While the Jewish Left keeps trying to convince us that most anti-Israel hatred is not antisemitism, a new poll has found that a large majority of American Jews see things such more clearly.
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The poll, sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League, asked Jews whether certain types of anti-Israel statements or actions are anti-Semitic: "Saying Israel should not exist as a Jewish state" (75% said it was anti-semitic); "Comparing Israel's actions to those of the Nazis" (70%); "Protesting Israeli actions outside an American synagogue" (67%); "Calling Zionism racist" (61%); "Calling for companies and organizations to boycott, divest from or sanction Israel" (56% agreed); and "Calling Israel an apartheid state" (55%).
Why are these results significant? Because for the past year, the US Jewish Left has been fighting against the acceptance of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's working definition of antisemitism. According to that definition, comparing Israel to the Nazis, calling Israel's existence racist and applying double standards to Israel are examples of antisemitism.
Jewish left-wing activists have grown worried because many governments, Jewish organizations and others have embraced the IHRA definition. The Jewish Left has good reason to worry since many groups and individuals in their camp indulge in precisely that kind of rhetoric. Being labeled "antisemitic" means that their views are illegitimate.
So, in a desperate ploy, they organized several hundred left-wing academics to come up with their own definition, called the "Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism." The Declaration's extremely narrow wording effectively excuses most anti-Israel vitriol as being just "criticism of Israeli policies."
Obviously, no reasonable person claims that every single criticism of an Israeli policy is antisemitic. But it's also clear as day to most American Jews that a lot of extreme anti-Israel rhetoric, such as the examples cited above, is indeed antisemitic. Most Jews don't need a legal definition to know, instinctively, that something or somebody is antisemitic. We've all experienced enough in our lives to know that if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck.
This is a problem for several of the leading Jewish left-wing organizations, which in recent months have been edging closer and closer to the positions that most US Jews consider to be antisemitic.
Calling for sanctions against Israel, for example. According to the ADL poll, 56% of Jews think that's antisemitic. Well, in April, two such groups publicly endorsed legislation that would stop US aid to Israel if the Israeli army arrests Palestinian-Arab terrorists who are younger than 18 years old. That's what we call a sanction.
And just last week, the head of Americans for Peace Now went beyond that one bill and announced that there should be "US aid reductions" if Israel is guilty of any "human rights violations." And who, exactly, will be the judge of what constitutes a "human rights violation"? The United Nations? Amnesty International? Jimmy Carter?
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Reprinted with permission from JNS.org
