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Criticism of Israel, Media Focus, and Bias

photograph of Jerusalem through barbed wire fence

As in the past, in the wake of this most recent bout of violence in Israel an argument has raged in the media over the proper bounds of criticism of the state of Israel — when, in other words, does criticism of Israel merge with Jew hatred? No sane person denies that criticism of Israeli policies is, at least under some circumstances, not equivalent to prejudice against Jews. Nevertheless, some defenders of Israel claim that what they call the disproportionate attention paid to the Israel-Palestine conflict by Western media and other critics of Israel is itself evidence of Jew hatred. It is this claim that I will evaluate in this column.

I will grant the premise of those who make this claim — to wit, that the Israel-Palestine conflict does receive more critical attention than other, worse conflicts around the world. This is not to underplay the moral enormity of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians; my claim is simply that there are even more egregious violations of human rights in other parts of the world that receive relatively less attention from certain quarters. In order not to beg any questions — “disproportionate” has a negative connotation — I will put the question to be answered as follows: “Is the relatively greater attention paid to the Israel-Palestine conflict over other, worse conflicts itself evidence of Jew hatred?”

There are a number of players who might be said to pay more attention to the Israel-Palestine conflict than other, worse conflicts, but I will consider three: the Palestinians themselves, Arab observers, and the Western media. First, let’s consider the Palestinians. Suppose that Smith is a shop-owner whose store is periodically raided by a Jewish shoplifter. As yet unable to catch the shoplifter, Smith is consumed by hatred for him. Meanwhile, in another town, a Gentile serial killer rapes and kills women. On the rare occasions when the thought of the killer comes to Smith’s mind, Smith feels some degree of indignation and pity. Still, he does not hate and resent the serial killer as he does the Jewish shoplifter. It seems to me that Smith’s attitudes are not evidence of Jew hatred. It is natural — not to say morally good, just natural or commonplace — to focus more attention on the moral wrongs perpetrated against oneself than on the moral wrongs perpetrated against distant others. To do so does not necessarily reveal prejudice against the ethnicity of the wrongdoer. By the same token, Palestinians are naturally more focused on the wrongs perpetrated against them by Israel than on other, perhaps worse conflicts.

Now consider Arab observers. Suppose that Adam is Smith’s cousin, and Adam is almost equally consumed by hatred for the Jewish shoplifter as Smith. Again, I do not think this relatively greater focus on the Jewish shoplifter is evidence of Jew hatred. It is natural — again, not morally good, just commonplace — for those who feel a kinship towards victims of particular wrongdoing to focus more on that wrongdoing, even if there is worse wrongdoing somewhere else in the world. Arab critics of Israel tend to feel a bond of ethnic kinship with the Palestinians, and so will naturally focus more attention on the wrongs done to them than to others. This may offend against some conception of moral equality according to which we ought to dole out our attention to wrongs precisely in proportion to their egregiousness, with no special attention paid to wrongs that are “closer” to us in any sense. My point is merely that even if this form of neutrality is morally required, those who offend against it do not necessarily reveal prejudice in doing so.

It might be objected that some Arab observers have a history of openly anti-Semitic statements. Suppose Adam had such a history. Given this, would Adam’s focus on the Jewish shoplifter smack of Jew hatred? Surprisingly, the answer is no. This is a subtle point, so I want to be clear. With a past history of anti-Semitic statements, we have good evidence that Adam is an anti-Semite. However, Adam’s focus on the Jewish shoplifter does not provide additional evidence, over and above Adam’s past statements, that Adam is an anti-Semite. Similarly, an Arab who criticizes Israel and has a history of anti-Semitic statements is not more likely to be an anti-Semite than an Arab who has a history of anti-Semitic statements but never criticizes Israel.

