Progressive Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism
Encyclopedia
"Progressive" Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism is a 2006 essay released by the American Jewish Committee
, authored by Alvin H. Rosenfeld , with an introduction by the AJC's executive director, David A. Harris
. The essay makes the claim, as summarized by the New York Times, that a "number of Jews, through their speaking and writing, are feeding a rise in virulent antisemitism by questioning whether Israel
should even exist."
, described his motivation for writing the essay in an interview featured on the CampusJ
blog:
Rosenfeld explained his motivation to the New York Times saying he “wanted to show that in an age when anti-Semitism is resurgent, Jews thinking the way they’re thinking is feeding into a very nasty cause. ... Opposing Israel’s settlement of the West Bank or treatment of Palestinians 'is, in itself, not anti-Semitic,' [Alvin H. Rosenfeld] writes; it is questioning Israel’s right to exist that crosses the line."
Rosenfeld criticizes Richard Cohen for writing in a Washington Post column "The greatest mistake Israel could make at the moment is to forget that Israel itself is a mistake. ... The idea of creating a nation of European Jews in an area of Arab Muslims (and some Christians) has produced a century of warfare and terrorism of the sort we are seeing now. ... Its most formidable enemy is history itself." And for writing that "There is no point in blaming Hezbollah" during the summer 2006 clashes between Israel and Hezbollah.
Daniel Boyarin
Rosenfeld quotes Daniel Boyarin
with disapprobation for having written: "Just as Christianity
may have died at Auschwitz, Treblinka and Sobibor
...so I fear that my Judaism
may be dying at Nablus
, Deheishe, Beteen (Beth-El) and El-Khalil (Hebron
)." Rosenfield accuses Boyarin of lacking "lucid thinking" as well as "bias" for having drawn an analogy between the Nazi Holocaust and the Israeli government's conduct toward the Palestinians.
Radicals, Rabbis and Peacemakers
Rosenfeld writes that "The Israel that emerges in [the book] Radicals, Rabbis and Peacemakers – a country characterised as 'amoral', 'barbaric', 'brutal', 'destructive', 'fascistic', 'oppressive', 'racist', 'sordid', and 'uncivilised' – is indistinguishable from the despised country regularly denounced by the most impassioned anti-semites." Rosenfeld derives the interviewed subjects of the book for "not driven by anything remotely like reasoned historical analysis, but rather by a complex range of psychological as well as political motives that subvert reason and replace it with something akin to hysteria."
Cohen wrote that Rosenfeld's "essay comes at a time of high anxiety among many Jews, who are seeing not only a surge in attacks from familiar antagonists, but also gloves-off condemnations of Israel from one-time allies and respected figures" and goes on to note that "bitter debates over anti-Israel statements and anti-Semitism have entangled government officials, academics, opinion-makers and others over the past year, particularly since fervent supporters and tough critics of Israel can be found on the right and the left." Cohen, in addition to summarizing Rosenfeld's essay and its context, also sought out and then devoted significant column inches to the harsh reactions of many of those named by Rosenfeld in his essay.
Richard Cohen was quoted by the New York Times complaining that "the essay cherry-picked quotations. '[Alvin H. Rosenfeld] mischaracterized what I wrote,' [Richard Cohen] said. 'I’ve been critical of Israel at times, but I’ve always been a defender of Israel.' He did add, however, that a wide range of writers were named, some of whom have written inflammatory words about Israel. 'He has me in a very strange neighborhood.'"
Tony Judt
described to the New York Times that he believed the real purpose of outspoken denunciations of him and others was to stifle their harsh criticism of Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians. "'The link between anti-Zionism
and anti-Semitism is newly created,' [Tony Judt] said, adding that he fears 'the two will have become so conflated in the minds of the world' that references to anti-Semitism and the Holocaust
will come to be seen as 'just a political defense of Israeli policy.'" Judt, who advocates for a binational solution
to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, states that he "[doesn’t] know anyone in a respectable range of opinion who thinks Israel shouldn’t exist."
The New York Times also queried Tony Kushner
for his reaction. "'Most Jews like me find this a very painful subject,' Mr. Kushner said, and are aware of the rise in vicious anti-Semitism around the world but feel 'it’s morally incumbent upon us to articulate questions and reservations.'"
The original article in New York Times described the American Jewish Committee, the organization that released the essay, as a "conservative
advocacy group
." This characterization was prompted contested by the American Jewish Committee (with others also voicing their agreement that the original characterization of the AJC was erroneous). In response, the newspaper issued a correction
making clear that "[the AJC's] stance on issues ranges across the political spectrum; it is not 'conservative'."
Alvin Rosenfeld was highly critical of the New York Time's coverage alleging that the article on the whole was misleading and incorrectly framed
his argument, the admitted mischaracterization of the AJC was just one example. The mischaracterization, according to Rosenfeld, even includes the title of the article, which describes the targets of his critical essay as 'Liberal Jews' when, Rosenfeld writes, "I never referred to liberal Jews, if you read my piece carefully you simply won’t find the phrase." Gershom Gorenberg
concurs with this criticism writing that the "essay itself refers to 'progressives,' a group that overlaps with liberals but is not synonymous." The misleading coverage, Rosenfeld writes, "reduced my argument to a kind of Left-Right, Conservative-Liberal
face off" and led to many people misreading the essay.
Ben Harris, in a late February 2007 report for The Jewish News Weekly, writes that "the essay may be having the opposite of its intended effect" instead galvanizing "progressive" Jewish groups who feel "it is immoral to remain silent in the face of what they see as Israel’s mistreatment of the Palestinians." Harris quotes Philip Weiss
: "Things are changing. ... My perception is that the Jewish community, the Jewish progressives, are feeling licensed and rising up." Weiss himself notes two recent developments: the launch by Jewish Voice for Peace
of the Muzzlewatch Project dedicated to chronicling the alleged suppression of criticism of Israel, and the failure of the Zionist Organization of America
to oust a liberal Jewish group from a national pro-Israel alliance.
