Getting specific about anti-Semitic and Islamophobic incidents in connection to the Israel-Gaza conflict
I’ve written here before about how I try to vet claims that are being made in connection with the current Israel-Gaza War.
Here is a CBS report from October 261 on increasing anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim incidents:
Journalists and government officials and news consumers of all sorts have a challenge in sorting through claims about anti-Semitic incidents. In Europe, the far right was quick to seize on often-vague reports about groups protesting against Israel’s actions in Gaza, or even in sympathy for Hamas or their murderous October 7 attack, to blame Muslims, refugees, and immigrants for bringing “imported anti-Semitism” to Europe.
For anyone even vaguely familiar with the centuries-long history of European anti-Semitism and pogroms, this has to sound more than a little like a very cynical bad joke.
On the other hand, there are Islamist groups in Europe, and not just among recent immigrants. (The 9/11 attacks were planned in Hamburg, Germany.) Police and intelligence agencies need to take that threat seriously and move intelligently to deal with it. The US after the 9/11 attacks in 2001 unfortunately provided many examples of how not to proceed.2 Sowing distrust of the authorities among immigrants and Muslims is not the optimal approach.
There was a deadly attack in Vienna in 2020 by a group of young Islamists that left four dead and 23 wounded. One of the problems Austrian authorities had in failing to prevent it was that a previous far-right Interior Minister had conducted a bizarre raid on Austria’s own intelligence agency in 2018, apparently to discover what information they had found about possible illegal activities among the far-right party’s ranks. So other countries’ intelligence agencies had reduced cooperation with Austria because they didn’t trust the Austrians to protect sources and methods. And information that was provided by Slovak authorities about the perpetrators acquiring arms for dubious purposes was not properly processed.
“The 20-year-old attacker, who had Austria and Macedonian nationality, had been radicalised in Austria and had served 18 months in jail for trying to join jihadist group Islamic State (IS), which said it was behind the murders.”3
A grimly ironic feature of that attack was that a Palestinian asylum-seeker named Osama Abu El Hosna, who grew up in Gaza City and was a McDonald’s worker who happened to be on the scene, went to the aid of a Vienna policeman who had been wounded by the terrorist shooter.
A seriously injured policeman survives because Osama Abu El Hosna, who has just made it behind a tree trunk [after being shot at himself], drags the officer away from the scene of the crime to the paramedics in a hail of bullets. "The policeman told me to leave, but I stayed," Osama says today. He receives the Rescue Medal of the State of Vienna, presented personally by Mayor Michael Ludwig. Words of thanks [came] from the President of the Swiss Confederation, [and Austria President] Alexander Van der Bellen. Unofficial applause from the police and an official tribute. The Palestinian is the unexpected hero. The antithesis of the terrorist.4 [my emphasis]
The young man had no passport, i.e., he was formally stateless, as most people living in the Gaza Strip are. He and family had fled Gaza to escape the danger from Hamas.
His request for asylum in Austria was rejected. He had previously been suspected of terrorist connections himself, because he “had worked for a few hours at the small charity organization, Hope Association,” which was legal in Austria and whose official purpose was to provide assistance (food and hygiene articles) to refugees in Lebanon.
This is not how to win immigrant or Muslim communities over to cooperating with authorities against possible terrorist attacks!
You would think saving a cop’s life from a literal terrorist in the process of murdering people would count for something.
There is no way to prevent all crimes, of course. But for authorities to get advance warnings of such attacks being planned, it doesn’t help if they totally alienate the very communities most likely to be able to provide such warnings. Or if they actively encourage such actions within the community, e.g., with sometimes remarkably strange sting operations, as US authorities have done.5
The current Austrian Chancellor, Karl Nehammer, was Interior Minister at the time. He seemed to be much more interested in gaining headlines as a foe of Muslims and immigrants than he was in seriously dealing with terrorist threats, whether “homegrown” of “imported.”
Anti-Semitism is a problem, not just an ”imported” problem
Taking anti-Semitism seriously in a responsible way means recognizing that such politics, whether it is Viktor Orbán and his imitators talking smack about vast Jewish conspiracies with George Soros as puppet-master or the even grubbier forms popular among far-right groups need to be understood realistically. Which means recognizing that not every criticism of Israel’s occupation policies and not every dumbass remark about Jews is a sign of murderous anti-Semitism.
Anti-Semitism is widespread across the political spectrum. But for most of the far right and virtually all conspiracy theories, anti-Semitism is practically indispensable.
Which means we need to be clear about what is known about anti-Semitic incidents. A good example of how to do this is provided by Haaretz columnist Anshel Pfeffer, who writes about concerns over increased instances of anti-Semitic incidents and gives specific examples of what he is talking about. He relates a conversation he once had with Shimon Peres, the former Prime Minister of Israel (1984-1986) and former President (1995 to 1996). Peres told him, ““Antisemitism is no longer the problem of the Jews. It’s the problem of the societies where it occurs.”6
This seems on its face like a way to say that Jews are not to blame for anti-Semitism - which is of course what anti-Semites have claimed for centuries - but rather it’s a shortcoming of the anti-Semites themselves. A sensible enough position.
Pfeffer says the view he has taken for years, in line with that perspective, that “antisemitism is no longer a major threat to Diaspora Jews, and that much of the talk about it was an obsession and distraction from much weightier issues that Jews should be focusing on” was inadequate.
