An Israeli friend of mine once took part in an event overseas at which she described the PTSD she suffered as a result of Hamas rocket fire. Afterwards, a man who had known she was Israeli approached her and said, “For the first time, I see you as a human being.”
The man no doubt thought he was saying something nice. My friend, however, knew better. She immediately thought, “For the first time? Really?”
She was quite right to be skeptical, because the man’s statement was, after all, not nice. It was, in fact, horrific. It was an inadvertent admission to being the most virulent kind of racist. It was my friend who, in not responding out loud, was being nice—perhaps too nice, all things considered.
Such revelations come now and then, all equally horrifying, and another arrived earlier this week at a Coldplay concert. There, frontman Chris Martin humiliated two Israeli fans by telling them, “I’m very grateful that you’re here as humans. And I’m treating you as equal humans on earth regardless of where you come from.”
With many in the crowd booing and jeering, Martin then launched into the obligatory, “It may be controversial, but I want to welcome people in the audience from Palestine.”
The excellent Zionist writer Eve Barlow has dealt rather summarily with Martin, launching into an extraordinary condemnation:
When I first saw this video of you interacting with two young Israelis, I cussed you out. I tweeted “Fuck Chris Martin”. It’s important you know that because it’s important that you understand the injury you create in Jewish people for the cowardice you displayed. You were once married to a proud Jew who is the mother of your children. Gwyneth Paltrow has been uniquely courageous since October 7, and is one of the only A-list actors who has publicly condemned Hamas. It is disappointing that you have not been able to take her lead. That you could not in that moment, hush your crowd and teach them that Jews don’t require any explanation. I also read that your children Apple and Moses are being raised Jewish. Your son’s name alone gives me reason to tell you that I am consistently disappointed when I watch non-Jewish people take pleasure in Jewishness, Jewish traditions, Jewish heritage, Israeli history and culture, etc, only to fold into convoluted shapes like origami when pressed to proudly stand by Jews and Israelis. We don’t want our allies to be like origami. We want you to be like rocks. Be a rock. Tell boo-ing fans to leave the stadium.
I was unaware of Martin’s Jewish connections before reading this. So, Barlow’s critique led me to wonder if, perhaps, Martin had not inadvertently revealed his own antisemitism. What if he was genuinely trying to “be nice.” What if he really and sincerely had the best of intentions and thought he was doing a good thing? What if there really was no malice in his heart?
If so, it is, in its own way, even more horrifying than the racist who tried to “be nice” to my friend. Because it means that Martin simply has absolutely no idea what he’s talking about.
He doesn’t understand the world he lives in. He doesn’t understand what that world is doing to the Jews. He doesn’t understand how his “niceness” aided and abetted it. He is completely, utterly ignorant.
This, I think, says something rather important. It says something about privilege. The privilege of not being Jewish, of being a non-Jew.
It is a simple privilege, and perhaps one to be envied: One can ignore the horrors of life.
You don’t have to think about how evil the world can be. How unspeakably bad it is at times. That the world is not “nice” and does not seek to be “nice.” That the world can kill you if you aren’t careful, and a great many “nice” people, perhaps your best friends, may prove to be among the murderers.
The Jews do not have this privilege. Not then and not now. The world presents itself to us as it is. We know the horrors of life with a terrible intimacy, and they are too horrible for us to ignore. We cannot afford not to know.
But Martin does not know. Yet, as Barlow points out, due to his Jewish connections, he ought to know. If he doesn’t, it can only be because he chooses not to know. He has the privilege of not knowing, of being safe in ignorance, and of choosing to “be nice” at precisely the moment when he shouldn’t. When he should, as Barlow says, have told the monsters to f*** off.
It is not fair to say that all non-Jews are antisemitic. But almost all non-Jews do harbor prejudices or stereotypes about Jews or, like Martin, are blissfully ignorant. Those without malice in their hearts are, hopefully, the majority. But they are, in their own way, even more demoralizing than those who do, because they ought to know better and do not. As a result, they do not act when they must act. They have the privilege of not knowing and not acting. This is, in many ways, the bane of our civilization at the moment.
It is time for us to call out this privilege, as Barlow did, but on a much larger scale. We must make non-Jews aware, painfully aware, of just how good they have it. Of the obligations they, with their vast numbers, have to one of their world’s smallest minorities.
If they will not meet those obligations, we must force them to. We must become something to be reckoned with. We must make it harder for them not to know than to know.
We must inform them that “nice” is not enough. We need solidarity, moral clarity, and the courage to face the horrors of life. This alone will be sufficient to ensure that many non-Jews finally know, really know, that Jews are human beings.
Boenhoeffer had the searing insight that it is not evil we are fighting, but Stupidity.
Please research his Five Laws of Stupidity which he wrote in prison prior to his execution by the Nazis.
I don't think Martin's an antisemite. He's just morally mediocre.