Holly Huffnagle
Antisemitism in America
Holly Huffnagle - Antisemitism in America
- A very warm welcome to all of you who are joining us again this evening, and for those of you are first-comers today, welcome. We have a very special guest, Holly Huffnagle, who will be talking about antisemitism in America. This is a very special week, as our foundation, together with many other organisations, have joined forces to shine a light on the narrative of antisemitism. So Holly, a very, very, very warm welcome. And before I hand over to you, I just want to just share a little bit of information about you. Holly Huffnagle serves as AJC’s US Director for Combating Antisemitism, spearheading the agency’s response to antisemitism in the United States and its efforts to better protect the Jewish community. Before coming to AJC, Holly served as the policy advisor to the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism at the US Department of State and as a researcher in the Mandel Centre of Advanced Holocaust Studies at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. She received her master’s degree from Georgetown University, where she focused on 20th-century Polish history and Jewish-Muslim relations before, during, and after the Holocaust. Huffnagle has lived and worked in Poland to conduct research on ethnic minority relations before World War II and was selected for the Auschwitz Jewish Centre fellowship on pre-war Jewish life and the Holocaust in Poland and Northern Slovakia. Holly, many, many thanks for joining us tonight. I know that you are going to be in conversation with Carly, and we look very much forward to hearing what you have to say. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Wendy. So Holly, before we deep-dive into the topic of antisemitism, I thought it might be great for our audience to hear a little bit more about you and about how you’ve ended up in this role, because the Jewish community is incredibly lucky to have you. You know, you’re not Jewish, and yet you dedicate your life to helping fight antisemitism.
Thank you, Carly, and thank you, Wendy, for the kind introduction, and to Lockdown University for hosting me. So I’m actually really honoured to be the US Director for Combating Antisemitism for the American Jewish Committee, which is one of the oldest Jewish organisations in the United States, if not the oldest Jewish advocacy organisation in the US, founded in 1906. And I think, as Carly, you mentioned, you know, not being Jewish, this idea that I’m being entrusted to lead this fight against antisemitism in the United States is this burden and blessing in a very good, like, I really take it very seriously that I have this task to to be able to do this work. And I’m often, actually, people often assume I am Jewish because it’s in my job title to fight antisemitism, to fight anti-Jewish prejudice, but I think the assumption that Jews are seen as in charge of or responsible for fighting the hate against them is actually at the heart of the problem. And, you know, I started in this field, you know, through, actually, with the Holocaust, with Holocaust education, Jewish-Christian relations. I’m a practising Christian. I studied formally the 2,000 years of Christian anti-Judaism that really set the stage for the Holocaust to happen and, you know, and get in quote/unquote “Christian Europe,” and this understanding of how my own religion was used to, that it led to a genocide. And that was really my entry point into being a non-Jewish ally in the fight against antisemitism, and it’s something that I actually, one of my missions is to get more and more non-Jews to be part of this effort.
So coming from the background you’ve come from, you know, the late Rabbi Sacks always used to say that, “Antisemitism is the oldest hatred.” And you know, there’s certainly a lot of Christian antisemitism and tensions in that space to lean on. Before we talk about modern-day antisemitism, you know, your studies, what has that taught you about where we are today and how that informs kind of general American society reaction to antisemitism?
A couple of things. I think there’s a perception amongst many people that antisemitism is a thing of the past. You know, what happened with the Holocaust, I mean, it’s really not the same now, it’s not really an issue, that’s one thing. The other piece is there’s because people don’t know the history, they don’t know that it’s the longest hatred. They don’t know that there’s this vast pool of two millennia to choose from, to choose tropes and accusations and stereotypes and scapegoating from. They don’t know how it informs what we’re seeing today, and so something that I’ve been able to see from studying, you know, the DSI charge or blood libel or the desecration of the Host, which was popularised in the mediaeval ages, to these other accusations against Jews. They just take on different forms today, different masks. They’re used in some ways to demonise Israel. They’re used to, you know, spout conspiracies about Jews, but without knowing that 2,000 years of history, I don’t think people are able to recognise it today as antisemitism. And so that’s something that I think, one of my jobs is actually to bring in that past history into our present conversations about antisemitism.