Reporting for The Forward
, Rebecca Spence writes that "in the United Kingdom, a similar debate is raging in Jewish circles. Saying that Britain’s mainstream Jewish groups have stifled a free discourse on Israeli policies, about 130 generally leftist Jews have formed their own group, Independent Jewish Voices
."
“Most would say that they are simply anti-Zionists, not anti-Semites. But I disagree, because in a world where there is only one Jewish state, to oppose it vehemently is to endanger Jews.”
Gil Troy
wrote an opinion article in the New York Jewish Week praising the essay and criticizing its critics:
Lee Adlerstein wrote an opinion article for The Forward
entitled "Alvin Rosenfeld Is Right About Liberals And The Jewish State":
David Harris was happy with the reaction the essay received: “The individuals Rosenfeld mentions are on the political fringes in asserting that Israel has no right to exist and should either be destroyed or morphed into a so‑called binational state, which means the end of Israel as we know it."
Jonathan Tobin writes in The Jewish World Review that "Rosenfeld is careful to specify that questioning policies of Israeli governments is not the same as being anti-Israel, let alone anti-Semitic. But he has the bad manners to point out that those who aggressively question Israel's right to have any government or to defend itself against those who seek to destroy it are, at best, unwitting allies of a growing anti-Jewish movement. ... For this, Rosenfeld and his sponsors at AJCommittee have been treated to the sort of public tar and feathering that is usually reserved only for the troglodyte denizens of the far-right." Tobin concludes that "in recent years, it is the supporters of Israel who are becoming pariahs in intellectual circles, not its critics. For all the talk of ' martyrdom' on the part of people like Tony Judt, the fact is, they have not suffered one bit for pot shots at Israel or their sneers at those who stand up for Zion. If we want to know where we are headed, we need only look to Britain, where in intellectual and artistic circles it has gotten to the point where it may no longer be possible to identify as a Jew without also disavowing any support for Israel."
Edward Alexander wrote in the New York Post
in support: "When people like NYU's Tony Judt, the most vociferous and self-righteous of Rosenfeld's critics, issue their monthly calls for politicide
in Israel, which they demonize as the sole 'anachronistic' state in an otherwise progressive multicultural world, don't they sense, even subconsciously, a potential kinship with the genocidally inclined (and not-at-all progressive) president of Iran? In law, such kinship is called 'accessory to murder.'"
calls "Jewish Illiberalism" which "traces the heated language to increasing opposition to the Iraq war and President Bush’s policy in the Middle East, which [according to Wolfe] had spurred liberal Jews to become more outspoken about Israel." Wolfe states that “Events in the world have sharpened a sense of what’s at stake." “Israel is more isolated than ever”, which according to Wolfe is "causing American Jewish defenders of Israel to become more aggressive."
Richard Cohen responded via his regular Washington Post column published on February 6, 2007. Cohen noted that he has dedicated more than 90 columns to condemning antisemitism since he started as a columnist in 1976, “most of them full-throated condemnations of the hatred that killed fully one-third of all Jews during my lifetime. So it comes as a surprise that has the force of a mugging to be accused of aiding the very people I so hate – of being an abettor of something called The New Anti-Semitism.” Cohen writes that the report "has given license to the most intolerant and narrow-minded of Israel's defenders so that, as the AJC concedes in my case, any veering from orthodoxy is met with censure or, from someone like Reinharz, the most powerful of all post-Holocaust condemnations – anti-Semite – is diluted beyond recognition. The offense here is not just to a handful of relatively unimportant writers, but to memory itself."
Douglas Rushkoff
responded to the essay on his weblog on January 1, 2007, stating, "In their new whitepaper, [The American Jewish Committee] blame[s] "progressive Jews,' and yours truly by name, for promoting the extinction of the Jewish people. Of course, in my opinion, it is their racist and triumphalist stance that represents the antithesis of the Mosaic insights – and the greatest threat to what it was Jews have to offer the world in the first place."
Michael Berenbaum
, a prominent Holocaust scholar, is quoted “I think it’s a hodge-podge. ... I’m not sure how this advances discourse or debate. The question you must ask is, what do you gain by not engaging the discourse but by labeling and targeting it this way?”
In the Washington Post, Susan Jacoby writes that "This is in fact a sign that the American Jewish right is afraid that it is losing ground within the Jewish community. In their political alliance with the Christian Right over all issues related to Israel – forged, ironically, because Protestant fundamentalists regard Israel as the place where Jesus will return on Judgment Day – ultra-conservative Jews have broken with the best Jewish traditions of social conscience and social consciousness. ... Right-wing Jews have had to deny this vibrant, socially compassionate part of the Jewish past to justify their politics. So they promulgate the idea that liberal Jews, Jews who raise any questions about Israeli policies, are bad Jews."
On January 7, 2007, Daniel Sieradski appeared on Beyond the Pale, a progressive Jewish radio program that airs on Pacifica Radio
, along with Esther Kaplan and Sara Roy
, both of whom are mentioned in the report, to discuss both its alleged inaccuracies and perceived hostilities towards the progressive Jewish community.
Also in response to the essay, Michael Lerner
writes that "instead of seriously engaging with the issues raised (e.g. to what extent are Israel's current policies similar to those of apartheid and to what extent are they not?), the Jewish establishment and media responds by attacking the people who raise these or any other critiques – shifting the discourse to the legitimacy of the messenger and thus avoiding the substance of the criticisms. Knowing this, many people become fearful that they too will be labeled 'anti-Semitic' if they question the wisdom of Israeli policies or if they seek to organize politically to challenge those policies."
"The Jewish establishment has turned Judaism into a cheer-leading religion for a particular national state that has a lot of Jews, but has seriously lost sight of the Jewish values which early Zionists hoped would find realization there." Lerner warns that "when this bubble of repression of dialogue explodes into open resentment at the way Jewish Political correctness has been imposed, it may really yield a 'new' anti-Semitism. To prevent that, the voices of dissent on Israeli policy must be given the same national exposure in the media and American politics that the voices of the Jewish establishment have been given."
