tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/jews-18606/articlesJews – The Conversation2024-03-15T12:11:11Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2248352024-03-15T12:11:11Z2024-03-15T12:11:11ZWhat is the ‘great replacement theory’? A scholar of race relations explains<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581774/original/file-20240313-22-a4q7ya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=107%2C16%2C5406%2C3653&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Members of a white supremacist group demonstrate near the National Archives in Washington on Jan. 21, 2022.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/PatriotFront/3caaaf6fe498443da3305b2b4ffc7b94/photo?Query=2024%20white%20nationalists&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=748&digitizationType=Digitized&currentItemNo=NaN&vs=true&vs=true">AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://www.immigrationresearch.org/system/files/The%20%E2%80%98Great%20Replacement%E2%80%99%20Theory%2C%20Explained.pdf">“great replacement theory</a>,” whose origins date back to the late 19th century, argues that Jews and some Western elites are conspiring to replace white Americans and Europeans with people of non-European descent, particularly Asians and Africans.</p>
<p>The conspiracy evolved from a series of false ideas that, over time, stoked the fears of white people: In 1892, British-Australian author and politician Charles Pearson <a href="https://archive.org/details/nationallifeandc015071mbp">warned that white people</a> would “wake to find ourselves elbowed and hustled, and perhaps even thrust aside by people whom we looked down.” The massive influx of immigrants into Europe at the time fostered some of these fears and resulted in “white extinction anxiety.” In the U.S., it resulted in policies <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1921-1936/immigration-act">targeting immigration</a> in the late 19th and early 20th century. </p>
<p>In France, journalist Édouard Drumont, leader of an antisemitic movement, wrote articles in the late 19th century imagining how <a href="https://www.marxists.org/history/france/dreyfus-affair/drumont.htm">Jews would destroy French culture</a>. In 1909, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, an Italian poet and supporter of Benito Mussolini, argued that war and fascism <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/renaud-camus-great-replacement-brenton-tarrant/">were the only cure for the world</a>. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/08/12/these-are-the-three-reasons-that-fascism-spread-in-1930s-america-and-might-spread-again-today/">Fascism</a>, then and now, worked to ensure white dominance. </p>
<p>This was followed by the <a href="https://www.nature.com/scitable/forums/genetics-generation/america-s-hidden-history-the-eugenics-movement-123919444/">eugenics movement</a>, an erroneous and racist theory that supported forced sterilization of Black people, the mentally ill and other marginalized groups, who were all deemed “unfit.” </p>
<p>The 1978 book entitled “<a href="https://archive.org/details/the-turner-diaries-andrew-mac-donald-william-pierce">The Turner Diaries</a>,” a fictional futuristic account of the overthrow of the United States government, further contributed to white nationalist ideas. </p>
<p>Collectively, these gave rise to a global movement that attracted a wide range of <a href="https://archive.org/details/passingofgreatra00granuoft">white supremacist, xenophobic and anti-immigration conspiracy theories</a>. These theories were formally codified <a href="https://archive.org/details/le-grand-remplacement-renaud-camus">in the work of Frenchman Renaud Camus</a>, first in his 2010 book “L'Abécédaire de l'in-nocence” and elaborated in his 2011 book “<a href="https://archive.org/details/le-grand-remplacement-renaud-camus">Le Grand Remplacement</a>.” </p>
<p>Camus argued that ethnic French and white Europeans were being replaced physically, culturally and politically by nonwhite people. He believed that liberal immigration policies and the dramatic decline in white birth rates were threatening European civilization and traditions. </p>
<h2>Why this conspiracy theory matters</h2>
<p>These false ideas promulgated the spread of white supremacy, which has <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2022/05/17/racist-great-replacement-conspiracy-theory-explained?">contributed to terrorist attacks</a>, state violence and propaganda campaigns in the U.S and parts of Europe. </p>
<p>On Aug. 11, 2017, during a “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/11/us/white-nationalists-rally-charlottesville-virginia.html">white nationalists chanted</a> “You will not replace us” and “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/16/charlottesville-neo-nazis-vice-news-hbo">Jews will not replace us</a>.” In spring 2019, Belgian politician Dries Van Langenhove repeatedly posted on social media, “<a href="https://time.com/5627494/we-analyzed-how-the-great-replacement-and-far-right-ideas-spread-online-the-trends-reveal-deep-concerns/">We are being replaced</a>.”</p>
<p>In recent years, <a href="https://www.psychiatry.org/psychiatrists/diversity/education/stress-and-trauma/undocumented-immigrants">nonwhite immigrants</a> have been the target of xenophobia. Migrants, especially from Mexico, are accused of <a href="https://immigrantjustice.org/research-items/report-legacy-injustice-us-criminalization-migration">bringing criminal activities</a> to American cities. Immigrants have also been falsely accused of <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/08/18/1118271910/many-americans-falsely-think-migrants-are-bringing-most-of-the-fentanyl-entering">smuggling fentanyl</a> into the U.S. The reality is that immigrants commit <a href="https://www.npr.org/2024/03/08/1237103158/immigrants-are-less-likely-to-commit-crimes-than-us-born-americans-studies-find">far fewer crimes than those born in the U.S</a>. </p>
<h2>Impact of the theory and spread of hate</h2>
<p>In less than two decades, the theory has become a major idea, with as many <a href="https://www.rmx.news/france/france-poll-reveals-vast-majority-worried-about-great-replacement/">as 60% of the French population</a> believing some aspects of it. According to that survey, they are worried or at least concerned that they might be replaced. In the U.K. <a href="https://www.umass.edu/news/article/new-national-umass-amherst-poll-issues-finds-one-third-americans-believe-great">and the U.S.</a>, close to <a href="https://unherd.com/newsroom/one-in-three-brits-believe-in-great-replacement-theory/">one-third of those polled</a> believe that white people are systematically being replaced by nonwhite immigrants. Some in the U.S. fear that America might lose its culture and identity as a result. </p>
<p>Being aware of conspiracy theories and standing up to hatred, I argue, can help societies deal with the continuing fallout of extreme xenophobia, racist rants, the rise of white supremacy and the victimization of innocent people.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224835/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rodney Coates does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>False ideas about the extinction of the white race, spread around the late 19th and early 20th centuries, gave rise to xenophobic and anti-immigration conspiracy theories.Rodney Coates, Professor of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, Miami UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2209952024-01-29T13:34:35Z2024-01-29T13:34:35ZWhen is criticism of Israel antisemitic? A scholar of modern Jewish history explains<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571686/original/file-20240126-15-ohdmpw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=110%2C12%2C2573%2C1797&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Antisemitic incidents have spiked in recent months.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/BelgiumIsraelPalestiniansProtest/f1dde9aed49c452ebb9ecea51d4a80a8/photo?Query=protests%20against%20anti%20semitism%202023&amp;mediaType=photo&amp;sortBy=&amp;dateRange=Anytime&amp;totalCount=237&amp;digitizationType=Digitized&amp;currentItemNo=45&amp;vs=true&amp;vs=true">AP Photo/Nicolas Landemard</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>There has been a <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/antisemitism-rise-us-amid-ongoing-israel-hamas-war/story?id=104485604">sharp increase in antisemitism around the world</a> since the <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/timeline-surprise-rocket-attack-hamas-israel/story?id=103816006">Oct. 7, 2023, massacre by Hamas</a> and Israel’s subsequent military attacks in the Gaza Strip.</p>
<p>The apparent connection of this spike to many countries’ condemnation of Israel’s response has brought renewed focus on the relationship between antisemitism and anti-Zionism. When does criticism of Israel “cross the line” to antisemitism, and when is it a legitimate political expression? </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://charleston.edu/jewish/index.php">scholar of modern Jewish history</a>, antisemitism and Zionism, I suggest that the key to understanding that relationship begins with understanding antisemitism itself. </p>
<h2>History of antisemitism</h2>
<p>Anti-Jewish animosity is certainly not new — it dates to antiquity. The early Christian church attacked Jews for rejecting Christ and blamed them collectively for crucifying him. </p>
<p>The Gospel of John in the New Testament <a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/r/rsv/rsv-idx?type=citation&book=John&chapno=8&startverse=44&endverse=#:%7E:text=%5B44%5D%20You%20are%20of%20your,and%20the%20father%20of%20lies">was particularly vitriolic</a>, accusing Jews of being Satan’s children. The fourth century church father John Chrysostom <a href="https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/chrysostom_adversus_judaeos_01_homily1.htm">called them demons intent on sacrificing the souls of men</a>. </p>
<p>Medieval Christians added other myths, such as the <a href="https://yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Blood_Libels_and_Host_Desecration_Accusations">infamous blood libel</a> – the lie that Jews ritually murdered Christian children for their blood. Other myths accused them of poisoning wells, of desecrating the consecrated host of the Eucharist to reenact the murder of Christ; some even claimed that they had <a href="https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1876-0510-518">inhuman biology such as horns or that they suckled</a> at the teats of pigs. </p>
<p>Such lies led to violent persecution of Jews over many centuries. </p>
<h2>Modern antisemitism</h2>
<p>In the 19th century, these myths were supplanted by the <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/antisemitism-in-history-racial-antisemitism-18751945">additional element of race</a> — the claim that Jewishness was immutable and could not be changed via conversion. Though this idea first appeared in 15th-century Spain, it was deeply connected to the rise of modern nationalism.</p>
<p>Nineteenth century ethno-nationalists rejected the idea of a political nation united in a social contract with each other. They began imagining the nation as a biological community <a href="https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780199874002/obo-9780199874002-0232.xml">linked by common descent</a> in which Jews might be tolerated but could never truly belong. </p>
<p>Finally, in 1879, the German journalist Wilhelm Marr <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/wilhelm-marr-9780195040050?cc=us&lang=en&">coined the term “antisemitism</a>” to reflect that his anti-Jewish ideology was based on race, not religion. He chose the term because he imagined the Jews as a foreign, “semitic” race, referring to the language group that includes Hebrew. The term has since persisted to mean specifically anti-Jewish hostility or prejudice.</p>
<h2>The myth of a Jewish conspiracy</h2>
<p>Modern antisemitism built on those premodern foundations, which never completely disappeared, but was fundamentally different. It emerged as part of the new politics of the democratic modern era. </p>
<p>Antisemitism became the core platform of <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674771666">new political parties</a>, which used it to unite otherwise opposing groups such as shopkeepers and farmers, anxious about the modernizing world. In other words, it was not merely prejudice – it was a <a href="https://academic.oup.com/leobaeck/article-abstract/23/1/25/944572?redirectedFrom=fulltext">worldview</a> that explained the entire world to its believers by blaming all of its faults on this scapegoat. </p>
<p>Unlike anti-Jewish hatred in this past, this was less about religion, that Jews rejected Christ, and more about political and social issues. Antisemites believed the <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9780230349216_5">conspiracy theory</a> that Jews all over the world controlled the levers of government, media and banking, and that defeating them would solve society’s problems. </p>
<p>Thus, one of the most important features of modern antisemitic mythology was the belief that Jews constituted a single, malevolent group, with one mind, organized for the purpose of conquering and destroying the world. </p>
<h2>Negative traits attributed to Jews</h2>
<p>Antisemitic books and cartoons often used <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/photo/anti-jewish-propaganda">claws or tentacles</a> to symbolize the “<a href="https://perspectives.ushmm.org/item/the-international-jew-the-worlds-foremost-problem">international Jew</a>,” a shadowy figure they blamed for leading a global conspiracy, strangling and destroying society. Others depicted him as a puppet master running the world.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1710320257343119513"}"></div></p>
<p>In the late 19th century, Edmond Rothschild, head of the most famous Jewish banking family, was villainized as the <a href="https://www.theholocaustexplained.org/anti-semitism/modern-anti-semitism/">symbol of international Jewish wealth</a> and nefarious power. </p>
<p>Today, it is typically the billionaire liberal philanthropist George Soros who is <a href="https://www.ajc.org/translatehate/puppet-master">often portrayed in similar ways</a>. Caricatures of Soros portray him as a puppet master <a href="https://forward.com/fast-forward/554021/donald-trump-george-soros-antisemitic-imagery-puppet-master/">secretly controlling all levers of government</a>, media, <a href="https://twitter.com/kohenari/status/1280132289004011520/photo/1">the economy</a> and even foreign migration. </p>
<p>This myth that Jews constitute an international creature plotting to harm the nation has inspired massacres of Jews since the 19th century, <a href="https://yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Pogroms">beginning with the Russian pogroms of 1881</a> and leading up to the Holocaust. </p>
<p>More recently, in 2018, Robert Bowers murdered 11 Jews at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh because he was convinced that Jews, collectively under the guidance of Soros, were <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/a-conspiracy-theory-about-george-soros-and-a-migrant-caravan-inspired-horror/2018/10/28/52df587e-dae6-11e8-b732-3c72cbf131f2_story.html">working to destroy America</a> by facilitating the <a href="https://www.adl.org/resources/backgrounder/great-replacement-explainer?gad_source=1&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIhJWQjKSAhAMVqVdHAR32MQLOEAAYAiAAEgK0Z_D_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds">mass migration of nonwhite people</a> into the country. </p>
<p>Modern antisemites ascribe many immutable negative traits to Jews, but two are particularly widespread. First, Jews are said to be ruthless misers who <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/20/arts/design/jews-money-myth-antisemitism-exhibition-london.html">care more about their ill-gotten wealth</a> than the interests of their countries. Second, Jews’ loyalty to their countries is considered suspect because they are said to constitute a foreign element. </p>
<p>Since Israel’s establishment in 1948, this hatred has focused on the accusation that Jews’ primary loyalty is to Israel, not the countries they live in.</p>
<h2>Antisemitism and anti-Zionism</h2>
<p>In recent years, the relationship between antisemitism and anti-Zionism has taken on renewed importance. <a href="https://lsa.umich.edu/content/dam/cmenas-assets/cmenas-documents/unit-of-israel-palestine/Section1_Zionism.pdf">Zionism</a> has many factions but roughly refers to the modern political movement that argues Jews constitute a nation and have a right to self-determination in that land.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/2023-05-02/ty-article/.premium/adl-chief-focuses-major-speech-on-anti-zionism-and-threats-to-orthodox-education/00000187-dd19-dea8-af97-dfb91cb20000">Some activists claim</a> that anti-Zionism – ideological opposition to Zionism – is inherently antisemitic because they equate it with denying Jews the right to self-determination and therefore equality.</p>
<p>Others feel that <a href="https://omny.fm/shows/knxam-on-demand/anti-semitism-and-anti-zionism-are-they-always-the?t=0s">there needs to be a clearer separation</a> between the two, that not all criticism of Israel is anti-Zionist, and not all anti-Zionism is antisemitic. </p>
<p>Zionism in practice has meant the achievement of a flourishing safe haven for Jews, but also led to dislocation or inequality for millions of Palestinians, including refugees, West Bank Palestinians who still live under military rule, and even Palestinian citizens of Israel who face legal and social discrimination. Anti-Zionism opposes this, and <a href="https://omny.fm/shows/knxam-on-demand/anti-semitism-and-anti-zionism-are-they-always-the?t=0s">critics argue</a> that it should not be labeled antisemitic unless it taps into those antisemitic myths or otherwise calls for violence or inequality for Jews.</p>
<p>This debate is clearly evident in the competing definitions of antisemitism that have recently emerged. Three have gained particular prominence. The first was the so-called “<a href="https://holocaustremembrance.com/resources/working-definition-antisemitism">working definition</a>” of the International Holocaust Remembrance Association, or the IHRA, published in 2016. </p>
<p>In response, an academic task force <a href="https://israelandantisemitism.com/the-nexus-document/">published the Nexus definition</a> in 2021, followed by the <a href="https://jerusalemdeclaration.org/">Jerusalem Declaration</a> that same year, the latter signed by hundreds of international scholars of antisemitism. </p>
<p>Remarkably, all three definitions tend to agree on the nature of antisemitism in most areas except the relationship of anti-Israel rhetoric to antisemitism. The IHRA’s definition, which is by design <a href="https://kennethsstern.com/the-conflict-over-the-conflict/">vague and open to interpretation</a>, allows for a wider swath of anti-Israel activism to be labeled antisemitic than the others. </p>
<p>The Jerusalem Declaration, in contrast, understands rhetoric to have “crossed the line” only when it engages in antisemitic mythology, blames diaspora Jews for the actions of the Israeli state, or calls for the oppression of Jews in Israel. Thus, for example, IHRA defenders use that definition to label a <a href="https://www.adl.org/resources/media-watch/dissolve-jewish-state-peter-beinart-wrong">call for binational democracy</a> – meaning citizenship for West Bank Palestinians – to be antisemitic. Likewise, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/10/27/antisemitism-left-rising/">they label boycotts</a> even of West Bank settlements that most of the world calls illegal to be antisemitic. The Jerusalem Declaration would not do so. </p>
<p>In other words, the key to identifying whether anti-Israel discourse has masked antisemitism is to see evidence of the antisemitic mythology. For example, if Israel is described as part of an international conspiracy or if it holds the key to solving global problems, all three definitions agree this is antisemitic. </p>
<p>Equally, if Jews or Jewish institutions are held responsible for Israeli actions or are expected to take a stand one way or another regarding them, again all three definitions agree this “crosses the line” because it is based on the myth of a global Jewish conspiracy. </p>
<p>Critically, for many Jews in the diaspora, Zionism is not primarily a political argument about the state of Israel. For many Jews, it <a href="https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/zionism/9780813576091/">constitutes a generic sense of Jewish identity and pride</a>, even a religious identity. In contrast, many protests against Israel and Zionism are focused not on ideology but on the actual state and its real or alleged actions. </p>
<p>This disconnect can lead to confusion if protests conflate Jews with Israel just because they are Zionist, which is antisemitic. On the other hand, Jews sometimes take protests against Israel in defense of Palestinian rights to be attacks on their Zionist identity and thus antisemitic, when they are not. There are certainly <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/2/from-the-river-to-the-sea-what-does-the-palestinian-slogan-really-mean">gray areas</a>, but in general calls for Palestinian equality, I believe, are legitimate even when they upset Zionist identities. </p>
<p>In my view, antisemitism must be identified and fought, but so too must efforts to squash legitimate protest of Israel by conflating it with antisemitism. By understanding the mythology underlying antisemitism, hopefully both can be accomplished.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220995/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joshua Shanes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In recent years, the relationship between antisemitism and anti-Zionism has taken on renewed importance and competing definitions of antisemitism have emerged. What is antisemitism?Joshua Shanes, Professor of Jewish Studies, College of CharlestonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2169772024-01-03T13:43:29Z2024-01-03T13:43:29ZThe Lotus Sutra − an ancient Buddhist scripture from the 3rd century − continues to have relevance today<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566359/original/file-20231218-23-ldln3o.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C0%2C1189%2C601&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Lotus Sutra scroll praising the manifold mercies of the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/44849">Universal Gateway chapter of the Lotus Sutra/Calligrapher: Sugawara Mitsushige/The Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>State legislatures across the United States have introduced <a href="https://www.equalityfederation.org/tracker/cumulative-anti-transgender">over 400 bills to limit transgender Americans’ rights</a>. Many of these bills’ sponsors, such as the Christian nonprofit Alliance Defending Freedom, cite Christian values as well as the values of the other <a href="https://brill.com/view/journals/rag/11/1/article-p67_5.xml">Abrahamic faiths</a> – Judaism and Islam – to justify their anti-trans positions. </p>
<p>The Alliance Defending Freedom claims that Christians, Jews and Muslims view gender as binary and defined only by biology, though these religions’ <a href="https://therevealer.org/beloved-transgender-children-and-holy-resistance/">diverse followers</a> actually hold a <a href="https://theconversation.com/muslims-protesting-against-lgbtq-pride-are-ignoring-islams-tradition-of-inclusion-209949">range of views</a> on <a href="https://therevealer.org/turning-to-the-talmud-to-find-gender-diversity-that-speaks-to-today/">LGBTQ+ issues</a>. Historically, these religions were often more accepting of varied gender identities before <a href="https://publicseminar.org/2018/07/gender-as-colonial-object/">colonialism imposed binary gender</a> as a universal concept. </p>
<p>Religious <a href="https://www.ihs.gov/lgbt/health/twospirit/">values from multiple</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/for-indonesias-transgender-community-faith-can-be-a-source-of-discrimination-but-also-tolerance-and-solace-193063">traditions</a> have supported <a href="https://therevealer.org/many-paths-to-freedom-transgender-buddhism-in-the-united-states/">transgender identity</a>. <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/buddhist-masculinities/9780231210478">As a scholar of Buddhism and gender</a>, I know that several Buddhist texts treat gender as fluid. One such text is the Lotus Sutra, one of the most popular Buddhist scriptures in East Asia. Its core message is that everyone, no matter their gender or status, has the potential to become a Buddha. </p>
<p>The Lotus Sutra conveys its <a href="https://tricycle.org/magazine/greater-awakening/">message of universal Buddhahood</a> in several stories that depict transformations between male and female bodies. For example, a dragon girl instantly transforms into the masculine body of a Buddha, proving that female bodies are not barriers to awakening.</p>
<p>Elsewhere, the Lotus Sutra describes how the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.013.167">bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara</a>, known as Guanyin in Mandarin and Kannon in Japanese, takes on male or female forms depending on the needs of the audience. </p>
<h2>The dragon girl’s gender transformation</h2>
<p>To understand the story of the dragon girl, it is important to understand how Buddhas’ bodies were defined as masculine in early Buddhism. Most people are familiar with the historical figure Siddhartha Gautama as “the Buddha,” but Buddhists believe that <a href="https://tricycle.org/beginners/buddhism/why-do-buddhists-talk-about-many-buddhas/">several “Buddhas,”</a> or enlightened teachers, have been born throughout history. All of these Buddhas are said to possess 32 marks that distinguished their bodies from regular bodies. </p>
<p>One of these marks was a sheathed penis, which meant that Buddha bodies were male by definition. In addition, Buddhist texts identified five roles, including Buddha, that were off-limits to women. </p>
<p>In the <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-lotus-sutra/9780231081610">Lotus Sutra</a>, the Buddha’s disciple, Shariputra, refers to these limitations when he rejects the idea that the dragon girl could quickly attain Buddhahood: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“You suppose that in this short time you have been able to attain the unsurpassed way. But this is difficult to believe. Why? Because the female body is soiled and defiled, not a vessel for the Law. How could you attain the unsurpassed bodhi? … Moreover, a woman is subject to the five obstacles. First, she cannot become a Brahma heavenly king. Second, she cannot become the king Shakra. Third, she cannot become a Mara demon king. Fourth, she cannot become a wheel-turning sage king. Fifth, she cannot become a Buddha. How then could your female body attain Buddhahood so quickly?”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>However, the dragon girl proves Shariputra wrong by instantly attaining Buddhahood, transforming her young, female, nonhuman body into the male body of a Buddha. Women in premodern East Asia <a href="https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/rec3.12270">found inspiration</a> in the dragon girl’s story because it showed that their own female bodies were not barriers to enlightenment. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A scroll with golden etching on a black background depicting a scene from the life of the Buddha." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557848/original/file-20231106-21-qgdfq9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557848/original/file-20231106-21-qgdfq9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=655&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557848/original/file-20231106-21-qgdfq9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=655&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557848/original/file-20231106-21-qgdfq9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=655&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557848/original/file-20231106-21-qgdfq9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557848/original/file-20231106-21-qgdfq9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557848/original/file-20231106-21-qgdfq9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This scroll from the ‘Devadatta’ chapter of the Lotus Sutra depicts the 8-year-old daughter of the Dragon King emerging from her palace beneath the sea to offer a precious, radiant jewel to the Buddha on Eagle Peak.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/44851">The Metropolitan Museum of Art</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The bodhisattva’s gender fluidity</h2>
<p>Another inspiration from the Lotus Sutra can be found in the Chapter of Universal Salvation, which focuses on the <a href="https://south.npm.gov.tw/english/ExhibitionsDetailE003110.aspx?Cond=c176e479-7c87-462c-9b58-9b3900ca851e&appname=Exhibition3112EN">bodhisattva of compassion, Avalokiteshvara</a>. A bodhisattva is an advanced spiritual being who postpones enlightenment to help people in the world. </p>
<p>According to this chapter, Avalokiteshvara will adopt any form to save people. Avalokiteshvara can become a monk, nun, layman, laywoman, rich man, rich man’s wife, young boy, young girl, human or nonhuman, depending on the audience’s needs. </p>
<p>In China, this passage provided scriptural support for Avalokiteshvara’s perceived <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/kuan-yin/9780231120296">transformation from a male to female figure</a>. Indian Buddhist texts described Avalokiteshvara as male, but in China people came to see Avalokiteshvara as female. </p>
<p>Though scholars have not found one single explanation for this transformation, the Lotus Sutra passage offers justification for Avalokiteshvara’s gender fluidity. Images of Avalokiteshvara from China, Japan and Korea can depict the bodhisattva as masculine, feminine or androgynous.</p>
<h2>The Lotus Sutra and transgender inspiration</h2>
<p>Due to the Lotus Sutra, Avalokiteshvara has become an inspiration and icon for transgender, gender-fluid and nonbinary people in and beyond East Asia. At Japan’s <a href="https://matcha-jp.com/en/9828">Shozenji Temple</a>, head nun Soshuku Shibatani, who underwent gender reassignment surgery, has said, “The Kannon Bodhisattva has no gender identity,” using Avalokiteshvara’s Japanese name. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://blog.stheadline.com/article/detail/1116787/%E9%9D%9E%E7%94%B7%E9%9D%9E%E5%A5%B3">blog post</a> from Taiwan quotes from the Lotus Sutra in describing Avalokiteshvara as a nonbinary figure who transcends any single gender identity. </p>
<p>However, Avalokiteshvara’s role as a transgender icon is not universally accepted. Another <a href="https://n.yam.com/Article/20130509462739">Taiwanese blogger</a> reported that a friend of theirs argued with their description of the bodhisattva as transgender. In April 2022, an Avalokiteshvara statue in The Burrell Collection in Glasgow, Scotland, labeled as a transgender icon, <a href="https://www.museumsassociation.org/museums-journal/news/2022/04/glasgow-life-defends-trans-label-in-burrell-collection-after-politicisation-row/">resulted in protests</a>. The anti-trans group For Women Scotland argued that the label unnecessarily politicized the statue. </p>
<p>Despite these objections, more and more people have found inspiration in Avalokiteshvara as a transgender, nonbinary or gender-fluid figure. Just as the Lotus Sutra’s story of the dragon girl inspired Buddhist women in premodern East Asia, Avalokiteshvara’s gender fluidity offers inspiration to people today. </p>
<p><em><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/authwall?trk=bf&trkInfo=AQHFNdxAPOLqfAAAAYyDQhP4XlW43CSxFWDpq9-1rWWyWub3I-5Wq7BJL_wg5vkC0-EEWdyTHjmNbcHqNfYuNJ4krmD_PiPpjOatEpoVecRRhBp70u5VgTWb2HOF7POqNQMpnmg=&original_referer=&sessionRedirect=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.linkedin.com%2Fin%2Fmarissa-posani-8473432a6%2F">MJ Posani</a>, an undergraduate student at the University of Tennessee, contributed to the research for this article.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216977/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Megan Bryson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>For many Buddhists today, both in East Asia and across the world, the Lotus Sutra offers religious support for various gender identities.Megan Bryson, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, University of TennesseeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2180092023-12-07T18:29:49Z2023-12-07T18:29:49ZHolocaust comparisons are overused – but in the case of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel they may reflect more than just the emotional response of a traumatized people<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562232/original/file-20231128-17-5wy2xb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=9%2C9%2C3285%2C2183&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">On Oct. 12, a sign in Tel Aviv says in Hebrew, 'No more words,' near candles lit both in memory of those killed in the Hamas massacres and for the hostages taken to the Gaza Strip. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/sign-saying-in-hebrew-no-more-words-near-candles-that-were-news-photo/1720743293?adppopup=true">Amir Levy/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many observers have referred to the massacre of Israelis by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, as the deadliest attack against the Jewish people in a single day “since the Holocaust.” </p>
<p>As scholars who have spent <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C22&q=AJ+Patt&btnG=">decades studying the history</a> of <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=3-F0XCoAAAAJ&hl=en">Israel’s relationship with the Holocaust</a>, we have argued that the Holocaust should remain unique and not be compared with other atrocities. We have written against <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/06/19/holocaust-education-museum-greene/">simplistic Holocaust analogies</a>, like comparing mask and vaccine mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic to the Nazi persecution of the Jews, or the practice of labeling political opponents “Nazis.” Both seem to trivialize the memory of what is known as the Shoah, the Hebrew word for “catastrophe.”</p>
<p>But the <a href="https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R47754">Oct. 7 massacres perpetrated by Hamas</a> changed our thinking.</p>
<h2>Israeli identity and the Holocaust</h2>
<p>Over the past 75 years, the collective memory of the Shoah has assumed a central place in Israeli national identity. The memory of the Holocaust has increasingly become the prism through which Israelis understand both their past and their present relationships with the Arab and Muslim world. </p>
<p>Israelis saw the Holocaust’s threat of annihilation echoed in many situations. In 1967, there was the waiting period before the Six-Day War, when the Egyptian leader <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/the-1967-six-day-war-and-its-difficult-legacy/a-39117590">Gamal Abdel Nasser threatened to “wipe Israel off the map</a>.” It was there in the trauma of the Yom Kippur War in 1973 and the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Yom-Kippur-War">unexpected, simultaneous attacks by Egypt and Syria</a>. When <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/israeli-raid-against-iraqi-reactor-40-years-later-new-insights-archives">Israel destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981</a>, Prime Minister Menachem Begin justified it with the explanation that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1981/06/10/world/prime-minister-begin-defends-raid-iraqi-nuclear-reactor-pledges-thwart-new.html">“there won’t be another Holocaust in history</a>.” </p>
<p>This association has only strengthened in the past 40 years with the <a href="https://www.bakerinstitute.org/events/2323/">1982 Lebanon war</a>, <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/11/20/18080066/israel-palestine-intifadas-first-second">two Palestinian uprisings, known as intifadas</a>, and with the present <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/smoldering-iran-nuclear-crisis-risks-catching-fire-2023-05-05/">threat posed by a nuclear Iran</a>. </p>
<p>All these events evoke the memory of the Holocaust and are understood within the collective memory of threats of annihilation. This phenomenon represents, for many Israelis, an inability to separate their current situation from the vulnerability of the diaspora Jewish past. And this conflation of past and present continues to play a central role in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1386/iscc.7.2.123_1">Israeli politics, foreign policy and public discourse</a>. </p>
<p>The frequent comparisons between the Oct. 7 massacres and the Shoah are more, we believe, than just the default associations of a people submerged in <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-generation-of-postmemory/9780231156523">Holocaust postmemory</a>, which refers to inherited and imagined memories of subsequent generations who did not personally experience the trauma. In seeking to describe the depths of evil they witnessed on Oct. 7, Israelis were making more than just an emotional connection between the Holocaust and the Oct. 7 massacres.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562231/original/file-20231128-15-x8x3xx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man outside holding a placard that says that 7th October was the day that the most Jews have been killed since The Holocaust." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562231/original/file-20231128-15-x8x3xx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562231/original/file-20231128-15-x8x3xx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562231/original/file-20231128-15-x8x3xx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562231/original/file-20231128-15-x8x3xx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562231/original/file-20231128-15-x8x3xx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562231/original/file-20231128-15-x8x3xx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562231/original/file-20231128-15-x8x3xx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A protester holds a placard during a demonstration on Oct. 9 in London, outside of the prime minister’s residence.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/protester-holds-a-placard-which-states-that-7th-october-was-news-photo/1715821218?adppopup=true">Photo by Vuk Valcic/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To help explain the logic of that connection, specific and reasonable comparisons can be made to better understand Hamas’ traumatic and devastating massacre of Israelis. Below are a few of the many parallels:</p>
<h2>1. Ideology and identification</h2>
<p>Just as the Nazis aimed to annihilate the Jews, Hamas and affiliated terrorist organizations share the same objective: the destruction of Jews. <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp">The 1988 Hamas charter</a> refers to “Jews” and not “Israelis” when calling for the destruction of these people.</p>
