Being anti-genocide and anti-Israel isn't antisemitism. We don't care what a person's religion is but we do care if they support genocide. That the ADL & others avoid the correlation between a state committing human extermination with our tax dollars, buying our elections, & suppressing our civil rights is bull
I suppose it must be extremely disappointing for the liberal Jews that supported a liberal agenda. Here they believed that their support had earned them the right to not have their character questioned after they chose to support Israel irregardless of any questionable action.
You asked about Jewish, I wonder if you could pick black women / gays/ anything -I think it’s generational simple minded dual/ black white thinking- as I therapist I find the averages here align with what I see in the closed minded ignorance without critical thinking trends on just about anything…. The trend in thinking I believe is more telling than the topic being “thought on”- unfortunately
The huge percentages liberals who had ZERO agreements with the antisemitic statements was heartening. It truly is about Israel with those kids. I think you’ll find antisemites or folks who just believe the racist tropes of every ethnicity make up about 15% of any group unfortunately.
Some of these survey questions may lead to ambiguous implications, i.e., “Should Israel exist as a Jewish state?” A former Israeli Prime Minister (I can’t recall his name) said a few years ago: “Israel can exist as either a Jewish state or a democratic state but it can’t be both,” referring, I believe, to absorption of the West Bank territories among other issues.
It was Ehud Barak, but that's not exactly what he was referring to. He meant that the Arabs hugely outnumber the Jews, so if Israel were a totally democratic state, it would no longer be a Jewish state.
Barak's statement is often used by disingenuously those with anti-Israel/anti-Zionist views . The State of Israel is both a Jewish majority state and a democracy within its official borders with respect to all of its citizens (Jews and Arabs-roughly 20% of Israeli citizens are Arabs). Like all democracies, it is imperfect, and there is certainly discrimination etc. But that's not what Barak was referring to. Barak was concerned that if Israel continued to occupy the West Bank and Gaza, which were and are not part of the State of Israel, it would be viewed as undemocratic, and if Israel formally made the West Bank and Gaza part of Israel, the millions of Arabs residing there would become citizens of Israel and totally outnumber the Jewish population of Israel. It's the main reason Barak was a proponent of a "2-state solution."
I wish and have been arguing for a long time that people would make the distinction between Israel and Jews in general, especially in the US. US Jews are working to actually end the abuse of Palestinians by Israel. See Jews for Peace. See the number of Jews demonstrating against the war in Gaza. One of my wife's professors quit his job and went to Israel to actively work for a just peace.
It doesn't help that the Anti-Defamation League is working hard to equate the two - being Jewish and being proIsrael - because that just defines American Jews in the same set as Israelis, so if you hate the way one of them is acting, then you are psychologically forced to hate the other and assume that there is no difference. It may be too late, but if the ADL started making the difference, then maybe there would be less antiSemitism against American Jews.
I got degrees from two schools with large contingents of Jews, so I understand that Judaism is definitely NOT a uniform movement. And I realize that even American Jews can be jerks, but by and large, the Jews I know personally are much better people than the evangelicals I know personally.
Literally had breakfast with a pastor of mine from back in the day last Saturday.
Twenty years ago supporting Israel based on scriptural prescription was an article of faith, regardless of Israel's conduct. Our church was heavily linked to the ministry of Benny Hinn. We took instruction from TBN.
And in today's strange world the updated world view I got was, "not support the state of Israel," that we fought for the wrong side in WWII and "no proof the, 'Final Solution' even happened."
Looks like the results posted from the "Yale Youth Poll" pretty closely reflect the opinions of the 45-64 age group. And breaking the numbers down between widely varying age bins makes it a little cloudy.
The distance between the younger generation and the Holocaust is only telling half the story. For anyone under 30, the only Israel they have ever known is Netanyahu’s Israel. Now, that is not to say that the tension and brutality started with Netanyahu, but it has considerably deteriorated. All the younger generation knows of Israel is the graphic footage they see coming out of Gaza, authorized by an incredibly corrupt authoritarian leader. They see the lack of consequences and accountability. They see the unconditional support Israel receives in the form of weapons and intelligence and they find it appalling because it IS appalling.
And then on top of that, they are reading stories about how the most notorious child sex trafficker and his accomplice both have strong ties to Israel. And then you add in the toxicity of people like Candace Owens and it’s easy to see how the world they’ve grown up in would bring them to this moment. It’s not a justification, but it is a reality we need to understand and accept if we are to reverse course. Teaching about the Holocaust is not going to help matters when people are seeing the horrors of what is happening in Gaza right now.
I don't get it-why does Jewish discrimination always seem to come back? I get the frustration with Israel, but Jews living in America are American, not Israeli, and many have spoken out against what has happened in Gaza. There has to be more going on. Plenty of people despise Putin and yet I don't see a huge backlash against Russian-Americans.
