Betrayed and Befriended
Breaking up is hard to do, but new alliances are forming
It's been a whirlwind few months with the horrific news from Israel, and then Gaza, that just gets worse as we learn about the extent of Hamas's targeted sexual violence against Israelis and the thousands and thousands of dead Palestinian civilians along the thousands and thousands of (unreported) dead Hamas fighters, and with the anti-Jewish protests raging on campuses and city streets, led by people who fetishize an illiberal, zero-sum Palestinian nationalism because of their perceived skin color and the fact that they're not Jewish.
Some rallies persist, more tragic news stories continue from Israel, but things for some reason now feel quieter. I don’t think I’m alone in this.
I hope this doesn't sound perverse or insensitive, war is awful, and I know I’m far away from the destruction on either side, but you get used to the news. It's not just because of repeated body count statistics, that's not something to be inured to, it's because, by now, old alliances have torn and new ones have formed. The harsh pain of October and November has been replaced by something different. I think by now in early 2024, people more-or-less know where they stand.
What was once a stable reality shifted in an earthquake of violence and protest on October 7th. Your friends were suddenly not your friends. People you depended on as allies betrayed you and accused you of being a “colonialist” as if you were wearing a funny hat and fleeing England in the 17th century. Words like genocide which had been confined to the Holocaust and other grave moments of history became a throw-away term at best, or veiled antisemitism at worst. It was scary. My very Jewish community where I had formed a spiritual home forbade public mention of Israel or the war. What’s going on? Where is home?
And then strangers you never expected welcome from emerged with an open hand. News sources you never read appeared in your feed and offered insight and solace.
By early January, you've made new friends. You've found new anchors. You’ve separated yourself from those who can’t support you, nor you them.
I'm no longer so angry about the scary, all black "Shut it Down For Palestine!" posters on Brooklyn storefronts, stores that also share they're Black owned, signaling what had once been a source of pride but now are perhaps a sign of something else. The Shut it Down posters don’t need to add, "By Killing Jews" because it’s obvious. There is no Palestine peace movement that seeks safe borders with its Jewish neighbors, despite our best wishes and MLK projections in the west. The logical conclusion of a zero sum game Palestine is dead Jews. How do I know? The signs never call for peace.
I know it sounds cynical but who, exactly, is the face of a peaceful Palestinian nationalism? There’s not a single Palestinian politician or even a celebrity who calls for peace, let along the screaming cosplay kefiyyeh crowd.
Israel, while currently led by a far-right government that will most likely be thrown out of office in a few months, has oceans of people and political parties seeking peace. Many of them lived near Gaza. They were murdered and abducted by the very people they sought to co-exist with. There is no political party, faction or movement in the West Bank or Gaza with any power or popularity that seeks peace. There are some small non profit organizations, there are undoubtedly some individuals who want peace, but nothing more.
When people say Free Palestine, they mean, Free Palestine from Jews. And since there are 7 million Jews there, well… you get it.
I've left the minyan I mentioned (an informal synagogue) because they refused to support Israel as an organization or even allow public talk about supporting Israel after October 7th. To this day, declaring your support of Israel in a public setting, like in a sermon or in group chats online, is seen as divisive because they have a large anti-Israel faction. Yes, you read that right. While Israel is profoundly bound up in Jewish identity as a place in history, the name of our people, the source of the Hebrew language, the physical destination of Jews for thousands of years of diaspora, the promised land that forms the narrative of the Five Books of Moses, what we call the Torah, despite all this, there’s an anti-Israel faction in what had been my beloved Jewish community. A few months ago that was mind boggling to me. The fact that most of them are trans was even more confusing. What was going on? What does gender identity have to do with the 1967 war?
Now I give it a shoulder shrug. To me, they’re victims of the same illiberal sequestering of free speech and identity victim worship that afflicts our college campuses. (Unless it’s against Jews. Then it requires context.)
It was hard to leave the minyan, it had been a valued spiritual home, I still love the friends I made there after moving to Brooklyn. Now I've joined a different community -- a liberal Modern Orthodox synagogue where the rabbi isn’t censored from talking about the pain of the Israeli hostages living in Gaza out of fear he'll hurt the feelings of a few congregants who rally for homophobic authoritarian Palestinian nationalism, which I'll never understand, but hey, two Jews, three opinions.
In addition to joining a synagogue, I’ve also re-started a smaller, auxiliary Jewish community to create a rational space for Jews to fulfill their destiny as people irrevocably connected to Israel, regardless of politics. We meet once a month for Friday night davening (prayers) and a community meal, it’s small and fragile, but we have a thriving WhatsApp group and are literally the only group in Brooklyn for traditional egalitarian Judaism that stands for Israel.
Trad egal, as we call it, is a newer Jewish grassroots movement that straddles the line between Reform gender equality/gay inclusivity with Orthodox liturgy and traditional lifestyle rules. It’s a liberal post-modern blending of the strengths of both Reform and Orthodox movements without the constraints of organized leadership or dues. You can think of it as a replacement of Conservative Judaism — we sit in-between either “side” of contemporary Jewish worship — but that’s up for debate.
What I thought were permanent alliances with other leftists have shattered. Where were the BLM or Immigrants Rights allies at the March in DC with the tripartite mission to Support Israel, Fight Antisemitism and Return Hostages? None of them showed, but there were lots and lots of white Christians marching along with us. New bedfellows, new friends.
In a time of crisis, you’re always surprised by who supports you and who leaves you.
