Today was a very grim day in the history of the State of Israel. Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court (ICCC) are recommending Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Gallant along with Yahya Sinwar (Head of the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”), Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri, (Commander-in-Chief of the military wing of Hamas, known as the Al-Qassam Brigades), and Ismail Haniyeh (Head of Hamas Political Bureau) be arrested and brought to court for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
While President Biden has expressed opposition to this move at the ICC, he made himself clear in the days after October 7, 2023 regarding Israel’s international obligations. He said that he had spoken with Netanyahu during the days after the Hamas assault, supported the right of Israel to defend itself against Hamas. But President Biden warned that the difference between a democratic country and a terrorist organization is that democratic nations are expected to conduct war under rules of international law. In the end, Netanyahu was the one who brought this terrible onus upon himself and upon the country.
It would be remiss, however, not to note that the charges levelled against Israel and against Hamas are not, in fact, equivalent.
–The prosecution recommends charging Israel with crimes of omission: withholding food, water, electricity, and medicine. These are crimes that can be undone. The prosecutors are not recommending (at least not for now) Israel being charged with disproportionate use of force, killing Palestinian civilians, including old people, women, and children in the conduct of the war.
“[Crimes] occurred through the imposition of a total siege over Gaza that involved completely closing the three border crossing points, Rafah, Kerem Shalom and Erez, from 8 October 2023 for extended periods and then by arbitrarily restricting the transfer of essential supplies – including food and medicine – through the border crossings after they were reopened. The siege also included cutting off cross-border water pipelines from Israel to Gaza – Gazans’ principal source of clean water – for a prolonged period beginning 9 October 2023, and cutting off and hindering electricity supplies from at least 8 October 2023 until today. This took place alongside other attacks on civilians, including those queuing for food; obstruction of aid delivery by humanitarian agencies; and attacks on and killing of aid workers, which forced many agencies to cease or limit their operations in Gaza. My Office submits that these acts were committed as part of a common plan to use starvation as a method of war and other acts of violence against the Gazan civilian population as a means to (i) eliminate Hamas; (ii) secure the return of the hostages which Hamas has abducted, and (iii) collectively punish the civilian population of Gaza, whom they perceived as a threat to Israel.”
Hamas is charged with crimes of commission: acts of murder, sexual assault. These cannot be undone.
“My Office submits there are reasonable grounds to believe that SINWAR, DEIF and HANIYEH are criminally responsible for the killing of hundreds of Israeli civilians in attacks perpetrated by Hamas (in particular its military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades) and other armed groups on 7 October 2023 and the taking of at least 245 hostages. As part of our investigations, my Office has interviewed victims and survivors, including former hostages and eyewitnesses from six major attack locations: Kfar Aza; Holit; the location of the Supernova Music Festival; Be’eri; Nir Oz; and Nahal Oz. The investigation also relies on evidence such as CCTV footage, authenticated audio, photo and video material, statements by Hamas members including the alleged perpetrators named above, and expert evidence. It is the view of my Office that these individuals planned and instigated the commission of crimes on 7 October 2023, and have through their own actions, including personal visits to hostages shortly after their kidnapping, acknowledged their responsibility for those crimes. We submit that these crimes could not have been committed without their actions. They are charged both as co-perpetrators and as superiors pursuant to Articles 25 and 28 of the Rome Statute. During my own visit to Kibbutz Be’eri and Kibbutz Kfar Aza, as well as to the site of Supernova Music Festival in Re’im, I saw the devastating scenes of these attacks and the profound impact of the unconscionable crimes charged in the applications filed today. Speaking with survivors, I heard how the love within a family, the deepest bonds between a parent and a child, were contorted to inflict unfathomable pain through calculated cruelty and extreme callousness. These acts demand accountability. My Office also submits there are reasonable grounds to believe that hostages taken from Israel have been kept in inhumane conditions, and that some have been subject to sexual violence, including rape, while being held in captivity. We have reached that conclusion based on medical records, contemporaneous video and documentary evidence, and interviews with victims and survivors. My Office also continues to investigate reports of sexual violence committed on 7 October.”
–The prosecutors recommending charges only against Israeli political leadership. To this date, not the IDF Chief of Staff and officers.
The prosecutors recommendsprosecutingHamas military and political heads.
–The prosecutors recognize Israel having the right to defend itself against Hamas under rules of international law set by the Rome Statute.
“Israel, like all States, has a right to take action to defend its population. That right, however, does not absolve Israel or any State of its obligation to comply with international humanitarian law. Notwithstanding any military goals they may have, the means Israel chose to achieve them in Gaza – namely, intentionally causing death, starvation, great suffering, and serious injury to body or health of the civilian population – are criminal.”
