← Call Me Back - with Dan Senor
Loading summary
Transcript67 lines
- [00:00]
A
Before we start, I wanted to remind our listeners that we are in the process of growing ARC Media and are actively looking to fill multiple new roles, including producers, a writer, and community manager. In fact, we just opened the search for another role, news Producer. So if you're interested in being part of the future of ARC Media, please go to our careers portal on arcmedia.org and apply. You are listening to an art Media podcast.
- [00:33]
B
If you're going to call yourself an anti Zionist, you need to own the history of anti Zionism. But that requires education. We teach Nazi anti Semitism really well. We do not teach the history of the Soviet persecutions of Jews. We don't teach the history of Islamist persecutions of Jews. Are we surprised then that our kids don't know it and are willing to align with this stuff.
- [01:05]
A
9:30Am on Wednesday, January 28th here in New York City, it's 4:30pm in Israel as the body of the last hostage from Gaza, Ron Gvili, arrives in his Negev hometown of Maitar for burial. After 843 days, 12 hours and 6 minutes, the clock at Hostages Square on Monday went dark with Ron Gvili's return. In a eulogy to his son today, Itzik Gvili, the father of Ron Gvili, said, and I quote, when we opened the coffin and touched you for the first time in two and a half years, it was completely intact. Itzikvili said that IDF units dug up 250 graves in the Gaza City cemetery where his son's body was buried in their quest to find him, and that the number 250 is the numerical value of his son's name ran in Hebrew letters. In a wide ranging interview Tuesday evening following the return of the final slain hostage, Ron Gvili, Prime Minister Netanyahu said that Israel will not allow Gaza's reconstruction until terror groups disarm and reaffirmed that Israel will maintain security control over Gaza and the West Bank. Quote now we are focusing on completing the two remaining missions, dismantling Hamas's weapons and demilitarizing Gaza of arms and tunnels. Close quote Yesterday, the Financial Times reported that Israel is gearing up for discussions with the Trump administration on a new 10 year security agreement aiming to preserve US military support while indicating it is planning for a future with less direct American financial aid. On Monday, the USS Abraham Lincoln and its carrier strike group arrived in the Middle East. Upon its arrival, President Trump wrote on Truth Social, quote a massive armada is heading to Iran, moving quickly with great power, power, enthusiasm and purpose. Like with Venezuela, it is ready, willing and able to rapidly fulfill its mission with speed and violence if necessary. Close quote Trump said that he hopes that Tehran will, quote, quickly come to the table and negotiate a fair and equitable deal. No nuclear weapons, close quote the no nuclear weapons in all caps for added emphasis. We, of course, are monitoring developments in Iran closely. Ready, willing and able to drop an emergency episode if and when an attack commences. And before we move on to today's conversation, just a very brief announcement. On Sunday this Sunday, February 1st at 7:30pm Brett Stevens of the New York Times and editor in chief of SAPIR will be delivering the State of World Jewelry address at the 92nd Street Y. This is the address I delivered last last year. Barry Weiss delivered the year before. Brett's delivering it this year. It's an important event, it's an important audience, and Brett's theme and his speech and his message to all of us is very important. I have a little bit of a preview into it, so I highly encourage the Call me back community to attend. You can just go to the 92nd Street Y website to purchase tickets. Whether you want to attend in person or to access the streaming, we will link to it in the episode Description Brett always has interesting and provocative things to say, and he does and will. On Sunday night, many of you will know how big a fan I am of sapir, the quarterly journal of Jewish ideas edited by Bret Stephens, who came on this show recently to discuss U.S. foreign policy in Venezuela, the South China Sea and of course, Iran. Every issue of SAPIR is excellent, but did you know that a print subscription is free? If you haven't signed up for your free print subscription, that's right, completely free. No credit card information needed. Do it today as to not miss their upcoming issue on the theme of aspiration. As I've said in the past, they should be charging for it, but their generosity is your gain. Be sure to sign up for free@sapirjournal.org, call me back. That's sapirjournal.org callmeback. Now on to today's episode. It is news to no one listening to this podcast that anti Zionism has become completely mainstream in America and most of the Western world. In a recent essay, Our guest today, S.H. kellner, explores how a new form of anti Zionism has taken root in the United States, not just as criticism Israeli policy, but as an active political movement that manifests through protests, boycotts and institutional actions that challenge Jewish claims to self determination and political rights. A movement that many American Jews were unprepared for in terms of its rise and impact and actually unfamiliar with. But it should not be unfamiliar to many Jews around the world, including Jews who lived under other systems during the Cold War, where antisemitism was actually expressed in many of the ways that Shul says it is being expressed today, through anti Zionism, which we will get into our conversation. First, a little background on shul. Shul Kellner is a professor of Jewish studies and sociology at Vanderbilt University, which is where I first met him a few years ago when I went to campus sometime after October 7th to speak. Shul has written on social movement activism. He's a historian who studied anti Zionism in the ussr. And he is a professor who has been navigating academic anti zionism in the US since the 1990s. His most recent book, which I highly recommend, I devoured it. It's called A Cold War How American Activists Mobilized to Free Soviet Jews. And that book was a winner of the National Jewish Book Award. Shul joins us from a very snowy and icy Nashville this morning. Shul, thanks for being here.
