ANTISEMITISM: A BETTER DEFINITION AND ITS IMPORTANCE

On 16 August 2022, Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham signed “Executive Order 2023-118: Adopting Working Definition of Antisemitism.”  The “Working Definition” accepts verbatim the definition of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).  My blog of 16 October 2022 questions the necessity, purpose, scope, and timing of this executive order; it does not question the merits of the definition.

 

I do so now.  In response to the spike in antisemitism, it is critical to have a working definition of antisemitism which works.  To work, it must be: clear, conceptually precise, and inclusive; not ambiguous, vague, or selective.  The Governor had good reason to rely on the IHRA definition of antisemitism, but, recognizing that it is not “an exhaustive definition,” she should have closely scrutinized it and made adjustments to improve it.

 

Improvements can be made to the IHRA definition, which imperfectly conceptualizes antisemitism, and to a discussion or the details which imperfectly illustrate it.  For instance, imprecise language suggests that criticism of Israel is antisemitic.  However, much depends on the specific nature of that criticism.  Without its specification, some critics of Israel might be improperly and painfully suspected or accused of antisemitism though they are not.  That possibility is intimidating and thus infringes on free speech.

 

The IHRA definition states:

 

Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews.  Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.

 

This definition is a muddle.  The first sentence offers a definition of “antisemitism” which is flawed by misuse of language and narrowness of application.  The New Oxford American Dictionary defines a perception as “a way of regarding, understanding, or interpreting something; a mental impression.”  The IHRA definition fails to bridge the gap between the mental and the emotional. Moreover, although a “certain,” or particular, perception “may be” associated with hatred, other “certain”, or particular, perceptions are not.  Those who perceive Jews as inferior beings to be pitied, not hated, because, deluded by the Old Law, they deny the Messiah and thus deprive themselves of His blessings are also antisemites.  They express this perception by missionary efforts to convert Jews.  The IHRA definition, narrow and biased, fails to define antisemitism.

 

The second sentence offers a description of “manifestations.”  One manifestation is odd in specifying “non-Jewish individuals and/or their property.”  Non-Jews sympathetic toward or supportive of Jews (or Israel) might be hurt by manifestations of antisemitism.  If so, the IHRA should say so, but not as part of its definition.  The description is partial in omitting the antisemitism of invidious characterizations of Jewish principles and values, and equally invidious interpretations of Jewish history.

 

So much for the IHRA definition of antisemitism.  The discussion of manifestations and examples are no or not much better; they suffer from ambiguity or vagueness.

 

Manifestations might include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity.  However, criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.  Antisemitism frequently charges Jews with conspiring to harm humanity, and it is often used to blame Jews for “why things go wrong.”  It is expressed in speech, writing, visual forms and action, and employs sinister stereotypes and negative character traits,

 

Because the first sentence is ambiguous—there are different ways of “targeting” or criticizing Israel, an avowedly Jewish state—it lumps together all the ways and thus raises concerns about restricting free speech or impugning the motives of some speakers.  If the criticism invokes Jewish principles or values in judging Israel’s conduct, as I do, it is not antisemitic; if the criticism invokes them respectfully, it may even be philosemitic.  However, if the criticism reflects a double standard—one standard for Israel, another standard for other states—then the criticism is antisemitic.  The second sentence rightly allows criticism of Israel according to standards applied equally to other countries.  The other comments in this paragraph are a selection of some ways expressing antisemitism; there are more, as a following list of eleven items suggests.

 

The list of eleven items is incomplete; it does not include other possible ways of expressing or signaling antisemitism.  The first item, “Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion,” is vague and incomplete.  The words “radical” and “extremist,” used often and recklessly today, are vague.  Moreover, because encouraging, supporting, or rationalizing attacks on Jews can also be based only on their difference from other people, the item is incomplete.  The seventh, “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor,” is dubious.  No one connects a right of self-determination and a claimed racist basis of Israel, no one denies other countries this right because of presumed racism, and racism is not longer the fashionable claim; today, it is (neo-)colonialism.  Other examples in this collection of antisemitic beliefs or behaviors show similar deficiencies.