The prosecutors extend no such recognition to Hamas.
–The prosecutor extends sympathy the victims in Israel.
During my own visit to Kibbutz Be’eri and Kibbutz Kfar Aza, as well as to the site of Supernova Music Festival in Re’im, I saw the devastating scenes of these attacks and the profound impact of the unconscionable crimes charged in the applications filed today. Speaking with survivors, I heard how the love within a family, the deepest bonds between a parent and a child, were contorted to inflict unfathomable pain through calculated cruelty and extreme callousness. These acts demand accountability.
–The prosecutor concludes:
“Today we once again underline that international law and the laws of armed conflict apply to all. No foot soldier, no commander, no civilian leader – no one – can act with impunity. Nothing can justify willfully depriving human beings, including so many women and children, the basic necessities required for life. Nothing can justify the taking of hostages or the targeting of civilians.”
Campus protests manifesting anti-Zionism as an organized political force became a test-case this year for claims regarding the correlation between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. As Dov Waxman said here at the Forward about the pro-Palestine-anti-Zionist demonstrations that dominated U.S. campuses in the wake of October 7 and the Hamas-Israel war, “If you don’t characterize the protests as antisemitic in any way then it’s easy to just characterize this as free speech and put the onus on those who wish to restrict it. Whereas, if you characterize it as antisemitism, then it becomes hate speech and it does shift the onus somewhat on those who are saying it should be allowed.” As reported also by Arno Rosenfeld at the same site, “almost all Jewish students agree is a tense campus where political disagreements have boiled over into personal attacks, slurs and even some threats.”
By anti-Semitism, I am bracketing here conscious or subliminal dislike and hatred. There has been only a little overt expression on campus of this sort of anti-Semitism, at least in the United States. The direct object of intentional animus has been Israel and Zionism, not Jews and Jewishness or Judaism. Understood as a psychological mechanism, it is impossible to say one way or the other if anti-Semitism motivates anti-Zionism. It is probably the case that anti-Zionism taps into a reservoir of anti-Semitic tropes. But it is almost never a good idea to accuse a person of being an anti-Semite in the absence of manifest verbal expression. One never knows for sure what is the motivating cause of a personal or political animus.
By anti-Semitism in relation to anti-Zionism, I would rather point to an observable social dynamic: the exclusion of Jews from the public sphere. Not “all Jews,” of course, but of many Jews, or a large class of Jews, or Jews who do not meet or refuse the standard set by an anti-Israel litmus test established by a hardcore of pro-Palestine-anti-Israel activists on and off campus. Anti-Semitism slips out of the positive and negative push-pull between student-protest calls for Palestinian liberation conceived as corresponding to two things: the destruction of Israel as a national community and the isolation and exclusion of “Zionists” from campus.
ANTI-ISRAEL
Jewish anti-Zionists joining the protests testified to a different experience. They expressed feelings of safety and camaraderie with fellow Palestine solidarity activists. They spoke of the emergence of a new kind of Jewish community, especially around the welcome of Shabbat and Passover observance during demonstrations and at protest gatherings –one that conformed to the political point of view at the demonstrations and protests. The flipside of in-group communitas inside the ideological camp is hostility turned against members of the out-group, in this case their fellow Jews in Israel and the Diaspora, and more immediately on campus. From a privileged position relative to the Palestine solidarity movement, they actively contributed to a charged and binary anti-Israel discourse. The discourse is one that vilifies the State of Israel and “Zionist Jews.”
The vast majority of student protests were not physically violent. But they were not necessarily peaceful. Protesters occupied campus centers. They set up exclusive zones from which they projected ideational violence on Jews in Israel, demanded divestment and the boycott of academic institutions in Israel and in the U.S., including study abroad programs, and called for the exclusion of Zionists from campus life. Protest-marshals rejected dialogue with others and restricted access to outsiders. In an aggressive and binary macro-climate, Jewish students and especially Israeli students reported persistent shunning and verbal abuse from students and faculty in classrooms, dorms, dining halls, university sponsored online message-boards, student clubs, and so on. American and Israeli Jewish faculty and staff reported persistent hostility in their place of work. On many campuses, it was not always clear which protesters were students and who came from off-campus, creating a volatile environment. Sporadic threats of physical violence off-campus and sometimes on-campus as well as isolated cases of actual violence left deep impressions on campus life.
