Three out of four Bay Area Jews say that anti-Semitism is “a serious problem in the United States today,” according to a demographic survey just completed by the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation.
For more than half a century, American Jews have been asked that same question, in those exact words, and for more than half a century, about the same overwhelming majority of American Jews have been making the same response. Isn’t that a bit peculiar? Haven’t conditions changed drastically for the Jews in that period? Are Jews just out of touch with reality on this, of all subjects?
After all, just five decades ago, discrimination in employment, in housing, in California’s posh resort hotels, in elite universities, and in politics was the common experience for Jews. Today, such discrimination is as rare as hen’s teeth. So, how come three-quarters of Bay Area Jews can continue to say that anti-Semitism is a serious problem in America? Well, this federation was smart enough to ask a follow-up question, and the Bay Area Jews turned out not to be so crazy after all. Most of them do not associate anti-Semitism with those old patterns of discrimination and prejudice. Most of them associate today’s American anti-Semitism with “unfair criticism of Israel.”
“Unfair criticism” is “prejudiced criticism.” It is anti-Israelism, and not that hard to detect, even though the worst offenses are more often half-truth than whole-cloth falsehood. When Israel temporarily restricts Palestinian travel, following a terrorist massacre of Israelis, such masters of the half-truth as Amnesty International have tended to complain about the restrictions while ignoring the preceding terrorism. As the Anti-Defamation League once put it, “The Palestinians have indeed suffered but it is the continued campaign and terrorism against Israel that is to blame for the restrictions.”
But even so, are these Bay Area Jews out of touch with reality in that they exaggerate the amount of American anti-Israelism? An ADL survey this past April found that among those Americans with an opinion or preference, more than 8 out of 10 said their sympathies were with Israel rather than with the Arab nations, or the Palestinians. Most major polls have found roughly the same proportions, even before 9/11.
So, even if we are talking about anti-Israelism, are these Jews suffering from some disorienting psychosis when they say it is a “serious problem in America today?” Well, they would be out of touch with reality if they did not recognize that American public attitudes towards Israel can be volatile. In 1982, for example, many Palestinians were massacred in their Lebanese camps. The Israelis did not commit those massacres, but they had a strong presence in the area at the time, and received much blame in the American media. Before this terrible event, surveys showed that Americans with opinions and preferences had a greater sympathy for the Israeli cause by a 9 to 1 margin. After the massacres, American sympathies for the Israelis and Palestinians fell
into a virtual tie for a while.
Even those who know that most Americans are usually sympathetic to Israel also know that there is a potent minority of “opinion-makers” in the media, at the universities, among some political activists, who regularly spout prejudiced criticism of Israel. It would be foolish to dismiss the possible effect of that “potent minority of opinion-makers” on the volatile American public’s attitudes to Israel if certain conditions changed abroad and at home.
It is then at least conceivable that the public could become more hostile to American Jews and their support of Israel. But whether our concern is with hostility to American Jews, or to Israel, or to both, the main strategic problem we have to confront is not old-fashioned anti-Semitism, but new-fashioned anti-Israelism — today’s “root of the problem,” at least in America. And that is exactly what most Bay Area Jews meant by their survey response. Except for those benighted few who may believe that anti-Semitism is built into the DNA of non-Jews — these Jews are not at all out of touch with reality.
Earl Raab is executive director emeritus of the S.F.-based Jewish Community Relations Council.