A Sequel To Last Week's Story Of Severed Friendship

Children Of Israel Are Never Alone

Hey, beloved tribe.

A belated shavua tov.

I had a very interesting afternoon. It included a walk with the mother of the young woman I wrote about in last week’s column, whom I called D. If you missed that story or want to review it, you can read it here. The TL;DR version is that D. — a college student — broke off a longtime friendship with a Jewish classmate I called K. for not joining the campus demonstrations against Israel.

I had written to D’s mom and proposed this meeting last week, and I was very grateful and happy she agreed to it, but I wouldn’t say I was precisely looking forward to it. My private goal for this meeting was to have D’s mother understand that her daughter was doing something anti-Semitic and I did not expect this undertaking to be fun.

Nevertheless, it went better than I expected. I summoned all my restraint and diplomacy while imparting the set of truths I’d come to share. I told her honestly that I harbor no judgment or anger toward D, and that I know she’s a lovely person. And I also said I believed she was being manipulated in a very regrettable way that I hoped we could address together.

Here are a few excerpts from our conversation, reconstructed to the best of my memory:

D’s mom: “One thing I think made D. feel defensive and misunderstood is that K. told her she was being anti-Semitic. She couldn’t understand why K. would say that.”

Me: “Oh. Well, I understand exactly why K would say that.”

There was an uncomfortable beat before D’s mom said: “Okay, then can you help me understand why anti-Zionism is being interpreted as anti-Semitism?”

Me: “Absolutely, that’s a fantastic question and I’m so glad you asked. First of all, K and the other Israeli girl that D and her roommates excommunicated from their home and their lives have not been politically vocal on campus at all. They’re just Jewish. And they’re being told by people with no understanding of a conflict that if they don’t come out publicly against their own side and march alongside people screaming “Globalize the Intifada,” then they’re being dropped as friends.

Have you ever heard of such purity tests being imposed on other kids who have ethnic ties to another nation? Are Chinese American kids expected to rail against China, where a million Uyghurs are being held in concentration camps? Are Russian American kids held to account for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? Are Syrian Americans asked to answer for the brutality of Bashar al-Assad?

Furthermore, have you ever heard anyone imply those countries should not be allowed to retain their statehood? Do you hear about college kids seeking to “dismantle” China or Russia or Syria? During or after the Holocaust, did anyone talk about dismantling Germany? More than 75 years after Israel attained statehood, why do you think people are still debating whether the Jewish nation has any right to even exist?”

D’s mom readily conceded that she had never heard of any of those things happening to anyone besides Jews or any nation other than Israel.

Then I asked whether it was important to D and her friends to support indigenous rights. Of course the answer was yes. I then asked what that meant to them. What were they actually doing to support indigenous rights? Were they doing anything at all besides making solemn land acknowledgments at the beginning of their events or public remarks? Had any one of them, to her knowledge, given a single dollar of their own money to Native American causes? Were any of them seriously grappling with the ways each one of them had benefitted and continued to benefit from their own occupation of stolen land?

Since the answer was no, then I asked why any one of them would feel morally superior to an Israeli peer when it came to “colonization” — a label which, by the way, does not apply to Israel anyway, since Jews are indigenous to the land and it was the Arabs who colonized it for centuries.

I also pointed out that white progressives are usually lightning-quick to accept that they are very often guilty of latent racist bias when this is called out by, say, a Black or Native American classmate. In my experience, they readily apologize, thank their peer of color for bringing their unconscious racist assumptions or conclusions to light, and resolve to educate themselves and do better in the future.

Why then should it be so hard to accept that those same progressives are equally guilty of latent anti-Semitic bias? Why don’t they listen when Jews call it out? Why don’t they resolve to educate themselves and do better when it’s Jews instead of any other minority? I told D’s mom I felt that this, too, was anti-Semitism.

To her infinite credit, she listened without much resistance. The only moment where she balked was toward the end when she suddenly stopped in her tracks and said, “Wait a minute, you’re not denying the indefensible conduct of the Israeli military in this war, are you?”

I said, “I have no idea what you mean by that. Can you say more?”

She said: “I shouldn’t have said that. I don’t know why I said it.”

Me: “I mean, to be clear, I wouldn’t deny that war crimes are almost certainly taking place. War is hell on earth, it’s awful, it’s heart-mangling, it’s tragic. Israel is a country of human beings and some of them are surely terrible people. And I would bet that most every country commits war crimes. Including us. I mean, remember Abu Ghraib? But in the face of circumstances explicitly designed to maximize civilian deaths, Israel has managed to maintain the lowest civilian-to-combatant ratio in human history. Were you aware of that?”

Her: “No, I wasn’t. Not at all. Is that really true?”

Me: “It’s true and it’s well documented and I can send you more information about that if you’d like.”

The upshot is that we now have a plan for D and K to meet for a conversation next month which I will attempt to mediate as my gentlest, most toned-down, low-key and non-threatening self.

Of course, there are no guarantees of salvaging their friendship or inspiring D to broaden her understanding of this conflict, but I’m going to show up and bring my best moves.

Fam, I will likely be back with you in a week, after the Thanksgiving holiday. We are hosting for dinner on Thursday and then again the following evening, when we’re gathering a group of local Jewish teens in our home for Shabbat, to strategize about our own campus activism. Plus my kids are out of school, and it’s my daughter’s last year in our house, so I want to make the most of our time together.

I hope all of you have a wonderful Thanksgiving if you celebrate, and a great week, Shabbat and weekend.

Much love to every one of you.

Am Yisrael Chai.