<p>While the <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/hamas-2017-document-full">2017 Hamas covenant</a> states that Hamas does not seek war with the Jews, but instead “<a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/doctrine-hamas">wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine</a>,” the slaughter of Jews – many of whom were peace activists – in October has proven otherwise. </p>
<p>The national struggle of Hamas is predicated upon the conquest of land and elimination of the Jews. Hamas officials have subsequently promised to <a href="https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/article-771199">repeat Oct. 7 again and again</a> until Israel is annihilated.</p>
<h2>2. Indoctrination</h2>
<p>While the racial antisemitism of the Nazi regime differs from the antisemitism employed in the fundamentalist Islamic version of Hamas, <a href="https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/history/articles/the-nazi-roots-of-islamist-hate?ref=quillette.com">antisemitism is a key part of the struggle for both ideologies</a>. Indoctrination from an early age aimed at the dehumanization of the Jews is a key part of both how <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/indoctrinating-youth">Nazis taught young German students during the Third Reich</a> and in how <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/04/world/middleeast/to-shape-young-palestinians-hamas-creates-its-own-textbooks.html">Hamas educates children in Gaza</a>. </p>
<h2>3. Methods of killing and survival</h2>
<p>The horrors of Oct. 7 echo the brutal tactics Nazis used during the Holocaust, including not only murder but cruel humiliation of the victims. The testimonies of Oct. 7 survivors <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-forensic-teams-describe-signs-torture-abuse-2023-10-15/">reveal the torture</a> of parents and children, sometimes in front of each other, including <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/11/17/world/israel-investigates-sexual-violence-hamas/index.html">rape and sexual violence</a>, mocking and lingering in the murder process as the terrorists <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-shows-foreign-press-raw-hamas-bodycam-videos-of-murder-torture-decapitation/">relished the atrocities</a> they committed.</p>
<p>When the <a href="https://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/warsaw_ghetto_testimonies/intro.asp">Jews in the Warsaw ghetto</a> realized that the end was near, they worked for months to prepare hiding places for themselves in their homes and created improvised bunkers, doing whatever they could to avoid capture and deportation. They did not imagine that the Nazis would come to eliminate the ghetto in a different way, entering the ghetto with flamethrowers and burning down one building after another. <a href="https://www.historytoday.com/archive/feature/warsaw-flames">Some Jews were burned alive</a>, while others fled outside and fell into the hands of the Nazis. </p>
<p>On Oct. 7, victims in the kibbutzim and communities near Gaza hid in fortified safe rooms designed to protect them from rocket attacks. Hamas terrorists went from house to house, burning one after the other so that inhabitants would be forced to flee from their protected shelters. Others were <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/corpses-and-kids-bikes-burned-homes-and-death-in-kibbutz-where-hamas-butchered-100">burned in their homes</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562244/original/file-20231128-24-g2qbya.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two hooded men burning a white and blue Israeli flag." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562244/original/file-20231128-24-g2qbya.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562244/original/file-20231128-24-g2qbya.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562244/original/file-20231128-24-g2qbya.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562244/original/file-20231128-24-g2qbya.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562244/original/file-20231128-24-g2qbya.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562244/original/file-20231128-24-g2qbya.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562244/original/file-20231128-24-g2qbya.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Two hooded demonstrators burn a flag of Israel on the bridge linking Spain and France on Nov. 11, 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/two-hooded-demonstrators-burned-a-flag-of-israel-at-the-news-photo/1779070556?adppopup=true">Javi Julio/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>4. Using Jews in the killing process</h2>
<p>On Oct. 7, Hamas terrorists took a hostage from Nahal Oz, one of the kibbutzim in the south, and <a href="https://twitter.com/AvivaKlompas/status/1714100611572973893">forced him to go from house to house to knock on doors and lure his neighbors outside</a>. Afterward, they murdered him. Holocaust scholars have described such episodes from World War II in which Jews were forced to cooperate as “choiceless choices.”</p>
<h2>5. Terminology</h2>
<p>The word Shoah is used in the Bible to describe danger from neighboring nations, signifying distress, pain, torment, calamity and a <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/holocaust-remembrance-day/2019-05-01/ty-article/.premium/shoah-how-a-biblical-term-became-the-hebrew-word-for-holocaust/0000017f-dbbf-d3ff-a7ff-fbbf41b70000">“day of destruction</a>.” While it later came to define the total Nazi extermination of Jews in the 1940s, <a href="https://stljewishlight.org/news/israel-news/the-holocaust-all-over-again-the-massacre-at-the-israeli-rave-in-survivors-words/">multiple testimonies</a> collected from survivors of the Oct. 7 massacres use the <a href="https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/middle-east/felt-like-holocaust-terrified-israelis-recount-hamas-terror-after-surprise-invasion/articleshow/104261870.cms?from=mdr">term once again today</a>, echoing the biblical definition, to signal a day of desolation, darkness, destruction and gloom.</p>
<p>The words used to describe events are often loaded with emotional associations; the power and meaning of words that attempt to convey the depths of traumatic experiences cannot be discounted.</p>
<h2>Not the same</h2>
<p>There is a difference between pointing out similarities and creating shallow comparisons. We are aware of the tendency, especially in the political sphere, to resort to simplistic, symbolic and performative comparisons to the Holocaust – such as Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/31/world/middleeast/israel-erdan-yellow-star-of-david.html#:%7E:text=Erdan%20vowed%20that%20he%20and,letters%20on%20his%20left%20breast.">donning a yellow star with the words “Never Again”</a> on Oct. 31.</p>
<p>Oct. 7 is not the same as the Holocaust. Even so, we can use the study of the Holocaust to understand the traumatic and devastating encounters between Hamas terrorists and their victims on Oct. 7.</p>
<p>It might be a trivialization of the Holocaust to simply label Hamas as the “new Nazis,” but our analysis reveals that recognizing their eliminationist antisemitism means there can be no return to the pre-Oct. 7 status quo, when <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/11/26/netanyahu-hamas-israel-gaza/">Israel’s policy was to accommodate Hamas’</a> control of the Gaza strip.</p>
<p>Despite the natural tendency to turn away from the most shocking and the most horrific manifestations of human evil, there are times when gazes must not be averted, when horror must be confronted in order to understand the motivations of the perpetrators and the responses of the victims and the survivors. </p>
<p>In this case, at what point do we ignore analogies that seem deliberate and intentional? As Holocaust scholars, we recognize why Israelis are stuck – and struck – by the traumatic nature of Oct. 7.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218009/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Holocaust is not just a memory in Israel. It’s part of how Israelis understand themselves and their country − and it’s playing a part in how the country responds to the Hamas massacres of Oct. 7.Avinoam Patt, Director, Center for Judaic Studies, University of ConnecticutLiat Steir-Livny, Associate Professor of Holocaust, Film & Cultural Studies, Sapir Academic CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2185962023-11-28T02:14:47Z2023-11-28T02:14:47ZAt a time when journalism needs to be at its strongest, an open letter on the Israel/Hamas war has left the profession diminished<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562011/original/file-20231128-19-vlf74t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=30%2C6%2C4059%2C2146&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/pov-female-war-journalist-correspondent-wearing-1982400632">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The journalists who signed an <a href="https://form.jotform.com/233177455020046">open letter</a> to Australian media organisations last week calling for ethical reporting on the war in Gaza have succeeded in intensifying the dispute over whether the coverage has been fair. At the same time, they’ve called their own impartiality into question.</p>
<p>At last count, the letter had attracted 270 signatories from journalists at a range of institutions including the ABC, Guardian Australia, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Conversation and Schwartz Media.</p>
<p>At the Herald and The Age, both owned by the Nine company, senior editorial executives, including the papers’ editors, have <a href="https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/media/sydney-morning-herald-says-journalists-who-signed-gaza-petition-now-unable-to-participate-in-any-reporting-related-to-the-war/news-story/6a5acb546faea77a7da974c6cfe29a36">banned those staff</a> who signed the letter from having any role in covering the war.</p>
<p>The ABC’s director of news, Justin Stevens, did not go that far, but <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/journalist-union-meaa-backs-scepticism-campaign-against-israel/news-story/c7932eabaa30edbf1eb5765ed4618b02">warned his staff</a> that if they signed the letter, their ability to cover the story impartially may be brought into question.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/abc-chief-is-right-impartiality-is-paramount-when-reporting-the-israel-gaza-war-218100">ABC chief is right: impartiality is paramount when reporting the Israel-Gaza war</a>
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<h2>Addressing journalist deaths</h2>
<p>The signatories to the letter, in addition to the individuals, were the journalists’ section of the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) and its house (branch) committees at the ABC and Guardian Australia. It is not clear exactly under whose auspices the letter was written, but it is clear it has the endorsement of the union. </p>
<p>The letter raises two main issues. </p>
<p>One is that the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) has killed <a href="https://cpj.org/">at least 53</a> journalists in the course of the present conflict and has a history of targeting journalists. </p>
<p>The letter provides links to reputable organisations – Reporters Without Borders, the International Federation of Journalists, the Committee to Protect Journalists – each of which provides substantial detailed evidence making a strong case against the Israeli Defence Force.</p>
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<p>The letter states: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>As reporters, editors, photographers, producers, and other workers in newsrooms around Australia, we are appalled at the slaughter of our colleagues and their families and apparent targeting of journalists by the Israeli government, which constitutes a violation of the Geneva Conventions.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That much of it can be defended as an attempt to stand up for press freedom and hold the Israeli forces to account.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/more-than-one-journalist-per-day-is-dying-in-the-israel-gaza-conflict-this-has-to-stop-217272">More than one journalist per day is dying in the Israel-Gaza conflict. This has to stop</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<h2>Clear implications of pro-Israel bias</h2>
<p>However, the letter then goes on to argue in a veiled but unmistakable way that the Australian media’s coverage of the war has been pro-Israel. </p>
<p>This is achieved by a series of what, on the surface, look like journalistic motherhood statements:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We call for […] Australian newsroom leaders to be as clear-eyed in their coverage of the atrocities committed by Israel as they are of those committed by Hamas.</p>
<p>The immense and disproportionate human suffering of the Palestinian population should not be minimised.</p>
<p>Apply as much professional scepticism when prioritising or relying on uncorroborated Israeli government and military sources to shape coverage as is applied to Hamas […] The Israeli government’s version of events should never be reported verbatim without context or fact-checking.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The clear implication is that this is not being done, and that taken together they add up to a pro-Israel bias that needs to be corrected. </p>
<p>That is a highly contestable proposition and it needs evidence, but none is provided.</p>
<p>The letter goes on to urge that “adequate coverage be given to credible allegations of war crimes, genocide, ethnic cleansing and apartheid”.</p>
<p>The position taken by the ABC on the use of these terms was <a href="https://theconversation.com/abc-chief-is-right-impartiality-is-paramount-when-reporting-the-israel-gaza-war-218100">set out</a> ten days ago by its managing director and editor-in-chief, David Anderson. He said the ABC would report other people’s use of them but would not adopt them for itself.</p>
<p>This is the conventional way for impartiality to be applied when such politically charged language is used. When they are reporting atrocities of the kind perpetrated by both sides in this war, on what authority do journalists take it upon themselves to apply these definitions?</p>
<h2>Messy fall-out amid messy messaging</h2>
<p>A further question concerning impartiality then arises: does signing this letter disqualify a journalist from being involved in covering the war? Does it justify the action taken by the Herald and The Age?</p>
<p>Those two newspapers have traditionally taken a strict line on these issues, and their decision this time is consistent with that tradition. Many years ago, a Herald reporter was taken off the reporting of state politics when he declared his membership of the Labor Party.</p>
<p>The reason given by the editorial executive who made this decision was not that his coverage had been biased but that there would be an apprehension among those who knew of his affiliation that his coverage might be biased.</p>
<p>A strict line on impartiality is fine, if it is applied impartially, but Crikey has <a href="https://www.crikey.com.au/2023/11/03/australian-journalists-politicians-trips-israel-palestine/">drawn attention</a> to an uncomfortable fact: that three of the four editorial executives at Nine who imposed the ban have participated in trips to Israel sponsored by pro-Israeli groups.</p>
<p>You might think the handling of these problems by the media industry and the journalism profession couldn’t get much messier, but it could.</p>
<p>On November 11, a group of journalists calling themselves MEAA Members for Palestine <a href="https://overland.org.au/2023/11/meaa-members-in-solidarity-with-palestine/">published a separate letter</a> in Overland magazine, and in this there was nothing veiled about the position they took.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/i-just-find-it-very-hard-to-talk-about-it-without-getting-emotional-top-journalists-reveal-their-trade-secrets-to-leigh-sales-211426">'I just find it very hard to talk about it without getting emotional': top journalists reveal their trade secrets to Leigh Sales</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>They condemned the Australian government’s support for what they called Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza, called on the government to demand that Israel withdraw its forces and stop the bombing in Gaza, and condemned “the silencing and intimidation that our members experience when expressing support for, or reporting on, Palestine”.</p>
<p>They called on the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance to support the Palestinian solidarity movement and join with trade union action across the world to “end all complicity and stop arming Israel”.</p>
<p>As a trade union, the alliance undoubtedly has the right to take sides, even in a war. But doing so is irreconcilable with the professional ethical obligations of its members to report impartially. </p>
<p>The Overland letter and the more restrained open letter to the media organisations might be two separate documents but it would be naïve in the extreme not to think that the first was parent to the second.</p>
<p>The whole episode, including the obvious hypocrisy of the Nine editorial management, has left the profession and the industry diminished at a time when Australian society needs them to be at their strongest.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218596/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Denis Muller does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Hundreds of Australian journalists signed an open letter to news organisations calling for better coverage of the war. It calls their impartiality into question.Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2168582023-11-03T12:45:03Z2023-11-03T12:45:03ZDefending space for free discussion, empathy and tolerance on campus is a challenge during Israel-Hamas war<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557322/original/file-20231102-21-j4pkfx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=29%2C0%2C3964%2C2638&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Students at UMass Amherst march across campus following a walkout and rally protesting the university's "ties with war profiteers," while also calling for "a ceasefire and end of the blockade on Gaza." </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/amherst-ma-a-student-in-a-classroom-watches-as-umass-news-photo/1745625977?adppopup=true">Jessica Rinaldi/The Boston Globe via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>College and university campuses across the U.S. have <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/10/14/1205809697/israel-gaza-college-campus-protests-statements">seen polarization and unrest</a> since the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67039975">Israel-Hamas war began</a> with the Hamas attack on Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, 2023. Students and faculty have held protests and rallies, argued on social media and signed statements, some of which have increased mistrust and turmoil on campus. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/10/21/dc-colleges-universities-israel-hamas-statements/">Some college leaders have weighed in</a> on the war, which has not necessarily calmed their campuses. At the flagship campus of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, <a href="https://www.umass.edu/jne/member/david-mednicoff">scholar David Mednicoff chairs</a> the Department of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies. He spoke with The Conversation’s senior politics and democracy editor, Naomi Schalit, about how he and his colleagues and university leadership have tried to deal – as an educational institution and a community – with a highly charged situation on campus in which there is pain, anger and anguish on both sides. Mednicoff aims to contribute to an approach he believes central for his community: respectful discussion, listening and seeking understanding, and the chance for open minds and hearts in the middle of conflict.</em> </p>
<p><strong>What has been going on at UMass Amherst during this crisis?</strong></p>
<p>Immediately after the Oct. 7 attack, many Jewish students and community members with ties to Israel felt shocked, scared, confused and worried, and sought support from the university.</p>
<p>Soon after the attack, an active UMass student chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine began demonstrations and other events. With war looming, its members were also feeling upset, scared, confused and worried – very parallel feelings. </p>
<p>Our graduate student union quickly issued <a href="https://www.geouaw.org/solidarity-statement-with-palestine/">a statement, since toned down</a>, that blamed the attacks on Israel’s past policies, and appeared not to acknowledge Israel as a nation. <a href="https://www.nepm.org/regional-news/2023-10-13/disagreement-over-israel-hamas-war-stirred-at-umass-amherst">That statement upset</a> many Israeli and other members of the campus community, some of whom lost people they know on Oct. 7. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.nepm.org/regional-news/2023-10-13/disagreement-over-israel-hamas-war-stirred-at-umass-amherst">We’ve seen public activism from several groups</a> in the university community that decry the unequal power between Israel and the Palestinians, and feel solidarity with Palestinians. On the other side, organizations with connections to Israel held vigils and discussion groups. Some Jews at UMass found pro-Palestinian rallies and specific chants frightening, and possibly antisemitic. Some pro-Palestinian activists were doxxed online, threatened or smeared by right-wing news organizations. Many students in my department expressed feeling unsafe.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557330/original/file-20231102-25-hva0jc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A screenshot showing a portion of a statement from UMASS Amherst Chancellor Javier Reyes on the war." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557330/original/file-20231102-25-hva0jc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557330/original/file-20231102-25-hva0jc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557330/original/file-20231102-25-hva0jc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557330/original/file-20231102-25-hva0jc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557330/original/file-20231102-25-hva0jc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557330/original/file-20231102-25-hva0jc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557330/original/file-20231102-25-hva0jc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">On Oct. 10, UMass Amherst Chancellor Javier Reyes released a statement on the war.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.umass.edu/news/article/statement-war-middle-east-umass-amherst-chancellor-javier-reyes">Screenshot, UMass Amherst official website</a></span>
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<p><strong>That sounds representative of what’s been going on at colleges and universities around the country. At a certain point, the university’s leadership felt like it should speak?</strong></p>
<p>The chancellor, Javier Reyes, <a href="https://www.umass.edu/news/article/statement-war-middle-east-umass-amherst-chancellor-javier-reyes">issued a statement very quickly after the attacks</a>. That statement attempted to empathize with all students, staff and faculty who felt concerned and scared after the Hamas attack and who anticipated a full-scale Israeli war on the Gaza Strip as a result. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.umass.edu/news/article/statement-war-middle-east-umass-amherst-chancellor-javier-reyes">The chancellor’s initial statement</a> demonstrated the university’s broad concern for the impact of Oct. 7 on campus. It was clear in recognizing Hamas’ responsibility for its brutal and murderous attack on Israel. It also recognized that many people who cared about Palestinians would be grieving. </p>
<p>Many campus stakeholders saw the statement as appearing not to take sides in a conflict that provokes contentious reactions. I think the statement also spoke to the many UMass community members who felt deep concern for people suffering unfathomable loss on both sides in this new wave of conflict.</p>
<p>The UMass administration may not wish to weigh in on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because they see no campus communal consensus, or it is unclear that UMass can affect the issue directly. I am sure university officials care about this conflict. But they also may fear that taking a position on a genuinely contested global issue will make some members of our community feel unrepresented or discouraged from taking part in the robust education and contentious conversation on hard issues that help define the univerity’s mission.</p>
<p><strong>Those are really values, not politics, that you’re talking about, aren’t they?</strong></p>
<p>American universities face major challenges from external political groups, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/05/02/magazine/wendy-brown-interview.html">particularly on the right</a>. The idea that open, well-informed, reasoned discussion can be central in the U.S. or any society that calls itself democratic has itself become contested. Not only is what universities do challenged politically, but I fear we are losing ground. Whether we call it politics or values, defending and creating space for open, evidence-driven education, free discussion, empathy and tolerance is central in the struggle here and now to maintain democracy against authoritarianism.</p>
<p><strong>Do you mean it’s a political statement to say “We value respectful discussion of different points of view”?</strong></p>
<p>Right. It’s clear that there are a lot of folks who <a href="https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-college-free-speech-543aff623d5f54ad6529fe598ae48271">want to see universities like mine take a specific stance</a> on something like Middle Eastern politics. For people who care about Palestinian rights and the current onslaught of deaths from Israel’s military, this can seem more urgent now than anything else. I understand colleagues who think that UMass’ institutional potential to have a material impact on Palestinian lives is worth the risk to our harmony or community members’ security. Yet I also understand that a university might center the struggle to maintain our institutional autonomy, community members’ trust and diverse speech as a primary set of political responses. </p>
<p><strong>What has your department done during this period?</strong></p>
<p>I sent out a statement to our constituents that echoed the chancellor’s statement prioritizing concern for members of the community. It underscored the tragedy and sadness of death and disruption on both sides of this conflict. I was careful not to suggest a specific political posture because my position requires me not to shut down members of my community who may have different viewpoints. My colleagues and I have tried to be open to hearing our students’ concerns, even when some are angry at us for not taking a clearer political stand.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557329/original/file-20231102-21-f0ny00.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two people, one holding a Palestinian flag and the other an Israeli flag, with a third person holding a sign in front of the Israeli flag." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557329/original/file-20231102-21-f0ny00.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557329/original/file-20231102-21-f0ny00.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557329/original/file-20231102-21-f0ny00.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557329/original/file-20231102-21-f0ny00.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557329/original/file-20231102-21-f0ny00.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=547&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557329/original/file-20231102-21-f0ny00.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=547&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557329/original/file-20231102-21-f0ny00.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=547&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pro-Palestinian protesters held out signs to block a pro-Israeli protester as they peacefully disagreed on the campus of UMass Amherst on Oct. 25, 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/amherst-ma-pro-palestinian-protesters-held-out-signs-to-news-photo/1745588498?adppopup=true">Jessica Rinaldi/The Boston Globe via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Then my department convened two public talks by experts who live in our area. First, <a href="https://dailycollegian.com/2023/10/dr-ahmad-samih-khalidi-discusses-the-israel-gaza-conflict/">Dr. Ahmad Khalidi, a Palestinian academic and policy activist</a> with decades of relevant experience, provided one perspective. Dr. Khalidi spoke eloquently on current and ongoing conditions Palestinians face to the several hundred attendees and 70 or 80 people on Zoom. </p>
<p>More recently, we featured the perspectives of a local Israeli, <a href="https://en.idi.org.il/experts/1360">Dr. Jesse Ferris, who helps run a leading Israeli think tank, the Israel Democracy Institute</a>. This event also had very strong attendance. </p>
<p>Both events were civil and thoughtful and ended with a set of questions from the audience that indicated divergent perspectives in the room. After the second talk, several students initiated a discussion – indeed, a respectful argument – on whether or not Israel’s current military operations could be justified.</p>
<p>From my vantage point, as someone who sees many people on campus in pain and many more not knowing what to think, bringing in expertise that can encourage people to engage with one another, potentially across divides, seems needed. So that’s what we did. </p>
<p><strong>The group Students for Justice for Palestine, or SJP, held a large rally that ended up in a <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/10/25/metro/pro-palestinian-rallies-planned-for-mass-colleges-wednesday/">sit-in at the university’s administration building. Over 50 arrests</a> were made when the students didn’t leave as the building was officially closed. What did that mean for efforts to foster constructive discussions?</strong></p>
<p>I appreciate that the chancellor and his team met personally with students from SJP right after the rally and later with a group of Jewish students. The statement that the <a href="https://www.umass.edu/chancellor/news/chancellors-message-campus-activism-umass-amherst">chancellor issued a day after the SJP rally</a> seeks to balance concern for the campus community with aligning the university strongly with free speech, even when such speech is upsetting, as the rally felt to some. </p>
<p>The statement once more did not take a specific position on the Middle East or on the perspectives advanced by campus groups. The chancellor focused on defending the right of protesters, and everyone, to speak. </p>
<p>His statement did not make everyone here happy. Yet opening himself and UMass Amherst to criticism by championing vigorous debate on a far-flung, divisive conflict affirms what our university stands for. We are a place for discussion, diversity of opinion and sometimes difficult conversations about hard, hard problems.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216858/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Mednicoff does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A scholar of the Mideast at a large public university says that caring and a commitment to free speech have been central to his campus’s response to students upset and angry over the Israel-Hamas war.David Mednicoff, Chair, Department of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies, and Associate Professor of Middle Eastern Studies and Public Policy, UMass AmherstLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2165902023-11-01T16:54:48Z2023-11-01T16:54:48ZAttacks on Jews always rise globally when conflict in Israel and Palestine intensifies<p>The terrorist attack in Israel on October 7 and the subsequent war in Gaza have led to increased attacks on Jews around the world. This is not a new trend. When conflict happens in Israel and Palestine the result is often rising numbers of attacks and threats.</p>
<p>In 2016, a <a href="https://archive.jpr.org.uk/download?id=3650">study</a> by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights stated that “events in the Middle East can trigger antisemitic sentiment in the EU”. This was clear in western Europe, and less so in Hungary and Poland. </p>
<p>Increased conflict or wars in the Middle East do not create “prejudice against or hatred of Jews” (<a href="https://www.ushmm.org/antisemitism/what-is-antisemitism">one definition of antisemitism</a>) but trigger a <a href="http://fra.europa.eu/sites/default/files/fra_uploads/fra-2022-antisemitism-overview-2011-2021_en.pdf">pre-existing negative attitude</a> that can manifest itself in threats. </p>
<p>When news spread on October 7 of the deadly <a href="https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-gaza-hamas-rockets-airstrikes-tel-aviv-11fb98655c256d54ecb5329284fc37d2">attack</a> by Hamas, it appeared to lead to instances of people <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/08/israel-hamas-war-security-police-jewish/">celebrating the killings</a> in some countries, including <a href="https://omni.se/hamas-attacker-firades-i-flera-svenska-stader-kristersson-det-ar-groteskt/a/l32Vm9">in Sweden</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Gw-vdw4JoPE">the UK</a>.</p>
<p>This was followed by a wave of protests over Israel’s <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-67264703">military response</a> in Gaza, when <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/10/1142687">thousands</a> were killed. In <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/12/europe/france-ban-pro-palestinian-intl/index.html">France</a> and in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/12/scholz-pledges-zero-tolerance-as-antisemitic-incidents-rise-in-europe">Germany</a>, pro-Palestinian demonstrations were banned because it was suspected that these could degenerate into antisemitism. </p>
<p>This restriction on the right to protest <a href="https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20231018-top-court-to-rule-whether-france-s-ban-on-pro-palestinian-rallies-is-legal">has been criticised</a> and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/israel-palestinians-europe-protests-idAFKBN31J1HX">unauthorised rallies</a> in support of Palestine have been organised in these countries.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">A mob threaten Jews in an airport in Dagestan.</span></figcaption>
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<p>In many countries, the police or organisations working on the issue report a dramatic increase in the number of antisemitic incidents. According to advocacy group the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-antisemitic-incidents-up-about-400-since-israel-hamas-war-began-report-says-2023-10-25/">Anti-Defamation League</a>, antisemitic incidents in the US rose by 388% in slightly over two weeks after the attack by Hamas. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/antisemitic-islamophobic-offences-soar-london-after-israel-attacks-2023-10-20/">London’s Metropolitan Police</a> said on October 20 that the city had seen a 1,353% increase in antisemitic offences that month compared to the same month last year, and a 140% increase in Islamophobic offences. </p>
<p>Many of these are verbal threats in person and online, but there are also reports of physical attacks on synagogues and other Jewish institutions, for example in <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/porto-synagogue-vandalized-with-pro-palestinian-slogans/">Portugal</a> and <a href="https://www.lavanguardia.com/local/madrid/20231010/9289451/crece-vigilancia-sinagoga-madrid-amenaza.html">Spain</a>. </p>
<p>Some events planned by Jewish organisations have been cancelled due to fears for the safety of participants, including in <a href="https://www.elperiodico.com/es/internacional/20231011/miembros-comunidad-israeli-barcelona-miedo-antisemitismo-93216159">Barcelona</a>. In Dagestan a violent mob went looking for Jews at the airport in the capital <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67258332">Makhachkala</a>, and surrounded an aircraft that had come from Tel Aviv.</p>
<p>In the US, some Jewish students and teachers have <a href="https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-10-29/antisemitism-college-campus-israel-hamas-palestine">criticised</a> the wave of support for Hamas and crude attacks against Jews that have happened on some university campuses. For instance, at Cornell University in New York state, the university police are investigating threats to kill Jewish students. The FBI <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/29/us/cornell-university-antisemetic-threats-online-investigation/index.html">was called in</a> to ensure security.</p>
<h2>Pattern of antisemitism</h2>
<p>During this century, each violent escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has led to increased antisemitism in many countries. <a href="http://obs.monde.juif.free.fr/pdf/omj01.pdf">Statistics</a> from the Service de Protection de la Communauté Juive (Jewish Community Protection Service) in France show how antisemitic incidents were at a low level in the late 1990s but grew dramatically in the autumn of 2000 when the second intifada, a major uprising in the Palestinian occupied territories, began.</p>
<p>The same organisation’s <a href="https://www.antisemitisme.fr/dl/2014-EN">statistics</a> showed that antisemitic incidents (threats and hate graffiti) in France increased by 101% in 2014 compared to the previous year, and violent acts (physical attacks, vandalism) increased by 130%. The month with by far the highest number of antisemitic acts was July, the month when a war in Gaza broke out.</p>
<p>The pattern is the same in other countries. In the UK the Community Security Trust <a href="https://cst.org.uk/data/file/4/c/Annual%20Review%202014.1615559190.pdf">recorded</a> “a record number of antisemitic incidents in 2014, largely due to the increase in antisemitism during the conflict in Israel and Gaza in July and August”.</p>
<h2>Relationships with the Middle East</h2>
<p>When in December 2001 I interviewed Dalil Boubakeur, rector of the Great Mosque of Paris, he said that the relationship between Jews and Muslims in France is completely dependent on developments in the Middle East. With the region showing no signs whatsoever of moving towards a just and stable peace, the question becomes how Jews in other countries can feel safe, especially when the conflict is dramatically aggravated, as at the moment.</p>
<p>In countries with both Jewish and Muslim populations there are organisations for dialogue and understanding. As a rule, they work well with one exception: opinions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict diverge sharply. Participants in discussions tend to focus on other things. But right now, this is not possible.</p>