Rabbi Arthur Waskow
contends that far from enabling anti-Semitism, most of the authors the AJCom attacked (Tony Kushner, Adrienne Rich, and Daniel Boyarin, among others) are in fact major contributors to the renewal and revitalization of Jewish culture, cutting across the conventional Israel-Diaspora and religious-secular divides. He holds that Rosenfeld and the AJCommittee see no value in such contributions because they see Jewish value only in the State of Israel.
Waskow argues that the AJCommittee has done far more to undermine Israel and its Jewishness than the questions raised by these intellectuals, by the AJCommittee's supporting some specific policy decisions by the US and Israeli governments: especially the Iraq War, which has increased dangers to Israel; the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006; and the settlement of hundreds of thousands of Israeli Jews into Palestinian territories in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
and in an interview published on the CampusJ
blog.
He writes that many of his critics mischaracterize the argument he puts forth in his essay in a manner similar to what Rosenfeld wrote was an erroneous portray in the New York Times. He explains: "Since I never once referred to 'liberalism,' called no one a 'Jewish anti-Semite' or 'self-hating Jew,' said nothing about Democrats or the Iraq war, and made no attempt to 'silence' anyone, this Kakfaesque bill of indictment makes me wonder what is at play here – illiteracy, dishonesty, or worse? As Bret Stephens recently put it, 'How does joining a debate become an effort to suppress it?'
In response to accusations of silencing debate, Rosenfeld is quoted saying "Nobody’s being silenced ... I think it’s a red herring to talk about silencing, this debate in fact is evidence of a robust and open discussion and anybody who cries that someone else is censoring them is talking nonsense."
Rosenfeld argued that there was a "dialectical scam" amongst the far-left critics of Israel:
praised Rosenfeld's idea, but criticized his delivery and organization as "sloppy":
John Judis, a senior editor at The New Republic and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
, writes:
Essays
Further media coverage
American Jewish Committee
The American Jewish Committee was "founded in 1906 with the aim of rallying all sections of American Jewry to defend the rights of Jews all over the world...
, authored by Alvin H. Rosenfeld , with an introduction by the AJC's executive director, David A. Harris
David A. Harris
- References :...
. The essay makes the claim, as summarized by the New York Times, that a "number of Jews, through their speaking and writing, are feeding a rise in virulent antisemitism by questioning whether Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
should even exist."
Motivation
Rosenfeld, a professor at Indiana UniversityIndiana University
Indiana University is a multi-campus public university system in the state of Indiana, United States. Indiana University has a combined student body of more than 100,000 students, including approximately 42,000 students enrolled at the Indiana University Bloomington campus and approximately 37,000...
, described his motivation for writing the essay in an interview featured on the CampusJ
CampusJ
CampusJ Jewish Collegiate News was a website covering Jewish news on college and university campuses with a network of student journalists. CampusJ was launched in February 2005 by editor and publisher Steven I. Weiss of Canonist. The last posting was dated May 20, 2007...
blog:
Over the last few years I’ve been focusing a lot of my research on present day anti-Semitism... In the course of my research I began to notice that some of the people who were voicing some of the harshest hostility were themselves Jews, especially Jews on the radical Left. I wanted to document and try to explain their words, which struck me as often being extreme.
Rosenfeld explained his motivation to the New York Times saying he “wanted to show that in an age when anti-Semitism is resurgent, Jews thinking the way they’re thinking is feeding into a very nasty cause. ... Opposing Israel’s settlement of the West Bank or treatment of Palestinians 'is, in itself, not anti-Semitic,' [Alvin H. Rosenfeld] writes; it is questioning Israel’s right to exist that crosses the line."
Specific criticisms
Richard CohenRosenfeld criticizes Richard Cohen for writing in a Washington Post column "The greatest mistake Israel could make at the moment is to forget that Israel itself is a mistake. ... The idea of creating a nation of European Jews in an area of Arab Muslims (and some Christians) has produced a century of warfare and terrorism of the sort we are seeing now. ... Its most formidable enemy is history itself." And for writing that "There is no point in blaming Hezbollah" during the summer 2006 clashes between Israel and Hezbollah.
Daniel Boyarin
Rosenfeld quotes Daniel Boyarin
Daniel Boyarin
Daniel Boyarin is an historian of religion. Born in Asbury Park, New Jersey, he holds dual United States and Israeli citizenship. Trained as a Talmudic scholar, in 1990 he was appointed Professor of Talmudic Culture, Departments of Near Eastern Studies and Rhetoric, University of California,...
with disapprobation for having written: "Just as Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
may have died at Auschwitz, Treblinka and Sobibor
Sobibór extermination camp
Sobibor was a Nazi German extermination camp located on the outskirts of the town of Sobibór, Lublin Voivodeship of occupied Poland as part of Operation Reinhard; the official German name was SS-Sonderkommando Sobibor...
...so I fear that my Judaism
Judaism
Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...
may be dying at Nablus
Nablus
Nablus is a Palestinian city in the northern West Bank, approximately north of Jerusalem, with a population of 126,132. Located in a strategic position between Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim, it is the capital of the Nablus Governorate and a Palestinian commercial and cultural center.Founded by the...
, Deheishe, Beteen (Beth-El) and El-Khalil (Hebron
Hebron
Hebron , is located in the southern West Bank, south of Jerusalem. Nestled in the Judean Mountains, it lies 930 meters above sea level. It is the largest city in the West Bank and home to around 165,000 Palestinians, and over 500 Jewish settlers concentrated in and around the old quarter...
)." Rosenfield accuses Boyarin of lacking "lucid thinking" as well as "bias" for having drawn an analogy between the Nazi Holocaust and the Israeli government's conduct toward the Palestinians.
