Commemorating the Holocaust in Music

It is a truism--and a typical piece of philistine thinking--to say that it is "impossible" for words, or art, to capture the reality of the Holocaust. On some level, words and art--the only tools at our disposal--are "incapable" of capturing many realities and experiences, and yet we use them to try to approximate that goal. Still, most of us would nonetheless agree that addressing the Holocaust through the arts does pose steep challenges. Just avoiding the maudlin, the hackneyed, and the banal is challenge enough--never mind actually capturing the essence of the tragedy or making an original aesthetic statement.

And what of music commemorating the Holocaust?

At first, it seems hard even to think of pieces that might serve such a debate. Commemoration and depiction have been much more the domain of literature. Still, there are examples.

When I was a kid, I was present in New York at the world premiere of Darius Milhaud's cantata, "Ani M'amin" ("I Believe") to text by Elie Wiesel. In the words of a recent review: "a meditation on the possibility of faith in the presence of unbridled and seemingly unpunished evil." In all honesty, mostly what sticks in my mind is one rather cynical adult saying he had enjoyed the Holocaust more. He was, I suspect, no fan of modern and contemporary music. I am. Still . . .

I hadn't listened to the piece in years. I enjoy much of Milhaud's music, but somehow, this one, and this particular style of choral singing never did much for me. In any case, you can  judge for yourself from this excerpt.

A review of Donald McCullough's more recent "In the Shadow of the Holocaust," made it sound more promising, but I have not heard it yet.


Here, for what it's worth, are some of the compositions that I find most accomplished or most regularly play:


Lukas Foss, Elegy for Anne Frank

I've always been partial to the music of Lukas Foss, the German-born American composer who succeeded Arnold Schoenberg as professor of music at UCLA.

His "Elegy for Anne Frank" is a modest but moving piece. The elegiacal mood, crudely interrupted by variations on the Nazi hymn, the "Horst Wessel Song" (not as the Milken Archive describes it: the "German national anthem"), before returning to the original register, somehow captures both the innocence of the insightful girl and the anxiety of life in the Secret Annex. (It exists in two versions, one with spoken text, and one without, critics generally preferring the latter.)

Sample here


Arnold Schoenberg, A Survivor From Warsaw, Op. 46

Speaking of Schoenberg, this treatment of the Holocaust stands out by virtue of its relatively early date (1947) and its power. Although Schoenberg had converted to Catholicism, the rise of Nazism prompted him to return to Judaism. The text is Schoenberg's own, based on the account of a survivor of the Ghetto Uprising and liquidation. In the liner notes, fellow composer Nancy Van de Vate, noting that "many" regard the composition as "Schoenberg's most dramatic and moving work," describes it as follows:

     The narration is in Sprechstimme, a kind of speech-singing which Schoenberg developed, precisely notated for rhythms, more approximately for pitches, Olbrychski's moving narration is uniquely authentic, yet faithful to Schoenberg's notation. The cantata builds to a powerful, dramatic climax when, at "the grandiose moment," the male chorus begins spontaneously to sing the Shema Yisroel ("Hear, O Israel") in Hebrew, the third language of Schoenberg's life. It is "the old prayer" central to Judaism, that its martyrs have sung throughout history in defiance and resignation in their hour of death. It is the dramatic climax of the piece, for which Schoenberg has skillfully prepared the listener from the narrator's first lines when a French horn softly played the opening of the Shema Yisroel melody.

     The music vividly accentuates textual details throughout. A trumpet fanfare first awakens the Jews for transport to death camps. There are suggestions of military drum, unusual string effects from taps or scratches of string with bow sticks, high woodwind trills, muted brass fluttertonguing, snarls of muted horns and trumpets. The music builds to the terrifying counting off, louder and faster to prepare for the choral entry. "They began again, first slowly: One two, three, four, became faster and faster, so fast that it sounded like a stampede of wild horses, and all of a sudden, in the middle of it, they began to sing the Shema Yisroel." The sung Hebrew dramatically contrasts with the spoken English and brutal Nazi commands, and gives the work a powerful, moving climax in its only extended melody.

Here is a version narrated by the great Maximilian Schell:

I have a couple of recordings of this piece, but the following version, by Polish performers, conveniently combines it with other works commemorating the atrocities of the Second World War.

No list of Holocaust music would be complete without


Krzysztof Penderecki's "Dies Irae," or Auschwitz Oratorio.

Back in the day when I was a high school student, first learning properly about classical music, this piece was issued on a vinyl LP with a bleak black-and-white image of a crematorium chimney.  Popular, too, was his "Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima," and these became obligatory items on the record shelves of all right-thinking progressives who prattled on about "man's inhumanity to man" even if they didn't really know any history and could not fully appreciate the jarring, and indeed, terrifying music. They may have bought it, but I really doubt they often listened to it.

Penderecki's piece, composed for the dedication of the international memorial at the Birkenau (Auschwitz II) death camp in 1967, differs from the others here in that it does not focus on the Jewish victims. Although Jews made up the largest number of victims at Auschwitz, the camp served first for the internment of Polish political prisoners, and subversives and resisters from many countries. It is also a site of specifically Polish national mourning. Penderecki is also Catholic (literally and figuratively) in his textual choices. Although he does not use the text of the requiem mass, he draws upon the Psalms, Apocalypse, Revelation, and Corinthians, as well as Greek tragedy and modern poetry.

The piece also reminds us of a very exciting time in the history of avant-garde music and other arts, not least, when artistic experimentation flourished in the countries of the East Bloc between the tyranny of Stalinism and the prosaic repression and philistinism of the post-1967 "normalization" and the following "era of stagnation."

As Nancy Van de Vate says in her liner notes,

     Dies Irae is an atonal, extremely dissonant work employing precise notated pitches, quater-tones, and sounds of indeterminate pitch. As in other works from the composer's early period . . . combinations of many unusual timbres, used both simultaneously and in succession, create unusual textures, neither homophonic nor conventionally polyphonic. Extreme dynamic contrast, from the softest to the loudest imaginable musical sounds, adds further to the music's drama and intensity. The sound of an air raid siren at the end of the second movement intensifies a section of the music which depicts beasts and men being burned alive. The rattling of a chain and shaking of a thunder-sheet (lastra) further evoke feelings of fear and horror appropriate to the subject.
     The chorus sing, speak and chant with an unusual variety of vocal sounds. The imagery of their text is dramatic and terrible, ranging from references to the shorn hair of a little girl's pigtail once tugged by cheeky boys at school to the triumphant "Death is swallowed up by victory" (Absorpta est mors in victoria) of the final movement. Yet the work closes tragically with the phrase Corpora parvulorum (Bodies of the little ones) which has been heard many times earlier.

Part I:

I am a great fan of mid-century modernism in all fields, from architecture to avant-garde music, but more recently, the minimalists have made their contribution, too.

Among more contemporary compositions, one that I find the most compelling is


Steve Reich, Different Trains

Trains, along with chimneys and barbed wire, are among the most common and evocative images of the Holocaust as the epitome of modern industrialized death. (Not coincidentally, a train also figures on the cover art of the final CD that I will mention.)

