I don't know if it's really antisemitism, but I have nothing else

My fellow brown brother Arash Azizi wrote for The Atlantic on the far left’s continuing and unyielding dogmatism on the topic of Israel. The inciting incident has been the Democratic Socialists of America withdrawing their endorsement of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — by far the most successful political candidate they’ve ever had — for being…insufficiently anti-Israel?

If you’re confused about AOC getting tarred by this brush, then you might not realize just how deep antipathy towards Israel goes:

Ocasio-Cortez has been faulted for endorsing a resolution that affirmed Israel’s right to exist; for being open to funding the purely defensive Iron Dome, which has saved thousands of innocent Israeli and Palestinian lives; and for not backing the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign, which is so extreme in its opposition to “normalization” that it opposes left-wing Israeli writers as well as the Palestinian Israeli pro-peace and anti-occupation movement Standing Together.

The DSA never stops reminding us that America has a lot of problems; everything from racism, mass incarceration, poverty, unemployment, pollution, wealth inequality, healthcare access, food insecurity, homelessness, et cetera. Even if you disagree with their proposed solutions, their focus makes total sense!

But of all things a political movement chooses to get worked up over and transform into an unyielding litmus test, it has to be a foreign policy issue, and it has to be this particular one. It’s very weird!

I have to keep reminding myself that compared to something like the United States’ destructive adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, financial and diplomatic support for Israel is an objectively minor foreign policy issue for the average American. Yes, the $3.8 billion sent to Israel every year is a lot of money, but it’s nothing compared America’s $850 billion military budget. And Israel on its own remains an extremely wealthy country that enthusiastically prioritizes its military capabilities, with a $24 billion budget and an advanced domestic industry that is a major weapons exporter. If you really believe Israel is committing a genocide, vanishing all American financial assistance would barely leave dent in their efforts.

Whenever anyone asserts a justification for their beliefs, we can evaluate how earnest it is by checking their consistency. Just as one example, if the concern is “the US shouldn’t provide financial assistance to any conflict belligerent that is insufficiently cautious about inflicting civilian casualties”, then I would expected a stance just as hardline against Saudi Arabian support in their conduct in Yemen. Azizi reminds us of the undeniably selective outcry:

Some leftists will argue that billions of dollars in U.S. military aid to Israel make the issue particularly pertinent. But the United States has recently given billions more to Ukraine and regularly provides substantial military assistance to Jordan, Egypt, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Kenya, all of which are involved in controversial conflicts. The left didn’t abandon Ocasio-Cortez for her positions on aid to Ukraine (she has reliably voted for extending it) or NATO expansion (she’s for it), both of which run against the DSA line. And the average American leftist has little to say about the territorial disputes between Somalia and its neighbors, or about Sudan’s civil war, despite the considerable role the United States plays in these conflicts.

It gets even crazier when you examine some of the substantive arguments behind the teeth gnashing. I’ve always been aware of opposition to Iron Dome but couldn’t fathom what it was actually based on. The first piece I found was from the progressive Jewish Currents, from May 2023:

By almost entirely negating the ability of militant groups in Gaza to respond to Israel’s incursions, the purportedly defensive Iron Dome allows Israel to strike without fear of repercussion. And because the cost is so low when measured in Israeli casualties, Israel can wage perpetual war without suffering domestic political consequences, and is under negligible pressure to pursue diplomacy with the Palestinians.

Simply jaw-dropping. I can’t stop repeating that it’s impossible for the jury-rigged rockets launched by Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups to target Israeli military facilities; if they hit anything at all it’s bound to be random civilians. For someone to get so upset by the Iron Dome’s prevention of indiscriminate rocket barrages that they’d lament it, they must prioritize rocket “deterrence” overwhelmingly more than rocket casualties. And because the arguments for “deterrence” are highly speculative and questionable at best (as a JC letter to the editor pointed out), the calculus only works if you diminish the very real destruction and pervasive misery caused by the barrages to a negligible amount. If Israeli lives are worth almost nothing in your calculus, then it’s trivially easy to justify their mass slaughter, provided it generates enough deterrence points.

Why are folks so unhinged on this particular issue? Remember, that question is what got me interested in this topic in the first place. The same day I published that post almost ten months ago, I also posted this brief message on my personal social media:

I want to extend my solidarity with all my Jewish friends, who have been the target of a virulently unapologetic hatred campaign that continues to alarmingly escalate. There is never any justification whatsoever for chanting “Gas all jews!” at a protest, for tearing down posters of kidnapped children, or for targeting random Jews for the crimes of others.

It’s patently ghoulish behavior, and the perpetrators are shielding themselves behind valid concerns about the plight of the Palestinian people in order to cynically launder their depravity. The pro-Palestinian movement is digging its own grave by refusing to unequivocally disavow these monstrous elements from its ranks.

Tolerating blatant bigotry helps no one.

I knew at the time that this was going to piss some people off, but I wanted it to. If anyone thought this proclamation was unconscionable, then good riddance! Yet, I’m still struck at how tepid this message was.

I grew up enough of an ardent Muslim to appreciate how much religious dogmatism can poison one’s mind. So when I see the unyieldingly violent vitriol espoused by Muslim protestors on this issue, domestically and across the world, there’s no reluctance on my end to ascribe their zealotry as motivated by religious and ethnic hatred. But when it’s everyone else, my white lefty ex-friends, someone who putatively has no bronze age dog in the fight, do I really believe that they just hate Jewish people that much? It just seems unconscionable to accept that. Perhaps this is my own bigotry of low expectations.

I’m more than open to other theories, but it needs to be supported by hard evidence demonstrating a consistently applied principled stance. Earnest pro-Palestinian advocates absolutely exist, but you won’t find them in charge of the DSA. I really genuinely don’t know if antisemitism is the explanation. I don’t blame you if that’s what you think, because I’ve got nothing else.