Antisemitism vs. anti-Israelism

By Walter E. Block, AM THINKER

Image via Pxfuel.

I have antisemitic tendencies and am also a critic of Israel.  With the advent of the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which has just passed the House of Representatives with a 320-91 vote, and will soon wend its way toward the Senate, I shall be in deep trouble.

What antisemitic tendencies do I have?  I have strong negative feelings toward most Jews.  They are disproportionately supporters of socialism, wokeism, and every left-wing liberal shibboleth that comes down the pike.  I am utterly convinced that socialists are either stupid or evil.  I am equally of the opinion that Jews are not of low intelligence.  Indeed, we (for I am myself a proud Jew) have the highest I.Q.s of any demographic.  Draw your own conclusions.

Jews, and other socialists, of course, have learned absolutely nothing from the almost controlled experiments of East and West Germany, North and South Korea.  This failure of theirs cannot at all be attributed to stupidity.  Socialists are merely progressives or wokeists in a hurry, and all too many Jews can be characterized with the latter description.

I am not a “self-hating” Jew.  I don’t hate myself at all.  I only despise socialism, and I am appalled that so many of my co-religionists adhere to that abominable philosophy.

Yes, yes, there are honorable exceptions to this general tendency for Jews to denigrate capitalism, private property rights, free enterprise, and other attributes of civilization.  Names that come to mind in this regard are Gary Becker, Milton Friedman, Ludwig von Mises, Robert Nozick, Ayn Rand, and Murray Rothbard.  However, it cannot be denied that the overwhelming majority of members of this faith are bitter critics of these aspects of a civilized order.

According to Milton Friedman, “Jews owe an enormous debt to free enterprise and competitive capitalism  … [but] have been consistently opposed to capitalism and have done much on an ideological level to undermine it.”  He was no self-hater, either.

I am also a critic of Israel.  It is still way too socialistic for my taste, despite the best efforts of the present Likud administration to undo the efforts of the founders of that country.  I also criticize Israel for not pursuing its enemies with the force, alacrity, and determination these terrorists fully deserve.  The Israelis have been far too beholden to the Biden administration.  To mention only one instance, the IDF should have been in Rafah long before it entered that last redoubt of the evil Hamas.

There is a difference between being an antisemite and a critic of Israel.  There is a deep chasm between the two.  It is perfectly reasonable, coherent, logical to support the one and oppose the other.  For example, one could be a Judeophile, love Jews in general, and yet be a bitter opponent of Israel, its policies, its very existence.  There is no logical contradiction between holding these two superficially inconsistent views.  Perhaps such a person believes that Israeli Jews would be far safer if they all emigrated to the U.S.  Similarly, it violates no law of logic to despise most Jews and yet support Israel, that plucky little country that takes on enemies thousands of times larger, in population and territory, than itself.

In like manner, it is possible to be an anti-black racist and yet still admire the athleticism of this group of people.  Stipulate that Hitler loved the music of Bach and Mozart.  It violates no law of logic to revere the latter and take the opposite point of view about the former.

This rejection also emanates from the opposite side of the U.S. political spectrum.  According to Jerry Nadler, “this legislation threatens freedom of speech, one of our most cherished values, while doing nothing to combat antisemitism.”  He is a highly credentialed liberal member of the Democrat party, the most senior Jewish member of the U.S. House of Representatives, and represents a New York City district with one of the largest Jewish populations in the United States.  It is rare that members of three political philosophies can all agree on anything, let alone something as important and controversial as this.  Yet Green from the right, Nadler from the left, and your present author, who is a libertarian, all concur: the Antisemitism Awareness Act should be voted down in the Senate.

Why was this bill passed in the first place in the House of Representatives?  It was pretty much a response to the Palestinian protests on numerous U.S. campuses, starting with the most prestigious, such as Columbia, my old alma mater, and then spreading, like an out-of-control virus, to many other institutions of supposed higher learning.  This occurred not only in the U.S., but all around the world.  But there is a remedy for these outrageous outbreaks, which have nothing to do with free speech, let alone antisemitism.  And that is trespass.  These protesters simply do not have any free speech rights to engage in dialogue on the property of other people.  If I break into your house at 3 A.M. and start giving you a speech at that time, and you kick me out, you have not in the slightest infringed upon any free speech rights I undoubtedly have, which are limited to taking place on my own property or on that of others who welcome me.

Nowadays, if a person criticizes Israel only for doing what many other nations engage in; if he thinks that country can do absolutely nothing right; if on October 8, 2023, he fully blamed Israel for the depredations of the previous day (as did almost three dozen student groups at the no longer so prestigious Harvard University), then one has to seriously consider that such a critic is not only anti-Israel, but, also antisemitic