Now suppose that both the Jewish shoplifter and the Gentile serial killer are caught. It turns out that the Jewish shoplifter is a local “golden boy” who attends high school on a city scholarship, volunteers at soup kitchens, and plays varsity basketball. Many of his relatives hold important positions in government and the media, and many prominent members of the community rally around him, raising money for his legal defense. The serial killer, by contrast, lives on the margins of society, grew up in an abusive household, and had innumerable encounters with law enforcement prior to his most recent crimes. He’s represented by a public defender. Predictably the media, including local gadflies on the opinion pages of the local newspaper, focus a lot of their attention and ire on the golden boy. Once again, that they do this may be in some ways regrettable, as they ignore the serial killers’ victims in the process. There may be a moral argument for apportioning their attention and criticism differently. On the other hand, there is at least a partial justification (and not just a “man bites dog” explanation) for the focus in the fact that the golden boy receives a city scholarship. The point is that the greater focus on the golden boy is not necessarily evidence of Jew hatred. Similarly, Israel not only holds itself out as an upstanding member of the international community, but it also receives significant material support from the United States. These facts can explain why the Western media focuses attention and criticism on the Israel-Palestine conflict to a relatively greater degree than other, worse conflicts.

My conclusion, then, is that there are reasons that explain why both participants and observers pay more attention to the Israel-Palestine conflict than other conflicts — reasons that have nothing to do with Jew hatred. This is, of course, not to say that such attention is certainly not due to anti-Semitism. Rather, my conclusion is that the fact that, say, a member of the Western media focuses more attention on the Israel-Palestine conflict than other conflicts is not itself evidence — does not make it likelier — that this person is an anti-Semite.

How to Spot an Anti-Semitic Trope, and What to Do About It

photograph of Chicago Tribune building

On July 22, 2020, the Chicago Tribune’s lead columnist, John Kass, published a piece entitled “Something grows in the big cities run by Democrats: an overwhelming sense of lawlessness.” In it he claimed that the billionaire George Soros, who is Jewish, is responsible for clandestinely remaking the justice system by spending “millions of dollars to help elect social justice warriors as prosecutors.” The column provoked an enormous backlash, with the executive board of the Tribune reporters’ union, the Chicago Tribune Guild, issuing a letter decrying the column as an “odious, anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.” Kass was subsequently demoted from his perch on page 2 of the newspaper, which he has occupied for 23 years. Nevertheless, he defiantly penned a response in which he declared himself a victim of “cancel culture.”

This ugly episode raises a host of interesting philosophical issues, chief among which are the following: how can we know what counts as an anti-Semitic trope? And what should be done with those who peddle them? I will consider these questions in turn.

Modern anti-Semitism is a conspiracy theory with roots in the Tsarist forgery, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” This document purported to be the minutes of a late-19th-century meeting of Jewish leaders, the titular “Elders,” in which they conspire to conquer the world through such means as control of the economy and the press, and subversion of the morals of the non-Jewish world. Thus, the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory posits a clandestine Jewish scheme to take control of society’s institutions, such as the stock market, the legal system, the education system, and so on, with the ultimate aim of Jewish world rule.

What, then, is an anti-Semitic trope? I suggest that one important kind of anti-Semitic trope is a narrative, or fragment of a narrative, about attempts by powerful Jewish figures to control, subvert, or alter important social institutions, and in particular economic institutions. That narrative can take many, sometimes contradictory forms; for example, the Nazis accused Jews of both predatory capitalism and Bolshevism. Thus, when Kass writes that Soros “remakes the justice system in urban America, flying under the radar,” there is an unmistakable suggestion of the kind of secret effort to alter and control institutions that is characteristic of anti-Semitic thinking in general.

Suppose there is a group of powerful persons, most of whom happen to be Jewish, that actually does seek to control or subvert some important institution. An example might be pro-Israel groups’ efforts to influence U.S. foreign policy, a phenomenon controversially documented by Alan Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt in their book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. Would the rough account laid out in the last paragraph make any criticism of these groups’ efforts an anti-Semitic trope? The worry implicit in this question is that labeling such criticisms as “anti-Semitic” would prevent legitimate criticisms of the “Israel lobby” from being made.

Before explaining my response to this worry, it is worth noting other ways of responding to it. We might try to distinguish legitimate criticisms from anti-Semitic tropes by insisting that the latter must be a false narrative — i.e., they must fail to refer to any actual conspiracy or nefarious effort. On this view, an anti-Semitic trope is, as such, a kind of slander. However, this would still leave justified, but false, criticisms vulnerable to being labelled anti-Semitic tropes. Suppose Mearsheimer and Walt were wrong about the existence of an “Israel lobby.” Many would still want to deny that their book traffics in anti-Semitic tropes. On the other hand, suppose that they are correct. One can still imagine an actual anti-Semite condemning the Israel lobby using anti-Semitic tropes.

