This is nothing to cry about,” one student’s sister told her over the phone. “It’s just one guy.” The sister’s comment reflects a prevailing sentiment on campus, “What are you all so worried about?” Not everyone has understood the vehemence of the Jewish community’s reaction to the recent events on campus. Perhaps this is because while some saw this a solitary instance or a momentary lapse in what has been a welcoming campus, we have seen it as something more.
Recently voices protesting Jewish politics have become louder and bold enough to criticize Jews universally. Chronicle columns and the Palestine Solidarity Movement are just the newest facets of a frightening trend that many feel is emerging on Duke’s campus and outside it. The fear began before most of us knew who Philip Kurian was.
The fear comes from a knowledge of how words have been used historically to paint the Jewish people as the enemy. During the 15th century, Jews living in Spain were ordered to renounce their religion and embrace Catholicism. Many obliged, seizing the opportunity to be treated equally. Widespread resentment soon grew, however, over the financial success and political power of the converted Jews. Angered that these Jews had seamlessly slipped from oppressed minority to powerful majority status by becoming Catholic, the church called them out as heretics. They were tortured into admitting their sins in order to attain true purification. Once they did, they were executed for their crimes.
Much like the Spanish Inquisition claimed to take issue with the religious conviction, not bloodlines, of Jews, so has the new anti-Semitism emerged as a voice protesting Jewish politics, not people.
But it will be the people who suffer.
As the speakers brought in by the Joint Israel Initiative the weekend of the PSM demonstrated, respectful criticism of Israeli policies or the priorities of American Jewry is not anti-Semitic. Avraham Burg, a Jewish Israeli speaker, openly criticized not only the actions of Israel’s leaders but also American Jews, whom he saw as being in danger of becoming a one-issue people, who only cared about what was good for Israel. Such reasoned criticisms are interesting, educational and welcomed by the Jewish community.
The new anti-Semitism is a much quieter and more insidious force. It comes from a newly-emerging American ideology dictating that anything goes as long as you’re attacking the people in power. The new anti-Semitism lumps the Jewish people together as a united force with a single, detrimental agenda. Rather than worry about diversity of opinion within the Jewish community, the new anti-Semitism dictates that if one Jew says it, they all must think it. The new anti-Semitism is not concerned with the distinction between Israel’s laws and her people. And because of this, the new anti-Semitism is unable to condemn the murder of innocent civilians or the description of Zionism as a “disease.” Finally, the new anti-Semitism ceases to worry about the consequences of hateful, dangerous words on the pages of the campus paper.
If Jews can be painted as the people with power, as a group influential enough to withstand these attacks, the former examples of anti-Semitism on campus can be justified as representing the underdog, rooting for David.
This subtle and worrisome re-framing of the campus power dynamic has been evident in many forms. Many of the responses by pro-Palestinian students to Jewish calls for the PSM to condemn terror focused on the immense power and financial influence of Jewish groups as compared to the much smaller pro-Palestinian student groups. Many who criticize Israel have similarly attempted to portray it as a bully smashing up the defenseless Arab world. Philip Kurian’s column entitled “The Jews” described American Jewry as an influential “establishment” faking minority status. Throughout history, resentment over Jewish money and power has fueled the most horrific instances of anti-Semitism. Hatred towards the Jewish people has been justified by portraying them as the group taking from the rest of society. A parasite on the Fatherland.
After World War II, the old anti-Semitism began to dissipate because of the overwhelming unpopularity of hating a broken people. Only if Jews can be painted as a massive, controlling force can public opinion be aligned against them. In this way, the Jewish emergence from powerlessness in the form of Israel has become a liability to Jewish people as much as it has created a well-needed homeland. Now that Jews are powerful again, now that they have a country and the Palestinians have nothing, it has again become acceptable to criticize their every move. Accordingly, now that American Jews have attained success in this country, they can be described as an oppressive and dangerous establishment. The never-ending cycle of driving the Jews into the sea, forcing them to rebuild their temples and their lives, can restart.
It is in this climate that we fear well-meaning faculty and students have begun to question the very right for a Jewish state to exist. As is in the nature of a liberal campus, we have begun to root for the underdog—even if it means condoning the thing we deplore most, the thing we are fighting a war on.
And it is in this climate that Israel withdraws more and more into a cocoon of fences and armed guards, wondering why hunting down and killing the terrorists is a talking point for John Kerry and President George W. Bush, but a media nightmare for Ariel Sharon.
And it is in this climate that we wonder sadly if history is repeating itself, and if this is how the Jews of Europe felt when they picked up their morning papers and saw the first traces of hatred bubbling to the surface… and if they too naively thought it was “just one guy.”
Amanda Zimmerman
Executive Vice President
Freeman Center for Jewish Life
Corinne Low
Coordinator of Public Outreach
Freeman Center for Jewish Life
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