Given Jewish history, harboring a sense of gloom and doom is something of a cultural proclivity. But according to Earl Raab, since Sept. 11 of last year it’s been a whole new ballgame.
“Jews specialize in foreboding. But 9/11 elevated and introduced a whole new foreboding about the state of Israel and our own status,” said the Jewish Community Relations Council’s director emeritus Tuesday during a panel discussion touching on changes in the community, nation and world throughout the troubled past year.
“Another spike in foreboding arose due to American endurance in this war,” and the status of Jews if the nation grows weary of battling terror.
Polls demonstrating a rapid jump in the percentage of Americans who believe the United States provides too much aid to Israel helps justify Jews’ sense of dread, Raab maintained. The rise of anti-Semitism in Western Europe and the bandying about of “classically anti-Semitic” charges of dual loyalty in America don’t help either.
Raab drew laughter from a standing-room-only crowd of several score at the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation’s boardroom when he told fellow panelists that his speech would “handle the Jews. That’s my job.”
Co-speakers Andrew Ross, the San Francisco Chronicle’s senior executive foreign and national editor, and Eva Jefferson Paterson, the executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, also touched on Jewish issues. Paterson noted that much of America has been exposed to a darker element of humanity that Jews know all too well.
“Many bigots are not very smart; I guess it goes hand in hand,” the energetic black lawyer said with a laugh. “People from India, Pakistan, Sikhs — anyone with a turban, they think they’re bin Laden. Sikhs and the South Asian community… thought they’d assimilated into American society and now they know how vulnerable they are. This is something Jews and African-Americans don’t have to be told.”
A somber Ross admitted that his prognostications for the future seldom turn out to be correct, and he hoped that trend would continue as he predicted more “rough times” for the Jewish community in Israel and abroad.
Raab concurred, saying now is an especially difficult and confusing time to be a Jew. While Jews understand that criticism of Israel does not imply anti-Semitism (otherwise “half the population of Israel would have to be turned over to the Anti-Defamation League”), there is much “prejudiced” criticism out there as well, he said.
It is now “more difficult for the Jewish community to make the distinction between good-faith criticism of Israel and prejudiced criticisms of Israel, of which there are plenty even in Jewish quarters,” said the well-received Raab, the JCRC’s executive director from 1951 to 1987.
Raab listed “stereotypes, double-standards and the poise of even-handedness where it is not appropriate” as the hallmarks of anti-Semitic criticisms of Israel and said it is vital to crush such arguments while tolerating legitimate critiques of Israel’s actions. It is also vital, he said, for Jews not to assume a worst-case scenario is unavoidable, especially here in America.
“Since 9/11, panic about anti-Semitism [has led many] to accept it as inevitable as though it were part of the human genetic code,” he said.
“Europe requires a special discussion, but this country has demonstrated the determinability of anti-Semitism, and the new, pessimistic discussion of anti-Semitism feeds a spirit of isolationism among Jews which is self-defeating.”
If Jews are confused, so are Americans in general according to Ross. While the president frequently admonishes the nation that we are at war, what sacrifices have been asked of us? Ross asked. The answer: “Spend money, travel.”
Rather than the true galvanization into a wartime nation that occurred after Pearl Harbor, Ross compared the nation’s current mood to the period of Sitzkrieg or phony war immediately following the outbreak of World War II in Europe.
“In a sense, there’s a war on terror and the nation is at war — the president never ceases to remind us that there’s a war going on…We’re responding in Afghanistan, we’re going after Al Qaida; it’s an orange alert today and tomorrow. I don’t know how it feels to you, but, personally, I don’t feel I’m at war,” said the English-born Ross.
Ross also worried about abridgements of constitutional rights by those who “never really had a whole lot of use for the constitution in the first place,” and expressed doubt over the rationale for war with Iraq.
“If we go after Iraq, it’s because it’s a soft target,” he said. “It’s the easiest one to go after. I think the administration has not as of yet articulated its case very well. Our confusion is very well-taken.”
Raab, meanwhile, stressed that it is the United States’ obligation to crush the forces of radical Islam.
“At this moment we have to stand up to our responsibilities,” he said. “And you don’t pick your responsibilities.”