On its face, that seems to go far beyond the observation that Peres made to him. But Pfeffer describes why he no longer sees things that way:
I still believe Peres was right in many ways. But it’s no longer possible to say that this isn’t threatening the Jews. Not when on the English streets of my hometown of Manchester, the police are taking down posters of Jewish hostages; when the word “Gaza” is daubed in red on the Wiener Holocaust Library in London; when thousands gather in “pro-Palestinian” rallies in New York and Washington to praise Hamas’ “resistance”; when Stars of David are painted on Jewish homes and businesses in Paris; and when prominent broadcasters and columnists everywhere accuse Israel – which four weeks ago was the victim of a genocidal attack specifically aimed at exterminating entire Jewish families and communities – of carrying out a “genocide in Gaza” by going after the perpetrators.
I’m not even including the attempted pogrom against Jewish passengers at Makhachkala airport in Dagestan, because Russia really is a totally corrupt and racist society that has been carrying out a genocide of its own for the past 20 months in Ukraine.
These are all references that can be verified, unlike, say, vague reference to “widespread anti-Semitism on American college campuses” with no specifics provided.
We can legitimately question whether, say, the incident in Dagestan qualifies as a pogrom (as implied by the title of another article7) since apparently no Jews were actually there to be attacked. Although the intent to engage in a pogrom does seem like a reasonable assumption. And of course, it’s sensible to question the seemingly passive reaction by Russian authorities, who are not always tolerant of protests, much less violent incidents.
I’ll give NeverTrumper Jennifer Rubin credit for also providing numerous references about “intimidation, hate speech, threats and other illegal actions against Jewish students” in the US.8 But her argument that everyone who criticizes Zionism is anti-Semitic is frivolous: “In case anyone had doubts, we can do away with the notion that anti-Zionism is separable from antisemitism. If that were true, American Jews would not be in danger.”
There will presumably be some formal investigations of some of the incidents she describes, like the Cooper Union protest she references. The conservative-leaning Times of Israel described that incident along with others, though without any reference to the “one Jewish student” Rubin mentions who “heard calls for the ‘murder of Jews.” in the Cooper Union incident.9
Student protests have been a favorite culture-war issue for Republicans for decades, and maybe for as long as there have been students or protests or Republicans. It’s a polemical staple for them. And it’s easy to cherry-pick someone who has a sign with an obnoxious slogan and spotlight it instead of the hundreds of other people present who weren’t carrying such a sign.
Also, the fact that college presidents don’t want to issue official statements about a foreign war, even one receiving as much attention as the Israel-Gaza conflict, can only be understood if one keeps in mind that college presidents are constantly thinking of how to avoid controversy, particularly with donors. University administrations are really not in the habit of issuing regular pronouncements on foreign policy issues.
Incidents of actual violence and death threats have to be taken seriously, of course. I haven’t talked to a single student taking part in a protest over this conflict. But I feel comfortable in saying that many students who joined in a chant of “From the river to the sea/Palestine will be free” had never heard the particular slogan before and had no thought of it meaning “the elimination of all of Israel and its Jewish inhabitants,” as Rubin describes it.
Robert Reich gives some general advice to his Jewish and Arabs students, presumably at UC-Berkeley where he is an emeritus professor, who are feeling tensions related to the conflict in his Substack column, “The war is causing my students to fear each other”:
My Jewish students tell me of receiving antisemitic notes, of seeing swastikas, of feeling unsafe.
My Arab, Palestinian, and Muslim students tell me that speaking out against Israel’s aggression has resulted in “doxing,” and in some cases withdrawals of offers of employment. They are subject to anti-Palestinian and Islamophobic taunts. They also feel unsafe.10
The bottom line: This is an ugly war, that will almost certainly get much uglier. Actual thought will be required to not get lost in the polemics around it.
Antisemitic, Islamophobic incidents rise amid Israel-Hamas war. CBS News YouTube channel 10/26/2023. (Accessed: 2023-06-11).
Unleashed and Unaccountable: The FBI's Unchecked Abuse of Authority. ACLU Sept. 2013, 39-41. <https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/assets/unleashed-and-unaccountable-fbi-report.pdf>(Accessed: 2023-05-11).
Bell, Bethany & Paul Kirby (2023): Vienna murders: Four guilty of helping jihadist in terror attack. BBC News 02/02/2023. <https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64482080>(Accessed: 2023-05-11).
Konzett, Eva (2022): Zwei Jahre ihres Lebens. Falter 45:2022 09.11.2023, 20-22. <https://www.falter.at/zeitung/20221109/zwei-jahre-ihres-lebens>(Accessed: 2023-05-11). My translation from German.
Aaronson, Trevor (2022): The "Terrorist," the Rapist and Me. The Intercept 11/26/2022. <https://theintercept.com/2022/11/26/fbi-sting-informant-abu-khalid-abdul-latif/>(Accessed: 2023-05-11).
Pfeffer, Anshel (2023): Around the World, a New Era of Threats Against Jews Has Begun. Haaretz 11/02/2023. <https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/2023-11-02/ty-article/.premium/around-the-world-a-new-era-of-threats-against-jews-has-begun/0000018b-90af-db71-a7df-fdef9f580000> (Accessed: 2023-05-11).
Stanovaya, Tatiana (2023): Why the Russian Authorities Failed to Stop Pogroms in the Caucasus. Carnegie Endowment 10/31/2023. <https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/90873>(Accessed: 2023-05-11).
Rubin, Jennifer (2023): Elite colleges failed to fight antisemitism. Butthese academics did. Washington Post 11/05/2023. <https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/05/fighting-antisemitism-campuses/>(Accessed: 2023-05-11).
Tress, Luke (2023): Jewish students locked in NYC’s Cooper Union as protesters chanted ‘Free Palestine’. Times of Israel 10/26/2023. <https://www.timesofisrael.com/jewish-students-barricade-in-nycs-cooper-union-as-protesters-chant-free-palestine/>(Accessed: 2023-05-11).
Reich, Robert (2023): The war is causing my students to fear each other. Robert Reich Substack 11/06/2023. (Accessed: 2023-06-11).