Last week, Vice President Kamala Harris headlined the opening session of the Anti-Defamation League’s “Never is Now” conference on fighting antisemitism. Her prepared remarks have been heavily praised as an excellent step for a Democratic establishment that has all-too-often been hesitant to confront the issue of anti-Jewish sentiment head-on.
Hopefully, this read is correct and signals a shift in both recognition and willingness to act on the part of the party’s leadership. But the hard truth is that the vice president’s comments did not actually address the modern antisemites’ favorite loophole, and ideas this important must be stated with perfect clarity.
While it was refreshing to see advance headlines proclaiming that the vice president would acknowledge that singling out Israel is a form of antisemitism, what she actually said was that “when Israel is singled out because of anti-Jewish hatred, that is antisemitism. And that is unacceptable.”
The vice president is, of course, technically correct: When anything is singled out because of anti-Jewish hatred, that is by definition antisemitism and therefore unacceptable. But it is the rare and stupid antisemite who actually says that part out loud. In fact, most antisemites would probably vehemently deny their hatred of Jews. The real danger occurs when people, including prominent members of the Democratic Party, say that they harbor no anti-Jewish hatred, yet single out Israel for different treatment by casually using blatant lies and wholly inapplicable terms such as “colonialism,” “apartheid,” or even “ethnic cleansing,” as the vice president herself learned only a short time ago, to discuss and justify their hatred for the collective Jew among the states.
The problem is not new; antisemitism’s focus can shift over time, but in every generation, those manifesting anti-Jewish bigotry use some variant of the same refrain: “We don’t hate Jews, we just can’t stand ____.” To express their hatred in a socially acceptable way, antisemites need a rationale that can pass in polite society — ideally, one that appeals directly to the highest source of authority currently in vogue. As the late, great Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks once noted, in the Middle Ages, that was religion, in post-Enlightenment Europe, it was science, and now, it involves using (or abusing) the language of human rights with selective claims of social justice that see only Jews, or the Jewish state, as worthy of condemnation.
The question then becomes how to differentiate between legitimate criticism of Israel on the one hand and thinly veiled hate on the other. Fortunately, there is a remarkably easy, shorthand way to do so. The “3D test” for antisemitism was developed by Israeli human rights activist Natan Sharansky and later formed part of the basis for the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism used by dozens of countries, including the U.S. The premise is simple, and it works like this.
Classic antisemitism has always involved demonizing Jews by accusing them of horrible things, delegitimizing the Jewish collective identity, and applying double standards for the Jewish people. Those 3Ds are the three main weapons that antisemites have typically used when making their case against Jews. Nowadays, when antisemites like to masquerade as “merely” anti-Zionist, all you have to do is ask if the proponents of a given position are making use of these same tools.
When, for example, anti-Israel activists use classic antisemitic tropes to demonize the Jewish state with false accusations of hideous evil, when they deny history to delegitimize Jewish rights and claim that Jews are not indigenous to the land, or when they apply a double standard by denying only the Jewish people their right to self-determination, while at the same time calling for the elimination of the world’s only Jewish state, an ethnic cleansing of the region, and/or the genocidal extermination of the millions of Jewish people who actually live there, that is antisemitism.
Perhaps what the vice president meant to say was that when Israel is singled out, that is because of anti-Jewish hatred, and that is antisemitism. If so, then she should be applauded for calling out this modern scourge. The vice president also pledged that the Biden administration would fight antisemitism of every kind and call it out wherever it exists.
Harris once said, “Anyone who claims to be a leader must speak like a leader. That means speaking with integrity and truth.” Let us hope that she can demonstrate real leadership and speak clearly when she calls out antisemitism — even when people try to hide their hatred behind anti-Zionism and especially when it comes from within the ranks of her own party.
Mark Goldfeder is the director of the National Jewish Advocacy Center.
