Danger signals for American Jewry

Look outside. The weather is the same. The streets are peaceful. Cars whiz by. People chat and the world goes on.

It is precisely this surface peace that hides, that lulls, that drugs, if you will. It is the slow, creeping, imperceptible, non-violent change that allows things into consciousness that American Jewry has never countenanced before, at least since 1948.

Try this: March 30 is the Global Day of Action by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign. That is, boycott, divest from, and impose sanctions on Israel. What for? For its apartheid.

Shocking when heard the first time, the first time passed long ago. Now it is a matter of routine for Israel to be referred to as an “apartheid” state. You know, like South Africa, where whites beat and killed and segregated blacks as a matter of routine. Just like — so many in this country would now have everyone believe — Israel does to the Palestinians.

Coming to a campus near you this week: Israel Apartheid Week, on more than two dozen college campuses. No less than a former president of the US, Jimmy Carter, named a book after “Israel Apartheid.”

And this just in, from the annual meeting of J Street: “Obama’s too soft on Israel. The Palestinians need to get out of the jail they’re in.” That’s an attendee at the J Street annual conference. He, and many others there, think J Street itself is too soft on Israel. More than 2,400 people came to this conference.

The fact that there is a “Pro-Israel Week” on campuses that host the “Israel Apartheid Week,” or that various organizations stand up to the “BDS” movement, only accentuates the new reality: Israel is not just “disagreed with” or “criticized.” Israel is demonized. Not just in the Arab world. Not just in Europe. But in growing segments of American society. In the very place where the leaves continue to blossom and the chatting on the street is most congenial.

Peaceably, gradually, perhaps unnoticed, the language of the discourse on Israel has assumed proportions of hate, of distortion, of bile, of determination to punish. How long can it be before this same animus and style, o so comfortably and naturally adopted, is turned against Jews? Not, we must note, that the  object of this animus is not already directed to Jews — the ones who run the Jewish state, who, supposedly, are the successors of South Africa.

We shall not weary ourselves here with all the counterarguments against the fallacies so easily assumed by the BDS crowd and their fellow travelers. It is Israelis who were threatened with genocide, Israelis who have been the object of sustained terrorism, tearing, literally, limb from body and child from parent, for no reason other than that they chose to live in the Land of Israel. The point today is not these facts, it is the new fact: the pervasiveness, the ease, the comfort, with which the demonization of Israel proceeds; the smoothness by which the lies attain credibility.

It is the irony. Israel, a technological powerhouse, is inventing the cures that cure Jew and Arab alike, the devices that benefit all peoples, the efficiencies in food production that stave off starvation, regardless of race, creed, color or national origin. However, to the mind made up, the mind twisted and narrowed by a bias and a hatred so strong, these facts are of no moment.

The de rigueur acknowledgements, by lovers and supporters of Israel, that Israel is not perfect, that Israel has made mistakes, that Israel could do better, register not at all. It is not a balanced view of things that the new opponents of Israel seek. It is not an integrated, dialogical, give-and-take discourse, or political policy, they want. Missing is admittance of subtlety to the catechism of those who deem it perfectly reasonable to equate South African blacks with Palestinians, who quickly forget that Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip only to be greeted with thousands of Palestinian missiles, who think self-defense is an immoral concept if invoked by Israel.

Our object of concern here is not the Obama administration, but nonetheless its statement after (thankfully) vetoing an anti-Israel resolution at the UN perfectly reflects the degradation of discourse about Israel. Making certain that its vote should not be taken as support for Israel’s settlement policy, Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the UN, condemned all Israeli settlements everywhere, including in East Jerusalem and in those places where Jews in 1948 were exterminated by Arabs. This means, for example, that the Jewish Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem, in the heart of East Jerusalem — a quarter that goes back centuries — is now illegitimate. If pressed on the matter, Rice would likely concede the legitimacy of the Jewish Quarter in the Old City. The point is, one would need to press. The natural way to speak nowadays, even by diplomats supposedly trained in nuance, is to generalize, to demonize, to buy into the dangerous degradation of language about Israel.

The danger signs are there. We should not just accept them, or see them as inevitable. We must fight back. Language counts. Terms matter. We must call them out, whenever and wherever they occur. We must reverse the despoilation of language on Israel. Our destiny is at stake.

Copyright © 2011 by the Intermountain Jewish News