Fighting antisemitism is not bad for the Jews

A university president informs his fellow Jews that they really need to stop being so mean to the people who want to kill them.

"2017.03.26 Anti-Israel Protest, Washington, DC USA 01949" by tedeytan is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Recently, I wrote a piece asserting that New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and the American Jewish ruling class in general are decadent and depraved.

I believe this is proven not only by their total failure to protect their community from antisemitism, but also by the fact that many of them are actually defending antisemites.

I have discovered that, two weeks ago, further evidence of this was offered, once again by the New York Times.

I.

It came in a column published, of all times and probably deliberately, on Passover eve.

The piece is by Michael S. Roth, president of Wesleyan University. In it, Roth proudly boasts that he is “the first Jewish president” of Wesleyan. This is not a great testament to Wesleyan’s virtue, though Roth appears to have missed the irony.

He misses a great deal of irony, in fact, as indicated by the title of his column: “Trump Is Selling Jews a Dangerous Lie.”

Put simply, Roth is horrified that the Trump administration is actually fighting campus antisemitism—including, presumably, on his own campus.

Roth’s arguments in support of this are a literal blizzard of cliches. He writes, for example, “I find no comfort in the Trump administration’s embrace of my people, on college campuses or elsewhere. Jew hatred is real, but today’s anti-antisemitism isn’t a legitimate effort to fight it. It’s a cover for a wide range of agendas that have nothing to do with the welfare of Jewish people.”

This is a rather bizarre argument, given that fighting antisemitism is objectively good for the welfare of the Jewish people, no matter what “wide range of agendas” may accompany it.

One would think Roth would be happy that at least something is being done about the campus antisemites who have been violating the civil rights of Jewish students—including, presumably, his own—for well over a year.

But he very much is not. The reason is that antisemites are very upset about the whole thing.

Roth states: “Among the first high-profile targets of the anti-antisemitic push have been a recent Columbia graduate and a current Tufts University graduate student, one a lawful permanent resident of this country and the other one here on a student visa, who spoke out in favor of Palestinian rights. Both have been handcuffed, driven off and indefinitely detained. Neither has been charged with a crime.”

It is difficult to fully grasp the absurdity of this statement. First, if one is in any way involved in the current “pro-Palestinian” movement on campus, one is by definition involved in a genocidally antisemitic, racist, anti-American, pro-terrorist movement.

We know this is the case because those who speak out “in favor of Palestinian rights” say so. Indeed, they say so as constantly and as loudly as they can.

If one is not a citizen of the United States and one is engaged in such activity, it is unclear why the United States ought to continue to suffer your egregious presence.

Moreover, support for terrorism alone is considered grounds for deportation from the United States. This includes anyone who “endorses or espouses terrorist activity or persuades others to endorse or espouse terrorist activity or support a terrorist organization.”

If nothing else, the campus antisemites are unquestionably guilty of that.

Mr. Roth either knows this or he doesn’t. If he does, then his claims are appalling. If he does not, he has no business opining on the subject in the first place.

II.

Even more bizarre is that Roth appears to think that fighting antisemitism is not just bad for antisemites but somehow bad for the Jews.

He claims, “Abductions by government agents; unexplained, indefinite detentions; the targeting of allegedly dangerous ideas; lists of those under government scrutiny; official proclamations full of bluster and bile—Jews have been here before, many times, and it does not end well for us.”

First, Roth’s rhetoric is nonsense. Antisemites facing deportation have not been abducted; their detentions are not indefinite or unexplained; they are not being targeted for their ideas but their conduct; it is unknown how the government can find and detain offenders without making a list of them; and “bluster and bile” appears to be code for robustly condemning antisemitism.

Second, there is absolutely no way this “does not end well” for the Jews. Deporting antisemites means the antisemites are not there to defame, assault, and murder Jews. This is, by definition, a good thing. It makes the Jews safer and, given antisemitism’s larger social impact, it makes all Americans safer.

It is not surprising that Mr. Roth disapproves of this, because he appears to think that Jews are somehow responsible for antisemitism.

He claims, “The situation was different at Columbia. Protests became violent (both in the actions of the participants and those of the police who were called in to quell them). Tensions between supporters of Palestinians and Israelis were at times extreme.”

I will put aside Roth’s defamation of the police, except to say that it is outrageous. The police, restrained by pro-criminal elements in university leadership and administration, in fact acted with extraordinary restraint. Roth’s contention otherwise is probably a deliberate lie.