 

I offer a different definition of antisemitism: a cluster of beliefs, feelings, and actions which are adverse to Jews as individuals, groups, or the State of Israel because they are Jews or Jewish; which assume or imply the moral or religious imperfection, inferiority, or unworthiness of Jews or Jewish beliefs or practices; which denigrate, distort, or deny the Jewish historical experience; which apply double or differentiating standards in judging or treating Jews or Israel; or which exploit Jews for ulterior motives.

 

This last point might seem peculiar, for it addresses an unfamiliar or unrecognized form of antisemitism.  Many of those who support Israel and encourage Jews to relocate to Israel—they are called Christian Zionists—do so because they believe that the in-gathering of Jews in Israel is a pre-condition or cause of Last Days.  In other words, those Christians regard the Jewish people in Israel as a means to serve their theological ends.  By not regarding Jews as ends in themselves, Christian Zionists are antisemitic.

 

This definition sets forth five criteria for recognizing antisemitism.  As criteria, they apply to a wider set of circumstances than a list of “manifestations” or examples can do.  Their shortcoming is that those charged by the executive order to address antisemitism likely know little about antisemitism and likely will rely on IHRA “manifestations” or examples as clear-cut rules.  As a result, they are likely to fail to detect much which is antisemitic or to report “false positives.”  The willingness of New Mexico’s public officials or employees, even if knowledgeable, to address antisemitism is another question, one which a definition can neither address nor answer.

SURGING AMERICAN ANTISEMITISM: SOME SOURCES AND SYMPTOMS

Christians hate to think or talk about antisemitism, for good reason.  Christians, both believers and disbelievers raised in Christian families, rarely escape the likely influence of this ancient prejudice on them and others.  Known to them through church services and school instruction, the Gospels, especially John, are riddled with antisemitic terms and tales.  Christian Antisemitism, a history from then to now, by retired Anglican priest William Nicholls, once occupied bookstore shelves in the Judaica section of major chains like Barnes and Noble, Borders, and Waldenbooks lest the title offend by tacitly accusing browsing Christians (Amazon sells it at an outrageous price, though still worth it).

 

The attenuation of Christianity—atrophied theology, intrusive politics, declining membership—has not attenuated antisemitism.  As Christian Antisemitism observes, modern antisemitism builds on two millennia of Christian antisemitism, with the result that Christianity has made Jews the unique, internationally approved scapegoat to explain or relieve cultural, political, and social stresses.  Although modern antisemitism no longer needs Christianity’s theological props, it can appeal to them when necessary.

 

The surge in antisemitism since the turn of the century and, recently, since the outbreak of Israeli-Hamas hostilities reflects pervasive antisemitism throughout America’s Christian (and Muslim) populations.  Radical antisemites are the exposed outcroppings of underlying bedrock.  The English upper crust wittily understates this bifurcated bigotry: antisemitism is hating Jews more than is necessary.  Antisemitism varies by degrees, with most antisemitism latent, lurking in the background.  However, on the Right, it has been increasingly evident since the ascendancy of Donald John Trump and the prominence of alt-right fascistic organizations like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers.  On the Left, it has been less evident, perhaps because those thus affiliated think too highly of themselves to admit the antisemitism which they publicly deplore, perhaps because many in the media and in academe have a Leftward bias and ignore it, perhaps because academics, mainly in the humanities, have been influenced by over four decades of their political concerns with race, gender, class, and colonialism.

