Look, I left something unsaid, certainly. I can’t say that this particular incident would have happened or not if Israel were not currently engaged in genocidal acts on a daily basis. What I can say is that Israel clearly uses antisemitism as a shield and a pretense for those genocidal acts, and in less dire times, for the decades of lower level but equally unjust and horrific oppression that has characterized the occupation of Palestine from the beginning.
The ONLY time I experienced targeted antisemitism (graffiti & threats at my synagogue) as an American Jew growing up in a liberal area, was in the lead up to the second intifada as the Camp David Accords fell apart. So yes, antisemites are responsible for their own antisemitism, and antisemitism like any kind of prejudice is fundamentally unjustifiable - of course. And no, by that token, of course nothing Israel could do would justify antisemitism. What a moralistic statement like that misses, however, is the reality that antisemitism ebbs and flows with the state of the conflict in the holy land, and that Israel uses it as a self-reinforcing narrative to justify their ongoing crimes against humanity, paradoxically reinforcing the very thing they claim to be fighting against, and making the world less safe for the people they claim to fight for.
And to make it all very clear. I am blaming antisemites for antisemitism. Conflating Jewish identity with the state of Israel is antisemitic. Zionists are antisemitic.
Look, I left something unsaid, certainly. I can’t say that this particular incident would have happened or not if Israel were not currently engaged in genocidal acts on a daily basis. What I can say is that Israel clearly uses antisemitism as a shield and a pretense for those genocidal acts, and in less dire times, for the decades of lower level but equally unjust and horrific oppression that has characterized the occupation of Palestine from the beginning.
The ONLY time I experienced targeted antisemitism (graffiti & threats at my synagogue) as an American Jew growing up in a liberal area, was in the lead up to the second intifada as the Camp David Accords fell apart. So yes, antisemites are responsible for their own antisemitism, and antisemitism like any kind of prejudice is fundamentally unjustifiable - of course. And no, by that token, of course nothing Israel could do would justify antisemitism. What a moralistic statement like that misses, however, is the reality that antisemitism ebbs and flows with the state of the conflict in the holy land, and that Israel uses it as a self-reinforcing narrative to justify their ongoing crimes against humanity, paradoxically reinforcing the very thing they claim to be fighting against, and making the world less safe for the people they claim to fight for.
And to make it all very clear. I am blaming antisemites for antisemitism. Conflating Jewish identity with the state of Israel is antisemitic. Zionists are antisemitic.