10 | JUNE 10 • 2021 

guest column
Left in Silence
A

s a progressive Jew 
growing up with an 
Israeli father, I’ve 
always had a complex relation-
ship with Israel. There was a 
saying that my 
dad loved and 
that made an 
impression on 
me: “Don’t be so 
open-minded 
that you fail to 
choose your own 
side in a fight.
” 
So many years later, I feel this 
tongue-in-cheek truism has 
something important to teach 
progressives as we navigate the 
latest Hamas terror attacks on 
Israel as well as the troubling 
fallout here in America.
If you are following any of the 
online conversations, you can 
see that many younger mem-
bers of the liberal community 
are calling for strong public 
statements condemning Israel’s 
response to the 4,000-plus rock-
ets as too harsh or even as some 
sort of war crime. At the same 
time, older congregants and the 
Israeli community have been 
pressing for a clear stance in 
support of Israel with no equiv-
ocations or apologies. The result 
from many left-leaning orga-
nizations, such as the Reform 
movement, has been a sort of 
muted, even-handed stance that 
tries to please both sides — or 
at least offend neither.

PUTTING IT IN 
PERSPECTIVE
Let me share a perspective 
with the younger constituency, 
many of whom have char-
acterized Israel’s actions as 
criminal or worse. For those 
of us who voted Obama in for 
a second term and continue 

today to cheer him on as one 
of the most admired figures 
in America, we might take a 
look in the mirror of recent 
history. We all shrugged off 
Obama’s heavy-handed cam-
paign of drone strikes around 
the world as a necessary evil. 
No one suggested that he was 
a war criminal or that the 
several thousand deaths in 
Pakistan alone over his pres-
idency meant that America 
was a “terrorist state.” We 
dismissed civilian deaths with 
the Orwellian term “collateral 
damage,” and certainly never 
did the kind of macabre math 
that is being directed at the 
IDF requiring, heaven for-
bid, a minimum number of 
American casualties so that the 
enemy deaths would be pro-
portional. Nor did we suggest 
limiting the use of American 
might or technology to allow 
anything resembling a “fair 
fight” as post after post is now 
suggesting Israel must do. 
Considering that we accepted 
a years-long drone campaign 

waged against potential threats 
from literally across the globe 
where cutting technology was 
used to eliminate our enemies, 
it seems the height of ludi-
crousness for us to decry Israel’s 
11-day operation to stop rocket 
squads who were launching 
thousands of rockets in real 
time at Israeli civilians just kilo-

meters away. 
We who have never in our 
lifetimes waged a war on 
American soil might try a 
reality check before tossing 
accusations of war crimes at 
Israel when we let our own 
lethal campaign, not to men-
tion an ongoing 20-year war 
in Afghanistan, continue over 
drastically more distant and 
theoretical threats.

ANTI-ZIONISM IS 
ANTISEMITISM
Another strategy that has 
emerged in our community is 
to try and distinguish between 
Israel and Jews. “Don’t equate 
Jews around the world with 
Israel” reads many a Facebook 
post or TikTok sound bite. 
“
Attacking Jews in New York 

or Los Angeles is antisemitic 
because you are blaming the 
Jewish people for how the coun-
try of Israel is behaving.
”
Unfortunately, we need to 
understand the inverse message 
we are sending with these kinds 
of statements. Defending our-
selves as not to blame for Israel’s 
actions implies that attacking 
Israel isn’t antisemitic — only 
attacking American Jews. In 

Cantor 
Michael 
Smolash

DANNY SCHWARTZ

PURELY COMMENTARY

“WE SHOULD NOT BE BULLIED INTO 
CONCEDING THAT ANTI-ZIONISM IS 

ANYTHING BUT ANTISEMITISM.”

Members of 
the Metro 
Detroit Jewish 
community 
rally for Israel 
May 14 in West 
Bloomfield.

continued on page 12