Radicals, Rabbis and Peacemakers
Rosenfeld writes that "The Israel that emerges in [the book] Radicals, Rabbis and Peacemakers – a country characterised as 'amoral', 'barbaric', 'brutal', 'destructive', 'fascistic', 'oppressive', 'racist', 'sordid', and 'uncivilised' – is indistinguishable from the despised country regularly denounced by the most impassioned anti-semites." Rosenfeld derives the interviewed subjects of the book for "not driven by anything remotely like reasoned historical analysis, but rather by a complex range of psychological as well as political motives that subvert reason and replace it with something akin to hysteria."
The New York Times story
While the essay was released in 2006, it didn't attract any major mainstream attention until it was covered in late January 2007 in a New York Times piece by Patricia Cohen.Cohen wrote that Rosenfeld's "essay comes at a time of high anxiety among many Jews, who are seeing not only a surge in attacks from familiar antagonists, but also gloves-off condemnations of Israel from one-time allies and respected figures" and goes on to note that "bitter debates over anti-Israel statements and anti-Semitism have entangled government officials, academics, opinion-makers and others over the past year, particularly since fervent supporters and tough critics of Israel can be found on the right and the left." Cohen, in addition to summarizing Rosenfeld's essay and its context, also sought out and then devoted significant column inches to the harsh reactions of many of those named by Rosenfeld in his essay.
Richard Cohen was quoted by the New York Times complaining that "the essay cherry-picked quotations. '[Alvin H. Rosenfeld] mischaracterized what I wrote,' [Richard Cohen] said. 'I’ve been critical of Israel at times, but I’ve always been a defender of Israel.' He did add, however, that a wide range of writers were named, some of whom have written inflammatory words about Israel. 'He has me in a very strange neighborhood.'"
Tony Judt
Tony Judt
Tony Robert Judt FBA was a British historian, essayist, and university professor who specialized in European history. Judt moved to New York and served as the Erich Maria Remarque Professor in European Studies at New York University, and Director of NYU's Erich Maria Remarque Institute...
described to the New York Times that he believed the real purpose of outspoken denunciations of him and others was to stifle their harsh criticism of Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians. "'The link between anti-Zionism
Anti-Zionism
Anti-Zionism is opposition to Zionistic views or opposition to the state of Israel. The term is used to describe various religious, moral and political points of view in opposition to these, but their diversity of motivation and expression is sufficiently different that "anti-Zionism" cannot be...
and anti-Semitism is newly created,' [Tony Judt] said, adding that he fears 'the two will have become so conflated in the minds of the world' that references to anti-Semitism and the Holocaust
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
will come to be seen as 'just a political defense of Israeli policy.'" Judt, who advocates for a binational solution
Binational solution
The one-state solution and the similar binational solution are proposed approaches to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Proponents of a binational solution to the conflict advocate either a single state in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, or a single state in Israel and the West...
to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, states that he "[doesn’t] know anyone in a respectable range of opinion who thinks Israel shouldn’t exist."
The New York Times also queried Tony Kushner
Tony Kushner
Anthony Robert "Tony" Kushner is an American playwright and screenwriter. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1993 for his play, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, and co-authored with Eric Roth the screenplay for the 2005 film, Munich.-Life and career:Kushner was born...
for his reaction. "'Most Jews like me find this a very painful subject,' Mr. Kushner said, and are aware of the rise in vicious anti-Semitism around the world but feel 'it’s morally incumbent upon us to articulate questions and reservations.'"
The original article in New York Times described the American Jewish Committee, the organization that released the essay, as a "conservative
Conservatism
Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...
advocacy group
Advocacy group
Advocacy groups use various forms of advocacy to influence public opinion and/or policy; they have played and continue to play an important part in the development of political and social systems...
." This characterization was prompted contested by the American Jewish Committee (with others also voicing their agreement that the original characterization of the AJC was erroneous). In response, the newspaper issued a correction
Correction
Correction may refer to:* An euphemism for punishment* Correction , the posting of a notice of a mistake in a past issue of a newspaper* Correction , in financial markets, a short-term price decline...
making clear that "[the AJC's] stance on issues ranges across the political spectrum; it is not 'conservative'."
Alvin Rosenfeld was highly critical of the New York Time's coverage alleging that the article on the whole was misleading and incorrectly framed
Framing (social sciences)
A frame in social theory consists of a schema of interpretation — that is, a collection of anecdotes and stereotypes—that individuals rely on to understand and respond to events. In simpler terms, people build a series of mental filters through biological and cultural influences. They use these...
his argument, the admitted mischaracterization of the AJC was just one example. The mischaracterization, according to Rosenfeld, even includes the title of the article, which describes the targets of his critical essay as 'Liberal Jews' when, Rosenfeld writes, "I never referred to liberal Jews, if you read my piece carefully you simply won’t find the phrase." Gershom Gorenberg
Gershom Gorenberg
Gershom Gorenberg is an American-born Israeli historian, journalist and blogger, specializing in Middle Eastern politics and the interaction of religion and politics. He is currently a senior correspondent for The American Prospect, a monthly American political magazine...
concurs with this criticism writing that the "essay itself refers to 'progressives,' a group that overlaps with liberals but is not synonymous." The misleading coverage, Rosenfeld writes, "reduced my argument to a kind of Left-Right, Conservative-Liberal
Left-Right politics
The left–right political spectrum is a common way of classifying political positions, political ideologies, or political parties along a one-dimensional political spectrum. The perspective of Left vs. Right is a binary interpretation of complex questions...
face off" and led to many people misreading the essay.
Other news coverage
In early February 2007, Stacey Palevsky observes, in a report for The Jewish News Weekly, that "Everyone seems to be talking about it:"Journalists and Jews alike apparently are all trying to figure 'it' out – when does criticism of Israel evolve from legitimate to anti-Semitic? Why are progressive, liberal organizations increasingly tolerant of anti-Zionist language and actions? What does the rise of “new anti-Semitism” mean for Jews and for the Jewish state? And are Jews themselves contributing to anti-Semitic rhetoric? Or is such a charge contrary to the Jewish tradition of freethinking?
