Denial is also antisemitism

OPINION:

In recent weeks, we have seen many examples of students and others marching while waiving Palestinian flags, holding signs in support of Hamas terrorists, and shouting vile calls for the destruction of Israel and for the genocide of Jews.

While these expressions of hatred for Israel and Jews are clear evidence of the rapid growth of overt antisemitism across our nation and especially in our urban centers and on college campuses, they are not the only current manifestations of antisemitism. There is more subtle and potentially far more dangerous antisemitism that is seeping into our society.

This latter antisemitism is characterized by avoidance, denial and obfuscation.

The most explicit form of this latent and quieter antisemitism was put on full display last week in testimony before a congressional committee by the presidents of three elite universities. When questioned by members of Congress regarding their views on the evident and manifest hate speech threatening Jews and Israel that has taken hold on their respective campuses, each of the presidents refused to respond without qualification.

For every painful confrontation with the reality of the vile hate being spewed on their campuses, the presidents resorted to reading statements that had obviously been carefully crafted by lawyers.

When asked the simplest and most direct questions regarding the acceptability of hate speech calling for the destruction of Israel, along with its Jewish population, or for the genocide of Jews directly, the presidents cited, in almost hypnotic fashion, the importance of complying with the Constitution and that “context matters.”

While it is true that our Constitution is vital and that context does matter when judging speech, determining the manner of handling calls for the extermination of Jews on an academic campus does not require context; it requires good sense and forthrightness.

Clearly, none of the university presidents came across as antisemitic. But their unwillingness in the hearing to forthrightly address the existence of virulent antisemitism on their respective campuses reflected a more general unwillingness to confront the growing anti-Jewish hatred spreading across our educational establishment.

All of this, of course, is going on while so many academic centers have gone out of their way to stifle any expression of hatred against a plethora of other groups perceived as victims more worthy of concern. This incoherence is a form of denial.

Sadly, this form of denial is hardly an isolated event. There are many other examples of this type of covert and profoundly hypocritical antisemitism.

Seemingly, it is impossible for President Biden to condemn the spreading antisemitism without trying to conflate it with alleged Islamophobia. Every time the president tries to condemn antisemitism, he feels obliged to condemn all forms of hate and he is always compelled to cite Islamophobia, as though antisemitism and Islamophobia were inextricably related.

When the president and his administration attempt to reduce the significance of the presence of anti-Jewish hate, including by trying to camouflage it through amalgamation with other, unrelated bad acts, it dilutes the significance and dangers of antisemitism and gives cover to the true purveyors of hate and their acolytes.

Women’s organizations such as the National Organization for Women, UN Women, the National Women’s Law Center and Planned Parenthood, which have been vociferous in asserting their defense of women whenever they have seen the slightest disrespectful act against women, have been disturbingly and shockingly silent, dismissing the plight of Israeli women raped and brutalized by Hamas.

Those same groups would not hesitate to emote over incidents harmful to women that are inconsequential compared with the horrors that have been visited on women who happen to be Jewish. This is assuredly a silent form of antisemitism.

When, after Oct. 7, a member of Maryland’s Commission on Hate Crime Response and Prevention chooses to malign Israel, odiously comparing Israel to Nazi Germany, and does not articulate any concern regarding the violence that has been perpetrated against Israeli Jews, yet remains in her position, this is also antisemitism. In this case, distressingly, it is antisemitism under the imprimatur of government.

It is as though there were a tacit agreement (I might call it a gentlemen’s agreement, except that this might be perceived as sexist and discriminatory and subject me to condemnation), that attacks on Jews are not worthy of the concern that attacks on other groups are.

This is the worst kind of antisemitism. It permits the quiet and steady seepage of hate against Jews into everyday life and normalizes that hate.

Germany, from the late 19th century through the rise of Nazism in the 1930s, permitted and encouraged subtle and tacit antisemitism. Its universities became breeding grounds for hate against Jews. The ultimate outcome was the Holocaust, which occurred with the acquiescence of judges, lawyers, doctors and professors, the products of academic antisemitism, which lulled them into an unquestioning acceptance of Nazi ideology. The result was the industrial slaughter of 6 million Jews.

There is a need to confront the current wave of antisemitism head-on — not with avoidance, denials or obfuscation, but with firmness and forcefulness and without ambivalence. Anything less from the president of the United States down to community leaders can only lead the Jewish community and, ultimately, our entire nation down the path of disaster.

• Gerard Leval is a partner in the Washington office of a national law firm. He is the author of “Lobbying for Equality: Jacques Godard and the Struggle for Jewish Civil Rights During the French Revolution.”