"... But They're Doing Great" at UW

The University of Washington has just released a joint task force report on antisemitism and Islamophobia on its campus. I haven't read it cover-to-cover, but I have looked it over, and it seems to be an excellent and thoughtful report on an obviously touchy subject, for which the authors deserve kudos.*

There's a lot of interesting data to sift through, but there was one chart in particular that stood out to me, and not in a good way.

For those who can't read the chart, it asks a set of affected campus constituencies (e.g., Palestinians, Israelis, Jews, Muslims) how they assess the campus climate for themselves and all the other groups. The results were basically that each group said "things are awful for us and ours, but they're doing great!" So, for instance, when Israelis were asked this question, they overwhelmingly reported a hostile campus climate for Israelis and Jews, but generally reported that the campus was comfortable for Arabs, MENA people, Muslims, and Palestinians. Palestinian respondents reported the opposite -- they thought the campus climate was swell for Israelis and Jews, and terrible for Arabs, MENA people, Muslims and Palestinians.

I'll leave aside the first half of the equation ("things are awful for us") for now, though it's bad enough. One could I guess try to contest it if one wanted to, but I see little reason to doubt that the relevant communities are accurately reporting their own experiences in what has almost universally been characterized as a very rough year. But for the latter half of the finding ("... they're doing great") the polarization in responses is especially disturbing. 

The best case explanation I can think of is a failure of empathic imagination. Over many years, I've observed variations of this phenomenon where one's own lived experience of hurt and marginalization is paired with a decided conviction that everybody else is getting life fed to them on a silver platter. This certainly is part of my story around "Us Too-ism" -- everybody else supposedly can get a hostile speaker canceled at the first sign of discomfort, so why not us too? -- but it long predates it. Eight years ago I was writing about circumstances at Oberlin where both Jewish and Black students contrasted tepid community responses to discrimination targeting them with what they saw as "hypervigilant" reactions enjoyed by the other. That post in turn referenced a post almost ten years before that about the "pane of glass" which is obvious to someone standing in one position and invisible to their neighbor looking from a different vantage. We're all able to see the pane of glass standing as an obstacle in front of us, while blind to the pane of glass similarly blocking our neighbor.

And so, perhaps, at UW. The Jewish and Israeli students feel lonely and isolated. They look over at the encampments and the teach-ins and the flag-wavings and think "how lucky they have it -- clearly, the community has their backs when they cry out." The Muslim and Arab and Palestinians students, meanwhile, feel hyperscrutinized and overpoliced. They observe the congressional hearings and the discipline meted out to protesters and think "how lucky they have it -- look how responsive the powers-that-be are to them when they claim injury!" Both groups feel as if they're walking on eggshells, both feel that the tremendous stress and strain they are under is being ignored. In concept, this shared vulnerability could be a vector for solidarity and compassion -- these feelings are commonalities, not distinctions. But the problem is this shared vulnerability isn't perceived as shared at all, but rather unique, and that further entrenches the feeling of loneliness.

And this, as I said, is what I'd consider the best case scenario. Another explanation for the polarized responses is that we're seeing, not a failure of imagination, but a motivated refusal to acknowledge the vulnerability of the "other side", in favor of a constructed image where their power can be contrasted with our weakness. I would not be the first to observe that there is a strand of contemporary politics that aggressively valorizes weakness and vulnerability as its own justification for political solidarity. Though sometimes identified with the identity politics left, there's actually no intrinsic political cadence to this -- the right makes this move all the time. Who can forget when Breitbart, playing off investigations into "Big Oil" or "Big Pharma", created an entire subsection of his website dedicated to resisting the overawing power of "Big Peace"(!)? And of course, the contemporary right contains no shortage of claims that it stands against the elites, the powerful, the globalist cabal -- all attempts to claim the mantle of weakness against the evils of strength.

The true cynic would point to this politics to explain why each group is so emphatic about its own vulnerability -- it wants to stay on the right side of the empathy line. As I said, I don't think one needs to go that far -- I think it is more than likely that each group is accurately recounting its own experiences about itself. The point is, though, that where vulnerability (or at least the perception thereof) is a political resource, it can become a strategic imperative to deny it to one's competitors. Acknowledging that a given community -- Jews and Israelis, or Palestinians and Muslims -- are in a vulnerable state means acknowledging them as valid subjects of empathic concern and legitimating some flow of solidaristic political resources in that direction. Denying that acknowledgment can obstruct that flow, and better maintain an asymmetry in who is worthy of care and concern. Even in circumstances where antagonism isn't that overt, where resources of care and concern are assumed to be scarce, there still will be the temptation to withhold that acknowledgment and try to direct the flow to oneself.

The reason why this is worse that the first explanation is that it isn't something that can be resolved just by expanded imaginative capacities. Again, it speaks to a motivated refusal to recognize the aforementioned joint vulnerability. It's not just ignorance, there are reasons behind it. The work of overcoming this refusal to extend empathy means, in a very real sense, insisting on sharing a political resource that feels very much in short supply with a group that may in important respects feel like a rival. That is not an easy task, least of all in present climates.

Which is the true explanation? To be honest, I suspect there's a little of column A and a little of column B. That does give me a little hope, because I still believe -- justifiably or not -- that there are enough people who won't run away from their expanded empathic imagination such that, once they're peeled away from their more fundamentalist fellows, a new core of solidarity can emerge. Maybe that's wishful thinking on my part. But I don't see much of an alternative.

* I also read a critique of the report issued by a small group of Jewish UW stakeholders (I actually read the critique before the original document). I'm not a member of the UW community myself, and so you can take what I say with a grain of salt. But to be perfectly honest I found the critique to be churlish, even petty, clearly partisan in its motivation, and ultimately not at all compelling. 

The overall theme of the critique was a contention that the report was intentionally suppressive of anti-Zionist/pro-Palestinian Jewish viewpoints and so generated skewed conclusions. That contention was extremely weakly supported -- it seemed to me that the critics came in spoiling for a fight and made a series of tendentious or stretched inferences to justify picking one. For example, a single passing mention of the IHRA antisemitism definition (which the report said it "took into consideration along with other definitions", and then never mentioned again) inspired a veritable temper tantrum by the critics and a demand that the university instead adopt the Jerusalem Declaration of Antisemitism as its preferred definition (ironic, since JDA at its inception insisted that it should not be used as a definition of antisemitism in official proceedings!). It also lambastes the report for "attacks" on DEI work, but there is no such attack -- the report actually recommends incorporating antisemitism education and training into existing DEI structures. One can contest the mechanisms through which that incorporation would occur, but this is not an "attack" in any sense -- so where on earth is this defensiveness coming from other than preloaded beliefs that reports such as this are presumptively part of an anti-DEI crusade?

Perhaps the most serious allegation contained in the critique is its speculation that the report authors skewed their focus groups toward pro-Israel identifying students. This is a very grave charge, but the critics give absolutely no concrete evidence to support it. Literally their only basis for making this claim was that "one focus group was held at UW Hillel (an organization with standards of partnership that explicitly disallow affiliation with Jews critical of the state of Israel)." That and that alone was sufficient for the critics to assert with confidence that "We know" (we know!) "that whatever steps were taken were not sufficient" to ensure proper representational diversity.

This is absurd on a multitude of levels. First, the critic's position apparently is that an attempt to connect with the UW Jewish community should have a blanket policy of refusal to work with Hillel (again, their complaint is that one focus group was held there), which is an absolutely wild claim to make and utterly incompatible with actually trying to get a deep cross-section of the UW Jewish community. Second, it's simply false to say Hillel's partnership standards "explicitly disallow affiliation with Jews critical of the state of Israel." The partnership standards aren't directed at students qua students to begin with, and they are a fair flight more specific than targeting those who are merely "critical of the state of Israel" -- an especially important distinction because the UW report is actually very good about recognizing the heterogeneity of Jewish views on Israel and expressly disaggregating those who are "critical of Israel" from those who are outright "anti-Israel" (in the sense of wanting Israel to cease its existence). At most, only the latter would find Hillel an exclusionary space, but the numbers suggest that this cadre is a small (though not non-existent) minority amongst Jewish students. 

