Chapter 1- The BDS Pound of Flesh

My name is A Not Willf and this is there we should all be Zionists podcast. Each week I'll be reading one essay for my latest collection of essays book we should all be Zionists on issues facing the Jewish people in Israelis today. Conflict, peace, religion, politics, past, present and future. At the end I'll be joined by columnist Blake Flayton for a discussion on the themes of the essay and how they apply to contemporary Israel and Jewish life. You can purchase your own copy of we should all be Zionists anywhere you get your books. Thanks for listening. Let's start. The BDS pound a flesh and anti-Zionism. Several years ago as I was speaking at an APAC conference about Israel's Zionism and the slow rise at the time of anti-Zionism in the West, a couple of concerned parents approached me. They said, "Look, I nut, we're here inside the conference. We get what you're talking about, but our kids who are the ones who should be hearing you are outside protesting with, if not now." This was the first that I heard of the organization self-described as a movement of Jews to end Israel's occupation. I saw nothing special about its appeal to young people. I assumed it was merely the way of the world for young people to rebel against their parents reflecting changing values and circumstances. These youngsters grew up into a world where the idea that Jewish life at Threatened appeared distant, even ridiculous. They only ever knew Jews with real power, such as political power, state power and military power. They could therefore see no reason why Israel was necessary or relevant to their lives. They could comfortably believe that Jews could thrive by trusting in the kindness of others. It seemed reasonable to them to believe that Jewish priorities should be to care for others and that concern for Jews by Jews as Jews is a cringewsing sentiment. Yet over the years, I found that attributing this anti-Israel activism to the vastly different conditions under which the younger generation of Jews, certainly in the US, has come of age, failed to account for the growing virulence of this activism and the ever-growing demands that were made on Jews to join its ranks. Parents were no longer complaining as much that their kids are active in anti-Israel organizations. Perhaps they have come to accept that as a generational reality. Rather, they were expressing growing alarm that their kids were being pressured into such positions. They mentioned even that their kids were beginning to select colleges based on whether they would likely be subject to this kind of pressure. With the signs of distress multiplying, I realized that something far more sinister was at work. Young Jews were once again subjected to the most recent guise of the ancient bullying of Jews to be less Jewish, less visibly Jewish, less confidently Jewish, so that they could be accepted or at least tolerated by their host society. It is a phenomena that I have come to name the "Pound of Flesh". Shakespeare headed backwards. Throughout history, it is not the Jews who have demanded to be handed over a Gentile pound of flesh. Rather, it has been the Jews who were bullied to hand over a pound of flesh, most times metaphorically, but all too often, literally. When the demand made to Jews to hand over a pound of flesh is metaphorical, it constitutes a demand to mutilate Jewish identity so that it becomes somewhat more acceptable to those making the demand. Sometimes the mutilation is visual, demanding the Jews be less visibly Jewish in the public sphere, from removing keypas, to pendants, to IDF t-shirts. Sometimes it involves severing elements of Jewish identity, such as denying Jewish solidarity or the interconnection between Judaism and the land of Israel. Sometimes nothing less than a public ceremony of exorcism and renunciation, where Jews mutilate their identity vocally and in public, is sufficient so that those around them could be assured that the pound of flesh has indeed been paid. Tom Holland, in his excellent book The Minion, on how Christianity had made the West, described the ancient underlying vector of this dynamic as the program for civic self-improvement that aimed at transforming the very essence of Judaism. Holland describes how the Western ideas of enlightenment and human rights still had at their core the now secularized and universalized ancient Christian dream that Jewish distinctiveness might be subsumed into an identity that the whole world could share, one in which the laws given by God to mark the Jews out from other peoples with cease to matter. This is a dream that despite it becoming garlanded with the high-flown rhetoric of the Enlightenment, Holland explains, reached all the way back to Paul. According to Holland, in introducing the idea of the Enlightenment and universal human rights, the West claimed an authority for itself more universal than that of Christianity. But in doing so, only emphasized the degree to which in the scale of its ambitions and the scope of its pretensions, it was profoundly Christian. Faced with this all-encompassing new old vision of universal human rights, Jews could either sign up to this radiant vision or else be banished into storm-swept darkness. Holland adds that if this seemed to some Jews a very familiar kind of ultimatum, then that was because it was. The ancient roots of the pound of flesh dynamic mean that it is relentless. It always wants more and more and more until there are no more pounds of flesh remaining to hand over. Either Jews are no longer Jews or they are no longer alive. Throughout history and especially since the Enlightenment had secularized and universalized the Christian impulse, what Jews have discovered again and again that there was no number of pounds of flesh that is ever sufficient that would just let them be, other than perhaps the number of pounds that would spell their annihilation. Almost all Jews have been subjected to this relentless pound of flesh dynamic and will recognize it viscerally. Those who recognize it most are those who at one point facing a T intersection decided to stand firm and reject handing over that one additional pound of flesh. I experienced that dynamic myself. 