People are being labeled as anti-Semitic who are the opposite of anti-Semitic. What harm does this do?

In the heated media environment that has followed the explosion of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, many opinions are meeting instant censure, with anyone who posits that Palestinians have rights equal to others, running the risk of being fired from their jobs, silenced, de-platformed and doxed as anti-Semites or Nazi-sympathizers. 

The problem with this knee-jerk moralism and authoritarianism is that the concept being censored is one of the oldest, most distinguished ideas of American liberal democracy.

The idea that everyone should have equal treatment under the law is enshrined in our Constitution. The phrase “all men are created equal” is the aspirational beacon in the Declaration of Independence. No ideas are more American than these.

Long before the Bill of Rights codified religious freedom as the law of the land, the American colonies had already attained first-hand experience with the problems of mixing church and state. From conservative theocracies in New England that brutally executed Quakers and others who deviated from the ruling religious doctrine—the Quakers forced the issue through civil disobedience until draconian religious laws were abandoned—to a spillover of the religious civil war in England between Catholics and Protestants into open violence and persecution in the colony of Maryland, Americans developed an antipathy for religious sectarianism. Americans were interested in commercial enterprise, as well as the all-consuming racial wars that have roiled the land for centuries. With money to be made, and an imperative for racial solidarity, the benefit of separating church and state was self-evident.

When the great legal mind Louis Brandeis became the voice of the American Zionist movement in the early 20th century, he found there was no great appetite among American Jews for the colonial enterprise in Palestine. They felt they had found their promised land in America. Because of this idea of religious pluralism, Jews had prospered in America in contrast to the persecution they faced in Europe and other places.

People who stand up for this principle of equality, both in the past and in the present moment, many of whom are Jews themselves, are clearly not anti-Semitic. The principle and the people who have advocated for it have been steadfast allies to Jewish people throughout American history, as well as to Muslims and other minorities who have likewise built a life here.

Brandeis, who expanded individual and civic rights in numerous ways while serving on the Supreme Court, felt the way to get American Jews and the American public on board with Zionism was to sell the idea that Zionism could be equated with Americanism, that our brand of pragmatism that brings prosperity and freedom could be applied anywhere in the world.

For all his admirable qualities and all the idealistic intentions of Zionism, there is a flaw in what Brandies was thinking and advocating. He simply failed to consider that the heart of Americanism was religious freedom ensured by the separation of church and state, and the equality to which all people have a right.

Let’s realistically distinguish between these different groups. Who were the Nazis in reality? They formulated the ultimate expression of European white supremacy, an idea that had been promulgated around the globe for several centuries by multiple European colonial powers, against not merely Jews but any population whose skin pigmentation did not conform to European standards of superiority. 

In articulating this ideology, the Nazis took control of the largest industrial state on the continent and soon developed an omnipotent military force. With this power, they nominated themselves as the arbiter of who lived and who died. It was this vast power harnessed by the Nazis that was the prerequisite for the Holocaust.

The Palestinians are clearly not European white supremacists and bear no responsibility for the Holocaust which was carried out by Europeans. Their antipathy to Israeli colonialists who have taken their land seems justifiably earned. Palestinians, in contrast to the Nazis, have almost no power, military or otherwise, when the key ingredient for carrying out a genocide is overwhelming, one-sided hegemony. 

Even with strong emotions which easily rise to the level of hatred, Palestinians are far from meeting the threshold for genocidal Nazis.

The apparently subversive American principle of equality is under attack, not because it is sympathetic or indifferent to Nazis, but because it offers an inconvenient counter-argument to the proponents of Israeli policies. The case for Israel’s course of collective punishment and denial of rights is being built on the idea that there is one race of people who are so debased and so evil that they simply do not deserve equal rights. Hence, the endless equating of Palestinians with Nazis, with ISIS, with any demonic specter which will convince people that they are merely getting what they deserve.

Introducing the American idea that all people are created equal conjures the logic that if Israelis have a right to self-defense, then so too do Palestinians have a right to self-defense. They have the right to form military groups to fight a military occupation. If a city has been under siege for 17 years, the people in that city have a right to try to break that siege with whatever violent spasm, against whatever impossible odds, that they feel will further their cause for freedom for their families and loved ones.

But if we want to conflate that principle, that all people are created equal and have equal rights, with Anti-Semitism, what happens when the real Nazis show up? And that is not a hypothetical. Who will be the allies of Jewish people? European white supremacists, with whom Israel currently makes common cause in many countries? Or the advocates of pluralistic, religiously tolerant societies, where different kinds of people can live together in peace?

Jewish people are isolating themselves from their natural allies. That hardly makes them or the world safer. And it is proving devastating to American democracy and discourse.

Doug Rogers is a musician, composer and carpenter who lives in Long Eddy, NY.