<p>Some organisations have issued <a href="https://ajmfparis1.com/communiques/">statements</a> appealing for calm and saying their work will continue. But clearly this kind of dialogue is now facing great strain.</p>
<p>In Sweden’s third largest city, Malmö, where the number of Jews has <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/anti-semitism-in-malm%C3%B6-reveals-flaws-in-swedish-immigration-system-1.3080484">decreased</a> dramatically in recent decades, there has been for several years a praised dialogue work between Jews and Muslims, <em><a href="https://amanah.se/">Amanah</a></em>. </p>
<p>It is now paused. <a href="https://www.dn.se/sverige/hyllat-muslimsk-judiskt-samarbete-pausas-efter-facebookstatus-om-israel-palestina/">Those responsible believe that</a> in today’s intense atmosphere it is not possible to meet.</p>
<h2>Traditional antisemitic tropes</h2>
<p>As Israel defines itself as “the Jewish state” some people seem to think that all Jews, independent of citizenship and relationship to Israel, are <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/en/opinion/article/2023/10/29/the-jews-of-france-are-no-more-responsible-for-israeli-policy-than-the-arabs-of-france-are-for-hamas-terrorism_6212328_23.html">responsible</a> for what Israel does. </p>
<p>This is combined with harmful stereotypes of Jewish <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/protocols-of-the-elders-of-zion">manipulation and control</a> of powerful institutions that have been used <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/antisemitism-in-history-the-era-of-nationalism-1800-1918">for centuries</a> to stir up sentiment against Jewish people. The media is often accused of being pro-Israel as it is <a href="http://perspectives.ajsnet.org/the-oldnew-media-issue/jewish-media-power-myth-and-reality/">“controlled by the Jews”</a>. </p>
<p>Sometimes criticism of Israel is drawn from widespread old antisemitic tropes. It is therefore not surprising that the fabricated document from 1903, <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/protocols-of-the-elders-of-zion">The Protocols of the Elders of Zion</a> about an alleged Jewish plot for world dominion, is still <a href="https://www.arabnews.com/node/1906891/middle-east">widespread</a> in the Middle East. </p>
<p>As we witness a surge in conspiracy theories circulating online, it is worth mentioning that the <a href="https://time.com/6311698/antisemitism-conspiracy-theories-rothschild/">history of antisemitism</a> is full of these. Ideas about Jewish manipulation – spread among a wider segment of the population – can also be used in relation to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They “explain” things such as the US support for Israel and the positioning of western media. </p>
<p>All of these historic deeply embedded conspiracies and antisemitic beliefs feed into a fevered atmosphere where Jews can feel threatened wherever they live, and this is, unfortunately, unlikely to disappear.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216590/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Svante Lundgren does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Historically, data shows antisemitism rises around the world at times of conflict in the Middle East.Svante Lundgren, Researcher, Lund UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2163402023-10-30T12:32:05Z2023-10-30T12:32:05ZJewish response to Hamas war criticism comes from deep sense of trauma, active grief and fear<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556372/original/file-20231027-19-uknyr4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=34%2C0%2C3260%2C2198&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A house in a kibbutz In Be'eri, Israel, was the scene of part of the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, 2023.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/baby-rocking-chair-is-left-in-a-house-that-was-destroyed-in-news-photo/1723823463">Amir Levy/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In the wake of the <a href="https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-gaza-hamas-rockets-airstrikes-tel-aviv-11fb98655c256d54ecb5329284fc37d2">Hamas terror attacks</a> on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/timeline-surprise-rocket-attack-hamas-israel/story?id=103816006">Israeli military response</a>, Jewish people in Israel and around the world have, at times, been posting on social media or otherwise saying publicly that people who <a href="https://time.com/6323730/hamas-attack-left-response/">criticize Israel’s response</a> <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/israel-hamas-war-leads-to-heated-debate-and-protests-on-college-campuses">are, or might be, antisemitic</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>The Conversation U.S. asked <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=pgpEt8MAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Dov Waxman</a>, director of the <a href="https://www.international.ucla.edu/israel/home">Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies</a> at the University of California, Los Angeles, to explain why many Jews might feel that way.</em></p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556362/original/file-20231027-27-n69su.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A person holds a sign reading 'If you are silent when terrorists murder Israelis, stay silent when Israel defends itself.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556362/original/file-20231027-27-n69su.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556362/original/file-20231027-27-n69su.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556362/original/file-20231027-27-n69su.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556362/original/file-20231027-27-n69su.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556362/original/file-20231027-27-n69su.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556362/original/file-20231027-27-n69su.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556362/original/file-20231027-27-n69su.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A demonstrator holds a sign at a rally in support of Israel in Los Angeles on Oct. 10, 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/demonstrators-gather-during-a-rally-in-support-of-israel-news-photo/1717388473">Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>Why do some people appear to equate criticism of Israel with antisemitism?</strong></p>
<p>There is a perception that many Jews have – including many Jews on the left who are themselves outspoken critics of Israel – that some of the responses, particularly on social media and on some college campuses, to what’s been taking place in Israel and Gaza have been callous and one-sided at best, and in some instances shockingly amoral. Some responses have celebrated Hamas’ attack, and others have solely blamed Israel for it. Still others have been silent about that attack and have only denounced Israel’s military response.</p>
<p>There’s a widespread feeling among Jews that these kind of reactions to the horrific atrocities perpetrated against Israeli civilians don’t reflect a commitment to universal values or human rights. Rather, they exonerate Hamas and treat the mass murder of Israeli civilians as somehow acceptable or legitimate. Some suspect that there’s a double-standard at play when people furiously condemn the killing of Palestinian civilians, but say nothing, or even excuse it, when Israeli civilians are killed.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556373/original/file-20231027-17-f5zyfz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A crowd of people stand together, with one woman turning her face downward while holding an Israeli flag." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556373/original/file-20231027-17-f5zyfz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556373/original/file-20231027-17-f5zyfz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556373/original/file-20231027-17-f5zyfz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556373/original/file-20231027-17-f5zyfz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556373/original/file-20231027-17-f5zyfz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556373/original/file-20231027-17-f5zyfz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556373/original/file-20231027-17-f5zyfz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People attend an Israel Solidarity Rally at the Holocaust Memorial in Miami Beach, Fla., on Oct. 10, 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/people-attend-the-israel-solidarity-rally-organized-by-the-news-photo/1717558812">Marco Bello/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p><strong>What are Jewish people feeling and experiencing right now?</strong></p>
<p>Many people who aren’t Jewish are responding as if what’s been taking place is just another episode of Israeli-Palestinian violence. </p>
<p>But it’s different for many Jews. My own Facebook feed is pretty much just pictures of Israelis who have been killed or are currently held captive in Gaza. Many Jews have friends and family in Israel, so it’s very personal for them.</p>
<p>Many Jews are still grieving, shocked and traumatized by what happened on Oct. 7. But other people, in the U.S. and around the world, have already moved on from Oct. 7, and they are much more concerned about the war that Israel is now waging against Hamas and the devastating <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/10/15/1198908600/the-emotional-impact-of-the-israel-gaza-conflict-on-jewish-and-palestinian-ameri">impact it is having on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip</a>.</p>
<p>Jews are often looking for what people have to say about the massacres of Israeli civilians. Most want to hear an unequivocal condemnation of what Hamas did. Any attempt to contextualize it is seen as somehow rationalizing or minimizing Hamas’ attack, or a failure to recognize that Hamas is not simply seeking a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, but <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/what-hamas">the destruction of Israel</a>. </p>
<p>And, on top of all this, Jews are becoming increasingly worried and fearful about being harassed or violently attacked by people blaming them for Israel’s actions, or just taking out their anger on them. There’s been a massive spike in antisemitic incidents in the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-antisemitic-incidents-up-about-400-since-israel-hamas-war-began-report-says-2023-10-25/">United States</a> and in <a href="https://www.adl.org/resources/blog/global-antisemitic-incidents-wake-hamas-war-israel">many countries</a> since Oct. 7.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556374/original/file-20231027-25-nxu6li.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A crowd of people stand, with one person holding a sign saying 'Bring our family back' with photos of people below the words." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556374/original/file-20231027-25-nxu6li.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556374/original/file-20231027-25-nxu6li.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556374/original/file-20231027-25-nxu6li.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556374/original/file-20231027-25-nxu6li.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556374/original/file-20231027-25-nxu6li.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556374/original/file-20231027-25-nxu6li.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556374/original/file-20231027-25-nxu6li.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Supporters of Israel demonstrate at a ‘Stand with Israel’ rally in New York City on Oct. 10, 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/people-attend-a-stand-with-israel-vigil-and-rally-in-new-news-photo/1717510651">Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p><strong>What are the emotions behind this reaction?</strong></p>
<p>For many Jews, the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/08/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-attack.html">specific nature of Hamas’ attack</a> – the mass slaughter and the way in which Hamas gunmen went systematically from house to house murdering families, and, in some cases, brutally butchering people – evokes deep, traumatic memories of the Holocaust.</p>
<p>What took place on Oct. 7 was the <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/was-hamass-attack-on-saturday-the-bloodiest-day-for-jews-since-the-holocaust/">largest single-day killing of Jews</a> since the Holocaust. </p>
<p>What many Jews see in Oct. 7, therefore, is not just a continuation of a long-standing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. What happened on Oct. 7, in the minds of many, is qualitatively different. </p>
<p>The fact that many other people don’t seem to recognize or acknowledge that, or respond as many Jews would hope, is why some Jews feel that there’s antisemitism lurking beneath the surface – that Israeli Jews and Zionists in general have been so dehumanized and demonized that it’s become somehow acceptable for them to be killed, even if they’re civilians, including children and babies. </p>
<p><strong>Is criticism of Israel actually antisemitic, or antisemitic under certain circumstances that people should learn to recognize or understand?</strong></p>
<p>For a long time now, Israeli officials and some right-wing, pro-Israel organizations and activists have had the knee-jerk response that any criticism of Israel is antisemitic, and they strive to delegitimize critics of Israel by labeling them antisemites. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, legitimate criticism of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, and peaceful activism in support of the Palestinians, is too often called antisemitic. </p>
<p>I think that most Jews regard criticism of Israel as legitimate, though many feel that it is sometimes excessive. Many, if not most, Jews actually criticize Israel. Nobody seriously insists that all criticism of Israel is antisemitic. The real question is, what kinds of criticism of Israel are acceptable and what might be considered antisemitic? When does criticism of Israel cross the line into antisemitism?</p>
<p>Much of the mainstream American Jewish community, including many major organizations, draws the line between <a href="https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/resources/working-definitions-charters/working-definition-antisemitism">criticizing the actions and policies of Israeli governments</a> – toward the Palestinians, for example – and criticizing Zionism or Israel’s identity as a Jewish state. They regard the latter as delegitimizing Israel, and they see that as antisemitic.</p>
<p>In my view, it’s not necessarily antisemitic to criticize Zionism or oppose Jewish statehood, but it’s certainly true that some opposition to Zionism and Israel’s existence as a Jewish state is motivated by antisemitism.</p>
<p>In general, criticism of Israel or of Zionism is not, in and of itself, antisemitic, even if they are very harsh and unfair criticisms. However, such criticism is antisemitic when it draws on antisemitic tropes, antisemitic stereotypes or antisemitic ideas.</p>
<p>People can often draw on those things inadvertently – they don’t necessarily know what an antisemitic trope or stereotype is. So, for example, there is an old antisemitic trope called the <a href="https://www.adl.org/resources/backgrounder/blood-libel-false-incendiary-claim-against-jews">blood libel</a> that dates back to the 11th century, claiming that Jews seek to kill Christian children to use their blood for ritual purposes. So when people say that Israel is deliberately killing Palestinian children, what some Jews are hearing is that Jews are once again being accused of wanting to kill children.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="People wearing black clothes stand in front of a sign reading 'Jews for a free Palestine.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556326/original/file-20231027-22-ji659.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556326/original/file-20231027-22-ji659.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556326/original/file-20231027-22-ji659.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556326/original/file-20231027-22-ji659.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556326/original/file-20231027-22-ji659.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556326/original/file-20231027-22-ji659.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556326/original/file-20231027-22-ji659.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">American Jews in Chicago attend a service of remembrance for Israelis and Palestinians killed in fighting between Israel and Hamas.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/members-of-the-chicago-area-jewish-community-gather-at-a-news-photo/1732500854">Scott Olson/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>After 9/11, some people criticized the U.S., not because it didn’t have the right to respond, but they criticized the nature of that response, whether it was appropriate, proportional and aimed at the right targets. Isn’t that what people are doing now regarding Israel’s response?</strong></p>
<p>Yes, and just as we accept that it’s legitimate for people to criticize the U.S., it’s also legitimate for people to criticize Israel, or for that matter, any country.</p>
<p>But there is a difference in that nobody really challenges the existence of the United States, or says there should not be a United States of America. So when people criticize the U.S. or events in American history, they’re doing that in the context of an implicit assumption that the U.S. has a right to exist and will continue to exist. </p>
<p>Whereas in the case of Israel, its existence and legitimacy are still challenged. There are still many people who would rather there not be a state of Israel, at least not a Jewish state. So criticisms of Israel can take on a different character in that context.</p>
<p>In the case of Israel, there’s another important difference. Because of Jewish history, especially the Holocaust, there is an abiding sense of vulnerability that many Jews feel. And therefore there’s a worry about Israel’s existence and future, and ultimately the security of Jews, that I don’t think applies to the United States and Americans. Americans don’t have that existential fear.</p>
<p>This all boils down to a deeply traumatized group of people whose trauma was reactivated on Oct. 7 and in the harrowing days since. There’s this intergenerational, unhealed trauma from the history of antisemitism and the Holocaust, with Jews having been vilified, demonized and attacked for so long. That’s their collective memory. And it’s been powerfully evoked, even if not always consciously, over the past few weeks.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216340/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dov Waxman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Many people who aren’t Jewish are responding as if what’s been taking place is just another episode of Israeli-Palestinian violence. But it’s different for many Jews.Dov Waxman, Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation Professor of Israel Studies, University of California, Los AngelesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2138532023-10-27T12:16:47Z2023-10-27T12:16:47ZA Halloween party in Boston turned ugly when a gang hurled antisemitic slurs and attacked Jewish teenagers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556223/original/file-20231026-25-u7ye03.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Boston Globe detailed the Hecht House attacks in its Nov. 3, 1950, edition.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://bostonglobe.newspapers.com/article/the-boston-globe/134054748/">Boston Globe</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On a chilly Halloween night in late October 1950, dozens of Jewish teenagers and their friends gathered for merriment in the Boston neighborhood of Dorchester at the Hecht House, a Jewish community center that provided job training and hosted social events. While there, they celebrated the holiday with dancing, cake and ice cream.</p>
<p>Then, terror approached. </p>
<p>Motivated by antisemitism, neighborhood teens launched a brutal attack on the premises of Hecht House that left many of the young Jews at the party injured and some hospitalized. The attackers faced no repercussions.</p>
<p>The assaults at Hecht House sparked community conversations about anti-Jewish violence and its minimization by local authorities, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/antisemitic-attacks/2021/05/23/8907864e-bbdd-11eb-83e3-0ca705a96ba4_story.html">themes that resonate today</a> given the rising numbers of <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/antisemitic-incidents-on-rise-across-the-u-s-report-finds">antisemitic hate crimes</a>.</p>
<p>Details of the Hecht House attacks remain overlooked in <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/antisemitism-in-america-9780195101126">historical analyses about antisemitism</a>, where outbursts like these are often discounted as sporadic or insignificant.</p>
<p>Yet the incident – and what led up to it and its subsequent fallout – underscore the importance of taking antisemitic extremism seriously. </p>
<h2>Origins of violence</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.american.edu/cas/history/phd/phd-students.cfm">My research</a> on the history of antisemitic radicalism in America led me to the papers of the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit organization that fights antisemitism and extremism, where I learned about the Hecht House attacks. </p>
<p>The trouble started months before the attacks, when non-Jewish teens began <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/11/02/americas-forgotten-pogroms-222181/">assaulting Jews throughout Boston</a>, a prominent destination for Jewish people displaced by World War II. </p>
<p>Coupled with longtime antisemitic myths, the presence of these Jewish teens, called “foreigners” by some white Bostonians, spelled disaster for some members of <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/what-happened-to-the-jews-of-bostons-jew-hill-avenue/">Boston’s Jewish community</a>. As I learned further in my research, new immigrants were not the only Jews to suffer violence throughout the 1950s. </p>
<p>Youth gangs roamed the streets shouting regularly, “Come on out you dirty Jews, we’re going to stone and kill you!”</p>
<p>In one incident, a group attacked a disabled Jewish war veteran incapable of defending himself. In another, they beat a Jewish refugee boy whose parents had perished in a Nazi concentration camp.</p>
<p>In comments to local newspapers and official reports, Boston police downplayed such attacks as symptoms of “juvenile delinquency,” blaming bad parenting and teenage mischief rather than a toxic ideology.</p>
<p>When the <a href="https://www.jcrcboston.org/about-jcrc-2/">Jewish Community Council of Boston</a> complained to authorities about the wave of youth violence, officials responded with indifference, if not outright disdain.</p>
<p>“Kids have always called each other names and fought,” said one official to local Jewish leaders. According to the Jewish Community Council’s records, another common response was that the Jews were “just trying to stir up trouble,” reading “prejudice into fist fights.”</p>
<h2>Halloween at Hecht House</h2>
<p>Days before the Halloween attack, drunken teens broke into Hecht House and spouted antisemitic slurs. A fight erupted with Jewish residents, who kicked them out. </p>
<p>But the drunken teens promised to eventually return and “clean up the Jews.” </p>
<p>At the house, a Jewish boy soon discovered a note warning that “Hecht House Jews” had better “watch out.” The Anti-Defamation League collected the facts of the encounter from the Jews involved.</p>
<p>When the Halloween attack finally happened, between 1,500 and 2,000 spectators gathered close to Hecht House, hoping to catch a glimpse of the action.</p>
<p>The first victim, David Sault, was a Christian friend of the Jewish residents. He tried to enter the house through a back door when six boys seized him and beat him unconscious with a baseball bat. A police report listed the incident as “injured by falling from a ledge.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An image of a Boston police record detailing the beating of a man who had Jewish friends." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555916/original/file-20231025-22-8571o6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555916/original/file-20231025-22-8571o6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=137&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555916/original/file-20231025-22-8571o6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=137&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555916/original/file-20231025-22-8571o6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=137&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555916/original/file-20231025-22-8571o6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=172&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555916/original/file-20231025-22-8571o6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=172&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555916/original/file-20231025-22-8571o6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=172&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Boston police record detailing the beating of David Sault.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Anti-Defamation League</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>According to eyewitnesses, a gang of at least 15 assailants began a violent rampage chasing Jews from Hecht House down poorly lit neighborhood streets. They battered one Jewish boy, Milton Segal, with a tire chain, leaving him with a broken nose and cuts on his face and chest. Though he was hospitalized, Segal’s case did not appear in police records.</p>
<p>Two Jewish teens traveling to the party heard of the commotion and removed their trouser belts, prepared to defend themselves. Police accosted the pair and cuffed them for “being armed with a weapon,” but they were quickly released.</p>
<p>Two days later, when false rumors circulated within the Jewish community that a Jewish boy had died as a result of his injuries, some Jewish teenagers vowed revenge.</p>
<p>To avoid suspicion, they left Hecht House in small groups to confront the gang by a bowling alley. Both groups came armed with axes, razors and brass knuckles, but a policeman drew his revolver to stop the factions from fighting. </p>
<p>Eighteen of the 25 Jewish boys present were booked for participation in a fight, but the dozens of white Bostonians involved escaped consequences. </p>
<p>The violence persisted throughout the 1950s as Jews and others in the Boston community disagreed over its origins and the role of antisemitism. One writer for the Boston Herald commented that some community members might “dismiss these incidents as boy stuff and unavoidable.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An image of a newsletter shows the details of antisemitic incidents in Boston." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555915/original/file-20231025-19-t7ntuq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555915/original/file-20231025-19-t7ntuq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555915/original/file-20231025-19-t7ntuq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555915/original/file-20231025-19-t7ntuq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555915/original/file-20231025-19-t7ntuq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555915/original/file-20231025-19-t7ntuq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555915/original/file-20231025-19-t7ntuq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The November 1950 edition of an Anti-Defamation League publication highlights antisemitic attacks in Boston.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Anti-Defamation League</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Another journalist in the Boston Traveler wrote that “the youth-gang warfare has more of the coloration of juvenile delinquency than of antisemitism.” </p>
<p>Boston’s police commissioner also denied that the issue was racial or religious. After the Halloween debacle, he told Anti-Defamation League representatives that “vandalism and hoodlumism” were responsible for the affronts.</p>
<h2>The Jewish reaction</h2>
<p>Boston’s Jewish Community Council insisted that “deep-seated antisemitic” attitudes were to blame. Nationally, the Jewish press condemned the Boston police for its inability to “cope with organized kid pogroms.” </p>
<p>Jews drew connections between Christian youth gangs, the antisemitic and massively popular radio priest <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/holocaust-coughlin/">Father Charles Coughlin</a>, and his followers in the extremist militia group the Christian Front. Between the 1930s and 1940s, Coughlin preached anti-Jewish conspiracies to 30 million listeners each week, while his admirers in the <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/11/02/americas-forgotten-pogroms-222181/">Christian Front assaulted Jews</a> in large cities, including Boston.</p>
<p>Jewish and anti-fascist activists urged citizens to recognize the significance of ideological hatred in youth gangs. They argued that attributing violence against Jews to youthful delinquency sidestepped the real issue of antisemitism. </p>
<p>In early November 1950, the Anti-Defamation League finally convinced Boston’s police commissioner that the Hecht House assaults were the result of “organized bigotry.”</p>
<p>The flare-ups in Boston peaked on a particularly frightful Halloween in 1950 and exemplify not only the brutality of antisemitism but <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/lethal-threat-white-power-ideologues/629874/">the harms</a> of its trivialization by authorities who downplay claims of antisemitism.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213853/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Sperling does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Shortly after World War II, European Jews immigrated to American cities like Boston and were often met with violent antisemitism.Andrew Sperling, PhD Student in History, American UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2157602023-10-25T12:33:34Z2023-10-25T12:33:34ZAntisemitism has moved from the right to the left in the US − and falls back on long-standing stereotypes<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555439/original/file-20231023-29-xvca3a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C8%2C5991%2C3979&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An Oct. 19, 2023, rally in New York City's Times Square demanding the freeing of hostages taken in the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/people-gather-for-a-rally-in-times-square-demanding-the-news-photo/1745461296?adppopup=true">Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The U.S. is currently <a href="https://www.adl.org/resources/press-release/us-antisemitic-incidents-hit-highest-level-ever-recorded-adl-audit-finds">experiencing one of the most</a> <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/reports-of-antisemitic-incidents-in-u-s-spike-after-attack-on-israel-anti-defamation-league-says-195578437929">significant waves of antisemitism</a> <a href="https://antisemitism.adl.org/antisemitism-in-american-history/">that it has ever seen</a>. Jewish communities are shaken and traumatized. </p>
<p>Jewish and civil rights organizations both in the U.S. and in other Western countries reported a rise in antisemitic incidents following the <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/timeline-surprise-rocket-attack-hamas-israel/story?id=103816006">Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel</a> and the subsequent Israeli military response. The Anti-Defamation League reported that in the first week after Hamas’ deadly attack, in which 1,400 Israelis were killed, antisemitic incidents in the U.S. <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/reports-of-antisemitic-incidents-in-u-s-spike-after-attack-on-israel-anti-defamation-league-says-195578437929">tripled in comparison to the same week last year</a>. </p>
<p>Similarly, London police recorded a 1,353% increase in antisemitic crimes <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/antisemitic-islamophobic-offences-soar-london-after-israel-attacks-2023-10-20/">compared with the same period a year earlier</a>. </p>
<p>In addition, antisemitic symbols and rhetoric seem to be part of a growing number of protests that erupted around the globe following the escalation of the <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12607931/Times-Square-Palestine-rally-Hamas-Israel.html">conflict between Israel and Hamas</a>. </p>
<p>Most scholars agree that the term “antisemitism” describes animosity and discrimination against Jews. Broader definitions, such as the one adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, include the singling out of Israel and the demonization of its character, such as the claim that “the existence of a <a href="https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/resources/working-definitions-charters/working-definition-antisemitism">State of Israel is a racist endeavor</a>.” </p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=xBQYKHwAAAAJ&hl=en">My team of researchers</a> at UMass Lowell and Development Service Group, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, compiled and analyzed a comprehensive dataset of antisemitic incidents in the U.S. between 1990 and 2021. We wanted to understand what factors led to antisemitism. We covered violent antisemitism as well as incidents of antisemitic intimidation and vandalism. We included any attacks against Jews which were motivated by the religious identity of the victims – even if it was motivated by anger about Israeli policies. </p>
<p>Our study, which will be published soon, found a startling new phenomenon: The ideology underlying antisemitism in the U.S. now encompasses both sides of the political spectrum. And it allowed us to develop three other insights regarding the intensifying linkage between the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and antisemitism in the U.S. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1716196517613281517"}"></div></p>
<h2>1. Antisemitism is not exclusive to the far right</h2>
<p>Traditionally, antisemitism in the United States was <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2017/08/14/jews-will-not-replace-us-why-white-supremacists-go-after-jews/">promoted by far-right organizations and movements</a>, such as the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazi groups and skinheads. Such groups focused on propagating <a href="https://theconversation.com/anti-semitism-in-the-us-today-is-a-variation-on-an-old-theme-123250">traditional antisemitic narratives</a> alleging Jews’ racial inferiority, their control of the financial sector and their role in global cabals aiming to undermine America and Western civilization. </p>
<p>More recently, progressive and left-leaning movements that are critical of Israel’s policies – especially with regard to the Palestinian population in the territories occupied by Israel in 1967 – have become linked to antisemitic practices, too. </p>
<p>In a survey conducted in 2018 in 12 European Union countries <a href="https://fra.europa.eu/en/publication/2018/experiences-and-perceptions-antisemitism-second-survey-discrimination-and-hate">among victims of antisemitism</a>, 21% indicated that they were physically or verbally attacked by what participants called “left-wing” activists. In the U.S., our data shows that 95% of antisemitic incidents motivated by Israel’s policies were perpetrated by far-left or unidentified activists. Just 5% were perpetrated by known far-right activists. </p>
<p>Further indication that antisemitic violence is no longer the sole domain of far-right extremists can be gleaned from an analysis of our data that looked at the geographic characteristics of antisemitism. </p>
<p>We find that antisemitic hate crimes are occurring especially in politically progressive areas of the country. The New York metropolitan area and the Northeast in general, and urban centers in Florida, California, the Northwest and the Midwest are experiencing the majority of antisemitic incidents. </p>
<p><iframe id="wJ62o" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/wJ62o/2/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>While these regions of the U.S. were usually <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/opportunity/equality">considered hospitable to minorities</a>, our data reflects that in the past decade they are the most substantial hubs of antisemitic violence. </p>
<h2>2. US antisemitism is strongly correlated to escalation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict</h2>
<p>The outbreak of violence between Israel and Palestinians seems to inflame antisemitism in the U.S. and is exploited to amplify long-standing antisemitic tropes. </p>
<p>Rigorous analysis of our dataset found conclusive evidence that these escalations in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – such as the violent clashes between Hamas and Israel in the Gaza Strip in the past few years – are accompanied by an increase in antisemitic incidents in the U.S. </p>
<p>For example, in the months leading up to the Israel-Hamas war of May 2021, there was a gradual increase in antisemitic attacks that peaked in May 2021 and gradually declined in the following months. </p>
<p><iframe id="sbGtX" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/sbGtX/1/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>3. Israel’s policies and antisemitism abroad are connected</h2>
<p>The growing connection between Israel’s policies and antisemitic violence abroad, and especially in the U.S., reflects the view among many Americans that American Jews unquestioningly support Israel’s government. </p>
<p>The Anti-Defamation League’s leader put it bluntly when he stated following the May 2021 Israel-Hamas war that “<a href="https://www.adl.org/resources/press-release/adl-audit-finds-antisemitic-incidents-united-states-reached-all-time-high">the violence we witnessed in America during the conflict last May</a> was shocking … it seemed as if the working assumption was that if you were Jewish, you were blameworthy for what was happening half a world away.”</p>