Using the symbol of the train, Reich's piece offers a brilliant and troubling mediation on the vagaries of chance:

     The concept for the piece comes from my childhood. When I was one year old, my parents separated. My mother moved to Los Angeles and my father stayed in New York. Since the arranged divided custody, I traveled back and forth by train frequently between New York and Los Angeles from 1939 to 1942 accompanied by my governess. While these trips were exciting and romantic at the time, I now look back and think that, if I had been in Europe during this period, as a Jew I would have had to ride very different trains.

He says that the work, commissioned for the Kronos Quartet, "begins a new way of composing," "the basic idea" being "that speech recordings generate the musical material for musical instruments." It features recordings of his governess, an African-American Pullman porter, three Holocaust survivors, and historical train sounds from the era of his childhood journeys. It is divided into three parts:

America--Before the war
Europe--During the war
After the war

Popular music has not often ventured into the territory of the Holocaust, and that's probably a good thing. Still, there are notable exceptions.  One of the truly great albums is

Yehuda Poliker, Efer ve Avak (Ash[es] and Dust)

Poliker is one of the most multi-talented and influential Israeli musicians, a compelling vocalist and a stunning soloist on a wide range of intstruments.  His parents were Greek Holocaust survivors, deported from Thessaloniki to Auschwitz, and at the same time as Reich was writing "Different Trains," Poliker teamed up with son of Polish Auschwitz survivors Yaacov Gilad, who wrote most of the lyrics for "Ashes and Dust." Eight of the twelve songs deal with the Holocaust, and the album became not only a bestseller and reflection of Israeli Holocaust culture, but also a shaper of it: specifically, in the shift from collective to individual commemoration, and in its emphases on the new role of children of survivors in shaping the reception of the events as the focus moved from history to memory.

Like much of the best Holocaust literature (I always think of the works of Aharon Appelfeld), this music succeeds because it is subtle and often indirect, moving around the margins of the topic, confronting it by implication rather than declaration. The result is an overwhelming mood, a persistent sense of loss.

The title song:

When You Grow Up (a subtle meditation on the children of survivors)

A Small Station Called Treblinka (request English lyrics)

 

Yom HaShoah / Holocaust Memorial Day 2015/5775

Haaretz today ran an article, "A dozen reasons why Israel should do away with Holocaust Remembrance Day." It was no doubt supposed to be provocative, but even if some of the individual points were valid or worth discussing, the whole was less than the sum of its parts. Above all, in condemning the holiday "because it has become a tool in the hands of ultranationalist ideologues," the piece simply substitutes one political agenda for another. It's one of those ideas that, as the saying goes (not in fact Orwell's, but close to his thinking) is so absurd that only an intellectual could believe it.

One might as well say that we should end Fourth of July celebrations because American patriotism sometimes degenerates into triumphalist jingoism. The solution is not to do away with the holiday, and rather, to infuse it with new and deeper meaning. The founding of a revolutionary democracy or the commission of genocide are worth commemorating, and far too important to discard on the whims of a self-important op-ed writer.


At the very least, the simple and non-political rituals of commemoration should seem unobjectionable. The traditional ritual of mourning on the anniversary of death involves lighting a candle that burns for a full day.

I have taken to placing mine on top of this immense old candlestick, of hammered iron in the Arts & Crafts or Werkbund style, circa the beginning of the twentieth century.

The dealer I bought it from acquired it from a scrap metal dealer in Dortmund, so it's precise origin is unknown, Clearly, though, given its striking size (77 cm. tall, or just over 30 inches), it came from institutional setting rather than a private home. In fact, it is identical in appearance to a brass one sold at auction over a decade ago. That one came from the destroyed Leipzig synagogue in the Gottschedstraße, destroyed in Kristallnacht. It seems more than likely, then, that what I have here is another relic from the pogrom that began the Holocaust, and as such it seems especially fitting to call it into service for this use.


Many have remarked on the challenge of representing the genocide through conventional monuments. Some do, however, succeed in being both original and powerful.

Still, to me, the most powerful "monument" is actually a ritual used in Israel: On the morning of Holocaust Memorial day, an air raid siren sounds, and the entire country literally comes to a halt for two minutes. People stop where they stand on the sidewalk, cars and buses pull over to the side of the road, and drivers and passengers get out and stand respectfully  in silence. Then life resumes. It is the most eerie and moving ritual I have ever seen.

It is evanescent, yet eternal: lasting only two minutes yet repeated every year. It is a monument in time, of time. As Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said, "Judaism is a religion of time aiming at the sanctification of time. . . . Jewish ritual may be characterized as the art of significant forms in time, as architecture of time.”

And because this ritual so abruptly interrupts daily time itself, it conveys almost better than anything the tear in the fabric of the world and civilization that the Holocaust represented.

Footnote:

I have often thought that the United States should adopt something similar for Memorial Day. I still recall how, as children, we stood and observed a moment of silence at 11:11 a.m. on November 11, in tribute to Veterans' Day's origins as Armistice Day. We have lost that sense of an entire nation united in mourning the tragic costs of war.

More on Problematic and Spurious Martin Luther King Quotations

So, the flap over the quotation on the Martin Luther King memorial seems to have been resolved just in time for his holiday today.

The King sculpture is not the only example of deliberately and problematically selective quotation on the National Mall. The example that always comes to mind for me is the Thomas Jefferson Memorial, inside of which the Founding Father’s words are displayed. Panel Number 3 contains a ringing denunciation of slavery as “despotism” and a call for emancipation: "Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free.” It stops there rather than including the next sentence: “Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them."

Here, Jefferson is arguably the beneficiary rather than victim of abbreviated quotation though it would be interesting to debate which of the two versions best expresses his larger legacy.

As John Adams famously said, facts are stubborn things. So are quotes, not least to the extent that we marshal them as “facts” in our arguments. For all our modern belief in questioning political authority, we still, across the spectrum, invoke textual authority (in fact, I just did that here). We cite the words and wisdom of great men and women because of the authors as well as the content, in the hope that our arguments might derive strength from their borrowed prestige. If they said it, it must be true.

Worse than selective quotation are spurious quotes or attributions of authorship. The most notorious example pertaining to the Founding Fathers is an antisemitic fabrication in which Benjamin Franklin purportedly warned the Constitutional Convention against Jewish influence in the new nation. Concocted by American right-wing extremists in the 1930s, it was widely cited by the Nazis and still circulates today among hate groups ranging from the KKK and neo-Nazi Aryan Nations and Stormfront to Hamas.

Of course, false quotations can arise from cynical manipulation, misguided good intentions, or just plain ineptitude. Reverend King, poor man, has been a victim of all three: the latter, just months before the Memorial controversy broke.

Soon after President Obama announced the killing of Osama Bin Laden, there began to circulate a purported quotation by Martin Luther King that seemed tailor-made for the occasion:

I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

We are familiar with the related phenomenon in the case of Nostradamus: every time a major world event occurs, someone either reinterprets a vague quatrain as a clear prophecy of the occurrence, or just invents a new one out of whole cloth. It was disheartening to think that Rev. King might be thus exploited and reduced to that status.

In this case, the explanation was a bit more complex but less malign. A Facebook user had apparently offered her personal reaction to the killing (the first sentence), followed by a quotation from King, naming him as the source of the latter. Other users then circulated the comment, without the quotation marks, carelessly attributing the whole to King.

As in other contexts: if it sounds too good (here, in the sense of appropriate) to be true, it probably is.