- [07:08]
B
Hi. Hi, Dan. Thank you. Thanks for having me. It's 8:30 here in Nashville.
- [07:12]
A
You got real cred showing up for the podcast in the midst of what you guys are dealing with there. So there's a lot to cover here. I thought your essay, which we will link to in the show notes, it was interesting to me because it was sent to me by a number of people, people on the right, people on the left. So you clearly tapped into something that I think transcends, at least in the Jewish world, political leanings. And the reality is it's one of the topics that I think many of our listeners, when we get these questions, when we get take subscriber questions on the inside Call me Back podcast, it's one of the questions that keeps coming up over and and over. What to make of anti Zionism? Is it anti Semitism? Is it not? What is its real purpose? Could there be any legitimacy to anti Zionism? So, like, given this essay you just wrote and how you've been following these social movements for decades, you're the perfect person to help us navigate this. So let me just start with when and where, by your lights, did anti Zionism begin?
- [08:04]
B
Well, the anti Zionism that I've been studying began in the Soviet union in the 20th century. It's not the Jewish opposition to Zionist ideology. This was a movement that was persecuting Jews, and they didn't in the Soviet Union want to persecute Jews. In the name of Hitler's racist ideology. So they needed another justification and they had several. One of them was they were fighting Zionist imperialism. Essentially this was the label under which Soviet Jews have been persecuted for decades.
- [08:31]
A
How did it express itself? How did Jews in the Soviet Union, the former Soviet Union, experience it?
- [08:36]
B
The Soviet government shut down synagogues, they prevented Jews from having Jewish schools, Jewish newspapers. They defined things like teaching Hebrew as nationalist and therefore they essentially banned the teaching of it. These were things that the Soviet constitution had guaranteed all of the national minorities and they denied them to Jews. Then when Jews started to protest in the 1970s, 1960s, 70s, 80s and said we want out, they then persecuted them even more. So they fired them from their jobs, some of them lost their apartments, some of them, the really serious activists were sent to prison camps or into internal exiles. And all of this was in the name of fighting this so called anti Soviet ideology which they labeled as Zionism, by the way. It's not the Zionism that we know as a revival of the Hebrew language. The movement to bring Jews home to Israel. This was basically a word that they used for anything negative Jewish that they wanted to throw in under that label.
- [09:37]
A
And how would the Soviet Union or the Soviet government back then describe how they treated Jews like? They drew this distinction? They're like, look, we have no problem with Jews. We will let Jews, Jews be Jews. This is just a function of the Jewish relationship with another national state or its loyalty to another national state or. But Jewish life in the Soviet Union, they would argue, some would argue was not being persecuted.