Worse still is Roth’s monstrous claim that there were “tensions” between antisemites and Jews. There was no “tension.” There was a barbarous campaign of harassment, intimidation, defamation, and violence against Jewish students and Jews in general. There has never been a more one-sided “clash.”

To blame the Jews for the violation of their own rights is not only inaccurate, it is morally bankrupt. Anyone who makes such an argument has removed themselves from the realm of legitimate discourse. In making it, Roth effectively declares that he has no right to make any argument about anything whatsoever.

Worst of all, however, is this: “But in other ways, Columbia is an odd choice. It has the second-highest percentage of Jewish students in the Ivy League.”

A few months ago, I spoke to a recently graduated Columbia student. She told me a series of horror stories about the antisemitism she had experienced. She recounted how the administration collaborated with and enabled this antisemitism, and sometimes outright encouraged it.

She also told me that, as a result of this, she was making Aliyah. At least in Israel, she said, she would be protected from such barbarism.

In other words, Roth appears not to know that, as a result of Columbia’s systemic antisemitism, some young Jews are actually leaving the country. They see no future in a nation that many Jews have long seen as the future.

That Mr. Roth can write as if this is not the case this is one thing. That he appears to believe it is quite another.

III.

That he believes it proves conclusively that Mr. Roth and the privileged American Jews he represents do not much care for their own people. At the very least, they do not much care for its unprivileged members.

Those unprivileged Jews have been crying out for months about the abuse they are suffering. They have demanded that something be done about it.

In protesting the fact that something finally is being done about it, Mr. Roth clearly has not heard them. Perhaps he is too insulated by his privilege to do so. Perhaps he simply isn’t listening.

This is likely how Mr. Roth can write something as obtuse as “The enemy of our enemy was not our friend.”

In one sense, he is right that the enemy of our enemy is not always our friend. For example, Churchill allied with Stalin to defeat Hitler, but he never labored under the delusion that Stalin was a friend.

He made the alliance willingly, however, because he accepted the irony of history. Without Stalin, Churchill knew Hitler could not be defeated. He was absolutely right. So, Churchill felt the bargain was worth it. One hopes Mr. Roth would agree.

If he does, however, then it only indicts him further, because it proves the extent of his blinkered privilege. Protected by this privilege, he cannot know the dark truth that saving your own life is a thing beyond friends and enemies. The results are often ironic, but they can save you from death—and surely that is the higher value.

Only the unprivileged know this, however, because they alone have no defense against irony. Mr. Roth, in his privilege, cannot even begin to conceive of this.

All that matters to him are abstract and alleged ideals. Yet even these ideals are hollow. This is proven by the fact that Mr. Roth appears not to question them for a single moment.

It seems impossible for him to wonder whether these ideas are really worthy of their exalted reputation if those who adhere to them have now decided it is perfectly fine to kill all the Jews—including, however much he may hide from the fact, Mr. Roth himself.

IV.

None of this, however, really matters. There is a reason Mr. Roth never speaks the truth about the campus “protesters” he defends.

He barely mentions their antisemitism at all, let alone the genocidal rhetoric, the pervasive and systematic violence, the collaboration of faculty and administration, or the horrific psychological toll all this has taken on Jews both young and old.

It appears that he does not care. He hates Trump. He hates everyone who likes Trump. He hates everything Trump does. That is all that matters to him.

Mr. Roth has a right to his opinion of Trump and his administration, of course. Indeed, it would not be much of a problem if it were not clearly the only thing he cares about.

He does not seem to understand that, in his monomania, he has allowed himself to labor under the delusion that our enemies are, in some way, our friends.

Without this delusion, there is no possible way he could consider our enemies worthy of his defense.

Indeed, one might think that, even if he sincerely thinks our enemies have been done an injustice, he could at least leave it to others to defend them.

Sadly, Mr. Roth speaks for a very great many Jews of privilege.

We should not be surprised that they are capable of apologetics for our mortal enemies. If they were not, if they actually faced the reality of what all Jews are facing, the walls of their privilege would be shattered. They would be smashed in the face by the horrors of life.

Deep down, they know that, as a decadent and depraved ruling class, there is no way they could withstand such a thing. So, they obfuscate, they ignore, they accuse everyone but the guilty, and they blame the Jews.

For this, they and their entire class stand condemned, not only by morality and history, but by all the rest of us who cannot afford to lie to ourselves.