25 years ago as a young adult, I had the confidence that my opinions granted me access to a David Hirsch in his important book Contemporary Left Anti-Semitism calls "The Community of the Good." I was an Israeli of the political left. I was a member of the Israeli Labour Party. I worked with the left's leaders such as Yossi Baylin, the architect of the Azo Accords and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Shimon Peres. I supported a Palestinian state, vehemently opposed the settlements, saw the rapid end to Israel's military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and was thrilled when Israel disengaged from the Gaza Strip taking out all settlers and soldiers for good. But I was still very much a Zionist. My support for a two-state solution and a Palestinian state emanated from my desire that the other state and the two-state solution be the Jewish state of Israel. Yet several encounters led me to realize that despite my left-wing badges of distinction, the fact that I was an unapologetic Zionist banished me in the eyes of the so-called "community of the good" to the storm-swept darkness known as the fringes of the lunatic right. I faced a T-intersection. I could either hand over another pound of flesh and engage in an exorcism ceremony of renouncing Zionism, or I could step back and refuse to participate. I realized that the demands to comply with the right thinking of the community of the good would never end, that whatever I gave, there would always be a demand for more. And so I stepped back. In stepping back, I did not change my opinions about the conflict. I continued to support the equal right of the Jewish and Arab collectives to self-determination each and part of the land. Yet I accepted that these opinions were no longer sufficient to grant me access to the community of the good. So long as I was determined to remain Zionist and I was, I would never be considered a good enough Jew. I would remain on the outside. In the T-intersection between renouncing my Zionism or my Good Jew status, I renounced my status as a Good Jew. I figured better to be a confident Jew than a good one. Based on my own experience, I was able to recognize the pound of flesh dynamic as it was playing itself out for Jews and American colleges. When I attended college in the U.S. and the mid-1990s, liberal left-wing Jews could comfortably be pro-Israel and even active in APAC. With the emergence of J-street such Jews found it necessary to move there and then to J-street you. Then I learned that many of these young Jews found their new home and denouli established if not now, and then in Jewish voices for peace. Finally, I learned that if a Jewish student did not show herself to be the militant co-chair of students for justice in Palestine or wrote an op-ed in the Harvard Crimson proudly supporting the Crimson's editorial endorsing the boycott movement against Israel, she was simply not a good enough Jew. The pound of flesh dynamic is also expressed in the demand to repeat with enthusiastic amends. Any claims made about Israel, regardless of how outlandish, this was the placard strategy at work, equating Israel's Zionism and sometimes just the star of David drawn on placards with the greatest evil de jour. Zionism equals racism, amen. Zionism equals apartheid, amen. Zionism equals Nazism, of course. Zionism equals genocide, what else? Oh, Zionism now equals white supremacism. That's a new one, but sure. This progression of anti-Israel activism by young Jews no longer felt like a natural and understandable choice shaped by different generational circumstances, but the outcome of relentless dynamic of bullying at work. These past few months as a visiting professor at Georgetown University, I taught a course titled Zionism and Anti-Zionism. In the many office hours spent discussing student life, it became apparent that the pound of flesh dynamic of anti-Zionist activism operated very much like bullying. Like bullying, it prays on weakness and shame. Shame in one's full Jewish identity, with its calls to Jewish solidarity and connections to a far-away land of Israel and the state of Israel. The more one feels shame, the more the anti-Zionist bully can extract more pounds of flesh. The BDS movement has been one of the most effective users of this pound of flesh dynamic, inviting young Jews to the cause of justice, only to ultimately demand the mutilation of their Jewish identity. BDS has demanded that Jews not only criticize Israeli actions, but sever their relations with Israel completely. Not only students on campus, but Jewish organizations have begun to feel this dynamic at work. Just these past few months, the DC chapter of Sunrise, an organization mobilizing