Unfortunately, deliberate manipulations of King’s writings also exist. The best example, i.e. the one with the longest “legs,” involves an alleged statement on the relation between Israel, Zionism, and antisemitism. Rev. King, who worked closely with many representatives of the Jewish community in the Civil Rights Movement, was a staunch opponent of antisemitism (“because bigotry in any form is an affront to us all”), and a believer in the necessity of a secure and democratic Jewish state, aware that criticism of Israel sometimes stemmed from or masked darker motives. His views on these issues are a matter of record.

Somehow, though, this was not good enough for someone, who felt the need to improve upon reality by concocting a perfect conglomerate of a quote. Over the years, I’ve called people out for invoking it, however innocently. What is so fascinating is that this inauthentic piece, unlike the Bin Laden one, fooled so many people for so long. It can serve as a textbook illustration of the problems of sourcing and interpretation that historians engage in all the time.

At some point a little over a decade ago, a “Letter to an anti-Zionist Friend” purporting to be by Rev. King began to circulate. It reads, in part:

You declare, my friend, that you do not hate the Jews, you are merely ‘anti-Zionist.’ And I say, let the truth ring forth from the high mountain tops, let it echo through the valleys of God's green earth: When people criticize Zionism, they mean Jews — this is God's own truth.

In a way, it is both understandable and astonishing that no one caught on. Whereas the obvious clumsiness and arrogance of the truncated “drum major” quote reflected neither King’s style nor his personality, this one sounded authentic in sentiment and typical in tone.

That the tone was in fact just a bit too “typical”—a patently poor pastiche of the “I have a dream” speech—should, however, have been a tip-off that something was amiss. More surprising still, even though no one seems to have seen the “letter” before it was cited in a reputable 1999 book, no one checked the purported original publication in a 1967 issue of the now-defunct Saturday Review, a reference that proved to be non-existent. Apparently, because the book contained a preface by Martin Luther King III, everyone simply assumed that everyone else considered the text authentic on the grounds that, well, if it was not, someone surely would have said so.

Finally, CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America) pursued the matter, and at the start of 2002, sent out a news alert (on which the above is based), announcing that the “Letter” was a forgery.

Part of the problem was that the sentiments expressed in the letter were in general harmony with King’s documented views. The political sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset, and later, civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis, reported that King, toward the end of his life, responded to an anti-Zionist student by saying: “When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You are talking anti-Semitism.” Perhaps because that remark was documented only in imprecise personal recollections of an oral exchange (some critics have even called this account into question) the forger decided to construct a longer formal and exhortatory text around it.

In so doing, of course, he (or she) did no service to either to King or to some putative political cause.

Fabrication will not solve our problems. For that matter, neither will idle speculation. No one can say exactly what Rev. King would make of any specific policy today. We honor him by taking the historical record seriously: pondering his actual words and deeds and their continued relevance in a changing world.

A decade ago, in the same piece that contained the brief, purportedly authentic quotation, Lewis concluded,

King taught us many lessons. As turbulence continues to grip the Middle East, his words should continue to serve as our guide. I am convinced that were he alive today he would speak clearly calling for an end to the violence between Israelis and Arabs. [ . . . . ]

He would urge continuing negotiations to reduce tensions and bring about the first steps toward genuine peace.

King had a dream of an "oasis of brotherhood and democracy" in the Middle East. 

As we celebrate his life and legacy, let us work for the day when Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and Muslims, will be able to sit in peace "under his vine and fig tree and none shall make him afraid."

It's hard to argue with that, which should be more than enough to occupy us on a day dedicated to non-violence and service.

Cartouche from "Palestine," in Conrad Malte-Brun, Atlas Complet (Paris, 1812)

Grapevine and tent with the words, "Palestine" and (in Hebrew) "Israel,"

presumably an echo of Micah 4:4 and Numbers 4:5:

"But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig-tree; and none shall make them afraid";

"How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and thy tabernacles, O Israel!"

Hampshire College, Israel, and Palestine: 1975 or 1938? And 2012? Still Seeking Civility on Campus

Just under a year ago, on the eve of an event about Israel and Palestine that promised to be controversial, I wrote a piece expressing the desire for a less polarized, more civil atmosphere on campus, one in which we could debate opposing political positions without intellectual charlatanry and demonization, addressing nuances rather than resorting to gross oversimplification.

What followed has been both deeply disturbing and, in other ways, gratifying.
>
It was deeply disturbing because what happened was far worse than even the most pessimistic among us might have expected. The talk, by an Israeli soldier, tore the campus apart. Activists from Hampshire Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) did not merely protest outside the lecture hall (as was their right). They also disrupted and ultimately prevented completion of the talk, in clear violation of community norms. The speaker noted that this was only the second time that something of this sort had occurred. For the unashamed disruptors, their actions were a badge of honor. Responding to the administration’s condemnation of the disruption as well as the earlier verbal and physical harassment of an Israeli student, they and their supporters basically said:  "Zionists” are fair game. (1, 2)

For the rest of us—the majority of the campus population as well as outside observers—it was a mark of shame and a wake-up call. What was gratifying was seeing the tide begin to turn. Most students, regardless of their political views, were revolted. The administration, from the office of the President down through Student Affairs, finally grasped the seriousness of the situation. It saw that we needed to take energetic and positive steps to restore a sense of both civility and safety.

* * *

A shrewd visitor to campus, interested in these issues, recently looked around and said:

“The situation is even worse than I thought. I can tell you what your problem is: One part of the campus thinks it’s 1975, and the other thinks it’s 1938.”

He got it exactly right.

Allow me to translate (in case that is necessary) the historical references:

• 1975 refers to the year when the United Nations General Assembly notoriously defined Zionism, the founding philosophy of one of its member states, as racism (ironically, on the anniversary of the Kristallnacht pogrom in Nazi Germany). The UN finally repealed that infamous measure in 1991, in order not just to redress a wrong, but also to encourage movement toward peace. Two years later, Israelis and Palestinians signed the Oslo Accords (1, 2), affirming mutual recognition and the principle of a negotiated solution.

• 1938 refers to the tensions on the eve of World War II, when Jews felt cornered and abandoned: an expansionist Germany absorbed Austria, Britain and France browbeat Czechoslovakia into surrendering its fortified borderlands to Germany, and Kristallnacht signaled an escalation in Nazi antisemtism as well as the end of emigration.  By then, there were few places for Jews fleeing Europe to go anyway: neither the western powers nor Mandatory Palestine, where civil war was raging, offered a refuge.

In other words, one side is operating with ideological caricatures older than the students themselves, and the other feels isolated and threatened with social if not physical death.

Clearly, that is anything but healthy.

Last summer, the Boston Jewish Advocate caused a stir with an article entitled, “What's up with Hampshire College? A small Bay State campus becomes a hotbed of anti-Israel fervor." It quoted the Anti-Defamation League as saying that Hampshire generates more complaints about students being targeted for pro-Israel beliefs than any other campus in the New England region. As the article goes on to note, several students have alleged that the hostile climate involves elements of antisemitism.

This is a dire situation. A college, of course, is not obligated to be either pro- or anti-Israel, as such. However, expressing opposition to the destruction of a United Nations member state really should not be a very controversial opinion. Above all, an academic institution is duty-bound to uphold principles of open and rigorous intellectual dialogue.

