Why Many Bigots and Antisemites Support Israeli Apartheid
Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar are not only the first Muslim women in Congress, but they’re also the first to endorse the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian equal rights. For this, they are accused of antisemitism. Yet often, these accusers are cynically blasé to their own prejudices. Indeed, many are blind to the ways antisemitic tropes are used to support Israeli apartheid.
The argument that opposition to Israeli apartheid is per se antisemitic rests on the premise that its policies are justified because Palestinians are uniquely deranged. They are uniformly barbarians, savages, and terrorists committed to the wholesale extermination of all Jews. They use their children as “human shields” and for a kind of “human sacrifice.” Their children are like “little snakes.” They “worship death” and are therefore “not human.” They don’t mourn like you and I would. None of it is true.
It can be a form of bigotry to accuse others of being bigoted. This may sound paradoxical, but it’s a common trope throughout history. “They” can’t assimilate to our enlightened values, so we grant ourselves a special dispensation to prejudice. “They” are a threat to our women and children. “They” only understand one thing: force. “They” are not “us.”
In human history, “they” have been everyone: Bolsheviks, Native Americans, the poor, immigrants, Protestants, gypsies, and Jews. In apartheid Israel, “they” are Palestinians and increasingly, African refugees.
Similarly paradoxical, but not impossible to notice: many who support Israel are explicitly antisemitic themselves. These overlapping groups include evangelical Christian Zionists. They see the Holy Land as a staging ground for biblical/nuclear Armageddon. They support Israel only insofar as to bring about end-times. In their Book of Revelations eschatology, once enough Jews resettle, the Rapture will happen, wiping out the state of Israel. After Jesus returns, the remaining Jews will burn in hell if they don’t convert. With friends like these…
There are white supremacist antisemites who admire Israel’s ethnostate model. People like Richard Spencer see Israel as practicing the kind of aggressive identity politics they want for Europe and a White American state in the Pacific Northwest.
Antisemites who support Israel as a model ethnostate tell the Jewish people in their societies to get out. They say they don’t belong, can’t assimilate, and should go back to their own homeland. This echoes the old Jim Crow mantra of segregation as natural and better for all parties.
President Trump wants Israel’s separation wall that shoots anyone who approaches it on the US-Mexico border. (The Israeli wall is not technically a border wall since it is not on any agreed-upon border; it’s an annexation wall). Openly white supremacist congressman Steve King hides behind his support for Israel when accused (accurately) of having the same ideology as the Tree of Life shooter.
All of the aforementioned antisemites evince the George Soros conspiracy that sees Jewish elites as plotting to degrade the purity of white Christian society with immigrants and immorality. And all of them use their support for Israel to thinly veil their own antisemitism.
What should be obvious is that supporting Israel doesn’t make you a friend of Jewish people. Opposing Israeli apartheid doesn’t make you antisemitic.
Opposing Israeli apartheid comes from a place of deep and abiding love for all people. To support BDS is to support peace the only way it can be: through justice. This means nonviolence, equal rights, truth and reconciliation. BDS is a simple and fair bargain; once there is peace, there will be no need for BDS. It’s the same bargain as in South Africa and Northern Ireland: neither was “destroyed” when they ceased state policies of violent oppression.
Jewish-led groups like If Not Now and Jewish Voice for Peace are unimpeachable leaders on this issue. They draw on the Jewish tradition of social justice, healing the world (Tikkun Olam), and solidarity with the oppressed. In order to advance the canard that it’s antisemitic to criticize Israeli apartheid, they’re dismissed as “self-hating Jews” and “Kapos” (likening them to Nazi collaborators.) Again, note the ugly irony of using antisemitic tropes to silence Jewish critics of Israeli apartheid.
In an irony even more alarming, crying wolf on antisemitism makes it more difficult to credibly oppose it when it really rears its ugly head. Arguably the worst antisemitic movements today are in Eastern Europe. Far-right leaders in Ukraine, Poland, and Hungary are rehabilitating Nazis into national heroes and encouraging pogroms. With diminishing shame and irony, Netanyahu himself has stood with Hungary’s Viktor Orban, who is yet another antisemite content to purge his country of Jewish people. Such instances of actual antisemitism get far less attention than they should.
I’m not Jewish, and neither are Tlaib or Omar. But no matter who you are, your duty is the same. As a person of conscience and a hater of cruelty, you must persevere to tell the truth, no matter the baseless accusations and reckless smears. BDS is not just a free speech right; it is a moral duty.
It’s another sad paradox that victims of abuse run the risk of becoming abusers because they excuse themselves from criticism. But it isn’t inevitable. Never again means never again for everyone.