Perhaps instead we should draw a distinction between conspiracies that are composed of Jews and Jewish conspiracies. A Jewish conspiracy is an effort to subvert or control some important institution on behalf of the Jews, or in the perceived interests of the Jews as a group. Only statements that are meant to refer to a Jewish conspiracy in this sense are trafficking in the kind of anti-Semitic trope defined above. This seems like a promising distinction, but it suggests that in order to know whether some statement expresses this anti-Semitic trope, we need to know what the speaker means by it. Did Kass mean to posit some Jewish conspiracy, or just a conspiracy by someone who happens to be Jewish?

Every utterance has both a literal and a use-meaning (philosophers refer to these as an utterance’s “locution” and “illocution,” respectively). The literal meaning is the statement’s “propositional content”; it is what the speaker says. The use-meaning is the intention of the speaker in making the utterance; it is what a speaker means. For example, if someone says “I stand for the national anthem,” the literal meaning of the utterance is that they stand when the national anthem plays. However, the speaker may intend to convey that she is patriotic.

We can use this distinction and the distinction between a Jewish conspiracy and a conspiracy by Jews to develop an account of a certain kind of anti-Semitic trope. On this account, a statement expresses this kind of anti-Semitic trope only if it purports to refer to some conspiracy or effort by Jewish persons to control or subvert some institution, and the speaker means to refer to a Jewish conspiracy or effort, and not just a conspiracy or effort by Jews. Anti-Semitic tropes, then, are in this case the products of both the literal and the use-meaning of statements.

Furthermore, I propose that the ethical status of utterances that fulfill the content requirement for being an anti-Semitic trope is critically dependent upon their use-meaning. A person can non-culpably utter a statement with the same content as an anti-Semitic trope if she did not intend to suggest a Jewish conspiracy and could not reasonably have foreseen that it was anti-Semitic, or if she took adequate, good-faith measures to make it understood that she was not intending to suggest a Jewish conspiracy. As with other kinds of wrongdoing, culpability increases with the degree to which the literal anti-Semitism of the utterance was known to or intended by the speaker. Nevertheless, a harsher, “strict liability” regime for utterances with the same content as anti-Semitic tropes would unduly restrict political discourse, such as criticism of Jewish donors to progressive causes.

That said, Kass deserves the criticism he has received. On the one hand, the fact that conservatives have argued that Kass did not use anti-Semitic tropes on the grounds that he did not intend to posit a Jewish conspiracy supports my contention that anti-Semitic tropes are products of both literal and use-meaning. On the other hand, one could reasonably believe that Kass did intend to posit a Jewish conspiracy. Kass must be aware that conspiracy theories specifically revolving around George Soros are circulated widely by open anti-Semites, and he seems to place undeserved emphasis on the contribution of this particular wealthy Jewish businessman to progressive political causes in a political system in which multimillion-dollar campaign contributions are not at all infrequent.

Given these facts, the best we can say for Kass is that he was negligent in his use of language with the same content as anti-Semitic tropes: he should have known that claiming George Soros is responsible for clandestine funding of progressive causes dovetails with anti-Semitic propaganda, and he should have done something to allay concerns that he intended to suggest a Jewish conspiracy. Moreover, although I believe that those who decry “cancel culture” have legitimate concerns, Kass’s claim that he is a victim of it is a good example of powerful people crying “censorship!” when they encounter criticism. If strong criticism is deserved, a person in a free society must bear its costs.

Christianity’s Role in Alt-Right Terrorism: More than an Aesthetic

photograph of alt-right rally

In the wake of the April 27th, 2019 shooting at the Chabad of Poway synagogue in San Diego County, California, fears of a rise in modern antisemitism continue to grow. The gunman that opened fire on the congregation’s Passover worship—killing 60-year-old Lori Kaye and wounding three others—posted an “open letter” filled with political conspiracies, racial slurs, biblical scripture, and Christian theology to the website 8chan shortly before the attack. The gunman’s rhetoric and motives classify him as a member of the alt-right: “a range of people on the extreme right who reject mainstream conservatism in favor of forms of conservatism that embrace implicit or explicit racism or white supremacy.”

