Antisemitism and the Struggle for Justice
Transcript of Executive Director of Jewish Voice for Peace Rebecca Vilkomerson’s remarks from “Antisemitism and the Struggle for Justice” panel, 11/28/2017
It’s an honor to be sitting on a panel with such a thoughtful, committed group of people. After all the hoopla surrounding this event, it is exciting to be here having a serious, nuanced conversation about a really important topic.
Amy spoke very evocatively about what happened in Charlotesville and I want to start there as well, because I also remember watching the video with young men thundering “blood and soil, blood and soil” and feeling truly terrified.
Throughout this year, incidents of vandalism, bomb threats, assaults and threats of violence toward Jews and Jewish institutions have been a regular staple of the news. In my lifetime, at least, people who express, support, or tolerate antisemitism have never been so visible in the U.S.. President Trump this weekend tweeted out a link to a website which, among other things, has printed a flowchart to illustrate Jewish influence over banking.
Also this weekend, The New York Times ran a warm and fuzzy profile of an open admirer of Hitler, proof that white nationalism has become a legitimate part of the national political conversation
Antisemitism in the United States is frighteningly and ever-more-visibly real. And all of us who believe in justice need to address that reality.
Jewish Voice for Peace’s primary mission is work for the full equality and freedom of all people in Israel/Palestine. JVP has also increasingly become a political and a spiritual home for so many, and especially those of us who treasure our Jewish identity but don’t think that requires identifying with a state that is practicing apartheid.
We have always understood that fighting antisemitism and all forms of bigotry is a crucial element of our core political values. That’s why we name it explicitly as part of our mission, and why we have published two books on the topic.
The question remains: how can we authentically engage in conversations about the real and appalling antisemitism that exists alongside the ways that accusations of antisemitism are often used as a cudgel to suppress criticism of Israel?
To be clear: criticism of the Israeli state that is based on its past and present actions is not antisemitic. Palestinians experience systematic dispossession and displacement at Israeli hands, but that reality is often obscured in the public conversation because it becomes a conversation about perceived antisemitism rather than rights.
It is not easy to talk at the same time about antisemitism as it exists, and the way that some people use antisemitism — both accusations of it and feelings of victimization by it — to protect and deflect criticism of Israel.
It requires honesty and self-reflection to hold both of these truths.
Any discussion about antisemitism, about racism, about Israel, is loaded with each of our particular histories, and the emotions they bring out in us. We cannot have an honest conversation without acknowledging that we are not talking just about facts, but feelings.
And the truth is, I am angry.
I am angry at the profound hypocrisy of the institutional Jewish community.
If the past year has taught us nothing else, it should have taught us that loving Israel does not mean that you love Jews. In fact, I would argue that what we are seeing an especially virulent Trumpian form of Zionist anti-semitism, when those who will defend Israel’s policies regardless of their devastating impacts on Palestinians align themselves with those that espouse and advance antisemitism.
Just days ago, the far-right Zionist Organization of America fete-ed Sebastian Gorka and Steve Bannon, which is only the most recent and most egregious example of Jewish institutions embracing rabid anti-semites solely because they are Zionists.
It is rooted in the long-standing policies of “pro-Israel” organizations to align themselves with Christian Zionist organizations like Christians United for Israel whose commitment to Israel is based on hastening an apocalyptic Christian version of armegeddon in which all Jews will be converted or die a tortuous death — a rather antisemitic vision!
But as long as you are pro-Israel, apparently you get a pass. And this is not just a right-wing phenomena.
The less extreme version is when Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, and Bret Stephens, in the pages of The New York Times, create litmus tests and making false equivalencies between organizations like Jewish Voice for Peace and the so-called “alt-right.”
It is profoundly dangerous, unethical, and inaccurate to characterize people and groups, like Jewish Voice for Peace, that support the full civil and human rights of Palestinians, as not only antisemitic, but equivalent to Nazis. It minimizes the true fight against antisemitism we all need to be waging, and is a blatant attempt to shut down a much needed conversation about Israel and its treatment of Palestinians.
The attacks on this event itself illuminate the current toxic reality in the Jewish community. Those attacks are not about caring about actual antisemitism. They are about giving voice to Islamophobia, and about protecting Israel despite-or perhaps because — of its shameful human rights record.
It is further profoundly dangerous, unethical, and inaccurate, not to mention racist and islamophobic, to unendingly attack a person like Linda Sarsour, who has proven herself to be an unflagging spokesperson for the rights of ALL people. She speaks out consistently against antisemitism and for the rights — nothing more, nothing less — of Palestinians, among many others.
These critiques are rooted in an Islamophobic worldview. It assumes that Palestinians who dare speak out against their own oppression by the Israeli government must automatically be doing so from a position of hating Jews. And it also requires that those same Palestinians, when they speak out against antisemitism, are disqualified and dismissed.
It must be said: Being anti-Zionist or non-Zionist does not make you antisemitic.
The assumption that it does ignores history, including a long Jewish history of opposition to Zionism, and ignores the reality of how Zionism is experienced by its victims. In no way does it negate the seriousness of antisemitism to equally seriously address the dispossession of Palestinians by Israel.
So while giving varying degrees of support and succor to figures who are truly anti-Jewish, Jewish institutions and individuals support and encourage the demonization of peaceful forms of resistance to Israel’s human rights abuses.
The institutional Jewish community has thus abdicated their responsibility to fight against actual antisemitism — trading it for support of Israel.
Which leaves it to us to build the real intersectional movements for justice needed in this time. Our discussion tonight was seen as so provocative precisely because we collectively represent a new vision for fighting antisemitism.
We are insisting on a vision of resisting antisemitism that roots it inside the broad fight against racism and oppression. We know that rather than falling into isolationism that we are strengthened by and welcome tying all liberation struggles together. That no one can have a monopoly on who gets to have these conversations, least of all those who seek to do so in order to allow Israel to have free reign to suppress Palestinian rights.
We believe that safety for Jews is rooted in connection, joint struggle, and mutual solidarity.
All of these struggles take all of us. I as a Jew feel a deep obligation to support the struggle of Palestinians for their rights, and it is moving and humbling and a sign of the world we are trying to build when our allies speak out for our safety as Jews.
Everything I have spoken about tonight has of course been merely exacerbated, not created, in the last year.
But this moment has an intense urgency.
Nothing is predetermined. It is a moment that asks all of us to step up, to be brave, to be precise in our language. To build a world where we understand that all of our safety is tied to one another, and that we can bring it about through solidarity and action together. To understand that none of us is free until we all are, and work to make it so.
Rebecca Vilkomerson
Executive Director
Jewish Voice for Peace
