Shocking Controversy Captivates Nation: The Gut-Wrenching Battle Involving American Jews You Won’t Believe!

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Normally I wouldn’t approach a controversial debate within the community, especially if it wasn’t mine (although I’m not sure I’m part of a coherent debate). But I have many Jewish friends in the US and UK and have been deeply struck by their reaction to the horrors of what is now widely referred to as 10/7 on social media.

I’m not so much referring to people’s revulsion at the hideous nature of the massacre perpetrated by Hamas, nor to its scale; I’m talking about the failure of many other groups, especially on college campuses, to share Jewish angst or even recognize it as legitimate. For more on campus wars and the growing divide within the Democratic Party, read this great article by my colleague Joshua Chaffin. This problem is as tricky as any I’ve ever encountered. What, you may ask, could cause me to tiptoe through this minefield? Because I am increasingly convinced that the fallout will have a significant long-term impact on the American left – and on the broader debate over identity in modern democracy. The main objective of this note is to raise questions and not to propose conclusions.

Rana, in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, you live as close as you can get to the headquarters of American progressivism. As I recall, the area was covered in Star Spangled Banners after 9/11. When George Floyd died, he was flooded with Black Lives Matters flags. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year, the Ukrainian flag joined BLM posters. Over most of the last few years, LGBTQ colors have become commonplace. Have you seen symbols of solidarity with the 1,400 Jews killed on October 7? Where I live in Georgetown DC, I haven’t spotted anything yet.

Some of my Jewish friends attribute this disparity to anti-Semitism. If an Islamist group had massacred a group of Palestinian Christian nuns, for example, we would show something related to Bethlehem. If the Jewish state had actually destroyed a hospital in Gaza, we would undoubtedly be waving the Palestinian flag. Alas, something like this seems likely to happen if Israel continues its ground invasion of Gaza.

Other Jewish friends have a somewhat different reaction. They highlight the ideology of American progressivism, which ranks victims in an order that is roughly a reflection of the perceived white patriarchal hierarchy. Some victims are worth it; others are not. As Jewish students discovered in a course at Stanford last week, Jews are defined as belonging to the oppressor group and therefore do not deserve sympathy. The instructor told a Jewish student that the 6 million victims of the Holocaust were far fewer than the death toll of colonization and that Israel – and by implication, all Jews – were part of the colonial problem. He then asked a group of students to stand at the back of the class and said: “This is what Israel is doing to the Palestinians. » If this instructor had downplayed the crime of slavery or questioned colonialism, he probably would have been fired that same day. For the moment it is simply suspended.

It doesn’t matter what you think about Israeli history or the government of Benjamin Netanyahu (I am an activist critic); it should be impossible to envisage any racial order with equanimity.

Many American Jews see the diverse reactions to the Oct. 7 attack as a turning point that shook their faith in an assimilated society. I think the shock is particularly strong for progressive American Jews, who might have assumed that the solidarity they felt toward other groups would be reciprocated — regardless of people’s positions on the two-state solution or whether if Israel were to become a secular binational state. After October 7, the chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” took on a much more worrying tone. Who could now trust the good intentions of those who recite this song? For the record, I firmly believe in the two-state solution. Israel and Palestine urgently need new leadership.

As I have said, I do not pretend to offer any conclusions or advice to American Jews, or even to Palestinian Americans, although I hope that Swampians of all backgrounds will email their thoughts. I do, however, have one observation to make about the American progressive movement in general. Once, Martin Luther King’s glorious vision of a nation where children “would not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” was a rallying cry among Americans who wanted change. Now, MLK’s comments are mostly quoted on the right (often for very cynical reasons).

Today’s left seems too preoccupied with its “systems” and “structures” to have faith in the dream of a common humanity. The fact that there are far-right Israelis who do not view Arabs as human beings is all the more reason to return to MLK. There can be no conceivable justification for glorifying a bloodthirsty theocratic movement such as Hamas. Rana, I have barely scratched the surface of a very complex and emotional subject. Inevitably, my thoughts are impressionistic. Still, I have a feeling we will return to this topic in the near future. In the meantime, I would be fascinated by your response.

Recommended reading

• My column this week I looked at the other Jordan – not the Biden summit planned in Amman, which was canceled after the Gaza hospital tragedy, but that of Jim Jordan, who failed to obtain a majority twice.

• I wrote last week about the importance of the Polish elections. As Anne Applebaum writes in The Atlantic, “Poland shows that autocracy is not inevitable”. The news from Poland burst forth like a ray of light in our dark sky.

• Finally, and to return to the subject of this note, read Simon Schama in last weekend’s FT: Let’s be grieving, angry and crying.

Rana Foroohar responds

Ed, like you, I have been stunned, but not surprised, by the sentiment on campus and the inability of university leaders in particular to truly speak out against Hamas’ slaughter of innocents. I say this with incredible sympathy for the plight of the people of Gaza. I have big problems with Israeli politics and understand that the long-term Israeli-Palestinian conflict has not been a fair fight for the Palestinians in many ways. That said, there is no doubt in my mind that what Hamas did was not “resistance,” retaliation, or anything like that. It’s murder. The innocent. In a particularly brutal way. End of the story.

I think a big problem is that much of the media and the general public have lost all capacity for nuance. You can say Hamas is wrong and still disagree with Israel’s long-term treatment of the Palestinians. You can lament the loss on both sides, even if you make it clear that what happened on October 7 was a terrorist attack that should be condemned without any kind of ridiculous academic discussions about the hierarchy of victims. This is not a hot take. It’s not sexy. It’s nuanced. It is complicated. And that requires breaking out of your silo bubble, literal and digital.

I completely agree with you that if the American left continues to go down the path of identity and victimhood, it will indeed be its downfall. Sure, let’s call on MLK. And by the way, Joe Biden, who did a great job, I thought, in his speech from Israel. His handling of this situation so far has been courageous, practical and balanced.

Your reactions

And now a word from our Swampians. . .

In response to “The new American growth model”:
“It seems to me that Bidenomics is nothing more than federal government intervention in the economy. Whether it’s post-pandemic budget cuts or new bills whose names bear no resemblance to their actual contents, this is not real economic activity or real growth. It’s artificial and like all industrial policy (the bills mentioned above), it probably won’t end well. And, while job “satisfaction” may be higher than it has been in the last 36 years, how productive are all these people with their flexible schedules and work-life balance? » —Henry D. Wolfe

In response to “Biden’s nightmare at the Mexican border”:
“The adoption of the term “migrants” to refer to border pressures in Europe and North America represents progress over the reflexive use of the term “illegal immigrants.” But we should improve the accuracy. Most of them are “refugees”, and not just people passing carelessly from one economic situation to another more advantageous one. Braving the Mediterranean storm, the deserts of the southwest, and the Darién Gap with infants in tow are markers of a desperate flight from abominable and otherwise unavoidable conditions. —Anton Dubrick