8 May 2 • 2019
jn
8 May 2 • 2019
jn

views

I

attended an April 14th symposium by Wayne
State University’
s Cohn-Haddow Center for Judaic
Studies and the Center for Peace and Conflict
Studies at Temple Beth El in Bloomfield Township.
titled “Beyond Fear and Hate: Recent Ramifications
of Anti-Semitism.
” Its organizers publicized it would
offer a “look at the nuanced history,
contemporary trends and future
outcomes related to anti-Semitism and
other forms of group-based hate.
” I
was there for the first two hours of the
program.
The idea of studying anti-Semitism
is good. We can’
t fight it if we don’
t
understand it. One way to not battle
anti-Semitism is to treat it as just
another hatred.
Anti-Semitism is the oldest hatred. It is a virus that
mutates from generation to generation. It isn’
t just a
stereotype or a resentment of Jews. Other groups are
stereotyped, resented and hated, but for Jews there are
no limits. Jews have been attacked for being both white
and non-white, as capitalists and communists, of being
too successful and too wretched, for being stateless and
for having a state, for being too passive and for fighting
too effectively. We’
re attacked for being whatever the
anti-Semite hates. Anti-Semites project their own
pathologies on the Jews.
Anti-Semitism is the one form of bigotry that is
regularly excused or whitewashed. Some writers have
objected to the “weaponization” of anti-Semitism,

which as far as I can tell means “shut up” if it’
s coming
from your side of the political aisle.
One of the program’
s panelists suggested that the
audience suspend judgment on Congresswoman Ilhan
Omar and her anti-Semitic tweets until after we read
her Washington Post op-ed. But it’
s clear that Omar was
untruthful in writing, “When I criticize certain Israel
government actions …
” She was not criticizing Israel
government actions when she accused AIPAC and
Israel of buying American support and accused Jews of
dual loyalty.
Only about half of the program was devoted
to discussing anti-Semitism. The rest was on
Islamophobia, racism and the current plight of illegal
immigrants trying to enter the United States. Lumping
all these issues together allowed the panel to trivialize
anti-Semitism as just another generic hatred. Despite
panelists’
claims to the contrary, Islamophobia and the
current treatment of migrants at our border are not
equivalent to 3,000 years of persecution, expulsions,
forced conversions, ghettoization, blood libels,
pogroms, massacres and genocide.
One audience member pointed out during a short,
mid-program Q&A, no good is done by equating
Holocaust refugees with today’
s Central American
refugees in order to score easy anti-Trump points.
Jews refused entry into the United States were fleeing
genocide and sent back to die in Nazi concentration
camps. This kind of comparison belittles the Holocaust
and insults the memories of the 6 million.
European anti-migrant sentiment was also brought

up. Yes, there is prejudice and anger among Europeans
against migrants. There is also a tremendous increase in
anti-Semitism being fueled by some of these migrants,
and it is combining with native European anti-
Semitism. Jews are once again escaping Europe, but
none of the presenters mentioned that.
One panelist gave excellent information on
20th-century anti-Semitism describing Henry
Ford’
s Dearborn Independent, the Protocols of the
Elders of Zion, Father Coughlin and the blaming of
Jewish immigrants for crime, a cholera outbreak and
communism. Rather than expand on this important
thread, he minimized it by insisting that there is a
parallel between anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. He
went on to describe differences between left and right
anti-Semitism, but without mentioning campus anti-
Semitism or the clear link between anti-Zionism and
anti-Semitism.
If the aim was to dissect anti-Semitism, this
symposium was a missed opportunity. As an attempt to
examine a wide range of hatred, it came off as a mostly
superficial recitation of some bigotries based on the
political leanings of the panelists.
With worldwide anti-Semitism rising, it is more
important than ever to have a forum to examine anti-
Semitism in all its forms and include suggestions for
battling it. Who’
s going to rise to that occasion? ■

Harry Onickel is a Ferndale freelance writer and literacy consultant.
He is currently working on a history of anti-Semitism for high school
students.

Don’t Dilute Study Of Anti-Semitism

Harry
Onickel

Muslim and Jews in America: Parallel Trajectories, Shared Future

essay

T

he beginnings of Jews and Muslims in North
America has a similar though not identical time-
table and trajectory. Jews came to America large-
ly to escape political persecution and economic hard-
ship in search of religious freedom and
a better life. The first Jews who arrived
in North America were refugees from
Recife, Brazil, where they had lived
briefly under a tolerant Dutch rule until
an earlier ban on Jewish settlement
and immigration was reinstated by the
returning Portuguese. Thereafter, the
number of Jewish refugees grew steadi-
ly, reaching 3,000 by 1820, 300,000 by
1880 and nearly 3 million by the eve of World War I.
The first Muslims arrived not long before the first
Jews, not as refugees but as African slaves. Historians
estimate the number of North American Muslim
slaves between 70,000 and 150,000, between one-fifth
and one-quarter of the slave population when slav-
ery ended in the 1860s. In the 20th century, Muslim
immigrants, like Jews, were impelled by violence,
political persecution and economic hardship to leave

towns where they had lived for generations and come
to America.
Once in America, Jews and Muslims embarked
on a search for acceptance. Jews had an advantage,
owing to their relative whiteness. While Muslims were
lumped in with other people of color, Jews were seen
by the white Protestant elite as less non-white than
African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native
Americans and Arab-Americans — provided Jews did
not display their Jewishness too ostentatiously.
Mass Jewish immigration to America preceded
mass Muslim immigration by nearly a century. Jewish
immigration from the Russian and Austro-Hungarian
empires began at the end of the 19th century; com-
parable Muslim immigration from the Middle East
and North Africa would take place nearly a century
later. Allowing for this time lag, parallels appear.
These massive influxes of immigrants transformed the
Jewish and Muslim communities. American Jewry on
the eve of this massive immigration was highly accul-
turated and Americanized. The several million Jewish
immigrants from Eastern Europe re-invigorated and
accentuated the distinctness of Judaism and Jewish

culture in America. Similarly, the Muslim community
in America for much of the 20th century consisted
largely of African-American Muslims who, despite
their religious affiliation, were seen as American
and not a foreign presence. Only toward the end of
the 20th century did the number of Middle Eastern
Muslims eclipse the number of Muslim African-
Americans.
Given these parallels, it is not surprising that the
large influx of Jewish and Muslim immigrants elicit-
ed a similar backlash. Ostjuden, the often-derogatory
term for Eastern European Jews, were denigrated
as disease-carrying criminals (as Latinos are today).
Amidst the “
American First” isolationist, anti-immi-
grant xenophobia that followed World War I, Jewish
immigrants were demonized by fearmongers. The
Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 effectively banned subse-
quent Jewish immigration — with catastrophic impli-
cations for Jews who would soon be trapped under
Nazi persecution.
This situation is not unlike the recent surge of
Islamophobia that has appeared amidst another surge
of “
American First” isolationist, anti-immigrant xeno-

Howard
Lupovitch

continued on page 10