Antisemitism cops won’t protect Jews
“Do you want Columbia University to be cursed by God?”
This was the question posed by Rep. Rick Allen, R-Ga., to Columbia University President Minouche Shafik during an April 17 House Committee on Education and the Workforce hearing investigating antisemitism at the university. According to Allen, such a curse is the “real clear” import of Genesis 12:3, which he quoted as: “If you bless Israel, I will bless you, and if you curse Israel, I will curse you.” By allowing pro-Palestinian protests to continue at Columbia, Allen implied, Shafik was courting divine wrath.
Setting aside the separation of church and state issues of Allen’s inquiry, as a religious studies professor who teaches courses on Judaism, Zionism and the Bible, I immediately heard the error in the congressman’s comments: The word “Israel” does not appear in Genesis 12:3. Allen’s misquote is a common one among Christian Zionists, who draw a direct line from Abraham to the modern state of Israel, and therefore invest that state with holy significance. For some among them, like pastor John Hagee, Israeli wars are seen not as lamentable tragedies but as positive signs of the end times. “Support” for Israel in this worldview welcomes the deaths of thousands, if not millions of Jews, insofar as that is seen as the divine plan.
Allen’s performance of protecting Jews is, like the actions of so many in government, a performance to serve his political interests or personal beliefs, and it comes at the expense of American Jews and our democracy.
Take last week’s introduction of the bipartisan College Oversight and Legal Updates Mandating Bias Investigations and Accountability (COLUMBIA) Act. If passed, the bill would allow the Department of Education to send “antisemitism monitors” to colleges that receive federal funding. The monitor would release quarterly reports evaluating progress in combating antisemitism. If such progress were deemed insufficient, federal funding could be revoked.
I immediately wondered what guidance the Department of Education would use in appointing this monitor. Who would be qualified for the role? What definition of antisemitism would be employed? What methods of combating antisemitism would be recommended? Depending on which party is in power, I can envision this playing out in several different ways — all of them bad.
Under a Democratic president, I could see the Education Department deferring to specific preferred nongovernmental organizations to provide the monitor with its charges. Self-proclaimed “mainstream” Jewish organizations, like the Anti-Defamation League, would eagerly seek to influence the position along their desired lines — even though many American Jews such as myself vehemently oppose its politics. The result: a policing of pro-Palestinian speech and genuine academic inquiry. Controversial debates that belong in the classroom, such as the claim that the slogan “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is necessarily and inherently antisemitic, could now be arbitrated by federal policy and enforced against university students.
Under Republican presidents, the situation would almost certainly be even worse. A monitor could set about “discovering” antisemitism in every left-wing intellectual trend the GOP despises. The recent campaigns against critical race theory, and diversity, equity and inclusion give clear indications of how this office would work. Under the guise of protecting Jewish students, this federally constituted thought police would browbeat institutions into suppressing the academic freedoms of students and faculty until they conformed to conservative preferences.
An all-too-predictable outcome is that thousands of Jews, who dissent from the position of the so-called “major” Jewish organizations and therefore take prominent roles in pro-Palestinian activism, could find themselves caught in this dragnet. Christians in government will farcically accuse Jews of antisemitism, a dystopian scenario that has been the reality in Germany for some time now.
The practice of those in power “protecting” Jews in this dubious way is not a modern phenomenon. What we are seeing play out in Congress today recalls the medieval status of Jews in Christendom as servi camerae regis, “servants of the royal chamber,” under the special protection of the king. Royal power exploited Jews economically while using them as a buffer against both nobles and the lower classes. Eventually, the kings always sacrificed their pawns: England’s King John proclaimed in 1201 that the Jews were “like our own private thing,” but his successor Edward I expelled them all in 1290 to ease the passage of a tax.
One can easily see this playing out yet again should the COLUMBIA Act become law. As the “antisemitism monitors” systematically assault critical race theory or diversity, equity and inclusion or whatever other demons the GOP invents, non-Jewish students and faculty will inevitably see Jews as beneficiaries of special government protection that they themselves are denied. Jews, drawn ever more tightly into alliance with power, will be unable to forge alliances with other marginalized groups. This will actually strengthen antisemitism because antisemites always claim that Jews deviously accrue illicit power and privilege.
That those in power have selectively decided that only pro-Israel Jews are worth protecting lays bare the disingenuous motives behind their actions. For American Jews, regardless of where you stand on Israel, supporting these governmental actions is a devil’s bargain that can only hurt our communities in the long run.
The COLUMBIA Act is an attack on American Jews, not a defense. We don’t need federal officials, whether non-Jews or self-appointed “mainstream” Jewish antisemitism police, telling us what’s antisemitic and what isn’t.