THE INTERSECTION WHERE IT'S ABOUT JEW-HATRED NOT ISRAEL
Since the October 7th 2023 Hamas outrage in southern Israel there has been endless argument and explanation,about the difference between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. Where is the intersection where the former edges into the latter?
The best example is today’s massacre at a Hanukkah celebration on Bondi Beach in Sydney.
It is legitimate to criticize the Israeli government’s ongoing revenge campaign against all Gazans (you think it has stopped because of Trump’s “peace” plan? Have you looked at the body count for the last week?) In fact many Israelis do just that.
The criticisms of Israel — especially when couched in immature campus rhetoric — can be difficult for global Jewry to endure. But:
When it leads to two random people murdering Jews at a Jewish celebration in a different hemisphere 8800 miles away from Tel Aviv that is the intersection. Nothing to do with Israel, everything to do with just killing Jews because of what “their” country is doing in Gaza — and now the West Bank.
As a Jew you grow up with a sense of being just outside of the rest of society. It is a product of our history going back to the origin story. Chosen-ness brings obligations of religious practice. It also implies a separateness from all other peoples. For Millennia that separateness has bred suspicion that has led to hatred which periodically led to outbursts of elimination-ist violence, like today’s events.
In the global Town Sewer that is X — it is not the Town Square, Elon, it is the pipes underneath it through which piss, shit and mental corruption swirl and overflow — and on other branches of social media, the hatred is being returned to the perpetrators of today’s atrocity in the same intemperate way.
In Emancipation, I wrote that anti-Semitism is a subset of stupidity. Today’s attack in Bondi is the proof of that assertion.
After the emotion from this atrocity has died down what will have changed? Will the intifada — the shaking off of Israel’s occupation — be any closer? Gaza will still be a wreck, the West Bank will continue to be paved over with new settlements by Netanyahu’s government. In the parts of the world to which Muslims have emigrated in large numbers, Islamophobia will continue its rise. The nativist response to this kind of violence will continue to fuel anti-democratic forces in Europe and America.
And not one mind will have been changed.
And worst of all, the arguments about how to find a just solution to the eight decade long crisis in Israel and Palestine will continue on the wrong side of the intersection where anti-Zionism crosses over into Anti-Semitism … and will be doomed to failure.
I don't quite know what to write, my heart sorrows that hatred of 'the other' rules throughout the world.
Michael, thank you for this appropriately painful FRDH. I join you in praising the heroes who kept the body count from being even higher. We live in a time in which there is easy access to support online for hatreds of every stripe, in which pathetic losers can find comfort and even instructions on how to actualize their most horrific fantasies, and applause for the blood they spill. From Bondi Beach in Australia, where Hanukkah celebrating Jews were the targets, to Bavaria, Germany where police have prevented a massacre at a Christmas celebration allegedly planned by Islamic extremists, we are shocked in this moment but know that soon, numbness will embrace us once again. Until the next time.