"Opportunity"

 A few years ago, when a spate of horrific killings of Asian Americans was in the news, a friend of mine who's Chinese American wrote down a few of his thoughts—trying to answer the fundamental question that follows every senseless atrocity: why? One of the words on his list was a simple one: "opportunity." I was struck by this phrasing and asked him to explain. He said that Asian Americans were attacked perhaps simply because they were there; because it was easy; because they were visible; because they were vulnerable. It was as if there was a kind of simmering rage, resentment, and latent capacity for cruelty inherent everywhere in human life. Then, when it gathered itself into expression, it was most often directed against those who stuck out; the ones in the most exposed position. They were the ones people had the "opportunity" to strike. 

I've been thinking back to his comment this week as our country faces another wave of bias-motivated attacks against racial and religious minorities—this time crystalizing around groups who have been conflated and lumped together, in some segments of the public mind, with events in the Middle East. There was the murder of a six-year-old Palestinian-American child, Wadea Al-Fayoume, in Illinois on October 14. There was the rash of online death threats and calls for mass murder targeting Jewish students at Cornell University—and many similar antisemitic incidents breaking out around the country. 

In trying to imagine what it is that caused this spike in hate and violence, I come back to my friend's word: opportunity. We all may be at risk of violence in this country (the Maine mass shootings last week proved that too); but some are at greater risk than others: some are particularly exposed by the clothes they wear, the color of their skin, or the religion they practice. It is the same profound vulnerability captured in a poem like Edgar Lee Masters's "Yee Bow," about the persecution of Chinese immigrants in small-town America: the exposure of a member of a minority group who cannot trust that the majority-dominated state will act to protect them; a member of a minority group who could be dispatched almost casually, with barely a thought ("as if it were a prank")—as Masters captures so eerily and poignantly in the poem. 

There is of course nothing to be gained from comparing the suffering of different groups: every racial and religious minority in the United States has been targeted—if not in this round of violence, then in many others before. Still, this past week has underscored for me that, on a global scale, Jews are a minority among minorities. At only 0.2% of the world's population, Jewish people are undeniably vulnerable and exposed. This is true according to headcount alone, even if we were to cite no other reasons. They do not have any country other than Israel in which they come even close to constituting a majority of the population. And they seem to have all too few allies on the international stage. 

I'm not just referring to the UN General Assembly's vote for a ceasefire last week in the conflict in Gaza. One can feel a lot of different ways about that without falling into antisemitism. I would have wished the international community had recognized the justice of Israel responding to Hamas's brutal attack in some military form (how could any country endure the mass murder of their own citizens—by an armed terrorist group threatening to repeat the atrocity at the first opportunity—and not be expected to act in self-defense and to prevent future killings?)—but I also sympathize with and endorse calls to halt the bombing in Gaza. No matter what statistics one uses, at this point, and no matter how much Hamas shares in the blame by basing its military operations in civilian and residential areas, it is undeniable that these bombing campaigns have caused unspeakable carnage to civilians—including killing thousands of innocent children. I cannot merely accept that as the price of war—not even of a justified war. 

What I have in mind though, is not so much this resolution, as another that was voted down just before it. On the very same day the nations of the world voted in favor of a ceasefire, they failed to pass another resolution that simply condemned the October 7 Hamas terrorist attacks and called for the immediate and unconditional release of hostages. That's it! That's all it did! You can read the whole resolution yourself if you don't believe me—it's only a paragraph long. Yet the United Nations failed to pass it. What could they possibly have objected to in its language? I guess 78 of the world's voting nations do not have any problem with Hamas massacring Jewish families in their homes, then abducting hundreds of others at gunpoint? 

One sees chilling votes like that and one can begin to understand why Israeli Jews—and Jews in any country—might feel the world does not care about their fate. Jews are in an especially vulnerable position around the world, looking sheerly by the numbers. I mean by this the small numbers of Jews themselves, relative to the overall global population, but also the scant number of gentile-majority countries that seem to have their back in consistently opposing antisemitic violence. 

People on the left—including opponents of the Israeli government—need to demonstrate some sensitivity to this. By all means, criticize occupation and apartheid in the West Bank; by all means, call for the protection of civilian life in Gaza—for even military actions in self-defense never justify the taking of innocent life or the targeting of noncombatants. But the left needs to be equally vocal and vigilant in opposing the antisemitism within their own movements. And they need to talk about these issues in a way that shows some empathy for the fact that Jewish people are indeed at constant risk of persecution and genocide. Why? Why are they at risk? For the same reason Yee Bow was, in Masters's poem, the same reason my friend gave above: opportunity. 