 

Comes a catalyst, however, and the antisemitism of the Progressive Left becomes overt, much to the surprise and dismay of traditional liberals and Democrats.  The conflict between Israel and Hamas has been the catalyst which has exposed antisemitism on the Left.  The response of academics—everyone’s prime example being some Harvard students, faculty, administrators, and alumni—reflects these political concerns.  Their support for Palestinians and justifications for Hamas reflect the simple-minded, binary dogmas that the powerful are bad, the weak are good.  Israel is no longer remembered as a construct of the United Nations to serve as a post-war refuge for European Jews and a homeland for other Jews; it is recognized since the Six Day War in 1967 as a colonizing power.  Academics might view Israel (wrongly, I think) as a “settler colonizer” but fairly (and, I think, rightly) criticize its policies in dealings with the West Bank and Gaza, notably its expanding settlements, on political grounds.  However, when they call for a cessation of hostilities when Israel is defending itself by admittedly relentlessly attacking its sworn, relentless enemy, it is applying a standard of warfighting to this armed conflict which it applies to no other armed conflict.  In doing so, academics reveal a principal symptom of antisemitism, the double standard.

 

The symptoms of antisemitism in Las Cruces are less obvious, though it is present, usually unrecognized, unacknowledged, or denied because it is small-scale, subtle, and quiet.  The LCPD’s reluctance to address the near certainty that antisemitism motivated five false charges against me shows that it is rife within the department, from the cop on the beat to successive chiefs of police, permanent or interim.  All City Council members disregarded the issue discussed in several of my blogs.  My District 1 councilor not only did nothing to resolve the issue, but also secretly informed the city attorney of my views because she feared a lawsuit for bias-based policing and due-process violations.  Several hundred Las Cruces citizens received the same blogs about the antisemitism motivating these charges, but none wrote either to challenge my position or to condemn the motive or the charges.  Denial or dismissal of antisemitism tolerates it, and such tolerance is another symptom of antisemitism—no surprise in the City of Three Crosses.

 

Elsewhere in New Mexico, antisemitism is no secret.  In Santa Fe, the Governor issued an executive order to address antisemitism in the state—ostensibly, though “whereas” details were missing, a statewide problem well known to her administration.  In her administration, the former Attorney General ignored my complaint about bias-based policing altogether, not even acknowledging it.  Obviously, officials fear to address actual cases because they are likely to expose the breadth and depth of antisemitism in a state three-quarters Christian and one-third Catholic.

 

Thus far, New Mexico has apparently experienced few, if any, outrageous incidents of antisemitism like those which are occurring in so many places elsewhere.  “Apparently” is my way of making due allowance for the possible suppression of such disconcerting news.  For the Governor’s executive order protests too much, with the likely perverse effect of encouraging under-reporting.  Despite present circumstances, complacency about antisemitism in Las Cruces and New Mexico is unwarranted.  The old adage is apt: the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

WHY ISRAEL IGNORES AMERICAN PRESSURE TO DECLARE A CEASE FIRE

This blog reflects a thought experiment, an attempt to write from what I think is an Israeli perspective, whether civilian or official, about the Israeli-Hamas conflict.  It is not an easy task.  I have never supported Israel’s peacetime or wartime policy or conduct vis-à-vis Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza since the Six Day War in June 1967 (or its policies and practices affecting Israeli Arabs).  I would support a boycott-divestment-sanction policy intended solely to force Israel to withdraw to its pre-war boundaries.

 

My reactions to current hostilities between Israel and Hamas are conflicted.  On the one hand, I deplore the loss of civilian lives on both sides of the conflict.  Although I am aware of the disproportionate numbers of casualties and the degrees of sufferings, I am stymied in any calculations about what is right or wrong in the circumstances.  My tolerance of the disproportion in no way reflects a belief that an Israeli life is worth more than some number of Gazan lives; such ratios are immoral and obscene.  On the other, I honor Israel’s right as a recognized state under international law to defend itself against its enemies and to do so as others have done before it.  So I base my thinking about the current hostilities on America’s recent history of waging war in its defense.  I compare Israel’s perceptions of threat from Hamas with America’s perceptions of threat from Japan.