So one of the tools that AJC has that we use on the front page of the ShineALightOn.com website for Shine a Light, is the AJC, the “State of Antisemitism in America Report.” And the statistics on there are not the most positive of reading. You know, four in 10 American Jews have changed their behaviour over the last 12 months out of a fear of antisemitism, and 41% of Americans have witnessed an antisemitic incident in person, online, or against a Jewish institution over the past 12 months. Now, I can highlight a lot more statistics, but as you’re the expert, you know, what are the top lines that this report tells us?
Well, you mentioned two of them, like, two of the top lines. A couple of other top lines was the fact that, you know, nine in 10 American Jews think antisemitism is a problem today. Eight in 10 American Jews believe that it’s increased. You mentioned, you rightly mentioned that Americans are seeing antisemitism and that American Jews actually are experiencing it. So we found that one in four American Jews have been personally targeted by antisemitism in the past 12 months. This is our third year. For our audience listening in, this is our third year doing this survey. We’ve actually never asked a question in that short a time frame. We’d always previously asked about, in the last five years has this happened? Is in the last five years? And we actually asked in the last 12 months. And so we know now, we have concrete, you know, findings, that show that American Jews are experiencing heightened antisemitism very recently. But the other finding is this kind of this disconnect, this divergence between how American Jews perceive and experience antisemitism and how the general public sees it, understands it, or doesn’t understand it. And a few big findings here. One was the divergence with its increase, so again, eight in 10 American Jews believe that it’s increased. About four in 10, 44% of Americans believe that antisemitism has increased in the last five years, even though we know they’re seeing it. Like, they did respond to seeing antisemitism. We also found that one in three, 34% of Americans are not familiar with the term antisemitism. 16% of Americans have never heard the word before. 18% of Americans had heard it but couldn’t define it. So that’s a troubling number, although I will say I always try to look for some signs of hope in this fight against antisemitism or some signs of light, if you will. And one positive is that number’s actually down. Americans who really aren’t familiar with antisemitism, that number is down this year. Last year, it was 46% of Americans who weren’t familiar with the term. This year, we found that it was 34%, so that’s some improvement. And another improving, like, another positive is to say, okay, two positives to say, Carly, and I’ll turn it back to you, is we did find that American Jews do feel more secure in America today. 43% said they felt less secure in 2020, and that number dropped to 31% in 2021. So there is at least a growing sense of security, a small, but a growing between years. A lot of this has to do, I think, with the change in administration and some political climate change in our country. But another positive finding was that the vast majority of Americans, Jews and US adults, believe that the statement, “Israel has no right to exist,” which, you know, we know as the kind of foundational core of anti-Zionism, to be antisemitic. So 85% of Americans said that that statement is antisemitic, and that number increased by 10% over one year, so that was a good finding.
And let’s dig a little deeper on the element around Americans understanding the term antisemitism because I’ve always been surprised, you know, and coming from the UK, I think there is perhaps more understanding of the word, but one of the studies last year said, you know, 25%, when asked, say they are anti-antisemitism. Because you’re used to being, you know, anti-racist, and therefore, it feels like you should be anti it. And that, in and of itself, tells us that there’s a lot of confusion around the word. And therefore, you know, how does it work when AJC asks those questions? Because if you start off from a base of you don’t really understand antisemitism, how do you take it forwards? And given how much of your time you spend engaging and educating with people about antisemitism, do you think we’re using the wrong language?
