When Does Anti-Israel Become Antisemitism?

I have been thinking a lot about antisemitism lately.  I understand people can be opposed to some, or even many, of the policies Israel has pursued and is pursuing vis-à-vis Palestinians (both before and since October 7).  The issues between Israelis and Palestinians are difficult, and I don’t know the answers.  In this regard, I remember when I was a kid and I would go to my grandparents’ place in central Minnesota for two weeks each summer.  My grandparents had a little souvenir plaque on the wall that read: “Don’t judge a man until you have walked a mile in his moccasins”.  Which is probably a useful thing to keep in mind with respect to the Israeli-Palestinian question – for everybody.

But my concern is different than that.  I’m not talking about what Israelis and Palestinians think about each other.  I’m talking about people in America, and I’m wondering whether, at some point, if we’re not careful, anti-Israel views in America might turn into real antisemitism.

Who would have thought that Weimar Germany could turn into the Holocaust?  Looking back on it, it seems clear.  But hindsight often makes things seem clearer than they actually were.  Because the real question is whether it was clear in 1920s Germany that the Holocaust was, almost literally, just around the corner.  The answer is probably not.  That may be why more Jews didn’t leave Germany and why so many stayed.  They couldn’t imagine their neighbors would do such things to them.  But their neighbors did.  And it wasn’t just Adolf Hitler and the Nazis who did it.  It was a lot of normal, everyday Germans, who all of a sudden weren’t normal or everyday at all.

Personally, I don’t understand why people hate Jews.  But I know from history that it happens.  There were pogroms and anti-Jewish riots and killings across Russia and eastern Europe in the 1800s and 1900s.  In 1492, the same year Columbus discovered America, Spain expelled all Jews who wouldn’t convert to Christianity.  For that matter, as one historian put it, the Crusaders got ready to go to the Middle East to retake the Holy Lands from the Muslims by killing Jews in Europe. 

Which is my concern: If Germany could go from the Weimar Republic to the Holocaust in less than twenty years, what could happen in America from today to twenty years from now?  I realize it is unthinkable what happened to Jews in Germany, but sometimes unthinkable things happen.  They did in Germany.  As I said before, I don’t understand why people hate Jews, and I don’t understand why or how antisemitism in the 1930s and 1940s, in Germany (and elsewhere), could kill millions of Jews.  But it happened.  Which means we have to be mindful of what could happen.  It is not enough to just say “Never again” and then go on our merry way as if it could never happen again – because it could. 

That does not mean Americans cannot disagree with what Israel does or what policies it follows.  But it does mean we must not let those disagreements turn into hatred and harassment of Jews; in other words, antisemitism.  Because antisemitism has happened way too many times in our world.  We have to be smarter and more careful to make sure it doesn’t happen again.  We have to remain vigilant – because we don’t want to go down in history as people who weren’t.