Consider This from NPR - As antisemitism grows, it is easier to condemn than define

Episode Date: May 16, 2024

For American Jews who grew up thinking antisemitism was a thing of the past, the last several years have been startling. White supremacists marched in Charlottesville. A gunman massacred worshippers at a synagogue in Pittsburgh. Then came the Hamas attacks of October 7th and Israel's war in Gaza.The Anti-Defamation League says since then, antisemitic incidents in the US are up 361% over the same period a year ago. Both Congress and the White House have tried to address antisemitism in recent weeks, yet there's still a debate about what it is. Two journalists, who have been thinking and writing about antisemitism in the U.S. weigh in.For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

For American Jews who grew up thinking anti-Semitism was a thing of the past, the last several years have been startling. In 2017, white supremacists marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, chanting, Jews will not replace us. Jews will not replace us! That year, Jewish cemeteries were vandalized. There was a wave of bomb threats against Jewish community centers. Everybody's no more than one or two degrees of separation from someone whose kids ended up on a sidewalk in front of a JCC over the last couple of weeks. That's Jeremy Burton, head of Boston's Jewish Community Relations Council, speaking to NPR at the time. Frankly, it's a bit of a shock. And maybe we are a bit naive, but we sort of maybe assumed that it was something we had mostly left behind. The Anti-Defamation League said instances of anti-Semitism in the U.S. shot up 57 percent in 2017.

And things haven't gotten any better. In 2018, a man walked into a Pittsburgh synagogue during Shabbat services and killed 11 people. Alongside the violence, political rhetoric has seemed to change too. As president, Donald Trump equivocated about the Charlottesville marchers. And you had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people on both sides. And in 2019, Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota tweeted, it's all about the Benjamins, baby, suggesting the American Israel Public Affairs Committee had bought political support for Israel.

She apologized after other lawmakers criticized her. Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar apologized today for perpetuating one of the oldest hateful stereotypes in the book, the anti-Semitic claim that Jews control politics with money. All of those events were part of the conversation American Jews were having for the last several years before the Hamas attacks of October 7th and Israel's subsequent war in Gaza. And that context helps explain why there is so much debate now about demonstrations in support of Palestinians. Debate about what is a legitimate demand for human rights and what crosses over into anti-Semitism. Consider this.

The question of how to define anti-Semitism and what to do about it is unfolding on campuses and in Congress. We'll talk with two Jewish journalists who have tried to find some clarity in this fog. From NPR, I'm Ari Shapiro. It's Consider This from NPR. Political leaders from both parties say they want to fight anti-Semitism in the U.S., and that may be where the agreement ends. Defining anti-Semitism can be

much harder than condemning it. Lawmakers in Congress have talked about anti-Semitism more this year than I've seen in my entire life. President Biden recently gave a major speech on the topic. There's an old line that I grew up with, get two Jews in a room and you'll hear three opinions. Well, for this conversation, we've got three Jews, myself included. Our guests are both journalists who've been thinking and writing a lot about the forms that antisemitism takes in the U.S. these days and why these lines can be so blurry. Franklin Foer is a staff writer at The Atlantic, and Julia Yaffe is a founding partner and Washington correspondent at Puck. Welcome. Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us, Ari. Let's head to the college campuses where there have been these protests all over the

country. And each of you has written about incidents of anti-Semitism around these protests in support of Palestinian rights. At the same time, we have heard protesters say accusations of anti-Semitism are too often being used to silence legitimate speech. Can both things be true? Yeah. In fact, both things can be true. I think that the question that gets invoked at the core of this is, is anti-Zionism the same thing as anti-Semitism? Oh, yeah. I intend to get to that. Go ahead. Okay. So do you want me to – I can steer clear of this. Take it away, Frank.

Let's go there. Is believing in the existence of a Jewish state, which I understand you both do, is opposing that, is saying, I don't believe Israel should exist, inherently anti-Semitic? I would say it's not. Yes. I'd say it's not inherent. We have a disagreement. It's not inherently anti-Semitic. We love disagreement.