Ben Harris, in a late February 2007 report for The Jewish News Weekly, writes that "the essay may be having the opposite of its intended effect" instead galvanizing "progressive" Jewish groups who feel "it is immoral to remain silent in the face of what they see as Israel’s mistreatment of the Palestinians." Harris quotes Philip Weiss
Philip Weiss
Philip Weiss is an American journalist who co-edits Mondoweiss, which he describes as a "news website devoted to covering American foreign policy in the Middle East, chiefly from a progressive Jewish perspective," with Adam Horowitz...
: "Things are changing. ... My perception is that the Jewish community, the Jewish progressives, are feeling licensed and rising up." Weiss himself notes two recent developments: the launch by Jewish Voice for Peace
Jewish Voice for Peace
Jewish Voice for Peace is a United States Jewish organization which describes itself as "a diverse and democratic community of activists inspired by Jewish tradition to work together for peace, social justice, and human rights [to] support the aspirations of Israelis and Palestinians for security...
of the Muzzlewatch Project dedicated to chronicling the alleged suppression of criticism of Israel, and the failure of the Zionist Organization of America
Zionist Organization of America
The Zionist Organization of America , founded in 1897, was one of the first official Zionist organizations in the United States, and, especially early in the 20th century, the primary representative of Jewish Americans to the World Zionist Organization, espousing primarily Political Zionism.Today,...
to oust a liberal Jewish group from a national pro-Israel alliance.
Reporting for The Forward
The Forward
The Forward , commonly known as The Jewish Daily Forward, is a Jewish-American newspaper published in New York City. The publication began in 1897 as a Yiddish-language daily issued by dissidents from the Socialist Labor Party of Daniel DeLeon...
, Rebecca Spence writes that "in the United Kingdom, a similar debate is raging in Jewish circles. Saying that Britain’s mainstream Jewish groups have stifled a free discourse on Israeli policies, about 130 generally leftist Jews have formed their own group, Independent Jewish Voices
Independent Jewish Voices
For the Canadian group see Independent Jewish Voices . For the Australian group see Independent Australian Jewish Voices.Independent Jewish Voices is an organization launched on 5 February 2007 by 150 prominent British Jews such as Nobel laureate Harold Pinter, historian Eric Hobsbawm, lawyer Sir...
."
Praise and support
Shulamit Reinharz wrote in a column for the Boston-based Jewish AdvocateThe Jewish Advocate
The Jewish Advocate is a Jewish weekly newspaper serving Greater Boston and the New England area. It was established in 1902, and is the oldest continuously-circulated English-language Jewish newspaper in the United States...
“Most would say that they are simply anti-Zionists, not anti-Semites. But I disagree, because in a world where there is only one Jewish state, to oppose it vehemently is to endanger Jews.”
Gil Troy
Gil Troy
Gil Troy is an American academic. Troy is Professor of History at McGill University in Montreal and a Visiting Scholar affiliated with the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington....
wrote an opinion article in the New York Jewish Week praising the essay and criticizing its critics:
Finally, rather than treating the essay as an honest analysis of a painful, complex issue, critics accused the AJC of stifling the debate. Such hysteria makes intellectuals look spoiled, thin-skinned and brittle. Best-selling authors like Noam ChomskyNoam ChomskyAvram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
or billionaires like George SorosGeorge SorosGeorge Soros is a Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, philosopher, and philanthropist. He is the chairman of Soros Fund Management. Soros supports progressive-liberal causes...
ritualistically applaud their own bravery and pretend they are lonely voices when joining the trendy intellectual pile-on against Israel . How it is that people who viciously criticize Israel and Zionism, who lecture the Jewish world about tolerating diverse opinions, suddenly cannot stomach vigorous debate when they are criticized? Nothing in the AJC essay advocates hate laws, suppressing free speech, shunning, or any other intimidation. Professor Rosenfeld did what thinkers are supposed to do – identify, catalogue, analyze, explain, and challenge.
Lee Adlerstein wrote an opinion article for The Forward
The Forward
The Forward , commonly known as The Jewish Daily Forward, is a Jewish-American newspaper published in New York City. The publication began in 1897 as a Yiddish-language daily issued by dissidents from the Socialist Labor Party of Daniel DeLeon...
entitled "Alvin Rosenfeld Is Right About Liberals And The Jewish State":
People should and do have a constitutional right to criticize Israel, even harshly, including challenging its right to exist. There must be robust debate about the wisdom of Israel’s policies, and there is much to criticize.
However, this is not a normal time and we are not permitted to ignore reality. Searing criticism rightly branded as delegitimization of Israel is truly dangerous, all the more painfully so when it comes from Jews. The community, given its own right of expression, should decry defamations of this kind.
For commentators with a public audience to delegitimize Israel at this time is hurtful, undermines existing needed support and, at least in that manner, encourages Israel’s enemies. We should and must say so — as Alvin Rosenfeld has done.
David Harris was happy with the reaction the essay received: “The individuals Rosenfeld mentions are on the political fringes in asserting that Israel has no right to exist and should either be destroyed or morphed into a so‑called binational state, which means the end of Israel as we know it."
Jonathan Tobin writes in The Jewish World Review that "Rosenfeld is careful to specify that questioning policies of Israeli governments is not the same as being anti-Israel, let alone anti-Semitic. But he has the bad manners to point out that those who aggressively question Israel's right to have any government or to defend itself against those who seek to destroy it are, at best, unwitting allies of a growing anti-Jewish movement. ... For this, Rosenfeld and his sponsors at AJCommittee have been treated to the sort of public tar and feathering that is usually reserved only for the troglodyte denizens of the far-right." Tobin concludes that "in recent years, it is the supporters of Israel who are becoming pariahs in intellectual circles, not its critics. For all the talk of ' martyrdom' on the part of people like Tony Judt, the fact is, they have not suffered one bit for pot shots at Israel or their sneers at those who stand up for Zion. If we want to know where we are headed, we need only look to Britain, where in intellectual and artistic circles it has gotten to the point where it may no longer be possible to identify as a Jew without also disavowing any support for Israel."
