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Five Jewish false beliefs about domestic antisemitism

Many American Jews are unprepared to acknowledge that left-leaning groups and the institutions with which they identify hold them in bigoted disregard.

The remains of a missile fired from Iran into the Jewish state, seen in the forests of Safed in northern Israel on  Oct. 6, 2024. Photo by David Cohen/Flash90.
The remains of a missile fired from Iran into the Jewish state, seen in the forests of Safed in northern Israel on Oct. 6, 2024. Photo by David Cohen/Flash90.
Kenneth Levin
Kenneth Levin is a psychiatrist, historian and author of The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege.

While most American Jews are interested in supporting the well-being of the Jewish community and Israel, the prominence accorded these issues in shaping people’s political priorities varies widely. Yet to the extent that these issues do rank high in the political thinking of much of the community, their translation into continued, overwhelming support for Democrats reflects the embrace of several false beliefs regarding the party, American Jewish well-being and Israel.

Five of them are: 

  1. Antisemitism in America is mainly a right-wing, conservative phenomenon.

This is a long-standing conviction among Jews that can be traced to their forebears’ experiences in late 18th- and 19th-century Europe—that the extension of civic rights to Jews largely garnered more support from liberal cadres than from conservatives, although this pattern was not consistent. Polls of American Jewish opinion throughout many decades have revealed a vast majority believing antisemitism to be more rife among American conservatives than liberals; however, actual surveys of American opinion regarding Jews do not support this belief. One might have expected that the emergence, particularly in the last decade, of leftist-dominated American academia as the chief institutional bastion of domestic antisemitism would have led to some questioning of the long-held association of Jew-hatred primarily with the right. But it has generally not done so. One might likewise have expected that since Jewish fealty to the Democrats has been grounded in the perception of the Democrats as the traditionally liberal party and, therefore, more congenial for Jews, the rejection in recent years by much of the American left and the Democratic Party of basic liberal principles would have led to a rethinking of old assumptions. An example of abandoned liberal principles is the commitment to free speech now being attacked on campuses. Another is a commitment to judging individuals by the content of their character rather than their group identity, also rejected by key left-dominated institutions. But again, there is little evidence of such a rethinking by American Jews even as the Republican Party has become the major political defender of such principles. Certainly, the vile antisemitism of far-right, white-supremacist and neo-Nazi sources has been garnering significant support on social media in recent years. Media personality Tucker Carlson’s popularity and his promotion of such rightist mouthpieces for Jew-hatred as the unhinged Candace Owens and Holocaust-denier “historian” Darryl Cooper are notable examples. But the other major sources of antisemitism—the progressive left and Islamists (the so-called red-green alliance) and black radicals—have penetrated much more into the American mainstream. In addition, they often make common cause with white supremacists and neo-Nazis. Any examination of social-media accounts belonging to Islamists and black radicals will, not infrequently, find praise of Hitler and the Nazi agenda, and the admiration goes the other way as well. In addition, the recent burgeoning of antisemitism in the United States, again largely from leftist, Islamist and black-radical sources, has been accompanied by a reluctance of the Democratic Party to address the hate. In Congress, there has been a consistent pattern to avoid discussion of the issue or to insist that any discussion be immersed in a wider consideration of bigotry. The recent greater attention to the issue in the House of Representatives has been a result of Republican control of the House. Yet the belief that Jew-hatred is promoted primarily by the right remains an article of faith for many American Jews.

  1. Left-wing anti-Jewish sentiment is rooted in hostility to Israel.

This false belief is largely grounded in wishful thinking. Many American Jews are simply unprepared to acknowledge that left-leaning groups and the institutions with which they identify hold them in bigoted disregard. Therefore, they prefer to interpret that disregard as Israel’s fault. Much of the domestic anti-Jewish sentiment is indeed couched in anti-Israel or anti-Zionist terms, with any animus towards Jews often explained by bigots as stemming from Jewish support for Israel. But the wholesale attacks on Jews at college campuses and in the streets since the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in southern Israel ought to have raised some doubts about such explanations. In fact, there has been a domestic, left-dominated campaign fostering Jew-hatred that is only loosely linked to Israel. The diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) movement, ubiquitous in its academic spawning grounds and in much of corporate America, promotes Jew-hatred by categorizing Jews as privileged whites and by singling them out as particular beneficiaries of racist advantage by virtue of their being disproportionately successful. Jews are also viewed as proper targets of DEI venom because of their history of supporting meritocracy. These rationales for peddling Jew-hatred are distinct from and not simply secondary to anti-Israel bias, even though that bias—with Israel caricatured as a white-colonial project—is another facet of DEI hate-mongering.

