Yasha Levine
[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n the Soviet Union, Jews hated having their Jewish “nationality” stamped on their official documents and rubbed in their faces and used to dictate their lives and opportunities. That’s one of the main reasons why my parents decided to flee the Soviet Union with me and my brother in 1989.
Now 30 years later in America…
NYT Politics
@nytpolitics
President Trump will sign an executive order defining Judaism as a nationality, not just a religion, thus bolstering the Education Department's efforts to stamp out "Boycott Israel" movements on college campuses
Trump Targets Anti-Semitism and Israeli Boycotts on College Campuses
The president’s order would allow the government to withhold money from campuses deemed to be biased, but critics see it as an attack on free speech.
nyti.ms
December 10th 2019
I want to write more about Trump’s weaponization of Jewish sectarian identity on behalf of Israel and Evangelical Christians, his most powerful and dedicated base. But I’m on the road right now, so I’ll have to keep this kinda short for the time being.
It’s obvious that defining Judaism as a “nationality” on college campuses that receive federal funding has nothing to do with protecting American Jews from antisemitism. The whole thing is part of a larger political ploy to stop political criticism of Israel by conflating Jewish identity with Zionism.
Conflating Jews and Israel and defining anti-Zionism as antisemitism has long been goal of the Zionist movement, but it’s important to remember that Zionism has never had full unanimous support among Jews.
My grandfather Aaron was active in Jewish Communist circles in Ukraine. He was almost certainly against Zionism. And many of Jews that came to America a century ago were also against Zionism and Jewish nationalist politics — that included The Forward, the largest and most widely read Yiddish language newspaper in America. Zionism and hardcore support for Israel only became dominant in the 1960s, two decades after the establishment of Israel. It was a shift in attitudes that coincided with the professionalization, assimilation, and general rightwing drift of American Jews and represented the community’s move away from the left and towards nationalist and identity politics.
But nothing lasts forever.
Support for Zionism and Israel has been dropping, especially among younger American Jews who don’t feel comfortable unconditionally backing an ethno-theocractic state that’s based on racism and a brutal, constantly expanding military occupation of Palestine. To me — on top of the occupation and the built-in racism — the idea that Jews need a “racially” pure Jewish state in order to thrive and survive comes with all sorts of political and historical problems. It’s an idea that’s directly connected to the virulent 19th and 20th century nationalist ideologies that displaced economic politics with fantasies about blood and soil, tearing Europe apart and nearly exterminating European Jews — from Germany to Poland to Ukraine. It’s bad news and bad politics. (And apparently under Trump’s new executive order I would be considered an antisemite if I was a college student and said this on campus.)
Israel and American Zionists have been freaking out and trying to frantically plug up leaky reservoir of support among younger American Jews. Censoring pro-Palestinian activism and criticism of Israel on college campuses is one of the ways they’ve been hoping to do it.
But whatever happens to American Jews, Israel has been blessed with total, unwavering backing from a more powerful and less squeamish domestic set: Evangelical Christians. As people have been pointing out, support from Evangelicals is what Trump is most likely thinking about with this executive order to protect Jews.
How? Well…
Tom Delay, the evangelical former Congressman from Texas, once explained the logic of evangelical support for Israel quite succinctly to Max Blumenthal. It’s all about the Rapture: “Obviously we have to be connected to Israel to enjoin the Second Coming!” Or as televangelist John Hagee declared: “Support the Jewish people and the state of Israel today, tomorrow, and forever — until the Messiah comes!” Amen and Mazel-Tov!
—Yasha Levine
PS: Even as I write this, the story is evolving — Jared Kusher’s stepped in to defend his daddy-in-law!
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