Jewish response to Hamas conflict criticism comes from deep sense of trauma, lively grief and worry

Within the wake of the Hamas terror assaults on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the Israeli army response, Jewish individuals in Israel and all over the world have, at occasions, been posting on social media or in any other case saying publicly that individuals who criticize Israel’s response are, or could be, antisemitic.

The Dialog U.S. requested Dov Waxman, director of the Y&S Nazarian Heart for Israel Research on the College of California, Los Angeles, to clarify why many Jews may really feel that manner.

Why do some individuals seem to equate criticism of Israel with antisemitism?

There’s a notion that many Jews have – together with many Jews on the left who’re themselves outspoken critics of Israel – that a number of the responses, significantly on social media and on some school campuses, to what’s been going down in Israel and Gaza have been callous and one-sided at greatest, and in some cases shockingly amoral. Some responses have celebrated Hamas’ assault, and others have solely blamed Israel for it. Nonetheless others have been silent about that assault and have solely denounced Israel’s army response.

There’s a widespread feeling amongst Jews that these form of reactions to the horrific atrocities perpetrated in opposition to Israeli civilians don’t replicate a dedication to common values or human rights. Moderately, they exonerate Hamas and deal with the mass homicide of Israeli civilians as one way or the other acceptable or legit. Some suspect that there’s a double-standard at play when individuals furiously condemn the killing of Palestinian civilians, however say nothing, and even excuse it, when Israeli civilians are killed.

What are Jewish individuals feeling and experiencing proper now?

Many individuals who aren’t Jewish are responding as if what’s been going down is simply one other episode of Israeli-Palestinian violence.

Nevertheless it’s totally different for a lot of Jews. My very own Fb feed is just about simply footage of Israelis who’ve been killed or are at the moment held captive in Gaza. Many Jews have family and friends in Israel, so it’s very private for them.

Many Jews are nonetheless grieving, shocked and traumatized by what occurred on Oct. 7. However different individuals, within the U.S. and all over the world, have already moved on from Oct. 7, and they’re much extra involved concerning the conflict that Israel is now waging in opposition to Hamas and the devastating affect it’s having on Palestinians within the Gaza Strip.

Jews are sometimes searching for what individuals must say concerning the massacres of Israeli civilians. Most need to hear an unequivocal condemnation of what Hamas did. Any try and contextualize it’s seen as one way or the other rationalizing or minimizing Hamas’ assault, or a failure to acknowledge that Hamas just isn’t merely in search of a Palestinian state within the West Financial institution and Gaza, however the destruction of Israel.

And, on prime of all this, Jews have gotten more and more apprehensive and fearful about being harassed or violently attacked by individuals blaming them for Israel’s actions, or simply taking out their anger on them. There’s been a large spike in antisemitic incidents within the United States and in many international locations since Oct. 7.

What are the feelings behind this response?

For a lot of Jews, the particular nature of Hamas’ assault – the mass slaughter and the way in which through which Hamas gunmen went systematically from home to accommodate murdering households, and, in some circumstances, brutally butchering individuals – evokes deep, traumatic reminiscences of the Holocaust.

What happened on Oct. 7 was the largest single-day killing of Jews for the reason that Holocaust.

What many Jews see in Oct. 7, subsequently, is not only a continuation of a long-standing battle between Israel and the Palestinians. What occurred on Oct. 7, within the minds of many, is qualitatively totally different.

The truth that many different individuals don’t appear to acknowledge or acknowledge that, or reply as many Jews would hope, is why some Jews really feel that there’s antisemitism lurking beneath the floor – that Israeli Jews and Zionists typically have been so dehumanized and demonized that it’s develop into one way or the other acceptable for them to be killed, even when they’re civilians, together with kids and infants.

Is criticism of Israel truly antisemitic, or antisemitic underneath sure circumstances that folks ought to study to acknowledge or perceive?

For a very long time now, Israeli officers and a few right-wing, pro-Israel organizations and activists have had the knee-jerk response that any criticism of Israel is antisemitic, and so they attempt to delegitimize critics of Israel by labeling them antisemites.

Sadly, legit criticism of Israel’s therapy of the Palestinians, and peaceable activism in assist of the Palestinians, is just too typically referred to as antisemitic.

I believe that almost all Jews regard criticism of Israel as legit, although many really feel that it’s generally extreme. Many, if not most, Jews truly criticize Israel. No one severely insists that every one criticism of Israel is antisemitic. The true query is, what sorts of criticism of Israel are acceptable and what could be thought-about antisemitic? When does criticism of Israel cross the road into antisemitism?

A lot of the mainstream American Jewish neighborhood, together with many main organizations, attracts the road between criticizing the actions and insurance policies of Israeli governments – towards the Palestinians, for instance – and criticizing Zionism or Israel’s id as a Jewish state. They regard the latter as delegitimizing Israel, and so they see that as antisemitic.

For my part, it’s not essentially antisemitic to criticize Zionism or oppose Jewish statehood, however it’s definitely true that some opposition to Zionism and Israel’s existence as a Jewish state is motivated by antisemitism.

Usually, criticism of Israel or of Zionism just isn’t, in and of itself, antisemitic, even when they’re very harsh and unfair criticisms. Nevertheless, such criticism is antisemitic when it attracts on antisemitic tropes, antisemitic stereotypes or antisemitic concepts.

Folks can typically draw on these issues inadvertently – they don’t essentially know what an antisemitic trope or stereotype is. So, for instance, there may be an previous antisemitic trope referred to as the blood libel that dates again to the eleventh century, claiming that Jews search to kill Christian kids to make use of their blood for ritual functions. So when individuals say that Israel is intentionally killing Palestinian kids, what some Jews are listening to is that Jews are as soon as once more being accused of eager to kill kids.

After 9/11, some individuals criticized the U.S., not as a result of it didn’t have the precise to reply, however they criticized the character of that response, whether or not it was applicable, proportional and aimed on the proper targets. Isn’t that what individuals are doing now relating to Israel’s response?

Sure, and simply as we settle for that it’s legit for individuals to criticize the U.S., it’s additionally legit for individuals to criticize Israel, or for that matter, any nation.

However there’s a distinction in that no person actually challenges the existence of america, or says there shouldn’t be a United States of America. So when individuals criticize the U.S. or occasions in American historical past, they’re doing that within the context of an implicit assumption that the U.S. has a proper to exist and can live on.

Whereas within the case of Israel, its existence and legitimacy are nonetheless challenged. There are nonetheless many individuals who would slightly there not be a state of Israel, not less than not a Jewish state. So criticisms of Israel can tackle a unique character in that context.

Within the case of Israel, there’s one other vital distinction. Due to Jewish historical past, particularly the Holocaust, there may be an abiding sense of vulnerability that many Jews really feel. And subsequently there’s a fear about Israel’s existence and future, and in the end the safety of Jews, that I don’t assume applies to america and People. People don’t have that existential worry.

This all boils right down to a deeply traumatized group of individuals whose trauma was reactivated on Oct. 7 and within the harrowing days since. There’s this intergenerational, unhealed trauma from the historical past of antisemitism and the Holocaust, with Jews having been vilified, demonized and attacked for thus lengthy. That’s their collective reminiscence. And it’s been powerfully evoked, even when not at all times consciously, over the previous few weeks.