Is it because Jews are far more successful and educated? If you're a racist, that sounds like a "you" problem. Maybe you should get yourself educated and become successful. Is it because of their high levels of input into our culture via media? So what? Start your own media channel; make your own movies. It doesn't mean you have to tear others down.
Tell that to the ADL. If you look at the Israeli backed propaganda, it pushes a definite equivalence between the two. Notice that in states such as Texas, any criticism of Israel is legally defined as being antiSemitic. Note that in many of the antiGaza war protests the protesters are flat out designated as being antiSemitic even though many of them are Jewish.
People with no personal experience with a large number of Jews ie, lots of rural America, will equate the two because that is the way the Israeli and right wing propaganda is pushing.
It's because people hate those they've mistreated. It becomes a self-reinforcing psychological loop. You *need* to believe they are awful people, who deserved what they got, to have any shred of respect for yourself after however you mistreated them.
these numbers are horrific! more than 1 in 10 people in the US is just fine with antisemitism. How does this compare to other forms ofprejudice? Are we this fargone?
Antisemitism (aka pathological scapegoating), like any mob sentiment, functions as a social bonding mechanism. Hating and blaming Jews also obviously has an ancient historical pedigree, meaning it's among the first devices available when ignorant, angry or alienated people reach into their psychic knapsacks.
That said, it's hard to tell from this poll how many harbor antisemitic feelings *when asked*, and how many there are for whom antisemitism is a ruling passion and Jews or Israel a compulsive fetish.
Which, to be sure, is searching for cold comfort.
I see no point in apportioning blame between Right and Left in the matter, as political allegiances among the very online young are arguably too fluid to permit confident generalizations. Although my impression is that the Left was first mainly infected with anti-Israel prejudice and moved on to the more comprehensive antisemitic variety, whereas on the Right it's been mostly the other way around.
BTW, as a Jew I will not engage in what I regard as the futile if not contemptible tendency to disavow the Israeli government as "bad" Jews who make life difficult for the rest of us. That evokes the German Jewish attitude toward the embarrassing Polish *ostjuden*; it didn't work in Germany and won't soften antisemitism in America today. Israel should be defended against antisemites because any attack on Zionism as such not only singles out the Jewish State in a patently discriminatory manner, but is manifestly intended to deprive Jews collectively of our last, best defense against another wholesale massacre.
What should Israel have done in response to Hamas’ 10/7/23 massacre of 1200+, abduction of hundreds more, etc? How many Islamist wars and attacks are enough? Why haven’t Arab states stepped up to help resolve the plight of those trapped in Gaza? Should Israel have allowed Hamas to maintain a 450 mile long tunnel network in a territory that is 25 miles long? How would you have resolved the situation?
You won't get serious answers to your serious questions in the Bulwark comments section. Instead you are more likely to get some pontification about the original sin of the Balfour Declaration, the unfairness of the UN 1947 partition plan, the peacefulness of the 1st Intifada (never mind the 1967 war, the 1973 war or the 2d Intifada) and then, finally, the certitude that only a 1-state solution in which Israel, Gaza and the West Bank are all merged into a single nation in which Israeli Jews live as a minority under a benevolent Arab majority will bring lasting peace. Frankly, any discussion of Jews or Israel in the Bulwark comments is a waste of time.
I don't find it surprising. People in that age group are far removed from the events of WWII. They have no mental image of Jews as a downtrodden group of people notwithstanding that many read The Diary of Anne Frank in school. They see the present Israel, not the one created to move Jews out of Europe where they were unwelcome displaced persons. They see the modern city of Tel Aviv and sophisticated military operations with slick high tech stuff. They equate the creation of Israel with the actions of earlier British, Dutch, French, and Spanish empires moving into resource rich countries to strip them of the resources and subjugate the people there. I am not saying that Israel treated Palestinians with the respect they should have been accorded. Just that the creation of Israel was motivated by different things. Somewhere bone deep in them is the concept that Jews are suspect, having too much influence and too much money. And an undetermined number of young people see Jews as a monolithic group...Israeli Jews, American Jews, English Jews...they're all Jews and all responsible for what is happening to Palestinians.
I wonder what a similar look at anti-Americanism in Europe would find. It’s human nature to conflate a nation with its government —and, in a democracy, not entirely unreasonable—and both Israel and the US are belligerent states with despicable leaders. Yet, there is in both cases a visceral loathing underneath. Antisemitism is and always has been a core value of the populist right, but on the left it is stoked by the “cowboys and Indians” take on the Middle East (cowboys being imperialism incarnate) that dominates universities.
Being anti-genocide and anti-Israel isn't antisemitism. We don't care what a person's religion is but we do care if they support genocide. That the ADL & others avoid the correlation between a state committing human extermination with our tax dollars, buying our elections, & suppressing our civil rights is bull
I suppose it must be extremely disappointing for the liberal Jews that supported a liberal agenda. Here they believed that their support had earned them the right to not have their character questioned after they chose to support Israel irregardless of any questionable action.