Finally, and most damningly, the report clearly did speak to and incorporate the views of the anti-Israel minority. How do we know? Because the report (to its credit!) specifically delved into and devoted an entire section to experiences of marginalization by anti-Zionist Jews -- something one does not see every time one of these reports emerges but is absolutely appropriate given the subject matter. The report even says it included comments from "self-identified anti Zionist/anti-Israel Jews in proportion to their representation in the random sample of quotes provided to the task force co-chairs (18%)" -- that 18% figure is either equal to or if anything higher than (the report was fuzzy on this) the proportion of anti-Israel Jews in the UW Jewish community. Despite all of this effort, none of it is given any mention whatsoever in the critics' document. Perhaps they missed it. But it I think decisively belies the unsupported assertion that the report deliberately ignored the diversity of Jewish views on Israel at UW.

Ultimately, as someone who periodically does consulting work with university leaders on issues of antisemitism, I found this critique tremendously disheartening and frustrating. The report seemed unusually attentive to the diversity of views amongst Jews on matters relating to Israel, and seemed like a good faith attempt to accurately communicate the sentiments of the Jewish community as a whole. That even an effort like this was met with a response like that -- the near-reflexive at this point fuming about Zionist hegemony and suppression of dissident voices etc. etc. is, to be honest, a substantial deterrent in continuing that work forward. There's just no pleasing some people.

From Scarsdale To Dearborn, Enough with the Dogwhistles Already

Incumbent Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) is facing a tough primary challenge from fellow Democrat George Latimer. Much of the heat in the primary has centered around Israel (Bowman is a harsh critic; Latimer has AIPAC backing), and in that context Latimer claimed in a public debate that Bowman's constituency is not the local residents of New York, but rather "Dearborn, Michigan" (and "San Francisco, California"). Dearborn is well-known for its large Arab and Muslim population, and so Bowman quickly called him out for the racist "dog-whistle".

I, of course, immediately harkened back to not-so-fond memories of Antone Melton-Meaux's 2020 primary challenge to Ilhan Omar,* where Omar's campaign sent out a mailer highlighting her challenger's donor support, singling out one from the heavily Jewish suburb of "Scarsdale, New York" (all of the named donors in Omar's mailer were also Jewish). This, too, was pounced on by Omar's opponents and said to be an antisemitic dog-whistle.

Latimer's defenders say he was merely highlighting Bowman's lack of local support. Omar's defenders likewise contended she was being unjustly smeared as a critic of Israel.

So, is this sort of attack a dog-whistle? Quick -- everybody switch sides!

In all seriousness, if you condemned the Omar campaign for its "Scarsdale mailer" you don't get to give Latimer a pass on this. And likewise, if you poo-pooed the Scarsdale mailer as a ginned up controversy over nothing you can sit right down in your high dudgeon over the Dearborn remark.

(My answer: Both instances were shady and both politicians deserved to be called out on it.)

* I'm bemused to rediscover that my blogpost on this controversy was titled "I Have To Talk About Omar and Melton-Meaux, Don't I?", which really captures a certain mood, doesn't it?

Talking Antisemitism (and Islamophobia) in Eugene

Earlier this week, I traveled down to Eugene to give two talks (one for students and the general public, the other for faculty and staff) on Islamophobia and antisemitism with Hussein Ibish.

I don't have any truly wild stories to report. We did have one disruption (to which I remarked "we beat the spread!") -- for those of you keeping score, it was a "pro-Israel" disruption -- but he was escorted out with relatively little incident. But overall, the audiences seemed engaged and happy to have us. I had two students separately stop me on the street well after the event was over to say how much they appreciated the event, one of whom was a leader of the campus chapter of J Street U, which was responsible for a very thoughtful letter regarding issues related to the campus encampment and Israel/Palestine questions more broadly that I encourage you to read.

Speaking of which, the university reached an agreement with protesters to disband the encampment while we were out at dinner. One of the administrators involved in the negotiations was on a text chain dealing with some of the issues while we ate! Living history, indeed.

All that said, the most exciting that happened was probably seeing if my Nissan Leaf could travel from Portland to Eugene on a single charge (answer: yes, but we were at 6% when we arrived at the hotel and 2% when we got home). I also started to come down with a cold on the second day (which I'm only just starting to pull out of now), so that was unpleasant. But for the most part, this felt like a successful event in front of a receptive audience that was happy to hear people try to tackle difficult issues about antisemitism and Islamophobia with rigor and care. I'm grateful to the University of Oregon community for having us, and I hope that they found it to be as fruitful and productive as I did.

Jewish Protests at Berkeley, a Follow Up and Victory Lap

UC-Berkeley Political Science professor Ron Hassner has ended his sleep-in protest, stating that the university administration has agreed to all of his requests. In particular he flagged the following:

(1) First, he asked that "all students, even the ones wearing Stars of David, should be free to pass through [Sather Gate] unobstructed. The right of protestors to express their views must be defended. It does not extend to blocking or threatening fellow students." The university has since "posted observers from the Division of Student Affairs to monitor bullying at the gate. These are not the passive yellow-vested security personnel who have stood around Sproul in prior weeks. The Student Affairs representatives are there to actively document bullying, abuse, blocking, or intrusion on personal space."

(2) The second request was for the Chancellor to "'uphold this university’s venerable free speech tradition' by inviting back any speaker whose talk has been interrupted or canceled. The chancellor did so gladly and confidently. The speaker who was attacked by a violent mob three weeks ago spoke to an even larger crowd this Monday."

(3) The third request was to fund and implement "mandatory Islamophobia and anti-Semitism training on campus". This has also apparently been arranged.

I give Ron a lot of credit. First, he's not dunking on the administration here, in fact, he gives them a lot of credit: "It is my belief that campus leaders would have fulfilled all these requests of their own accord even in the absence of my sleep-in.... At best, our sleep-in reinforced the university’s determination to act and accelerated the process somewhat."

Second, it's important to emphasize that Ron's protest did not ask or come close to asking that Berkeley silence anyone else's speech, including that of the protesters at Sather Gate. While they should not be able to obstruct Jewish students seeking to travel to campus, they have the right to present their views as well as anyone. It is not a concession but an acknowledgment of the proper role of the university administration that he did not press for them to end the protests outright.

Third, one might notice that Hassner's last demand was for antisemitism and Islamophobia training to be implemented on campus. In recent years, it has become almost cliched to hear certain putative anti-antisemitism warriors express fury whenever the fight against antisemitism is paired with the fight against Islamophobia, racism, or other forms of bigotry. They call it "All Lives Mattering" (although, when these coalitions against hate form and antisemitism isn't included in the collective, they call it "Jews Don't Count"). I've long thought that this was an abuse of the "All Lives Matter" concept, and it is notable that Hassner -- who not only has a ground-level perspective but who is actually putting his money where his mouth is in terms of combatting antisemitism -- doesn't see the pairing as a distraction or diminishment of what he's been fighting for but as an asset. More people could stand to take note.

Art Maven Roundup

All of the sudden, I've been on an art kick. The below image is a silkscreen I recently purchased from DC-based artist Halim Flowers. Flowers was convicted of felony murder as a juvenile and sentenced to two life terms. He was released after serving 22 years following statutory reforms aimed a juvenile offenders who had received life sentences, and now is showing in galleries around the world.

Pictured: "Audacity to Love (IP) (Blue)" by Halim Flowers. The colors are meant to be reminiscent of the Israeli and Palestinian flags (blue and white, and red, white, and green).

* * *

Trump continues to show his contempt for American Jews, saying any Jew who doesn't support him "hates their religion" (and Israel).

An in-depth story about a White supremacist who was elected to city council in Enid, Oklahoma, and the recall campaign to try and remove him.

