Several days ago I encountered a video on my feed, discussing the current argument about the effectiveness of putting the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) definition of Antisemitism to use. The speaker in the video said that organizations - like IfNotNow and Jewish Voices for Peace - who speak against the IHRA definition are "damaging the consensus". Now that - regardless of my personal opinion - means one of two things; one, a not-negligible portion of Jewish society does not accept it, so this consensus is not really a consensus; two, the speaker does not count the opposition as Jewish and can subsequently announce that consensus has been achieved. I looked at the comments. It wasn't pretty.
Meanwhile, on the other end of town, a Jewish organization's Instagram account described the whole of Abe Foxman's legacy as one big "red flag" against appointing him Special Envoy to Monitor and combat Antisemitism. Deborah Lipstadt - who has some antisemitism-fighting credit to her name - got off somewhat easier, not without being reprimanded for saying that Antisemitism existed on both sides of the political map.
I got a bit confused. So I did what every right-minded Jewish boy needs to do when faced with such dilemmas. I opened the "Jewish Yearbook" and started pulling out numbers. Down here, you can see the number of antisemitic incidents in the US per year. These numbers are not the ultimate truth and they certainly do not represent all aspects of antisemitism in America (for a more detailed discussion, see the Jewish Yearbook 2018), but they do tell a story.
So what is it that drives antisemitism up or down? Since I am definitely no expert on antisemitism (statistically, neither is any of you readers, so we're evenly matched...) I will have to stick to common sense. Even worse, the data are not normalized to fit population growth, so we probably need to say that a rise in numbers is milder than it seems whereas a fall is somewhat sharper when measured against population growth.
So, is it American government policies? I would say no. There are at least two periods in which there is both a rise and a fall in antisemitic incidents under the same administration (81'-89', 01'-09'). There is also the Trump administration which was extremely supportive of the fight against antisemitism (see, for example executive decision 13899 which pertains to the matter at hand) and yet, wasn't able to bring down the rising numbers.
Is it the economy? Maybe when people are hungry and desperate they turn on the Jews? Well, the "Great Recession" of 2008-2010 brought only a microscopic rise in numbers. According to the World Bank data, GDP per capita has been continuously rising in the USA since the 60's with a minor bump during the 2008-2010 period; the GINI (inequality index) rose sharply from 1985 to 1995 and kept sailing at about the same level until 2015. Incidents' numbers do not correlate with either.
Could it be the Israeli-Arab conflict? Well, since the beginning of the first Intifada in 87' there was a stable rise in incidents' numbers. Then, in 1994, which comes directly after the Oslo accords and the Israeli-Jordanian peace agreement we see a record number of incidents. From 2000 until 2003 we see only small changes - if any - although in these years Israel retreated from Lebanon and attended the Camp David summit. The second - extremely violent - Intifida that broke out in October 2000, also made no significant changes in numbers; neither did the following "Defense Shield" operation and the construction of the Israeli separation wall.
And there is the matter of Jewish advocacy and its continuous battle - from left and from right - against antisemitism. How do Jewish efforts compute into all of this? Do they have an effect? How can we measure it? Could it be that Jewish leaders from 82' to 86' and from 04' to 13' had the magic formula for fighting antisemitism and the others just didn't know what they were doing?
Of course, one should say, this is an extremely superficial line of thought. Probably there is no single element that can be isolated and pointed at as the sole generator or destroyer of antisemitism. Worse, it may be a different element - or a combination of elements - at any given point in time. Many would even say that antisemitism needs no reason; it is a hateful, violent impulse that simply takes over people. At any rate, this is my point exactly. We actually don't know, and if there is anybody out there who has a solid proof of what drives antisemitism, especially today, or what magic bullet we should use against it I would be more than happy to see or hear it. The threat is real enough.
In the end, I believe, both left and right winged Jewish organizations are doing their best to fight Antisemitism. I also believe that none of them can methodically prove that their approach is more effective than the other's. And yet they spend no little time and energy boycotting, divesting and sanctioning each other. As MK Gandhi said (That's it for me. Quoting Gandhi at people. I'll be hung for pretentiousness...) "...man is not capable of knowing the absolute truth and, therefore, not competent to punish". I don't know who's right but neither does anybody else. So why not start the fight on Antisemitism with some Jewish compassion, eh? for Jews.
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