So, Jews are supposed to be conservative now. They
aren't, by and large -- but evidently they're supposed to be.
According to what story? To understand ourselves, we need to find out what story we're in. Let's do the same thing as a society: what story are we in, and what do Jews have to do with Trump?
Depending on how the story plays, "the Jews" are a wedge issue. The Arab world has been using that wedge to divide America and can also use it to distract their own restive populations at home. If that's your story, what's not to like?
Within western civilization, one side of the story is connecting Jews with money and blaming them for the economy. On the other side, conversely, are stories that connect Jews with socialism, communism and radicalism in general.
I learned somewhere that the Soviet Union initiated the Zionists-as-Nazis meme back in the '50s to sow division and antagonism in the West, yet the rapidity with which the story ignited and spread surprised even them. Supposedly the meme also became big in Germany in the second generation after the Holocaust. Anti-Zionism took off in Europe in concert with anti-colonialism and anti-Americanism -- understandable among America's adversaries, or those for whom America was a symbol of evil, or those who simply thought America needed taking down a peg. Stories are political.
At first America was relatively sheltered from anti-Israel and anti-Zionist propaganda. Although I felt foreshocks as early as the '80s, people like me who had been conditioned to keep their heads stuck in the sand could continue to do so. The anti-Zionist story remained hidden or on the fringes.
Not until I became involved in a liberal (that is, left-leaning) church I attended with my Christian husband was I fully confronted with this narrative to which they were receptive and were actively spreading. Around the same time, anti-Zionism was emerging on American university campuses, where Jews were increasingly being denigrated as "Zionists."
These experiences of mine began a dozen years ago, but when, looking for help in understanding and coping with the story, I turned to the Jewish community -- or, in my case,
returned to the Jewish community -- I was still being told how there's so little antisemitism in America and how lucky we are. That, too, has changed, although it's very difficult, almost impossible, for liberal Jews (the majority of Jews I know) to acknowledge that that this part of the story has been coming from the left, including liberal churches and clergy we consider allies.
In the story, from the perspective of much of
liberal America,"good Jews" are the ones who don't act too Jewish or practice Judaism and especially the ones who condemn Israel. The story makes it a no-no for Jews to love or maintain any positive connection to Israel at all -- a hard sell for most Jews. In other words it's a polarizing story whereby a Jew is "for 'em or against 'em" -- "for
us or against
us." That makes it easy to say who "the bad Jews" are: all the rest.
That makes for a story with a clear and present "bad guy:" Jews.
That also makes for a conspiratorial story. As such, Jews are frequently characterized as holding undue influence over America's foreign policy. Often, on the sophisticated left, other terms -- neocons, neocapitalists, neoliberals (as well as "Zionists") -- are substituted for "Jew." Sounds better and provides cover, plausible deniability, and even blindness to the workings of one's own thought processes. Permits the storyteller du jour to claim they are just telling it like it is.
Anti-Zionism justifies putting all Jews except for the self-proclaimed good ones -- those who have "converted to" the dominant story -- into the same basket with Israel. Doing so is framed as "just criticizing Israel," rather than, say, antisemitism.
Theological arguments can be brought to bear in support of the story, the claim, for example, that Jews "misunderstand" their covenant to be about the land or fail to jettison their particularity in recognition that "all are one in Christ." (Perhaps related to the latter, it remains a meme that Jews got persecuted because they "set themselves apart.")
And so the story became useful as a political tool of division, in the process, exacerbating the division among Jews themselves. We've got an echo chamber going: Jews calling each other "self-hating" and, meanwhile, in the populace at large, the left and right taking turns saying which Jews are the "bad" ones.
Trump has bought into the story, except for him the
good Jews are the very ones the left says are
bad. He agrees with the left in casting Jews as conservative, nay,
Trumpist. They're loyal, to themselves, Israel, and him.
The story not only became useful as a tool of division for those standing outside of America but also provided a useful political tool for the left -- the proverbial "common enemy," or scapegoat, being a tempting way to assemble a following in rough times. It's easier and safer to say who you're against than to call attention to what you're for.
To be effective, a story must work. We know we shouldn't hate or hold others up for hateful treatment, but claiming Jews "deserve it" opens a loophole.
It does not hurt that saying Jews do deserve it has a long tradition. The story seems new, and in a sense
is new to those born since World War II. However, we should say "new all over again," for it is
not new.
Relatively subtle until recently, hidden behind some church doors or restricted to campus, only after much prior effort and in the last few years has it jumped the firebreaks into the public square.
Is the story anti-Israel but not anti-Jew? So claim its proponents. But only the intellectual elite can keep the two apart in their story, and even then not for long. I've come to consider as sophistry the epiphenomenon of advice on 'when it's okay to criticize Israel,' since critique of Israel the
country and
anti-Zionism are two different entities, apples and oranges.
In the story from the left, anti-Zionism masquerades as a social-justice movement, just as, a hundred years ago, antisemitism was "science."
The Zionism of the story is a hijacked term that has been turned into a pejorative, "Zio" being a stand-in for "Jew" in its old pejorative sense.
What
Zionism means outside of that dominant story is a wish for a homeland for the Jewish people, and, now that there
is a homeland,
gratitude for that homeland. That's a simplified version of what Zionism is in the Jewish people's own story. Anti-Zionism has no beneficial impact on the country of Israel. It does not move it to the left. It does not further the anti-Zionists' stated goal of peace. Instead, the more Israel is attacked or demonized, the
more right-wing it becomes. Meanwhile Israel's denouncers cling to their narrative. It's their story and they're sticking to it.
Trump's reversal of the story won't help. It too is polarizing. Israel, from the other angle all bad, is now supposed to be all good. Neither is true. And watch out for friends like Trump.
Well, of course, the other side already had
Jew standing in for
conservative since whatever they don't like is represented by
Jew. The difference being, naturally, that those other guys were more subtle about it.
From the first, Christians created an alternate "Judaism" to define themselves over and against. The antidote is for
Jews to say what Judaism is.
According to Karen L. King, the early church took from Judaism what was popular and called that "Christianity;" they called the residue "Judaism." They made that residue their foil and Jews their Other.
Being the Other means standing for whatever is wrong and bad. Having an Other means having a garbage dump -- somewhere to put whatever you don't want to keep, including internal conflict.
Especially internal conflict. The Other morphs as the story requires. When "white" was
good, Jews weren't quite, and now that it isn't, Jews are the essence of whiteness.
In this story, a Jew is a political statement. "The Jews" are now to stand for the right wing, the Trumpists, notwithstanding that most Jews are liberals.
Thus we have Jews being told what they are, put in their place. They have their designated role to play in somebody else's story. To coin a phrase, It's the
story, stupid.
Trump is only amplifying what was already reverberating around society, making it explicit and saying it out loud. And with friends like Trump, you
don't need enemies.
...The antidote being to speak up.