- [10:01]
B
You know, if you want to go into Russian literature, let's say happy Soviets were all alike, unhappy Soviets were each unhappy in their own way, right? So the Jews were not deported like the Crimean Tatars. You know, they weren't starved to death in the millions like the Soviets did to the Ukrainians. So each group had its own particular brand of persecutions. The persecutions against Jews were essentially a slow squelching of identity. They were not allowed to express a positive Jewishness and they weren't allowed to gather to express any type of Jewish collectivity. The Soviet government would create a token institution here or there just to show the west that no, no, no, we're not persecuting the Jews, they're just not interested. But they basically didn't allow Jews to gather Jewishly to express Jewishness. And, and being Jewish was stigmatized. So kids were getting bullied in school and not just by their fellow students, but also by their teachers, the good teachers who tried to Help would do things like, listen, I'm not going to register your name here as Jewish. You have some Russian ancestry, so I'm going to register you as Russian and that will help you. There's a deep anti Jewishness that's baked into the system so that even the people who were trying to help were helping in ways that would squelch the Jewishness, minimize it. So it's a really, really difficult situation that Jews were in in the Soviet Union. If they couldn't express their Jewishness positively and yet they were being persecuted for it negatively, what were they going to do?
- [11:22]
A
Okay, now this is distinctive from what most American Jews before October 7th would have in mind when they describe what anti Semitism looks like or what antisemitism could look like in America and the West. They had a different vision or a different frame of reference when they would think about antisemitism than what you just described. So can you talk Most American Jews and Jews in the west thought of when they thought of anti Semitism? Because it's not that.
- [11:48]
B
Right? It's certainly not that. Look, we think of anti Semitism here as hate, as racism, as a psychology that is coming from the political right and the Soviet system. They were anti racist, they were anti anti Semitism, they were anti Nazi, and they found a different way of persecuting Jews in a different way of labeling it. But here in the States, we think of anti Semitism essentially as a prejudice, a bad psychology. And if it does get expressed politically, we're looking to the political tradition that the Nazis were an heir to and also one of the accelerators of. But the Soviet system was different and they named it differently because they were very clear that they were not like Hitler, they were not doing anti Semitism and they were opposed to it, but at the same time they were persecuting Jews. So how are they going to speak about it if they can't justify it in racist language? Right.
- [12:39]
A
So the Soviets were saying, we don't have a problem with Jews, we have a problem with Israel. I think the reason most American Jews and Jews throughout the west think of extreme right wing antisemitism as quote, unquote, anti Semitism is because it eclipsed the Soviet experience of antisemitism in the minds of so many Jews today because it was eclipsed by the Nazi experience. When they think anti Semitism, they think of Nazism and Nazism is what you just described.
- [13:00]
B
Yeah, but even when we were fighting against the Soviet persecution of Jews from the states in the 70s, 1980s, we referred to what the Soviets did as anti Semitism. That is what made it legible to us. The Soviets were saying we're not anti Semitic, and yet we insisted on labeling it anti Semitism rather than saying, okay, you want to say that what you're doing is anti Zionism. That type of treatment of Jews will accept that label. You know, that's anti Zionism. It has nothing to do with Israel. It has everything to do with the treatment of Jews in your own country and the rationales that you're using to justify it. So if you want to call it anti Zionism, that's what anti Zionism is meaning.
- [13:38]
A
If you want to call it anti Zionism, that's fine. But you should know that what you are calling anti Zionism is being used as a basis to persecute Jews.
- [13:47]
B
Yeah, there are different rationales for persecuting Jews and there are different ways that the persecutions of Jews get expressed. One of the labels, and the most common label that we'll use is antisemitism. But if we're studying it historically, that was a label that was invented in Germany in the 1800s. It was specifically referring to keeping Jews out of politics based on their race, not based on religion, but based on race. It's in their blood. They can't convert out of it. Because a lot of Jews in Germany in the 1800s were trying to integrate into German society by converting. That was sort of the deal that the governments were willing to make with them then. That was anti Semitism. But we now use that as a generic term for all anti Jewishness everywhere throughout history. And in fact, I think it's a problem. There are different ways that anti Jewishness has gotten expressed in different times and places. And by collapsing it all under one label, we're missing the variety.
- [14:40]
A
Okay, so now tell me how that movement that you've chronicled quite extensively, that happened in the Soviet Union, the anti Jewishness, let's call it anti Jewishness in the Soviet Union, or had the effect of being a mass anti Jewish movement that was both top down and bottom up. How did that wind up here in the West?