For the most part, the internet is the primary radicalizing force for alt-right members. Website chat-rooms like 8chan and Gab, flaunting the value of free speech, attract people hoping to share their odious views and plan acts of violence. In corners of the internet, hate and ignorance combine for deadly affect. In his Prindle Post article, author Alex Layton examined the role that antisemitic political conspiracy played in the October 27, 2018 attack on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburg, noting that the shooter “bought into [and was motivated by] a conspiracy that the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) was leading the caravan of refugees who have been migrating from Honduras to the U.S.-Mexico border in recent weeks.” These antisemitic political conspiracies are characterized by what’s known as “secondary antisemitism” where the roles of perpetrator and victimhood are reversed. Prindle Post author Amy Elyse Gordon analyzed how secondary antisemitism was used in the manifesto of the Tree of Life synagogue attacker, saying, “This . . . rhetoric of victimization, including his claims that Jews were committing genocide against ‘his people’ . . . moments before he shoots up a crowd of morning worshipers, is the idea that the real relationships of victimhood are being obscured. This statement reads like a pre-emptive self-absolution for a mass shooting as an act of self-defense.” Political conspiracies and secondary antisemitism certainly motivate attackers, but an underexamined area of influence on alt-right terrorists and their sympathizers may actually lie in the disparate texts reflecting debate and diversity within early Christian tradition.  

The Berkeley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs notes that ideas of “traditional Christianity” have heavily influenced the rise of the American alt-right movement, but that “it is important to note that it is almost exclusively an aesthetic phenomenon and not a theological one. Actual Christian theology, in general, is quite hostile ground for the theories of scientific racism . . . and blood and soil ‘volkism’ favored by the alt-right to take root.” The claim of a primarily aesthetic connection between Christianity and the alt-right is to say that Christian symbolism is being exploited to create the appearance of Christendom within alt-right worldviews. For example, the Christian Identity movement—one of seventeen Christian hate groups listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center—is based on the postulate that only European whites are the descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel. The movement, then, is built on an aesthetic of Judeo-Christian tradition despite the fact that its white supremacist reading of the bible is entirely unfounded. While alt-right terrorism certainly fabricates a Christian aesthetic, how deep are the theological roots of antisemitism on which they base their ideology?

Antisemitism is a complex, vile, and ever-evolving prejudice against the Jewish community. Antisemitism manifests itself in many ways, but one major example stems from the early Christian idea that the Jewish people were responsible for the murder of Jesus. Despite the fact that only Roman authorities had the power to condemn people to death, the canonical gospels depict the Jewish people as demanding the crucifixion Christ. The Gospel of Matthew, even portrays the Jewish crowds as verbally accepting the responsibility for the death of Christ: “When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead an uproar was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. ‘I am innocent of this man’s blood,’ he said. ‘It is your responsibility!’ / All the people answered, ‘His blood is on us and on our children’” (Matthew 27:24-25). This passage was cited verbatim as justification for the attack on the Chabad of Poway synagogue in the shooter’s open letter.

Professor of Hebrew and Judaic studies at New York University, Annette Reed, says that the diabolization of the Jewish people was “just one of a broad continuum of different [rhetorical] strategies by which followers of Jesus made sense of their relation to Judaism.”

Christianity was not made legal in the Roman empire until 313 CE when emperor Constantine issued the edict of Milan—roughly three hundred years after the Crucifixion. Downplaying the role of Roman authorities in the death of Christ would have been advantageous for a religion attempting to gain political and cultural acceptance in Rome. At this time, the Christian tradition was also working through tensions of self-identification and began to define itself as separate from Judaism.

At the heart of the separation between early Jesus followers and Judaism lies an anxiety about Christianity’s responsibility for antisemitism. John Gager, Professor of Religion at Princeton University, writes, “The study of relations between Judaism and early Christianity, perhaps more than any other area of modern scholarship, has felt the impact of WWII and its aftermath. The experience of the Holocaust reintroduced with unprecedented urgency the question of Christianity’s responsibility for anti-Semitism: not simply whether individual Christians had added fuel to modern European anti-Semitism, but whether Christianity itself was, in its essence and from its beginnings, the primary source of anti-Semitism in Western culture.”