young people to make climate change and urgent priority across America, pulled out of a DC rally to support voting rights because Jewish organizations, which were also participating, also dare to incidentally support Israel. The organizations they mentioned, the National Council of Jewish Women, the Reform Movement's Religious Action Center, and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, are some of the most progressive organizations of the Jewish community devoted to numerous causes of justice and equality. That was still not enough. These organizations by their mere presence were sullying a noble cause. Jews were expected to hand over more pounds of flesh as the price of participation. More recently, BigDuck, a company that helps not profits with their communications, declined to work with the Hartman Institute over its connection to Israel. This led the Hartman Institute to issue a statement that identified the precise nature and goal of the pound of flesh dynamic as a moving of the goalposts on BDS from Israel to North American Jewish organizations. Hartman correctly noted that this applies a standard of North American Jewish commitments that would exclude the vast majority of the members of our community. A moving of the goalposts is literally how the pound of flesh dynamic works, creating standards that make it nearly impossible for Jews to be fully Jewish is the ancient goal. My choice to step back from the pound of flesh dynamic of bullying was a personal one, but I have since met many Jews older and younger who shared with me their pound of flesh moments. They told me of their tea intersection moments when they realized that it would never be enough, that the one additional pound of flesh they were demanded to hand over is not going to be the last. They would never be left alone. They told me how they decided to take a step back, realizing they were turning their backs on the community of the good, but they were clear that the price of their release from their bullies was worth it. Extracting oneself from the pound of flesh dynamic is not only the right thing to do, but also the key to mental health. One of the best responses from a student to my Zionism and anti-Zionism course was that it was better than dozens of hours of therapy. Anti-Zionist bullying takes an emotional toll. It is not a matter of intellectual discourse. It operates at the deepest levels of our Jewish being. The only effective response then is to resist it with confidence and pride, and thus rob it of its power to pray. It is difficult to bully confident and proud people. If anti-Zionists are met with Jews who are proud Zionists who embrace their Jewish identity fully, it is nearly impossible to shame them into handing over another pound of flesh. Faced with pride and confidence, bullies seek other easier targets. Indeed, as the pound of flesh dynamic revealed itself, to more Jews as the ancient bullying that it was, some Jews responded by openly and proudly declaring themselves Zionist, especially on campus and especially in progressive spaces, whether it is Club Z, World Zionist Congress or Zionist, Zionism has re-emerged into West. Not as a movement to build a state happily that has already been accomplished, but as a form of confident Judaism. And so today, my response to concerned parents and exhausted students is short and simple. The most effective response to bullies is resistance. The best way to extract oneself from pound of flesh predators is confidence and pride. The best response to anti-Zionism, in other words, is Zionism. So a not, you just finished reading an essay that was published in Tablet magazine in May of 2022 called the BDS Pound of Flesh in Anti-Zionism. And I just mentioned to you that I would have loved and very much appreciated to read this essay when I was in college because it feels like it was written to me specifically personally because everything that is mentioned are things that I went through to a T, exactly. I got to school at George Washington in D.C., not Georgetown, where you taught. And I wanted nothing more than to be a progressive left-wing activist. I was involved in all of these different student organizations advocating for $15 minimum wage for LGBT rights, for reproductive freedom, for labor rights, et cetera, et cetera. And I was at protests every week and I was working on Capitol Hill and that was my core social circle. My group of roommates, we were all involved in the same programs. Everything was perfect until I started noticing the strangest things. And that in every space that I put myself, things were set against Israel that were even to someone who knew very little about the conflict and very little about the history, didn't sound political, and they didn't sound it. They didn't sound as though we were going to be discussing with open minds about compromise and about peace and about each other's narratives. They sounded very personal. And when I made objections clear to the people in my social circles, I understood that they also didn't know a lot about policy and they didn't know about history or what was actually happening on the ground in Israel. They just knew that people who called themselves Zionists were not welcome in these spaces. Examples are an LGBT pride march in in DC in June of 2019 that banned the rainbow flag if there was a megan David in the middle, or there was a rally on my campus for $15 minimum wage for the janitors. And it immediately turned