We must deal, too, with anti-Palestinian racism
The problem is largely unaddressed
For weeks, and especially since the questioning of Ivy League officials by Elise Stefaniak and others, the national media has been turning its gaze to antisemitism in elite colleges with a consistency and focus rarely visited on any topic of prejudice. The balance between academic freedom and ensuring a safe environment for students will always be a balancing act, and it is perfectly appropriate to ask all of our institutions - especially those with the cultural cachet of the Ivy League - to explain how they intend to strike the balance and keep their spaces welcome for Jewish students. On the other hand, many have pointed that Stefaniak, who has trafficked in the deadly ‘replacement theory’ conspiracy that is frequently leveled against Jewish Americans, is hardly a good faith actor in this process. There is more to be troubled by than Stefaniak’s potentially feigned concern, however - particularly the apparent lack of any effort to secure the same safety for Palestinian Americans as for our Jewish community.
The prejudice stems from both unofficial and official quarters. Deep seated prejudice against Muslims and Arabs was brought over with the first Anglo settlers of the continent and been a facet of American society, consciously or otherwise, for as long as it has existed, but the conflict in Israel and Palestine has hardened it. Edward Said’s Orientalism describes the the need for Western defenders of Israel to see Arab Palestinians as “bent for bloody vengeance, second, psychologically incapable of peace, and third, congenitally tied to a concept of justice that means the opposite of that”.
We saw a version of this after the October 7 attacks, and its deadly consequences. Media warning of a foreboding ‘day of Jihad’, or equating the Palestinian Intifada with a call for genocide, has directly contributed to violence already. The tragic and infuriating murder of a six-year-old boy in Chicago by his family’s landlord can only be understood as the direct result of prejudice against Palestinians driven by stereotypes and ethnoreligious hostility. The unprovoked shooting of three Palestinian students in Vermont needs to be seen in the same way.
Liberals cannot simply throw up their hands and say ‘this is civil society, this is the culture we’re in’. As John Stuart Mill notes, “Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough: there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling” - while we cannot and, even if we could, probably ought not forcefully prevent the hateful, bigoted speech against Palestinians and Muslims generally that is present throughout our media environment. But just as special care is being paid to addressing antisemitism in universities, if only to demonstrate the allyship of the authorities involved, the same should be extended to Palestinians facing an equally deadly prejudice. If the government cannot act, then civil society - from viewers to advertisers - must punish and limit the reach of clearly genocidal language, such as Mark Levin on the radio or D. W. Wilbur (in an essay to which I won’t link) arguing that there are no innocent Palestinians. A great deal of publicly distasteful speech needs to be tolerated not just by government but by civil society - however, open calls for war crimes and the dehumanization of millions does not fall in this category.
Moreover, the issue goes beyond the media and into government. Florida Representative Brian Mast has argued openly that Congress should not “so lightly throw around the idea of innocent Palestinian civilians”, claiming “I don’t think we would so lightly throw around the term ‘innocent Nazi civilians’ during World War II. It is not a far stretch to say there are very few innocent Palestinian civilians.” While Mast and his colleagues excoriate Ivy League presidents for failing to control the speech of their students, they lay the groundwork for genocide justification themselves. Here the government does have authority - to censure Mast’s speech as they censured Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib for her claims about IDF war crimes which, though perhaps inaccurate, seem to have stemmed entirely from a humanitarian concern based on reports on the ground.
Even more acutely, Rep Ryan Zinke of western Montana, a potentially vulnerable seat, has introduced legislation to ban Palestinian passport holders from the US and revoke their visas. Such a blatantly bigoted piece of legislation cannot be read as anything but collective punishment of a whole people for the actions of a few individuals. Defeating an individual bill is a necessary but not sufficient response to this kind of prejudice - beating Zinke should be a priority for 2024, as he has shown a loathsome willingness to feed prejudice against our most vulnerable residents for his own gain.
If Republicans were serious about building a ‘small l’ liberal society where individuals are truly judged according to their character, not their ethnicity, they would drop both Zinke and Mast. The refusal to do so discredits the effort by Republicans (and not a few Democrats) to demonize academics for tolerating ostensible hate speech when it comes to Israel. There is really no tradeoff between fighting antisemitism and discrimination against Palestinians, who are currently in immediate danger not only abroad but here in the United States.
Frederick Douglass explained the hostility and pessimism the Reconstruction American Republic engendered among many in Europe -and American conservatives - by saying
“A Government founded upon justice, and recognizing the equal rights of all men; claiming higher authority for existence, or sanction for its laws, that nature, reason, and the regularly ascertained will of the people; steadily refusing to put its sword and purse in the service of any religious creed or family is a standing offense to most of the Governments of the world, and to some narrow and bigoted people among ourselves.”
Douglass speaks with characteristic confidence in the potential of America, ascribing to it a character more aspirational than, perhaps, accurate. But we today have a responsibility to bring this dream ever closer to fruition. Rooting out antisemitism is one portion of this task - but an equally important endeavor, and one of a most pressing nature, needs to be combatting Islamophobia and especially prejudice against Palestinians.