<p>Thus, it is not surprising that following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack, Jewish organizations on American campuses became the <a href="https://forward.com/fast-forward/561683/university-pennsylvania-hillel-antisemitism-adl-vandalism/">main targets of violent activism by Palestinian rights supporters</a>. Nor was it surprising that the first reaction of U.S. law enforcement agencies in the wake of the Hamas attack was <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/security-tightens-around-jewish-schools-communities-due-to-tension-in-middle-east/">enhancing the protections</a> of Jewish schools and communal facilities. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555644/original/file-20231024-25-uchg24.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Demonstrators carrying signs that include one equating Zionism to Nazism." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555644/original/file-20231024-25-uchg24.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555644/original/file-20231024-25-uchg24.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555644/original/file-20231024-25-uchg24.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555644/original/file-20231024-25-uchg24.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555644/original/file-20231024-25-uchg24.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555644/original/file-20231024-25-uchg24.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555644/original/file-20231024-25-uchg24.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Thousands of demonstrators waving Palestinian flags and signs denouncing ‘Israeli apartheid’ march in support of Palestinians in Los Angeles on Oct. 14, 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/thousands-of-demonstrators-waving-palestinian-flags-and-news-photo/1724697003?adppopup=true">David Swanson/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>4. Antisemitism today exploits long-standing antisemitic tropes</h2>
<p>American Jewish communities had <a href="https://theconversation.com/as-israel-turns-70-many-young-american-jews-turn-away-95271">traditionally strong links to the state of Israel</a>, and many extended their support in various ways. They included contributing money to Israeli cultural, educational and social institutions, as well as advocating for U.S. support. This was explicit acknowledgment of the importance to the Jewish people of having a homeland. </p>
<p>In recent years, however, many Jewish communities, especially their younger members, <a href="https://theconversation.com/as-israel-turns-70-many-young-american-jews-turn-away-95271">became increasingly critical of Israeli policies</a> and the country’s ongoing military control of the occupied Palestinian territories.</p>
<p>Despite such developments within the Jewish community, efforts by organizations sympathetic to the Palestinian cause to link American Jews as a whole to Israel’s policies seem to have intensified. Such linkages reflect an extension of one of the most resilient and long-standing antisemitic tropes, in which <a href="https://theconversation.com/anti-semitism-in-the-us-today-is-a-variation-on-an-old-theme-123250">American Jews are portrayed as having a dual loyalty</a> and a preference to support Israel’s interests over American ones, especially in times in which they may conflict. </p>
<p>In the past, sentiments regarding American Jews’ alleged dual loyalty were mainly exploited by extremists on <a href="https://jewishjournal.com/news/united-states/336589/florida-van-with-palestinian-flag-and-hitler-was-right-sign-circles-around-pro-israel-rally/">the far right</a>. Lately, it seems also to be manifested in left-wing discourse and actions that support or legitimize marginalization of Jews in the U.S. by blaming them for Israel’s policies.</p>
<p>Examples of this new manifestation of antisemitism include the exclusion of American Jewish organizations from <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/23/us/womens-march-anti-semitism.html">progressive campaigns</a> and <a href="https://forward.com/opinion/562543/rice-university-hillel-lgbtq-israel/">events</a> and the <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/were-jewish-berkeley-law-students-excluded-in-many-areas-on-campus">exclusion of Jewish activists from progressive associations</a>. </p>
<h2>Combating the new antisemitism</h2>
<p>The reactions to the recent escalation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict illustrate a profound change in the ideological roots of antisemitism in the U.S.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.adl.org/resources/blog/support-hamas-terror-anti-israel-rallies-across-us">The many cases in which professional</a> <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/10/18/university-israel-hamas-college-tensions/">and student associations</a> as <a href="https://time.com/6323730/hamas-attack-left-response/">well as political organizations</a> were quick both to legitimize Hamas terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians and direct their animosity toward U.S. Jews showing solidarity and sympathy with Israeli victims are prime examples. </p>
<p>That means any effort to combat antisemitism in the U.S. must take into consideration the growing ideological diversity behind contemporary incidents of antisemitism.</p>
<p>Those efforts will need to understand the nuances that shape American Jews’ relationships with Israel – and recognize that despite the substantial progress U.S. Jews experienced in the U.S. in all aspects of public life, antisemitism is still a part of the American political landscape.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/215760/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Arie Perliger receives funding from the National Institute of Justice</span></em></p>Antisemitism in the US is growing – and that growth appears to be related to the escalation of the conflict between Israel and Hamas. It also reflects a different political ideology than in the past.Arie Perliger, Director of Security Studies and Professor of Criminology and Justice Studies, UMass LowellLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2103372023-08-29T12:26:16Z2023-08-29T12:26:16ZHow individual, ordinary Jews fought Nazi persecution − a new view of history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541736/original/file-20230808-20-mx7iby.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=28%2C17%2C3815%2C2489&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Lizi Rosenfeld, a Jewish woman, sits on a park bench bearing a sign that reads, 'Only for Aryans,' in August 1938 in Vienna.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1102831">United States Holocaust Memorial Museum /Provenance: Leo Spitzer</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In Nazi Germany, Hertha Reis, a 36-year-old Jewish woman, performed forced labor for a private company in Berlin during World War II. In 1941, she was evicted by a judge from the two sublet rooms where she lived with her son and mother – <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/1419-ps.asp">she was unprotected as a tenant because of an anti-Jewish law</a>.</p>
<p>In plain daylight, in front of the courthouse in the heart of the Nazi capital, she protested in front of passersby.</p>
<p>“We lost everything. Because of this cursed government, we finally lost our home, too. This thug Hitler, this damned government, these damned people,” she said. “Just because we are Jews, we are discriminated against.”</p>
<p>Historians knew of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Holocaust/Jewish-resistance-to-the-Nazis">clandestine acts of resistance</a>, of course, and of armed group resistance, such as the <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/warsaw-ghetto-uprising">Warsaw ghetto uprising</a>. But in the dominant understanding of the Nazi period until now, the act of speaking out publicly as an individual against the persecution of Jews seemed unimaginable, especially for the Jews. </p>
<p>But in July 2008, I stumbled on the first trace of such public acts of resistance in the logbook of a Berlin police precinct, one of the few chronicles of its kind that had survived in the <a href="https://landesarchiv-berlin.de/en/the-landesarchiv-berlin">Berlin State Archive</a>.</p>
<p>The entry, bearing the label “political incident,” was written by a police officer who had arrested a Jewish man protesting against the Nazi anti-Jewish policies. At the time of the discovery, <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=aug_8D0AAAAJ&hl=en">I had studied the persecution of German Jews</a> intensively for almost 20 years, but I had never heard of anything like this.</p>
<p>Intrigued, I started investigating. Subsequently, finding more and more similar stories of resistance in court records and survivor testimonies began to shatter my established scholarly beliefs. </p>
<h2>Challenging traditional views of Jewish resistance</h2>
<p>Historians, including myself, had long painted a <a href="https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/156520">picture of passivity of the persecuted</a>. When discrimination in Nazi Germany gradually increased, the Jews slowly adapted, so went the argument. More generally, an assumption still exists today that defiance, especially individual protest, <a href="https://thechinaproject.com/2022/10/13/a-rare-protest-banner-hangs-off-a-bridge-in-beijing/">is rare in authoritarian regimes</a>.</p>
<p>The astonishing evidence from the Berlin police files resonated deeply with me on a personal level. I grew up behind the Iron Curtain in East Germany. The communist regime persecuted even mild expressions of individual opposition as threats. This personal experience of living in a dictatorship until the age of 28 provided me with a distinct sensitivity that enabled me to recognize day-to-day forms of resistance. </p>
<p>Knowing from history that the treatment of the political opposition in Nazi Germany was so much more brutal, how much more serious must the Hitler regime have perceived any signs of resistance coming from their No. 1 racial enemy, the Jews?</p>
<p>Still, today the public and many scholars understand Jewish resistance during the Holocaust mostly in terms of rare armed group activities in the Nazi occupied East, for example <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/jewish-resistance">ghetto uprisings or partisan attacks</a>. </p>
<p>By including individual acts and, thus, broadening the traditional definition of Jewish resistance, over a dozen years of systematic research I was able to unearth many new sources – from police and court records of various German cities to video testimonies of survivors – that documented a much greater volume and variety of resistance acts than could ever have been imagined. </p>
<p>The astonishing results change the view of Jewish resistance during World War II dramatically. The story of Hertha Reis and many other potent tales of individual defiance and courage contradict the common misconception that Jews were led like sheep to slaughter during the Holocaust.</p>
<h2>A 17-year-old challenges the Nazi regime</h2>
<p>Searching the <a href="https://landesarchiv.hessen.de/ueber-uns/hessisches-hauptstaatsarchiv-wiesbaden">Hesse Main State archive in Wiesbaden</a>, I found the story of Hans Oppenheimer. He left his four-story apartment house every night for weeks in 1940, breaking the curfew for Jews. Not a single light illuminated the street in front of him. The city of Frankfurt had ordered a brownout to protect it from Allied air raids. </p>
<p>A few blocks away from his home, Hans hid in a doorway. With the entire city, Hans waited anxiously for the bombs to fall.</p>
<p>Persecuted because he was Jewish, as a 17-year-old, Hans had already toiled as a forced laborer for a year and a half, most recently unloading stones and cement bags from river barges for 10 hours every day. He earned only pennies and felt constantly harassed.</p>
<p>Hans had never been to a movie or a play, because those were prohibited for Jews in Frankfurt. As a Jewish adolescent, he saw no future in Nazi Germany. Because the war prevented him from leaving, he had decided to do something.</p>
<p>Every night, he waited in the dark, anxious and excited. When the sirens started to blare, announcing that the Allied bombers were closing in, Hans set off fire alarms to divert the German firefighters from the actual bombing sites. In December 1940, after he had set off dozens of false alarms, the police finally manage to catch Hans red-handed.</p>
<p>The Frankfurt prosecutor indicted Hans Oppenheimer and put him on trial. Since the court could not prove treason, the now 18-year-old received only three years in prison for sabotaging the war effort. </p>
<p>Incarcerated and isolated, Hans suffered from severe depression and physical debilitation. When the prison officials did not respond to his repeated complaints, the young man attempted to take his own life twice. At the end of 1942, the Gestapo deported all Jewish prison inmates from Germany to Auschwitz. Hans Oppenheimer did not survive there for long, because of his weakened state. He died on Jan. 30, 1943, just days after he had turned 20 years old.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Ingrid Frank tells how her uncle, Fritz Josefsthal, beat the editor of the Nazi newspaper ‘Der Stürmer’ with his whip after it published an antisemitic obituary of his father.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p></p>
<h2>A new history of Jewish resistance</h2>
<p>Forgotten until now, between 1933 and 1945 hundreds and hundreds of Jewish women and men performed individual acts of resistance in Nazi Germany proper. I present many of their stories in my new book, “<a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300267198/resisters/">Resisters. How Ordinary Jews Fought Persecution in Hitler’s Germany</a>.” </p>
<p>They destroyed Nazi symbols, protested in public against the persecution, disobeyed Nazi laws and local restrictions and defended themselves from verbal insults as well as physical attacks.</p>
<p>Amazingly, Jews of all ages, educational backgrounds and professions resisted in many ways. Some did it repeatedly, others just once. The fact that so many Germans and Austrians individually resisted the Nazis and their policies obliterates the common misconception of the passivity of the persecuted Jews. </p>
<p>Instead, such widespread individual acts of resistance during World War II provide a new view of history: that Jews showed agency in fighting their persecution by the Nazis. And this, in turn, demonstrates that individual resistance is possible under even the worst genocidal circumstances.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210337/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Wolf Gruner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Finding the stories of individual Jews who fought the Nazis publicly and at great peril helped a scholar see history differently: that Jews were not passive. Instead, they actively fought the Nazis.Wolf Gruner, Shapell-Guerin Chair in Jewish Studies and Professor of History; Founding Director, USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and SciencesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2047702023-05-10T12:29:08Z2023-05-10T12:29:08ZOn its 75th birthday, Israel still can’t agree on what it means to be a Jewish state and a democracy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525208/original/file-20230509-27-4vwc7n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=9%2C0%2C6050%2C3431&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Under a portrait of Theodor Herzl, David Ben-Gurion on May 14, 1948, declares the establishment of a Jewish state to be known as the state of Israel.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-israeli-declaration-of-independence-proclaimed-on-14-news-photo/944222584?adppopup=true">Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As Israel celebrates the <a href="https://apnews.com/article/israel-protests-flag-netanyahu-overhaul-354a807daa5c901823a99419ce1eb638">75th anniversary of its founding</a>, and nearly a century and a half after the <a href="https://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/3946.htm">first Zionists came to Palestine from Europe</a>, the core tension behind the country’s establishment – whether a Jewish state could be a democratic state, whether Zionism could accommodate pluralism – is more obvious than ever.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.globalfirepower.com/country-military-strength-detail.php?country_id=israel">Israel today is a military powerhouse</a> and one of 38 members of the influential <a href="https://www.state.gov/the-organization-for-economic-co-operation-and-development-oecd/">Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development</a>, formed in 1961 to promote cooperation among democratic, free-market-oriented governments. </p>
<p>Such strength and economic viability would be unfamiliar to the Jews whose identity was forged in the <a href="https://link.springer.com/10.1007/978-0-387-29904-4_17">European diaspora</a>. There, Judaism and its practitioners shunned political and military power. They saw themselves as a minority facing discrimination, persecution and violence. Power was the domain of gentiles. </p>
<p>Jews, often <a href="https://pluralism.org/diaspora-community">separated from the non-Jewish world</a>, focused instead on developing social institutions to help the poor and weak, not asserting their will as a political community.</p>
<p>This attitude toward the state and politics began to change for Europe’s Jews in the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1486474">aftermath of the French Revolution</a>, when the majority of Jews lived in Europe, especially central and Eastern Europe. As some of the traditional legal and political barriers that kept Jews outside of mainstream society began to crumble, Jews began to integrate into broader society and culture.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525358/original/file-20230510-15-ucshcc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525358/original/file-20230510-15-ucshcc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525358/original/file-20230510-15-ucshcc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525358/original/file-20230510-15-ucshcc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525358/original/file-20230510-15-ucshcc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525358/original/file-20230510-15-ucshcc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525358/original/file-20230510-15-ucshcc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/israel-1948-138054">Expert analysis</a> of the birth of the state of Israel and the plight of the Palestinian people.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>This process also brought about, for some Jews, <a href="https://www.brandeis.edu/now/2011/september/polonskyexcerpt.html">new attitudes toward their Jewish identity</a>.</p>
<p>Many no longer defined themselves as members of a religious community. As many other <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/43852/summary">groups had begun to do in Europe</a>, they saw themselves as belonging to a national community. For some, nationalism also offered a way out of the predicament that Jews faced in Europe: hatred and discrimination, which came to be known as antisemitism.</p>
<p>This <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Zionism">nationalism was called Zionism</a>. And the thinking went that if the Jews are a nation, then they should have their own nation-state, <a href="https://www.fpri.org/article/2015/01/origins-and-evolution-of-zionism/">preferably in Palestine</a>, the Jews’ ancestral homeland. There they could assume control of their historical destiny, not to be at the mercy of non-Jewish nations and rulers.</p>
<p>Zionism sought to solve a particular Jewish problem, gathering Jews dispersed around the world, ending the unique Jewish historical experience of centuries of life under the rule of often hostile governments, and universalizing the Jewish experience by creating a Jewish state and society like all other nations. It was the “natural right of the Jewish people to be <a href="https://main.knesset.gov.il/en/about/pages/declaration.aspx">masters of their own fate</a>, like all other nations, in their own sovereign State,” said Israel’s declaration of independence. </p>
<p>But just how universal would a Jewish state be? Could such a nation be both Jewish and democratic?</p>
<p>That is the central question that, more than a century later, has yet to be answered clearly and affirmatively.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525212/original/file-20230509-19-q9oiaa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A clipping from the London-based Jewish Chronicle by Zionist Theodor Herzl, saying the founding of a Jewish state is the 'solution of the Jewish question.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525212/original/file-20230509-19-q9oiaa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525212/original/file-20230509-19-q9oiaa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525212/original/file-20230509-19-q9oiaa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525212/original/file-20230509-19-q9oiaa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525212/original/file-20230509-19-q9oiaa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525212/original/file-20230509-19-q9oiaa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525212/original/file-20230509-19-q9oiaa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An article by Zionist Theodor Herzl for the London-based Jewish Chronicle, Jan. 17, 1896.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:JewishChronicle1896.jpg">Wikipedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Reconciling universal and particular</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Theodor-Herzl">Theodor Herzl</a>, an Austro-Hungarian Jew acknowledged as the father of modern Zionism, considered this tension in his 1902 utopian novel “<a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/quot-altneuland-quot-theodor-herzl">Altneuland,” or “The Old New Land</a>.” Herzl tried to envision what a future Jewish society in Palestine would look like.</p>
<p>One of the novel’s key plot lines involves a political campaign pitting a xenophobic rabbi who preaches the Jewish character of the community against a secular candidate who advocates inclusivity and cooperation between Jews and Arabs in this imagined Jewish society.</p>
<p>Herzl’s choice: the pluralist candidate prevailed.</p>
<p>But throughout the history of the Zionist movement and the state of Israel, what Herzl described has been a core source of tension. This duality was on full display in <a href="https://main.knesset.gov.il/en/about/pages/declaration.aspx">Israel’s declaration of independence</a>, in many ways the quintessential manifestation of political Zionism.</p>
<p>On the one hand, the document offers a version of Jewish history that emphasizes the uniqueness of the Jewish experience and offers historical justification for the creation of a safe haven for the Jews. </p>
<p>After establishing the attachment of the Jews to their ancestral homeland, the authors of the declaration address the Holocaust, writing that, “the massacre of millions of Jews in Europe … was another clear demonstration of the urgency of solving the problem” of Jewish “homelessness” by “re-establishing” the Jewish state, which would “open the gates of the homeland wide to every Jew.”</p>
<p>At the same time, <a href="https://main.knesset.gov.il/en/about/pages/declaration.aspx">the document pledges</a> that the state of Israel would be faithful to the U.N. charter, protecting the rights of all minorities: “The State … will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex.”</p>
<p>David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, suggested that once the country was created, Zionism would wither away. The nation, as a Jewish state with laws that protect minorities, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41805141">would resolve the contradictions inherent in Zionist ideology</a>.</p>
<p>But as long as the majority of Israelis felt a sense of existential threat – <a href="https://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqresrre1952102300">both from neighboring Arab states</a> and <a href="https://eh.net/encyclopedia/a-brief-economic-history-of-modern-israel/">dire economic conditions</a> – Zionism continued to provide a unifying ideological umbrella to most Israelis.</p>
<h2>After 1967, a transformation</h2>
<p>In the aftermath of <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-39960461">the 1967 Six-Day War</a>, when Israel conquered the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the West Bank from Jordan and the Golan Heights from Syria, the country emerged as a <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/the-1967-six-day-war">regional military and economic power</a>. </p>
<p>It was a time of significant social, political and economic change.</p>
<p>A growing number of Israelis – especially those from the more secular, upper classes – <a href="https://en.idi.org.il/articles/15731">began to question</a> the country’s particularism, which conceived of the country as a shelter for Jews that would protect them from external threats. For these upwardly mobile Israelis, known <a href="https://sunypress.edu/Books/B/Beyond-Post-Zionism">as the post-Zionists</a>, the founding myths of a vulnerable young state no longer seemed relevant. </p>
<p>They wanted Israel to become a fully normal part of the American-led global order. They believed the country should integrate into the region by <a href="https://www.csis.org/analysis/israels-rightward-shift">resolving the conflict between Jews and Arabs</a>. And they wanted to participate in the global economic market as the country transitioned from a state-run economy to the free market.</p>
<p>At the same time, religious Jews and poorer Israelis, mostly descended from Jewish communities of the Arab Middle East and North Africa, resisted this cosmopolitan liberal shift. They held tightly to their Jewish identity, rejecting what they saw as compromises driven by alien ideals like democracy and pluralism. To this group, <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/2009-06-05/ty-article/neo-zionism-101/0000017f-f454-d223-a97f-fdddf95b0000">known as neo-Zionists</a>, the ideal was a Jewish state as protection from the rapid changes engulfing the country.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525215/original/file-20230509-17-msfdbh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Men lying down on the ground with their hands behind their heads, overseen by armed soldiers." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525215/original/file-20230509-17-msfdbh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525215/original/file-20230509-17-msfdbh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525215/original/file-20230509-17-msfdbh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525215/original/file-20230509-17-msfdbh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525215/original/file-20230509-17-msfdbh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=554&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525215/original/file-20230509-17-msfdbh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=554&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525215/original/file-20230509-17-msfdbh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=554&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Palestinians surrender to Israeli soldiers in June 1967 in the occupied territory of the West Bank, during what is known as the Six-Day War.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/palestinians-surrender-to-israeli-soldiers-in-june-1967-in-news-photo/51347132?adppopup=true">Pierre Guillaud/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Palestinian question disappears</h2>
<p>From the 1970s through 2000, much of the post-or-neo-Zionist divide was over the occupation of the West Bank, <a href="https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/west-bank/">where 3 million Palestinians live</a>. Could there be peace between Israelis and Palestinians? </p>
<p><a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40209614">Post-Zionists wanted peace</a>, seeking a two-state solution that would see a Palestinian state next to Israel. <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/2009-06-05/ty-article/neo-zionism-101/0000017f-f454-d223-a97f-fdddf95b0000">Neo-Zionists rejected any territorial compromise</a> with the Palestinians.</p>
<p>In the 21st century, in the aftermath of <a href="https://users.ox.ac.uk/%7Essfc0005/The%20Rise%20and%20Fall%20of%20the%20Oslo%20Peace%20Process.html#:%7E:text=Why%20did%20the%20Oslo%20peace,between%20Israel%20and%20the%20Palestinians.">the peace process collapse</a> and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Israel/The-second-intifada">the second intifada</a>, or Palestinian uprising, the Palestinian issue has virtually disappeared from Israel’s political landscape.</p>
<p>Instead, the country’s attention has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/07/world/middleeast/israel-divisions-judicial-overhaul.html?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ForwardingtheNews_6535443">returned to the old divisions</a> between those advocating policies that would <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2016/03/08/views-of-the-jewish-state-and-the-diaspora/">enhance the Jewish character of the country</a> and those who champion universal policies more favorable to excluded minorities.</p>
<p>The Israeli government that came into power in late 2022 represents the <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-stunning-political-comeback-for-israels-netanyahu-may-give-way-to-governing-nightmare-ahead-193892">nationalistic, particular camp most forcefully</a>. Its main agenda has been a plan <a href="https://theconversation.com/israels-netanyahu-facing-off-against-the-supreme-court-and-proposing-to-limit-judicial-independence-and-3-other-threats-to-israeli-democracy-197096">to diminish and restrict the Israeli Supreme Court’s powers</a>. To the ruling coalition, the court has been <a href="https://theconversation.com/israel-enters-a-dangerous-period-public-protests-swell-over-netanyahus-plan-to-limit-the-power-of-the-israeli-supreme-court-199917">a hindrance in pursuing policies</a> advancing the country’s Jewish nature.</p>
<p>This so-called reform has driven <a href="https://theconversation.com/israel-enters-a-dangerous-period-public-protests-swell-over-netanyahus-plan-to-limit-the-power-of-the-israeli-supreme-court-199917">hundreds of thousands of protesters to the streets</a>. Their demand is a simple one: democracy.</p>
<p>Israel may no longer be a fledgling state – but it has yet to overcome the basic contradiction that has defined it from the very beginning: Can it be Jewish and democratic?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204770/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eran Kaplan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Israel may no longer be a fledgling state – but it has yet to overcome the basic contradiction that has defined it from the very beginning.Eran Kaplan, Rhoda and Richard Goldman Chair in Jewish Studies, San Francisco State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2040252023-04-21T00:15:02Z2023-04-21T00:15:02ZPlagues, poisons and magical thinking – how COVID lab leak hysteria could be straight from the Middle Ages<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521740/original/file-20230419-20-yw3j9w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C7%2C4867%2C3237&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The COVID “lab leak” story clearly isn’t going away soon. The theory that the pandemic began with an accidental release of the virus from a lab in Wuhan recurs like clockwork – most recently in a <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Health/new-report-senate-republicans-doubles-covid-lab-leak/story?id=98656740">report from Senate Republicans</a> in the US this week.</p>
<p>Earlier this year, the US Department of Energy and FBI <a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/us-canada/300819839/fbi-joins-us-energy-department-in-endorsing-covid-lab-leak-theory">endorsed the same theory</a>. It’s a very modern story – but as medievalists, we can tell you we’ve been here before, and we should be wary of simple narratives of blame. </p>
<p>The lab leak theory remains a <a href="https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/2023.03.08-Statement-of-Dr.-Robert-R-Redfield88.pdf">legitimate hypothesis to investigate</a>. Yet much of the discussion surrounding it shows evidence of the “contagion effect” of magical thinking – the belief that a visible effect is somehow contaminated by a hidden essence linked to its origin. </p>
<p>The anxieties still <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/28/lab-leak-natural-spillover-how-origins-covid-us-political-debate">whirling in conservative media</a> echo the escalating accusations of well-poisoning in medieval Europe. These exploded into mass violence in the mid-14th century, and survive in later legends about witches’ ability to concoct poisonous agents. </p>
<p>In an age of antibiotics and scientific explanations, we like to consider ourselves more advanced than our forebears. But our research into the early history of conspiracy theories and xenophobia tells a more complicated story about how magical thinking continues to shape our response to disasters like the pandemic.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1648406861622956033"}"></div></p>
<h2>Poisonous powders and plagues</h2>
<p>Fears of contagion often derive from anxieties about unknown or poorly understood aspects of disease. Who among us never felt compelled to disinfect our groceries or mail during the early months of the pandemic? </p>
<p>Our current research, “The First Era of Fake News: Witch-Hunting, Antisemitism and Islamophobia”, examines how myths that emerged during the Middle Ages are still being used to justify modern atrocities. It shows how the contagion effect also leads to scapegoating and faulty attributions of blame. The threat of disease is layered onto suspicious “others” – such as Jews during the Middle Ages, or Chinese labs today. </p>
<p>When Jews were accused of poisoning wells to cause outbreaks of plague in 1348-49, the “contagion” associated with them was both literal and metaphorical. Jews were accused of <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673699903963?via%3Dihub">concocting poisonous powders</a> from spiders, toads and human remains – the ingredients form a running list of items invoking disgust and fear of infection. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/covid-19-why-lab-leak-theory-is-back-despite-little-new-evidence-162215">COVID-19: why lab-leak theory is back despite little new evidence</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<p>But Jews were also considered suspicious simply because they were Jews – exotic religious outsiders who might have connections with coreligionists in other cities, or who might travel far from home. Jews were feared to contaminate Christian communities by their very presence, and medieval preachers weren’t shy about saying so. </p>
<p>We can call this kind of contagion “magical” – fear that simple contact with a mistrusted outsider somehow makes us vulnerable to influences or activities we do not understand. We should take heed: in the case of well-poisoning accusations, those fears led to the wholesale slaughter of Jewish communities in Central Europe. </p>
<p>Individual Jews were tortured into elaborate confessions of guilt, then murdered along with their communities. They were blamed for the plague’s spread and devastation. The contagion effect easily convinced medieval Christians that a terrible disease must originate with people already considered suspicious.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521753/original/file-20230419-14-eipspl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521753/original/file-20230419-14-eipspl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521753/original/file-20230419-14-eipspl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521753/original/file-20230419-14-eipspl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521753/original/file-20230419-14-eipspl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521753/original/file-20230419-14-eipspl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521753/original/file-20230419-14-eipspl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fear and superstition: an etching depicts medieval flagellants praying for protection against the plague.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Conspiracy and Christianity</h2>
<p>There are similar fears of magical contagion in theories about the lab leak being the pandemic’s origin. Blame is a powerful motivator. We continue to be swayed by the idea that some specific agency must be responsible, rather than unpredictable processes of virus mutation. </p>
<p>Even China has embraced this logic, with various suggestions made about the virus emerging somewhere (anywhere) outside its borders. The contagion effect has also been manipulated for political advantage. Donald Trump’s early fear mongering about a “<a href="https://theconversation.com/donald-trumps-chinese-virus-the-politics-of-naming-136796">China virus</a>” was a convenient distraction from the failures of his own administration in the early days of the pandemic. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/young-people-may-be-more-likely-to-believe-in-conspiracy-theories-that-deny-covid-facts-heres-how-to-respond-188318">Young people may be more likely to believe in conspiracy theories that deny COVID facts – here's how to respond</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Like medieval civic leaders, it was easier for some politicians to assuage the rage and anxiety of people with stories of blame than by acknowledging failures and unknowns.</p>
<p>There are bad as well as good reasons to investigate the lab-leak hypothesis. Using the theory as a way to target and punish enemies is a bad reason. So is the <em>a priori</em> assumption that nefarious intentions lie somewhere behind every major event, a cornerstone of <a href="http://sks.to/conspiracy">conspiratorial thinking both ancient and modern</a>. </p>
<p>We should be on the alert for this style of thinking. It tends to get people killed. When Jews were accused of poisoning wells in medieval Europe, they were <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315521091-5/pestis-manufacta-jon-arrizabalaga">believed by many</a> to be doing so “in order to destroy and eradicate the whole Christian religion”.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/chinas-only-now-revealed-crucial-covid-19-origins-data-earlier-disclosure-may-have-saved-us-3-years-of-political-argy-bargy-202344">China's only now revealed crucial COVID-19 origins data. Earlier disclosure may have saved us 3 years of political argy-bargy</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Viral magical thinking</h2>
<p>In some political quarters, the lab-leak theory operates as the thin edge of a similar civilisational struggle, with the Chinese as the villains working in secret on various schemes to dominate or destroy Western democracies. </p>
<p>Such accusations attempt to impose coherence on a profoundly uncertain situation, and suggest a reassuring narrative of clear cause and effect rather than random chance. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-ufos-to-covid-conspiracy-theories-we-all-struggle-with-the-truth-out-there-163483">From UFOs to COVID conspiracy theories, we all struggle with the 'truth out there'</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>China’s tight-lipped approach to information-sharing <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2023/02/covid-pandemic-origin-china-lab-leak-theory-energy-department/673230/">isn’t helping to allay suspicions</a>. In the eyes of lab-leak theory advocates, the desire to hide information suggests something more nefarious than a simple desire to avoid blame. </p>