- [15:00]
B
The Soviets were trying to undermine an American Israeli alliance. They were trying to undermine American power. And one of the ways that they did that was by attacking the American ally in the Middle east, by delegitimizing Israel. And this is both for domestic consumption and also for international consumption. They begin creating essentially libels against Jews and against Israel. They introduced the genocide libel back in the 1960s. You know, long, long, long before October 2023 or November 2023, when we start hearing it here. And so they begin to popularize this. The language filters out through the New Left, the far left in the 60s and 70s, but it is largely subterranean. We don't experience it or hear about it that much because of the political situation. When we were fighting the Soviet Union during the Cold War, anti Zionist politics were also seen as an anti American politics. It was associated with the enemy in the Cold War. Once the Cold War ends, those ideas are still present. They've already moved into left political spaces. But there's not that recognition that this is part of Soviet Cold War global politics. So the memes are there, the ideas are there, and they begin to get perpetuated in lots of different places where left activist groups are working.
- [16:20]
A
Okay, so tell me why this before October 7, 2023, largely went unnoticed? In other words, when it erupted like it did on October 8, I think many of us were shocked. I suspect you were not surprised.
- [16:34]
B
I was shocked, but not surprised. Look, we noticed this before. We saw this in Durban in South Africa. We saw this playing out at the United Nations.
- [16:43]
A
This is in 2000, the Durban Conference.
- [16:45]
B
In South Africa, the Durban Conference Against Racism. In the year 2000, anti Zionist activists spent a lot of time building alliances and doing the groundwork that a good social movement should be doing. When anti Zionism was getting expressed in, say, a Brooklyn co op of boycotting Israeli food, you know, people recognized it for what it was, but at the same time, they were saying, it's a Brooklyn co op, it's only Brooklyn, it's just a co op. But these things were happening in small trickles here and there, and we missed the broader connections, we missed the broader significance. But this was the groundwork that was being laid so that when Hamas committed its, what they called its Al Aqsa flood, the anti Zionist groups were ready. And in the Jewish community in the States, we had, on the one hand ignored it, we had on another hand, minimized it when we did recognize it, because we thought that our alliances were strong and we mislabeled it. Back when we had seen this occurring, even back in Durban, we labeled it anti Semitism rather than anti Zionism. And because our default thinking is antisemitism is a politics of the right, we got ourselves in the position of now debating with anti Zionists whether their politics were anti Semitic or not. While they are boycotting Jews, while they're delegitimizing Israel, while they're treating Jews in ways that Jews should not be treated and instead of actually confronting it as it was, we got into a semantic debate. Is it anti Semitism, is it not? What was done in Durban to Jews was bad. I don't care what you label it, it was bad. They called it anti Zionism. We would have been smarter to say this. Anti Zionism is a problem. We need to be on guard for it.
- [18:25]
A
And you go back to Durban in 2000, but you could go back as far as you can go back even farther. But let's just pick another date. 1975, I think. November 1975, the UN General assembly adopts a resolution equating Zionism with racism. Passes overwhelmingly in the UN General Assembly.
- [18:42]
B
Yeah. Guess who's behind that resolution?
- [18:44]
A
Soviet Union. Yeah, right. I mean, I know our listeners have example after example after example of attacks against Jews in the name of, quote, unquote, anti Zionism, not anti Semitism, but in the name of anti Zionism that have occurred over the last two years. But sometimes there's so much of it, we just kind of lose track and we become numb to it. And it's hard to just kind of stare at the totality of it and the comprehensiveness of it. And just to give one example, like Hen Mazik, who's someone who's been an important voice since October 7, he posted on X a list of synagogues that have been set on fire or targeted with arson since October 7th. I'm just going to just think about this. October 17th, synagogue in Tunisia. October 18th, synagogue in Berlin. November 8th, synagogue in Montreal in Canada. November 18th, synagogue in Armenia. November 19th, synagogue in Lakewood in the US another one on February 28th in Tunisia. April 5th, Germany. April 10th, Russia. May 1st, Warsaw in Poland. May 17th in France, May 10th in Canada and Vancouver. I mean, I can go on and on. The list goes on. Most recently January 10th in Mississippi. January 14th. So just two weeks ago in Germany. Every time a synagogue he writes is set on fire, he has to update the list. So to be clear, you read that list and you think, really, this is just about criticizing Israel.