The situation is not unique to Hampshire.  The Palestinian-Israeli journalist Khaled Abu Toameh has said that he felt safer in Gaza or the West Bank than at US universities, where he needed police protection and was called a Nazi for daring to question the activist orthodoxy: “Listening to some students and professors on these campuses, for a moment I thought I was sitting opposite a Hamas spokesman or a would-be-suicide bomber.”

Still, we are naturally most sensitive to the flaws in our own surroundings. And, as serious as the problem here is, it of course cannot completely describe a vibrant and productive institution in which faculty and students of widely varying views nonetheless flourish and engage one another.

And 2012?

My deepest hope is that Hampshire College will establish a reputation, not as the epicenter of conflict, and instead, as a model of conciliation. Two of the groups with which I have been in contact offer strong examples of how this can be accomplished.

The broad-based Israel on Campus Coalition sends a pair of representatives—David Makovsky, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, who has written about the peace process as both a journalist and a scholar, and Ghaith al-Omari, Executive Director of the American Task Force on Palestine, who has served as part of the Palestinian negotiating team at Camp David and as an advisor to Mahmoud Abbas—to colleges and universities. Rather than just parachuting in to present pieties and platitudes in a one-off performance, they insist on doing at least three events so that they can start a sustained process of communication. Typically, they might begin with a luncheon roundtable hosted by leaders of various student groups, followed by a facilitated dialogue session. Later in the day, they speak to classes. Early in the evening, they join faculty for dinner or dessert. Finally, they take part in a larger event for the campus as a whole—a lecture or panel discussion, including question-and-answer from the audience.

The team has scored great successes, even in some of the most “difficult” venues, such as the University of California, Irvine (1, 2, 3). "Civility, we felt, was missing on campuses," says al-Omari. Sometimes, the partners explain, the mere sight of the two appearing together is enough of a surprise or a shock to prompt students to move beyond stereotypes and start thinking differently.

A report in the Georgetown Hoya could have been written about Hampshire:

“The campus discourse, we thought, was too much about recriminations, Makovsky said." "Usually the campuses are ahead of the curve on issues, but on this one issue across the country, we felt the campuses are behind the curve. While people are talking to each other in the Middle East, why can't they talk to each other in the Northeast?" [. . . . ]

Rather than forming factions, students should recognize that the interests of Israel and Palestine are not diametrically opposed, al-Omari said.  

"You can be a pro-Palestine advocate without being anti-Israel," he said.  

He illustrated the way in which campus dialogue seems focused on the "zero-sum approach," which states that what is good for one nation is bad for the other and the "tribal approach," which delves into the history of both nations to justify conflict. Neither of these viewpoints, he argued, leaves room for objectivity or potential consensus. [ . . . . ]

"If we are serious people for a two-state solution, then we have to build up both sides of the two-state solution," Makovsky said. "We found that the faculty was not attuned to these developments on the ground, that their thinking was stuck in a very confrontational age. What we want to do is bring the message to the students that you've got to be forces for coexistence."

In al-Omari's words, "You have to move beyond the tribal lines in a policy debate. Once you look at this as a policy issue, you always can find policy solutions." And as Makovsky puts it, "For the most part, what's needed is to basically treat the students as adults, not just PR targets."

The program of the “Center for Ethnic, Racial and Religious Understanding” at Queens College does just that. It is difficult but necessary. Founded by Professor Mark Rosenblum, it employs a methodology of “walking in the other side’s shoes.” As a once largely Jewish campus that now boasts a considerable Muslim population, Queens College might seem an unlikely place for dialogue but it has become an ideal one. Motivated by the tragedies of the Second Intifada and the 9-11 attacks, Rosenblum explained to the New York Times, he sought a way to bridge the widening gaps that were destroying education as well as human lives. In words that, again, could as easily be applied to Hampshire, he says, "It was hard to teach in a classroom where students had such preconceived ideas and had essentially become propagandists for their own side," he said. "It was quite nasty and ruthless.” 

His classes now require students to study and then “make the best possible case for the other side.” It works. "I did not expect anybody to change their position," he said. "My job is just to get you to feel a little bit of confusion by revealing that what you thought was a black and white struggle has a little more gray." Or, as one of the Muslim students put it, the class did not diminish his dedication to the Palestinian cause, but it did enable him to see the conflict in a new way: "People stop spreading legends and start talking the truth," he said. "It is so easy to hate people on the other side when you don't talk to them and you don't have to know them. But when you engage in discourse with them, you see they feel the way you do about your people. It's not so easy to hate them anymore." Classes ran overtime, and students who met in classes continued their dialogue after the semester was over.

In both cases, part of the message is: it’s easy to demonize when you’re dealing with abstractions and straw men. In dialogue, one has to deal with real people and real complexity.

Hampshire College is a leader in so many areas with accomplishments we could draw upon. Why not this one? The projects practically suggest themselves.

We have a distinguished Peace and World Security Studies Program. We have a large population of “international” students. Why could we not create a program in which Arab and Israeli students and scholars live and learn together and teach others? We are pioneers in sustainability and environmental science. Why could we not involve our students in efforts to address these issues in the Middle East, from energy to agriculture and water resources? As the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, based on cooperation between Arabs and Israelis, puts it, nature has no borders. After all, our new President was the leader of a major environmental organization. Could there be a better opportunity?

Now, contrast all this with “hotbed of anti-Israel fervor.” Is that all we have to show for all the years of “activism” around the Middle East conflict here? Should we allow ourselves to be defined by negation?

Is that really how we wish to be known?

Surely, we can do better.

Why not pro-Israel, pro-Palestine, pro-peace?

Why not? Really, why not?

Putting the Hampshire College Divestment Myth in its Grave

The anti-Israel “BDS” (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement seems to be at a tipping point. It confidently promises an unprecedented campaign in 2012, yet its efforts in the past year met with pushback and setbacks around the globe. Its choice of targets moreover grew increasingly petty, not to say, bizarre: hummus (made in New York)? chocolate shops in Australia? a symphony orchestra on tour? (1 vs. 2)  WTF?! The world finally seems to be catching on.

Plans for a national conference of the BDS movement, to be held at the University of Pennsylvania in February (1, 2), are already bringing bad news. The administration not only declared in advance that hosting the gathering did not constitute endorsement (standard operating procedure for all sorts of student events). It also took the notable step of explicitly condemning the BDS movement and affirming the importance of ties with Israeli academics.

Bummer.

The Penn activists claim to be “Picking up where the 2009 Hampshire conference left off.” They may wish to reconsider their chosen model. The rather lackluster original conference at Hampshire (1, 2, 3)  followed on the heels of the claim that the College had divested from “the Israeli Occupation of Palestine” earlier that year. Unfortunately, as everyone else in the world seems to know, that divestment claim is false. Call it what you will—misinterpretation, wishful thinking, hoax, fraud, lie—it didn’t happen, and that’s that. Hampshire College disposed of any remaining doubts when it presented its new socially responsible investing policy last month.