In violation of codes of student conduct, actions excluding Jewish students from participating in campus life helped create a social environment placing universities and colleges in potential violation of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Title VI prohibits discrimination at educational programs that receive federal assistance. Under the title, “no person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”
Creating a hard psychological and social binary, anti-Zionist expression on campus and off campus was layered into distinct but connected discursive/ideational clusters. The meaning of any single statement, such as the much debated “River to the Sea,” would be viewed, not in isolation, but as part of the total aggregate of organized statements in which that individual statement appears. The voices of individuals varied, some of whom were very extreme, others less so. The intensity and persistence of protests varied from campus to campus, college by college within a single university, department by department. But the baseline memes (per below) were consistent and uniform, not “moderate,” and most likely organized and digital, as was the anti-Zionist platform.
–Random cases of physical assault, intimidation, and one reported death threat. Hostile messaging was sponsored by universities on online message boards and listservs.
–The most toxic speech-acts were expressed largely by off-campus activists (but not always). These were not entirely separable from the main protests on-campus. As part of the common political macro-environment, they raised the perception of physical threat. In Morningside Heights, for example, adjacent to Columbia University, the most extreme pro-Hamas messaging heard off-campus included statements like: Al-Qassam, you make us proud, take another soldier out + We say justice, you say how? Burn Tel Aviv to the ground + Hamas, we love you. We support your rockets too + Go Back to Poland + Zionist Scum Off Campus + Death to Zionists. Statements of this kind were widely reported in the press.
–The baseline discourse was only one degree less toxic. The standard, uncompromising messaging on-campus and off-campus were charged by loud and rhythmic chants and boldly graphic flyers: From the River to the Sea Palestine Will Be Free + From the Water to the Water Palestine is Arab + The Only Solution is Intifada Revolution + Free Free Palestine + End Israeli Genocide + Globalize the Intifada + Intifada Intifada + Glory to the Martyrs + Israel Will Fall + We Don’t Want 2 States, We Want ’48 + Resistance is Justified By Any Means Necessary + Zionism Will Fall + Zionist Donors Hands Off Our Campus + Zionism is Terrorism + We Don’t Want Zionists Here.
–The protests were not “anti-war.” There were no calls for peace, much less coexistence between Palestinians and Jews in Israel, or between Jews and Muslims in the United States, at least not outside the narrow frame defined by the protesters themselves. From day-1, student and faculty voices on-campus embraced Hamas violence against Jews in Israel. Pro-terror protesters and supporters (affiliated with JSP) were “exhilarated” by the violence against civilians on October 7 and promoted images of Hamas fighters under the banners of “decolonialism” and “armed resistance.” The violence of October 7 directed at civilians in Israel was seen as the path to Palestinian liberation. Protesters denied the Hamas attacks, especially rape as a weapon of war, or pushed blamed for it on the occupation or Israeli settler-colonialism.
–The constant destruction of flyers calling attention to the Israeli hostages left their own visual mark in the neighborhoods directly off-campus. No doubt the flyers were seen as a provocative challenge to Palestine solidarity, as if they were meant to justify the war by Israel against Hamas in Gaza. But this does little to explain the utter cruelty. The de-facing of the human image (old people, women, young men, children) was a palpable act of symbolic violence manifesting deep hatred for Jews in Israel and for the American Jews who care about their fate, regardless of their own varied political positions about Israel.
American Jews and Israeli Jews on-campus had more than sufficient reason to recoil from this hostile macro-environment; from fellow students and faculty calling for the destruction of Israel, including calls for violence and death to Jews in Israel; and from fellow students calling for their own exclusion on campus; from the imposition of political litmus tests on Jewish students in violation of the formal principle of academic freedom and deeply held understandings of core Jewish communal belonging.
ANTI-SEMITIC
The IHRA definition of anti-Semitism was the first document of its kind that set out to identify context-dependent guidelines with which to assess discourse concerning Israel. It has since been weaponized by the Jewish right to penalize all criticism of Israel. For their part, the anti-Zionist left has turned the IHRA into an odious object. This is because anti-Zionism rejects even context-dependent links between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. Pointing to a small group of Jewish allies, anti-Zionist protesters are quick to claim that “anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism.” But even by metrics determined by the liberal-progressive Jerusalem Declaration On Anti-Semitism, the anti-Zionism manifest in campus protests was anti-Semitic.
According to the Jerusalem Declaration’s definition, “Antisemitism is discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews (or Jewish institutions as Jewish).”
The Jerusalem Declaration leaves open the precise contours delineating the relation between Jewishness and Israel. But it does not support in full the claim that “anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitic.” Anti-Zionists contend that Judaism and Jewishness are not the same as Zionism and Israel. Anti-Zionism then demands Jews to part ways with Zionism and Israel on that basis. According to the counterargument, Zionism and Judaism are two distinct social forms that are impossible to separate, especially after the establishment of the state in 1948. Anti-Zionism is for that reason arguably anti-Jewish, while using “Zionist” as an epithet against a broad class of Jews is intentionally abusive and anti-Semitic.