No good deed goes unpunished. Our intersectional former allies are on their own going forward. Mazel tov!
Israel's treatment of Palestenians has been a PR disaster for the Jews. ADL not helping.
You asked about Jewish, I wonder if you could pick black women / gays/ anything -I think it’s generational simple minded dual/ black white thinking- as I therapist I find the averages here align with what I see in the closed minded ignorance without critical thinking trends on just about anything…. The trend in thinking I believe is more telling than the topic being “thought on”- unfortunately
The huge percentages liberals who had ZERO agreements with the antisemitic statements was heartening. It truly is about Israel with those kids. I think you’ll find antisemites or folks who just believe the racist tropes of every ethnicity make up about 15% of any group unfortunately.
Some of these survey questions may lead to ambiguous implications, i.e., “Should Israel exist as a Jewish state?” A former Israeli Prime Minister (I can’t recall his name) said a few years ago: “Israel can exist as either a Jewish state or a democratic state but it can’t be both,” referring, I believe, to absorption of the West Bank territories among other issues.
It was Ehud Barak, but that's not exactly what he was referring to. He meant that the Arabs hugely outnumber the Jews, so if Israel were a totally democratic state, it would no longer be a Jewish state.
Barak's statement is often used by disingenuously those with anti-Israel/anti-Zionist views . The State of Israel is both a Jewish majority state and a democracy within its official borders with respect to all of its citizens (Jews and Arabs-roughly 20% of Israeli citizens are Arabs). Like all democracies, it is imperfect, and there is certainly discrimination etc. But that's not what Barak was referring to. Barak was concerned that if Israel continued to occupy the West Bank and Gaza, which were and are not part of the State of Israel, it would be viewed as undemocratic, and if Israel formally made the West Bank and Gaza part of Israel, the millions of Arabs residing there would become citizens of Israel and totally outnumber the Jewish population of Israel. It's the main reason Barak was a proponent of a "2-state solution."
It was Ehud Barak (the translations slightly vary but you have correctly state the gist of it).
This is propaganda filled with weasel words. Not saying that antisemitism isn't a problem, it definitely is, but c'mon. Do better, Bulwark.
I wish and have been arguing for a long time that people would make the distinction between Israel and Jews in general, especially in the US. US Jews are working to actually end the abuse of Palestinians by Israel. See Jews for Peace. See the number of Jews demonstrating against the war in Gaza. One of my wife's professors quit his job and went to Israel to actively work for a just peace.
It doesn't help that the Anti-Defamation League is working hard to equate the two - being Jewish and being proIsrael - because that just defines American Jews in the same set as Israelis, so if you hate the way one of them is acting, then you are psychologically forced to hate the other and assume that there is no difference. It may be too late, but if the ADL started making the difference, then maybe there would be less antiSemitism against American Jews.
I got degrees from two schools with large contingents of Jews, so I understand that Judaism is definitely NOT a uniform movement. And I realize that even American Jews can be jerks, but by and large, the Jews I know personally are much better people than the evangelicals I know personally.
Literally had breakfast with a pastor of mine from back in the day last Saturday.
Twenty years ago supporting Israel based on scriptural prescription was an article of faith, regardless of Israel's conduct. Our church was heavily linked to the ministry of Benny Hinn. We took instruction from TBN.
And in today's strange world the updated world view I got was, "not support the state of Israel," that we fought for the wrong side in WWII and "no proof the, 'Final Solution' even happened."
Strange times, Bless the Lord..
Looks like the results posted from the "Yale Youth Poll" pretty closely reflect the opinions of the 45-64 age group. And breaking the numbers down between widely varying age bins makes it a little cloudy.
The distance between the younger generation and the Holocaust is only telling half the story. For anyone under 30, the only Israel they have ever known is Netanyahu’s Israel. Now, that is not to say that the tension and brutality started with Netanyahu, but it has considerably deteriorated. All the younger generation knows of Israel is the graphic footage they see coming out of Gaza, authorized by an incredibly corrupt authoritarian leader. They see the lack of consequences and accountability. They see the unconditional support Israel receives in the form of weapons and intelligence and they find it appalling because it IS appalling.
And then on top of that, they are reading stories about how the most notorious child sex trafficker and his accomplice both have strong ties to Israel. And then you add in the toxicity of people like Candace Owens and it’s easy to see how the world they’ve grown up in would bring them to this moment. It’s not a justification, but it is a reality we need to understand and accept if we are to reverse course. Teaching about the Holocaust is not going to help matters when people are seeing the horrors of what is happening in Gaza right now.
