, has led to student demonstrations, students trying to push Jews (especially those who generally support Israel) out of student organizations, who attempt to get the universities to take certain political positions and to divest from Israel related investments. And, for reasons stated above, these things often have some faculty support.

The second area in which these forms of antisemitism have shown up in this country is within the arts community. Here there have been boycotts or attempted boycotts of Israeli artists and musicians. The arts communities are generally politically left wing, not right wing, and – even more than in the case of universities – the protests tend to be anti-Israel and not antisemitic.

I have read through what I have written so far and must say that, although I think I have put the elements of my thinking in this post, I can’t be proud of the way I organized it, nor do I think it will sway many readers. Of course, I don’t know. But it is very complicated when we are dealing with three interrelated definitions: antisemitic, anti- Zionist and anti-Israel, and we really don’t know what any of those terms means in given situations, whether they are weak or strong, situational or more general, conflated or separate, and so on.

The other night, at the suggestion of two friends, I watched (you can, too) a program sponsored by the Streicker Center at Temple Emanu-el in New York, whether Anti-Defamation League president Jonathan Greenblatt and New York Times columnist Bret Stephens spoke about antisemitism. They both thought the program (and particularly Stephens) were wonderful. I disagreed completely. I thought it was a program completely lacking in necessary nuance. It was all: we (Israel) are right, and no one understands us they way we understand ourselves, and woe are us, but we know we are right and (left unspoken) God is with us. You should listen to the program (on the Streicker website) and see what you think.

In my role as vice president of the Haberman Institute for Jewish Studies, the DC version of the Streicker Center more or less, I get involved in a lot of discussion about the types of programs we should put on, and now of course, how we should be dealing with antisemitism. The Stephens/Greenblatt program was a “preaching to the choir” program – a large Jewish audience hearing what they expected to hear and what they always do hear, without much of a challenge to their own thought process. I think we should be broader in our programming, more educational than partisan, and that perhaps our programming on this subject should not be directed to predominantly Jewish audiences (as all of our programs really are) but to a broader non-Jewish audience. This may be harder for us to arrange, but I think it may be the way to go.