<p>But embracing an argument built on a tissue of circumstantial evidence is also part of the conspiracy theory playbook: magical thinking enters the grey zone of unanswered questions to create elaborate narratives of false reassurance. </p>
<p>Some questions about the origin of COVID-19 may never be answered. For many, that is an unpalatable idea. Yet if we are to intervene in this historical pattern of overreaction, conspiracy theory and blame, we need to be honest about the limits of our knowledge.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204025/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simone Celine Marshall and Hannah Johnson have received Fulbright funding for their project, "The First Era of Fake News: Witch-Hunting, Antisemitism and Islamophobia".</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Work on this project is being supported by a Fulbright fellowship. Neither Fulbright International nor Fulbright NZ pays fellowship recipients for publication. The authors' opinions are entirely their own, and do not represent the views of any organisation.</span></em></p>In an age of antibiotics and scientific reason, we like to think we’re more rational than our forebears. But the early history of conspiracy theories suggests some behaviours persist through time.Simone Celine Marshall, Professor of Medieval Literature, University of OtagoHannah Johnson, Professor of English, University of PittsburghLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2019202023-04-19T12:44:57Z2023-04-19T12:44:57ZUS giving to Israeli nonprofits – how much Jews and Christians donate and where the money goes<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521062/original/file-20230414-22-tyvncl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C284%2C4827%2C2687&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Israeli political conflicts could change the giving patterns of U.S. Jews. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/anti-reform-protesters-wave-israeli-flags-chant-slogans-and-news-photo/1251806244">Matan Golan/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Hundreds of thousands of Israelis have been protesting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/israel-is-facing-twin-existential-crises-what-is-benjamin-netanyahu-doing-to-solve-them-200820">proposed judiciary overhauls</a> and the <a href="https://www.vox.com/world-politics/23629744/why-israelis-protesting-netanyahu-far-right-government-judiciary-overhaul">continued erosion</a> of Palestinian human rights for months. </p>
<p>It’s possible that what’s happening loudly and without precedent on the streets of Israel is having a quieter but significant effect in the United States – which has the <a href="https://www.jewishagency.org/jewish-population-5782/">largest Jewish community outside Israel</a>.</p>
<p>American Jews may have concerns about the reforms themselves. In addition, the current Israeli administration counts among its supporters politicians who want to <a href="https://religionnews.com/2023/01/11/why-israels-orthodox-jewish-parties-want-to-narrow-the-countrys-law-of-return/">tighten restrictions on whom Israel considers to be Jewish</a> in ways that would exclude some U.S. Jews. <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-63780509">Many of Netanyahu’s allies are also anti-LGBTQ</a>. While some American Jews might share these views, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/politics-israel-government-united-states-judaism-benjamin-netanyahu-c19f1de03e19428958181ebd2dcb1461">they are not representative</a>.</p>
<h2>Billions donated a year</h2>
<p>Israeli nonprofits amassed <a href="https://www.cbs.gov.il/he/mediarelease/DocLib/2022/253/08_22_253e.pdf">US$35.3 billion in total income in 2015</a>, roughly $45 billion in 2023 dollars, from all sources. That total included revenue like university tuition and concert ticket sales, as well as $4.4 billion – roughly $5.6 billion in 2023 dollars – in donations from all sources, foreign and domestic.</p>
<p>Donations from <a href="https://www.ilp.sites.tau.ac.il/_files/ugd/0e9d9e_f2c0ec8d1a06476e9192b8e62605dddc.pdf">outside Israel accounted for $2.8 billion</a> of those gifts, about two-thirds of this kind of funding. We analyzed <a href="https://www.guidestar.org/">Guidestar’s database of nonprofit tax records</a> to identify U.S. organizations sending money to Israel.</p>
<p>Israeli nonprofits, such as <a href="https://afmda.org/">Magen David Adom</a>, or Red Shield – Israel’s equivalent to the Red Cross and Red Crescent – and the <a href="https://www.k-shoa.org/index.php?language=eng">Foundation for the Welfare of Holocaust Victims</a>, rely on foreign donors for more than half of their philanthropic funding.</p>
<p>Much of this money, but not all of it, comes from <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-jewish-giving-to-israel-is-losing-ground-100946">American Jews and Jewish organizations</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=7rkRD3AAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=a">I am a researcher</a> who focuses on how nonprofits get the resources they need to deliver their programs and services. I worked with <a href="https://en-law.tau.ac.il/profile/gfeit_74">Galia Feit</a> and <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=GRVc-3gAAAAJ">Osnat Hazan</a>, scholars based at <a href="https://english.tau.ac.il/">Tel Aviv University’s</a> <a href="https://www.ilp.sites.tau.ac.il/">Institute for Law and Philanthropy</a>, to get <a href="https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/who-gives-and-who-gets-the-challenges-of-following-the-money-from-the-u-s-to-israel/">a clearer picture of this funding</a> – which we studied because it was from the most recent year for which comprehensive data is available. </p>
<h2>Many different interests</h2>
<p>We’ve found that the donations that Israeli nonprofits get from the U.S. are notable in part for the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-021-00433-8">variety of donors</a>.</p>
<p>Israelis who now live outside of Israel, non-Israeli Jews who consider Israel a Jewish homeland, and people who are neither Israeli nor Jewish alike help fund these organizations.</p>
<p>For non-Jews, Israel represents what is known as a <a href="https://scalar.usc.edu/works/boundary-objects-guide/boundary-objects">boundary object</a> – different groups assign different meanings to the same thing. Depending on their <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/05/11/jewish-americans-in-2020/">particular religious and cultural identities</a>, American Jews have many different ideas of what Israel represents. But nearly all of these ideas differ from the idea of Israel held by, for example, <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2021/05/26/as-israel-increasingly-relies-on-us-evangelicals-for-support-younger-ones-are-walking-away-what-polls-show/">evangelical Christians</a>. </p>
<p>No matter the motivation or rationale, the end result is that funds supporting Israel go to a wide array of nonprofits in the same country. </p>
<h2>Collecting and parsing data</h2>
<p>The first <a href="https://bir.brandeis.edu/bitstream/handle/10192/39/TheNewPhilanthropy.pdf">comprehensive study</a> assessing giving to Israel focused on Jewish philanthropy. Published in 2012, using 2007 data, the authors estimated that 774 organizations raised $2.1 billion, which would be about $3.06 billion in 2023 dollars.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2018-12-09/ty-article-magazine/.premium/inside-the-evangelical-money-flowing-into-the-west-bank/0000017f-f4b0-d460-afff-fff6add90000">study of evangelical Christian giving</a> to Israeli nonprofits covering a longer time period – from 2008 through 2016 – identified <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1M-ItrvTeoqTb4qyqL-EFTcw9MYvsPt29sWIIp26z3ng/edit">11 organizations</a> donating an estimated total of $50 million to $65 million over the entire period – less than $82 million in 2023 dollars. While this is less than 3% of all of the funds Israeli nonprofits obtained in foreign donations, we believe it’s worth watching this trend in part because the amounts grew in the period we reviewed.</p>
<p>From this study we were able to identify 1,179 funding organizations granting <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-021-00433-8">a total of $1.8 billion</a> to Israeli organizations.</p>
<p><iframe id="rtd8P" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/rtd8P/3/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>3 main kinds of funders</h2>
<p>We sorted funding organizations that support Israel into three main categories and one catchall.</p>
<p><strong>Centralized organizations</strong></p>
<p>These are major funders located outside Israel that distribute funds aggregated from multiple individuals and Jewish organizations. These include national organizations like the <a href="https://www.jnf.org/">Jewish National Fund</a> and the <a href="https://www.jewishfederations.org/federation-finder">146 local Jewish federations</a> located in such places as Cleveland, New York City and Los Angeles that fund local causes such as Jewish summer camps and education about Israel and the Holocaust, and also send money abroad.</p>
<p>Other examples include <a href="https://bbyo.org/">BBYO</a>, a national pluralistic movement for Jewish teens where I used to work; <a href="https://www.hillel.org/">Hillel International</a>, through which Jews on college campuses worship, connect and do service projects; and <a href="https://www.birthrightisrael.com/">Birthright Israel</a>, which provides free trips to young Jews to help them forge connections with Israel.</p>
<p>Centralized organizations have <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691170732/the-american-jewish-philanthropic-complex">historically channeled most of the funds</a> donated to Israeli organizations from abroad. </p>
<p>The 43 funders in this category represented only 4% of all funders but gave $707 million to Israeli nonprofits – 39% of the total donations.</p>
<p><strong>‘Friends of’ organizations</strong></p>
<p>These groups are smaller than centralized organizations. They mainly collect funds to support a single Israeli nonprofit, such as the <a href="https://afipo.org/">American Friends of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra</a>, the <a href="https://www.afhu.org/">American Friends of Hebrew University</a> and the <a href="http://www.naf-iolr.org/?page_id=18">North American Friends of Israel Oceanographic Research</a>.</p>
<p>The 349 friends of funders we identified accounted for 30% of all funders and $752 million, or 41%, of donations.</p>
<p><strong>Family foundations</strong></p>
<p>These charities are typically founded, funded and governed by members of a single family. Examples here include the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation and the Bloomberg Family Foundation. Family foundations represent 25% of all funders and donated $87 million in 2015 – but only 5% of all the funds we assessed. </p>
<p>About 15% of the giving to Israeli nonprofits from the U.S. organizations we studied didn’t appear to originate in any of these three main categories.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521065/original/file-20230414-22-g3ace1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Well-dressed older people gather for a festive meal in a pretty venue." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521065/original/file-20230414-22-g3ace1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521065/original/file-20230414-22-g3ace1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521065/original/file-20230414-22-g3ace1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521065/original/file-20230414-22-g3ace1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521065/original/file-20230414-22-g3ace1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521065/original/file-20230414-22-g3ace1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521065/original/file-20230414-22-g3ace1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The American Friends of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra held a 2019 gala at a private home in California.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/richard-ziman-speaks-at-the-american-friends-of-the-israel-news-photo/1151090111?adppopup=true">Tasia Wells/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>4 categories of Israeli nonprofits</h2>
<p>There is less data on the Israeli groups getting this funding as opposed to the foreign groups making the donations, but we found enough information to identify <a href="https://www.ilp.sites.tau.ac.il/_files/ugd/0e9d9e_fda254b52723480da7669c35b86ee1dd.pdf">four main causes</a> based on either the identity of the funders themselves or the groups they fund.</p>
<p><strong>Jewish religious institutions</strong>
Israeli synagogues and yeshivas – Orthodox rabbinical seminaries – received $266 million, around 15% of all funds.</p>
<p><strong>Higher education</strong>
Donations to Israeli colleges and universities totaled $206 million, about 11% of the total.</p>
<p><strong>Health</strong>
Hospitals and medical research centers such as the <a href="https://www.hadassah.org.il/en/">Hadassah Medical Center</a> and the <a href="https://jewishmedicalassociationuk.org/medicine-in-israel/hospitals/western-galilee-hospital/">Western Galilee Hospital</a> obtained $81 million in donations, about 4% of all foreign philanthropic funds. </p>
<p><strong>Christian causes</strong>
Christian-focused organizations, such as <a href="https://fconline.foundationcenter.org/fdo-grantmaker-profile/">Outreach Foundation of the Presbyterian Church</a> and the <a href="https://www.ifcj.org/">International Fellowship of Christians and Jews</a>, donated $56.4 million.</p>
<h2>Changes ahead?</h2>
<p>This picture has no doubt changed. For example, the <a href="https://www.centralfundofisrael.org/">Central Fund of Israel</a> is reportedly a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/20/business/israel-judges-kohelet.html">major backer of the Kohelet Policy Forum</a> that is pushing many of the judicial reforms. However, that charity did not provide this detail in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-a-990-form-a-charity-accounting-expert-explains-175019">mandatory 990 form it filed with the Internal Revenue Service</a> for 2015. </p>
<p>We are beginning to study data from 2017 and 2019, which is only now becoming available. A group called the <a href="https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/475405929">American Friends of Kohelet Policy Forum</a> does show up in the newer data. Its connection to the Central Fund of Israel is unknown, but its inclusion is notable for illustrating the influence that U.S. organizational donors may have in Israel.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521069/original/file-20230414-16-vg0f8i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A gray-haired man stands next to the U.S. and Israeli flags while speaking at an event." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521069/original/file-20230414-16-vg0f8i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521069/original/file-20230414-16-vg0f8i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521069/original/file-20230414-16-vg0f8i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521069/original/file-20230414-16-vg0f8i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521069/original/file-20230414-16-vg0f8i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521069/original/file-20230414-16-vg0f8i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521069/original/file-20230414-16-vg0f8i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at the Kohelet Policy Forum conference in Jerusalem in 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/isreali-prime-minister-benjamin-netanyahu-speaks-at-the-news-photo/1192534346?adppopup=true">Menahem Kahana/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There are signs that <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-jewish-giving-to-israel-is-losing-ground-100946">giving from Jewish organizations to causes in Israel is decreasing</a> even as giving to Jewish causes outside of Israel increases. The <a href="https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/exclusive-jfnas-long-term-plan-for-aid-to-ukraine/">Jewish Federation of North America’s shifting view on Ukraine</a> is one example of this. Rather than viewing the war as a short-term emergency, the organization is planning for long-term, ongoing support. </p>
<p>And many of the nonprofits in our study were subject to the <a href="https://nff.org/learn/survey">same pressures and problems</a> many nonprofits experienced around the world at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic: an increased demand for services at odds with a reduction in donations, the loss of volunteers and a scramble for new ways to work when in-person operations became restricted or impossible.</p>
<p>Between <a href="https://apnews.com/article/politics-israel-government-united-states-judaism-benjamin-netanyahu-c19f1de03e19428958181ebd2dcb1461">heightened concerns over Israel’s policies</a>, <a href="https://www.brandeis.edu/jewish-experience/alumni-friends/2022/september/alumni-roundtable-judaism.html">growing numbers of antisemitic incidents</a> and increasingly pressing social justice issues at home, we believe that Jewish federations and other local funding groups that historically made fundraising for Israeli causes a high priority may experience more pressure from their donors to instead support groups doing work closer to home.</p>
<p>We have no doubt that the <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/2023-03-16/ty-article/.premium/top-democrats-call-to-make-u-s-aid-to-israel-conditional-on-two-state-solution/00000186-eba4-d048-adc6-ffbe82cf0000">political situations in both Israel and the U.S.</a> will only exacerbate these trends. Support from local communities and centralized organizations may <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/472070/democrats-sympathies-middle-east-shift-palestinians.aspx">shift along with changing political winds</a> as <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/07/opinion/benjamin-netanyahu-israel-protests.html">American Jews face calls</a> to <a href="https://www.insidephilanthropy.com/home/2023/2/8/with-the-right-wing-in-charge-in-israel-jewish-donors-cant-afford-to-turn-away">take sides in Israeli current events</a>.</p>
<p>Ultimately, what it means to support Israel, who gives, and what they are giving may be changing as <a href="https://cdn.fedweb.org/fed-42/2/JoinStatementFederations.pdf">American Jews grapple with what is happening in Israel</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201920/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jamie Levine Daniel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Political situations in both Israel and the US could be changing prior patterns with these donations, which fund hospitals, museums and a wide array of organizations.Jamie Levine Daniel, Associate Professor, Paul H. O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2010382023-03-06T13:35:42Z2023-03-06T13:35:42ZWhat is a pogrom? Israeli mob attack has put a century-old word in the spotlight<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513291/original/file-20230302-14-u09672.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=94%2C23%2C5128%2C3444&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Palestinians look out from a damaged building next to scorched cars in the town of Hawara, near the West Bank city of Nablus, on Feb. 27, 2023.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/IsraelPalestinians/b86627dc8b494251a271b1aa0a4f4ec6/photo?Query=west%20bank&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=25904&currentItemNo=42">AP Photo/Nasser Nasser</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Following the murder of two Israeli brothers in the West Bank on Feb. 26, 2023, a mob of around <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-02-27/ty-article/.highlight/why-no-one-should-be-surprised-by-settlers-rampaging-through-a-west-bank-town/00000186-939a-d9b3-a587-bfbea51c0000">400 Israelis attacked</a> the <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/settlers-said-to-rampage-in-huwara-after-deadly-attack-set-fire-to-cars-and-homes/">Palestinian town of Huwara</a>. They <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-02-26/ty-article/.premium/following-deadly-west-bank-shooting-israeli-settlers-rampage-town-of-hawara/00000186-8ed8-d525-a9ef-9ef8f87f0000">torched dozens of homes and cars</a>, leaving one dead and hundreds wounded before being stopped by Israeli security forces. </p>
<p>Though some government leaders – including the <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/police-to-probe-far-right-mk-for-remarks-backing-violent-west-bank-settler-rampage/">head of the parliament’s National Security Committee</a> – praised the mob or <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-03-01/ty-article/.premium/palestinian-village-of-hawara-needs-to-be-wiped-out-israels-finance-minister/00000186-9d56-df48-ab96-bd576aac0000?fbclid=IwAR2MgEVZAfnW2rPVlBaYq9auXvnTlZqYf_64NPVnuZq5cDZaPKoBZ7xcfUg">called</a> for the state itself to erase the town’s existence, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned them for “taking the law into their own hands.” Others – including the <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog-february-28-2023/">top Israeli general</a> in the West Bank – used even stronger language, calling the attack a “pogrom,” as did a <a href="https://twitter.com/IsraelHistSoc/status/1630565499045019649/photo/1">statement against the attack</a> by the Israeli Historical Society, signed by some of Israel’s most renowned historians. </p>
<p>According to historian of Russian Jewry <a href="https://www.historians.org/research-and-publications/perspectives-on-history/december-2007/in-memoriam-john-doyle-klier">John Klier</a>, <a href="https://yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Pogroms">a pogrom is</a> “an outbreak of mass violence directed against a minority religious, ethnic or social group [that] usually implies central instigation and control, or at minimum the passivity of local authorities.” </p>
<p>In other words, it is an explosion of mob violence by members of a majority group against a minority, with at least passive support of the state. Pogroms remind the minority of their lower place in the social order.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://jewish.cofc.edu/documents/jewish-studies-faculty-and-staff-bios/joshua-shanes,-associate-director.php">scholar of modern Jewish history</a>, I am very aware that the use of this term is highly contentious. Because of their pivotal role in modern Jewish history in general – and the birth of Zionism and Israel in particular – pogroms have an oversize place in Jewish collective memory. </p>
<h2>Russian origins</h2>
<p>The Russian word was first <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/pogroms">made infamous</a> around the world after a series of such attacks broke out against Jews across Russian-controlled Ukraine <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/russian-and-east-european-history/russians-jews-and-pogroms-18811882?format=HB&isbn=9780521895484">in 1881 and 1882</a> in response to the assassination of Czar Alexander II, which was blamed on “the Jews.” The 250 pogroms <a href="https://yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Pogroms">killed dozens of people</a> and caused extensive property damage. </p>
<p>Despite the relatively low death toll compared with 20th-century pogroms, these first pogroms played a pivotal role in Jewish history. Millions of Jews abandoned hope in Russia and moved to the United States, while a small cadre considered Jewish national options in Palestine instead. In other words, the pogroms partially gave birth to modern Zionism. </p>
<p>One lone pogrom in 1903 in <a href="https://yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Kishinev">Kishiniv</a>, Moldova, which killed 49 Jews, had a particularly powerful effect on Jewish politics at the time. It received worldwide condemnation, including by the renowned Russian authors Leo Tolstoy and Maksim Gorky, and was the subject of a powerful Hebrew poem, “<a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/9781631495991">The City of Slaughter</a>,” that galvanized support for militant Zionism. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513294/original/file-20230302-2048-ey7yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man wearing a black jacket holding loose sheets of papers with lists of names on them." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513294/original/file-20230302-2048-ey7yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513294/original/file-20230302-2048-ey7yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513294/original/file-20230302-2048-ey7yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513294/original/file-20230302-2048-ey7yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513294/original/file-20230302-2048-ey7yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513294/original/file-20230302-2048-ey7yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513294/original/file-20230302-2048-ey7yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A list of all 187 victims of a 1919 pogrom in the Ukrainian town of Dubova.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/Documents1919Pogrom/9427339e04d94dfab7032cdd817113f4/photo?Query=pogrom%20jews%20&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=72&currentItemNo=25">AP Photo/David Karp</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Often the government was in fact not behind the violence and sometimes even opposed it. This was particularly <a href="https://upittpress.org/books/9780822985259/">the case in 1881</a>, for example, when Russian forces even occasionally fired on the rampaging mob. </p>
<p>Critically, however, the dominant ethnic groups, which included Ukrainians and Russians, assumed that the Russian government was on their side. After all, there was extensive, legal discrimination against the Jewish minority and constant incendiary rhetoric by government officials.</p>
<p>In subsequent decades, the level of violence in Eastern Europe dramatically increased, often with the open support of the Russian authorities. Thousands were killed during two years of unrest following the first Russian Revolution in 1905, while over 100,000 Jews were killed in <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250116253/inthemidstofcivilizedeurope">Ukrainian pogroms</a> from 1918 to 1921. Pogroms continued throughout the interwar period, leading up to the Holocaust, and <a href="https://yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Kielce">beyond it</a>.</p>
<h2>From Russia to Israel</h2>
<p>Although the word pogrom today has grown beyond its initial Russian Jewish setting – it can describe white violence against African Americans like the <a href="https://forward.com/culture/470529/the-tulsa-massacre-wasnt-a-race-riot-it-was-a-pogrom/">1919 Tulsa race massacre</a> – it is still widely associated with those East European events. Using it to describe this week’s attack on Huwara – or <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/2021-09-30/ty-article-opinion/a-pogrom-and-silence/0000017f-e3d0-d7b2-a77f-e3d7bac80000">other similar attacks</a> in Israel or Palestine – effectively puts Israel in the place of the Jews’ historic persecutors. This is a highly uncomfortable position for many Jewish people, particularly in Israel. </p>
<p>It is not surprising, then, that critics on social media have argued that this cannot be a pogrom because it was not directed by the state, or because it is the result of a two-sided ethnic conflict, not an act of one-sided oppression. </p>
<p>However, these comments are neither historically accurate nor fair to the current situation. In today’s Israel, minority rights have been suppressed as well, particularly in the West Bank. Palestinians in the West Bank, unlike the Jewish settlers next to them, face violence and discrimination in nearly every aspect of their lives. In other words, Israeli Jews and Palestinians are today not equal partners in an ethnic rivalry. </p>
<p>Moreover, as in czarist Russia, the state has also suggested its sympathy for violence through incendiary rhetoric and failure to prosecute violent Jews. In fact, historical records show far more rioters <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/russian-and-east-european-history/russians-jews-and-pogroms-18811882">were arrested and punished by Russia in 1881</a> than in Huwara this week, where only <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/israel-frees-all-settler-suspects-arrested-during-huwara-rampage/">eight of the 400 Jewish offenders were arrested</a>, only to be quickly released. </p>
<p>This failure to punish any of the perpetrators sends a message of state support for the violence even clearer than the open support in statements by leaders of the government security apparatus. Some Israeli government officials <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-03-02/ty-article/.premium/no-such-thing-as-settler-violence-far-right-israeli-minister-excuses-hawara-rampage/00000186-a2cd-d45a-a9ef-beef9ee40000">even argue</a> that by definition there can be no such thing as Jewish pogrom. </p>
<p>As to why the Israeli general, the Israeli Historical Society, or the <a href="https://twitter.com/FoxmanAbraham/status/1630028668788408320">former head of the Anti-Defamation League, Abe Foxman</a>, among others, would use the term if it is so charged? Perhaps precisely because Jewish people using the word to describe the attack on Huwara know that it’s deeply uncomfortable, and that it might shock Israelis to address the violence more appropriately.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201038/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joshua Shanes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A scholar of Jewish history explains how the term ‘pogrom’ lives in Jewish collective memory and why its use can be highly contentious.Joshua Shanes, Associate Professor of Jewish Studies, College of CharlestonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1994242023-02-09T09:05:11Z2023-02-09T09:05:11ZWhat does the Bible say about homosexuality? For starters, Jesus wasn’t a homophobe<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508641/original/file-20230207-21-ed2xy3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Pope Francis was recently asked about his views on homosexuality. He <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/pope-francis-says-laws-criminalising-lgbt-people-are-sin-an-injustice-2023-02-05/">reportedly replied</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This (laws around the world criminalising LGBTI people) is not right. Persons with homosexual tendencies are children of God. God loves them. God accompanies them … condemning a person like this is a sin. Criminalising people with homosexual tendencies is an injustice.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This isn’t the first time Pope Francis has shown himself to be a <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium.html">progressive leader</a> when it comes to, among other things, gay Catholics. </p>
<p>It’s a stance that has <a href="https://theconversation.com/pope-francis-visit-to-africa-comes-at-a-defining-moment-for-the-catholic-church-197633">drawn the ire</a> of some high-ranking bishops and ordinary Catholics, both on the African continent and elsewhere in the world.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/pope-francis-visit-to-africa-comes-at-a-defining-moment-for-the-catholic-church-197633">Pope Francis' visit to Africa comes at a defining moment for the Catholic church</a>
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<p>Some of these Catholics may argue that Pope Francis’s approach to LGBTI matters is a misinterpretation of Scripture (or the Bible). But is it? </p>
<p>Scripture is particularly important for Christians. When church leaders refer to “the Bible” or “the Scriptures”, they usually mean “the Bible as we understand it through our theological doctrines”. The Bible is always interpreted by our churches through their particular theological lenses. </p>
<p>As a biblical scholar, I would suggest that church leaders who use their cultures and theology to exclude homosexuals don’t read Scripture carefully. Instead, they allow their patriarchal fears to distort it, seeking to find in the Bible proof-texts that will support attitudes of exclusion. </p>
<p>There are several instances in the Bible that underscore my point.</p>
<h2>Love of God and neighbour</h2>
<p>Mark’s Gospel, found in the New Testament, records that Jesus entered the Jerusalem temple on three occasions. First, he visited briefly, and “looked around at everything” (<a href="https://www.bible.com/en-GB/bible/111/mrk.11.11">11:11</a>). </p>
<p>On the second visit he acted, driving “out those who were buying and selling in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who were selling doves” (<a href="https://www.bible.com/en-GB/bible/111/mrk.11.15">11:15</a>). Jesus specifically targeted those who exploited the poorest of the people coming to the temple. </p>
<p>On his third visit, Jesus spent considerable time in the temple itself (<a href="https://www.bible.com/en-GB/bible/111/MRK.11.NIV">11:27-13:2</a>). He met the full array of temple leadership, including chief priests, teachers of the law and elders. Each of these leadership sectors used their interpretation of Scripture to exclude rather than to include. </p>
<p>The “ordinary people” (<a href="https://www.bible.com/en-GB/bible/111/mrk.11.32">11:32</a> and <a href="https://www.bible.com/en-GB/bible/111/mrk.12.12">12:12</a>) recognised that Jesus proclaimed a gospel of inclusion. They eagerly embraced him as he walked through the temple. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.bible.com/bible/100/MRK.12.24.NASB1995">Mark 12:24</a>, Jesus addresses the Sadducees, who were the traditional high priests of ancient Israel and played an important role in the temple. Among those who confronted Jesus, they represented the group that held to a conservative theological position and used their interpretation of the Scripture to exclude. Jesus said to them:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Is this not the reason you are mistaken, that you do not understand the Scriptures or the power of God?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Jesus recognised that they chose to interpret Scripture in a way that prevented it from being understood in non-traditional ways. Thus they limited God’s power to be different from traditional understandings of him. Jesus was saying God refused to be the exclusive property of the Sadducees. The ordinary people who followed Jesus understood that he represented a different understanding of God.</p>
<p>This message of inclusion becomes even clearer when Jesus is later confronted by a single scribe (<a href="https://www.bible.com/en-GB/bible/100/mrk.12.28">12:28</a>). In answer to the scribe’s question on the most important laws, Jesus summarised the theological ethic of his gospel: love of God and love of neighbour (<a href="https://www.bible.com/en-GB/bible/111/MRK.12.NIV">12:29-31</a>).</p>
<h2>Inclusion, not exclusion</h2>
<p>Those who would exclude homosexuals from God’s kingdom choose to ignore Jesus, turning instead to the Old Testament – most particularly to <a href="https://www.bible.com/en-GB/bible/111/GEN.19.NIV">Genesis 19</a>, the destruction of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Their interpretation of the story is that it is about homosexuality. It isn’t. It relates to hospitality.</p>
<p>The story begins in <a href="https://www.bible.com/en-GB/bible/111/GEN.18.NIV">Genesis 18</a> when three visitors (God and two angels, appearing as “men”) came before <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Abraham">Abraham</a>, a Hebrew patriarch. What did Abraham and his wife Sarah do? They offered hospitality. </p>
<p>The two angels then left Abraham and the Lord and travelled into <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%2019%3A1-29&version=NIV">Sodom (19:1)</a> where they met Lot, Abraham’s nephew. What did Lot do? He offered hospitality. The two incidents of hospitality are explained in exactly the same language. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%2019%3A1-29&version=NIV">“men of Sodom” (19:4)</a>, as the Bible describes them, didn’t offer the same hospitality to these angels in disguise. Instead they sought to humiliate them (<a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%2019%3A1-29&version=NIV">and Lot (19:9)</a>) by threatening to rape them. We know they were heterosexual because Lot, in attempting to protect himself and his guests, offered his virgin daughters to them <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%2019%3A1-29&version=NIV">(19:8)</a>. </p>
<p>Heterosexual rape of men by men is a common act of humiliation. This is an extreme form of inhospitality. The story contrasts extreme hospitality (Abraham and Lot) with the extreme inhospitality of the men of Sodom. It is a story of inclusion, not exclusion. Abraham and Lot included the strangers; the men of Sodom excluded them.</p>
<h2>Clothed in Christ</h2>
<p>When confronted by the inclusive gospel of Jesus and a careful reading of the story of Sodom as one about hospitality, those who disavow Pope Francis’s approach will likely jump to other Scriptures. Why? Because they have a patriarchal agenda and are looking for any Scripture that might support their position.</p>
<p>But the other Scriptures they use also require careful reading. <a href="https://www.bible.com/en-GB/bible/111/lev.18.22">Leviticus 18:22</a> and <a href="https://www.bible.com/en-GB/bible/111/lev.20.13">20:13</a>, for example, are not about “homosexuality” as we now understand it – as the caring, loving and sexual relationship between people of the same sex. These texts are about relationships that cross boundaries of purity (between clean and unclean) and ethnicity (Israelite and Canaanite). </p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Galatians%203%3A28&version=NRSVUE">Galatians 3:28</a> in the New Testament, Paul the apostle yearns for a Christian community where:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Paul built his theological argument on the Jew-Greek distinction, but then extended it to the slave-free distinction and the male-female distinction. Christians – no matter which church they belong to – should follow Paul and extend it to the heterosexual-homosexual distinction. </p>