Jon Haber, who has followed anti-Israel divestment efforts closely, likens the so-called BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement to a vampire: (1) every time you think it’s dead, it comes back, a phenomenon that conveys (in accordance with its hopes and wishes) an air of invincibility. In fact, (2) its powers are more limited than it would like you to believe, because it can become a threat only when you allow it to cross your threshold. In Jon’s view, the BDS movement—which has scored no major or lasting victories in the course of a decade—has survived beyond its normal life only by virtue of the fact that its dedicated activists prey upon those who, whether deliberately or unwittingly, allow it to gain entrance to their organizations.

high time for institutions to wake up to the threat of BDS

This explains why the academically robust but financially anemic Hampshire College would prove such an enticing victim for the vampires: the endorsement of the first American institution of higher education to divest from South Africa would lend weight to the false assertion that Israel, too, practices “apartheid.”

That the College, following a divestment request by anti-Israel activists, made changes to its investment portfolio in 2009 is not in dispute. The dispute turns instead on the meaning of that action. The task of the historian, as Thomas Babington Macaulay says in the motto on the masthead of this blog, is not merely to establish the facts, but above all, to interpret them.

As is well known: the College, upon reviewing the fund in question, found that multiple companies were in violation of its socially responsible investment policy, and reallocated its assets accordingly. That standard (e.g. declining to invest in military products) was the sole rationale behind the action. The decision had nothing to do with Israel, affected a far greater number of firms having no association with Israel, and above all, rendered no verdict on Israel or its policies, whether within the “Green Line” or in the “occupied territories.”

No credible observer believes that divestment took place, for three very simple reasons: Divestment is a political action that therefore has meaning only if it is (1) deliberate and (2) accompanied by a public statement (3) on the part of an officially responsible body. When the College divested from holdings in South Africa, the administration and trustees publicly announced their action and stated the reasons. That contrast says it all.

A mere change in resource allocation makes no such statement. I once tried to illustrate this distinction by analogy:

If I sell my shares in Chrysler because I think it's a badly-run company that does not serve its stockholders, it's technically "true" that I have "relinquished" (to use the language of another recent student flier) my investment in a particular firm that profits from our irresponsible reliance on fossil fuels, but I have hardly "divested" myself—as a conscious and political statement (which is the only practical meaning that "divestment" can have in this context)—of participation in the carbon-based economy: especially if I continue to hold stock in Ford, Toyota, and Mobil.

The disinclination of Hampshire College to invest in certain areas does not necessarily render a verdict on their legality or morality:

• The College (although this is nowhere formally stated) does not invest in companies dealing in alcoholic beverages. Unlike tobacco, the latter do not necessarily cause harm when used responsibly. However, alcohol is neither a necessity of life nor an unmitigated good, and the College simply prefers to direct its resources to firms that, e.g. “Provide beneficial goods and services such as food, clothing, housing, health, education, transportation and energy.” (Policy, p. 2: Point 1) No rational person would conclude that, by declining to support the alcohol industry, we are endorsing prohibition—or even temperance. Hampshire College serves beer, wine, and liquor at some of its events—for example, dinners of the Board of Trustees, who approve the investment policy.

• The policy does not allow investment in companies that “Make nuclear, biological, or conventional weapons.” (Policy, p. 2: Point A) Nations have the right to self-defense. The US Constitution requires the government “to provide for the common defence,” and authorizes Congress “to raise and support armies” and “provide and maintain a navy.” No rational person would therefore conclude that our policy entails a rejection of the Constitution or the armed forces of the United States.

The decision taken in response to the divestment request had to do with military products, not their recipient: not Israel, not anyone else. If and when there is a Palestinian state, the College will likewise refuse to invest in firms that provide it with weapons.

Clear, one would think.

And yet the divestment myth refused to die. BDS advocates clung to it with a religious fervor, as if repeating it often enough could make it true.

They will find it more difficult than ever to maintain that position following the report on the new socially responsible investment policy last month.

Former President Marlene Fried:

there is clarity and unanimity on the Board that it did not make a decision to divest from the State of Israel, that it did not decide that Israel was in the same camp as South Africa.

Although the student questioner, fearing some semantic or conceptual confusion, correctly pointed out that the divestment claim involved the “Israeli occupation of Palestine” rather than investment in Israel, as such, it is a distinction without a difference in light of the above (as well as the stance of the BDS movement, for that matter)—and indeed, Fried responded by reaffirming the College’s rejection of the claim: “the Board does not believe that.”

There was no dissent from any member of the committee, and that includes Professor Emeritus Stan Warner, a well-known economist and political progressive, who was the faculty representative on the subcommittee on investment responsibility (CHOIR) at the time of the original divestment request, and who advised and educated student members about investment policy. Surely, if divestment had succeeded, he would know and be duty-bound to say so. But no, in the course of the nearly twelve-minute discussion of the issue, he was in fact the only member of the committee who did not speak to the controversy, as such, jumping in only briefly to answer a procedural question.

The College has made it clear, time and again: no divestment took place in 2009.

It has now affirmed that even more clearly at the end of 2011.

As they used to say in the olden days:

Q.E.D.
(1, 2)

Or, as we say nowadays:

Myth busted!

It’s high time that we put the divestment myth in the graveyard of history, where it belongs.

Question-and-Answer on Israel and Divestment at Hampshire College (the "elephant in the room")

the "elephant in the room"

The false assertion that Hampshire College in 2009 divested itself of holdings in what student activists called "the Israeli Occupation of Palestine" came up when an ad hoc committee recently presented the new "socially responsible"—or "Environmental, Social and Governance" (ESG)—investing policy (full story here).

There, the committee forcefully reaffirmed the administration's consistent past assertions that no such thing ever occurred.

Here is the video of the conversation. Because the audio quality of remarks delivered without benefit of a microphone is poor, I have also transcribed the key portions of the dialogue to the best of my ability, with approximate time-markers.








The members of the committee present are (from left to right):

• Jonathan Scott: an alumnus, from the College’s first entering class, now member of the Board of Trustees and head of the Investment Committee
• Marlene Fried: a professor of philosophy and Director of the Civil Liberties and Public Policy Program, who served as Interim President last year, while we conducted the search for a full-time president
• Beth Ward: Secretary of the College
• Stan Warner: Professor Emeritus of Economics, and long the faculty representative on the responsible investing committee
• Ken Rosenthal: first Treasurer of the College, now Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees



It was following the campaign by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) associated with the anti-Israel BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement that the Board of Trustees decided the entire socially responsible investing policy had to be overhauled. The report to the community by the ad hoc committee charged with that review did not explicitly address Israel and the old divestment controversy.

An activist from Students for Justice in Palestine therefore clearly and politely raised the issue of what he called the “elephant in the room.” He had several related questions, beginning with process and procedures.  

Student questioner: (00:30) “My main three questions are, first is there transparency of the investment, is any of that changing? Is CHOIR [Committee at Hampshire On Investment Responsibility: oversees the definition and application of the guidelines; JW] the still the only way, does CHOIR have access to look at specific companies, where does that happen for students? [ . . . .] Where do you get access to looking at the portfolio?[ . . . . ]"

Jonathan Scott: "CHOIR will have full access to the portfolio: it is actually a subcommittee of the Investment Committee." [this is in fact covered quite simply and explicitly in the two-page portion of the document pertaining to CHOIR; JW].  (01:14) Stan Warner further explains that there will be access through the office of the Vice President for Financial Affairs, who then affirms that statement. He continues, “We’re invested in socially responsible funds, and you can then see: what specific companies.”