 

On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor killed about 2500 military personnel and did a great deal of damage to military facilities.  America declared war on Japan, expelled many Japanese-American citizens from West Coast cities, incarcerated many of them in “internment camps,” announced unconditional surrender as its wartime policy, fire-bombed Tokyo and nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki, three cities with large civilian populations, and thereby killed hundreds of thousands of civilian men, women, and children.  America feared the Japanese and adopted policies and tactics which reflected its fears, though they were unrealistic.  For the West Coast was over 5000 miles from Japan, a distance which could not be easily or quickly overcome by significant military forces with the military technologies then known.  Moreover, America was stronger than Japan, as Japan well knew.

 

On 7 October 2023, Hamas launched an attack on Israel and killed 1400 civilians deliberately and barbarically.  It attacked no military targets.  It planned to launch a second attack of the same kind in hopes of initiating a broader anti-Israel war supported by other Arab forces.  Israel has responded with a military invasion of Gaza which has killed thousands of Gazans and presumably hundreds of Hamas fighters.  Israel’s policy of trying to spare or reduce civilian casualties is well known but hard to implement in this conflict because Hamas co-locates many of its personnel, facilities, equipment, and munitions in, under, or close to civilian facilities (hospitals, mosques, schools, residential areas).  Israel fears Hamas, whose forces are at its borders and possess weapons capable of hitting many targets, with a preference for civilian targets, in much of Israel.  Under these circumstances, Israel may have decided upon a policy of unconditional surrender or total elimination of Hamas.

 

As thus described, Israel has better grounds for total war against Hamas than America had against Japan.  Yet, whereas no one called for America to fight less than an all-out war against Japan, many are calling for Israel to cease fighting before the threat to it has been neutralized or eliminated.  Israel is aware of this double standard and distrusts the calls for a cease-fire or peace.  It suspects them because none offers a proposal which, if implemented, would protect it from future and perhaps more destructive attacks.  Given nothing concrete to mitigate its justifiable fears, Israel would be irresponsible to cease its military operations against Hamas for the mere promise of a hoped-for, undefined political solution by diplomats who have a record of negotiating infeasible and unenforceable arrangements in the region.  Israel refuses to risk its survival because outsiders sympathize with Gazans who have supported Hamas and now suffer or die.

 

Israel views America as its great protector but notes that America does not realize the depth of Israel’s existential danger, in the present, great, in the future, greater.  Israel notes that America has not pledged that it will regard an attack on Israel as an attack on the United States, as it has declared about an attack on a NATO ally.  Unable to entirely rely on America, Israel must be self-reliant in its defense.  Although Israeli deterrence has failed, Israeli counterattacks can prevail in defeating Hamas.  For Israel to fully trust America, it must know that America understands that Israel cannot protect itself from an existential threat if it turns its self-defense and safety over to others.  Still, Israel would be comforted if America made such a NATO-like pledge.  Israel might see it as the added deterrence not only needed in the future, when the current hostilities cease on Israel’s terms, but also enabling interested parties in and out of the region to devise and deploy an effective resolution of the long-standing antagonism between Israelis and Palestinians.

 

 

A note on American tactics in Vietnam.  Even though national security was not imperiled and the country was not fearful, American forces used many of the tactics since adopted, with significant differences, by the Israel Defense Forces.  American troops relocated entire villages into compounds called “Strategic Hamlets,” killed mostly old men, women, and children in attacks on villages suspected of harboring Viet Cong guerillas, killed any Vietnamese in “free fire zones,” and conducted devastating B-52 bombing raids on Viet Cong strongholds, often near villages.  The massacre at My Lai was an aberration only in its magnitude.  Elsewhere, U.S. forces showed a reckless disregard of Vietnamese civilians’ lives.

PUBLIC DIPLOMACY VS. PRIVATE POLITICS IN MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS

Everyone knows that what diplomats and politicians say in public is often at odds with what they say in private.  I offer a case in point reflecting my experience.