- [20:02]
B
Anti Zionism is about a treatment of Jews in the countries where anti Zionism is happening. And one of the ways that anti Zionism gets expressed in the States and around the world is through the torching of synagogues. Does it make you feel better to label it antisemitism? Okay, label it antisemitism. But you're missing what's happening. There was a synagogue that was torched, and just a few weeks ago, before it's rebuilt, someone scrawled Free Palestine graffiti on that synagogue. Okay, if we're gonna get into a debate about whether that graffiti then is anti Semitic versus anti Zionist, let's just be very clear. People are torturing synagogues and they are scrolling graffiti on the synagogues that are here. In this instance, it's a free Palestine, but this is a synagogue in the States. It's affecting Jews here, it's a targeting of Jews here. The rationales, the ideologies that are being used to justify this type of behavior toward Jews and is not for the most part, the ideology that was coming from Germany in the 1800s. It is an ideology whose roots trace back to the Soviet union in the 20th century.
- [21:08]
A
And how has this expressed itself? You work on a college campus. You are a close observer of what's happening on college campuses. What would you want us to understand about how this has played out in the academic world?
- [21:20]
B
Yeah, you don't really have a problem of intellectually justified, legitimate right wing anti Semitism in the professoriate. In academia. On college campuses, the treatment that we're seeing of Jews, be it Jewish students who have been harassed at the encampments for the past few years or Jewish faculty who are getting boycotted, that is coming from people who are labeling themselves anti Zionist. It's coming from the political left, and it is intellectually justified. If you had people who were coming in with right wing, racist, anti Semitic ideas, they would be laughed out of the university as intellectually unserious. But we're having an othering of Jews and a discriminatory treatment of Jews that is taken intellectually very seriously. And because it's being taken seriously intellectually, it actually has a foothold institutionally and it actually shapes the culture of academic life.
- [22:17]
A
So I think the story of what's happened in academia is very important because as you said, it has provided intellectual legitimacy for this distinction between anti Zionism and anti Semitism, which is, as you point out, it's ridiculous. It's anti Jewishness, it's othering of Jews in whatever form it comes, call it whatever you want. Synagogues are being burned down, guys. So we have a problem. But this faux distinction has been given legitimacy by academia. You're in the middle of it, you're in the belly of the beast, and you study how social movements grow and spread. And so I'm really, you're like, better equipped than anyone I know, actually to help us understand how this happened in academia. Some argue that there are foreign government actors from all over the world, particularly from the Middle east, who are sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood and they are funding American academic institutions. Others argue, no, no, no, no. There's a monoculture within academia at many American college campuses. And, and this monoculture just inbreeds. They just hire people who think like them generation after generation. This is something that's gone back decades. It's not just an anti Zionist issue. It's much bigger and broader and it's self created. Is it all of the above? You're on the front lines.
- [23:30]
B
Yeah, I think it's more of the latter. I mean, I feel like I'm in a little island of sanity here at Vanderbilt.
- [23:36]
A
It's absolutely an island of sanity.
- [23:38]
B
Yeah, but go out into the academic associations and the like. Look, there's a very narrow ideological spectrum. It'll go from far left to maybe center. And on the far left you have a lot of scholar activists. It's not about objectivity, it's about using scholarship to change the world. And when you get a whole bunch of people with very similar politics and ideological monoculture, one of the things that they'll do, and they've done this in academia, is try to create institutional change. They want to change the world and they're going to start at home by changing the places where they're working and the scholarly associations that they're in. They're opposed to Israel, they're anti Zionist for whatever reasons they will say that leads them to say we're going to boycott Israeli scholars. But it's not just a personal position that will then become a resolution at an academic association and it's going to get institutionalized. And that then creates a culture that people who are not involved in this movement are going to have to respond to. But when you have a group of really, really passionate activists, very well organized, who are essentially taking over these organizations, to fight them requires courage, requires energy. And most academics are not interested in fighting that. Most of the professors are focused on doing their own work. They're seeing what's happening in the scholarly associations. They're not that happy about it, but they're not really going to the mat to fight to save these institutions. So the institutions were weak to begin with and they were ripe for takeovers. And the activists did a good job of organizing. You know, they went after vulnerable institutional targets and they managed to take them over. And you could look at what's happening with anti Zionism in the academy as a symbol of the broader dysfunctions in the academy. A healthy system of higher education would not have this stuff. And so the question for me, as A sociologist looking at that is why institutionally, what's going on that will allow activists from one side of the political spectrum to very effectively organize in a space while activists from the other side of the political spectrum are largely frozen out of it. And I think that tells you something about the system itself.
