“And the eyes of the world are watching now. Watching now”
Peter Gabriel, Biko
In September, 1977, Stephen Biko was killed by South African police while in custody. Nelson Mandela was already in prison. The United States, which had blocked UN sanctions against South African apartheid for decades, didn’t impose its own sanctions until 1986, over Ronald Reagan’s opposition. Biko had been dead for nine years. Support for apartheid regimes is in the DNA of the USA — a nation built on the backs of and by African slaves and their descendants. The unbalanced and intentional population of our prisons and jails from Abolition through today, and the criminal justice system that supplies it, is only one example of the side America will always take.
Until it can’t. Until the outrage here threatens business profits and election campaigns. Until regular people in crowds so large they can’t be dismissed demand change. And, until people feel free to speak their minds and their hearts. To say, simply, as human beings, that apartheid and its works are unacceptable.
Israel is an apartheid state. That statement — so obvious that with regard to any other nation on the planet it would be unnecessary — shouldn’t be controversial or subject to responsible argument. But it will be. Because any criticism of (a) Israel, (b) its government, or (c) its war on Palestinians is subject to a special scrutiny, one that often intentionally, and in bad faith conflates criticism of the nation of Israel with criticism of Jews. The zeal with which Israel’s critics are slandered with the “Antisemite” label is far more effective than the Iron Dome itself in protecting Israel’s monstrous and nearly uniformly-condemned war crimes from the outrage they deserve, and the condemnation that should result in not only the withdrawal of the United States’ support for its apartheid regime, but, sanctions, like those that helped move South Africa away from it.
There are two ominous clouds drifting across America. In their shadows the landscape darkens and good people understandably seek shelter. Sometimes though, that shelter can be a dangerous surrender to the dark forces behind those clouds. Antisemitism is on the rise. At the same time, reckless accusations of antisemitism not only restricts and bullies good faith discussion but also tragically undermines the identification of real antisemitism. The Boy Who Cried Wolf was devoured by the wolf because, ultimately, he was not believed. That wolf lives in these shadows.
The pain of antisemitism, I can assume, is unimaginable to those who haven’t been its victims. Antisemitism must be condemned without hesitation, in every instance. Basic human decency demands nothing less. But reckless and unfounded accusations of antisemitism must not be used as weapons to silence those who would also — should also — condemn conduct by any nation that also violates the same standards of human decency. Even if that nation is Israel.
“You can blow out a candle,
But you can’t blow out a fire
Once the flames begin to catch
The wind will blow it higher”
P. Gabriel, Biko
This is where the old people say The Rubber Meets The Road: Criticism of the political policies of the state of Israel is not necessarily criticism of the Jewish faith. In this information-rich time we should be intellectually supple enough to understand that a non-Jew can hate antisemitism to their core and at the same time hate the devastation visited upon innocent Palestinians by Israel.
Hate thrives in silence. Wars do, too. We survive as a people only if we can have these conversations. Such political fluency is particularly important when another storm brews here in the United States. Autocratic and hateful leaders divide us. Leaders who embrace Nazis and “good people on both sides.” We have to avoid unnecessary divisions among the very people who would otherwise be natural allies against this evil. Open-minded and thoughtful people who would be the first to stand against antisemitism shouldn’t be condemned because they also complain about the treatment of innocents in Palestine. We can do both. We must do both.
Right now, the flames of outrage against apartheid — and murder — by Israel can’t “begin to catch” because candles lit in the US by those daring to object are blown out by slanderous accusations of antisemitism before they can. There’s no doubt that decent people, people who want only to say that hospitals shouldn’t be bombed, food convoys shouldn’t be attacked, and children shouldn’t be murdered in the name of “defense,” have been bullied to remain silent out of fear of being labeled - often by people whom they respect — an antisemite. This is an advantage the Afrikaner didn’t have. Neither should Israel.