into a free Palestine rally where the Zionist capitalists were accused of exploiting the janitors, the custodial workers at an American university. And then there was other events such as after the Pittsburgh Tree of Life shooting when 11 Jews were killed and I wanted to hang in this really flag in my dorm room and I was told by my roommates that it needed to be a very small one because they wouldn't have felt comfortable. So all of these things added up and like you said in the essay originally I went along with it because the cost of not going along with it was to not have any friends. I didn't know at that point that there were friends outside of these circles that I would eventually make and they would be much better for my mental health. But I went along with it and I assumed that this is what I needed to do and I assumed that I had been brainwashed growing up into believing horrible terrible things and now I needed to repent from that. I needed to disown everything that I had internalized and accept the new truth, the new way and therefore I would be accepted. But as even as I started doing that I remember once on Holocaust Remembrance Day I posted a picture on my Instagram honoring the 6 million and somewhere in the picture there was an Israeli flag, there was a woman with an Israeli flag standing in front of Auschwitz and even that was too far. Even after everything that I had done I felt to make peace even that was controversial enough for me to get a bunch of DMs about how I should take it down because it was offensive to Palestinians. And even when there was a young student who was caught on camera in my dorm room, not my dorm room, my dorm building after a party, responding to the question on a video, what are we going to do to Israel? She said we're going to bomb Israel, you Jewish pieces of shit and then when a friend of mine posted on his Instagram that we shouldn't be condemning her, we shouldn't be holding her accountable because the Jewish community on campus doesn't do a whole lot to stand up for the less fortunate and to involve themselves in social justice causes. Even when I objected to that that was seen as over the line and that was seen as well he's not really a progressive because look at how far he's come but he still has this grievance, he still has this sort of Zionist inclination. And so eventually I said like you wrote in the essay I said we're done. I can't do this anymore and that led me to straight up Zionist pro-Israel activism which I've been involved in ever since. So I wish that I had read it sooner but I'm so glad that I have it now. Thank you. I mean your story is one of the inspirations for this essay, you were one of the founders of the New Zionist Congress, the ability really for students to go through this process and to reclaim a Zionist identity and what you're describing is exactly this dynamic and at one point like you said you can't think it's anything else. What you describe of like the flag was too big or there's still like some Zionist remains it's exactly what Tom Holland describes like that you have to get out all the Jewishness out of it you know that is only when it ends it doesn't end before and I must say that by now by now I've heard it from many people and students one student actually read the essay and she's still in college and she told me that she was in tears reading it. And so I must say these days like I put those ideas out there but I also sometimes feel that the only way to get to students who are experiencing that is they have to come to it on their own. I'm not sure you can really tell them because the things you said the feeling of repenting I had to belong it's almost descriptions of occult you know and what will happen if I'm out and is there a world for me out there so sometimes there's actually no choice than having the students themselves go through this process and emerging and saying enough is enough. Right and it's what was really interesting to me during college was that the Jews who were accepted the Jews who were in the upper echelons of these social spaces or who were not facing the same backlash that I was it seemed as though the defining characteristic of their Judaism was being mad at other Jews. So these Jews were like you said if they weren't the kind of militant frothing at the mouth vice chair of the students for justice in Palestine chapter and we had a fair amount of Jews involved in our students for justice in Palestine chapter then they weren't good enough unless they defined their Judaism as being sort of a renegade against the mainstream hill L even J Street institutions and organizations on campus then it simply was not good enough. Yeah. Yeah I mean this dynamic is relentless it's amazing to see it ever since I've been talking about it all I get from both parents and students are signs of recognition like they they recognize this as something that's happening and this is why at the end my recommendation is not about you know for for too long our recommendations were about we need to explain that this is what's happening in Israel and not this and I remember the moment that I realized that anti-Zanism is not about Israel which sounds weird I'm meant to say anti-Zanism but but I remember that moment that was like it's not about Israel we have made the mistake I have made the mistake for years of thinking that this is a discussion about Israel and therefore we should respond with a discussion about Israel Israel