- [25:47]
A
Okay, this is your world. You're dealing with a lot of these professors who have these very strong views and are part of the problem, as you say, even taking them at their word. Let's just say they say it's about anti Zionism, it's about us, we, the academics, rejecting Israel's right to exist, quite literally. Is there any other example where academics get organized to challenge another nation's right to exist?
- [26:11]
B
Yeah, I'm not sure that I can think of that. But it's not just a matter of individual academics. It's basically this is a matter of organized academic groups. Sociologists for Palestine, for example. Each field, each discipline has its own group that has organized, they've created a social movement and so they're trying to promote this stuff. Even if there are academics who feel this way about other countries, they're not organized to do anything about it. This group is very well organized and effective.
- [26:39]
A
Where does Islam or Islamism fit into what you wrote about?
- [26:44]
B
Different groups have different reasons, justifications for believing that Jews should not have the right to self determination. You have Marxists who have their own reasons. You have Islamists as well, who have their reasons. Their reasons are more rooted in religion, in a religious supremacism than Marxism. But they've managed to create an alliance. Most of the faculty in the States are not coming from an Islamist point of view. You know, to the extent that they're coming from an ideology, they're coming from a left ideology. The intellectual traditions that Western academics are being trained in are coming from Marx. They're not coming from the Quran.
- [27:21]
A
Well, I would say the Islamist movement writ large as we think of it is definitely capitalizing and leveraging this Marxist anti Semitism.
- [27:30]
B
Yeah, for sure.
- [27:31]
A
The Marxist antisemitism is quite useful to the Muslim Brotherhood worldview.
- [27:35]
B
Yeah, certainly, certainly.
- [27:36]
A
Okay, so I want to talk now about a segment here that we get a lot of questions about. It is Jewish Americans and Jews all over the world, although I think it's actually more of an American phenomenon than it is elsewhere in the Diaspora. But it's table that for now. I want to get to American Jews who say I stand shoulder to shoulder with the people in the encampments. I stand shoulder to shoulder with those saying Some of the most strident things about Israel because I, as an American Jew, I am anti Zionist or I am extremely critical of Israel. Where do these Jews fit into your analysis?
- [28:11]
B
Do they know the history of anti Zionism? Do they know the history of persecutions of Jews in the name of the ideology that they are? They're purporting to say that they're aligning with. In some ways, I think as a Jewish community we need to take responsibility for not teaching the history of anti Zionism. We teach Nazi anti Semitism really well. We do not teach the history of the Soviet persecutions of Jews. We don't teach the history of Islamist persecutions of Jews. So are we surprised then that our kids don't know it and are willing to align with the stuff? They have a visceral reaction against antisemitism. They know they do not want to be antisemites. They know that antisemitism is bad. And there are lots of good reasons why they have that visceral reaction. If we had taught even just a fraction of Soviet anti Zionism and Islamist anti Zionism that we taught about Nazi anti Semitism, they might have that same reaction. And they might be a little more reluctant to go and embrace the type of rhetoric and practices that we were seeing at the encampments. Or maybe not, but at least they would have made the moral choice. They did not have the ability to make the moral decision because we never educated them about that. It's one of the interesting things to me is you'll hear this is one of the tropes that you'll hear from American Jewish anti Zionists youth. You never taught me. And they're referring to Israeli Palestinian conflict. I'm skeptical about the trope itself, but I'm certain that we never taught them about Soviet anti Zionism.
- [29:36]
A
You're right that we never taught them about Soviet antisemitism. But you're also skeptical of the trope too, about the we never taught you about the Israeli Palestinian conflict. Our listeners can't see right now you're really rolling your eyes.
- [29:45]
B
What are they living under a rock? I mean, you're in the United States. The Israeli Palestinian conflict has been in the news, thoroughly covered more than any other conflict in the world for how long? It doesn't make sense to me how Americans are able to grow up without knowing something about the complexities of the conflict.