This is such an important question. It’s a question we kind of, we all don’t talk about, and we deal with. So we thought about, at AJC, how do we use other words? You know, do we use words like Jew hatred or, you know, anti-Jewish bigotry? Because antisemitism is, well, it’s rooted in pseudoscience. It’s rooted, you know, it came from an antisemite, you know, who created in the 19th, or popularised it, at least, in the 19th century, in Germany. We actually asked this question on our survey. Carly, this isn’t published on our website, but we did ask both American Jews and US adults about the term, for instance, Jew-hatred. And the vast majority of Jews in America, like, by, it’s, I think, 70% to 14, you know, 15% prefer the term antisemitism over the term, you know, Jew-hatred. And I think there are some positives in that because we know that antisemitism is much more than a hatred. It’s a conspiracy, you know, et cetera, so I think that’s good. And then US adults, actually, were more familiar with the term antisemitism than they were the term Jew-hatred, which seems, you know, interesting because you would think that Jew-hatred is self-explanatory, but more people actually recognise the term antisemitism than recognise the term Jew-hatred, and we do define it for Americans. Like, when we’re asking the survey questions, the very first question on our survey is, you know, “Do you know,” or, “How familiar are you with the term antisemitism?” They answer it before we proceed to the next questions about the state of antisemitism in America, and if it’s a problem, we do define it. AJC defines it for them. We say, we don’t use the full IHRA working definition, but we do say, “Antisemitism, which is a hostility or prejudice toward Jews. Do you think… ?” and then, we continue. So we do have to define it for them before they proceed with the survey.
And there’s something I learned last week actually, which I didn’t know, and heard from listening to you, is that the Pew Research poll, which is a poll conducted, you know, regularly in America, when they talk about what’s the most admired religion in the US, often Judaism and Jews come up very high. Now, how does that square with this increase in antisemitic incidents?
This is really interesting, Carly. The Pew study, which has, I know it’s come out at least in 2014, 2017. There wasn’t a recent study on antisemitism, actually, but they ask Americans about their feelings toward different religious groups. But both the times that they’ve done this study, Jews are at the top. The very top of the list are, on average, of all age groups, are Jews and Judaism. It’s called the feeling thermometer, and you measure in degrees of warmth, and Jews are quite warm, I think, like, almost 70 degrees of feeling. And we even saw between 2014 and 2017, positive feelings towards Jews rising just in those few years. And we’ve done research, actually, on asking Americans about if you would listen to a Jewish person, you know, define antisemitism, if you’d be more likely to listen to somebody that’s Jewish. And we had some interesting results from that question last year, where many people said they would not listen to Jews to understand what antisemitism was. And at first we were thinking, “Is there an antisemitic motivation? What is it?” This year, we asked that same question, and we asked why. And we actually found out that many Americans just said that, “Oh, well, you know, I’m an independent thinker. I think for myself. This is very interesting to hear from a Jewish person on defining antisemitism, but I make my own decisions.” What we found was Americans are actually more likely to listen to Jews define antisemitism than to listen to Black Americans define racism or to listen to Asian Americans define anti-Asian hate.
So I think in some sense that that goes to this, a little bit of the affinity. I think the big issue, this is really the crux of the issue, is that Americans really don’t understand what antisemitism is, so they’re not aware that it’s not just a hatred towards Jews, right, but it’s that certain perception. So many conspiracies, from QAnon to Soros, George Soros was a puppet master, they’re rooted in an anti-Jewish animus, and you’ll have people believing these conspiracies who would be on a very warm thermometer, you know, toward Jews as Jews or toward Judaism, the same with Israel, antisemitism as it can relate to Israel. If people only see Jews as a religious group, then they’re going to see antisemitism only as a religious bias, and they are not criticising Judaism or Jews as Jews, then it’s actually not antisemitic. So anti-Zionism, therefore, in their minds can’t be antisemitic because it’s not an attack on Judaism, which, we know, actually, that anti-Zionism, you know, can be, often is, antisemitic, and so we see those incidents increasing even though that level of warmth and affinity towards Jews is still quite high. And I think lastly, even with classic antisemitism, like even with, you know, things like the DSI charge, that Jews, you know, then and now are responsible for the death of Christ. Like this still makes it into sermons. You know, Christian American, quote/unquote, today, they may have an affinity towards Jews. They’ll, you know, calling Jews, their elder brother or the root of their faith, and have that high affinity, that high thermometer, you know, warmth and reading, but still be carrying, you know, anti-Judaism and classic antisemitic tropes. So I think that’s kind of how we square the circle, but it’s not perfect.