According to the Jerusalem Declaration, anti-Semitic expression includes the demonization of Israel, the imposition of anti-Zionist litmus tests, and the unconditional rejection of collective (presumably political) Jewish life in the State of Israel.
–According to the Jerusalem Declaration, ascribing unique and total evil to Jews is anti-Semitic:
“What is particular in classic antisemitism is the idea that Jews are linked to the forces of evil. This stands at the core of many anti-Jewish fantasies, such as the idea of a Jewish conspiracy in which ‘the Jews’ possess hidden power that they use to promote their own collective agenda at the expense of other people. This linkage between Jews and evil continues in the present: in the fantasy that “the Jews” control governments with a ‘hidden hand,’ that they own the banks, control the media, act as “a state within a state,” and are responsible for spreading disease (such as Covid-19). All these features can be instrumentalized by different (and even antagonistic) political causes.”
–According to the Jerusalem Declaration, Israel-coded speech can sometimes count as anti-Semitic:
“Portraying Israel as the ultimate evil or grossly exaggerating its actual influence can be a coded way of racializing and stigmatizing Jews. In many cases, identifying coded speech is a matter of context and judgement, taking account of these guidelines. Holding Jews collectively responsible for Israel’s conduct or treating Jews, simply because they are Jewish, as agents of Israel.”
–According to the Jerusalem Declaration, establishing litmus tests for Jews re: Israel is anti-Semitic:
“Requiring people, because they are Jewish, publicly to condemn Israel or Zionism (for example, at a political meeting).”
–According to the Jerusalem Declaration, to reject in principle and without qualification the State of Israel is anti-Semitic:
“Denying the right of Jews in the State of Israel to exist and flourish, collectively and individually, as Jews, in accordance with the principle of equality.”
In this view of the Jerusalem Declaration, persistent and rhetorically charged protests that seek the elimination of Israel, that demonize the country, and create litmus tests for Jewish students are almost definitely anti-Semitic. These features of anti-Zionist discourse predate the atrocities of October 7 and the Hamas-Israel war in Gaza. They color the current messaging of pro-Palestine protests against Israel. They underpin attempts to isolate Jewish student organizations under the banner of anti-normalization. Regardless of one’s position on the war and the State of Israel, this is why it is claimed with justifiable cause that anti-Zionism creates hostility against Jewish students.
Anti-Semitism is recognized by scholars as systemic in western society. This means that the presence or absence of an intention or even underlying bias has nothing to do with whether anti-Zionist speech or speech-acts are anti-Semitic or not. Anti-Semitism is a reservoir of historically embedded tropes twisting perception of real and imagined Jewish power. Such tropes are especially virulent during moments of crisis. It is anti-Semitic to exclude Jews from the public sphere on the basis of an uncompromising ideological litmus test. It is anti-Semitic to hold Israel responsible for the collective ails of society. Accusing Jews of genocide and supporting genocide, placing Zionism at the root of capitalism, colonialism, and anti-Black racism is steeped in coded anti-Semitism.
Judaism and Zionism are distinct phenomena, but they are not, in the final analysis, separable. In Jewish tradition and cultural memory, Jerusalem and the Land of Israel are symbolically charged organizing topoi; they are objects of spiritual attention and utopian hope. In modern times, the State of Israel was established as a refuge for a long-suffering people. The State of Israel constitutes a major, if not the most significant in-gathering of Jewish life in the world today and in the history of the Jews. Israel is the national home of some seven million Jews. Setting aside abstract ideals, if the essence of Jewishness is the social bond connecting Jews with each other, then cutting off a major part of that social body is, by definition, anti-Jewish; to impose this violation of engrained social norms on Jews is probably anti-Semitic.
NOT ANTI-SEMITIC
I refuse to believe that all protesters against Israel during the war against Hamas in Gaza are motivated by anti-Semitism or tap into latent anti-Semitism. Supporting Palestinian independence and Palestinian human dignity is not anti-Semitic and not anti-Zionist. Criticism of Israel and Zionism is not anti-Semitic and not anti-Israel or anti-Zionist. Across the political spectrum, people of good faith and common decency are appalled by the enormous loss of civilian life in Israel on October 7 and in Gaza. Without knowing anything about the history of the conflict or the complexity of the politics, many of us are horrified by the simple public face of the ultra-rightwing-religious-right government that represents the State of Israel. For students on campus today, this is the only Israel they have known for as long as they have been alive; for junior faculty this is the only Isarael they have known since becoming politically conscious. They have not seen something better.