- [30:03]
A
You say this phenomenon of Jews, predominantly young Jews who are quote, unquote, anti Zionist, is much more of an American phenomenon than it is a diaspora Phenomenon. Can you explain?
- [30:13]
B
For sure, I would say, and you'll forgive me for the academic speak, it's a function of American privilege that we've had generations who have grown up in the States so secure in their position as Jews in America and so secure in the faith that America's political system is stable that they basically have not been able to empathize or put themselves in the position of Jews basically anywhere else in the world.
- [30:43]
A
But so why doesn't this exist in meaningful numbers in Australia, Canada, France? I mean I haven't traveled to Australia as our Australian listeners constantly remind us. But I haven't traveled to Australia. But I have traveled, I've spoken to communities and met with communities all throughout North America and Europe. And I sense that this, what you're describing, does not exist in those places. So what's going on in Jewish life in those places where this self loathing doesn't exist?
- [31:11]
B
I think that in the States there's a notion of American exceptionalism, that the way that Jews have been treated politically in other places won't happen here, can't happen here. And other countries don't have that sense of exceptionalism. Also they have different immigration histories. Even the difference between Canada and the U.S. so Canada is a much younger Jewish community, many, many more percentage wise descendants of Holocaust survivors and the like. So there's a generational memory in Canada that American Jews don't have. You know, that's true in other places as well, South Africa and the like. I see American Jewish anti Zionism as a very American way of being Jewish.
- [31:49]
A
I want to ask you about these words because you talk in your essay and elsewhere about the choice of words which could sound very academic, which is fitting. You are an academic. Guilty as charged.
- [32:02]
B
For the sins I have committed.
- [32:05]
A
But this issue of should we hyphenate anti Zionism, should we hyphenate anti Semitism, meaning anti hyphen Semitism, anti hyphen Zionism. Even using the word anti Zionism because it's like a code or something, it's not saying discrimination against Jews, anti Jewishness or anti Jews or whatever othering of Jews. We have these like seemingly technical, almost clinical terms that are used in the debate that we've allowed. We don't stop people from using those terms. So you, you have these views about. But that we've made our own mistake in the use of these, of the nomenclature. So can you speak to that?
- [32:40]
B
Yeah, I think part of the way that the politics of anti Zionism creates a hostile environment for Jews is while we are being treated horribly. We're being baited into having linguistic debates about what should we label the way that we're being treated. So I will try as much as I can to actually not use a noun, anti Semitism, anti Zionism and the like, but to describe the actions, the torching of synagogues, the othering of Jews, the boycotting of Israelis, the boycotting of Jewish institutions. I prefer to focus on what the actions are rather than trying to figure out what the labels are with regard to the term anti Zionism and antisemitism and the spelling. One of the ways that we're being distracted from actually fighting back is we're being told, no, no, no, no, this is not about hatred of Jews. This is just about criticism of Israel. One of the things that scholars of antisemitism realized a long time ago was that they had the same type of conversation from the anti Semites. They were saying that really, no, they are really against Jews and we need to be talking about Jews. And the scholars of antisemitism said, wait a second, you know what? We want to talk about the antisemites. We want to talk about what they're doing, how they're thinking, how they're behaving. And one of the ways that we're going to shift that focus is we're going to drop the hyphen. It's not going to be antisemitism, which is calling our attention to something, Semite, Semitism, whatever that is. We're just going to call it all one word. It's a new word, no hyphen, antisemites, antisemitism. And we're going to focus on that. I'm saying we need to do the same thing for anti Zionism. Whatever they're saying about Jews, about Israel, that's their way of talking. But we don't need to embrace that. What we need to be doing is looking at them, looking at anti Zionists and analyzing, calling out the way that they are talking about Jews, the way that they are objectifying Jews, the way that they are treating Jews. So dropping the hyphen is, at a minimum, it's a reminder to ourselves, this is not a conversation about Zionism. It's not a conversation about Zionists, quote, unquote. It's a conversation about the people who are out there torching the synagogues, boycotting our scholars, boycotting our institutions, and then catching us up in all these linguistic contortions so that we don't actually stand up to fight back against this treatment that we should not be subjected to.
