To the editor: I discovered the op-ed from visitor contributors David N. Myers and Joshua Goetz on antisemitism to be illuminating (“Antisemitism seems from the left and the appropriate, however not equally,” March 20). The authors do an admirable job in differentiating anti-Jewish sentiment (precise antisemitism) from anti-Israel sentiment (which some might contemplate anti-Zionist or anti-colonial).
Is antisemitism extra rampant on the left or the appropriate? Many progressives — particularly youthful liberals — reject doctrinaire colonialism and imperialism, and do not need the historic perspective on the historical past of the Center East and the current historical past of Israel. What some might view as occupation and even apartheid, others may even see as a necessity for overt actions to guard the way forward for Israel and an impartial Jewish state.
The far proper, nevertheless, is much less nuanced. Many in that camp mainly see anybody who will not be white and Christian because the “different” and have come to propagate dangerous “alternative principle” conspiracies. That sentiment, certainly, is pure antisemitism and leads many on the appropriate to resort to hate and even violence.
Disagreeing with Israel’s governmental insurance policies and present management will not be intrinsically antisemitic any greater than disagreeing with present U.S. management and insurance policies is anti-American or unpatriotic. Nonetheless, extending that disagreement to hatred and violence in opposition to individuals owing to their faith is most positively vitriolic antisemitism.
We should take care of the fact that many within the progressive tent might harbor hatred towards the Jewish state and its insurance policies and never essentially towards Jewish individuals. Many within the far-right tent, in the meantime, might embrace the land of Israel for its biblical significance to Christianity, however need Jewish individuals to vanish.
Michael Schneider, Truckee, Calif.
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To the editor: Myers and Goetz try a critical evaluation of antisemitism. But their suggestion that Israeli navy motion is a significant driver of worldwide antisemitism rests on a type of sophistry that’s, at backside, intellectually sophomoric.
The argument proceeds by abstraction. It isolates Israel’s conduct from the historic circumstances wherein it happens — many years of warfare, terrorism and specific rejection of a Jewish state — after which treats that isolation as clarification. That’s not evaluation; it’s a rhetorical maneuver.
Israel should be topic to ethical scrutiny, particularly in warfare. However antisemitism will not be a contingent response to Israeli coverage. It predates the state, persists independently of it and readily exploits modern occasions as justification.
To conflate Israeli actions with the causes of antisemitism is to mistake pretext for trigger — and to danger putting accountability for that hatred onto its targets.
That’s not readability. It’s argument by distortion.
Stephen Macht, Los Angeles