Edward Alexander wrote in the New York Post
New York Post
The New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and is generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continuously as a daily, although – as is the case with most other papers – its publication has been periodically interrupted by labor actions...
in support: "When people like NYU's Tony Judt, the most vociferous and self-righteous of Rosenfeld's critics, issue their monthly calls for politicide
Politicide
Politicide has three related but distinct meanings. It can mean a gradual but systematic attempt to cause the annihilation of an independent political and social entity. For example the destruction of the apartheid system in South Africa...
in Israel, which they demonize as the sole 'anachronistic' state in an otherwise progressive multicultural world, don't they sense, even subconsciously, a potential kinship with the genocidally inclined (and not-at-all progressive) president of Iran? In law, such kinship is called 'accessory to murder.'"
Criticism
Patricia Cohen see similarities between Rosenfeld's essay and what Alan WolfeAlan Wolfe
Alan Wolfe is a political scientist and a sociologist and is currently on the faculty of Boston College and serves as director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life...
calls "Jewish Illiberalism" which "traces the heated language to increasing opposition to the Iraq war and President Bush’s policy in the Middle East, which [according to Wolfe] had spurred liberal Jews to become more outspoken about Israel." Wolfe states that “Events in the world have sharpened a sense of what’s at stake." “Israel is more isolated than ever”, which according to Wolfe is "causing American Jewish defenders of Israel to become more aggressive."
Richard Cohen responded via his regular Washington Post column published on February 6, 2007. Cohen noted that he has dedicated more than 90 columns to condemning antisemitism since he started as a columnist in 1976, “most of them full-throated condemnations of the hatred that killed fully one-third of all Jews during my lifetime. So it comes as a surprise that has the force of a mugging to be accused of aiding the very people I so hate – of being an abettor of something called The New Anti-Semitism.” Cohen writes that the report "has given license to the most intolerant and narrow-minded of Israel's defenders so that, as the AJC concedes in my case, any veering from orthodoxy is met with censure or, from someone like Reinharz, the most powerful of all post-Holocaust condemnations – anti-Semite – is diluted beyond recognition. The offense here is not just to a handful of relatively unimportant writers, but to memory itself."
Douglas Rushkoff
Douglas Rushkoff
Douglas Rushkoff is an American media theorist, writer, columnist, lecturer, graphic novelist and documentarian. He is best known for his association with the early cyberpunk culture, and his advocacy of open source solutions to social problems.Rushkoff is most frequently regarded as a media...
responded to the essay on his weblog on January 1, 2007, stating, "In their new whitepaper, [The American Jewish Committee] blame[s] "progressive Jews,' and yours truly by name, for promoting the extinction of the Jewish people. Of course, in my opinion, it is their racist and triumphalist stance that represents the antithesis of the Mosaic insights – and the greatest threat to what it was Jews have to offer the world in the first place."
Michael Berenbaum
Michael Berenbaum
Michael Berenbaum is an American scholar, professor, rabbi, writer, and film-maker, who specializes in the study of the memorialization of the Holocaust...
, a prominent Holocaust scholar, is quoted “I think it’s a hodge-podge. ... I’m not sure how this advances discourse or debate. The question you must ask is, what do you gain by not engaging the discourse but by labeling and targeting it this way?”
In the Washington Post, Susan Jacoby writes that "This is in fact a sign that the American Jewish right is afraid that it is losing ground within the Jewish community. In their political alliance with the Christian Right over all issues related to Israel – forged, ironically, because Protestant fundamentalists regard Israel as the place where Jesus will return on Judgment Day – ultra-conservative Jews have broken with the best Jewish traditions of social conscience and social consciousness. ... Right-wing Jews have had to deny this vibrant, socially compassionate part of the Jewish past to justify their politics. So they promulgate the idea that liberal Jews, Jews who raise any questions about Israeli policies, are bad Jews."
On January 7, 2007, Daniel Sieradski appeared on Beyond the Pale, a progressive Jewish radio program that airs on Pacifica Radio
Pacifica Radio
Pacifica Radio is the oldest public radio network in the United States. It is a group of five independently operated, non-commercial, listener-supported radio stations that is known for its progressive/liberal political orientation. It is also a program service supplying over 100 affiliated...
, along with Esther Kaplan and Sara Roy
Sara Roy
Sara Roy is an American political economist and scholar. She is a Senior Research Scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University....
, both of whom are mentioned in the report, to discuss both its alleged inaccuracies and perceived hostilities towards the progressive Jewish community.
Also in response to the essay, Michael Lerner
Michael Lerner (rabbi)
Michael Lerner is a political activist, the editor of Tikkun, a progressive Jewish interfaith magazine based in Berkeley, California, and the rabbi of Beyt Tikkun Synagogue of San Francisco.-Family and Education:...
writes that "instead of seriously engaging with the issues raised (e.g. to what extent are Israel's current policies similar to those of apartheid and to what extent are they not?), the Jewish establishment and media responds by attacking the people who raise these or any other critiques – shifting the discourse to the legitimacy of the messenger and thus avoiding the substance of the criticisms. Knowing this, many people become fearful that they too will be labeled 'anti-Semitic' if they question the wisdom of Israeli policies or if they seek to organize politically to challenge those policies."
"The Jewish establishment has turned Judaism into a cheer-leading religion for a particular national state that has a lot of Jews, but has seriously lost sight of the Jewish values which early Zionists hoped would find realization there." Lerner warns that "when this bubble of repression of dialogue explodes into open resentment at the way Jewish Political correctness has been imposed, it may really yield a 'new' anti-Semitism. To prevent that, the voices of dissent on Israeli policy must be given the same national exposure in the media and American politics that the voices of the Jewish establishment have been given."
