Taking Antisemitism Seriously Doesn’t Require Downplaying Islamophobia
The two hatreds have similar causes and thus must be jointly opposed
When the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology sat before Congress last December to answer questions about rising antisemitism on college campuses, they expressed concern over not just antisemitism but Islamophobia as well. Republican members of Congress lambasted this as a false equivalence. GOP Virginia Rep. Bob Good said, “Most Americans understand there is no real issue with Islamophobia in this country.” However, the reality is that when antisemitism and Islamophobia are pitted against each other as if they are competing interests rather than isomorphic hatreds, as if they are mutually exclusive concerns rather than reinforcing bigotries, it stifles our ability to more effectively combat each.
The university presidents clearly did not perform well at the hearing; it should not have been difficult to condemn calls for Jewish genocide while pushing back against an obviously bad faith actor like New York Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik, who herself has repeatedly poured antisemitic conspiracy into the waters of American politics. But the presidents were right to affix worries about Islamophobia to their concerns over antisemitism, and their critics were wrong to impose on this issue an oppositional frame that requires dismissing Islamophobia as an inflated concern—or even a baseless panic. A more precise view of both hatreds would detect the similarities between them.
Today’s Islamophobia—which is most troublingly expressed through state discrimination—has a historical analogue to antisemitism, specifically, when the U.S. curbed Jewish immigration in the early 20th century (more on this later). Today, antisemitism is socially or culturally driven rather than by the state, but here, too, there is commonality given that both American Jews and American Muslims express worries about non-state violence and discrimination against, for example, our houses of worship. What’s more, both groups have been treated as fundamentally other throughout American history and even in present times. The shape of our respective plights is similar enough to warrant mutual understanding rather than distrust.
Just as the historical and current mistreatment of American Muslims and Jews ought to make all liberals sympathetic to both instead of picking one over the other, it should also cause us to recognize that fighting antisemitism but not Islamophobia—or vice versa—offers neither a road to less bigotry. These two hatreds work together and, as such, need to be jointly opposed. This, ultimately, is what makes the bifurcation of the two so wrongheaded: conceiving of antisemitism and Islamophobia as being in competition disarms us of an understanding of each that is needed to more effectively combat both.
Antisemitism Today
One reason some people insist on a singular focus against antisemitism—sometimes to the exclusion of Islamophobia—is that they believe it is being pervasively downplayed in society. They maintain that antisemitism is not taken seriously enough because Jews are considered white and well off, and they lay the blame for this at the doorstep of Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives and other progressive social ideas.
I don’t doubt that there are those who downplay the existence of antisemitism because of the status of many American Jews. I am sure there are some who believe that just because most Jews are considered white and are wealthy and are no longer subject to targeted persecution by the state—certainly not the kind that Jews had historically experienced in, say, 19th and 20th century Europe—there is no problem. They even regard Jews as part of the privileged class.
Jewish people have had undeniable success in assimilating (or, if you prefer, acculturating) into the American mainstream. But social persecution, bigotry, and intolerance against Jews remains. The other-ization of Jews has proceeded in appreciable ways across every American era, including now.
After Oct. 7, a kosher dining hall at Cornell University was the target of death threats; a Yiddish center in the Bronx was defaced with graffiti; and a man reportedly yelled “Free Palestine” and fired shots outside of a synagogue in Albany, New York. Hundreds of synagogues across the United States were targeted by emailed bomb threats in December. According to officials, on a single day, Jan. 2, 91 synagogues in California alone received threats. These incidents not only hold random Jewish people and spaces accountable for the actions of a government half a world away, but treat Jews like me within the United States as somehow essentially other, insidious, and threatening, when in truth the institutions being targeted, and we ourselves, are here.
Anti-Israel Attitudes and Antisemitism
But is it right that to say that Jews “don’t count” as an oppressed minority and that this is the reason Israel was not extended more solidarity in the weeks after Oct. 7? While I don’t doubt that there were some who did indeed fail to extend sympathy to Israel because they believe Jews are white and privileged, many no doubt refused to stand unambiguously with Israel because they believed that Hamas’s horrific attack existed within the context of an ongoing Israeli occupation of the West Bank and followed the deadliest year on record for Palestinians. Or because they believed that the important thing to focus on was Israel's response, which is to say, the war in Gaza. One can disagree with this stance. One can argue that there is a double standard applied to Israeli citizens and hostages. One can ask, for example, why it took the United Nations over a month to call for an investigation into Hamas’ gruesome gender-based violence. But it is important not to conflate lack of support for a state—a state with a government and an army—with hatred or suspicion of all Jewish people.
Many Jewish people may regard this distinction as purely academic. They see the critique of the Jewish state as part and parcel of the hostility toward the Jewish people. It is true, of course, that there were those who decided to spew hatred against Jews in general during anti-Israel demonstrations. For example, pro-Palestinian protests in Sydney, Australia, reportedly degenerated into chants of “gas the Jews.” A protester at a march near New York University held up a sign that showed the Star of David being chucked into the trash along with the words, “Keep the world clean.” It is also worth noting that, until 2017, Hamas’s charter spoke of a struggle against all Jews, not just Israel, making it more than a little understandable that Jews would see those hailing Hamas murderers as liberators for the Oct. 7 attack as antisemitic in addition to violently anti-Israel.
Still, we must maintain the distinction that criticism of Israel is not per se antisemitic. Americans on and off university campuses are well within their rights, even justified, in criticizing Israel and the United States for supporting its bombardment of Gaza. Further: The Palestinian flag is not antisemitic. To call for a free Palestine is not antisemitism. To push for a ceasefire, or for a change in U.S. or Israeli foreign policy, is not antisemitic. To bring a list with the thousands of names of Palestinians killed in Israel’s war on Hamas and bombardment of Gaza—this, again, is not antisemitic. To note that multiple members of the Israeli government are calling for the removal of Palestinians from the resettlement of Gaza is not antisemitic, either. Again, what should be forcefully called out and condemned is the conflation of Jewish institutions and spaces with the state of Israel. But, conversely, conflating the criticism of Israel with antisemitism should also be criticized.
