those with more of a burn-it-all-down ap- proach embrace Team Palestinians. (If you were to take my use of Teams here to be dismissive, you would be right.) What I’m dismissing is not the seriousness of con- flict itself, which is bleak and self-evident. Rather, it’s how little what’s going on in the diaspora has to do with the war versus what it symbolizes in pre-existing domestic rifts. How else could you explain the way that, per Martin Gurri writing in the Free Press , Jews have come to represent “nor- mies” and frat boys? There’s something to the way that the classic conflict of prep- pies versus theatre kids now plays out as if it were somehow about geopolitics: two intractable conflicts, conflated. The new philosemitism, then, consists of pro-Israel cheerleading interspersed with sombre anti-antisemitic posting. Is this what Jews, collectively, find appealing? It’s un- clear how much this wave of philosemitism has to do with real-life Jews to begin with. Philosemitism is not the opposite of antisemitism. It is its own way of using Jews as an idea, which never works out well for us. L ofty principles conflicting with on-the- ground ick at real-life Jews is basically the story of philosemitism in any era or in- carnation. If you like Jews because we’re cosmopolitan, you’re going to lose it when you learn how many Jews (no more or less than anyone else) are deeply provincial and lacking in curiosity about the world beyond whomever they went to kindergarten with. If you imagine Jews are all like Hannah Arendt or Susan Sontag, what do you do when you meet one who owns exactly one book and it’s The Catcher in the Rye and she was as- signed it in high school? Will you consider this a lesson learned, or will you be mad at her for not living up to expectations? If someone says they’re a friend of the Jews, you do eventually have to ask, of which Jews? for we are not all friends with one another. The new philosemitism must contend with the presence of Jews with-
further still. It’s not conservatism, exactly, unless that’s the term you’re using to refer to nostalgia for the calm liberalism of the not- so-distant past. That said, some philosem- itism is more right-wing than centrist, and springs from criticisms of Islam and of leftist politics, and a sense (not always accurate) of Jews as natural allies in this. There have been times in history—and still are corners of social media—where defending the West implied antisemitism. Now it appears to go the other way. It all depends how you’re de- fining Western civilization, and there have always been competing definitions. There are still the white supremacists who use the term The West as a euphemism for a realm that ought to exclude Jews. Is it, then, that the marginalized are for Palestine, and the privileged for Israel? This is certainly the impression you get if you observe the way Palestine has become the centrepiece of a consolidating progres- sive movement (or, in more skeptical terms, an “omnicause”). But philosemitism doesn’t shake out along clear-cut identity-based lines. Ritchie Tor- res, an Afro-Latino U.S. congressman repre- senting the impoverished South Bronx, is on Israel’s side. Many Iranians living outside Iran are Israel supporters out of a shared opposition to Islamic fundamentalism. In Canada and elsewhere, some Indigenous leaders support Israel and see Jewish Is- raelis as having a similar connection to that land as they do to theirs. Last I checked, Kevin Vuong is not a posh WASP. Much is made of Queers for Palestine, and the seemingly counterintuitive attempts to link support for Palestinians with LGBTQ+ liberation. (Sample headline: “Yes, Palestin- ian solidarity is a queer issue,” in Xtra Maga- zine .) But then you get individual non-Jew- ish gay people like comedian Daniel-Ryan Spaulding on the opposing side. Supporting Israel aligns with opposing transgender ac- tivism in the strange polarization of contem- porary political alliances, and is therefore a natural fit for whichever subset of the gay, lesbian, and bisexual community has dis- sociated itself from mainstream queer activ- ism. This is just one of the enemy-of-my-ene- my backstories that can, these days, make someone seeming randomly pro-Jewish. Here is how I’ve been able to make sense of who falls where on Israel-Palestine mat- ters, among those not otherwise implicated or interested: People who favour the status quo and stability pick Team Jews, while
in the pro-Palestine movement, including rabbis as well as Jewish Studies students and faculty. And the anti-woke philosem- ite—the one incidentally pro-Israel but more centrally invested in fighting progressive dogma—must come to terms with the em- brace, by many liberal Jews and Jewish institutions, of the very phenomenon they oppose. Bari Weiss is Jewish but so too is DEI consultant extraordinaire Tema Okun. There are progressive Jews and right-wing Jews and anti-woke Jews and ambivalent Jews and Jews who (like our Catcher -read- ing composite above) don’t have any idea what I’m talking about. If I could press a button and turn the world’s committed antisemites into philosemites I suppose I would, because it’s better to be liked for weird reasons than wished dead. But philosemitism is not the opposite of antisemitism. It is its own way of using Jews as an idea, which never works out well for us. In his book Obstinate Hebrews , historian Ronald Schechter writes about how terribly useful Jews were, symbolically, as figures for Enlightenment gentiles to use for thinking through philosophical notions of difference and inclusion. This is both an interesting ab- stract thing for academics to contemplate and terrible foreshadowing. As Kirsch writes, “There may be little to love about philo-Semitism, and little to be grateful for in its history; but that is because genuine esteem between Christians and Jews, like real affection of all kinds, cannot be grasped as an ‘-ism.’ Ideologies deal in abstractions, and to turn a group of people into an abstraction, even a ‘positive’ one, is already to do violence to them.” If surveyed on their feelings about the Jews, the answer I’d like to hear from a non-Jewish compatriot would not have any- thing to do with being impressed at Jewish achievements or contributions. It would sim- ply be: “They’re human beings, no better or worse than anyone else.” Jews are of interest to the outside world wildly out of proportion to our own num- bers. Our fate as real-life people shouldn’t be tied up with that of phenomena, even impeccable ones like entrepreneurship or sobriety. I don’t want to be collectively admired for qualities I, as an individual, might not even share. You admire Jews for our financial savvy? Interesting; let me introduce you to my bank account. Though it’s true I have no alcohol tolerance— you’ve got me there. n
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