<p>We are all “clothed in Christ” (<a href="https://www.bible.com/en-GB/bible/111/gal.3.27">3:27</a>): God only sees Christ, not our different sexualities.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199424/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gerald West does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Those who exclude any groups of people from God’s kingdom choose to ignore the teaching of Jesus.Gerald West, Senior Professor of Biblical Studies, University of KwaZulu-NatalLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1982982023-01-26T19:06:11Z2023-01-26T19:06:11ZDisabled people were Holocaust victims, too: they were excluded from German society and murdered by Nazi programs<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506003/original/file-20230124-13-xzjg5i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=113%2C2%2C1681%2C1096&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Five handicapped Jewish prisoners, photographed for propaganda purposes, who arrived in Buchenwald after Kristallnacht.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Holocaust Memorial Museum/Photograph #13132</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When Dominic Perrottet admitted to wearing a Nazi uniform to his 21st birthday party, he <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-01-12/dominic-perrottet-apologises-for-wearing-nazi-costume-to-21st/101849280">apologised</a> to Jews and veterans – but not to the other groups who were persecuted by the Nazis, including disabled people. </p>
<p>However, disabled people were the first victims of the Holocaust. They were murdered in a number of Nazi programs specifically targeting them, as well as those that targeted Jews, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinti">Sinti</a>, and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Rom">Roma</a>. </p>
<p>In 2023, International Holocaust Remembrance Day marks 90 years since the Nazis assumed power, and immediately began their persecution of everyone they thought of as “inferior”.</p>
<p>The Nazis frequently described disabled people as “useless eaters”, “empty human shells”, and “life unworthy of life”. They chose these labels to evoke images of people who were incapable of doing anything, and so needed to be kept in institutions for their entire lives, wasting the tax dollars of non-disabled people. </p>
<p>A suite of policies implemented by the Nazis forced disabled people out of German society and into institutions, where they worked until they were murdered.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/uvrwnJ6hQ9s?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Disabled people were the first victims of the Holocaust.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Most disabled people lived in the community</h2>
<p>In early 20th-century Germany, most disabled people lived in the community. In the mid-1920s, a national government survey of disabled people (the only one conducted during that era) found that few disabled people lived in institutions permanently. In fact, only a minority of disabled people lived in institutions at all – and this was often for education or rehabilitation, when they were young. </p>
<p>For example, though 17.5% of blind people lived in “schools for the blind”, the majority (80.4%) of blind people were adults living in the community. And a third of those disabled people with the highest rates of institutionalisation – the psychologically or intellectually impaired – lived in the community.</p>
<p>A network of organisations managed by and for disabled people prioritised gaining and maintaining employment. Some, such as the German Association of Blind Academics, established in 1916, focused on a particular profession. Others, such as the Self-help League of the Physically Handicapped, established in 1919, created training and jobs for its members. In 1929, it had a membership of 6,000 throughout Germany, and was a role model for a similar organisation in Austria.</p>
<p>This trajectory of increasing self-determination and community involvement of disabled people ended when the Nazis came to power in 1933. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/three-charts-on-disability-discrimination-in-the-workplace-85183">Three charts on: disability discrimination in the workplace</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Exclusion and government hate campaigns</h2>
<p>One of the first legislative changes that affected all disabled people, as it did all Jews, was their exclusion from the new <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/women-in-the-third-reich">marriage loans program</a>, which lent money to each newly married couple, and forgave a quarter of the loan for each child they had. </p>
<p>Given Germany’s economic instability and high rates of unemployment, this financial assistance was significant – but only marriages “in the interest of the national community” were eligible. Both Jewish and disabled people were also ineligible later that year, when farms were made available to people who would not otherwise have an inheritance.</p>
<p>These laws were accompanied by a relentless government hate campaign. In schools, libraries, and waiting rooms, there was a succession of posters, pamphlets, and magazines, reminding “Aryans” of their superiority, and of the undesirability of everyone else. </p>
<p>Tours through institutions where disabled people were forced into scenes of helplessness became commonplace. These tours were mandatory for anyone who was planning to marry, in order to dissuade the couple from proceeding if there was any chance their child might be “unfit”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506047/original/file-20230124-17-adihpe.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Images of physically disabled children, with a caption that reads 'deformed'." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506047/original/file-20230124-17-adihpe.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506047/original/file-20230124-17-adihpe.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506047/original/file-20230124-17-adihpe.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506047/original/file-20230124-17-adihpe.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506047/original/file-20230124-17-adihpe.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506047/original/file-20230124-17-adihpe.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506047/original/file-20230124-17-adihpe.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nazi propaganda slide featuring two images of physically disabled children. The caption reads ‘deformed’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Marion Davy</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In this atmosphere, the <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/timeline-event/holocaust/1933-1938/law-for-the-prevention-of-offspring-with-hereditary-diseases">Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases</a>, which made the sterilisation of disabled people compulsory, encountered little opposition when it was enacted on 14 July 1933. </p>
<p>When it officially took effect, on 1 January 1934, movies and travelling exhibitions were added to the hate campaign. These stifled any remaining opposition, and made it impossible for the victims of this law to maintain any privacy about their personal circumstances. </p>
<p>Those who objected to their sterilisation were labelled unpatriotic. Those who did not object to their sterilisation were labelled inferior. And either way, women who were sterilised were then targeted for rape. Foreshadowing the Nazis’ increasing incarceration of disabled people, the only way to avoid sterilisation was to commit oneself to an institution.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506014/original/file-20230124-22-d1d8p8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Four disabled men, dressed in black." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506014/original/file-20230124-22-d1d8p8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506014/original/file-20230124-22-d1d8p8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506014/original/file-20230124-22-d1d8p8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506014/original/file-20230124-22-d1d8p8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506014/original/file-20230124-22-d1d8p8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506014/original/file-20230124-22-d1d8p8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506014/original/file-20230124-22-d1d8p8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nazi propaganda, showing four disabled men. The original caption reads: ‘Hereditary illnesses are a heavy burden for the people and the state’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of G Howard Tellier</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It became increasingly dangerous for disabled people to be seen in public, let alone to work. To force them into institutions, it was now only necessary for the Nazis to target the few remaining avenues they had for remaining in the community – marriage and education. </p>
<p>In 1935, one month after sexual contact and marriage was prohibited between “Aryans” and Jews, it was also prohibited between “Aryans” and disabled people. In the same year, disabled people were not permitted to attend school past elementary level. And within two years, they were not permitted to attend school at all unless it was part of an institution.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/people-with-disabilities-in-group-homes-are-suffering-shocking-abuse-new-housing-models-could-prevent-harm-197989">People with disabilities in group homes are suffering shocking abuse. New housing models could prevent harm</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Aktion T4 and the murder of disabled people</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/euthanasia-program">Aktion T4</a> program targeted disabled adults in Germany and Austria, murdering them in gas chambers attached to institutions. Though it is the most well-known of the programs that specifically targeted disabled people, it was not the first, and not the only one.</p>
<p>The murder of disabled children began on July 25 1939, and was soon part of the procedure of designated hospitals throughout Germany and Austria. In September, the Nazis began murdering the patients in the asylums of the countries they occupied, beginning with Poland. </p>
<p>The first victims of Aktion T4 were murdered in October – the program had a quota of 70,000 victims. When this quota was reached, most of Aktion T4’s staff were assigned to establish the “final solution”, and the euthanasia of disabled people was transferred to hospitals.</p>
<p>Disabled people were victims of every other Nazi extermination program, too. Whether they had found a way to remain in the community, or became impaired due to Nazi violence or the work they were forced to do, many disabled people were incarcerated in concentration camps and ghettos. 3,200 blind people were deported from <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/theresienstadt">Theresienstadt</a> alone.</p>
<p>These events are important to remember – not only as history, but as an example of how short the path from exclusion to murder can be.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/198298/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amanda Tink does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In 2023, International Holocaust Remembrance Day marks 90 years since the Nazis assumed power. Disabled people were the first Holocaust victims; Nazi programs discriminated against and murdered them.Amanda Tink, PhD Candidate, Western Sydney UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1960762023-01-26T11:56:59Z2023-01-26T11:56:59ZThe Holocaust: remembering the powerful acts of ‘ordinary people’<p>“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there,” the British author LP Hartley once <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jun/17/lp-hartley-go-between-ali-smith">wrote</a>, hinting at the mystique of history – the idea that people in the past were somehow different to us in the 21st century.</p>
<p>As many historians will tell you, it’s not particularly useful to <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/radio/sunday/the-past-is-not-the-present-do-food-animals-have-rights-alberto-manguel-s-curious-mind-the-great-hunger-1.3497315/the-allure-and-the-dangers-of-presentism-1.3497463#:%7E:text=The%20American%20Historical%20Association%20has,to%20find%20ourselves%20morally%20superior.%22">project modern values onto the past</a>, or to judge historical figures by contemporary ideals. But the idea that the past far away in space and time, is also flawed. It encourages people to overlook the fact that those involved in seismic past events were real human beings, just like ourselves. </p>
<p>Nowhere is reconciling that distance between past and present more important than in the case of the <a href="https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/what-was-the-holocaust">Holocaust</a>, which saw the murder of six million Jews at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators. Drawing on this idea of making the past less of a “foreign country”, the <a href="https://www.hmd.org.uk/what-is-holocaust-memorial-day/this-years-theme/">official theme</a> for <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/remember/international-holocaust-remembrance-day">Holocaust Memorial Day</a> 2023 in the UK is “ordinary people”.</p>
<h2>Difficult questions</h2>
<p>Holocaust Memorial Day is the annual opportunity for people around the world to remember and learn about – and from – the genocide. As the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust has outlined in its theme vision:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Genocide is facilitated by ordinary people. Ordinary people turn a blind eye, believe propaganda, join murderous regimes. And those who are persecuted, oppressed and murdered in genocide aren’t persecuted because of crimes they’ve committed – they are persecuted simply because they are ordinary people who belong to a particular group.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The theme of ordinary people encourages us to ask difficult questions of ourselves and society. Those who faced persecution were ordinary people who could do little to stop their fate.</p>
<p>We also tend to talk of the Nazi regime in sweeping terms – as an <a href="https://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/mann/Doc3.pdf">amorphous spectre of cruelty and fanaticism</a>. But we must also remember that this regime was composed of ordinary men, women and children. It was a human phenomenon. Even Adolf Hitler – who as the figurehead of the Third Reich has become almost an <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/can-we-compare-donald-trump-hitler/572194/">abstract symbol of evil</a> – was ultimately one single man.</p>
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<h2>The Holocaust as part of the British story</h2>
<p>Human stories can bring us closer to the Holocaust in an emotional sense. But in the UK, it is possible to move closer to the past in a geographical sense. The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust notes that “while the theme for HMD 2023 focuses on ordinary people, this can be extended to include ordinary locations, or sites”.</p>
<p>It can be tempting to think that the Holocaust happened “<a href="https://holocausteducation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/6.-BritaintheHolocaust-download.pdf">over there</a>”, far away in mainland Europe. But the Holocaust is <a href="https://www.theholocaustexplained.org/resistance-responses-collaboration/responses/british-response/">part of British history</a>, albeit a <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-55932-8">complex one</a>.</p>
<p>During the 1930s, an estimated <a href="https://www.theholocaustexplained.org/resistance-responses-collaboration/responses/british-response/">80,000 Jewish refugees came to Britain</a>. Between November 1938 and September 1939, approximately 10,000 children were transported to Britain as part of the <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/kindertransport-1938-40">Kindertransport</a>. </p>
<p>Yet, even though by 1941 allied governments were receiving incomplete reports of mass killings in Eastern Europe, no decisive action was taken against the Holocaust specifically. Until the end of the Second World War, the British war cabinet maintained that military victory would be the most effective way to end the genocide (or what was known of it).</p>
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<h2>Save the children</h2>
<p>Britain was involved in responding the Holocaust in several different ways, as illustrated by the stories of two ordinary people. One was <a href="https://www.nicholaswinton.com/">Nicholas Winton</a>, a career banker who petitioned the UK government relentlessly between 1938 and 1939 for Czech children to be allowed entry to the UK. The other was <a href="https://www.yadvashem.org/righteous/stories/haining.html">Jane Haining</a>, matron of a Jewish school in Budapest who remained with her charges and was sent to Auschwitz. </p>
<p>With a small group of helpers, Winton worked tirelessly to evacuate as many children from Prague as possible, <a href="https://www.hmd.org.uk/resource/sir-nicholas-winton/">ensuring the safe passage</a> of 669 children to host families in Britain.</p>
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<p>Jane Haining’s fate proved more <a href="https://biahs.co.uk/2019/10/16/jane-haining-the-scottish-protector-of-jews-who-perished-at-auschwitz/">tragic</a>. A committed member of the evangelical United Free Church of Scotland, she took up her position in the girls’ hostel of the Jewish mission school in Budapest in 1932. Following the outbreak of World War II in 1939, she decided to remain with her young wards, despite her church’s advice that she should return to Edinburgh.</p>
<p>Haining’s assistance of persecuted Jews began before the <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/hungary-after-the-german-occupation">German invasion of Hungary</a>. From 1940, Jewish refugees from Nazi-occupied states had started to arrive in Budapest, and some were taken in by Haining and her school. </p>
<p>The assistance Haining had offered Jews had not gone unnoticed by the new German occupiers of Budapest. In late April 1944, Gestapo officers arrived at the hostel to arrest the Scot for possession of illicit radio receivers. During questioning, the charges were <a href="https://biahs.co.uk/2019/10/16/jane-haining-the-scottish-protector-of-jews-who-perished-at-auschwitz/">broadened</a> to include working among Jews and political activity, amongst other allegations. </p>
<p>Following confession under duress, she was transferred to the <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/kistarcsa">Kistarcsa transit camp</a> on the outskirts of Budapest. In May 1944, Haining was deported to <a href="https://www.auschwitz.org/en/">Auschwitz</a>, where she died of starvation three months later. </p>
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<h2>Bringing the Holocaust closer to home</h2>
<p>Between 2020 and 2022, there was a <a href="https://cst.org.uk/">22% rise in antisemitic incidents</a> in the UK, while distressing <a href="https://www.genocidewatch.com/copy-of-current-genocide-watch-aler">examples of genocide</a> continue to proliferate around the world. </p>
<p>To ensure new generations understand what happened to the Jews and other minorities during World War II, studying the Holocaust has been a compulsory part of the <a href="https://www.het.org.uk/about/holocaust-education-uk">national curriculum</a> in England since 1991 (although there is no formal requirement in Scotland or Northern Ireland). <a href="https://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/holocaust-antisemitism/holocaust-denial-laws.html">Thirteen European countries</a> have legislation that criminalises Holocaust denial and the Nazi message, but this is not illegal in the UK. </p>
<p>In the current climate of social, cultural and national division, it is ordinary people who have the power and the responsibility to support efforts to <a href="https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/resources/educational-materials/why-teach-about-holocaust">learn from and about the Holocaust</a>, so that appalling events from history are not repeated. Education is a vital tool to sow <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-64012628">cultural appreciation and overcome social division</a>, but there is always more to be done.</p>
<p>As it was demonstrated over and over during World War II, it is ordinary people, working together, who are capable of achieving extraordinary things.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/196076/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Adamson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>This theme of this year’s Holocaust Remembrance Day encourages us to ask difficult questions of ourselves and society.Daniel Adamson, PhD in History, Durham UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1982832023-01-23T13:22:44Z2023-01-23T13:22:44ZJewish doctors in the Warsaw Ghetto secretly documented the effects of Nazi-imposed starvation, and the knowledge is helping researchers today – podcast<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505661/original/file-20230120-22-xwbvu0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C20%2C791%2C453&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Starvation was omnipresent in the Warsaw Ghetto for both young and old.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_101I-134-0771A-39,_Polen,_Ghetto_Warschau,_Kind_in_Lumpen.jpg#/media/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_101I-134-0771A-39,_Polen,_Ghetto_Warschau,_Kind_in_Lumpen.jpg">Blid Bundesarchiv/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>During the years of suffering and tragedy that defined the Warsaw Ghetto in the midst of World War II, a team of Jewish doctors secretly documented the effects of starvation on the human body when the Nazis severely limited the amount of food available in the Jewish ghetto. The doctors collected this work in a book and, 80 years later, <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=HyTsVigAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Merry Fitzpatrick</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/warsaw-ghettos-defiant-jewish-doctors-secretly-documented-the-medical-effects-of-nazi-starvation-policies-in-a-book-recently-rediscovered-on-a-library-shelf-182726">rediscovered the brave efforts of these doctors</a> hidden in a library at Tufts University, in Massachusetts in the U.S. In this Discovery episode of The Conversation Weekly, we speak to Fitzpatrick about how she found this piece of history, the story of its creation and how modern scientists are learning from the knowledge so bravely documented by the Jewish doctors. </p>
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<p><iframe id="tc-infographic-561" class="tc-infographic" height="100" src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/infographics/561/4fbbd099d631750693d02bac632430b71b37cd5f/site/index.html" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>Merry Fitzpatrick is an assistant professor at Tufts University who studies food security and malnutrition, especially in conflict zones. One day, she was searching through the school library and came across a book that she had never heard of in the basement.</p>
<p>“I went and pulled it off the shelf, and it was this crumbling little book. Its pages were just brown and brittle, and you could tell it hadn’t been opened in a long time,” she says. The foreword described the conditions of the Warsaw Ghetto and the anguish of doing research there. It was written by Israel Milejkowski, who Fitzpatrick calls the “Fauci of the ghetto”, after the former chief medical advisor to the U.S. president Anthony Fauci.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505666/original/file-20230120-20-qgtd0a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Children climbing a wall." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505666/original/file-20230120-20-qgtd0a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505666/original/file-20230120-20-qgtd0a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505666/original/file-20230120-20-qgtd0a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505666/original/file-20230120-20-qgtd0a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505666/original/file-20230120-20-qgtd0a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=560&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505666/original/file-20230120-20-qgtd0a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=560&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505666/original/file-20230120-20-qgtd0a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=560&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Smuggling was how most people in the ghetto got food, and children were often the ones sneaking out of the ghetto to do it.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Food_smuggling_Warsaw_Ghetto.jpg#/media/File:Food_smuggling_Warsaw_Ghetto.jpg">nieznany/unknown via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
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<p>Over the course of 1941 and 1942, Milejkowski and his colleagues saw an opportunity to produce something good from the horrors of the Nazi-controlled ghetto. The lack of food was extreme. “The Jews were given a ration of 180 calories a day at one point. That’s like half a cookie,” says Fitzpatrick. As the doctors took care of the Jewish population in the ghetto – including their friends and colleagues – they documented the effects of starvation, too. These doctors then collected their research into the book that Fitzpatrick found. </p>
<p>Even today, the research done by the Jewish doctors is shedding light on some mysteries within the field of starvation and malnutrition research. Tuberculosis was very common in the ghetto, but when the doctors would test starving children with obvious symptoms of tuberculosis, the tests would often come back negative. As Fitzpatrick explains, “What it was was that in starvation, the body pretty much gives up on immunity – that’s not the priority. So when you do a test, you’re looking for an immune response that isn’t there.” </p>
<p>To find out how this idea is helping Fitzpatrick better understand HIV in malnourished children and the rest of Milejkowski’s story, tune in to this week’s episode of The Conversation Weekly.</p>
<hr>
<p>This episode was produced by Mend Mariwany and hosted by Dan Merino. The executive producer is Mend Mariwany. Eloise Stevens does our sound design, and our theme music is by Neeta Sarl.</p>
<p>You can find the original story written by Merry Fitzpatrick and her colleague Irwin Rosenberg <a href="https://theconversation.com/warsaw-ghettos-defiant-jewish-doctors-secretly-documented-the-medical-effects-of-nazi-starvation-policies-in-a-book-recently-rediscovered-on-a-library-shelf-182726">on The Conversation</a>.</p>
<p>You can find us on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/TC_Audio">@TC_Audio</a>, on Instagram at <a href="https://www.instagram.com/theconversationdotcom/">theconversationdotcom</a> or <a href="mailto:podcast@theconversation.com">via email</a>. You can also sign up to The Conversation’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/newsletter">free daily email here</a>. A transcript of this episode will be available soon. </p>
<p>Listen to “The Conversation Weekly” via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our <a href="https://feeds.acast.com/public/shows/60087127b9687759d637bade">RSS feed</a> or find out <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-listen-to-the-conversations-podcasts-154131">how else to listen here</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/198283/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Merino does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A researcher at Tufts University near Boston discovered an old book full of research on starvation written by Jewish doctors imprisoned in the Warsaw Ghetto.Daniel Merino, Associate Science Editor & Co-Host of The Conversation Weekly Podcast, The ConversationLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1972632023-01-09T13:17:24Z2023-01-09T13:17:24ZIsrael’s new hard-line government has made headlines – the bigger demographic changes that caused it, not so much<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/503373/original/file-20230106-11-750vf8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=3%2C3%2C1019%2C679&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">People wait at a bus stop at the Mahane Yehuda market in Jerusalem.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/people-wait-at-a-bus-stop-at-the-mahane-yehuda-market-on-news-photo/1400881265?phrase=jerusalem%20shop&adppopup=true">Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Israel’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-stunning-political-comeback-for-israels-netanyahu-may-give-way-to-governing-nightmare-ahead-193892">new goverment</a> is <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/israel-swears-in-netanyahu-as-prime-minister-most-right-wing-government-in-countrys-history">the most right-wing and religious leadership</a> the country has had in the 75 years of its existence, as many observers have <a href="https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2022/12/29/israels-new-government-is-the-most-right-wing-ever">pointed out</a>. And this style of leadership may last because it represents the next generation of Israelis. </p>
<p>You don’t have to look far to see that the religiously observant Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox sectors of Israel’s population are growing quickly. The new <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/gamliel-and-porush-approved-as-ministers-bringing-cabinet-to-31-members/">minister of Jerusalem affairs</a> has 12 children. The <a href="https://zionutdatit.org.il/en/-/strock-2/">minister of national missions</a> – one of the few women in the cabinet – has 11, the housing minister 10, the interior minister nine, the <a href="https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel/politics/1672257176-portrait-bezalel-smotrich-the-controversial-and-feared-ally-of-israel-s-netanyahu">finance minister</a> and the <a href="https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/meet-the-new-mk-ofir-sofer-urp-587561">minister of immigration</a> have seven each and the <a href="https://www.jewishpress.com/news/israel/religious-secular-in-israel-israel/ben-gvir-pulls-a-coup-recruiting-rabbi-shmuel-eliyahus-son/2022/08/22/">minister of heritage</a> has six.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/haredi-population-growing-twice-as-fast-as-total-israeli-population-report/">rapid growth</a> of Israel’s ultra-Orthodox population has profound consequences for the rest of society, especially Israel’s <a href="https://doi.org/10.7135/UPO9780857288073.005">delicate status quo</a> between religion and secularism. Moreover, ultra-Orthodox voters and politicians are increasingly allied with parties from another religious demographic whose influence is growing: Orthodox nationalists.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.american.edu/cas/faculty/mbrenner.cfm">a professor of Israel Studies</a>, I would argue that Israel’s future may look less like the cosmopolitan, secular Tel Aviv than the nearby <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/bnei-brak">ultra-Orthodox city of Bnei Brak</a> or one of the satellite towns outside Jerusalem that are centers of Orthodox nationalism.</p>
<h2>Four tribes</h2>
<p>In 2015, then-President Reuven Rivlin gave <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ci5zZi5Zpb0">a famous speech</a> in which he called Israel a society of “four tribes.” </p>
<p>There are secular or moderately religious Jews, who constituted the vast majority of the country’s founders and until today make up most of its political, economic and cultural elite. Though estimates vary, around half of Israel’s Jewish population <a href="https://www.ynetnews.com/article/b1ykzxpzs">consider themselves secular</a>, and 19% are marginally observant.</p>
<p>Then there is the group usually called National Religious, or Religious Zionist. These Israelis combine Orthodox Judaism with commitment to political Zionism, and <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/national-religious-camps-path-from-denying-settlements-to-merging-with-radicals/">now constitute the core</a> of the settler movement in the West Bank. They constitute <a href="https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/as-many-as-one-fifth-of-israeli-jews-identify-as-national-religious-study-finds-389291">around 20%</a> of Israel’s Jewish population, or about 15% of its total population.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A large group of men standing in rows concentrate in prayer." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/503374/original/file-20230106-19-dl05sk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/503374/original/file-20230106-19-dl05sk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503374/original/file-20230106-19-dl05sk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503374/original/file-20230106-19-dl05sk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503374/original/file-20230106-19-dl05sk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503374/original/file-20230106-19-dl05sk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503374/original/file-20230106-19-dl05sk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hard-line national religious Israeli Jews attend a mass prayer at the Western Wall in 2014 against Israeli-Palestinian talks.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/hardline-national-religious-israeli-jews-attend-a-mass-at-news-photo/465908865?phrase=%22national%20religious%22%20israel&adppopup=true">Ahmad Gharabli/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>A third group is called Haredim, or ultra-Orthodox in English. Unlike other Orthodox Jews, who are integrated into mainstream neighborhoods and workplaces, many Haredi groups try to separate themselves <a href="https://www.academicstudiespress.com/jewishidentities/a-well-worn-tallis-for-a-new-ceremony-trends-in-israeli-haredi-culture">to an extent</a> from secular society. Originally, they <a href="https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/ultra-orthodox-anti-zionist/">did not support</a> the creation of the State of Israel, which they believed should come about only through the Messiah. Today, however, Haredi communities are <a href="https://apnews.com/article/middle-east-religion-jerusalem-israel-29fa429e432e87bdb2f62f7a5a1d95d7">politically associated</a> with right-wing parties.</p>
<p>The fourth group Rivlin mentioned are <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/palestinian-arab-israeli-citizens-identity/2021/06/10/2591ef56-c861-11eb-8708-64991f2acf28_story.html">Israeli Arabs</a>, or as they increasingly call themselves, Palestinian citizens of Israel.</p>
<p>These four groups rarely interact in everyday life. Each has its own school system, and they marry and socialize within each other – which Rivlin warned could weaken the country. </p>
<h2>Haredim today</h2>
<p>Over time, there has been a population shift between the four sectors. When Rivlin <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ci5zZi5Zpb0">delivered his speech</a> in 2015, he reported that for the first time, most of Israel’s first graders were not admitted to secular Jewish schools, but to one of the three other systems.</p>
<p>The ultra-Orthodox population is growing quickly. Haredi families have an average of about <a href="https://en.idi.org.il/articles/25385">seven children</a>, compared with <a href="https://mercatornet.com/israel-natalism-and-nationalism/80954/">just three</a> in the general population and two among secular Jews. According to a recent study of the Israel Democracy Institute, the ultra-Orthodox sector constitutes 13.5% of Israel’s population today and will <a href="https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/culture/article-726394">rise to 16%</a> by the end of the decade, with further increases expected. They already constitute about <a href="https://en.idi.org.il/articles/47009">a quarter</a> of all Jewish pupils in Israel’s schools today.</p>
<p>These demographic changes pose challenges for Israel’s society and economy. For example, the poverty rate among the ultra-Orthodox is <a href="https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/culture/article-726394">twice as high</a> as among other Israelis due to a culture that emphasizes intensive religious study over paid employment, and schools that prize religious learning over secular subjects. The unemployment rate among Haredi men is almost 47%, compared to <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/israels-unemployment-rate-drops-to-its-lowest-since-onset-of-covid/">less than 5%</a> in the total population.</p>
<p>Unlike most other Jewish Israelis, most Haredi youth do not serve in the army, which is based on exemptions the secular founder of the state, David Ben-Gurion, <a href="https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/rules-of-engagement">made 75 years ago</a>. At the time, the ultra-Orthodox were a marginal group, and Ben-Gurion was convinced they would remain so.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Teenage boys in white shirts and black slacks look at a political poster." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/503375/original/file-20230106-26-1shn4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/503375/original/file-20230106-26-1shn4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503375/original/file-20230106-26-1shn4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503375/original/file-20230106-26-1shn4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503375/original/file-20230106-26-1shn4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503375/original/file-20230106-26-1shn4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503375/original/file-20230106-26-1shn4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A poster showing Likud party leader Benjamin Netanyahu after a 2022 campaign event in Bnei Brak, Israel.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/supporters-look-at-the-likud-party-campaign-modified-truck-news-photo/1244330524?phrase=bnei%20brak&adppopup=true">Amir Levy/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Young Arab men and women are not required to serve in the army, either. Added to the number of Haredi youth, this means that <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2019-09-03/ty-article/.premium/should-israel-scrap-its-peoples-army-model/0000017f-f264-da6f-a77f-fa6e09bd0000">almost half</a> of Israel’s eligible population are not drafted today.</p>
<h2>National Religious</h2>
<p>The second-fastest growing “tribe” in Israel, <a href="https://mercatornet.com/israel-natalism-and-nationalism/80954/">based on birth rate</a> – with families of four children, on average – are the Orthodox National Religious, whose current political leaders represent the settlers of the West Bank. </p>
<p>Religious voters who support these groups often prioritize Israel’s character as a Jewish state over its character as <a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2018/7/31/17623978/israel-jewish-nation-state-law-bill-explained-apartheid-netanyahu-democracy">a liberal democracy</a>. For example, 65% of Jewish Israelis who identify as “religious” and 89% of ultra-Orthodox say that Jewish law should take precedence over democratic principles in the case of a contradiction, <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2016/03/08/israels-religiously-divided-society/">according to a Pew survey</a>.</p>