does this or it doesn't do that it's not about Israel it's the respectable mask behind which Jews can be assaulted in the spaces like you described in the places that they felt that they were most themselves so it's not about responding with specific answers so today when students ask me what to do I tell them don't talk about Israel it's not a discussion about Israel the only way to fight it off is an attitude the attitude of confidence the attitude of pride if you wish the attitude of coming out as a Zionist but it's only the attitude that will make it go away the endless discussions about what Israel is doing that was just a way to keep us busy right I went to brown university a couple years ago to write a piece on a project that they were doing there and it was this very exciting project people were very very very very much looking forward to it on campus it was supposed to build bridges it was supposed to bring peace they wanted media to cover it was called the narrow bridge project and I went into the space where they where they were putting it together and there was a whole binder that they put together about conflicting narratives about the conflict and then there were poster boards about strategies that we can utilize to connect with people and to recognize each other's realities and to tone down the temperature of Zionism and anti-Zionism and realize that history is in black and white and then they had speakers and it was very beautiful and they were talking about how they're expanding education and after the fact after you know these were all Jews we're doing that only Jews were invited to participate in this because the Palestinian students or the Palestinian sympathetic students would not have participated because that would have been seen as normalization so after this event I spoke with a couple of more proud Zionist students a part of the pro-Israel organization on campus and I said is this sort of thing helping you is this sort of you know coming together helping you and they said well no because it's all Jews Jews love to discuss and debate and to you know work things out but the other side simply wasn't showing up to the table and so it seemed a little pointless to us it seemed like we were just sort of you know talking about how great we were because of the initiatives that we were doing and so I said well what would help you because they like a lot of other elite universities had experienced you know their own BDS shenanigans on campus that were targeted specifically toward Jews in Israel is not anything to do with Israeli policy of course and they said over the last couple years there has been an influx in at Brown and Brown has made the conscious decision to do this to bring in more students from day schools and from religious backgrounds who look Jewish visibly Jewish they were keepers or whatever and when they come to campus and they are very excited just to participate with us who might be more secular in pro-Israel day rallies or you know we have Shukshuka on the quad or we eat hummus or you know there's expanded Jewish scholarship on campus there's more Jewish programming on campus there's more academics coming and speaking that is what helps us nothing about the conflict nothing about the history it's just Jewish identity because now all of a sudden it seems less progressive when you attack us because we are distinct from the majority and I was like oh Fascinating. Yeah. And that was the moment that I realized why I felt so differently about it. I mean, for many years, there was this difficulty of, why do I feel differently about the lethal anti-Semitism that comes from the right? I mean, it's clearly lethal. People get killed over that. And the mostly non-lethal anti-Zionism from the left. I mean, anti-Zionism is very lethal in the Middle East, but let's say on American campuses, it's mostly not lethal. And why did I feel so differently about it? And I realized that anti-Semitism is recognized as something external. It's like crime. You can be a victim of crime. You take precautions. It might not always help. But generally, your social circle is not a bunch of criminals. Anti-Zionism, I realized all of a sudden, it's much more like domestic violence. It attacks you under the respectable mask of the spouse in your home, in the place where you're supposed to feel safe. And like you said, social justice organizations, many of them were founded by Jews. Jews believe certainly in America that the very nature of Judaism is to be involved in social justice causes. Academia journalism, these are places where Jews are prominent, and this is where anti-Zionism is used as their respectable mask to go after them. So anti-Zionism has just become a way to basically put together an assault on Jewish life, where Jews are. And that's where they are on campuses, in journalism, in social justice circle. And we need to meet it head-on like you described with confidence, with pride, with resistance to bullying, and the whole conversation about Israel, seriously, enough people are talking about Israel, enough Israelis are arguing without Israel. We never had a shortage of Jews and Israelis criticizing Israel. That's really not what we're in the market for. I agree. Wholeheartedly. I think if they're so interested in debating Israel and talking about Israel, they should move to Israel. Absolutely. That would be my recommendation, my closing recommendation. Very well. Thank you so much. Thank you.