Rabbi Arthur Waskow
Arthur Waskow
Arthur Ocean Waskow, born Arthur I. Waskow, is an American author, political activist, and rabbi associated with the Jewish Renewal movement.-Education and early career:...
contends that far from enabling anti-Semitism, most of the authors the AJCom attacked (Tony Kushner, Adrienne Rich, and Daniel Boyarin, among others) are in fact major contributors to the renewal and revitalization of Jewish culture, cutting across the conventional Israel-Diaspora and religious-secular divides. He holds that Rosenfeld and the AJCommittee see no value in such contributions because they see Jewish value only in the State of Israel.
Waskow argues that the AJCommittee has done far more to undermine Israel and its Jewishness than the questions raised by these intellectuals, by the AJCommittee's supporting some specific policy decisions by the US and Israeli governments: especially the Iraq War, which has increased dangers to Israel; the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006; and the settlement of hundreds of thousands of Israeli Jews into Palestinian territories in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Rosenfeld's response to critics
Rosenfeld responded to his critics via a piece published in The New RepublicThe New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
and in an interview published on the CampusJ
CampusJ
CampusJ Jewish Collegiate News was a website covering Jewish news on college and university campuses with a network of student journalists. CampusJ was launched in February 2005 by editor and publisher Steven I. Weiss of Canonist. The last posting was dated May 20, 2007...
blog.
He writes that many of his critics mischaracterize the argument he puts forth in his essay in a manner similar to what Rosenfeld wrote was an erroneous portray in the New York Times. He explains: "Since I never once referred to 'liberalism,' called no one a 'Jewish anti-Semite' or 'self-hating Jew,' said nothing about Democrats or the Iraq war, and made no attempt to 'silence' anyone, this Kakfaesque bill of indictment makes me wonder what is at play here – illiteracy, dishonesty, or worse? As Bret Stephens recently put it, 'How does joining a debate become an effort to suppress it?'
In response to accusations of silencing debate, Rosenfeld is quoted saying "Nobody’s being silenced ... I think it’s a red herring to talk about silencing, this debate in fact is evidence of a robust and open discussion and anybody who cries that someone else is censoring them is talking nonsense."
Rosenfeld argued that there was a "dialectical scam" amongst the far-left critics of Israel:
The ubiquitous rubric "criticism of Israel," however, has also come to designate another kind of discourse—one that has almost become a politico-rhetorical genre unto itself, with its own identifiable vocabulary, narrative conventions, and predictable outcomes. At its ideational core is what the British scholar Bernard Harrison calls a "dialectical scam." It goes something like this: (1) Spot an Israeli action that can serve as the ground of "criticism of Israel" (e.g., Israel's military incursion into the area near Jenin in April 2002 in response to Palestinian terrorist massacres); (2) Then "dissent" in the strongest possible terms, for instance by likening the "razing of Jenin" to the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, while anticipating that "powerful" and "repressive" Jewish institutions will try to "silence" the critics by calling them anti-Semites; (3) When taken to task by more sober-minded critics who find that, contrary to your charge, there was no such thing as "the razing of Jenin" and that the IDF has nothing in common with the SS, cry "foul" and claim their censure perfectly illustrates the point that there really is a Jewish organizational conspiracy to silence "criticism of Israel" by branding the authors of such criticism "anti-Semites."
For some, this dialectical scam works nicely and validates their sense of themselves as intellectual martyrs suffering for a higher ideological cause. Once one is on to it, however, the scam readily dissolves into what it actually is: political bias, compounded by a touch of hysteria, masquerading as victimization. Thus, when a tiny political group calling itself "Jewish Voice for Peace" sets out to track "a growing epidemic of intimidation and harassment from fellow Jews seeking to stifle open debate over America's policy toward Israel," it can hardly be expected to be taken seriously.
Mixed responses
Gershom Gorenberg of The American ProspectThe American Prospect
The American Prospect is a monthly American political magazine dedicated to American liberalism. Based in Washington, DC, The American Prospect is a journal "of liberal ideas, committed to a just society, an enriched democracy, and effective liberal politics" which focuses on United States politics...
praised Rosenfeld's idea, but criticized his delivery and organization as "sloppy":
Rosenfeld's own sloppiness hurts him. While attacking vituperative opponents of Israel who call themselves "progressive," he identifies their views with all who call themselves progressives – rather like letting James Dobson define what "Christian" means. He fires the shotgun of his criticism at such a wide flock of writers that his reader can wonder where he is aiming. Does The Washington Post's pro-Israel columnist Richard Cohen really belong to the same ideological species as those who accuse Israel of genocide?
The blurriness is a shame, because Rosenfeld has a legitimate argument. He explicitly rejects the view that any attack on Israeli policy equals anti-Semitism. Rather, his intended target is those Jews who reject the very existence of a Jewish state, and who express their opposition in shrieks that rise to equating Israel with the Nazis.
John Judis, a senior editor at The New Republic and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is a foreign-policy think tank based in Washington, D.C. The organization describes itself as being dedicated to advancing cooperation between nations and promoting active international engagement by the United States...
, writes:
There is a paradox that haunts these charges of anti-Semitism. On the one hand, Rosenfeld, Harris, and others want to deny that American Jews and American Jewish organizations like AIPAC suffer from dual loyaltyDual loyaltyIn politics, dual loyalty is loyalty to two separate interests that potentially conflict with each other.-Inherently controversial:While nearly all examples of alleged "dual loyalty" are considered highly controversial, these examples point to the inherent difficulty in distinguishing between what...
in trying to influence U.S. foreign policy. It's anti-Semitic or contributes to anti-Semitism, they say, to make that charge. On the other hand, they want to demand of American Jewish intellectuals a certain loyalty to Israel, Israeli policies, and to Zionism as part of their being Jewish. They make dual loyalty an inescapable part of being Jewish in a world in which a Jewish state exists. And that's probably the case. Many Jews now suffer from dual loyalty – the same way that Cuban-Americans or Mexican-Americans do. By ignoring this dilemma – and, worse still, by charging those who acknowledge its existence with anti-Semitism – the critics of the new anti-Semitism are engaged in a flight from their own political selves.
