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A man named Mohamed Soliman is charged with multiple crimes relating to a brutal Molotov cocktail attack on people in Boulder, Colorado, who were demonstrating in favor of Israeli hostages in Gaza. Some of the victims suffered second- and third-degree burns, but all of them are expected to survive. Soliman yelled “Free Palestine” as he lobbed his firebombs into the crowd.
It goes without saying that Soliman is being accused of antisemitism. But the discomforting fact is that the Israeli government bears responsibility for much of the antisemitism here in the United States and the rest of the world.
As everyone knows, there are lots of people who are fiercely opposed to the Israeli government’s actions against the Palestinians in Gaza. But any person who is able to engage in independent thinking and critical thinking is able to recognize that the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza are separate and distinct from Jews and Judaism in general. In fact, there are many Jews who themselves oppose the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza.
The problem arises in the fact that the Israeli government will not permit that mindset to stand. The Israeli government steadfastly maintains that anyone who opposes the policies of the Israeli government is necessarily antisemitic — that is, that that person hates not only what the Israeli government does to Palestinians but also automatically hates Jews and the Jewish faith at the same time.
In other words, the Israeli government inculcates a mindset in people that automatically conflates the actions of the Israeli government with Jews and Judaism. Thus, the notion is that if one hates what the Israeli government is doing, one automatically hates Jews and Judaism at the same time.
For a person who is capable of engaging in independent thinking and critical thinking, that notion is obviously ridiculous. It’s like saying that a person who opposes the Vatican’s response to the Catholic Church’s child sex-abuse scandal automatically hates Catholics and Catholicism. The independent thinker can easily separate out the two and can easily oppose a Vatican policy while, at the same time, continuing to embrace Catholics and Catholicism.
Unfortunately, however, people with soft and malleable mindsets are susceptible to the Israeli government’s propaganda. Being told by the Israeli government that opposition to Israeli policies is equal to hatred of Jews and Judaism, they end up adopting that mindset. They become convinced that because they oppose the policies of the Israeli government, that means they also hate Jews and Judaism.
Thus, people in this group embark on one of two courses of action: (1) They begin speaking out against not only the Israeli government but also against Jews and Judaism, which, needless to say, is not in the best interests of Jews; or (2) They go silent in their criticism of the Israeli government for fear of being labeled antisemitic.
In fact, this latter course of action — suppression of dissent against the Israeli government — is precisely the reason why the Israeli government employs its conflation strategy in the first place. Realizing that many people do not want to be labeled antisemitic, the Israeli government conflates criticism of Israeli government policies with hatred of Jews and Judaism as a strategic device to silence criticism of the Israeli government’s policies. Thus, to avoid being labeled an antisemite, many people will refrain from criticizing the Israeli government.
The biggest problem is that there is another group of people in American society — the off-kilter people — people like Mohamed Soliman. People in this group have the same malleable mindsets as many others, but the difference is that they resort to violence to exact revenge for what the Israeli government is doing to Palestinians. Rather than peacefully opposing Israeli government actions with the power of the written and spoken word, like with articles and podcasts, which is what they should do, these off-kilter people instead target Israeli government officials with violent revenge through assassination. But they go further than that. They also target Jews in general because their mindset is one that has conflated hatred of Israeli government’s policies with hatred of Jews — the mindset that the Israeli government has inculcated in them as part of its strategy to silence criticism of the Israeli government.
Thus, Jews in general would be much safer and better off if the Israeli government were to drop its conflation strategy for silencing criticism of its policies and instead simply tell the truth — that the Israeli government is separate and distinct from Jews and Judaism, that Jews in general do not bear responsibility for the policies of the Israeli government, and that, in fact, many Jews oppose the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza. In that way, the off-kilter people might, at the very least, stop targeting Jews to express opposition to the actions of the Israeli government, which would thereby make life safer for Jews here in the United States and elsewhere.
The post The Israeli Government Makes Life Unsafe for Jews appeared first on The Future of Freedom Foundation.
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Author: Jacob G. Hornberger
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