Given the well-covered softness in Biden's support in the Muslim community, it seems suicidal to me for Democrats to give into the repulsive Islamophobic attacks holding up the confirmation of Third Circuit Court of Appeals nominee Adeel Mangi (the story indicates that Biden has remained rock-solid in backing his confirmation, but there may be some misgivings in the Senate Democratic caucus).

Writing on the sudden "heterodox" support for revisionist accounts justifying George Floyd's murder, Radley Balko flags what has been obvious for a long time: as much as this cadre likes to bleat about respecting truth, free-thinking, and rationality, it is as if not more beholden to ideologically-convenient narratives at the expense of reality. Pretty much everyone on the internet has been sharing this with their own story of the alt-center blowing past truth in order to push conservative grievance politics; mine was watching them stand in unblinking support of a hit piece on California's Model Ethnic Studies Curriculum even after it was revealed the author completely fabricated the inclusion of a seemingly-damning antisemitic quote.

Interesting retrospective on the Israeli Black Panthers in JTA.

The Supreme Court's frosty reception to the contention that government officials privately lobbying social media companies to take down misinformation is a First Amendment violation is the latest suggestion that the Court is finally losing patience with the regular drumbeat of insane legal theories emanating out of hyper-conservative Fifth Circuit.

"Jews Don't Count" vs. "All Lives Mattering"

A few days ago, three Palestinian-American students were shot in Vermont.

One of the wounded students attended Brown University, and so Brown University president Christina Paxson led a vigil on Monday. In her prepared remarks, Paxton planned to say the following:

At a faculty meeting last month, I said that "Every student, faculty and staff member should be able to proudly wear a Star of David or don a keffiyeh on the Brown campus, or to cover their head with a hijab or yarmulke."

But in the actual presentation, the "Star of David" and "yarmulke" references were dropped (the story states this occurred after anti-Israel heckling, but it's not clear what the exact causal relationship was).

I learned of all this via the National Review, which of course wants you to be aghast. "Jews Don't Count" and all that. But I'm so old, I remember when many Jewish actors, particularly on the center-right, were furious at what they termed "all lives mattering" antisemitism -- responding to an incident of antisemitism by condemning an array of other prejudices alongside antisemitism, rather than letting a condemnation of antisemitism stand alone. And the thing is, under that metric, we could say that Paxson's sin was -- in a vigil about an incident of anti-Palestinian racism -- including a reference to antisemitism. By doing so, she would have "all lives mattered" anti-Palestinian racism. She should have condemned anti-Palestinian violence "alone".

Now for my part, I don't believe that. I don't generally think that tying different forms of discrimination together is objectionable "all lives mattering", and so I don't think that condemning Islamophobia or racism weakens a condemnation of antisemitism (or vice versa). I also don't think that every condemnation of antisemitism has to include a condemnation of other forms of oppression (or again, vice versa). It's fine when they're linked together, and it's fine when they stand alone (and for what it's worth, it's just wrong to assert that antisemitism is never condemned "alone"). Either way Paxson could have done it would have been okay.

More broadly, I've argued that the concept of "all lives mattering" is not properly applied to any case where "where someone tries to link different forms of oppression or marginalization together." Rather, "all lives mattering" only obtains where one

respond[s] to a complaint of an injustice experienced by a particular community by suggesting the complaint is illegitimate or exclusionary unless it is reframed away from focusing on the particular community and instead presented in more universal language.

So it is not "all lives mattering" for Paxson to loop in an issue of antisemitism to her vigil responding to a claim of anti-Palestinian racism, but it would be "all lives mattering" if it was suggested that her vigil would be inappropriate or illegitimate if it didn't also talk about oppression in more universal terms. The National Review piece, though written in neutral tones, certainly carries the subtext of such an assertion.

But more to the point, my definition of "all lives mattering" is not the one I've been seeing in the quarters of the Jewish community who've been leveling the charge. Based on their more expansive account, Paxson would absolutely have been "all lives mattering" had she included the line about the Star of David, and so she was wise to omit it. But I don't think that the critics in question believe that -- they're more likely to be offended that the line was taken out (proving that "Jews don't count") than they were at the prospect it would be kept in. That suggests that their position on "all lives mattering" is not a consistent one (and I'd argue, that inconsistency at root derives from their position being fundamentally untenable). Worth keeping in mind.

Swapping Strategies

Different minority groups often swap strategies for protection in the context of trying to overcome societal oppression, and an advance for one group often can lead to advances for others. In a recent interview I did with Lewis & Clark's alumni magazine, for instance, I talked about how the pathway used to ensure Jews receive Title VI protections (notwithstanding the fact that Title VI doesn't cover religion, only race, ethnicity, and nationality) was quickly adopted to also secure similar protections for Muslims. Security tips meant to keep synagogues safe are often used to help secure mosques as well. And so on.

Another example of this that's less remarked upon, though which is (depending on your vantage) more interesting, more amusing, or more grim, is how the legal arguments pro-Israel advocates have used to try to extend anti-discrimination protections to cover backlash against Jews-as-Zionists have increasingly been adapted by pro-Palestine advocates to try and create discrimination claims around backlash directed at Palestinians-as-anti-Zionists.

I think we're all familiar with the contours of these arguments, and the controversy surrounding them, in the context of the "anti-Zionism as antisemitism" play. A Jewish student says something "Zionist" and is targeted by adverse action as a result. The student's supporters say "this is antisemitism -- Zionism is an integral part of my Jewish identity, and so attacking me on the basis of 'Zionism' is tantamount to attacking me as a Jew." Opponents reply that Zionism is a political ideology and criticisms of that ideology -- whether ultimately well- or ill-taken -- cannot be deemed to be targeting persons on the basis of an ascriptive identity. Not all Jews are Zionists, and in any event there is a difference between an identity and an ideology many members of a given identity happen to believe in.

Yet increasingly, we're seeing similar arguments being raised to bolster claims of anti-Palestinian discrimination. Consider the civil rights complaint Palestine Legal filed on behalf of Ahmad Daraldik, who was removed from his position as head of the Florida State University in part due to speech characterized as anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, or antisemitic. This complaint followed shortly after a high-profile complaint filed against USC on behalf of a Rose Ritch, a Jewish student ousted from student government for being a "Zionist". There are more than a few similarities between how the cases are framed that may not be coincidental. While Ritch's case is not mentioned in Daraldik's complaint, there does seem to be something to the notion that Palestine Legal (which undoubtedly was aware of the Ritch case), thought something along the lines of "if the Zionists can make claims like this, than so can we."

To be sure, some of Daraldik's allegations are quite "traditional" cases of discrimination (e.g., social media messages directed at him containing racial slurs). But others very much seek to present Daraldik's anti-Zionist speech as integral to his identity as a Palestinian, such that backlash against the speech ought to be viewed as tantamount to attacking him as a Palestinian. For example, he characterizes the hostility he endured as resulting from his "speaking about my life as a Palestinian growing up under Israel’s violent system of apartheid". And his lawyers likewise argued that statements by the university president characterizing some of Daraldik's own speech as antisemitic (a social media post which referred to an IDF soldier as a "stupid Jew" was probably the most prominent) was said to "reinforc[e] the anti-Palestinian stereotype that Palestinians reacting to experiences of violence and oppression by the Israeli government/military are inspired by anti-Jewish animus, not their own oppression" -- what many wearing other shoes might characterize (favorably or derisively) a "trope-based" argument.