Islamophobia, Antisemitism’s Fellow Traveler
Antisemitism and Islamophobia do not function in exactly the same way, and there are significant differences between the American Jewish and American Muslim experience today, particularly in the way Islamophobia has been legitimized by politicians and lawmakers. But both groups know what it is to be other-ized, to be blamed for actions on the other side of the globe.
A six-year-old Palestinian boy was stabbed to death by his landlord, who attacked him and his mother out of hatred for Palestinians and Muslims. (They had immigrated to the U.S. from the West Bank for security and a better life.) Three Palestinians were shot in Vermont; one is now paralyzed from the chest down. A Muslim friend of mine, the journalist Akbar Shahid Ahmed, was dubbed “Hamas Boy” by none other than Commentary editor John Podhoretz for reporting on members of the U.S. Congress shielding Israel’s war conduct from scrutiny.
Mosques in the United States are worried about security, and incidents of bias against Muslim Americans are reportedly on the rise, a phenomenon that has echoes in the post-9/11 moment where Islamophobia spiked. In these examples, as in the examples of antisemitism in America today, individuals are being held accountable for the actions of others, treated as foreign and threatening within their own country.
There are other parallels between the Jewish experience of yore and what Muslims are confronting today in America: American Jews can recall when they were banned or turned away from entering the United States. Indeed, President Roosevelt pushed hundreds of Jews aboard the St. Louis, seeking a safe haven during the peak of World War II, back to Europe and Germany. In a similar vein, today, Trump plans to reup his “Muslim” travel ban if he regains office; Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is insisting that the U.S. not take in any Gazan refugees, and Congressman Ryan Zinke has proposed not just to bar more Palestinians, but expel those already here.
That often the same individuals who use Islamophobic tropes also peddle antisemitic conspiracy theories in concert—for example, in suggesting Jewish billionaire philanthropist George Soros was trying to flood Europe with Muslim migrants—is still further reason to look at both as two sides of the same coin.
If we are to remain in a liberal, pluralistic society, we need to look at antisemitism and Islamophobia as expressions of the same impulse: to make it dangerous to be any kind of “other” in America, and to treat ethnic, religious and other differences as perpetually and irreversibly foreign and inauthentic to the United States.
The good (or at least better) news is that while antisemitism and Islamophobia are on the rise, so, too, is concern about them. Here, however, there are partisan differences: Both Republicans and Democrats express concerns about rising antisemitism but only Democrats seem concerned about rising Islamophopia. A Pew study from last month found that roughly half of all Democrats and Republicans (and those who lean Democratic and Republican) are concerned about increasing violence against American Jews. By comparison, while 53% of Democrats and those who lean Democratic are concerned about rising violence against Muslims in the United States, the same is true of only 22% of Republicans.
But to care about a liberal, pluralistic society is to be aware of, and to care about, both, and to not advance the security of one minority group at the expense of another. This is not a zero-sum game. Enhancing the space for one will also mean doing so for the other.
A new newsletter, If You Can Keep It, just debuted from Protect Democracy’s Ben Raderstorf. Ben recently co-authored (with his colleague Jennifer Dresden) a piece in our pages taking a closer look at political violence in America today and arguing that the increasing prevalence of political threats and intimidation is deeply corrosive to our democracy. The mission of If You Can Keep It is near and dear to our heart: shining a light on authoritarian developments so that we can more effectively combat them. Subscribe to Ben’s excellent new newsletter—it’s free!
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All of these points are excellent.
I am sure there is a lot of antisemitic activity. A great deal preceded October 7th because much of it doesn't have anything to do with Israel but it is the product of the far right white supremacist movement. It's scary no matter who does it.
One thing you don't see parity for is vicious attacks by Muslim individuals on Jewish individuals.
There are many videos of individuals verbally berating and physically threatening Muslims for some kind of sympathy toward Palestine. Some of these people are Jewish and though they claim to be afraid they certainly cannot be afraid because they are following these people screaming epithets at them or saying absolutely savage things (like the former Obama State Dept. aide muttering insane Islamophobic thoughts to the NYC vendor who could very well have been Christian given that he was Egyptian). A woman threw hot coffee on a child in a park because the father was Muslim or SE Asian or something (but it was not hot enough to burn him, thank goodness).
There does seem to be some hostility toward people who are perceived as supporting Israel (so presumably Jewish) and they are anxious in various situations, especially when they are outnumbered, as is very understandable.
Still, it's hard not to see SOME Islamophobia from people following Muslims around muttering threats to them as punching down. The videos are very reminiscent of the things white Americans do to Black Americans. The Muslims targeted by these attackers are lower down on the social ladder--as they are perceived to be non-American, immigrants, generally more hated, more suspected by police, probably lower income, etc.
A core element of Jewish identity is a narrative of Exile and Return ("Next year in Jerusalem"), and while Israel's current Gaza offensive has been brutal and counterproductive, it's equally clear (since anti-Jewish pogroms began long before 1948) that Jews aren't welcome in "Palestine."
"Palestine" was the name applied to the area by the Romans when they kicked out the Jews. If local Arabs had welcomed the returning Jews home, there'd have been no Nakba, and they'd be prospering now.
Talk about conflating "criticism of Israel" with antisemitism! How about those who conflate mere "criticism of Israel" with denial of the defining narrative of the Jews? Talk about respect for the traditions of Indigenous people! Claiming that Judaism is based on a fairy tale (or a fraud) is antisemitism -- full stop.