It is not anti-Semitic, indeed, it is profoundly Zionist, to want a ceasefire, the safe return of hostages, cessation of the war, the rebuilding of lives for people in Israel, Gaza, and Lebanon, justice for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, ending settler and IDF violence against them, and Palestinian self-determination. Between the River and Sea, there are Jews and Palestinians, two national communities, political horizons based on the possibility of regional alliances and international frameworks. It is not anti-Semitic to recognize the humanity of Israelis and Palestinians, and oppose their violent dispossession, to want to see an end to the death and destruction of this war on the basis of a viable political horizon that meets the needs of two peoples.
Anti-Zionism, for its part, is its own distinct phenomenon, with its own history and norms established in opposition to the Zionist project and the establishment of the State of Israel. Since the late 1960s, the progressive left in the United States have attached colonial, settler-colonial, and anti-racism paradigms onto pro-Palestine-anti-Zionist maximalism. In the name of anti-Zionism, uncompromising pro-Palestine activism promotes the destruction of Israel. At the most radical extreme, activists glorify violence by Hamas against Israeli civilians “by any means necessary.” Far from the actual violence in Gaza and Israel, the call for an Arab Palestine without Israel between the river and sea is, at best, a utopian pipedream made in bad faith by people with no direct stakes in the region. The progressive-anti-Zionist left rejects the possibility of mutual recognition between what are two national communities. What they call for amounts to a future ofinter-communalconflict and endless cycles of violence, war, and death. What they call for is anti-Jewish and anti-Palestinian.
In an ideal world, but not in this one, a thick redline separates the cause of Palestine and Palestinian self-determination, on the one hand, from anti-Zionism, the total rejection of Jewish self-determination, on the other hand. People of good faith would reject dead-end animus and hatred, and uphold a common future based on mutual recognition, the value of human life, dialogue and understanding, not violence and division between Israelis and Palestinians, Muslims and Jews.
It is possible to be of one mind. This op-ed by Hanin Majadli at Ha’aretz is a Palestinian reflection on Gaza an Palestinian identity that mirrors the thoughts of so many of us this year who care about this place and people. The usual refrain on the Jewish left is to talk about 2 narratives, a Jewish one and a Palestinian one. But this year of total catastrophe for two peoples calls for people of good will to start figuring out how to thread Nakba-Memorial-Independence Day into a single narrative. The narrative starts in the bleak and utter grief. It compares to what she describes is the fate of a drowning ant in a terrible sea. “Have we been destined only to live in the shadow of the Nakba or in the midst of it?”
It is not my intention to obscure the suffering of Gaza and Palestinian statelessness. I only want to note a shock of recognition (the recognition of “the other” and the recognition of “self”) in the inversion of a mirror image.
Majadli writes, “In the past, Israel’s Independence Day pained me because you won, and we lost; because you have renewal, and we are licking the wounds of our destruction; because you’re stringing up flags, and we’re hiding our own flags. You’re planting trees, and in the West Bank uprooting our trees. You’re building homes, and in the Negev demolishing ours. This year, you’re in the midst of destruction, ruin and a future shrouded in uncertainty. Does that console me? Absolutely not. And I’m pleased that it doesn’t console me. Because everything around us is so sad.”
“Our heart a prisoner in Gaza” with no political horizon and no foreseeable way out of this terrible war and civilian suffering. Under the pall of a deep collective political and moral crisis, Passover this year was unlike any other in recent memory. “Redemption” is a bitter word that sticks in the throat. Facing implacable and wicked enemies, the ones who rise up to destroy them, the people in Israel are led by callous political leaders who, in their own wickedness, abandon them to perpetual war. In Israel, they are the sovereign co-creators of the ugly and narrow-place or mitzrayim, the dungeon they have built for the people of Israel in the Land of Israel.
Here are the key points that stood out for me this violent and unhappy year from the Passover Haggadah
–The 4 cups of wine and fearsome Haggadah illustrations by Leonard Baskin.
–My mother reads “seder of the simple” from a hasidic tale by Martin Buber. She reads this every year. “My wife said, ‘Why don’t you make a seder like all the other Jews?’ So I said to her, ‘What do you want from me? I am an ignoramus ad my father before me was an ignoramus and I don’t know what to do. The only thing I know is this –that our fathers were in exile among the gypsies. But we have a God who took us out from there and made us free. And now we are in exile again, but God will bring us out. Then I saw on the table before me matza and wine and eggs. My wife and I ate the matzoh and eggs and drank the wine, And I said, ‘You God –look down at us make us free.'”
