Chanukah is coming. If you know me at all, you will know that I have conflicted feelings about the holiday. I welcome any holiday that brings us together as a community, and as a people, to share our heritage. I love the lights and the latkes, and it was always a bright moment of belonging when I young.
But I bristle at how the traditional (and a-historical) story of Chanukah and the Maccabees promotes orthodoxy and violence, and how the holiday is – and has long been – a celebration of Zionism. I can only imagine how it will be warped this year to promote a murderous Maximalist Zionism.
This year, in the midst of the War on Gaza, let’s try to re-configure Chanukah as a celebration of freedom from oppression for everyone, including Palestine. Let’s light our candles to illuminate the darkness around us.
I wrote this in social media as I made preparations to light the Chanukah lights for eight nights to commemorate the legendary liberation of the Jewish people almost 2,200 years ago. The real story was, of course, much more complex than the myth, of course, but the act of lighting the lights has taken on a special significance for all of us. This is how we stand-up to be counted, by placing our chanukias in the window for all to see.
Rabbi Brant Rosen wrote this week that, this year, we can use that light to guide us to justice in Gaza; it is a notion that I embrace, even if I recognize that many of my community would find it heresy.
And, to be honest, I am finding it hard to see the bright light of hope after two months of a brutal war that, with unqualified American military support, seems likely to grind on indefinitely or, the horrific thought came to me in a sleepless night, until there is no one else left to die. In my despair, my social media commentary has evolved in a series of Nietzschean aphorisms as I grope for some wisdom in the growing darkness.
What else is there to say?
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I’m sure that I am not alone in this, but I have not been sleeping well for the last two months. At least twice a week, I barely sleep at all. Last night was one of those nights. So, I’m going on, maybe, three hours. So… If I seem even more scattered than usual, and I haven’t gotten back to you emails and PMs, that is why. And I will endeavor to get to those as soon as consciousness has returned.
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Antisemitism is not worse now than it has been in the recent past. It has always been bad. If you think that it is worse, that is only because you have been ignoring or excusing it. The State of Israel’s brutal war on Gaza has not stimulated a “surge in antisemitism.” Expressions of antisemitism by people like Elon Musk, for example, were not inspired by his position on the war. Nor was Marjorie Taylor Greene’s “Jewish Space Lasers” comment, or the Meer One mural praised by Jeremy Corbyn, or the massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. Antisemitism is a feature – indeed, a foundational feature – of Euro-American culture.
There has been a surge of criticism of the State of Israel because its flagrant violations of international law and Palestinian human rights happen to be on everyone’s mind right now, and because people who are appalled by slaughter of civilians in Gaza are speaking out. While I have no doubt that some of the people expressing such criticism embrace antisemitic beliefs because antisemitism is, in fact, so pervasive in Euro-American culture, that does not mean that such criticism is, in and of itself, antisemitic.
This surge of criticism of the State of Israel has, however, been characterized as “antisemitic” by the State of Israel and its Zionist proxies in the Diaspora. This is a weaponization of the CHARGE of “antisemitism” in order silence critics of the State of Israel, which is a geopolitical entity and not the Jewish people, by a government and an ideological movement that is comfortable with allying itself with actual antisemites in the global extreme right and the Christian nationalist movement.
The effect of this is to elide actual antisemitism where it exists in the Diaspora (and especially in the United States) and to put Diaspora Jews at risk.
The kid protesting on campus against the killing of Palestinian civilians is not acting as an antisemite. John Hagee, the Christian nationalist pastor who was invited to speak at last month’s pro-Israel rally in Washington is an actual antisemite, and his “Christian Zionism” is, at its very core, virulently antisemitic; Elon Musk is an actual antisemite, and he is a friend and supporter of Benjamin Netanyahu. Their every action is, to some extent, antisemitic, and they have been embraced by Zionists.
Please learn to tell the difference between criticism of the State of Israel and actual antisemitism which, often enough, is strongly Zionist.*
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* White/Christian Nationalists and Maximalist Zionists want the same thing; they want to make America (and Canada, and Europe, etc.) Judenrein and send all the Jews to their “homeland.” They believe that those Jews who do not go where they “belong” deserve no consideration, rights, or protection.
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We have arrived at that point where I am too “anti-Zionist” for many Zionists, and insufficiently “anti-Zionist” for many anti-Zionists. I regard myself as a non-Zionist Jew, however. Feel free to ask about that, sometime.
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The utter devastation of Gaza and the shocking civilian casualties are not incidental to the State of Israel’s goal, they are the goal. That is important to keep in mind. The 6,000 dead children are not unfortunate collateral damage; they are the targets. This is how the State of Israel wages war.
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To be honest, I cannot understand why anyone would think that killing people is EVER a good thing to do.
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The fact that Palestinian deaths are more than 16,000, compared to @ 1,200 Israelis, and that the IDF enjoys a manpower advantage of 13.5:1 really tells you all you need to know about this war.
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I called out a Christian friend for an offensive cultural appropriation (they were lighting a Chanukiah in “solidarity”), and they were so deeply offended that they blocked me. Which is kind of the proof of the appropriation – Jewish rituals and practices do not belong to us; they are the property of everyone, even Christians.
Sigh.
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Sexual violence is abhorrent. We must denounce it whether the perpetrator is a Hamas terrorist, or an Israeli soldier or settler.
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Now that the leaders of the land have cleared everything up and equated anti-Zionism with antisemitism, all we have to do is to define anti-Zionism. Am I an anti-Zionist if I am critical of the State of Israel, if I believe that legitimate “defense” has limits and should not include the use of disproportionate military force against civilian targets means to obliterate civilian and military infrastructure, if I believe that the freedom and self-determination only has meaning if it is universal, that national governments should follow international law and honor their treaty obligations, if I believe that a foreign government in which I have no vote or say does not represent me, if I believe, as a Jew, that we have an obligation to pursue justice, repair the world, and respect the sanctity of human life above all other consideration? In other words, does my humanity and my commitment to the values of Judaism now make me an anti-Zionist and thus, an antisemite?
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Denying a Jew’s Jewish identity is, in fact, an egregious form of antisemitism.