And how does that translate into reality? You know, when you talk with audiences, when you engage with senior officials or corporations, how do those statistics inform the way you educate around antisemitism, and what do you think are the most important things to highlight?
I think we really have to highlight how American Jews are experiencing antisemitism, and we also have to bring in other statistics besides just the perception data. You know, so we were measuring, you know, “Have you been targeted? How do you feel? Do you think it’s a problem?” We’ve gone to members of Congress. We’ve gone to interreligious and intergroup leaders, to heads of companies, to university leadership, and sometimes, not often, but sometimes, the pushback will be, “Well, is this just how American Jews are feeling?” Or, “How can Jews be discriminated against if they are, you know, white or privileged?” Or, you know, some of this language that we’re seeing. And we really have to show with incident data as well, like showing the FBI data, for instance, the hate crime statistics data, which shows that, you know, even though Jews make up less than 2% of the American population, in 2019, they accounted for almost 60% of anti-religious bias crimes. This past year, in 2020, in part, I think, because of the pandemic, it was a little bit less, but still, 55%. So the majority of antireligious bias crimes target Jews and say, “No, the perceptions that Jews are experiencing antisemitism do reap match reality on the ground. This is a growing problem, and we need to do something about it.” So we need to pull from other sources in addition to our data when we’re going to some of our interlocutors, but I think there has been an, really, since what happened in Pittsburgh, and maybe starting with Charlottesville, but with Pittsburgh and followed by Poway, followed by, to a lesser extent, Jersey City, and that is in part because it wasn’t committed by a white supremacist, but there has been some more openness to understanding that this is a problem, and we need to do something about it.
In the UK, we have something called the Macpherson principle, you know, which basically says that those who are victims of racism, that you should basically assume it’s racism and investigate it that way until proven otherwise. And to some degree that basically it allows Jews to define antisemitism for themselves. Now, it’s not infallible. It doesn’t always work, but we do at least have that principle to lean on. What’s the case in the US in terms of, you know, who gets to define what antisemitism is, and how much of the burden is on the, kind of, the victim or Jews themselves?
This is really interesting because when I worked in the Special Envoy’s Office to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, and we were only responsible for combating antisemitism in every country around the world except one, which was the US, we did see, especially in our work in Western Europe and the UK, this, I think, rightful emphasis, actually, on the victim in some senses to be able to define the hatred that is against them. We know that doesn’t always work. Even we look to other communities, you know, if Muslims are tasked to define Islamophobia, at what point is criticising Islam, you know? Making sure, like, how do we still ensure that it is an appropriate definition or stance to take? But I still think the victim-centered focus is really important. I don’t think that was much of the case here in the United States. I actually don’t think, you know, Jews were really being relied upon to define antisemitism until maybe even a little bit more recently.
And I, you know, I think back to what Jonathan Freedland, a British journalist, and he said this, like, a few years ago, you know, the whole Corbyn affair, Carly, which I know you know quite well. He said that, you know, on the left, Black people are usually allowed to define what racism is. Women can define sexism. Muslims, again, can define Islamophobia, but when Jews call out something antisemitic, leftist non-Jews feel entitled to tell Jews they’re wrong, right, that they’re exaggerating or lying or using it as a decoy tactic and then actually give Jews a long lecture on what anti, you know, Jewish racism really is. I don’t think that’s the extent as much here. I do think the Jewish community is listened to. I think our biggest challenge is the diversity of opinion within the American Jewish community, you know, because of the history of American Jews, which actually, you know, in the Diaspora and even though I’m not Jewish, I will proudly use my Jewish colleagues and their historical analysis in saying this, that it really is the best-faring Jewish community in the Diaspora outside of Israel, you know. We often use the quote by Jonathan Sarna, who says that, “America might not have been heaven for Jews, but it was the furthest thing from hell they had ever known.”