–The horrendous violence of the 10 plagues, 50 plagues, 250 plagues; fiery anger, wrath, indignation, trouble and messengers of evil. The bitter herb, the suffering and death. And the terrible fate of the innocent children, the first born of an enemy nation, the bitter cries of the Palestinian people, the doom their own leaders draw upon them. Concluding the Seder is the grim world of the Had Gadya. It consumes itself in a violent chain reaction. With the Holy One nowhere in sight, there is only the one little goat, and the cat, and the dog, and the stick, and the fire, and the water, and the ox, and the butcher, and the Angel of Death.
–The Haggadah is presupposed on basic inversions: from slavery to freedom, anguish to joy, mourning to festivity, darkness to great light, enslavement to redemption. Everything is stuck. None of the inversions are firing this year. Israel remains unfree in an unredeemed world. A stifled Hallelujah marks the non-passage to great light, with no new song to sing to God.
— After 4 cups of wine are the folksongs: the Temple songs and Who Knows One and Had Gadya. We sing them not because we are joyous, but because we our unhappy. Not because we are righteous and good, but the opposite. At this moment, the essence or ikar is the klal of Jewish life, the one that “the wicked son” rejects. Absent the salvation of God, if there is such a thing, is the being together with each other across our own differences at this moment of grief, shock, fear, and rage.
“This house no longer exists….The house went up in flames on October 7 in Hamas’ attack on Be’eri. I went over family photos and chose to focus on a picture of life that deliberately perpetuates the past – the house before the destruction and obliteration…All the people in the painting are well,” she says. “The house in the painting was destroyed, but Sahar is in good condition and the whole family has been staying since the massacre at a hotel on the Dead Sea.”
[Tigist Yoseph Ron’s is winner of the Haim Shiff Prize for figurative-realistic art for 2019. You can find her work featured here at Ha’aretz. The feature includes the image of Shabbat on the Kibbutz the artist’s statement above, and the story of the artist’s family’s immigration from Ethiopia and absorption in Israel. Paintings touch upon family history and community. The reflective place of the image build up the clear outline of bodies + a washed out and unclear sense of time + the close sitting together of people]
I’m getting all of this from Marc Ponte, a public historian researching 17th century migration and slavery in Amsterdam, Brazil and Suriname. Ponte shared a wonderful twitter thread about the performance of Hester, of Verloosing der jooden by Johanne Serwouters, performed almost annually at the Amsterdam Schowburg starting in 1659. Before that the Purim story was performed at improvised theaters in warehouses and cellars in the city’s Jewish neighborhood.
Ponte found a piece of historical evidence from the city’s notarial department. The case involved the appeal of 4 Jews appealing against an attempt by the city to ban the play. Mention is made that the performance of these kinds plays had long been performed in the city.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries #Purim Hester’s story was played out in warehouses and cellars around Vluivenburg. In 1722, Salomon Elias Cohen ‘the Fireworker’ was charged with playing ‘comedien buyten de schouwburg’
Cohen felt this was unfair, because this had been tolerated by the city of Amsterdam for a long time. On April 22, 1722, he had four witnesses present to the notary Johannes Vilekens on Sint Antoniesbreestraat ‘near the Zuiderkerk’, opposite Huis de Pinto.
Benjamin Eliasar, Markus Levie, Levie Sijmons and Moses Raphaels declare that since childhood they have known nothing other than that during Purim in ‘packhuijsen oft cellars (…) in the High German Jewish Tael [Yiddish mp] den Inhout of the History of Hester’ was played
The witnesses say that the performances were performed every year without any problems, even long before their birth. One of the witnesses, 54-year-old Marcus Levie, cited the story of his much older (and now long deceased) brother.
The brother, who was born around 1628, had not only told Levie that the story of Esther had been played with Purim since he was a child, but that he had also often performed on stage himself, both for Haman and for others. characters.
In the mid-17th century, Rembrandt also lived in the area. It is possible that he witnessed the Jewish celebrations and performances up close and was inspired by his print The Triumph of Mordecai (ca 1641).
Title: The Triumph of Mordecai
Artist: Rembrandt (Rembrandt van Rijn) (Dutch, Leiden 1606–1669 Amsterdam)
Date: ca. 1641
Medium: Etching and drypoint
Dimensions: sheet: 6 15/16 x 8 11/16 in. (17.6 x 22 cm)
Classification: Prints
To Ponte’s tweet which includes the image, I would only add the following. In the etching, Rembrandt, so utterly Jewish, frames the triumph of Mordechai in the intimation of architecture in the intimation of an urban scene. What Ponte’s post makes unclear is if the etching represents the triumph of Mordechai in Shushan, the capital, or rather its theatrical representation in Amsterdam.