- [35:11]
A
And how do you respond to Jews who say, look, I have legitimate criticisms of Israel. Yeah, okay, or anyone for that matter. How do I express it without falling into this trap of being kind of segregated in the minds of the mainstream Jewish community, of being outside the mainstream of the Jewish community?
- [35:27]
B
You want to criticize the government, Criticize the government. But don't label this anti Zionism. Don't embrace that label. You know, recognize what has been done to Jews in the name of anti Zionism. You know, criticize Israel. But don't say that that means that Jews don't have a right to self government. They're different things and they're getting conflated and Jews are conflating them in closing this out.
- [35:46]
A
Many people who turn out to these rallies or turn out to these protests and have joined the mob or you know, lived in the encampments, et cetera, et cetera, I get the sense that a lot of them have no idea what they've waded into and they are along for the ride, but they are not as inherently hostile to us as it may seem or as their numbers may represent. How do you explain that? You've been studying social movements? Sadly, this is a social move.
- [36:14]
B
Yeah, this is a social movement. It's a very effective social movement. I think that they have learned the lessons of America's Soviet Jewry campaign better than any American Jews have in terms of actually how to turn out people, create a sustainable movement, build a movement culture.
- [36:27]
A
What's the key lesson or lessons that are applicable here?
- [36:29]
B
Oh, the key lesson is you create a movement culture that will engage and make people feel good about what they're.
- [36:35]
A
Doing and then people turn out and that becomes then a community for people. Give points of connection, social inclusiveness. You're part of something.
- [36:44]
B
Right. And it's bigger than any specific policy issue. Right. So you know, the fighting in Gaza's over, but the movement's not going to end. The anti Zionist movement's not going to end. They'll just, they already have their group, they have their community. They're just going to now take that culture and move it on to some other issues. Issues of the day can change. The movement continues. But I think you're right that most of the people who turned out to the encampments, they were clueless about the history of anti Zionism. They embrace this language without really thinking about it. As a professor, it makes me sad to see these are college students and college professors in some instances. You know, without like know your history. Take Your words, seriously. But you're looking at a generation of college students who their junior high and high school years had been spent behind a screen during and after Covid. And these encampments unfortunately gave them a very, very strong, powerful sense of in person community where they feel like they're making a difference for the good of the world. And that's really, for us, it's probably the most dangerous thing because they're going to look back with a lot of nostalgia on their college years when they remember when they were out there rallying against the Zionist enemy. And for Jews, that's going to have long term echo effects.
- [37:54]
A
All right, shul, before we wrap, I guess my closing question then is how do you recommend Jews engage in this definitional debate? This definitional question is anti Zionism, antisemitism?
- [38:07]
B
I recommend that we do not engage the debate. If you're torturing a synagogue, does it matter if we label it anti Semitic or anti Zionist? If you're telling me that you're torturing the synagogue or boycotting Jews because you are against Zionism and that's how you're treating American Jews, okay, I'll take you at your word. What you're doing is wrong. It does not make the behaviors any better by changing the label. And if you're going to call yourself an anti Zionist, you need to own the history of anti Zionism. And we need to make clear to people who are using that term that this is a history. But that requires education. And before we're going to be able to educate others, we have to educate ourselves.
- [38:43]
A
All right, Shaul, thank you for doing this. I feel like we can't have these conversations enough because this, sadly, as you're saying, the war in Gaza may be over, but this movement is not going away. It does feel a little bit like the new normal.
- [38:55]
B
Yeah. Thank you, Dan.
- [38:57]
A
Thank you. Stay warm.
- [38:59]
B
I'll try.
- [39:09]
A
That's our show for today. If you value the Call Me Back podcast and you want to support our mission, please subscribe to our weekly members only show, Inside Call Me Back. Inside Call Me Back is where Nadavael Amit Segal and I respond to challenging questions from listeners and have the conversations that typically occur after the cameras stop rolling. To subscribe, please follow the link in the show notes or you can go to arkmedia.org that's arkmedia.org call me back is produced and edited by Lon Benatar. Arc Media's executive producer is Adam James Levin. Already our production manager is Brittany Cohn, sound and video editing by Liquid Audio Community Management by Gabe Silverstein. Our music was composed by Yuval Semo. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan. Senor.