Antisemitism – Anti-Netanyahu: A false equivalency
Photo courtesy BBC
I usually write about Vermont, but even here we’re complicit in the horror being perpetrated on Gaza unless we speak out.
In several conversations recently, I’ve expressed my horror both at Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel that killed some 1200 and involved the raping and abduction of peaceful Jewish citizens, but also the disproportionate military and anti-civilian response from Israel’s right-wing political leaders that has led to the death of over 50,000 Palestinian men, women, and children, although experts believe the actual number may be much higher. Neither is forgivable.
While expressing this opinion with friends, I was twice accused of “antisemitism.”
The Schubarts and related families were German Jews largely from the province of Swabia. The earliest arrivals came in the late 19th century looking for economic opportunity. Successive generations came to escape the pogroms of the World War I era.
When World War II broke out, my paternal grandparents rejected the mother-tongue and refused to speak German. Anxious to differentiate themselves from the shtetl Jews on the Lower East Side, they lived largely on the Upper East Side among a coterie of assimilationist Jewish families, many of whom were portrayed in the popular 1967 book “Our Crowd.” Most were non-observant Jews, preferring instead to attend the Ethical Culture Society.
My father died in World War II on December 3, 1944, in Leyte Gulf in the Philippines four months before I was born and just nine months before the U.S. dropped the first atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ending the war. Since my mother’s family was of Dutch and English descent, I was not considered by my family as Jewish. When my mother married Emile René Couture in 1947, I was baptized a Catholic and was raised as such. The first time I heard the word “Jew” as a youngster was hearing old Vermonters say “Did you…?”
At 18, I rejected organized religion altogether, becoming agnostic after reading Dostoievski’s “The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor.”
My roommate in boarding school was Jewish as were two of my closest friends. I was taught to judge people not by their spiritual beliefs but rather by how they behaved. “Hate the behavior, not the person.”
In both conversations, I asked permission of the person with whom I was talking to express my horror at the behavior of right-wing Israeli politicians without being labelled an “antisemite.” Being critical of the minority ruling party of Israel is political not personal — hardly “antisemitism.” They are a false equivalency.
I was told categorically in both cases, that they are one and the same… hating the behavior of right-wing Israeli politicians is hating Jews. Conversation ended.
As I’ve written elsewhere, I understand the good promulgated by many religious communities, but I also understand first-hand the camouflaged capacity for judgment, hatred, and punishment in too many organized religions. Inspired by divine beings throughout history who have lived among us, religions themselves are the creations of fallible humans. The founding values of our own country are being undermined by white “Christian” nationalists who contravene every tenet of Christianity and echo the racist philosophy of eugenics, the “great replacement theory.”
A version of “the Golden Rule” is found in every religion – “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
The genocide in Gaza is not being perpetrated by Jews or Israelis per se but by the Netanyahu regime. According to the Times of Israel, an Israel Democracy Institute poll finds 72.5% of all Israelis believe Netanyahu should accept responsibility for the horrors of October 7th and resign; 48% believe he should resign immediately; only 10% believe he should neither take responsibility nor resign. 83.5% of those on the left and 69% of those in the center support Netanyahu’s immediate resignation, as opposed to only 25.5% on the right.
It goes without saying that Netanyahu’s military aggression is motivated by his legal liability in the Israeli cabinet and legal system.
Netanyahu has counted on antisemitism charges to garner support around the world for his anti-Palestinian and genocidal policies that both protect his personal interests and potentiate an entire takeover of Gaza. President Trump, with his personal history of antisemitism and racism, has been his direct collaborator as, until recently, have many other countries afraid of being called “antisemitic.” (Trump has even gone so far as to suggest that when Netanyahu drives Palestinians from their homeland, it would make a lovely resort that Trump enterprises could build.)
So far only relatively minor international players have dared challenge this ploy. South Africa’s leadership, a country whose own deeply racist history healed itself under the former Desmond Tutu, has called for a trial by the UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ).
The Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC), a 57-member bloc, which includes Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan and Morocco voiced their support for the case on December 30, as have Malaysia, Turkey, Jordan, Bolivia, The Maldives, Namibia, Pakistan, Colombia, and Brazil, and the 22-member Arab League.
Besides countries, many advocacy groups and civil society groups worldwide have also joined South Africa’s call for justice.
Only now are major players in the European Union and Canada beginning to allude to Netanyahu’s “genocide” and call for trial by the International Court.
The former (2006-2009) prime minister of Israel Ehud Olmert, just released this statement, “Never since its establishment has the state of Israel waged such a war … The criminal gang headed by Benjamin Netanyahu has set a precedent without equal in Israel’s history in this area, too.”
I’ve come to believe we’re all complicit if we sit by and watch lives ending daily in Gaza — 54,000 to date and some 123,000 wounded. Sitting in the safety of our living rooms we watch lethargic, skeletal children wave empty pans and beg for food and water. Opposing the mass starvation of civilians is not antisemitism, it’s simple human empathy and, in fact, upholds the intrinsic values of Judaism. As long as we buy into the false equivalency, we become complicit in the destruction of the largely peace-loving people the Palestinian territories.
Yes, Hamas triggered this. But how many courageous Gazan civilians have spoken out against Hamas’s leadership? A recent Palestinian Center for Policy and Research poll showed Gazan support for Hamas dropping from 52% to 43% in May.
We must understand that opposition to the Netanyahu government’s horrific destruction of Gaza’s people, schools, hospitals, infrastructure, and economic life is not “antisemitism;” it’s humanity writ large.
We must also call out President Trump’s efforts to weaponize “antisemitism” as a self-serving political ploy by the scared, insecure little man in the big white house.
- Bill Schubart
