Is this Post Anti-Semitic?

First off, I hope the answer is no. According to my understanding of antisemitism, nothing I have ever written would qualify as being anti-Semitic. But my understanding is not the only one. There are many people who might deem a lot of my criticisms of Judaism and Jewish practices as anti-Semitic.

Before I get into the meat of the post, I'll note that antisemitism is real and appears to be on the rise. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) notes that in 2017, anti-Semitic events increased by 50% over 2016 and more than doubled since 2015. I have no reason to dispute these numbers. ADL breaks down anti-Semitic incidents between harassment, vandalism and assault, of which the first two are dominant and about equally split. Vandalism, for example, is often a very clear cut example of anti-Semitic behavior. But there are many other behaviors that aren't so clear cut. It turns out that there are lots of people who have a vested interest in muddying the waters of what is or isn't antisemitism. Let's look at these parties.

Why Racists Muddy the Waters

The first group who regularly muddies the waters are the racists and bigots, namely the anti-Semites themselves. There are lots of ways in which they operate. One obvious one is to disguise anti-Semitic statements in more banal terms. This is sometimes referred to as dog-whistling. The idea here is that other anti-Semites pick up on the terminology and recognize the speaker as one of their own. However, because the term is "hidden," they maintain plausible deniability for the rest of the population. One example of dog-whistling is the use of a term like "globalists." An anti-Semite can say this and other anti-Semites hear "Jews" while the rest of the population might hear "someone who supports international agreements at the expense of national sovereignty." People have caught onto this word, but they'll just keep on coming up with more and more dog whistles.

Another way anti-Semites benefit from muddying the waters is that they are able to expand what is considered legitimate critiques. By constantly pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable they may eventually broaden that region of acceptability. This tactic was used to great affect by Nazi Germany among others.

Here's yet another insidious way that anti-Semites use gray areas to their own benefits. Let's say you are someone who would like all Jews to leave your country. You can't just say that, at least you can't in most places. But what you can do is start agitating for things like banning ritual slaughter or circumcision. The basic idea here is that you co-opt an issue for your own anti-Semitic purposes. You get to dodge criticisms of antisemitism because you can always say that you are supporting animal rights or children's' rights. And it just so happens that there already are a lot of people who are not anti-Semitic who oppose ritual slaughter and circumcision that you can point to and essentially hide behind.

Why Religious Zealots Muddy the Waters

The other group that likes to muddy the waters is religious zealots. Let's use circumcision again as an example. There are a lot of reasons that we as a society should have a debate on whether we should be circumcising infants. However, if you are a religious Jew this is not a good debate for you to have. It's far better to dismiss it as mere bigotry. The more things you can sweep away as anti-Semitic the less you actually have to play defense. If you can claim every religious critique is anti-Semitic you never need to justify anything.

I've encountered this approach many times among religious Jews regarding biblical criticism. They will say that Wellhausen, one of the original biblical critics, was an anti-Semite therefore all of biblical criticism is an exercise in antisemitism. This is a pretty hollow attack, but it sets up a nice wall that other religious people can hide behind in order to not have to engage with the various assaults that biblical criticism mounts against traditional interpretations. The end result of all this if the religious adherent manages to broaden the definition of antisemitism to include things that aren't really anti-Semitic, then they can safely inoculate themselves and their communities against any critique that arises from that gray area. They just claim it's all antisemitically motivated and move on.

All these muddy areas make it very difficult to navigate as someone who has opinions on various features of Jewish ideology. It's probably true that anti-Semites can find stuff I write and use it on their own. After all, I have written some pretty strong criticisms of various parts of the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud. Yet by not voicing my criticisms because of fears of being labeled anti-Semitic, I'm letting both the anti-Semites and the religious zealots win. 

Nowhere is this muddy area more difficult to navigate than with regard to the state of Israel. So let's dive headfirst into this treacherous land.

Israel is a Huge Muddy Morass

When I transitioned from a religious Jew to an atheist it allowed me to take a less dogmatic view towards Israel. The religious view is that the land of Israel from the Mediterranean to the Jordan (and even a bit beyond) was granted to the Jews by divine right. Once I no longer believe that, and later found that large portions of that area where never controlled by any Jewish entity, things started getting very gray very quickly. Yet, I found the whole topic extremely difficult to get good information on.

Both sides, the anti-Semites and the religious zealots benefit from criticisms of Israel being viewed entirely in anti-Semitic black-white terms. As such, I've probably encountered more propaganda with regard to Israel than I have in almost any other issue I've tried to research. Anti-Semites use it as a way to inject some of their hatred into mainstream topics, and the religious use it to deflect any critiques. Is there a way forward to how we can possibly separate discussions about Israel from the giant anti-Semitic rhetorical swamp that surrounds it?

Natan Sharansky tried to do this. He created the 3 "D" test for whether a critique of Israel is legitimate or not. His 3 Ds are:

1. Deligitimization: referring to Israel as not a legitimate state capable of self-determination
2. Demonization: referring to groups as evil or demonic
3. Double Standards: criticizing Israel on certain issues while ignoring worse issues elsewhere

Any critique of Israel that uses one of those "D"s, according to Sharansky, is grounded in antisemitism. I agree with Sharansky about the second of those Ds. To me that seems pretty clear. But the first and the third deserve some more thought. As of now, I'm not sure whether I agree with Sharansky or not.  This is one of the things that I plan to think and write about over the next month or so. I'm not sure when the next post will be (I have some trips coming up and a change of residence). My current plan though is to tackle D1 and D3.