[With many thanks to Marc Ponte for sharing this on Purim]
“To blame the victims for their own suffering is simply an easy way to distance oneself from them. Blaming the victims is just like idealizing them—at best superfluous, perhaps a sign of the difficulty of facing cruelty at all. It is, however, not only undignified to idealize political victims; it is also very dangerous. One of our political actualities is that the victims of political torture and injustice are often no better than their tormentors. They are only waiting to change places with the latter. Of course, if one puts cruelty first this makes no difference. It does not matter whether the victim of torture is a decent man or a villain. No one deserves to be subjected to the appalling instruments of cruelty. Nevertheless, even at the cost of misanthropy, one cannot afford to pretend that victimhood improves anyone in any way. If we do not remember that anyone can be a victim, and if we allow hatred for torture, or pity for pain, to blind us, we will unwittingly aid the torturers of tomorrow by overrating the victims of today. One may be too easily tempted to think of all victims as equally innocent because there cannot, by definition, be a voluntary victim. That may have the consequence of promoting an endless exchange of cruelties between alternating tormentors and victims.”
Judith Skhlar, “Putting cruelty first” in Ordinary Vices, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), 17-18
The last many months have been a demoralizing and disorienting nightmare, a nauseating disequilibrium for Israel and Palestine, and for anyone who cares about the people who live there and the violence they suffer. The people of Israel and Palestine have been dragged by their leaders into a deep and destabilizing miasma of shock and disbelief, grief and rage with no end in sight beyond death and destruction. In place of political leadership, hollow slogans of “resistance” and “total victory” paper over a narrow and debilitating horizon of perpetual war. No thought and no care are given to protecting the human life of a complex social fabric. The mind reels in the constricted and depressing place of a hopeless dead-end turning in on itself, a circle with no line forward.
The only way to stabilize the situation suffered by Israel and Palestine is to build a bigger picture. The first steps are a pause in fighting, hostages home, humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza. Then, end the war, create clear borders and redlines, back this up with regional and international power, isolate and remove Hamas from power, get Hezbollah off the border in the north without more violence, topple the government of Israel, withdraw from Gaza, lift the siege of Gaza, rebuild Gaza and the north and south of Israel, end the occupation in the West Bank, isolate the religious right in Israel, recognize the State of Palestine next to the State of Israel, reaffirm the State of Israel next to the State of Palestine, normalize relations between Israel and the Arab world, secure peace and human life on foundations of mutual security, mutual interest, mutual recognition, and mutual respect.
The big picture and a path forward demands a tripartite common: [1] An international-regional common: Neither Palestine nor Israel can function on their own outside international ad regional frameworks. Ending the occupation and defeating Hamas require cooperation linked to regional integration and international guarantees which are only possible under the rubric of a viable two-state compact. [2] A local moral common: Under the painful gravity of human suffering, the families of the hostages want their people back; the people in Gaza have literally lost everything. They are the moral core of the conflict, a common humanity of hurt. Their suffering is the only thing that matters. [3] A spiritual common: In the region and abroad, people need to resist the overpowering logic of enmity and commit to human life, the image of God in all people.
Violence and death are core realities obstructing any big picture of a human common. For Palestinians there is a one-hundred-year war against their homeland and people, while Israelis talk about wars-of-no-choice. But all the old paradigms are broken, and hopefully the old cycles. Objectively, the catastrophe of October 7 and the Hamas-Israel, unprecedented in the history of the conflict, has ripped the status quo ante to shreds. With no going back, the extreme scale of the catastrophe is creating new realities. With the passing of every week, Israel and Palestine are confronting the limit of their own power. They are hedged in by what the United States, Europeans, and Sunni states are willing to tolerate from either side. There are clear limits to what they are willing to support politically and financially. Israel and Palestine are backed into corners of their making whose only solution is a peace-of-no-choice.
Over here, diaspora Jews need to bracket and stop weaponizing the genuine fear of anti-Semitism at this political moment. Most of our friends and fellow citizens want an end to the war and a decent end of conflict resolution to the conflict. We should take note that radical anti-Israel-anti-Zionism is a fringe political phenomenon; that Israelis overwhelmingly hold Netanyahu and his government primarily responsible for the disaster brought upon the country by Hamas on October 7; that many Palestinians in Gaza hold Hamas responsible for the catastrophe they are now suffering; that for many if not most Israelis, the thing that matters most is returning the hostages. Understandably at this moment, Israeli Jews overwhelmingly oppose the idea of a 2-state solution, but in favor of no practicable alternative.