 Student: (01:28) “The other kind of, just, comment, question is, to me, feels like an elephant in the room, um, the reason, to me, that I felt that quite, well, not the reason, but the timing, was in February 2009, right after CHOIR had been restarted by students and CHOIR had put together this whole group of six companies—GE, DynCorp, Motorola, Terex, United Technologies, and [another] that I can’t get off the top of my head right now, as not fitting into the policy of our previous socially responsible investment [inaudible word]: making weapons and selling them to the Israeli army and being used in the occupied territories in the West Bank and Gaza. And that proposal went to the Investment Committee, the Investment Committee passed it, and it went to the Board, and on February 9, the Board voted on, to divest from [inaudible] that had those five companies in it.”

He goes on to note that this prompted a closer look at other investments: CHOIR sent the fund "to the entire Investment Committee to look at it and added another hundred or so companies to that list as also being, not part of the, not fitting into our socially responsible endowment (02:37) and they voted on divestment, so, one question is: did that happen? Did, are we out of that mutual fund? and are there companies—according to what we just saw, they’re [or: that are?] making weapons, operating from countries that are engaged in heavy violations, I would imagine those companies would still be, I know there’s not a blacklist of companies [ . . . . ]"

(03:00) “and lastly, just the fact that it wasn’t talked about, says something about the whole situation still” [and CHOIR’s {?} involvement] “because, that being said, sometimes even among college students with power at Hampshire our power is to make good statements [?], initially when those students joined CHOIR, that wasn’t the ritual, legal [?], to get the school to make a statement that investing in companies that are selling weapons to the Israeli army to use on the West Bank for illegal occupation or for illegal siege is socially irresponsible, and other schools should follow suit, end up doing what we did, and so powerful, what we did back in South Africa, which was: morally, you know, lift it up, [look?] at this great thing [at?] Hampshire, this moral standard that we, our power, and, you know, other schools have to move forward since Hampshire (03:57) and whether or not the administration of Hampshire, or everyone at Hampshire feels that that was what happened, the greater, um, I know I’m sure it’s been talked about in socially responsible investing statements, conversations, emails [ . . . . ]"

(04:18) “so I’m just curious if there was any of the time when you actually talked about that in relationship because [ . . . ] in February was the reason that, right after that vote, a lot of people from the school got a lot of backlash from the ADL and Alan Dershowitz and other people all of a sudden [ . . . . ] I know that’s a lot.”

Response by Jonathan Scott (04:44) “Alex, I hear your passion, and I appreciate it, having been a Hampshire student myself. And I think the best way to answer [. . . ] with respect to the decision to divest, I think that, as the Investment Committee, what CHOIR did elevated, the, made it clear, to me (I’m making that [statement] as an individual), that our policy was totally inadequate. And, so I think that it made us go back and say, ‘wow, we have an inadequate policy': Not only was it not up to date, it wasn’t clear, and it was the Policy and CHOIR and the Guidelines all together. So I for one have been really wanting this to be passed for some time. We’ve had other things going on on campus, having nothing to do with CHOIR, and I think, going forward, this policy is going to help inform the greater good of the College for what we’re doing. And it was a teachable moment for me, to get clarity on an issue—and I’m not speaking about the Israeli issue, I’m speaking about the clarity of the actual document itself. And that’s what we did, that’s what we’re speaking about today."

He goes on to explain how the College maintained its basic ethical investment strategy over the past three years by applying a particular licensed screen to an index fund.

"As far as—I guess the other thing that’s important, and we said it already–we have tried to maintain to the extent possible our belief in our core values all through the last three years."  He goes on to give details on the index funds and screens.

(07:39) “As far as the securities you named [i.e. the ones involved in the alleged divestment], sitting here [. . .] it’s hard to know what’s in or out of a fund on a given day, but as I said, [ . . . ] you’ll be able to see more" [when the new system is fully in place]

(07:55) Secretary of the College Beth Ward:
“I think there’s really an [inaudible] on the part of the College to have exactly those conversations, I mean not necessarily [inaudible] reference all of these per se, but really think about all of these political issues. I mean, it’s really hard to struggle with them, and you know, I think about South Africa and some of those [inaudible], and in some ways it seems like the world is kind of murky.”

(08:29) “focusing on companies is a very clarifying way to approach these policies, which does not in any way mitigate the need for us, you know, to [take on?] other issues.” We need to have conversations about politics.

(08:56) Ken Rosenthal (noting that he joined the Board just around the time of the controversy in 2009):  “What we discovered was: There had not been conversations on this campus as there should have been over a period of time, and so I think things, I think things exploded when, had we been talking about these issues regularly, we might have approached them in a more consistent and in a different way. And what we’re trying to do here is trying to reestablish a forum on this campus, a regular forum, where people can come, not feel frustrated, and can meet regularly [ . . . ] so that we can get the ideas out, we can consider them, and we can move, if necessary, quickly, to make changes. I don’t know that there will be changes that will always be necessary, but I do think conversation is necessary, especially because, especially because the tenure[s] of some of us go back many years, but for students, they may only be aware of these issues for one or two years and not be a- not appreciate that something may have been talked about three or four years ago or six or seven. We need to have those conversations regularly so people feel they’re a part ….”

(10:15) Marlene Fried: “I want to speak to the elephant. [ . . . ] I sort of came into this late, I was not the best informed or paying attention in 2008, but last year, I was paying a lot of attention [i.e. when, as interim President, she had to address the deteriorating climate on campus following the harassment of an Israeli student ( 1, 2) and the disruption of a talk by an Israeli soldier; JW], so it is very clear that there is a real divide between what the ‘buzz’ out there is about what Hampshire did or didn’t do, and about what the Board of Trustees of Hampshire College believes that it did, and there is clarity and unanimity on the Board that it did not make a decision to divest from the State of Israel, that it did not decide that Israel was in the same camp as South Africa.”

Student: “But it did say: Israel [sic] occupation, and the students on the Board did [use?] Israeli occupation, which is very different than Israel [ . . . ].”
They had been hoping that the Board would state that it broke the College's alleged ties to the occupation (or words to that effect).

(11:19) Fried: “The Board does not believe that it broke. And so, I guess the next thing is where will such conversations happen in the future, and I’m thinking it’s envisioned that CHOIR would a place where that will happen, and that’s why CHOIR is [inaudible; others break in]"

(11:36) Rosenthal: "And we hope it’s energized. We don’t want it just to be there waiting for somebody to call it to order, we want it to regularly say: we’re meeting, come talk to us."

Hampshire College Presents New Socially Responsible Investment Policy; Said Most Rigorous in the Country

(l-r) Jonathan Scott, Marlene Fried, Beth Ward, Stan Warner prepare for the presentation (not in picture: Ken Rosenthal)

December 13, 2011 

This afternoon, members of a Hampshire College ad hoc committee on socially responsible investing, formed in 2009, presented their long-awaited report to the community. The process, already drawn-out because of administrative transitions and other unrelated internal issues, was further delayed by the unusually early snowstorm this fall, which prompted the closing of the campus and evacuation of students. Although first scheduled for November 3, the meeting thus took place over a month later.