These arguments, too, try to present a political orientation vis-a-vis Israel and Zionism as an integral part of an ascriptive identity. In that respect, they parallel Ritch's efforts to make the same argument at USC, and they're vulnerable to the same objections: anti-Zionism, like Zionism, is a political ideology, and so we might also say that criticisms of that ideology -- whether ultimately well- or ill-taken -- cannot be deemed to be targeting persons on the basis of their Palestinian identity. But -- without taking a position on the substance of his complaint -- I have more sympathy for Daraldik's conceptual argument here than one might suspect (precisely because I have some sympathy for Ritch's iteration too). While it's true that "not all Palestinians" likely agree with what Daraldik said or believes (what is Bassem Eid doing these days?), that does not mean there is no connection between what Daraldik said (and the backlash to it) and his Palestinian identity. I can absolutely see how not being able to level criticisms of the Israeli government or its policies would be experienced as an oppressive blanket that functionally obstructs the ability of Palestinian students to participate as equals in educational spaces. And the belief that there is "pure" animus against outgroups that does not drape itself in the garb of reasons seems unrealistic to me; the problem of disentangling "political" speech from bigotry is assuredly difficult, but it's also unavoidable. These responses don't tell us, of course, how the law should handle cases like Daraldik's or Ritch's -- at most, they show why they present genuinely nettlesome problems. But the point is they present the same problems, and the strategies for trying to make Daraldik's claims legally legible are similar to those used to do the same for Ritch's -- an overlap which simply does not seem coincidental.

A few days ago, we saw another example of this overlap in Tannous v. Cabrini University, involving a Palestinian professor terminated from his position due to social media posts that were alleged to be antisemitic but which he insisted were actually anti-Zionist (among the offending messages was one reading: "zio controlled USGOV politicians promise to cancel 2T$ of student loan debt ... yet they sent that 2T$ to Ukraine, Nato, and Israel to arm NAZIs.... Israel and Ukraine are societal cancers and must be eradicated."). 

The professor sued under a variety of theories, including claiming racial discrimination (he was at one point represented by Palestine Legal, though I don't know if they remained his attorneys throughout the litigation). In general, the district court concluded that a belief that a plaintiff is racist -- even if "wrong" -- does not equate to showing that adverse action occurred due to unlawful prejudice. In other words, it's not discriminatory to (even wrongly) accuse people of antisemitism. The exception might be if there was evidence that the only reason why a person holding X views was deemed to be racist was because they were also a member of a given identity group (another person of a different identity, but holding otherwise similar views, wouldn't be targeted). And indeed, the professor did argue that "[d]ue to his status as a Palestinian American, [the university] presumed that his tweets critical of Israel were actually criticism of Jews." The court rejected this argument as conclusory (there was no evidence presented that the university wouldn't have been equally offended no matter who wrote these tweets) -- but again, the core claim being raised here is one relying on the existence of a "trope" that seeks to convert backlash against "tweets critical of Israel" into an ascriptive attack on his Palestinian identity.

Indeed, there's a part of me that read the Tannous case and wondered if there might be a bit of 10-dimensional chess going on. The main basis for the court's decision in Tannous was that even unfairly accusing someone of "racism" or "antisemitism" is not tantamount to discrimination on basis of a protected class. Tough luck for Professor Tannous. But also, maybe, tough luck for Rose Ritch, whose detractors also could say that they acted against her not because she was Jewish, but based on their belief that her ideology was racist. That belief might be wrongheaded, but under the logic of Tannous it is not antisemitism. Tannous might have lost the battle, but Palestine Legal may have won the war -- and in any event, one can see the logic of them pursuing the case as a win-win: if arguments like the one they made on behalf of Tannous are rejected, then these arguments aren't going to be available for Zionist Jews making similar claims of discrimination where the underlying facts suggest the antisemitism is cloaked in antisemitic garb; and by contrast if those arguments are in fact legal winners, then there's no reason why they shouldn't leverage them for their own clientele.

To be clear: there's nothing unsavory about what's going on here. Legal arguments and precedents travel, and it's entirely normal and ordinary that various groups will decry the outrageous, abusive advocacy tactics of their opponents in one moment and furiously crib off them in the next. Jewish groups do it too (witness the blinding oscillation between "DEI is the devil" and "let's use contemporary DEI language to explain antisemitism"). But it's still interesting/amusing/grim (take your pick) to witness the unacknowledged but almost certainly significant influence contemporary Zionist legal advocacy is having on developing the strategies of their anti-Zionist adversaries (and, probably, vice versa).

You Do Not "Stand Up For Jews" By Involuntarily Roping Us Into Your Islamophobia

A true all-time classic moment in "allyship" this week from London's mayoral race, pitting Conservative Susan Hall against the Labour incumbent Sadiq Khan:

The British Conservative Party’s candidate for London mayor said that Sadiq Khan, who currently holds the post, is “divisive” and has therefore “frightened” some of Britain’s Jewish community.

“I will ask for as much help as I can get in London because we need to defeat him,” Susan Hall said Monday night at a Conservative Friends of Israel event in Manchester that was part of the Tory party’s annual conference. “Particularly for our Jewish community.”

Those of you who only follow British politics in passing may not know this, but the British Jewish community has historically had an outstanding relationship with Khan. Even in the depths of Corbyn era, Khan was seen as a Labour party member who genuinely had the backs of the Jewish community, including calling out his own party for failing to treat antisemitism with requisite seriousness. The allegation that Jews are "frightened" by Khan has no basis in fact and is clearly just a sideswipe at the fact that he is Muslim.

Hence, the response from British Jewish leaders was not at all surprising: 

British Jewish groups quickly issued statements condemning Hall and defending Khan, who is London’s first Muslim mayor and has Pakistani ancestry. The Board of Deputies of British Jews said that Khan has always treated the Jewish community “with friendship and respect.” Longtime Jewish Labour parliament member Margaret Hodge called Hall’s comments “dog-whistle politics” and said “Khan has always called out antisemitism, wherever it has reared.”

But it's Hall's response to Jews saying her comments were out of order that is truly transcendent:

When asked by Sky News if she would apologize for her comments in the wake of the criticism she has received, Hall said: “I will never apologize for standing up for our Jewish community.”

You tell 'em, Hall! You're not going to let some dirty Jews tell you how to stand up for the Jewish community! It's called allyship -- look it up! 

Four Thoughts on the CUNY Law Affair

Yes, I've heard about "that" graduation speech at CUNY Law. I'm not interested in parsing it; I have better things to do with my time. But I do want to share four thoughts about some of the broader issues in play and the (expectedly less-than-stellar) metacommentary.

First, CUNY's board of trustees has come out with a statement averring that "Hate speech ... should not be confused with free speech" and declaring that the graduation remarks fall into the latter category. Face palm. In the context of a public university, which CUNY is, "hate speech" most certainly is free speech, and retains all constitutional protections assigned to the latter. It astounds me that we still see statements like this on controversies like this when the constitutional rules are so clear. There is absolutely no cause to argue that the speaker's remarks are anything other than speech protected by the First Amendment, no matter how hateful one does or does not deem them to be.

Second, CUNY Law, probably more than any law school in the country (including Berkeley), is a citadel of the hard left. Its student body and, to a slightly lesser extent, faculty is very much self-selected to fit within this well-to-the-left-of-the-Democratic-Party-median mold. Is that a problem? This raises the classic question of diversity within institutions versus diversity across institutions -- it's okay, or perhaps even valuable, that there exist some law schools that are self-consciously hard left in orientation, so long as it is one option on a larger menu. Maybe CUNY Law is just the Regent University or Liberty University Law School of the left. You want a self-consciously conservative Christian experience, you go to Liberty. You want a self-consciously left-wing activist experience, you go to CUNY. Other schools offer different choices. There is a long and proud tradition of the "liberal" education that tries to draw from as wide a range of views and perspectives as possible; but there's an equally long and proud tradition of an education that is intentionally imbricated within a deep and specific intellectual and ideological framework (a religious college is the most prominent example). At the very least, it is not self-evident that we think the latter sort of initiative is always wrong -- at least so long as the prospective law school applicant has other choices.

Is this actually good? Does it matter that CUNY is a public law school? Does it matter that it's a public law school in a generally liberal city? Does it matter that, even in the context of a generally liberal city, CUNY Law is far off to the left of the mainstream? Open questions, as far as I'm concerned.