<p>National Religious parties, which have proved popular with <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgymww/israel-elections-right-wing-ben-gvir">young voters</a>, were the real surprise winner of the November 2022 election – particularly their more radicalized leadership. Whereas former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, for example, was ready to enter a coalition with left-wing and Arab partners, <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgymww/israel-elections-right-wing-ben-gvir">new leaders</a> Bezalel Smotrich and <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-01-03/ty-article/.premium/ben-gvir-visits-the-temple-mount/00000185-760e-de47-afdf-f6bf34c40000?utm_source=mailchimp&utm_medium=Content&utm_campaign=daily-brief&utm_content=7a5ff0e961">Itamar Ben-Gvir</a> reject any cooperation with parties left of center and would not be welcome by those parties, anyway.</p>
<h2>Political consequences</h2>
<p>What both religious sectors have in common is a growing outspokenness about making Israeli society more in line with Orthodox principles. For example, Israel is the most LGBTQ-friendly state in the Middle East, yet many government ministers and their spiritual leaders <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/video/israeli-school-officials-fear-anti-173021187.html">have used derogatory language</a> toward the LGBTQ community. There have been calls to permit <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/orthodox-parties-demand-legalization-of-gender-segregated-public-events/">separate seating</a> for men and women at public events and to allow doctors <a href="https://apnews.com/article/israel-discrimination-benjamin-netanyahu-lgbtq-people-78bcd332053aa26c3c9949eac2264d1c">to refuse patients</a> whom they do not want to treat on religious grounds. </p>
<p>These shifts have the potential to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/12/28/hundreds-us-rabbis-protest-new-israeli-government-public-letter/">alienate American Jews</a> who are, apart from Israelis, the largest Jewish community in the world but mainly <a href="https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/the-american-jewish-community-will-look-different-in-50-years">identify with the more liberal Reform or Conservative movements</a>.</p>
<p>The different types of Orthodox Jews have come a long way from rejecting political Zionism or from keeping religion out of politics. Smotrich, the National Zionist new minister of transportation, has openly stated that his ideal is <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/smotrich-says-israel-should-follow-torah-law-again-drawing-ire-of-liberman">a Torah state</a>, meaning a Jewish state founded on Jewish religious laws.</p>
<p>His supporters are still far from fulfilling that dream, but well aware that the country’s demographic changes may be on their side – a challenge to Israel’s delicate status quo. Overcoming the gaps in Israel’s increasingly segmented society will require serious bridge-building efforts on both sides – even more than at the time of Rivlin’s warning.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197263/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Brenner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Two religiously observant groups of Jews in Israel, the ultra-Orthodox and Religious Zionists, are increasingly acting as political allies. The consequences could be profound.Michael Brenner, Professor of Jewish History and Culture at Ludwig Maximilian University and Abensohn Chair in Israel Studies, American UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1947802022-11-30T16:01:54Z2022-11-30T16:01:54ZAncient DNA from the teeth of 14th-century Ashkenazi Jews in Germany already included genetic variations common in modern Jews<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498055/original/file-20221129-11920-w79ymf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=38%2C31%2C2036%2C1406&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Partial layout of the graves discovered during the excavation at the medieval Jewish cemetery of Erfurt.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Thuringian State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology/Karin Sczech + Katharina Bielefeld</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>About two-thirds of Jews today – or about 10 million people – are <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jews">Ashkenazi</a>, referring to a recent origin from Eastern and Central Europe. They reside mostly in the United States and Israel. Ashkenazi Jews carry a particularly high burden of <a href="https://www.jewishgeneticdiseases.org/jewish-genetic-diseases/">disease-causing genetic mutations</a>, such as those in the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/breast/young_women/bringyourbrave/hereditary_breast_cancer/jewish_women_brca.htm">BRCA1</a> gene associated with an increased risk of breast and ovarian cancer.</p>
<p>This genetic burden suggests that the population was shaped by what geneticists call a <a href="https://evolution.berkeley.edu/bottlenecks-and-founder-effects/">founder event or a bottleneck</a>. In other words, a small number of foremothers and forefathers contributed much of the modern gene pool. As the population grew and the descendants of these founders had many children, disease mutations that were carried by the few founders became widespread.</p>
<p>One of the most striking features of Ashkenazi Jews today is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msr133">how genetically homogeneous</a> they are, with almost no discernable differences in ancestry between Ashkenazi Jews across the world. Were Ashkenazi Jews equally similar to each other in the past? What were their origins? To what extent was the gene pool shaped by intermarriage with non-Jews?</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-genom-083117-021749">New technology</a> has made it practical to economically sequence whole genomes from skeletal remains. <a href="https://scarmilab.org">We</a> <a href="https://reich.hms.harvard.edu">and</a> 30 colleagues mostly from Israel, Germany and the U.S. investigated these questions by <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2022.11.002">sequencing the centuries-old remains of Ashkenazi Jews</a> from the medieval Jewish community of Erfurt, Germany.</p>
<h2>Sequencing DNA from a medieval cemetery</h2>
<p>Previous studies of genomes of Ashkenazi Jews living today made it clear that the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajhg.2012.08.030">founder event occurred in medieval times</a>. But the earlier geographic origins of the Ashkenazi ancestors are poorly understood.</p>
<p>The first historical records of Ashkenazi Jews are from the Rhineland in Western Germany in the 10th century. In the hundreds of years that followed, an increasing proportion lived in Eastern Europe. Despite periodic persecution, the <a href="https://www.bjpa.org/content/upload/bjpa/dell/DellaPergola%20Some%20Fundamentals.pdf">number of Ashkenazi Jews grew</a> and peaked at more than 10 million in the mid-20th century, before about <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/33397139">six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498052/original/file-20221129-22-c2soy0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="four story medieval building with excavated dirt in foreground" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498052/original/file-20221129-22-c2soy0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498052/original/file-20221129-22-c2soy0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498052/original/file-20221129-22-c2soy0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498052/original/file-20221129-22-c2soy0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498052/original/file-20221129-22-c2soy0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498052/original/file-20221129-22-c2soy0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498052/original/file-20221129-22-c2soy0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Archaeologists worked to recover medieval remains from a graveyard. The granary building is in the background.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Thuringian State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology/Martin Sowa</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The <a href="https://juedisches-leben.erfurt.de/jl/en/middle-ages/index.html">medieval Ashkenazi Jewish community of Erfurt, Germany</a> existed between the late 11th century and the mid-15th century. After a gap following a 1349 massacre, the Erfurt Jewish community became one of the largest in Germany – in fact, one of the <a href="https://juedisches-leben.erfurt.de/jl/en/middle-ages/old_synagogue/index.html">oldest intact Jewish synagogues</a> in Central Europe is in Erfurt – but Jews were expelled in 1454. After that, the city built a granary on top of the Jewish cemetery.</p>
<p>In 2013, the granary was converted into a parking garage. Prior to construction, the state led a rescue excavation that uncovered 47 graves, most of which we sampled for DNA before the skeletons were reburied in the 19th-century Jewish cemetery.</p>
<p>Our study required review from the local Jewish community, because traditional Jewish law prohibits disturbing the dead under most circumstances. But <a href="https://din.org.il/2021/09/11/%d7%93%d7%92%d7%99%d7%9e%d7%95%d7%aa-%d7%93%d7%a0%d7%90-%d7%9e%d7%a9%d7%9c%d7%93%d7%99%d7%9d-%d7%a2%d7%aa%d7%99%d7%a7%d7%99%d7%9d-%d7%a1%d7%95%d7%92%d7%99%d7%95%d7%aa-%d7%94%d7%9c%d7%9b/">recent rabbinical scholarship</a> suggested that ancient DNA research is permissible if scientists use loose teeth from already excavated remains. We followed this approach with the aim of being <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-04008-x">sensitive to community perspectives</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497959/original/file-20221129-12-puyzlr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="tooth next to ruler and labelled plastic bag" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497959/original/file-20221129-12-puyzlr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497959/original/file-20221129-12-puyzlr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497959/original/file-20221129-12-puyzlr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497959/original/file-20221129-12-puyzlr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497959/original/file-20221129-12-puyzlr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=589&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497959/original/file-20221129-12-puyzlr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=589&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497959/original/file-20221129-12-puyzlr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=589&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In accordance with rabbinical ruling, researchers collected DNA from teeth that were already loose in the remains of people who lived during the 1300s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">David Reich/Harvard Medical School</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Today’s population is a blend of past groups</h2>
<p>We sequenced 33 individuals who lived in the 14th century. Among them were two families: a mother and two children, and a father, who had likely been killed by a sword blow to the head, and his daughter.</p>
<p>Our first question was: Do medieval Erfurt Jews and modern Ashkenazi Jews belong to the same genetic population? On average, yes. There has been almost no incorporation of genes from non-Jewish European populations over the last 600 years. </p>
<p>But the biggest surprise was that Erfurt Jews were noticeably more diverse than modern Ashkenazi Jews.</p>
<p>Some medieval individuals had greater Middle Eastern ancestry; they were genetically most similar to modern Ashkenazi Jews with origins in France and Germany.</p>
<p>Others had greater Eastern European ancestry, consistent with historical evidence that a number of people living in Erfurt between 1350 and 1400 had surnames indicating origins in the East, as well as Slavic given names.</p>
<p>The two groups – those with more Middle Eastern or more Slavic origins – also had distinct levels of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%9418O">oxygen isotopes</a> in their teeth, indicating they used different water sources in childhood, and thus, at least one of the groups must have included migrants. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, individuals from both groups were buried side by side, suggesting no social segregation.</p>
<p>Non-genetic research suggested that in the Middle Ages, Ashkenazi Jews were <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/origins-of-yiddish-dialects-9780198739319">culturally divided into two major groups</a>. Western Jews lived in the Rhineland, where Ashkenazi Jews first settled. They may correspond to the Erfurt group with the greater Middle Eastern ancestry. Eastern Jews, from eastern Germany, Austria, Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, may correspond to the Erfurt group with the greater Eastern European ancestry.</p>
<p>Erfurt was at the geographic boundary between the two medieval Jewish communities, and in the 14th century, it was likely a home to Jews belonging to both. This may explain our detection of two genetically distinguishable groups in one place.</p>
<p>Modern Ashkenazi Jews don’t show the medieval genetic heterogeneity. Instead, their genomes look like a nearly even mixture of the two Erfurt groups. Our genetic results fit with <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/origins-of-yiddish-dialects-9780198739319">studies of names, dialects and religious rites</a>, which suggest that the Western and Eastern groups eventually merged and formed a single Ashkenazi culture.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498061/original/file-20221129-18-uoe4mi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="a man kneeling on pad on dirt works on something buried in the ground" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498061/original/file-20221129-18-uoe4mi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498061/original/file-20221129-18-uoe4mi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498061/original/file-20221129-18-uoe4mi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498061/original/file-20221129-18-uoe4mi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498061/original/file-20221129-18-uoe4mi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498061/original/file-20221129-18-uoe4mi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498061/original/file-20221129-18-uoe4mi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In advance of construction, archaeologists carefully excavated medieval remains so they could be respectfully reburied in a 19th century cemetery.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Thuringian State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology/Ronny Krause</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A founder event left its genetic mark</h2>
<p>Our next question was whether Erfurt Jews show signs of the founder event so evident in the genes of modern Ashkenazi Jews.</p>
<p>They do. A stretch of genetic material called <a href="https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/mtdna-and-mitochondrial-diseases-903/">mitochondrial DNA</a> is inherited only from mothers. Different people around the world today carry subtly different variations of it. One variant of mitochondrial DNA is found in 20% of modern Ashkenazi Jews and is nearly absent in non-Jewish populations. We identified it in 35% of the Erfurt individuals.</p>
<p>In other words, a third of the people we sampled from the graveyard descended, via their maternal line, from a single woman. That so many people share the same ancestral mother implies that the population must have been extremely small in the centuries before.</p>
<p>In the Erfurt individuals, we also found mutations common in Ashkenazi Jews today but extremely rare elsewhere, including 16 disease-causing mutations, one of them in the well-known BRCA1 gene. Another research group sequenced the genomes of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2022.08.036">six Ashkenazi Jews from 12th-century Norwich, England</a> and identified other disease mutations that are also still seen in Ashkenazi genomes today.</p>
<p>What was most striking about the founder event was how strongly the Erfurt Jews were affected. We estimate that the degree of relatedness of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajhg.2012.08.030">modern Ashkenazi Jewish genomes to each other</a> is about what would be expected if they descended from a population that had been persistently small throughout the second half of the Middle Ages. How small? We calculated that a core of only 1,000-2,000 reproducing people during this time would be responsible for most descendants today.</p>
<p>When we repeated a similar calculation using the Erfurt data, we encountered a surprise. Based on the medieval DNA, our estimate of the size of the founding population was about 3-fold smaller, only around 500 people. </p>
<p>How could it be that we were detecting the same founder event – responsible for the same disease-causing mutations in the Erfurt and in the modern Ashkenazi Jewish communities – and yet its impact on the Erfurt Jews was larger? </p>
<p>To address that, we proposed there were additional medieval Ashkenazi communities that inherited much less DNA from the core group of reproducing people we identified for Erfurt. We don’t yet know who these communities were, but our modeling suggests that they must have existed and later mixed with Erfurt-like communities, averaging together to form today’s Ashkenazi Jews.</p>
<p>So sometime after the 14th century, genetic barriers between Ashkenazi Jewish communities must have broken down, and the archipelago of scattered early Ashkenazi Jewish populations collapsed into the homogeneous group seen today. This was accompanied by extremely rapid population growth, which then continued for centuries. The Ashkenazi Jewish community, which had originally been demographically peripheral in the Jewish world, with its center of gravity around the Mediterranean and the Middle East, eventually became the largest world population of Jews.</p>
<h2>A template for future studies</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497962/original/file-20221129-16-tumege.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="view of an old stone building through a stone arch" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497962/original/file-20221129-16-tumege.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497962/original/file-20221129-16-tumege.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=688&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497962/original/file-20221129-16-tumege.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=688&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497962/original/file-20221129-16-tumege.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=688&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497962/original/file-20221129-16-tumege.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=865&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497962/original/file-20221129-16-tumege.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=865&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497962/original/file-20221129-16-tumege.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=865&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Old Synagogue of the medieval Jewish community of Erfurt is now a museum documenting past Jewish life in Erfurt.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stadt Erfurt Marcel Krummrich</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Erfurt and Norwich are just two locations. A richer picture of medieval Ashkenazi Jewish history will require sampling additional sites. How Ashkenazi Jews relate to Sephardi Jews and the many other living Jewish communities, and how all of these communities relate to Roman-period Judeans, are mysteries that ancient DNA research may also one day address. Any such research would need to take into account modern community sensitivities, and we think our work in Erfurt is a good model.</p>
<p>More broadly, this work provides a template for how ancient DNA, even from individuals who lived relatively recently, can reveal aspects of history that are otherwise invisible. By carrying out such studies, scholars can help reveal the roots of modern groups, enriching people’s understanding of themselves and each other.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/194780/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shai Carmi received funding for this study from the Israel Science Foundation and the United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation. He is a paid consultant at MyHeritage.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Reich receives funding for his research from the US National Institutes of Health, the Allen Discovery Center program (a Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group advised program of the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation), the John Templeton Foundation; a private gift from Jean-François Clin, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.</span></em></p>A German town needed to relocate a medieval graveyard to build a parking garage. A positive side effect: Scientists got to sequence the DNA of Ashkenazi Jews who lived more than 600 years ago.Shai Carmi, Associate Professor of Population and Statistical Genetics, Hebrew University of JerusalemDavid Reich, Professor of Genetics and of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1904922022-09-16T12:17:56Z2022-09-16T12:17:56ZQueen Elizabeth II ascended to the throne at a time of deep religious divisions and worked to bring tolerance<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484357/original/file-20220913-4826-8wgrqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C0%2C1941%2C1339&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In her efforts to build a new relationship with the Catholic Church, Queen Elizabeth II had interactions with several pontiffs. She is seen here with Pope John Paul II. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/BritainQueensReignPhotoGallery/bc023d4fdcf446b1a44081e39bf7facd/photo?Query=queen%20Pope%20John%20Paul%20II&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=48&currentItemNo=20">AP Photo/Alessandro Bianchi, Pool, File</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Thousands of Christian cathedrals and churches <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/06/13/1104560863/queen-elizabeth-ii-is-the-second-longest-reigning-monarch-in-history">rang their bells</a> for an hour at noon the day after Queen Elizabeth II died in honor of the 96-year-old monarch and her 70 years of service as queen of the United Kingdom.</p>
<p>The ringing of church bells across the country on the death of the monarch is a custom dating back to the early 13th century in Great Britain. As an <a href="https://college.holycross.edu//faculty/jpierce/">expert in medieval liturgy</a> and longtime participant in official <a href="https://www.usccb.org/committees/ecumenical-interreligious-affairs/interreligious">dialogue between</a> the Episcopal Church – a member of the community of global Anglican churches – and the Roman Catholic Church in the United States, the sound had a special poignance for me, and I thought of the queen’s lifelong commitment to British religious life. </p>
<p>Based on her Christian faith, the Queen encouraged dialogue and tolerance among different Christian churches and with other religions as well. This is especially true of the two oldest faiths in Great Britain: Catholicism and Judaism. </p>
<p>But to appreciate the significance of her efforts, it is necessary to understand the complicated history of these religions in the United Kingdom. </p>
<h2>‘Defender of the Faith’</h2>
<p>For centuries, English monarchs reigned as king or queen of England. But since the 16th century, they have also <a href="https://religionnews.com/2022/06/03/elizabeth-iis-70-years-as-head-of-the-church-of-england/">held the titles</a> Defender of the Faith and Supreme Governor of the Church of England. </p>
<p>King Henry VIII received the title <a href="https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2020/07/defender-of-the-faith.html">Defender of the Faith</a> from Pope Leo X, then head of the Catholic Church, in 1521 after the king published a rebuttal of the ideas of Martin Luther, whose reforms launched the Protestant Reformation. Henry retained this title even after later breaking from the authority of the pope, titling himself Head of the Church in England. </p>
<p>With the exception of his Catholic successor – his daughter Mary I – all British monarchs have retained this title.</p>
<p>In the 17th century, some of the kings of England became personally sympathetic toward Catholicism. This was so unpopular that in 1689, <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/private-lives/religion/overview/catholicsnonconformists-/#">Parliament passed a Bill of Rights</a>, forbidding Catholics from ascending to the throne; it remains in force today. Until the 2013 Succession to the Crown Act, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-32073399">sovereigns were forbidden</a> to even marry Catholics.</p>
<p>After the 1707 passage of the <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/heritage/articlesofunion.pdf">Articles of Union</a>, these kings and queens reigned over an expanded realm consisting of England, Scotland and Ireland – the United Kingdom – but retained leadership only of the Church of England, the Anglican Church.</p>
<p>Most Irish were Catholic, while the <a href="https://www.churchofscotland.org.uk/about-us/our-structure">Church of Scotland was Presbyterian</a>. This Protestant church eliminated the ancient office of bishop and placed leadership in the hands of ordinary pastors, called presbyters or elders. </p>
<p>In the Articles of Union, the British monarch <a href="https://www.churchofscotland.org.uk/about-us/church-law/church-constitution#article1">guaranteed the rights of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland</a>, and every monarch since has sworn an oath to uphold them upon ascending to the throne.</p>
<p>No such protection was guaranteed to any other church or religion.</p>
<h2>Continuing problems in Catholic Ireland</h2>
<p>In 1649, King Charles I, who favored Catholicism, was <a href="https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/british-civil-wars">deposed and executed by Parliament</a> after a bloody civil war. The <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/40084/chapter-abstract/341041967?redirectedFrom=fulltext">invasion of Catholic Ireland</a> by Oliver Cromwell, a former member of Parliament, followed soon after, resulting in brutal massacres. Although the English monarchy was <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/430/chapter-abstract/135223697?redirectedFrom=fulltext">restored in England and Ireland</a> in 1660, restrictions on Catholics in Ireland and Britain continued long after. </p>
<p>The freedoms of non-Anglican groups, including Jews, continued to be curtailed through <a href="http://moses.law.umn.edu/irishlaws/intro.html">penal laws</a> until the 19th century. Tensions between Catholic Irish and Anglican British continued <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74373-4_4">even after the laws were repealed</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econmod.2010.01.016">They worsened</a> when the Irish economy and population were devastated by the <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/evolutionofparliament/legislativescrutiny/parliamentandireland/overview/the-great-famine/">Irish Potato Famine</a>, beginning in 1845, and Parliament was slow to respond.</p>
<h2>Judaism in England</h2>
<p>For two centuries, small communities of Jews in Britain lived quietly, protected by the British monarchy. They faced growing hostility in the 13th century due to the Crusades, religious wars to capture the Holy Land from its Muslim rulers, when Christian attitudes toward “foreign” religions hardened. </p>
<p>Since only <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/2854044">Jews were allowed to lend money and collect interest</a> – Christians considered this a sin – nobles in debt began to accuse Jewish lenders of “usury,” charging exorbitant interest on loans. They pressured the crown to take action, and in 1290, King Edward I <a href="https://www.history.ox.ac.uk/::ognode-637356::/files/download-resource-printable-pdf-5">expelled all Jews from the kingdom</a>. They were not allowed to return until the 17th century by law. </p>
<p>Under Cromwell, Jews were unofficially allowed to return to England. Some were already residents there, including <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Jews_of_Britain_1656_to_2000/RNyvgPAuvhAC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA26&printsec=frontcover">New Christians</a> – Spanish Jews who had at least superficially converted to Christianity to avoid expulsion from Spain after 1492. Gradually, other groups of openly Jewish refugees were unofficially <a href="https://victorianweb.org/religion/judaism/gossman2.html">allowed to resettle in England</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484379/original/file-20220913-4760-j43d1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A group of young people waving while aboard a ship." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484379/original/file-20220913-4760-j43d1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484379/original/file-20220913-4760-j43d1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484379/original/file-20220913-4760-j43d1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484379/original/file-20220913-4760-j43d1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484379/original/file-20220913-4760-j43d1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484379/original/file-20220913-4760-j43d1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484379/original/file-20220913-4760-j43d1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Young Jewish refugees arrive in Harwich, England, from Germany, on Dec. 2, 1937.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/PersecutedJewsInEngland1937/251d7cb657524bacb21b401978c990c9/photo?Query=jews%20england&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=28&currentItemNo=22">AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As Jewish immigration increased throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, restrictions were lifted and Jewish business <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/29778906">became an important part of</a> the British economy. <a href="https://theconversation.com/bevis-marks-britains-oldest-synagogue-is-central-to-londons-history-heres-why-it-needs-protecting-170326">Synagogues were constructed</a> in London and <a href="https://www.jewishgen.org/jcr-uk/Community/leeds/articles/leeds-vic3.htm">other major British cities</a> at this time, and worship was openly permitted. <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Vict/21-22/49/enacted">The Jews Relief Act of 1858</a> granted Jews the right to serve in Parliament. Despite this, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/cambridge-history-of-judaism/jews-of-great-britain-16501815/627C706CD6DF45A84E64140F287DBFD5">antisemitism remained a strong part</a> of British social and cultural life.</p>
<h2>The queen and the past</h2>
<p>In the early decades of the 20th century, British monarchs <a href="https://www.historyandpolicy.org/opinion-articles/articles/visiting-the-pope-the-monarchs-private-visit">began to adopt a more tolerant attitude</a>. The Queen’s great-grandfather, King Edward VII, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/british-history-after-1450/monarchy-and-british-nation-1780-present?format=PB">took some important first steps</a>. But Queen Elizabeth II made dialogue with non-Anglican Christian churches and non-Christian religious communities <a href="https://www.woolf.cam.ac.uk/whats-on/news/statement-on-her-majesty-queen-elizabeth-ii-1">a priority during her reign</a>, <a href="https://www.state.gov/reports/2020-report-on-international-religious-freedom/united-kingdom/#:%7E:text=Census%20figures%20from%202011%2C%20the,percent%20Jewish%3B%20and%200.4%20Buddhist">recognizing the increasing reality of Great Britain</a>, especially England, as a multifaith nation. </p>
<p>In 1951, two years before Queen Elizabeth II took the throne, she met privately with Pope Pius XII – almost 400 years after Queen Elizabeth I was <a href="https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/doc/PapalBull1570_M/index.htm">officially excommunicated</a> by Pope Pius V for taking the title Supreme Head of the Church of England. </p>
<p>Queen Elizabeth II had a private audience with Pope John XXIII 10 years later – only the second reigning monarch of the U.K. to visit with any pope. </p>
<p>Her efforts to build a new relationship with the Catholic Church included ongoing interactions with the popes. An official state visit with Pope John Paul II followed in 1980, and that <a href="https://www.vaticannews.va/en/world/news/2020-05/john-paul-s-1982-visit-to-britain-an-extraordinary-event.html">pope made a pastoral visit to Great Britain</a> two years later — the first time any pope had ever traveled there. </p>
<p>Another private audience with John Paul II followed in 2000, and in 2010 the queen <a href="https://www.christiantoday.com/article/catholic.church.seeks.to.clarify.purpose.of.popes.visit/26105.htm">met with Pope Benedict XVI</a> during his official state visit to the U.K. In 2014, she met with Pope Francis at the Vatican, a meeting commemorating 100 years of <a href="https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/252238/queen-elizabeth-met-five-popes-in-her-lifetime">renewed diplomatic relations</a> between the two sovereign states.</p>
<p>Violent resistance and tension continued in the independent Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom’s Northern Ireland over independence until the <a href="https://peaceaccords.nd.edu/accord/northern-ireland-good-friday-agreement">Good Friday peace accords</a> were approved by both sides in 1998. In 2011, the queen became the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-13420053">first reigning monarch to visit the Republic of Ireland</a>, a signal of support of the republic’s <a href="https://www.itv.com/news/utv/2022-09-09/an-historic-visit-reflections-on-queens-2011-trip-to-the-republic-of-ireland">independence</a> and what has been called one of the “<a href="https://www.itv.com/news/utv/2022-09-09/an-historic-visit-reflections-on-queens-2011-trip-to-the-republic-of-ireland">most significant</a>” acts of her long reign. </p>
<p>The Jewish community in Britain <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/queen-elizabeths-long-complex-relationship-with-the-british-jewish-community/">has also been supported</a> by the queen. Although she herself never visited Israel, <a href="https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-716696">several other members of the royal family did</a>. </p>
<p>The queen also received visits from several presidents of Israel. Several times, she participated in Holocaust commemorations and visited memorials, including <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/queen-elizabeth-to-travel-to-nazi-concentration-camp/">a 2015 trip to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp</a>, 70 years after it was liberated by the Allies. And in 2022, the Church of England issued <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/church-of-england-on-christian-jewish-relations">an apology for its contribution to the expulsion of Jews</a> from England in the 13th century.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484376/original/file-20220913-4760-lbjby7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip bending down to pay homage and lay a wreath at the Nazi concentration camp Bergen-Belsen on June 26, 2015." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484376/original/file-20220913-4760-lbjby7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484376/original/file-20220913-4760-lbjby7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484376/original/file-20220913-4760-lbjby7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484376/original/file-20220913-4760-lbjby7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484376/original/file-20220913-4760-lbjby7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484376/original/file-20220913-4760-lbjby7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484376/original/file-20220913-4760-lbjby7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Queen Elizabeth II participated in Holocaust commemorations and visited the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 2015.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/GermanyBritain/614ea48062434aab9398e7e622f24e51/photo?Query=queen%20visit%20concentration%20camps&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=42&currentItemNo=34">Julian Stratenschulte/Pool Photo via AP</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 2012, Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, called the queen the “<a href="https://www.rabbisacks.org/archive/the-queen-is-defender-of-all-britains-faiths/">Defender of all Britain’s Faiths</a>,” writing that, “No one does interfaith better than the Royal Family, and it begins with the Queen herself.”</p>
<h2>The king and the future</h2>
<p>Indeed, the former Prince of Wales suggested in 2015 that the title Defender of the Faith be understood more broadly, as simply “<a href="https://www.princeofwales.gov.uk/will-prince-wales-be-defender-faith-or-defender-faith">Defender of Faith</a>.” He stressed that he wanted to be seen as a defender of religious rights in general, not just the Anglican faith.</p>
<p>And when his accession was proclaimed on Sept. 10, 2022, King Charles III took the long-standing oath to preserve the rights of the Church of Scotland using the same wording that his predecessors have since the 16th century – <a href="https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2022/09/10/king-charles-iii-proclamation-oath-accession-council-vpx.cnn">as Defender of the Faith</a>. </p>