In part for that reason, attendance was low. Classes ended last week, and most students either had gone home or were working furiously on their final papers. There were barely two-dozen people (excluding the five presenters) in the large lecture hall—which, by contrast, was filled to capacity last February, when an Israeli soldier spoke about his experiences (or tried to), prompting one of the fiercest campus controversies (1, 2, 3, 4) over an issue that accounts for the great interest in what would otherwise be a matter mainly for the policy wonks and number-crunchers.

I counted only three students and three members of the faculty. The others present were from the staff or administration of the College. Again, the season had much to do with this. Still, the difference is telling: people will more readily turn out for a protest than a policy presentation.

The formal name is: Policy on Environmental, Social and Governance Investing (ESG).


I’ll be posting more extensively later about the entire document, but here’s the initial take-away. The content matched  what I predicted, and it on the whole looks very good.


• Process and Product

Part of the task was to break down an unwieldy older document (last revised in 1994) into more logically consistent components, separating overall policy from more specific guidelines and operating procedures. Nothing earth-shattering or controversial there.

The committee members at several points took pains to make clear, however, that even during the period of review, the College had never dropped its policy on social responsible investment practices. Rather, it had simply set aside the old oversight committee and the specific document that governed its operation.


• Principles

Most people will of course be most interested in the actual content, which can be summarized with relative ease.

In part because of its relatively small endowment, Hampshire conducts its investments through various existing managed funds, which contain stock in a number of enterprises. The College seeks funds whose holdings most approximate its values, but can in addition apply various “screens” in order to further refine what it actually invests in. In some cases, we use existing screens developed by other parties, but it is the ESG that ultimately constitutes the guidance for the fund managers.

Put briefly, the document treats investments from both the positive and the negative standpoint: things that we wish to support, and things that we do not wish to support. In the former category, for example, are firms that provide necessary goods and services in sustainable ways, firms that uphold human and environmental rights, firms that enhance the quality of life and social justice, or support education.

In the latter category are firms that either seriously violate accepted norms of justice and sustainability or simply engage in activities whose net effect is destructive or at the least might not be seen as a value that the college actively needs to support. Thus, for example: on the one hand, firms that practice discrimination or have poor labor, health, or environmental records, or on the other hand, firms that engage in military production, etc.

Merely participating in, say, some form of military production, however, is not necessarily enough to preclude an investment altogether, especially in an age in which a given firm may engage in a wide range of activities. The College can therefore assess individual cases using a “threshold” measure, i.e. taking into account the share of revenue that a firm derives from a given activity.

The basic policy fits on a page. The actual guidelines are five times as long.

In summary, the document arguably sets new standards of rigor and accountability. Consultants who have examined it call this policy “the strongest and most all-encompassing” that they know of. Hampshire College thereby assumes a leading national role in yet another area of higher education.

• Politics

Because controversy involving investment in firms doing business in or with Israel was the proximate cause that led to the review of the investment policy, this was arguably the topic that will be of the greatest interest to the outside world as well as many members of the College community, even though this question plays no role in the old or new policy, proper.

Although the committee members did not explicitly raise the issue themselves, they did on more than one occasion make statements that clearly addressed the matter, e.g.

“we don’t divest from countries, we divest from firms"

When a student explicitly raised the question, former Interim President Marlene Fried stated that the College’s views on what occurred during the 2009 divestment controversy and the interpretations were quite different. Bottom line:

“There is clarity and unanimity on the Board that it did not make a decision to divest from the State of Israel, that it did not decide that Israel was in the same camp as South Africa.”

That should be the end of that story—but you can bet that it will not be.

To Bigotry No Sanction: Antisemitic Nutjob on Parade (by himself)

As the "Occupy" movement gained staying power and attracted both greater numbers of people and greater scrutiny, some observers began to express concern about antisemitic incidents. A minor debate ensued as to the representativeness of the cases in question (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10). It seems to have subsided.  The Anti-Defamation League soon concluded, "There is no evidence that these anti-Semitic conspiracy theories are representative of the larger movement or that they are gaining traction with other participants." At the same time, it noted the historical connection between economic hardship and antisemitism, and urged vigilance, including forthright condemnation of any expressions of bigotry.

In any case, there were certainly no incidents of that sort here. Indeed, an orthodox Jew mingled happily with the others at the "Occupy" rally.

Participating? Proselytizing? Who cares. Be happy: it's Sukkot. (Occupy Jerusalem!)

Unfortunately, Amherst did have a first-class bigot on parade on October 16.

A dishonest or merely overzealous reporter might have made much of this. Fortunately, he was a parade of one, a legend in his own mind. He was not part of either the "Occupy" rally or the Tea Party counter-demonstration, both of which shunned him.

Instead, he merely attached himself, parasitically, to the events. Indeed, he seemed desperate to attract the attention of cars and passers-by who slowed to observe the events on the Common. 

desperately seeking someone

Love/Hate

 He had other messages, too (though not really all that different).

Clearly, he wanted his fifteen seconds of fame.

I've decided to give them to him, but for my reasons rather than his.

I've been teaching my course on antisemitism, and we just wrapped up last week, with a consideration of the complex situation in the contemporary world.

Antisemitism in the United States has greatly diminished over the past century but certainly not gone away. In fact, contrary to what one might expect, Jews remain by far the most frequent target of hate crimes directed against a religious group; there was even an uptick in antisemitic attitudes in the last two years. But that is precisely why the poor deluded fellow pictured here is noteworthy: acts of overt hostility and hatred have become rare and confined to a disreputable fringe. Since World War II—for obvious reasons—antisemitism has become morally repugnant or at least unfashionable. This is an epochal and welcome change.  At the same time, it creates new problems. Antisemitism persists in many forms, but how do you define and combat it when almost no one admits to it anymore? (Traditional antisemites, at least, left no doubt as to where they stood.)

There is therefore a contentious debate over the existence of a so-called "new antisemitism." I'll spare you the lecture here, but basically, it turns (surprise) on the definitions of "new" and "antisemitism."

To adherents of the concept, it is the latest manifestation of a phenomenon that has evolved along with the place of the Jews in the larger world: For centuries, when the Church defined the Jews as the quintessential unbelievers, the Christian west kept them in a state of subjugation and eventually demonized them as the object of horrific fantasies. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as the religious argument waned and Jews gained civil rights and established themselves in mainstream European society, they instead became the target of political and racial antisemitism, which regarded them as unassimilable aliens in the national body politic. Today, antisemitism tends to manifest itself primarily in the demonization of Israel and Zionism, the most visible manifestation of Jews and Judaism in the modern world (of course not to be confused with mere criticism of the policies of the State of Israel; no sensible person argues otherwise). One of the most useful and widely accepted definitions of antisemitism, developed by the European Union Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia,  thus incorporates controversial contemporary manifestations arising from the Middle East conflict, while emphasizing the importance of evaluating the full context of any given statement.

Some of those who disagree find the phenomenon new but not antisemitic; some argue that it is neither. One should stress, however, that rejecting the label does not have to imply condoning some of the beliefs and actions that it denotes. The questions of classification and moral judgment are separable.

Obviously, the present case leaves no room for ambiguity with regard to either. The poor fellow and his sign are antisemitic in the classic sense of the term: He is a bigot. He is attacking Jews, as such, and as a collective, based on wild and imaginary fears. Still, it's worth taking just a moment in order to see why, and what else that can tell us.