Third, CUNY Law's Jewish Law Student Association has strongly come out in defense of the graduate speaker and against the public backlash. This is in accord with the CUNY JLSA's larger orientation on issues like this (anti-Zionist, pro-BDS, and so on), and it seems reasonably clear that it represents the consensus view of Jewish students at CUNY Law (which again, is a very particular and self-selecting bunch). Given this, it is fair to note that there is something very odd about people racing to "protect" Jewish students from "antisemitism" that the students themselves not only don't identify as antisemitic, but actively support. Who exactly is being helped here?

One could answer that by referencing the potential Jewish students who would be interested in a CUNY Law experience but are deterred or forced out because they do find the environment to be unbearable (I am aware of at least some Jewish students leaving CUNY Law, or not applying in the first place, for precisely that reason).* In such a situation, the rump remainder of Jewish students who are perfectly happy with that environment will be all that remains, but the resultant "consensus" is not really properly characterized as innocent. Again, this could be reframed as a diversity-within-versus-across-institutions issue, though: maybe it's good that there is one school where anti-Zionist Jews are the dominant Jewish faction; so long as the Zionist Jewish majority has other options. Or maybe not. I do think the core puzzle of "opposing antisemitism" at a given institution over and against the objection of the Jews who are actually present there is at the very least an oddity that people need to wrestle with.

Fourth, many people are contending that the harshly critical response to the speaker constitutes "Islamophobia." For any individual remark or "criticism", that will of course depend on its content. But insofar as we're talking about, e.g., Rep. Ritchie Torres ("Imagine being so crazed by hatred for Israel as a Jewish State that you make it the subject of your commencement speech at a law school graduation. Anti-Israel derangement syndrome at work.") or Mayor Eric Adams ("I was proud to offer a different message at this year’s CUNY law commencement ceremony — one that celebrates the progress of our city and country, and one that honors those who fight to keep us safe and protect our freedoms.... We cannot allow words of negativity and divisiveness to be the only ones our students hear."), it's really hard to warrant the charge of Islamophobia unless you're willing to endorse a (dare I say it?) IHRA-style understanding of what "discrimination" is.

There's little in the way of evidence that Adams or Torres object to what the speaker said because she's a Muslim (and would have been fine with it if she was Christian). And one can of course already hear the classic retorts, remixed: "Criticism of anti-Israelism is not Islamophobia!" "Don't conflate opposition to Israel with Islam!" Given that, the warrant for the Islamophobia claim, it seems, has to be some version or combination of arguments like (a) taken as a whole, the intensity and vitriol of the blowback are disproportionate to a degree that they can be held to function in practice as a form of anti-Muslim hostility; and/or (b) pro-Palestinian sentiments are sufficiently tied to many Muslims sense of religious identity so as to make attempts at silencing or degrading said views tantamount to silencing an important facet of this speaker's Muslim identity; and/or (c) public "criticism" of this sort is part of a pattern or practice of social conditions which practically speaking operate as policing mechanisms that limit Muslim public participation and license their anti-Muslim harassment and discrimination.

Those arguments may well have purchase. But they're exactly the sorts of arguments which, in the context of IHRA and related debates over antisemitism, are alleged to be "censorial", "conflating", "chilling", and otherwise inappropriate in their alleged failure to distinguish between "criticism of Israel" (whether warranted or not) and "antisemitism." Here, the same failure could be alleged: failing to distinguish between "criticism of anti-Israel" (whether warranted or not) and "Islamophobia". And that alleged "failure" could similarly be met with a rejoinder that this too-pat response overlooks the realities of the situation and the practical impact this sort of speech and conduct has a means of impeding the equal public status and standing of Muslims, just as that rejoinder is leveled in the antisemitism case.

To be clear: this is a classic "everyone is a hypocrite" complaint. The anti-IHRA people, when the topic is Islamophobia, are happy to make claims that in the antisemitism context they'd label "chilling", "silencing", or "conflating". And the pro-IHRA people just as suddenly are unwilling to accept logic like this to the extent that it might require seriously reckoning with the prospect that their own speech or conduct can be labeled Islamophobic. If we understand why this speaker could interpret the backlash as Islamophobic, we should be able to understand how Jewish speakers might interpret certain vitriolically anti-Israel speech as antisemitic, and vice versa. For my part, I've long held that it's entirely possible for "dueling" discrimination charges to both be at least in part justified (see this post, and pages 161-63 of "The Epistemic Dimension of Antisemitism" for discussion), and so -- without commenting on the merits of either charge in this case -- it is fully possible in concept both that the way the speaker spoke was antisemitic AND that the way the broader community responded to the speech was Islamophobic (or that neither claim is sustainable, or that only one is).

* When I was on the job market, I did submit an application to CUNY Law in a year where they were looking to hire a constitutional law professor. I did not receive an interview, and, in retrospect, I think CUNY Law would have been a very uncomfortable place for me given my identity and the research that I engage in.

Let That Be a Lesson For You, Part II

Way back in 2009, I wrote about a case in the Netherlands where an Arab NGO was prosecuted for hate speech after publishing an article insinuating the Holocaust was exaggerated. The thing was, the NGO did not actually think the Holocaust was exaggerated -- rather, it was trying to draw attention a claimed double-standard after Dutch authorities had dropped hate speech charges against right-wing Dutch filmmaker Geert Wilders for a film critics claimed insulted Muhammad. 

Drawing on entry #45 of advice for evil overlords ("I will make sure I have a clear understanding of who is responsible for what in my organization. For example, if my general screws up I will not draw my weapon, point it at him, say 'And here is the price for failure,' then suddenly turn and kill some random underling."), I observed that when a non-Jewish far-right extremist engages in hateful speech towards Muslims, the proper response -- even if one believes in tit-for-tat -- is not to turn and attack some random other minority group (here, Jews).

In the files of "all that's old is new again", a similar situation appears to be brewing in Sweden, where a Egyptian writer has postponed (but not cancelled) a planned "protest" of burning a Torah scroll in front of the Israeli embassy. Why is he burning a Torah scroll in front of the Israeli embassy? Because a far-right Danish journalist and politician (who is not Jewish) recently burned a Koran in front of the Turkish embassy. A hateful and despicable act, to be sure -- but why is the response to awful behavior by a right-wing, non-Jewish Dane to attack the Jewish community in front of the Israeli embassy? Burning a Christian Bible in front of the Danish embassy would not be justified, but at least it would have symmetry. But for some reason Jews are always the random bystander executed in situations like this.

I also want to emphasize that local Jewish community leaders credit the prevention of the Torah burning to Muslim leaders in Sweden speaking out against it. This "protester" is a hateful schmuck whose hate happens to illustrate a particular form of pathology I wanted to highlight. Fortunately, he's a hateful schmuck in the course of being repudiated, and that's a good thing.

Who's Defending Hamline?

By now, you've probably heard of the flare-up at Hamline University in Minnesota, where an adjunct professor of art history was dismissed following student complaints after she showed a historic painting that depicted the prophet Muhammad. Every account I've seen suggests that the professor presented the painting (which was created in Persia by a Muslim artist in the 14th century) in a respectful and sensitive fashion, including notifying students that it would be depicted in her syllabus and again before the start of the relevant class (and told students they were free to opt out of attending that session). Nonetheless, the college not only declined to renew her contract, they expressly accused her of "Islamophobia" and indicated that "academic freedom" should not have protected her ability to "harm" her student.

The decision to terminate the professor has been met with a firestorm of criticism (e.g.: FIRE, PEN America, the Muslim Public Affairs Council, Academic Freedom Alliance). I personally found this post by Jill Filipovic to be especially thoughtful. So far, though, the college has been emphatic in defending its decision.

On that note, however, one thing I've yet to see is any prominent figure defending Hamline. The closest I've seen is a local CAIR official who (at a university-sponsored forum) said that the lesson had "absolutely no benefit" and compared alternative Muslim perspectives on portraying Muhammad as akin to the existence of people who think "Hitler was good." I've also heard hearsay that some academic professional organizations have privately declined to speak out because many officers and/or members feel uncomfortable. But as far as public discourse goes, I've seen essentially nothing but wall-to-wall condemnation.

