Greenblatt scolds the anti-Zionist children

Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL gave an important speech last weekend in which he proclaimed, Anti-zionism is antisemitism, as dangerous to Jews as white supremacy, and named as outright antisemites three “radical” pro-Palestinians groups, Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), as well as the Palestinian writer Mohammed El-Kurd.

What did they do wrong? The “negation of another people, a concept as alien to the modern discourse as white supremacy,” Greenblatt said. “We must act against the antizionist extremists just as we have against other extremists from the white supremacists and alt-right ilk who murder Jews.”

The speech was pervaded by a sense that U.S. Jews are in terrible danger. Greenblatt cites a recent report by the ADL that shows antisemitic incidents spiking yet again to unprecedented levels– a “surge in antisemitic violence that exploded across America during the conflict between Israel and the terror group Hamas in the spring.” The numbers “skyrocketed.”

It all seems crazy to me. Unprecedented violence? I live in Trump country and I don’t wear a yarmulke, but I don’t feel that foreboding myself, even as I worry about America coming apart at the seams.

But if Greenblatt is crazy, he’s crazy like a fox. This speech is strategic. Greenblatt has a big job; he is a four-star general in the Israel lobby’s war to preserve the special relationship. And he needs to counter Israel’s tanking reputation. There have been a wave of reports in the last year accusing Israel of apartheid, including from goldplated human rights organizations Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Those reports could break into the mainstream; and Greenblatt, a former Obama aide and Starbucks executive who regularly gets time on the cable stations to talk about ending “systemic racism” and other evils, is waving the bloody flag of antisemitism to make sure that Congress and liberal media don’t go near the apartheid reports.

Greenblatt’s core audience is the political establishment and the Jewish establishment. He is trying to raise money from his supporters, and make sure that Democratic Party leaders marginalize “those in their party who knowingly traffic in antizionist tropes and make malicious claims against the Jewish state,” as he puts it. Remember that the Israel lobby was able to purge Israel critics in the UK Labor Party.

Though most of the groups he attacks are non-Jewish or Muslim, Greenblatt is also taking a leadership role in the war inside the Jewish community over Israel. Greenblatt is as aware as I am about the growing anti-Zionism in Jewish youth. Surveys consistently show that 20 percent of young Jews don’t believe in a Jewish state; even the American Jewish Committee says so. Fully a quarter of all Jews say that Israel is an apartheid state, but the number goes up to 38 percent of those under 40.

A few years ago David Harris of the American Jewish Committee gave an agonized speech about the wayward Jewish youth at a Westchester temple. He cried out, “Where did we go wrong in our homes and our schools,” that these kids are listening to anti-Israel arguments on campus and don’t see what a miracle Israel is? “To me it’s extraordinarily painful,” Harris said.

Greenblatt is tougher and colder than David Harris. He is going on the offensive, he’s willing to pile up bodies of bad Jews. He is saying, We’ve gone too easy on these young rebels, I’m doubling down, we’re not giving an inch.

Does Greenblatt actually think he can stem the tide? Certainly he can slow it down. His speech will be read in synagogues. Jewish scolding works. I’ve written about my own inability to explore anti-Zionism for many years because of the pressures of my community, till it became too much, at the tender age of 50! Later my mother told me my work was “vile” and her best friend Golda in Jerusalem told me my writing made her sick and I was only doing it because I hadn’t worked out my father issues and my literary career was a failure. I felt guilty about being such a fuckup. The handwringing never really stops! There is a long tradition of excommunicating heretical Jews– and given the smallness of the community, Jews are sensitive to this. Young Jews from Open Hillel seemed afraid of me when I interviewed them years ago, and progressive Zionists at Princeton took over a talk I was giving about Palestinian solidarity to anatomize my alleged antisemitism.

And still the numbers of young Jewish anti-Zionists grows. The Harvard Crimson just came out for BDS and the Jewish chairperson of the paper’s editorial board, Orlee Marini-Rapoport, celebrated the editorial on twitter.

Which brings us back to surges in violence. The Harvard editors were moved, they said, by how violent life is for Palestinians. Israel has killed hundreds of Palestinians in occupied territory in the last year, including scores of children.

Greenblatt’s speech doesn’t even acknowledge what life is like for Palestinians under Israeli rule and occupation. His entire speech is an angry attempt to change the subject. Joe Biden is going to Israel in late June, and Greenblatt wants to make sure that Joe Biden doesn’t dare put pressure on Israel.

We’re likely to see more such blunt attacks on anti-Zionism. Rep. Ted Deutch auditioned for his new job at the American Jewish Committee by accusing Rep. Rashida Tlaib, Muslim Democratic colleague, of antisemitism because she dared to quote from the apartheid reports. Mark Mellman is a principal of the Democratic Majority for Israel, whose raison d’etre is smearing progressives as haters.

It is not purely cynical. These execs are ardent Zionists, they believe in the historical need for a Jewish state. Like a lot of Jews older than themselves, they really still see Israel as a miraculous deliverance of the Jewish people in the 20th century after what Greenblatt calls our “vast history” of persecution; and they are able to blind themselves to the enormous price Palestinians have paid. A form of systemic racism they would never tolerate here.

Israel can’t help itself. Its inability to do anything to lift the occupation, its ever-more-rightward shifts as the nation state of the Jewish people — assure that young people will keep turning into anti-Zionists.

So I’m grateful for Greenblatt’s speech. He wants to force the issue. But young people who hear this speech will just want to read Mohammed El-Kurd.

Thanks to Adam Horowitz and Michael Arria