• To begin with, of course, there is the language: using "Jew" rather than "Jewish" as an adjective (as H. L. Mencken—himself no paragon of toleration—noted nearly a century ago) is a venerable and offensive practice. (A parallel survives in the insulting Republican habit of using "Democrat" instead of "Democratic" as an adjective when attacking the rival party: e.g. "Democrat wars.")

As for the content:

• The sign portrays Jews as self-centered and concerned with their own interests. In the mild, "social" form of antisemitism, Jews are seen as "clannish," and "sticking to themselves." In the nasty version, here, they are driven by inherent and implacable hostility to non-Jews, causing and rejoicing in the suffering of others. This is one of the oldest themes, from the ancient pagan view of Jews as haters of mankind, to medieval fears of Jews as sadistic ritual murderers of Christian children. Elements of this view persisted in the modern era: a combination of their religious doctrines (supposedly as embodied by the Talmud) and centuries of warped socialization was said to teach scorn for and mistreatment of gentiles, for example, through dishonest business practices.

• Then there is another old chestnut: The charge that Jews control the media of journalism and entertainment dates to the nineteenth century and has been a staple of antisemitic discourse ever since. In the milder version, it is a matter of disproportionate representation or bad taste. In the nastier, one, it is a matter of nefariousness as well as numbers. Combine fantastic fears of hostility and domination, and it is but a short distance to conspiracy theories of the sort epitomized by the Protocols of the Elders of Zion: the Jews engage in sinister plots to control the world.

• And why not? They are alleged to be devoted only to one another, not even to the country in which they live. The charge of dual loyalty is one of the oldest, in some ways a modernized and secularized version of the old religiously based denial of rights.

So far, so good. This is classic stuff.

At the same time, the message of the sign dovetails in disturbing ways with the slightly subtler antisemitism of both the new nativist or crypto-fascist right and the anti-globalization left. With its allusion to current conflicts in the Middle East, it is actually a very revealing amalgam of old and new—akin to what in Europe is being described as "cross-front" or hybrid antisemitism.

Polls over the past half-century show that the focus of antisemitic stereotypes in the US has shifted from ethics to power and the personal to the political: whereas the main charge leveled against Jews was formerly that they were, say, unscrupulous in their business practices, it is now that they have too much power in the business world, which they wield on behalf of collective material and political interests of their own.

If someone tells us that there is a conspiracy in which Jews control the press in order to exercise a still more sinister control over the levers of government and dominate the globe, we dismiss that as crackpot raving.

If someone tells us that Jews, because of their political influence and devotion to Israel, shape government policies that endanger the United States, we may well just stop to listen.

Pat Buchanan put it this way on the eve of the Gulf War in 1990:

"’The civilized world must win this fight,’ the editors thunder. If it comes to war, it will not be the 'civilized world' humping up that bloody road to Baghdad; it will be American kids with names like McAllister, Murphy, Gonzales, and Leroy Brown." 

Translation: the Jews, who are not loyal to the country in which they live, and whose money runs the newspapers, will get the US into a war on Israel's behalf, paid for with the blood of white ethnics, Latinos, and Blacks. (the irony of bigot Buchanan pretending to express concern for minorities was priceless)

Still pretty crude.

Jumping ahead to the next US involvement in Iraq, it may (to some) sound a bit more plausible when put this way:

The list of Jewish neocons we came up with is a provocation, I’ll admit. And if it were a list of dentists or firefighters or stockbrokers, then that would indeed be very offensive. However, the neocons are no ordinary group – they are the most influencial [sic] political/intellectual force in the world right now. They have the power to start wars and to stop them. They are the prime architects of America’s foreign policy since 9/11 – a policy that is heavily weighed in favor of Israel and a key source of anti-Americanism around the world. So I think it is not only appropriate, but necessary to put them under a microscope. And if we see maleness, whiteness, Jewishness, Zionism or intellectual thuggery there, then let us not look the other way.

On the ethnic question: Is it not just as valid to comment on the Jewishness of the neocons as it is to point out that the majority of them are male or white or wealthy or from the Western world or have studied at a particular university? If half the neocons were Palestinians, would the US have invaded Iraq?

That's from a 2004 piece in the magazine of Adbusters, one of the antiglobalization organizations behind the "Occupy" movement. (For the record: the US forced Israel to stay out of the 1991 Iraq war, and Israel by no means pressed for war with Iraq in 2002, being far more concerned about Iran.) As Alana Goodman recently translated and summarized:

That’s not to say the Occupy Wall Street movement itself is anti-Semitic. But if the top organizer behind the Tea Party turned out to have published a blacklist of American Jews he claimed had dual loyalty to the U.S. and Israel, the backlash from the media would be massive.

Indeed. Here, it is worth citing Oxford's Brian Klug, an avowed man of the solid left and an authority on antisemitism who rejects the notion of a "new" antisemitism, which he considers both intrinsically too broad and politically problematic because it risks tarring advocates of the Palestinian cause with the brush of bigotry:

To an antisemite, Jews are a people set apart, not merely by their customs but by their collective character. They are arrogant, secretive, cunning, always looking to turn a profit. Loyal only to their own, wherever they go they form a state within a state, preying upon the societies in whose midst they dwell. Mysteriously powerful, their hidden hand controls the banks and the media. They will even drag governments into war if this suits their purposes. Such is the figure of ‘the Jew’, transmitted from generation to generation.

Where this fantasy is projected on to Israel because it is a Jewish state, or Zionism because it is a Jewish movement, or Jews in association with either Israel or Zionism: there you have antisemitism.

The latest Anti-Defamation League poll finds that 80 percent of Americans agree with the statement, "Wall Street and major banking institutions in our country operate in their own selfish interest and not in the interest of the American economy." By contrast, 19 percent "answered 'probably true' to the statement 'Jews have too much control/influence on Wall Street,' an increase from 14 percent in 2009." The same survey found that 15 percent of Americans hold "deeply anti-Semitic views."

Are those figures on bigotry high or low? In one sense, they are disturbingly high. Putting things in context, though, they represent a sea-change from the crisis era of the Great Depression and New Deal, when antisemitism was both rife and openly expressed in the US. The  "deeply anti-Semitic" figure is moreover down from 29 percent in 1964, when this series of polls began, though up from a low of 12 percent in 1998. Perhaps more revealing, then, is the fact that, over those nearly six decades, the number of Americans who believe Jews are "more loyal to Israel than to America" has held strikingly steady at around 30 percent (in Europe, it's much higher).

As both the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and Goodman are at pains to make clear, the point is not that the "Occupy" movement is antisemitic in origin or majority character. Rather, it is a matter of vigilance on the part of the activists and the rest of us. There are good ideas and reprehensible ones, and there are understandable sentiments couched in unfortunate terms or directed at the wrong target. It was not for nothing that the nineteenth-century German Marxists called antisemitism "the socialism of fools"—or that Paul Berman, more recently, called anti-Zionism the "anti-imperialism of fools."

Seeing the man with the sign as a deluded bigot is easy. Seeing the potential bigotry in more subtle statements, with whose underlying sentiments we may want to agree, is more difficult.

After all, isn't that the thing about the nature of bigotry?

If it were simple, it would not have remained a problem for so long.


[Updated]