Indeed, the universality of the "Hamline got it wrong" position in some ways renders it impressive the degree to which the Hamline administration is sticking to its guns here. It is one thing to abandon principles of academic freedom under intense external pressure demanding censorship; it's another thing to abandon principles of academic freedom in the face of intense external pressure to abide by them. It does make me wonder if there are any unknown cross-currents of pressure that the college is responding to. It's not out of character for a university to make terrible, craven decisions, of course -- but it's a little out of character for a university to make terrible, brave decisions, which makes me think that there must be some point of leverage on the administration that they are succumbing to. Again, the prospect that these cross-currents exist doesn't at all excuse the college's actions here. If, for example, the decision to terminate the professor was widely popular amongst Hamline students (or groups that Hamline hopes to recruit students from), it would still be the case that the college had an obligation to stand up for the right principles. But at least that would be a normal, explicable failing.

But maybe I'm overthinking it. Maybe the Hamline administrators are that ideologically committed to being thoughtlessly censorial. Or maybe there's a line of Hamline defenders I haven't seen. But as far as I can tell, virtually everyone (left right and center) is onboard with the view that Hamline fouled up. The last people to agree, it turns out, are the Hamline administrators.

ADL Officially Apologies for Opposing Park51 Mosque

In 2010, the ADL released a statement supporting efforts to ban construction of a mosque and Islamic community center in south Manhattan, claiming it was allegedly insensitive to the victims of 9/11. It was a grotesque incident of ADL-approved religious discrimination, and has been a stain on the organization's legacy ever since.

Today, ADL head Jonathan Greenblatt has officially apologized for his organization's stance: "we were wrong, plain and simple."

This was the right thing to do. It was the right thing to do one day after the ADL's discriminatory foray into the controversy, but it's never too late to do the right thing. Indeed, it perhaps would have been easy to simply try and forget this ever happened -- let it recede into the background, a bit of embarrassing old news under the ancien régime, but never bring it up again. Yet the ADL decided -- mostly, it seems, of its own accord -- to raise it again (and open themselves up to a wave of "too lates" and "whatabouts..." and this that and the other) by way of apology. That's worthwhile, and worthy of praise.

So -- well done, ADL.

Two notes though:

1) Acknowledging one's wrong and apologizing for it is an important part of teshuvah. Another part, at least if not more essential, is reflecting on what led you astray in the first place so that you don't do it again. I hope the ADL, in recognizing that it was "wrong, plain and simple," is thinking internally about what made it go wrong, and reflecting on what it needs to alter about it self to ensure that it never again indulges naked bigotry again.

2) How many other civil rights organizations can you think of that have released a statement like this, on any topic, admitting any mistake? Surely, the ADL is not the only one that has made errors deserving repentance. But I struggle to think of another prominent organization actually taking ownership of its wrong (at least, a wrong committed with recent memory). It is a dangerous fact about contemporary discourse that we often treat those who apologize for their wrongs worse than those who brashly ignore them and carry forward. This is something we should not do, and before anyone crows about the ADL being so terrible it had to apologize, think about what it says about all the other organizations out there, who have had their own indulgences into racism or antisemitism or misogyny or Islamophobia, who maintain a studious silence -- hoping everyone forgets, hoping it recedes from memory as "old news".

British Jews Should Announce They Can't Support Corbyn--or Johnson

This was a piece I initially wrote for publication outside of the blog. It had a tumultuous journey, including being accepted in one newspaper before the editor withdrew the offer an hour later. Most recently, it spent two weeks in limbo after the editor who was considering it solicited the draft ... then immediately went on vacation for a week. When he returned, he promised to get to it "first thing Monday". I never heard from him again.

Anyway, the election is tomorrow and there's still no sign that he will get back to me, so you're getting the piece here. It's slightly less timely than I'd like -- though much more timely than if I posted it after election day.

* * *

Earlier this month, The Guardian published a letter from twenty-four prominent non-Jewish figures, publicly declaring that they could not support Labour in the next election due to the raging antisemitism that has enveloped the party under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.

For the UK’s beleaguered Jewish community, it was a taste of that elusive elixir: solidarity. The knowledge that Jews do not stand alone, that we do have allies, that there are people who will not stand idly by and do nothing as this wave of antisemitism comes bearing down. That the letter’s signatories included figures like Islamophobia watchdog Fiyaz Mughal, who is intimately and painfully aware of the direct dangers a Tory government would do to him and his community, only makes it more powerful. In a very real sense, this is what it means to have true allies.

These past few years have been rough on British Jews, but if there is a silver lining, it is in moments like these: the public witnessing of all those who remain willing to plant their banner and fight antisemitism. The statements of resignation from persons who no longer can associate with a party that has become a force for hatred against the nation’s Jews. The figures—some Jewish (like MP Ruth Smeeth), some not (like London Mayor Sadiq Khan)—still bravely resisting antisemitism from within the party.

And there is grim satisfaction to be taken in Corbyn’s almost comically-high public disapproval ratings—which have reached upwards of 75% in some polls. For this, too, is at least in part a public and visceral repudiation of the brand of antisemitism Corbyn has come to represent.

Yet it is the ironic misery of the Jewish fate that we cannot even take unmediated satisfaction in those rejecting Labour antisemitism. Why? Well, because of the primary alternative to Labour: the Conservative Party, led by Boris Johnson.

The Tories have their own antisemitism problems, although—and as a liberal it pains me to say this—they pale in comparison to those afflicting Labour, at least today. And for me, I’ve probably written more on Labour antisemitism than I have on any other social problem outside of America or Israel.

But if the Tories are not today as antisemitic as is Labour, where the Tories can be aptly compared to Labour is along the axis of racism, Islamophobia and xenophobia. It is fair to say that on those issues, the Conservative Party is institutionally xenophobic in a manner that is on par with Labour’s own institutional antisemitism. Or put differently: Boris Johnson is to Muslims, Blacks, and Asians what Jeremy Corbyn is to Jews.

This is hardly unknown, and the latent nativism of the Conservative Party’s Brexit policy is only the tip of the iceberg. We saw the ugliness of Conservative racism in the Windrush Scandal, where Afro-Caribbean British citizens were harassed, detained, and even deported as part of the Tories’ pledge to create a “hostile environment” for undesired immigrants in the country (notwithstanding the fact that the Windrush Generation consisted of natural-born British subjects). We saw it in the game efforts by Muslim Conservative politicians to draw attention to festering Islamophobia amongst Tory candidates and politicians, and the grinding resistance of the Conservative political leadership to seriously investigate the issue—surely, this resonates with Labour’s own kicking-and-screaming approach to rooting out antisemitism inside its own ranks.

And—like with Corbyn’s Labour party—Tory xenophobia starts right at the top. In 2018, Boris Johnson was slurring Muslim women in Europe as “letter boxes”. Advocates at that time urged then-Prime Minister Theresa May to withdraw Johnson’s whip. She declined. Now he’s Prime Minister. In the meantime, Islamophobic instances in the country surged 375%.

There is a terrible commonality here: the legitimate fears Jews have about a Corbyn-led British government are mirrored by the equally legitimate worries BAMEs (Blacks, Asians, and Minority Ethnics) about the prospect of another term of Conservative rule.

To be clear: the Jewish community has not endorsed these Conservative predations. They are overwhelmingly opposed to Brexit. They have spoken out and stood out against racism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia, and have done so consistently.

But there is another step that has not yet been taken. The Jewish community might return solidarity with solidarity, and write their own letter announcing that they cannot sanction voting for Labour—or the Tories. Twenty-four Jewish luminaries, each pledging that just as Labour’s antisemitism means that they cannot support Labour, Conservative racism and xenophobia preclude them from backing the Tories.

