As advocates for Palestine, each one of us needs to interrogate our internal antisemitism
If you are a Christian, you have been taught to be antisemitic. You are not necessarily to blame, but we must all actively repudiate this hatred.
Many years ago, I worked at Hersheypark. One of the rides I operated was called the Twin Turnpike. It consisted of antique cars and sports cars powered by lawnmower motors. Every morning, we’d gas up the cars, and pull the ropes on the motors to get them going. Obviously, the result was a stinky ride. It smelled like gasoline and burnt exhaust. By the end of the day, we stopped noticing the stench, even if our heads pounded a little from inhaling all that exhaust.
Getting used to a foul smell, even if it gives you a migraine, is a lot like the prejudices we take in as children. The motor may start at our birth and the smell may seem jarring, but by the time we come of age, we are already used the odor. It becomes a part of life. For Christians, what began as a New Testament polemic between fledging sects of Judaism trying to find their identity—what would eventually become early Christianity and early rabbinic Judaism—turned into full-throated anti-Jewish prejudice that has hung in the air like a bad, poisonous smell ever since. The New Testament engages in dialogue between different sects of Judaism as they form their own identities—some of the polemic is benign, at least at the beginning—but its fruit has been toxic.
Most progressives are familiar with the idea that sexism and racism are systemic– seemingly in the very air we breathe. However, Christians are undereducated about how this applies also to antisemitism. I am here to tell you—as someone who is recovering from Christian antisemitism myself—that if we don’t interrogate it, we are participating in it. And I write specifically because I am an advocate for Palestinian freedom and dignity. Our movement is shot through with anti-Jewish rhetoric, even if not consciously intended.
Ibram X. Kendi has taught us that impact matters more than intent. Many activists for Palestine affirm this teaching when it applies to oppressions they’re familiar with. They are ready to call out Islamophobia, but overlook anti-Jewish prejudice. Again: regardless of your intent, your rhetoric can have a hateful impact.
Christianity’s very formation required it to be different and distinct from Judaism, especially in the later centuries. To get a foothold on political power, at some point, Christians, in fact, oppressed Jewish people. This legacy expressed itself in Europe for centuries and resulted in displacement, pogroms,and genocide. The Holocaust is only the most infamous example of this history, but twenty years earlier, Europeans were already killing Jews, en masse. “From 1918 to 1921, more than 1,100 pogroms killed over 100,000 Jews in an area that is part of present-day Ukraine.”
This record of anti-Jewish violence started in the Roman Empire, continued throughout the Middle Ages (epitomized in the Crusades), and into the rest of European histories. You can read more of this history on Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg’s blog, here. The point is that antisemitic violence is endemic to European Christianity. By 1933, nine million Jews lived in Europe; today just one million do.
Most of us feel distant from antisemitic prejudice because we consciously condemn what we know of this history. But even the way we read the Bible can have antisemitic echoes. Christians who dismiss the “God of the Old Testament” as different from the “God of the New Testament” are engaging in what we call “supersessionism", i.e. the fallacy that the New Testament was meant to negate and replace the Old. Christians who read the NT as nullifying the Torah and who de-Judaize Jesus and Paul commit the same mistake. Christian supremacy has a way of worming its way into our very understanding of Scripture. (For a deeper dive, see the work of Matthew Thiessen and Amy-Jill Levine ).
Knowing the history of Jewish trauma is important in our advocacy for Palestine. (For one thing: trauma informs a great deal of support for Israel and for the brutality of Netanyahu’s administration). Jewish history is essential for us because the violence that characterizes it is ongoing. It’s true that some people think any opposition to Zionism or to Israel is antisemitic. I can feel compassion for people who feel that way, but I think such arguments risk erasing Palestinians and their very real plight. Further, I do think that many leaders in the Middle East are also fundamentally antisemitic. (The very charter of Hamas reveals this, for example). But, as Christians, we cannot start our interrogation of antisemitism by criticizing Israel’s opponents. That gets us off the hook too easily. Rather, we need to take the log out of our own eye, to use a familiar Biblical trope.
My call is to Christian activists for Palestine. One example that I see regularly is activists making the claim that the reason the United States is supporting Israel is simply because of Israeli and Jewish special interest groups. Yes, those groups fund the campaigns of politicians, but their funding is not controlling those politicians. This too easily devolves into the stereotype that Jews are corrupt, greedy, and controlling.
The U.S. supports Israel for two main reasons: 1) Republican Evangelical Christian voters and politicians have an odd and unfounded eschatology holding that Christ will return once Israel is restored. 2) Democrats and moderates plainly support Israel because of U.S. interests in the Middle East. In fact, that is one big reason why Israel achieved statehood in 1948. It was not only for the ostensible reason that it would be a safe-haven for Jews, but also so that the West could have an ally in the region. The U.S. supports Israel out of self-interest, not only because of Israeli lobbyists. Furthermore, many Americans support Israel for a variety of ethnic, religious, and political reasons.
In our pro-Gaza advocacy, we should be specific about our criticism of Netanyahu. We vehemently oppose him—not Israel as a whole, and definitely not Jews as a whole. We should see Jewish lobbyists as influential, yes, but let’s not exaggerate that influence. And we need to consider that every one of our actions and thoughts, as Christians, is laced with a history of antisemitism. Let us face our prejudice and work toward divesting ourselves of it.
This does not weaken our cry for justice in Palestine; it strengthens it.