  1. Left-wing hostility to Israel is due to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing Israeli policies.

Israeli political sentiment has swung to the right in the past two decades in response initially to the terror war unleashed by PLO leader Yasser Arafat in 2000. The rightward shift was subsequently reinforced by Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005; the territory’s seizure by Hamas two years later; and the multiple Hamas-initiated wars since then. But to believe that this right-ward swing in Israeli politics is the source of left-wing anti-Israel animus in America is to ignore the reality that such animus is widely directed at the very existence of the nation and not simply its political shifts. The canards of racism, apartheid and genocide emanating from the campuses, elements of the media and the nation’s cultural elites, as well as from some members of Congress, have nothing to do with a particular Israeli government. And when President Joe Biden withholds weapons amid a war initiated by Hamas—and Vice President Kamala Harris endorses his doing so and promises to do more of the same if elected president, or when both press for an immediate ceasefire and allowing Hamas to survive with an opening to reconstitute itself—that puts Israel and its people in danger. The false belief that the American leftist hostility to Israel is due to the current right-wing political dominance in Israel is—like the false belief that antisemitism in America is due to anti-Israel hostility—a matter of wishful thinking. Many Jews want to believe that the leftist elites with whom they identify and who are so hostile to Israel are only hostile to its leadership, and that their bigoted anti-Israel rhetoric is not as hateful and as directed against Israel’s very existence as it obviously is.  

  1. Israel has been remiss in not promoting a Palestinian state and doing so would resolve left-wing hostility.

An obvious retort to this false belief is to cite all the times that Israel has offered the Palestinians a state only to have the offer rejected, as in 2000 and again in 2008. But a more substantive response is to note that there has never been a Palestinian leadership that has been willing to accept a state alongside Israel. On the contrary, Palestinian leaders have time and again insisted that they would never recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state in any part of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. And all have used their schools, mosques and media to promote genocidal antisemitism and to incite their people to pursue Israel’s annihilation. This is, of course, true of Hamas, which declares in its charter that it has a religious duty to kill the world’s Jews. And it is true of the Palestinian Authority, which offers generous cash rewards to Palestinians (shaheeds or “martyrs”) who kill or at least try to kill Jews, and which indoctrinates its children to dedicate themselves to Israel’s destruction. Additionally, calls on college campuses and in the streets for Palestinian liberation “from the river to the sea,” coupled with the repetition of those calls by left-wing advocates of the Palestinian agenda, provide further proof that offers of a Palestinian state alongside Israel will not end left-wing hatred.

  1. Democratic assertions of commitment to Israel’s defense prove that the left is no threat to Israel’s well-being, but rather, a guarantor of it.

Administration officials, including Biden and Harris, reiterate that Washington’s commitment to Israel’s defense is “ironclad.” But neither pushing for a ceasefire in Gaza nor withholding all but defensive weapons is supportive of Israel’s struggle for survival. In Gaza, there are policies that allow Hamas to survive, potentially rebuild its power and attempt to fulfill its promise of repeating the Oct. 7 massacre. More broadly, Israel’s fending off Iran, which is close to becoming a nuclear power and consistently declares its objective of eradicating the Jewish state, requires more than defensive weapons. So, too, does combating Iran’s myriad proxies—the circle of fire Iran has established around the Jewish state. It requires Israel to be equipped with the means to go on the offensive against those sworn to annihilate it. When, in April, Iran attacked Israel with hundreds of drones and missiles—and the attack was effectively countered—Biden insisted that Israel not respond. As though an attack’s being blunted should somehow exempt Iran from any action to deter it from its promised future aggression. Iran is free to pursue a war against Israel, either directly or through its proxies, but Israel is pressured not to counterattack and denied weapons for doing so. Purely defensive weapons won’t prevent Iran from realizing its nuclear ambitions and presenting a still greater threat. Imagine if America, when it was aiding Britain in the many months between the start of World War II and America’s entry into the war, had told the British that it would only provide them with defensive weapons but not with arms that would enable them to take the war to the Nazis.

American Jews like to think of themselves as a particularly well-informed part of the electorate. But their vulnerability to being swayed by wishful beliefs while ignoring undeniable facts is real and dangerous. It all too often results in political choices that are detrimental to the well-being of both the domestic Jewish community and Israel. 

The opinions and facts presented in this article are those of the author, and neither JNS nor its partners assume any responsibility for them.
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