The UK, after all, is not a complete two-party system, and in many constituencies there are very live options that extend beyond Labour and Tory. The resurgent Liberal Democrats, for one, bolstered by refugees repelled by Labour antisemitism or Conservative xenophobia and showing renewed strength particularly in marginal constituencies where Labour is flagging. Regionally, the SNP or Plaid Cymru also are often competitive. Even the Greens, in some locales, are a viable option.

None of these parties are perfect. One does not need to search far to find instances of antisemitism in these other parties, for example, and the Liberal Democrats still have trust to re-earn following their disastrous stint as junior coalition partners to the Tories less than a decade ago.

But imperfections notwithstanding, none of these parties has completely caved to gutter populism in the way that both Labour and Tory have. They are cosmopolitan in orientation. They have faced antisemitism and other forms of prejudice, but they’ve responded decisively to it. They are not perfect, but they are viable choices, in a way that neither the Tories nor Labour can at this point claim to be.

And yet, still this companion letter—rejecting Conservative hatred with the same public moral clarity as The Guardian writers rejected Labour hatred—hasn’t been written. As much as many dislike Conservative politics, as much as many loathe Boris Johnson and the insular nativism he stands for—we have not forthrightly declared that the bigotry of his party is of equal moral weight and equal moral impermissibility at the bigotry of Corbyn’s party. We have not insisted that both be rejected.

Responding to the argument that Labour antisemitism had to be overlooked because of the pressing necessity of avoiding the disasters of a Tory government, the Guardian letter writers asked “Which other community’s concerns are disposable in this way? Who would be next?”

One could perhaps forgive the Windrush Generation for taking a tentative step forward in reply.

So again: why hasn’t that companion letter been written? Why hasn’t there been the declaration that the Windrushers, the migrants, the Muslims—that these community’s concerns are indispensable in the exact same way that the Jewish community’s concerns should (but often are not) be viewed as indispensable? Why has the wonderful solidarity demonstrated by the Guardian letter not been returned in kind?

The most common answer is that as terrible as Johnson is and as repulsive as Tory policies are, only a Conservative majority can guarantee that Corbyn will not become Prime Minister. Even the LibDems might ultimately elect to coalition with Labour if together they’d form a majority (ironically, many left-wing voters who dislike Corbyn but loathe Johnson express the same worry in reverse to explain why they can’t vote LibDem—they’re convinced that Jo Swinson would instead cut a deal to preserve a Conservative majority). As terrible as Johnson is, stopping Corbyn has to be the number one priority for British Jews. And a vote for anyone but the Tory candidates is, ultimately, a vote for Jeremy Corbyn.

Jewish voters who act under this logic, they would say, are by no means endorsing Brexit, which they detest, or xenophobia, which they abhor. They hate these things, genuinely and sincerely. But their hand has been forced. In this moment, they have to look out for Number One.

I understand this logic. I understand why some Jews might believe that in this moment, we cannot spare the luxury of thinking of others.

 I understand it. But it is, ultimately, spectacularly short-sighted.

To begin, if we accept that British Jews are justified in voting Tory because we are justified looking out for our own existential self-preservation, then we have to accept that non-Jewish minorities are similarly justified in voting Labour in pursuit of their own communal security and safety. We cannot simultaneously say that our vote for the Tories cannot be construed as an endorsement of Conservative xenophobia but their vote for Labour represents tacit approval of Corbynista antisemitism. Maybe both groups feel their hands are tied; trapped between a bad option and a disastrous one. And so we get one letter from the Chief Rabbi, excoriating Jeremy Corbyn as an “unfit” leader, and another competing letter from the Muslim Council of Britain, bemoaning Conservatives open tolerance of Islamophobia.

But if the Jews reluctantly vote Conservative “in our self-interest” and BAME citizens reluctantly vote Labour “in their self-interest”—well, there are a lot more BAME voters in Britain than there are Jewish voters. So the result would be a massive net gain for Labour. Some pursuit of self-interest.

Meanwhile, those Brits who are neither Jewish nor members of any other minority group are given no guidance by this approach. There is no particular reason, after all, for why they should favor ameliorating Jewish fears of antisemitism over BAME fears of xenophobia. From their vantage point, these issues effectively cancel out, and they are freed to vote without regard to caring about either antisemitism or Islamophobia. At the very moment where these issues have been foregrounded in the British public imagination in an unprecedented way, insisting upon the primacy of pure self-interest would ensure that this attention would be squandered and rendered moot.

Of course, all this does not even contemplate the horrible dilemma imposed upon those persons who are both Jewish and BAME—the Afro-Caribbean Jew, for instance. They are truly being torn asunder, told that no matter how they vote they will be betraying a part of their whole self.

And finally, whatever we can say about the status of Tory antisemitism today, painful experience demonstrates that tides of xenophobia, nativism, and illiberal nationalism reflected in the Conservative Party will always eventually swallow Jews as well. That day will come, and if history is any guide it will come quickly. Jews should think twice and thrice before contemplating giving any succor to that brand of politics, no matter what seductive gestures it makes at us today.

So no—it will not do for Jews to back the Tories out of “self-interest”, for doing so will ultimately fail even in protecting ourselves. Ultimately, the reason that Jews should clearly and vocally reject both Labour and Tory is not sentimentality, but solidarity—solidarity in its truest and most robust sense. There simply are not enough Jews in the United Kingdom to make going it alone a viable strategy. We need allies, and so we need to find a way to respond to the reality of Labour antisemitism in a way that binds us closer to our allies rather than atomizing us apart. The solidarity they showed us must be reciprocated in kind.

If there is one theme I have heard over and over again from UK Jews, it is the fear of becoming “politically homeless”: unable to stomach voting for Tory nativism, unable to countenance backing Labour antisemitism.

But as The Guardian letter demonstrated, Jews still have friends, and allies, and people who will have our backs no matter what. And if you’ve got friends, allies, and people who have your back, what do you do if you’re worried about homelessness?

I’d say, you start building a new house—one with room enough for all of us.

If You Can't Blame Omar ... Well, Buckle Up and Try Again

The other day, a thread by a right-wing commentator named Robby Starbuck made its way onto my Twitter feed, whipping up hysteria about "Somalis" beating up and robbing White people in Ilhan Omar's district.

If a gang of white people were targeting Somalis to brutally beat & rob them it would be the lead story at CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post & NYTimes. It’d be paraded as proof of a white supremacy problem in the country but when it’s gangs of Somalis in Ilhan’s district doing it... 🤷🏻‍♂️

— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) September 14, 2019

There are several problems with this, starting with the fact that none of the local coverage I've read says that the perpetrators are entirely or even primarily Somali, and moving onward and outward to the incredible allegation local street crime is generally national news and only isn't when the perpetrators are Black (hey, have you heard about the gang of White students who beat up a Black classmate in Florida? No? Somehow it missed out on its entitlement to being the lead story on the Washington Post!).

As it happens, I used to live a few blocks away from the area where these crimes occurred. Crime wasn't rampant, but it wasn't entirely unheard of -- especially crime of the "robbing drunk pedestrians leaving the baseball stadium and/or surrounding bars" variety, which by all accounts appears to be what happened here. It's not a race war, and the neighborhood isn't under siege. It's crime.

In any event, I noted that -- at least at the time of Starbuck's tweet -- most non-Minnesotans probably hadn't yet heard about the arson targeting a synagogue in Duluth,* probably because it occurred in Rep. Pete Stauber's (R) district and thus couldn't be pinned on Ilhan Omar.

Of course, I'm giving people too much credit, because of course now I am seeing folks doing the whole "what about the synagogue fire!" at Rep. Omar -- and yet not, strangely-or-not-strangely enough, Rep. Stauber. For the record, Rep. Omar tweeted about the Duluth arson -- which occurred 150 miles away from her district -- on September 10th, while Rep. Stauber (who, to reiterate, actually represents Duluth) did so on September 12th.

Believe it or not, I don't bring that up as a "gotcha" at Rep. Stauber -- politicians move at different paces and one can always play the "why didn't you speak up on this faster" game. I raise it because it should, by all rights, conclusively falsify the notion that Omar was anything but way out in front on this tragedy, and deserves nothing but credit on it.