Further reading
Interviews- Ben Greenberg. Interview With Alvin Rosenfeld. CampusJCampusJCampusJ Jewish Collegiate News was a website covering Jewish news on college and university campuses with a network of student journalists. CampusJ was launched in February 2005 by editor and publisher Steven I. Weiss of Canonist. The last posting was dated May 20, 2007...
. March 2, 2007. - Bob GarfieldBob GarfieldBob Garfield writes the "Ad Review" TV-commercial criticism feature in Advertising Age. He is also the co-host of the On the Media show on National Public Radio. Before that, he was a frequent contributor to All Things Considered. He is the advertising analyst for ABC News...
, Brooke GladstoneBrooke GladstoneBrooke Gladstone is an American journalist and media analyst. She is host and managing editor of the National Public Radio newsmagazine, On the Media, and has been a contributor to The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Observer, and Slate...
, J.J. Goldberg. Transcript: A Zion in the Sand. NPRNPRNPR, formerly National Public Radio, is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to a network of 900 public radio stations in the United States. NPR was created in 1970, following congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting...
On The MediaOn the MediaOn the Media is an hour-long weekly radio program, hosted by Bob Garfield and Brooke Gladstone, covering journalism, technology, and First Amendment issues. It is produced by WNYC in New York City...
. February 16, 2007.
Essays
- Alvin H. Rosenfeld. 'Progressive' Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism. American Jewish CommitteeAmerican Jewish CommitteeThe American Jewish Committee was "founded in 1906 with the aim of rallying all sections of American Jewry to defend the rights of Jews all over the world...
. 2006. - Shaul Magid and Paul Bogdanor. Zionism, Anti-Semitism, and the Boundaries of Dissent: Round 2 of the Alvin Rosenfeld Debate, Zeek, April 2007.
- Alvin H. Rosenfeld. "Modern Jewish Intellectual Failure: A Brief History," in The Jewish Divide Over Israel: Accusers and Defenders, ed. Edward Alexander and Paul Bogdanor, Transaction Publishers, 2006, pp. 7–32.
- Alan WolfeAlan WolfeAlan Wolfe is a political scientist and a sociologist and is currently on the faculty of Boston College and serves as director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life...
. Free Speech, Israel, and Jewish Illiberalism. The Chronicle of Higher EducationThe Chronicle of Higher EducationThe Chronicle of Higher Education is a newspaper and website that presents news, information, and jobs for college and university faculty, staff members and administrators....
. November 17, 2006. - George SorosGeorge SorosGeorge Soros is a Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, philosopher, and philanthropist. He is the chairman of Soros Fund Management. Soros supports progressive-liberal causes...
. On Israel, American and AIPAC. New York Review of Books. April 12, 2007. - Shalom Freedman Rosenfeld is Right Jewish Political Studies Review 19:1–2, March 1, 2007.
- Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz 'Some Notes on Anti-Semitism from a Progressive Jewish Perspective. Jewish Currents March 2007.
Further media coverage
- Alvin Rosenfeld. Rhetorical violence and the Jews
- Joe Lanzmann. Are you a liberal anti-Semite? SlateSlate (magazine)Slate is a US-based English language online current affairs and culture magazine created in 1996 by former New Republic editor Michael Kinsley, initially under the ownership of Microsoft as part of MSN. On 21 December 2004 it was purchased by the Washington Post Company...
. February 2, 2007. - Stanley Kutler. On Jewish critics of Israel. The Boston GlobeThe Boston GlobeThe Boston Globe is an American daily newspaper based in Boston, Massachusetts. The Boston Globe has been owned by The New York Times Company since 1993...
. February 7, 2007. - Jack Gilden. Hey, Lefty. Jewish Times. February 9, 2007.
- Gaby Wood. The new Jewish question. The ObserverThe ObserverThe Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
. February 11, 2007. - Ira Youdovin. Is Community Open to Critics of Zionism?. The ForwardThe ForwardThe Forward , commonly known as The Jewish Daily Forward, is a Jewish-American newspaper published in New York City. The publication began in 1897 as a Yiddish-language daily issued by dissidents from the Socialist Labor Party of Daniel DeLeon...
. February 23, 2007. - Alvin Rosenfeld Is Right About Liberals And the Jewish State. The ForwardThe ForwardThe Forward , commonly known as The Jewish Daily Forward, is a Jewish-American newspaper published in New York City. The publication began in 1897 as a Yiddish-language daily issued by dissidents from the Socialist Labor Party of Daniel DeLeon...
. March 16, 2007. - Emanuele Ottolenghi. News from the Continent: False Prophets. Commentary Magazine. February 19, 2007.
- The Jewish Grassroots Revolt. (Alliance of Concerned Jewish CanadiansAlliance of Concerned Jewish CanadiansIndependent Jewish Voices describes itself as representing Jews in Canada who have in common a strong commitment to social justice and universal human rights.The organization was founded in 2008 as a result of the national Independent Jewish Canadian Conference.IJV promotes the expression of...
), Canadian DimensionCanadian DimensionCanadian Dimension is a Canadian leftist magazine founded in 1963 by Cy Gonick, and published out of Winnipeg, Manitoba 6 times a year, with a circulation of 3,000 copies....
. February 19, 2007. - Larry Lowenthal. Uproar over recent essay. Commentary Magazine. February 28, 2007.
- Hillel Halkin. “Progressive” Critics of Israel. Commentary Magazine. February 28, 2007.
- Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis . Rebbetzin's Viewpoint: Purim Replay. The Jewish PressThe Jewish PressThe Jewish Press is an American weekly newspaper, geared toward the Modern Orthodox Jewish community. It describes itself as "America's Largest Independent Jewish Weekly." The newspaper has a politically conservative viewpoint and editorial policy....
. February 28, 2007.