I don't get it-why does Jewish discrimination always seem to come back? I get the frustration with Israel, but Jews living in America are American, not Israeli, and many have spoken out against what has happened in Gaza. There has to be more going on. Plenty of people despise Putin and yet I don't see a huge backlash against Russian-Americans.
Is it because Jews are far more successful and educated? If you're a racist, that sounds like a "you" problem. Maybe you should get yourself educated and become successful. Is it because of their high levels of input into our culture via media? So what? Start your own media channel; make your own movies. It doesn't mean you have to tear others down.
"Jews living in America are not Israeli"
Tell that to the ADL. If you look at the Israeli backed propaganda, it pushes a definite equivalence between the two. Notice that in states such as Texas, any criticism of Israel is legally defined as being antiSemitic. Note that in many of the antiGaza war protests the protesters are flat out designated as being antiSemitic even though many of them are Jewish.
People with no personal experience with a large number of Jews ie, lots of rural America, will equate the two because that is the way the Israeli and right wing propaganda is pushing.
It's because people hate those they've mistreated. It becomes a self-reinforcing psychological loop. You *need* to believe they are awful people, who deserved what they got, to have any shred of respect for yourself after however you mistreated them.
these numbers are horrific! more than 1 in 10 people in the US is just fine with antisemitism. How does this compare to other forms ofprejudice? Are we this fargone?
Antisemitism (aka pathological scapegoating), like any mob sentiment, functions as a social bonding mechanism. Hating and blaming Jews also obviously has an ancient historical pedigree, meaning it's among the first devices available when ignorant, angry or alienated people reach into their psychic knapsacks.
That said, it's hard to tell from this poll how many harbor antisemitic feelings *when asked*, and how many there are for whom antisemitism is a ruling passion and Jews or Israel a compulsive fetish.
Which, to be sure, is searching for cold comfort.
I see no point in apportioning blame between Right and Left in the matter, as political allegiances among the very online young are arguably too fluid to permit confident generalizations. Although my impression is that the Left was first mainly infected with anti-Israel prejudice and moved on to the more comprehensive antisemitic variety, whereas on the Right it's been mostly the other way around.
BTW, as a Jew I will not engage in what I regard as the futile if not contemptible tendency to disavow the Israeli government as "bad" Jews who make life difficult for the rest of us. That evokes the German Jewish attitude toward the embarrassing Polish *ostjuden*; it didn't work in Germany and won't soften antisemitism in America today. Israel should be defended against antisemites because any attack on Zionism as such not only singles out the Jewish State in a patently discriminatory manner, but is manifestly intended to deprive Jews collectively of our last, best defense against another wholesale massacre.
So this "last, best defense" is a wholesale massacre of your own?
What should Israel have done in response to Hamas’ 10/7/23 massacre of 1200+, abduction of hundreds more, etc? How many Islamist wars and attacks are enough? Why haven’t Arab states stepped up to help resolve the plight of those trapped in Gaza? Should Israel have allowed Hamas to maintain a 450 mile long tunnel network in a territory that is 25 miles long? How would you have resolved the situation?
You won't get serious answers to your serious questions in the Bulwark comments section. Instead you are more likely to get some pontification about the original sin of the Balfour Declaration, the unfairness of the UN 1947 partition plan, the peacefulness of the 1st Intifada (never mind the 1967 war, the 1973 war or the 2d Intifada) and then, finally, the certitude that only a 1-state solution in which Israel, Gaza and the West Bank are all merged into a single nation in which Israeli Jews live as a minority under a benevolent Arab majority will bring lasting peace. Frankly, any discussion of Jews or Israel in the Bulwark comments is a waste of time.
I don't find it surprising. People in that age group are far removed from the events of WWII. They have no mental image of Jews as a downtrodden group of people notwithstanding that many read The Diary of Anne Frank in school. They see the present Israel, not the one created to move Jews out of Europe where they were unwelcome displaced persons. They see the modern city of Tel Aviv and sophisticated military operations with slick high tech stuff. They equate the creation of Israel with the actions of earlier British, Dutch, French, and Spanish empires moving into resource rich countries to strip them of the resources and subjugate the people there. I am not saying that Israel treated Palestinians with the respect they should have been accorded. Just that the creation of Israel was motivated by different things. Somewhere bone deep in them is the concept that Jews are suspect, having too much influence and too much money. And an undetermined number of young people see Jews as a monolithic group...Israeli Jews, American Jews, English Jews...they're all Jews and all responsible for what is happening to Palestinians.
I wonder what a similar look at anti-Americanism in Europe would find. It’s human nature to conflate a nation with its government —and, in a democracy, not entirely unreasonable—and both Israel and the US are belligerent states with despicable leaders. Yet, there is in both cases a visceral loathing underneath. Antisemitism is and always has been a core value of the populist right, but on the left it is stoked by the “cowboys and Indians” take on the Middle East (cowboys being imperialism incarnate) that dominates universities.