<p>There is little doubt that during his reign, King Charles III will continue to build on the foundation of toleration and dialogue laid down firmly by his mother. Modern Britain is a nation of many faiths, and a contemporary monarch will need to ensure that each of them is vigorously defended and warmly celebrated.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/190492/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>I was a member of the Anglican-Roman Catholic Dialogue in the US for several years, as a Roman Catholic member appointed by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.</span></em></p>Queen Elizabeth II encouraged tolerance in a multifaith United Kingdom. To appreciate the significance of her efforts, it is important to understand the country’s complicated religious history.Joanne M. Pierce, Professor Emerita of Religious Studies, College of the Holy CrossLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1892902022-08-26T12:18:46Z2022-08-26T12:18:46ZSalman Rushdie wasn’t the first novelist to suffer an assassination attempt by someone who hadn’t read their book<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481130/original/file-20220825-26-pyhaxf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=64%2C86%2C1758%2C1331&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A still from the film version of Hugo Bettauer's prophetic 1922 novel 'The City Without Jews.'</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://sites.barbican.org.uk/thecitywithoutjews/assets/I8O6TbQPLw/stoj_15-1868x1483.jpeg">Barbican</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Hadi Matar, the man charged with the attempted murder of the distinguished novelist Salman Rushdie, admitted that he had only “<a href="https://nypost.com/2022/08/17/alleged-salman-rushdie-attacker-didnt-think-author-would-survive/">read like two pages</a>” of “<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/323746/the-satanic-verses-by-salman-rushdie/">The Satanic Verses</a>,” Rushdie’s 1988 novel that angered fundamentalist Muslims around the world. Iran’s former Supreme Leader, Ayatalloh Ruhollah Khomeini, who announced a fatwa calling on all Muslims to murder Rushdie in 1989, <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/ayatollah-khomeini-never-read-salman-rushdies-book">hadn’t read it at all</a>.</p>
<p>“The Satanic Verses” wasn’t the first – and won’t be the last – novel to provoke the rage of a fanatic who has no grasp of literature’s nuances.</p>
<p>In 1922, an Austrian writer named <a href="http://worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n90644199/">Hugo Bettauer</a> published a novel set in Vienna called “<a href="https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book//lookupid?key=olbp91179">The City Without Jews</a>.” It sold a quarter of a million copies and became known internationally, with an <a href="https://archive.org/details/citywithoutjews0000unse/page/n5/mode/2up?view=theater">English translation</a> issued in London and New York. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcX3VWkXLjA">A silent movie adaptation, which has recently been recovered and restored</a>, appeared in the summer of 1924. The following spring, a young Nazi burst into Bettauer’s office and shot him multiple times. The author died of his wounds two weeks later.</p>
<h2>A novel published in a polarized city</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequality/">As in the U.S. today</a>, there was a major <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/40178867">gap between rich and poor in early 20th-century Vienna</a>. </p>
<p>The impressive architecture of the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Vienna/Layout-and-architecture">inner city</a> sheltered immense wealth, while there was desperate poverty in the working-class districts beyond. The opulence of the banks and department stores, the culture of the theaters and opera house – especially in the predominantly Jewish district of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/travel/connecting-past-and-future-on-a-pilgrimage-to-viennas-jewish-quarter/2019/01/24/6804366a-1a7a-11e9-9ebf-c5fed1b7a081_story.html">Leopoldstadt</a> – inevitably stirred deep resentment. </p>
<p>In the years immediately preceding World War I, populist mayor <a href="https://ww1.habsburger.net/en/chapters/i-decide-who-jew">Karl Lueger</a> saw his opportunity: He could win votes by blaming every problem on the Jews. Many a Jewish refugee would later say that <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/george-clare-memoirist-who-recalled-life-in-nazi-vienna-and-postwar-berlin-1726060.html">the antisemitism in Vienna was worse than Berlin’s</a>. An impoverished painter living in a public dormitory in a poor district to the north of Leopoldstadt was <a href="https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/go-in-depth/why-did-hitler-hate-jews/">inspired to build a new ideology</a> following Lueger’s blueprint. His name was Adolf Hitler.</p>
<p>Hugo Bettauer was born Jewish. Though he converted to Christianity, he never lost touch with his roots. He worked as a journalist and became a prolific novelist.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481134/original/file-20220825-16-9tfss7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Book cover featuring a drawing of a snaking line of people." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481134/original/file-20220825-16-9tfss7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481134/original/file-20220825-16-9tfss7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=847&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481134/original/file-20220825-16-9tfss7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=847&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481134/original/file-20220825-16-9tfss7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=847&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481134/original/file-20220825-16-9tfss7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1064&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481134/original/file-20220825-16-9tfss7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1064&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481134/original/file-20220825-16-9tfss7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1064&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hugo Bettauer’s novel ‘The City Without Jews’ sold over 250,000 copies.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.filmarchiv.at/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/bettauer_roman-510x720.jpg">Austrian Film Archive</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“The City Without Jews” (“Die Stadt ohne Juden”), ominously subtitled “A Novel of Tomorrow,” is a dystopian satire.</p>
<p>“A solid human wall,” it begins, “extending from the University to the Bellaria, surrounded the beautiful and imposing Parliament Building. All Vienna seemed to have assembled on this June morning to witness an historic event of incalculable importance.” </p>
<p>They have come to hear a politician called Dr. Schwertfeger – clearly based on Lueger – proclaim that all Jews are to be expelled from the city. </p>
<p>“Heil Dr. Karl Schwertfeger,” cry the mob, “Heil, heil, heil, the liberator of Austria.”</p>
<p>Names, facial features and ancestry are investigated; even those with mixed blood are put on the list of people to be expelled. Synagogues are desecrated and the entire Jewish population is packed into railway carriages with their suitcases. To watch this scene in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0016392/">the 1924 silent movie version</a> of the novel is a chilling experience: It is as if you are witnessing the Holocaust before it happened.</p>
<h2>Nazi wrath</h2>
<p>The ingenious twist in the novel is that once the Jews have been expelled, the economy and culture of Vienna collapse: no bankers, no tailors or hoteliers, no theater, no newspapers. The exiles return to a regal welcome and all ends well. The book is a simple but immensely powerful satire on antisemitism, which holds the reader’s attention by focusing the story on a handful of well-sketched characters.</p>
<p>But the novel and movie stirred the wrath of the incipient Austrian Nazi movement. Bettauer was denounced as a communist and a corrupter of the city’s youth. <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/25726/chapter-abstract/193221761?redirectedFrom=fulltext">Otto Rothstock</a>, a 20-year-old dental technician who had imbibed all the antisemitic propaganda of the age, decided to take action and assassinated the author in March 1925. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481136/original/file-20220825-22-6dgt1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Bird's eye view drawing of the murder scene." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481136/original/file-20220825-22-6dgt1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481136/original/file-20220825-22-6dgt1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481136/original/file-20220825-22-6dgt1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481136/original/file-20220825-22-6dgt1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481136/original/file-20220825-22-6dgt1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=635&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481136/original/file-20220825-22-6dgt1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=635&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481136/original/file-20220825-22-6dgt1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=635&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A drawing of the crime scene used during the trial of Otto Rothstock.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.filmarchiv.at/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/bettauer_tatortskizze-1024x863.jpg">Austrian Film Archive</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In court, Rothstock said that he was saving European culture from “degeneration.” He <a href="https://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+murder+of+Hugo+Bettauer.-a0268312215">described Bettauer’s journalism</a>, which often celebrated erotic liberation, as pornographic, and gave no indication that he had actually read the novel. His defense lawyer, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Riehl">Walter Riehl</a>, was the sometime leader of the Austrian Nazi Party. He got his man off with a plea of insanity and a mere 18 months confinement in a mental institution.</p>
<p>Rothstock lived until the 1970s, <a href="https://kurier.at/kultur/kino-ausstellung-stufenplan-der-ausschliessung/312.543.507">never repenting of his Nazism</a>. Startlingly, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Karl_Breslauer">H.K. Breslauer</a>, the director of the movie adaptation, subsequently became a propagandist on behalf of Hitler’s Nazi party. By contrast, <a href="https://wfpp.columbia.edu/pioneer/ccp-ida-jenbach/">Ida Jenbach</a>, the Jewish woman who co-wrote the screenplay, was deported to the Minsk ghetto. She was liquidated either there or at the nearby <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/maly-trostenets-concentration-camp">Maly Trostenets</a> concentration camp.</p>
<p>Ironically, given the parallels between the Rushdie attack and the murder of Bettauer, in Vienna today <a href="https://www.filmarchiv.at/program/exhibition/die-stadt-ohne/">it is Muslims who are demonized, as Jews were 100 years ago</a>.</p>
<h2>The blinders of extremism</h2>
<p>Writers seem to be especially vulnerable in polarized times when beliefs harden into dogma and those who hold opposing views are demonized.</p>
<p>Rushdie’s novel is peopled by angels and devils, propelled by dream sequences and fantastical provocations. It celebrates diverse identities while mocking prophets and politicians, the British and their empire, and all manner of divisions and dogma. It is a work of “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UI9I2p71ct0">magic realism</a>” that demands to be read playfully, not literally.</p>
<p>But religious and political fundamentalists have no time for play, for questioning, doubt and curiosity. In one passage, Rushdie drew on some ancient heterodox texts to depict the Prophet Muhammad being spoken to by the devil instead of God, and it was enough to stir fury across the Muslim world. By the same logic, Bettauer’s satirical “novel of tomorrow” – a thought experiment intended to make readers think twice about the Jewish contribution to Viennese life – enraged the antisemites.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Woman in headscarf holds newspaper." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481112/original/file-20220825-1450-gjjprb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C3%2C2038%2C1416&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481112/original/file-20220825-1450-gjjprb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481112/original/file-20220825-1450-gjjprb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481112/original/file-20220825-1450-gjjprb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481112/original/file-20220825-1450-gjjprb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481112/original/file-20220825-1450-gjjprb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481112/original/file-20220825-1450-gjjprb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An Iranian woman reads a newspaper in 2000 with a drawing depicting British author Salman Rushdie as a hanged man.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/an-iranian-woman-reads-a-paper-in-tehran-14-february-2000-news-photo/1242459432?adppopup=true">Henghameh Fahimi/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“Fundamentalism,” <a href="https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/anti-liberal">writes the critic Terry Eagleton</a>, “is essentially a mistaken theory of language”: It assumes that every word of a text, whether sacred or secular, must be read as a statement of a literal truth or a proclamation of the unshakable beliefs of the author. It is deaf to irony, metaphor, satire, allegory, provocation, ambiguity, contrariness. </p>
<p>So it likely wouldn’t have made any difference if Otto Rothstock had read “The City Without Jews” or if Hadi Matar and Ayatollah Khomeini had read “The Satanic Verses.” They would have heard only the message they wanted to hear. </p>
<p>It’s a troubling sign of the times that <a href="https://twitter.com/benmschmidt/status/1562212497272279041">the number of college students getting degrees in literature</a> is declining <a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/alevel-association-of-school-and-college-leaders-english-action-england-b1019028.html">across the world</a>. In our divided age, it is more important than ever for people to continue to learn the art of reading with imagination and empathy – and without the blinders of politics or religion.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/189290/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Bate does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Writers seem to be especially vulnerable in polarized times, when the nuances of works are more likely to be overlooked.Jonathan Bate, Foundation Professor of Environmental Humanities, Arizona State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1856682022-07-26T11:57:29Z2022-07-26T11:57:29ZThere is a lot of antisemitic hate speech on social media – and algorithms are partly to blame<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475238/original/file-20220720-25-ycf9uk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C0%2C4747%2C3078&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Social media is being used all over the world to express hatred of Jews.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/online-messaging-social-media-auto-post-production-royalty-free-image/1307414278?adppopup=true">Urupong/ iStock / Getty Images Plus</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Antisemitic incidents have shown a sharp rise in the United States. The Anti-Defamation League, a New York-based Jewish civil rights group that has been tracking cases since 1979, found that <a href="https://www.adl.org/resources/press-release/adl-audit-finds-antisemitic-incidents-united-states-reached-all-time-high">there were 2,717 incidents in 2021</a>. This represents an increase of 34% over 2020. In Europe, the European Commission <a href="https://www.isdglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/the-rise-of-antisemitism-during-the-pandemic.pdf">found a sevenfold increase</a> in antisemitic postings across French language accounts, and an over thirteenfold increase in antisemitic comments within German channels during the pandemic. </p>
<p>Together with other scholars who study antisemitism, we started to look at how <a href="https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003200499-2">technology and the business model of the social media platforms were driving antisemitism</a>.
A 2022 book that we co-edited, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003200499">Antisemitism on Social Media</a>,” offers perspectives from the U.S., Germany, Denmark, Israel, India, U.K. and Sweden on how algorithms on Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and YouTube contribute to spreading antisemitism.</p>
<h2>What does antisemitism on social media look like?</h2>
<p>Hatred against Jews on social media is often expressed in stereotypical depictions of Jews that stem from Nazi propaganda or in denial of the Holocaust. </p>
<p>Antisemitic social media posts also express hatred toward Jews that is based on the notion that all Jews are <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/11/20/18080010/zionism-israel-palestine">Zionist</a> – that is, they are part of the national movement supporting Israel as a Jewish state – and Zionism is constructed as innately evil.</p>
<p>However, today’s antisemitism is not only directed at Israelis, and it does not always take the form of traditional slogans or hate speech. Contemporary antisemitism manifests itself in various forms such as GIFs, memes, vlogs, comments and reactions such as likes and dislikes on the platforms. </p>
<p>Scholar <a href="https://pure.au.dk/portal/en/persons/sophie-schmalenberger(9ff053c5-5bcf-44a1-b4b9-2dd472196ab1).html">Sophie Schmalenberger</a> found that antisemitism is expressed not just in blunt, hurtful language and images on social media, but also in coded forms that may easily remain undetected. For example, on Facebook, Germany’s radical right-wing party Alternative für Deutschland, or AfD, <a href="https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003200499-4">omits the mentioning of the Holocaust</a> in posts about the Second World War. It also uses antisemitic language and rhetoric that present antisemitism as acceptable.</p>
<p>Antisemitism may take on subtle forms such as in emojis. The emoji combination of a star of David, a Jewish symbol, and a rat resembles the <a href="https://www.philaholocaustmemorial.org/antisemitism-explained/">Nazi propaganda likening Jews to vermin</a>. In Nazi Germany, the constant repetition and normalization of such depictions led to the dehumanization of Jews and eventually the acceptance of genocide. </p>
<p>Other forms of antisemitism on social media are <a href="https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003200499-6">antisemitic troll attacks</a>: Users organize to disrupt online events by flooding them with messages that deny the Holocaust or spread <a href="https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003200499-3">conspiracy myths as QAnon does</a>. </p>
<p>Scholars <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/person/gabriel-weimann">Gabi Weimann</a> and <a href="https://il.linkedin.com/in/natalie-masri-5b4893205?original_referer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F">Natalie Masri</a> have studied TikTok. They found that kids and young adults are especially in danger of being exposed, often unwittingly, to antisemitism on the <a href="https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003200499-11">very popular and fast-growing platform</a>, which already counts over 1 billion users worldwide. Some of the content that is posted combines clips of footage from Nazi Germany with new text belittling or making fun of the victims of the Holocaust. </p>
<p>The continuous exposure to antisemitic content at a young age, scholars say, can lead to both normalization of the content and radicalization of the Tik-Tok viewer. </p>
<h2>Algorithmic antisemitism</h2>
<p>Antisemitism is fueled by algorithms, which are programmed to register engagement. This ensures that the more engagement a post receives, the more users see it. Engagement includes all reactions such as likes and dislikes, shares and comments, including countercomments. The problem is that reactions to posts also <a href="https://gizmodo.com/former-facebook-exec-you-don-t-realize-it-but-you-are-1821181133">trigger rewarding dopamine hits in users</a>. Because outrageous content creates the most engagement, users feel more encouraged to post hateful content.</p>
<p>However, even social media users who post critical comments on hateful content don’t realize that because of the way algorithms work, they end up contributing to its spread. </p>
<p>Research on video recommendations on <a href="https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-020-00550-7">YouTube also shows how algorithms gradually lead users to more radical content</a>. Algorithmic antisemitism is thus a form of what criminologist <a href="https://hatelab.net/people/">Matthew Williams</a> calls “algorithmic hate” in his book “<a href="https://thescienceofhate.com/">The Science of Hate</a>.” </p>
<h2>What can be done about it?</h2>
<p>To combat antisemitism on social media, strategies need to be evidence based. But neither social media companies nor researchers have devoted enough time and resources to this issue so far.</p>
<p>The study of antisemitism on social media poses unique challenges to researchers: They need access to the data and funding to be able to help develop effective counterstrategies. So far, scholars depend on the cooperation of the social media companies to <a href="https://undark.org/2022/04/18/why-researchers-want-broader-access-to-social-media-data/">access the data, which is mostly unregulated</a>. </p>
<p>Social media companies have implemented guidelines on <a href="https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003200499-14">reporting antisemitism on social media</a>, and civil society organizations have been demanding action against algorithmic antisemitism. However, the measures taken so far are woefully inadequate, if not dangerous. For example, counterspeech, which is often promoted as a possible strategy, tends to amplify hateful content. </p>
<p>To meaningfully address antisemitic hate speech, social media companies would need to change the algorithms that collect and curate user data for advertisement companies, which make up a large part of their revenue.</p>
<p>There is a global, borderless spread of antisemitic posts on social media happening on an unprecedented scale. We believe it will require the collective efforts of social media companies, researchers and civil society to combat this problem.</p>
<hr>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/social-media-and-society-125586" target="_blank"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479539/original/file-20220817-20-g5jxhm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=144&fit=crop&dpr=1" width="100%"></a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/185668/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Antisemitism today does not always appear in the form of traditional hate speech. It manifests in GIFs, memes, vlogs, comments and reactions on social media platforms.Sabine von Mering, Director, Center for German and European Studies, Brandeis UniversityMonika Hübscher, Research Associate, PhD Candidate, University of Duisburg-EssenLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1827262022-07-19T17:34:43Z2022-07-19T17:34:43ZWarsaw Ghetto’s defiant Jewish doctors secretly documented the medical effects of Nazi starvation policies in a book rediscovered on a library shelf<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474632/original/file-20220718-76232-8ep20p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=120%2C111%2C1165%2C793&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The book includes haunting photos from inside the ghetto, along with its record of the medical effects of starvation.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">'Maladie de Famine," American Joint Distribution Committee</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 1942, a group of starving Jewish scientists and doctors in the Warsaw Ghetto were collecting data on their starving patients. They hoped their research would benefit future generations through better ways to treat malnutrition, and they wanted the world to know of Nazi atrocities to prevent something similar from ever happening again. They recorded the grim effects of an almost complete lack of food on the human body in a rare book titled “<a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/maladie-de-famine-recherches-cliniques-sur-la-famine-executees-dans-le-ghetto-de-varsovie-en-1942/oclc/613124708">Maladie de Famine</a>” (in English, “The Disease of Starvation: Clinical Research on Starvation in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942”) that we <a href="https://dl.tufts.edu/concern/pdfs/h415pr96d">rediscovered in the Tufts University library</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474374/original/file-20220715-4647-pxtnux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="yellowed frontispiece of a book" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474374/original/file-20220715-4647-pxtnux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474374/original/file-20220715-4647-pxtnux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=830&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474374/original/file-20220715-4647-pxtnux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=830&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474374/original/file-20220715-4647-pxtnux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=830&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474374/original/file-20220715-4647-pxtnux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1042&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474374/original/file-20220715-4647-pxtnux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1042&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474374/original/file-20220715-4647-pxtnux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1042&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This French translation was donated to the Tufts University library in 1948.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">'Maladie de Famine,' American Joint Distribution Committee</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=HyTsVigAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">As scientists who</a> <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=irwin%20rosenberg&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C22">study starvation</a>, its biological effects and its use as a weapon of mass destruction, we believe the story of how and why Jewish scientists conducted this research in such extreme conditions is as important and compelling as its results. </p>
<p>The clandestine project’s lead doctor, Israel Milejkowski, wrote the books’s foreword. In it, he explains:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The work was originated and pursued under unbelievable conditions. I hold my pen in my hand and death stares into my room. It looks through the black windows of sad empty houses on deserted streets littered with vandalized and burglarized possessions. … In this prevailing silence lies the power and the depth of our pain and the moans that one day will shake the world’s conscience.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Reading these words, we were both transfixed, transported by his voice to a time and place where starvation was being used as a weapon of oppression and annihilation as the Nazis were systematically exterminating all Jews in their occupied territories. As scholars of starvation, we were also well aware that this book catalogs many of the justifications for the <a href="https://www.icrc.org/en/doc/war-and-law/treaties-customary-law/geneva-conventions/overview-geneva-conventions.htm">1949 Geneva Conventions</a>, which made starvation of civilians a war crime.</p>
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<p><iframe id="tc-infographic-561" class="tc-infographic" height="100" src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/infographics/561/4fbbd099d631750693d02bac632430b71b37cd5f/site/index.html" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>A defiant medical record</h2>
<p>Within months of their 1939 invasion of Poland, Nazi forces created the infamous Warsaw Ghetto. At its peak, more than <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/26627292">450,000 Jews were required to live in this small, walled-off area</a> of about 1.5 square miles (3.9 square kilometers) within the city, <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/4065270">unable to leave even to look for food</a>.</p>
<p>Although Germans in Warsaw were allotted a <a href="https://hekint.org/2022/01/06/the-warsaw-ghetto-hunger-study/">daily ration of about 2,600 calories</a>, physicians in the ghetto estimated that Jews were able to consume only about 800 calories a day on average through a combination of rations and smuggling. That’s about half the calories volunteers consumed in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/jn/135.6.1347">a study on starvation</a> conducted near the end of World War II by researchers at the University of Minnesota, and less than a <a href="https://www.dietaryguidelines.gov/sites/default/files/2020-12/Dietary_Guidelines_for_Americans_2020-2025.pdf">third of the average energy needs of an adult male</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474375/original/file-20220715-16-4kqicm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="emaciated naked patient sits on hospital bed with nurse behind" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474375/original/file-20220715-16-4kqicm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474375/original/file-20220715-16-4kqicm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=742&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474375/original/file-20220715-16-4kqicm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=742&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474375/original/file-20220715-16-4kqicm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=742&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474375/original/file-20220715-16-4kqicm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=932&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474375/original/file-20220715-16-4kqicm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=932&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474375/original/file-20220715-16-4kqicm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=932&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Even before mass deportations to death camps, many thousands of Jews died because of conditions within the Warsaw Ghetto.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">'Maladie de Famine,' American Joint Distribution Committee</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When the Nazis designated the district of the Warsaw Ghetto, it enclosed two hospitals, one serving Jewish adults and another for Jewish children. The hospitals were allowed to continue to treat patients with whatever resources they could obtain, but Jews in general were <a href="https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2010/winter/nuremberg.html">forbidden from conducting research</a>. Nevertheless, starting in February 1942, a group of Jewish doctors in the ghetto defied their captors by meticulously and secretly gathering data and observations on multiple biological aspects of starvation.</p>
<p>Then on July 22, 1942, Nazi forces entered the ghetto and destroyed the hospitals and other critical services. Patients and some of the doctors were killed outright or deported to be gassed, their laboratories, samples and some of their research destroyed.</p>
<p>With their own demise approaching, the remaining doctors spent the last nights of their lives meeting secretly in the cemetery buildings, transforming their data into a series of research articles. By October, as they put the finishing touches on the book, about <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/deportations-to-and-from-the-warsaw-ghetto">300,000 Jews from the ghetto had already been gassed</a>. The physicians’ own data showed that another 100,000 had been killed through forced starvation and disease.</p>
<p>With final deportations of the few surviving Jews underway and his own death imminent, Milejkowski wrote of the dark, yawning emptiness of the ghetto at that moment, and the horrifying conditions the doctors had labored under to conduct and record the research. </p>
<p>Milejkowski had words for not only the reader, but also his dear colleagues, many of whom had already been executed.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“What can I tell you, my beloved colleagues and companions in misery. You are a part of all of us. Slavery, hunger, deportation, those death figures in our ghetto were also your legacy. And you, by your work, could give the henchman the answer ‘Non omnis moriar,’ [I shall not wholly die].”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The team’s act of resistance through science was its way to wring something good out of an evil situation, to show the world the quality of the Jewish doctor, but mostly to defy the Nazis’ intent to erase their existence.</p>
<p>With death knocking on the door, the doctors smuggled their precious research out of the ghetto to a sympathizer who buried it in the cemetery of the Warsaw hospital. Less than a year later, all but a few of the 23 authors were dead.</p>
<p>Immediately after the war, the manuscript was dug up and taken to one of the few surviving authors, Dr. Emil Apfelbaum, and the American Joint Distribution Committee in Warsaw, a charity whose main purpose at the time was to help <a href="https://www.jdc.org/video/75-years-later-remembering-jdcs-role-in-saving-wwii-survivors">Jewish survivors</a>. Together, they made the final edits and printed the six surviving articles, binding them into a book along with photos taken in the ghetto. Apfelbaum died just a couple of months before the final printing, broken by his years in the ghetto.</p>
<p>In 1948 and 1949, the American Joint Distribution Committee disseminated 1,000 copies of the French translation to hospitals, medical schools, libraries and universities across the U.S. It was one humble, crumbling copy of this book that waited to be “rediscovered” about 75 years later in the basement of a Tufts University library.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474631/original/file-20220718-61161-bd2k07.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="black and white photo of an emaciated boy lying on a bed" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474631/original/file-20220718-61161-bd2k07.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474631/original/file-20220718-61161-bd2k07.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474631/original/file-20220718-61161-bd2k07.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474631/original/file-20220718-61161-bd2k07.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474631/original/file-20220718-61161-bd2k07.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474631/original/file-20220718-61161-bd2k07.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474631/original/file-20220718-61161-bd2k07.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Many of the ghetto’s inhabitants had no other diseases beyond the effects of starvation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">'Maladie de Famine,' American Joint Distribution Committee</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The book’s grim descriptions</h2>
<p>Based on observations of thousands of deaths from starvation, this research from the Warsaw Ghetto provides insight into the biological progression of starvation that scientists now are just beginning to understand.</p>
<p>For example, many Warsaw Ghetto residents who died of starvation were otherwise free of disease. The ghetto researchers found that while an otherwise healthy body diminished through starvation apparently had a decreased need for vitamins, the need for certain minerals remained. They saw few cases of scurvy (vitamin C deficiency), night blindness (vitamin A deficiency) or rickets (vitamin D deficiency). But they did see significant osteomalacia, a softening of the bones, as the body mined them for their stores of minerals.</p>
<p>When the doctors provided sugar to the severely malnourished, their energy-starved cells quickly absorbed it. This demonstrated that the ability to quickly absorb and use energy remained to the end, suggesting that energy was the single most important factor in starvation, not other micro- or macronutrients.</p>
<p>Each of these observations invites us as scientists to explore further. And with these lessons we can hope to prevent deaths or long-term harm from starvation through better treatment for the severely malnourished.</p>
<p>As scientists studying starvation today, it would be <a href="https://www.ama-assn.org/system/files/2019-01/code-of-medical-ethics-chapter-7.pdf">unthinkable and unethical to starve people</a> to learn how the human body adjusts and changes during the end stages of extreme starvation. Even if researchers go into a famine-stricken population to learn about starvation, they immediately treat the victims, erasing the very object of their research.</p>
<p>Partly as a result of the experience of the Warsaw Ghetto, the Geneva Conventions made <a href="https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/Article.xsp?action=openDocument&documentId=ACF5220D585326BCC12563CD0051E8B6">intentional mass starvation a crime</a>, further strengthened by a U.N. Security Council Resolution <a href="https://www.un.org/press/en/2018/sc13354.doc.htm">as recently as 2018</a>. Nevertheless, this inhumane aspect of war <a href="https://theconversation.com/starving-civilians-is-an-ancient-military-tactic-but-today-its-a-war-crime-in-ukraine-yemen-tigray-and-elsewhere-184297">remains to this day</a>, as evidenced by current events in <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/the-starvation-of-a-nation-how-putin-is-using-hunger-as-a-weapon-in-ukraine/">Ukraine</a> and <a href="https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/10/09/ethiopia-is-deliberately-starving-its-own-citizens">Tigray</a>, Ethiopia.</p>
<p>Though “Maladie de Famine” has never been totally lost or forgotten, the lessons from the doctors’ research have faded to semi-obscurity. Eight decades after the destruction that ended their studies, we hope to shine a renewed light on this work and its enduring impact on physicians’ understanding of starvation and how to treat it. The unique data and observations regarding severe starvation that the Warsaw Ghetto doctors, despite their own suffering, presented in this precious book can even now help safeguard others from that same fate.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>The Joint Distribution Committee, which holds the copyright for “Maladie de Famine,” has allowed Tufts University to post a freely accessible <a href="https://dl.tufts.edu/concern/pdfs/h415pr96d">scan of the book</a> online.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182726/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The story behind the research can be as compelling as the results. Recording the effects of starvation, a group of Jewish doctors demonstrated their dedication to science – and their own humanity.Merry Fitzpatrick, Research Assistant Professor of Nutrition Science and Policy, Tufts UniversityIrwin Rosenberg, Professor Emeritus of Nutrition and Medicine, Tufts UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.