Embedded within the very identity of Christianity lies a troubling cause of antisemitism: the idea that Christians have replaced the Jewish people as the people of God. The Epistle to the Hebrews stands as one example of this idea—called supersessionism. The Jewish Annotated New Testament (second edition) says Christianity “understood itself as having replaced not just the covenant between Israel and God, but Judaism as a religion . . . Supersessionist theology inscribes Judaism as an obsolete, illegitimate religion, and in the New Testament this idea is articulated no more plainly than in Hebrews.”  Hebrews argues for the superiority of Christ over Jewish tradition—one point in a complex navigation of Christian-Jewish relations by early Jesus followers. However, the Christian view of Judaism as an invalid religion coupled with a scapegoating of the Jewish people for the Crucifixion of Christ can and has been read to justify egregious acts of violence.

Instead of asking if antisemitism ‘exists’ in the earliest thoughts and writings of Christ-followers, it may be more helpful to ask if the New Testament motivates antisemitic thought—whether it’s ‘there’ or not. Professor Reed points out that glaring anti-Jewish messages in the New Testament existed within a context of  “inner-Christian debate in which there were also others who were stressing instead the Jewishness of both Jesus and authentic forms of Christianity.” These anti-Jewish sentiments should then be understood within the context of the early Christian movement to separate itself from Judaism. Mark Leuchter, a Professor of religion and Judaism at Temple University, says, “Once the New Testament became holy specifically to Christians, the original context for debate was lost,” allowing the New Testament to become “justification for anti-Jewish violence and hatred . . . in ways that many Christians don’t even realize.”

The Chabad of Poway synagogue shooter was a member of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church—an evangelical denomination founded to counter liberalism in mainline Presbyterianism. After reading the Christian theology present in the shooter’s manifesto, Reverend of the church, Mika Edmondson, said, “We can’t pretend as though we didn’t have some responsibility for him — he was radicalized into white nationalism from within the very midst of our church.”

Also in response to reading the shooter’s manifesto, Reverend Duke Kwon of the Presbyterian Church in America says, “you actually hear a frighteningly clear articulation of the Christian theology in certain sentences and paragraphs. He has, in some ways, been well taught in the church.” To address the violent and growing crisis of alt-right, domestic terrorism in the United States, the Christian church must do more than simply condemn such acts. Christians, especially conservative, evangelical denominations whose political ideology engage alt-right views, should recognize that their teachings can and are being conflated with white nationalism. Practicing Christians are quick to defend the Bible in the face of criticism, but in this case there is more at stake than reputation. The connections between alt-right ideology and Christianity go dangerously beyond simple aesthetics. The reason Christian aesthetics are so widely co-opted by proponents of white supremacy is because early Christian scripture and the very identity of the Christian tradition has roots in anti-Jewish sentiment. Those who choose to ignore this reality become complacent in its tragic consequences.

The Pittsburgh Shooting and Secondary Anti-Semitism

"Governor Wolf Gives Remarks Regarding Pittsburgh Shooting and Participates in Vigil" by Governor Tom Wolf licensed under CC BY 2.0 (via Flickr).

This Saturday, Robert Bowers entered the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. Armed with an AR-15-style assault rifle and three handguns, Bower fired into the gathering of worshippers assembled for the morning service. At least eleven people were killed, while six others sustained injuries, including members of law enforcement.

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Media Sensationalism and the “Affaire Villemin”

The case of Gregory Villemin is well known in France, to the point that it is frequently referred to as the “Affaire Villemin.” Gregory was a four-year-old boy who was found dead in 1984, in the waters of the Vologne River in eastern France. There was intense media coverage of the case’s details, but ultimately, the murderers were never found.

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Censoring Richard Wagner

The Romantic Era of music brought us some of the most beloved minds in Western music we have ever known. Beethoven, Verdi, Puccini, Chopin – the list could go on and on. Following Beethoven’s brilliant instrumental music legacy, however, one German composer’s ingenuity stood out above the rest – Richard Wagner. While he was alive, Wagner was the single most popular composer in Germany. Even today, Wagner is one of the most celebrated composers in all of Western music history, and his operas are still performed worldwide. Unfortunately, however, his legacy has been tarnished by his radical anti-Semitic beliefs which were translated into many of his operas. Questions about the ethicality of performing his art in a modern setting have long been debated by the classical music community.

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