I now read news sources that either didn't exist before the war or have become magnified as other sources diminish in significance. The media is how we construct our reality, you’re doing it right now by reading this essay, and, for me at least, my reality has had a new infusion of sources. I'm talking about The Times of Israel when I want actual reportage about Gaza and not the New York Times, which has moments of value like with their reporting of Hamas sexual violence, but is mostly antagonistic to Israel.
I'm talking about Dan Senor's invaluable podcast with Israeli journalists, occasional posts in Bari Weiss' The Free Press when they aren’t nauseatingly right wing, substacks from the Israeli-American scholar Michael Oren, and essays by elite university donors like Bill Ackman, among many others. I'm sure you've seen this too. The old news sources don't get you very far anymore. It was once bewildering to me to read center right opinion makers and find myself nodding along, but now I can't imagine life without them. Doesn't make me align with the right, but it does increase my wingspan.
The last chip to fall, and what's at the heart of this essay, were my alliances with social justice efforts to increase diversity in society. I think many of us were surprised that DEI policies in academia led to anti-Jewish rallies on almost every campus in America. What was going in? Isn’t diversity a good thing? What does hiring more Black professors have do with an irredentist conflict 7,000 miles away? Turns out they’re tightly bound together. The anti-intellectual screeds of "colonialism" still make no sense, but I'm no longer so mystified by the DEI culture of intimidation and bullying. I get it now. DEI isn’t about diversity equity or inclusivity, that’s just a name like “Republican” is a name that doesn’t denote specific meaning. DEI is a team. It’s a faction. It’s an ideology.
Progressives, who dominate the academy and are disproportionately represented in the media, and whose ideologies have become woven into a narrative about "antiracism," are merely a faction. I won't use the term "woke" since it's a Republican pejorative that was originally black slang for a very valid way of understanding anti-Black racism. I think it’s best to respect people’s terminology, so I'll stick with what they call themselves: leftists and progressives.
By now it's clear to me that progressives don't care about racism or social justice despite the origins of their movement, that fell apart after October 7th. They're just a sect. They want power as much as extremist (i.e., all) Republicans want power. They want power as much as I want power, as much as Biden’s faction in the Democratic party want power. As much as billionaire donors to elite universities want power. We’re all in competition with each other. Despite progressive claims of social justice, simply substitute the word power and you’ll get it.
I believe progressives would stage a violent event like January 6th if they decide to go that way or they’re whipped up into enough of a frenzy. They’re not there now, but they could be soon. Sounds crazy, but they keep on illegally marching at major airports and infrastructure. How much longer will it be until a few of them light an actual match?
I thought I believed in the leftist grouping of social, economic, racial and environmental justice, but now I see what it is: it's window dressing for sectarianism. Don't believe me? Watch footage of college students forming gauntlets as they shout at Jewish students going to class. Look at how many hate groups like Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace (made up of many non Jews, in case the name is confusing) have chapters in most colleges. All factions and sects are sui generis, they’re not exactly the same as right wing militias, but that's all it is. Just another group vying for control.
What I've realized, and what makes me feel so much better, is that progressives don't believe in progress, not in the sense that we try to progress from bad things to good things, that we try start with something broken and progressively fix it until it works better. That sounds great, but that's not what progressives stand for. They just want power. They want to make America great for... themselves.
Sound familiar?
The news media makes the mistake of equivalency all the time. They do it in Israel and Gaza every day, and they also do it in politics too. I think journalists after 2016 have improved, but it’s a little too late. They created this world where "both sides are extremists." Or "both sides are bad," meaning Republicans and Democrats, but we know that's not true. The Democratic party evolves with the times, but it's more or less the same as it ever was. It's a big tent with different factions. It's the Republican party that's changed. They were heading there for decades but they tipped into something else entirely with Trump. He's the apotheosis of their belief system, which is white Christian authoritarianism styled after leaders like Victor Orban. They say so themselves.
The point is that journalists have struggled identifying that Democrats are basically normal institutionalists, and Republicans have completely gone off the rails and want to overthrow the Constitution.
Bear with me. This has been what I've always thought, that the equivalency was lazy and false, but now I see that the journalists were right, they were just covering the wrong group of people.
The Democrats and the Republicans are vastly different, one is enthralled to a racist authoritarian con artist, the other is a multi-factional party that believes in democracy. But where the journalists are right is that the fringe factions within the Democratic party, and some who go beyond it as Green (Jill Stein) or People's Party (Cornel West), are as radical and violent as Trump's followers. They are the new Tea Party. They call themselves progressives. I call them the MAGA Left.
It's clear now. DEI oaths, an obsession with gender identity that goes beyond the protections all people deserve, the fixation on 19th century colonialism, the focus on skin color at the expense of economic considerations (e.g., Claudine Gay comes from a wealthy family), it's sectarian.
So what about the rest of us? What’s our name? I don't know. A man at a bar the other day overhead me and my friend Josh talking about the war. He introduced himself as a "gentile who supports Israel" and said he deplores the current state of academia. He's an NYU librarian with 25 years of service. I asked what we should call ourselves.
"I like the word centrist," he said.
Josh and I nodded. Sounds good to me. It’s how Biden won in the first place.
"By now it's clear to me that progressives don't care about racism or social justice despite the origins of their movement, that fell apart after October 7th. They're just a sect. They want power as much as extremist (i.e., all) Republicans want power. They want power as much as I want power, as much as Biden’s faction in the Democratic party want power. As much as billionaire donors to elite universities want power. We’re all in competition with each other. Despite progressive claims of social justice, simply substitute the word power and you’ll get it."
Well said!