But I think because of this level of comfort, or in some senses, we have a small but loud, albeit very loud, group within the Jewish community who, you know, doesn’t see antisemitism as it can relate to Israel, or who is very anti and vocally very anti the IHRA working definition or who often will come out and attack other Jewish organisations. And I think that can affect how non-Jews see antisemitism, when they’re very confused within the Jewish community, that there’s not this unity. And so that’s something we’re working toward, and again, I think that’s one reason why the IHRA definition is so helpful, is because we have to say that the majority of Jews, like the majority, and that’s one reason why we do our surveys, and we can say that 80% of American Jews do think that this statement, “Israel has no right to exist,” is antisemitic, really putting to the numbers, you know, putting our commitments and our advocacy to the numbers, and then sharing that.
It’s very interesting to say that, you know, the US has been a kind of welcome home for the Jews for a long time because, you know, growing up in the UK, you know, we used to have very well-meaning American Jewish organisations come to the UK and kind of offer to lend their ear and their support, and in the three years that I’ve lived in the US, if you look at the number of Jews who’ve died at the hand of antisemitism in this country: Pittsburgh, Poway, Jersey City, Monsey, you know, those numbers don’t look good compared to anywhere else in the world. And, you know, I sit on the two security boards in the US, and, you know, I know that the American Jewish community and Americans have been behind the curve in really understanding the shift here that, you know, whilst maybe 10 years ago, this was a very safe place, you know, to be a Jewish person, all we have to do is look at what happened in Brooklyn on Shabbat in the run-up to Hanukkah to see that, you know, day in and day out, unfortunately, there are victim of antisemitism across America. So how do you think we wake up establishment here and the kind of leadership to understand that unfortunately, if you just look at the numbers, the last three years for Jews in America haven’t looked good.
And, you know, I think Pittsburgh was that wake-up call. It probably should’ve happened sooner. I think some within the community are slow to wake up, and that’s actually why AJC has made combating antisemitism, and even within the United States, we’re a global organisation, we fight all over the world, but really, returning our focus to where we started, like, so important to kind of raise the alarm bells. And I think, you know, one challenge that we have and that we really need to kind of have these educational campaign efforts, just like what Shine a Light is doing this week, is so many within the United States will look at racism, and they’ll look at the Jewish community, and they’ll see it in terms of status or privilege again, but that’s not the graph of antisemitism, you know. The long history of antisemitism shows, you know, more of the ups and the downs, and the Jewish community and those who work with the Jewish community to fight antisemitism know this, and just because American Jews are in this place of maybe having good jobs, and they no longer face the quotas they used to face, and they can access schools and no longer face termination in housing, and which is all huge improvements from 50 years ago, that doesn’t mean that if we remain complacent today that that’s going to all of a sudden change, and I think that’s what Jewish history says, and many people in America don’t know that history, and we have to be the ones to, you know, awaken them to that. And that’s something that we tried to do in Europe, you know, 20 years ago, when we were seeing a lot of issues related to anti-Zionism and antisemitism, with Jews being attacked especially in Western Europe for Israeli policies, and it wasn’t being called antisemitism. It took a long time for policymakers to kind of come around to this as an issue, and hopefully, it’s not too late, given there’s new efforts now to fight antisemitism in Europe. We’re trying to get ahead of that here in the US, but it’s quite challenging, Carly.
So obviously, part of Shine a Light is to really challenge people to understand what we’re calling modern-day antisemitism. You know, a lot of Americans, and I don’t have any statistical numbers, but you can probably give them, are more familiar with the more traditional far-right antisemitism, you know. The images we saw in Charlottesville with the tiki torches is what people would associate with antisemitism, but what has become more difficult for audiences to get their head around is this modern-day antisemitism, and where anti-Zionism and targeting Jews in America for the actions of the Israeli government, there’s that quote about, you know, “Do you have more of a problem with the Jews than is absolutely necessary?” You know, that kind of feeling, and to be honest, the rise of social media as a place for antisemitism to fester, and then, like all recent violent crimes, we see often what starts on social media doesn’t end on social media. And one of the tools I know that AJC and others and Shine a Light has made a fundamental pillar is IHRA, which we’ve touched on a few times. Now, for those of our audience listening in the UK, for example, IHRA is pretty well-established. It’s adopted by, you know, most of the departments of government. It’s in most university campuses. It’s not seen as a particularly controversial thing. In the US, that’s not necessarily the same. Help our audience understand why the IHRA tool is so important and how the definition is used and perhaps why some people see it as controversial.