Because I know there's a whole range of people who I know who are anti-Zionist who believe in a binational state. And it's not something I agree with. And I think it's a dangerous idea. But I don't think that they are per se anti-Semites because just thinking through their motivations of the people who make these arguments, I don't think that they hate Jews. But Julia, I can see you want to jump in. Yes. I think you can absolutely be anti-Zionist without being anti-Semitic. One of the main ways that you do that is by being Jewish. I think the problem with being anti-Zionist and being not Jewish is not even, and I think

these people have, a lot of these people have noble intentions. They see what's happening in Gaza and they're rightly incensed and horrified by it all. But then you get into questions of double standards. You know, if the Palestinians have a right to national self-determination, do the Jews not have that? And if so, why not? Can I, I know you disagree. No, no, no. I agree with her on all of that, actually. But I would say, just add one thing. I think that when people use the word Zionist, it's oftentimes a synonym for Jew, and it becomes a way for expressing thoughts about Jewish villainy, about Jewish

control, about a Jewish cabal that would be socially unacceptable if you use the word Jew. Some of the pro-Palestinian activists, including some Jewish activists, say that the focus on anti-Semitism at the protests is a distraction, that this deflects from a more serious issue of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Do you think that's a fair criticism? I think it is. Absolutely. I mean, I think the focus, I would put it differently. I would say that the focus on the college protests is ridiculous. And I think for a long time, it did shift the spotlight away from Gaza. I think what is very hard for the younger generation of Americans to understand is, you know, why is anti-Semitism even an issue? You guys look white.

Nobody pulls you over for one broken taillight and then shoots you for no reason. what has happened in America over the last, I would say, 50 years, two, three generations, is the exception that proves the rule of thousands of years of Jewish history, which Jews like my family, who came from the Soviet Union, where we were second-class citizens, where we were excluded from universities, from jobs, from overseas travel, that trauma is so deep because this has happened, you know, as we said in Passover, from overseas travel, that trauma is so deep because this has happened, you know, as we said in Passover, in every generation, somebody rises up to kill us. That's what we say in the Seder. I think that's very hard to explain to people who feel discriminated against every single day, that we're talking about these kind of phantom pains and the idea that it could

turn on a dime and the genocide could come again tomorrow versus an active daily kind of trauma of the racism that other groups in America feel. Frank, what do you think about the argument that the real trauma from past events and fear about what future events may bring should take a backseat to the ongoing killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians. I would say it's not even just, I mean, I think that minimizes what Jews are experiencing on campuses and in the world, just to say that it's an expression of past trauma, which obviously it's filtered through past trauma, as Julia describes.

But if you're on college campuses and in neighborhoods, and there are these very real examples of anti-Semitism. And just because there's one crisis that's happening in Gaza does not mean that there are not other crises that are happening in the world. And these protests are happening in the context of our democratic crisis where we can't express disagreements in a mild sort of way where everything escalates to incredible levels of vitriol and has a hint of violence to it. Yeah, I also think, sorry, I also think one of the issues with our political discourse now, but I think is just a problem of human brains in general, is I think it's very hard for people to hold two things in their heads at once as being true simultaneously. You can absolutely protest what is happening in Gaza right now. You can absolutely be appalled and horrified and want it to stop yesterday.

That doesn't mean that anti-Semitism is not important, not a canary in the coal mine for our democracy, which it kind of has also been traditionally. You can be both. The three of us are all roughly the same generation. We're all in our 40s. Are you surprised to see the level of antagonism that American Jews report experiencing right now? Frank, the title of your cover story in The Atlantic was The Golden Age of American Jews is Ending. Does this feel like a surprising, unexpected shift? It does. After October 7th, I've seen things in my own neighborhood

and in my own community that I never thought I would see. That my rabbi was walking down Connecticut Avenue, just a couple hundred feet from my house, and somebody rolled down the window and started shouting anti-Semitic epithets at her. And that at the base of my- In Washington, D.C.? Yeah.

And my daughter's school, there was a swastika that appeared in the middle of this crisis. And it suddenly started to feel local and intimate in a way that certainly defied everything I'd experienced throughout most of my life. Julia, are you surprised? No. I suspected you might say that having grown up in the Soviet Union. You know, I was seven when I came over and I had already experienced plenty of anti-Semitism as a child. I had a first grade teacher in the Soviet Union who wouldn't let me eat with the

rest of the class. The Soviet Jewish community looks at American Jews and sees them as these kind of Pollyanna types. They've lost that Jewish vigilance. They've lost that Jewish pessimism that they're just so optimistic. Guilty as charged. I remember the surprise among American Jews and being surprised by their surprise and kind of feeling like, we told you so.

It never goes away. Julia Yaffe of Puck and Franklin Foer of The Atlantic. It is so good to talk to you both. Thank you. Thanks, Ari. Thank you, Ari. This episode was produced by Connor Donovan and edited by Courtney Dorning. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan. And one more thing before we go, you can now enjoy the Consider This newsletter. We still help you break down a major story of the day, but you'll also get to know our producers

and hosts and some moments of joy from the All Things Considered team. You can sign up at npr.org slash consider this newsletter. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Ari Shapiro.