And all the global and decolonial left in the United States and Europe contribute are imbecilic anti-Zionist slogans. “River to sea,” “resistance by any means necessary,” “abolish settler-colonialism,” and “globalize the intifada” do not reflect in a critical way the immense toll in human life suffered in Gaza. Far away from the conflict with no people at risk, the myopic anti-Zionism cosplayed by white radicals and Black radicals (the non-Semitic left) exacerbate intra-communal conflict. With no big picture, radical anti-Zionism offer no viable path out of this demoralizing morass, no big picture, no vision and practice of a collective good.
Maybe the big-picture common of Israel and Palestine has nothing to do with peace and understanding. What binds together Jews and Muslims, Israelis and Palestinians into a common interest is infinite fear and hate; and the deep pain and concern they separately share, each for their own people, bound together and suffering with no clear path forward.
Philosophers and other theorists distinguish between the wide-open, harsh infinity of space as opposed to the buffered configuration of being in place. This structural distinction conforms also to digital space and place. Digital space is full of malevolent chaos. It is a miserable universe, out of joint, subject to malevolent beings who wish you emotional and even physical harm. In contrast to digital space, there is the place of digital home. One keeps and maintains digital home with and against the omniscience of the algorithm. A digital home creates a sense of place in the larger digital universe. The creation of a digital home depends upon supports and filters that determine whom one allows in and whom one excludes, and under what conditions. A digital home can be a closed and suffocating place or a welcoming place in a polarized and polarizing world, especially at times of political crisis and social violence. Reflecting the commitments and values of the occupant, a digital home depends upon contingent decisions to engage and not engage other people.
I have been thinking a lot about digital home in relation to the politics of Zionism and anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, October 7, and the Hamas-Israel war. At their best, the culture and politics of Israel and Palestine are always multi-perspectival. At moments of intense violence, it is easy to lose one’s bearings and best judgment when everything goes out of whack in the polarizing push and pull. One can lose a sense of one’s own best self. About Israel. I go to Twitter where I have found a group of people to whom I go for political and moral orientation. The political views of the people I engage vary. They do not all align with my own. But they do not close anyone out. Against all the American one-noters shitposting about Israel and Palestine, the people I engage generate points of view that are complex and multi-dimensional. They are almost all of them rooted cosmopolitans: Israeli, Jewish, Palestinian, American, Egyptian, Iranian, Pakistani, Saudi, British, French, Lebanese, Turkish. Based primarily in the United States and in Israel, they mostly write in English. They are journalists, historians, think-tankers. Many, but certainly not all of them, write or have written at Ha’aretz, the UAE based National News, the Saudi based Asharq Al-Awsat, Newsline, The Atlantic. Rejecting zero-sum politics, they are non-binary in their critical approach to the conflict and to culture.
I grew up in a Labor Zionist youth movement in the 1970/80s. I spent years in Israel during the 1980s. I pursued a PhD in modern Jewish thought and culture with a focus on religion. In the late 1990s, I started going online for news relating to Israel. It was my first exposure to Arab and Muslim news sites in English translation. Twitter has since then only worked to magnify and multiply that online experience. Twitter pulls the eye away from the myopic Jewish-Israeli-Jewish points of view that one tends to find as one goes out further onto the Jewish right or the Jewish left. On the Jewish left, no less than on the Jewish right, everything is always Jewish and all they see is Israel. The Jewish right is blind to the question of Palestine. The Jewish left blames all the terrible things that happen in the region on Israel. The people I follow at Twitter see things more clearly. They help one see better the place of Jewishness and Israel in the world and its place in the MENA. They see Israeli political dynamics next to Palestinian dynamics, next to Arab next to Turkish next to Iranian dynamics. This big view of the world is attuned to the region. It gives one to see that no national community is simply passive, that everything is in motion against and with each other.
A lot of people have bad experience on Twitter because they engage the wrong people. It is also probably true that larger profile accounts attract crazy and stupid people. I can only say that I came to Twitter relatively late in my online life and my own profile is modest. I wanted something bigger and less intimate than Facebook. And I found people at Twitter. I do not confuse them with friends. Most are complete strangers, even as I am on good terms and even friendly with some, mostly online. They are the reason and only reason I stay at Twitter, which is itself a hell-space. They both out and extend what I hope is a larger point of view. I “engage” with these people constantly. That means I like, comment, repost, and quote-repost. I expect no reciprocation and I am honored when I receive it. I engage with them constantly because I like them. And because the intentional engagement with them keeps my own algorithm clean. Twitter knows that these are the people I see online and who I want to see online; so they are the people I see online, especially now relating to October 7 and the Hamas-Israel war in Gaza.
At its best, the short-form of Twitter is a vital-digital complement to long-form thinking. Even as it opens place into space, the medium forces the user to refine perspective, to condense and to sharpen it. When and only when it works well, Twitter makes the user develop complex thoughts more to a point and sense of purpose that are human and home-like in structure.