Absolutely, so the IHRA definition, I think, is one of the most important tools that we have in our toolbox, and to be honest, if someone had told me five years ago, and I was at the State Department in May 2016, when IHRA met in Bucharest at the Plenary that adopted the definition, the working definition by consensus, and we were, you know, part of that team, that it would become so popular and so successful, I don’t know if I would’ve believed them. The number of governments, most EU member states, which have adopted the definition, cities around the world, universities, sports clubs. I think the Cantor Centre in Israel released a report a few months ago. There’s, like, over 500 entities which have somehow adopted or endorsed the IHRA definition, and Carly, as you know, there’s more coming in this week, even with the Shine a Light Campaign. It’s phenomenal to see. I think the, and before I get to the challenge with what’s happening here in the US, the positive piece, and again, speaking as someone who’s not Jewish, who had to learn the complexities of antisemitism through my work, so many leaders around the world, government leaders, even law enforcement, yes, religious leaders, educators, not Jewish, how are they supposed to know what antisemitism is, what it can look like when there’s an antisemitic hate crime that has to do with Israel? How is that, you know, that cadet in London going to know what to do? And then that’s why it’s so important that the IHRA definition was part of the police training that John Mann and others at CST, Carly, were so important in getting done. It’s useful, it’s a working definition.
It’s not in process, or it’s not still being worked on. It’s meant to work. It’s meant to be put to work, to be used by practitioners in the field. That’s why it’s so helpful. I think we’re caught up here in the United States with this, again, this debate about where and how Israel fits into the definition, and I think there are so many within the American context who, whether they feel safe in America, who don’t realise that, you know, the need for Israel as a place where Jews can live, for the first time, really, in history, without fear. And again, that’s sometimes in question as Israel faces so many outside threats and the need to continue to want to be part of these progressive movements. And I think there’s many important things in part of these progressive movements, but where we’re weakest in is these movements sometimes seeing the world, right, in this kind of black and white, oppressed versus oppressor manner. And Israel doesn’t fit with that, they can’t fit with that. And I think there’s some fear amongst especially Jewish progressives, and that’s actually where we see a lot of the vitriol against the IHRA definition, it’s not coming from non-Jews. It’s coming from Jews in America who maybe aren’t understanding that that definition is not meant to be used as a sledgehammer. It’s not meant to be used to, like, say that all criticism of Israel is antisemitic. It very clearly says that it is not. It is just meant to have examples which can show how antisemitism can manifest. And so one thing I think we, unfortunately, it’s become so politicised and polarised in our own country, that was one of the reasons why it hasn’t even been adopted by Congress yet legislatively. And we have an executive order by President Trump that encourages the use of the IHRA definition, but to date, only the Department of State and the Department of Education actually are, you know, fully using the definition.
We still have not been able to have political consensus in Congress because of this divisiveness, so that’s something that we’re working on here in the United States, but one thing I will say, which is positive news, is it’s being used still. So even if maybe at the top levels of our government and Congress, there hasn’t been consensus between Republicans and Democrats to vote to adopt the IHRA definition, we’re seeing cities across the US adopting it. We’re seeing, you know, governors promoting it with commissions on the Holocaust and combating antisemitism being formed, encouraging the IHRA definition. So it’s becoming, that’s what matters the most, is that we actually implement it, that it’s used in the classroom, that it’s used by law enforcement, that it’s used by elected officials, you know, to help them speak out against antisemitism. So I think at the grass roots, at the lower levels we’re actually beginning to see a lot more progress in the last couple of years. Two, three years ago, there hadn’t been as many options in the US as there have been to date, and that’s something we can take pride in.