But it doesn't matter. Too many people, including too many people in my community, have been driven utterly, completely, unjustifiably bonkers by Ilhan Omar. It's fine to disagree with her on policy -- I disagree with her on (some) policies, most notably her backing of BDS. It's not fine to drop in on her any time something bad happens to a Jew within a 4,000 miles radius and go "Well? Well!?!" You want to talk about "tropes", or "implicit bias", or "double-standards" -- start right there and take a nice long drink from the fountain. It is a constant, ever-present feature of the discourse around Ilhan Omar, and it should sicken us.

* Following an arrest of the suspect, a local homeless man, police say they do not believe it was a hate crime. Of course, it still was a devastating loss for the Duluth Jewish community -- which had ample reason to fear that it was a hate crime, and certainly is following the ongoing investigation with interest.

What It Means for Jews To Vote Tory

Daniel Sugarman has an interesting column on the prospect of UK Jews voting for the Conservative Party, simply because Jeremy Corbyn is unacceptable. What's interesting about it is that it pretty forthrightly acknowledges that Boris Johnson's Conservatives are unacceptable too -- to name just one issue, their Islamophobia is on par with Labour's antisemitism.

Sugarman frames his discussion around a Muslim colleague of his who loathes Corbyn, fully acknowledges his role in fomenting Labour's antisemitism crisis, yet indicates he might have to hold his nose and vote Labour anyway because the prospect of empowering Johnson's hatred towards his community is too awful to stomach. The premise of the column is that this logic is wholly reasonable and permissible -- it is legitimate for a Muslim voter in the UK, fully aware of (and repelled by) Labour's antisemitism, to nonetheless prioritize his or her own safety and vote against the Conservatives; and by the same token it is legitimate for a Jewish voter in the UK, fully aware of (and repelled by) the Tories's Islamophobia, to nonetheless prioritize his or her own safety and vote against Labour.

It's worth underscoring just what this logic actually implies, though. Many have thought that any British voter who votes Labour for any reason is, ipso facto, selling Jews out -- signaling that the appalling antisemitism that has followed in Corbyn's wake is unimportant or even acceptable. But Sugarman's argument means we can't accept this, anymore than we can accept that Jews voting against Corbyn and for Johnson are thereby signaling toleration for Islamophobia. People have all sorts of reasons for voting the way they do. Moreover, while Sugarman's logic sanctions Jews voting for Tories, it gives no such rationale for why anyone else should do so. After all, there is no a priori reason why a young non-Jewish, non-Muslim progressive voter should prioritize rejecting Corbyn's antisemitism over Johnson's Islamophobia. If both of those weigh equally on their conscience, then they cancel out, and then the question is whether Corbyn's Labour Party is better generally than Johnson's Conservatives -- presumably, most progressives would quite reasonably find the former to be more amenable to their interests.

True, under normal circumstances, it is fair to demand that people sacrifice certain private interests in deference to important moral considerations -- this is why the Trump voter who doesn't approve of "Build the Wall" and "Keep Muslims Out", but really, really wants a tax cut, can fairly be deemed to be racist (the failure to properly prioritize in the face of overwhelming moral necessity represents a dereliction of one's duty of care towards racialized others). But the point of Sugarman's analogy is that here there are huge moral catastrophes looming on both sides (and we haven't even mentioned Brexit yet). UK politics right now is a tragedy -- between Labour and Tory, there are no good options, or even acceptable options. It's just a choice between competing abominations. So long as one recognizes the sort of play that they're in, I don't really begrudge how they decide to act out their role.

Of course, for me this entire discussion immediately raises the question: why not LibDems? They aren't perfect, but they're unabashedly anti-Brexit and lack the institutionalized bigotry that afflicts their larger compatriots.  But while, unlike the US, the LibDems give British voters a valid third party option, Britain's first-past-the-post system nonetheless can see wild results in constituencies where more than two parties are seriously contesting. It's not out of the question that a reasonable voter might have to vote strategically, which brings us right back to where we started.

I've remarked before that the chaos in UK Labour is perhaps the only thing that's ever given me sympathy for "Never Trump" Republicans. On the one hand, the health and future of a viable, non-hateful British progressive community depends on Corbyn getting spanked. Only that can break the fever. This was one of the (many) tragedies of 2016: had Trump lost, it is at least possible -- possible -- that Republicans would have concluded that the path they were traveling was unsustainable and had a moment of reckoning. But now that Trump won, certain seals that should've never been broken have been shattered -- I'm skeptical that we will see a GOP that's even a tolerably ethical choice for decades. If Corbyn loses, maybe the spell breaks. But if he wins -- if, in spite of everything, it turns out that this brand of feverish populism and conspiracy-mongering is capable of carrying an election -- the damage could be felt for generations.

And yet: these are not normal times. It's one thing to suffer through a cycle of conservative governance. Nations survive those, as terrible as they are, and the damage they inflict, while often extensive, is rarely permanent. But thanks to Brexit, the UK is in a singular political moment -- poised to self-sabotage in an unprecedented way that could not be fixed or even seriously ameliorated next cycle. The prospect of handing over government to the Tories and allowing Boris Johnson to lead a Brexit as he sees fit is horrifying to contemplate -- it is a sacrifice that goes way beyond a few years time in the opposition.

Complicating it all is the fact that -- as much as Brexit represents the defining issue of this generation of British politics -- Jeremy Corbyn doesn't oppose Brexit. It'd be one thing to demand that voters hold their nose and vote Labour anyway to stop Brexit -- but it's far from clear that Corbyn's Labour party would actually do that. In a real sense, the two main party choices are between an Islamophobic conservative party desiring a Hard Brexit at any cost, and an antisemitic progressive party pushing for a "Soft Brexit" (or Lexit) that doesn't actually exist. Some choice.

I don't envy anyone who has to make it. Were it me, here would be my chain of voting priority:

1. Vote LibDem, in any race where it's feasible they'll win;
2. In races where the LibDem candidate can't feasibly win but the Labour candidate can, vote Labour if the candidate is both (a) seriously pro-Remain and (b) not antisemitic or an apologist for antisemitism in Labour (and there are -- yes, really -- plenty of Labour MPs who are not. There is a huge difference between Ruth Smeeth and Chris Williamson);
3. If the Labour candidate fails these tests, vote Conservative if the candidate is (a) seriously pro-Remain and (b) not Islamophobic or otherwise hateful;
4. If both the Labour and Conservative candidates fail their litmus tests, then vote for the best remaining candidate (even if they stand no chance at winning). 

Islamophobe Walks Out of Anti-Omar Protest Because Muslim Speaker Joined Protesters

The opening to this story, about a protest against Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) organized by the newly-formed Minnesota Jewish Coalition, is absolutely wild:

An estimated 100 people showed up Thursday afternoon for a Minnesota Jewish Coalition-organized rally on the steps of the State Capitol in St. Paul, but a vocal few were very disappointed with the direction the event took.

Marni Hockenberg, a Republican activist who live-streamed to her Facebook account that she was outraged that Somali activist Omar Jamal was one of the speakers of the event, “Stand Against Ilhan Omar’s Antisemitic Ideas & Support For BDS!”

“What the hell are they having a Somali speaker for?” Hockenberg said on her Facebook video posted to her account under the pseudonym Marnie Mockenberg. “This is wrong. I knew there was something wrong with this rally. I’m out of here.”

Again, just so we're clear: the Somali speaker (Omar Jamal, Director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center) was part of the protest against Omar's' "Antisemitic Ideas & Support for BDS". Hockenberg is so intolerant of Muslims she can't even tolerate them agreeing with her on other Muslims. That's the friction point in the anti-Omar movement these days, apparently.

Anyway. Now that this rally is concluded, I'm sure the MJC will be organizing a similar rally targeting Rep. Tom Emmer and then another aimed at a Rep. Jim Hagedorn.

Any day now. Any day.