 

On 7 June 1981, the Israeli air force, flying American F-16’s escorted by F-15’s, attacked and destroyed the Osirak nuclear energy research reactor outside Baghdad, Iraq.  Israel justified its pre-emptive attack to prevent Iraq from developing a nuclear weapon.

 

The incident became a major international issue.  In the U.N. Security Council, speaker after speaker denounced the Israeli attack, for, among other reasons, violating international boundaries and ignoring recent International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections which reported Iraqi compliance with its safeguards.  But the outrage which these diplomats expressed in public they dismissed in private because the facts known to them justified the Israeli raid.  On 15 June 1981, the UK Permanent Representative’s statement to the Security Council, though expressing this outrage, told the real story:

 

107. It has also been argued that, whatever the legal rights and wrongs of the matter, the international community privately breathed a sigh of relief after the Israeli raid, the suggestion being that the Iraqi Government will not now have a nuclear-weapon potential for some further time to come.

 

What caused the “international community[’s] privately breathed … sigh of relief” was the disclosure of discomfiting facts about what was going on at the Osirak facility.

 

I learned the facts while consulting to the Department of Energy on matters dealing with nuclear proliferation.  The French had been assisting Iraq with its civilian nuclear research program, particularly by providing it with uranium dioxide caramel fuel.  They believed that such caramelized fuel could not be processed to separate the uranium for other—i.e. military—purposes.  At about the time that Israeli jets were attacking Osirak, Israeli intelligence officers were briefing their French counterparts with proof that Iraqi scientists had separated uranium from the caramelized fuel.  Embarrassed, the French quietly cancelled their contracts with and discontinued their assistance to Iraq.  No one wanted to embarrass the French in public, so everyone resorted to private whispers to spread the truth within the diplomatic community.  Thus, the UK statement.

 

I tell this story because, I believe, what went on then is going on now in the conflict between Israel and Hamas.  The Arab governments, largely to avoid redirecting their citizens’ anger at Israel to themselves, are “loudspeaking” their outrage at the Israeli response to the Hamas attack and eschewing regional meetings to address regional problems.  Hamas vigorously opposed these important meetings intended to advance a rapprochement between Israel and Saudi Arabia.  Some think that Hamas’s attack aimed to disrupt such a rapprochement; if so, it has so far succeeded.

 

But, under the right conditions, it is not likely to continue to succeed.  For Gulf-state governments loathe Hamas.  It is possible that, if Israel’s retaliatory attack succeeds in eradicating Hamas without jeopardizing its standing by excessive civilian casualties—Hamas would thus win the propaganda war and maintain regional instability—, these governments will resume regional meetings not only to advance a rapprochement with Israel, but also to develop a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine problem.  Without Hamas to interfere or subvert that effort and with Israel’s participation, they would establish a Palestinian state with a unified government for the West Bank and Gaza, and support a “Marshall Plan” to make the new state politically and economically viable.  However much one regrets the loss of life, one can hope that the dead on both sides will not have died in vain.

 

 

NOTE ON LOCAL ELECTIONS: The disparity between public statements and private practice has a local application.  Both Kasandra Gandara, for mayor, and Tessa Abeyta, for councilor, have stated publicly that they favor transparency and accountability.  But hypocrisy and dishonesty are evident.  Both Progressives sit on the Public Safety Select Committee, a committee so secret that other councilors did not know it existed.  Whether their work on this secret committee has criminally violated the Open Meetings Act, their private conduct at odds with their public words undermines good—that is, democratic—government.

 

Recommendations:

 

For mayor, Alexander Fresquez, sensible innovator: rank first (rank Kasandra Gandara seventh or leave her slot blank).

 

For district 2 councilor, Bill Mattiace, former mayor: rank first (rank Tessa Abeyta second or, better, leave her slot blank).  City Council needs someone not only fully experienced in city government and, in this race, even-tempered, but also at least one voice and perhaps at least one vote different from those of councilors uniformly Leftish.