Maybe, let's not talk about Israel
Why does Israel appear in so many conversations to which it does not pertain?
Are you seeing the nonsense on Facebook Right Now? The text message buzzed at quarter-to-eleven on a Thursday night from a classmate who I had been texting with off and on all evening about what we thought would be on the Contracts exam. I was already in bed, and pulled my computer onto my lap to see what all the fuss was about.
In a Facebook group for current and former students of my law school, an argument had erupted in the comments on a post about the role of police when it comes to protests–specifically the Wet’suwet’en protests that were shutting down rail lines across the country in late February and early March 2020 when this incident occurred.
As a general rule, I don’t involve myself in Facebook arguments, and this story is no exception. The internet is a bad place to start an argument, everything becomes heated too quickly and there seems quite often to be no stance but the most extreme one. This is not to say that I’m not tempted. I frequently type out lengthy comments beneath posts I disagree with explaining why whatever is written is wrong, and subsequently delete the comment before posting it. At some point, I’m sure I will slip up and accidentally post something, but so far, so good.
As I read through the comments on the thread I was shocked to see the depths they went to in order to attack the opinion of the student who made the post. This isn’t to say that the original post wasn’t inflammatory–it was, but what followed was magnified ten times over.
And then it happened.
Halfway through the feed, the topic suddenly switched. Seemingly out of nowhere, it became a discussion about Palestine, which quickly devolved into Antisemitic comments. To say this pivot came as a surprise would not be entirely truthful. I move in so-called “progressive” circles, my law school included, and more often than not it’s only a matter of time before all debates, for some reason, reference Israel’s right to exist. But reading through comments made by individuals I would have to sit and have civil conversation with in class the next day, I started to wonder: why?
Why Israel? How could the Israeli-Palestinian conflict possibly have anything to do with police in Canada? Is it purely because it’s a divisive issue? Because if that’s the case, there are a lot other controversial topics to which we could turn: abortion rights, artificial intelligence, gentrification, pineapple on pizza, the list goes on.
But why Israel? Why always Israel?
As much as possible, I want to fight the urge to assume that this all motivated by some form of acknowledged or unacknowledged Antisemitism– though it feels worth noting that the student who made the original post about police is Jewish. I assume this mostly, because if I were to allow myself to see the world through this lens, it would make it near impossible for me to function in the liberal and progressive groups I live in, and where I do often find myself in an uncomfortable position of trying to reconcile the value I place on Judaism and Israel with the social and political movements I want to be part of. I am not alone in feeling this way, this struggle of being Jewish in progressive circles with their tendency towards condemnation of Israel for the fact of its existence has been commented on by Bari Weiss [https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/616727/how-to-fight-anti-semitism-by-bari-weiss/] and other journalists [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/14/opinion/college-israel-anti-semitism.html].
It would be one thing if it were really a conversation about Israel; if it were a conversation among individuals, with the relevant base-level of knowledge about Netanyahu’s policies, about the settlements, or the treatment of secular Jews by the orthodox population, or any number of sociopolitical issues in the country. But it’s not. It’s a conversation about selecting one side as innocent victim based on an extremely complicated set of facts.
Approximately one month before the Facebook incident the Secretary General of Amnesty International Canada came to give the keynote address at a conference on social justice legal careers at my law school. For the sake of honesty, I will admit that during his speech, which was more spectacle than specifics, my focus wandered from diligent note taking, to staring at the ceiling and texting from my computer. But then he said something that brought my focus zooming back to his place at the podium. His advice on pursuing an LLM had suddenly degenerated into talking about how he was currently involved in a suit trying to have wine produced in the West Bank labeled as having been made in Palestine rather than Israel. Again, for the sake of honesty, I was not entirely surprised that a speaker from Amnesty International was involved in a case that was subtly trying to delegitimize Israel. The organization has for a long time been very open about their position on the conflict. What surprised me was that this was the example he chose to cite. Amnesty International is involved in countless issues both in Canada and the world over, so why was his go-to example something about Israel? Perhaps it was fresh in his mind because it was something he was actively working on, but given that only a few minutes earlier had been talking about how there is lots of work to be done for human rights in Canada, I feel there is good reason to doubt that it was merely front of mind.
Why Israel? Is there not a more relevant topic to discuss?
Going back to the Facebook argument, let’s pretend for a moment that Israel actually was relevant to the conversation about the Wet’suwet’en protests. Almost every claim that has been brought forward for Aboriginal rights or title to land has been predicated on historical and religious connections to the land itself. We are frequently reminded that Indigenous religions are tied to the land we live on in Canada, and that for this reason, we must work to ensure as much as possible (though this is not often how it turns out in practice) is done to balance Indigenous interests with the interests of other Canadians.
Judaism is also a religion tied to the land – the land of Israel. לשנה הבאה בירושלים, Next year in Jerusalem, we say every year at the end of the Passover Seder. There are commandments–mitzvot–that can only be performed in the land of Israel. It is a faith that is fundamentally interconnected to a small piece of desert along the Mediterranian. To claim that one nation is a colonial white-supremacist state for existing in their ancestral homeland, while walking out of class and stopping trains for the sake of defending the right of another to do exactly that, feels to me to be the farthest thing from progressive.
I want to believe that this is not Antisemitism. I console myself by calling it ignorance, showmanship, and a failed attempt by some over-eager-under-exposed law students to be revolutionary by spitting out some comments that they don’t understand. I want to tell myself that it’s all just a desire to have an argument online. And hopefully, I’m right. But if that’s all that it is, then maybe, just maybe, let’s not talk about Israel. If we really need to have an argument online, let’s pick any other divisive issue. Let’s pick something that we all understand.
Ready? I’ll start…
Chocolate chip muffins and cupcakes are the same thing.
Go.
Originally published on my website… https://hodacessays.wordpress.com/2021/01/07/maybe-lets-not-talk-about-israel/