Any visible minority sticks out, in any context. Any minority is therefore at risk. They are the first available target when people start looking for someone to victimize. And Jews, being a minority among minorities—being a minority in every country on the earth's surface but one—being a minority relative to the global population as a whole by many orders of magnitude—are by that fact alone especially at risk. One does not even need to resort to the long history of genocide and persecution culminating in the Holocaust to make the point. Jews are isolated by the numbers; they are at extra risk.

This doesn't mean that every gentile-majority country wishes them harm. It certainly doesn't mean that every pro-Palestinian protest is rancid with antisemitism. But it does mean that, just as my friend described in relation to Asian Americans, when there is any general surge of social unrest, anomie, alienation, violence, disorder, or breakdown of institutions, then Jews will be targeted. Why? My friend called it: opportunity. They are there; they are visible; they stick out by virtue of being different from the majority. They will therefore be first in the firing line during any outbreak of violence. 

And this indeed is precisely what we are seeing around the world. A plane is stormed in Dagestan by antisemitic zealots who had heard a rumor that it might be carrying Israeli Jews. Protests that might have started with some good-faith human rights criticism of Israel in mind, end by picketing synagogues, catcalling people wearing Jewish religious dress, or ripping posters from the walls merely because they call attention to the plight of the hundreds of Israeli hostages still in Hamas captivity. (What is there for protesters to object to in calling for the release of Israeli civilians unless some at least of them are indeed motivated by antisemitism?)  

Many left-wing critics of Israel find it easy to distance themselves from such "one-off" actions or from any accusation of antisemitism. They see themselves as coming easily to anti-racist solidarity of all kinds, and they ask us to take it on faith that, if the worst really came again—if there were mass persecution of Jews—they would of course speak out. Yet, I find it impossible to take this on faith unless they do something to actually demonstrate it. What, indeed, are they waiting for? We don't need to speculate about what might come. If they were looking for an opportunity to prove that they would stand against antisemitism when it counts—well, here it is. The time is now. There was a pogrom in Israel on October 7. There was an attempted pogrom in Dagestan. There are threats to Jewish students in universities across the nation. If people object to this, now is the time to say so. 

People might retort: but these (at least the incidents in the United States) are one-off actions of lone individuals. They don't reflect any larger problem with the movement. But how many mass atrocities in history started as one-off actions of lone individuals that the state or the surrounding society tacitly condoned? I seldom quote from the Wall Street Journal op-ed page, but I have to concede they got this one right, when their editorial board wrote yesterday: "Before there was a Chancellor Hitler in 1933, there were roving bands of Brownshirts inflicting political and anti-Semitic violence on the streets of Germany. They too often went unchecked by police, prosecutors and politicians who didn’t understand the menace, sympathized with the offenders, or merely felt overwhelmed by the scale of the danger. Hitler gained power in part because the German state no longer could maintain its monopoly on violence in defense of democratic values."

If people aren't willing to speak out against the pogroms or threats of pogroms happening now, how can anyone expect that they would oppose them if they are left to swell to the point where they escalate into ethnic cleansing or genocide? If you don't notice or have any problem with "minor" forms of antisemitism, when it is still comparatively easy to arrest in its tracks, why should anyone trust that you will object to its most virulent expressions? 

After all, much of the violence and persecution of minorities throughout history has not been committed with the active complicity of state authorities. More often, it is initiated by private actors, permitting the government to dodge responsibility by casting the blame onto uncontrollable bands of "hooligans" and simultaneously winking encouragement for their actions. This was how the U.S. Supreme Court managed to persuade itself in the nineteenth century that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution had nothing to say about the racially-motivated mass murders of Black Americans, so long as they were carried out by "private" individuals involving no "state action." It was the pattern of how Hindu nationalist politicians turned a willfully blind eye to communal violence against Muslims in India. And it is how innumerable Chinese Americans fell victim to racist attacks in the nineteenth century and more recently. 

If we don't speak out to arrest the persecution of minorities when it is committed by "lone individuals," we may find we are too late to oppose them once it has gained the active complicity of the state. A single poster of an Israeli hostage torn from a wall is more than just that: it is a small act of aggression saying in effect: I don't care about this person merely because they are Jewish; I have no involvement in their fate; they don't deserve even to have their story told and for the world to wish for their safety and release. How many pogroms are started, like the killing of Yee Bow in Edgar Lee Masters's poem, by just one person doing something similarly "minor"—by just one minister's son—acting casually, indolently, "almost as if it were a prank"—yet ultimately ending the life of another?