Opinion | For American Jews, every day must be October 8th
Our friends are not the ones who, until recently, never said that the numbers of casualties in Gaza came from a Ministry of Health run by Hamas – a mistake they would never make if, for example, they reported figures provided by the Russian government produced. Or who describe the people murdered on October 7 as “Jewish settlers”, let alone living in towns and kibbutzim that are part of sovereign Israel. Or who talk about people who kill babies and kidnap elderly women as ‘fighters’ or ‘militants’.
Our friends are not at universities where every third building seems to be named after a Jewish benefactor. Schools like Stanford, which now defends students’ right to sing “from the river to the sea‘ – a call for the destruction of an entire state – on the grounds of freedom of speech are often the same places where, only recently, a student excluded from campus for “racist social media posts.” Freedom of speech is fine as a standard, not as a double standard.
Our friends are not those in the academic and corporate DEI offices or the diversity trainers who think that Jews do not count as a minority or who try to seduce Ashkenazi Jews into a “whiteness responsibilitygroup. Diversity that only thinks about race is anti-diversity; inclusion that functionally excludes Jews is not inclusive; equality that treats Jews as second-class victims is not fair. This should be axiomatic.
Our friends are not in the universe of people represented by people like Tucker Carlson and the guests on his show. Under the guise of a prudent foreign policy, the neo-isolationist right is turning into the anti-Israel left. repeats his tropes that Israel is ‘destroying Gaza’. These are the people whose thinking would be mainstreamed by a second Trump term.
The list could be longer. Knowing who our friends are not is not pleasant, especially after so many Jews have tried to be personal friends and political allies of people and movements who, while we grieved, turned their backs on us. But it is also enlightening. More than 3,800 years of Jewish history yields the same bracing lesson: in the long run, we are alone.
What can Jews do on October 8? We can stop being embarrassed, ambiguous or defensive about Zionism, which is, after all, one of the most successful movements for national liberation in the world. We can call it anti-Zionism for what it is: a new version of anti-Semitism, based on the same set of smears and conspiracy theories. We can leave the institutions that earned us: “Defund the Academy” is a much better slogan than defund the police.
Jewish America is rich with dreamers and entrepreneurs who have taken crazy risks in their careers to find value and create things that have never existed before. It is time for them to apply the same talent and energy to creating new institutions that adhere to truly liberal values, where Jews never have to fear. In time, the rest of America could follow suit.