So, you know, we could spend several hours talking about antisemitism in different aspects of American society, so I’m going to try and stick to a few favourites. So, you know, campus is often, unfortunately, held up as a bad example of a place where, you know, antisemitism and anti-Zionism manifest, and I know AJC does a lot of work in that space. What is it you think that makes it particularly insidious on campus, and what is it that you think campus administrators and universities themselves can do about it?
It’s interesting because our campus climate, you know, our campuses are not a monolith. Some Jews in some campuses have incredible experiences, very enriching, you know, fulfilling Jewish experiences on campus. We do know, of course, of the bad actors, if you will. I don’t want to put campuses just in a general, but there are certain campuses which are known to have, you know, more anti-Zionist, even antisemitic environments for Jewish students. And I think it comes, again, to this idea that many students, and just like many Americans, don’t necessarily understand not just what antisemitism is, but who Jews are. So if Jews are only seen as a religion or a religious group, then criticising Israel or demonising Israel or saying that Israel has no right to exist, that’s not antisemitic because, you know, that’s not an attack on Judaism or Jews as Jews. And that’s really a crux of the issue. We need to be able to show a couple of things. One is actually how progressive Zionism is and was, was and is, that it was a liberation movement. It was a marginalised people being liberated and being able to have their own state. Isn’t that what progressives want for minorities and for, you know, marginalised communities around the world? So that’s one big factor.
The other piece too is there’s a lack of knowledge of how connected Jews are to Israel, you know, historically, culturally, religiously, this sense that somehow, Jews will have to say that they are anti-Zionist to be a good Jew and participate in progressive causes on campus. That’s a complete double standard. No other group is being asked, you know, those questions. That’s a problem. We really need to work with campus leadership. That’s something, actually, AJC has a Campus Affairs Department. It’s within our Young Leadership Department. We’re going to be hosting it, you know, university summit, where university presidents will be coming together to work on these issues, try to help make their campuses safer for Jewish students and not have hostile environments as it can relate to antisemitism and anti-Israel bias that really does become a hostile environment for students. So this is really what we’re seeing on campus. It’s like a microcosm of the bigger narrative, this black and white, oppressor versus oppressed, on campus. And unfortunately, Carly, one of our challenges is within the academy itself, where a lot of the professors, even Jewish professors which are very left-leaning, have certain, their own viewpoints, right, about Israel, about seeing the world in this kind of post-colonial, anti-imperial viewpoint. And Israel’s too complicated just to fit into those kind of narratives, and so that’s something we are working on as well on campus.
And now, to turn to the political system in the US. You know, growing up in the UK, particularly in the last few years under Jeremy Corbyn before Keir Starmer took over, you know, we all watched as the Labour Party descended into antisemitism, and, you know, the party that was founded by Jews, that was the home for Jews became, you know, the place where people would sit on a Friday night and say, you know, “If Jeremy Corbyn becomes prime minister, where are you packing your bags to go to?” And, you know, I’m not comparing the Democratic Party to the Labour Party, but I think there are lessons to be learned, and, you know, there is often a key number of politicians in the US held up as those who are encouraging or espousing antisemitic ideas or ideas that could be interpreted as such. How are you navigating that, and what lessons do you think can be learnt and applied to the Democratic Party?
Couple of things, just to back up. The politicisation of so many things, actually, in our country, but actually, antisemitism and the fight against it has really almost put, like, it’s almost like thwarted some of our efforts because the past few years, you know, antisemitism used to be something that Republicans and Democrats could agree on. It had bipartisan support through and through, and we’ve had more challenges with getting resolutions passed on antisemitism, the IHRA definition, things that should not be issues becoming issues in a very polarised environment in our country, and, you know, who loses out at the end of the day because of this political divisiveness is the Jewish community. And, you know, even with right now in Congress, with the appointment of Deborah Lipstadt. She’s going to be our, she’s appointed by President Biden to be the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism in the State Department, you know, but her confirmations hearings are being held up for, you know, again, because of partisan politics. And this is a candidate that Jewish organisations across the board agree on, and yet this is keeping from a top position being filled and really undermining our leadership abroad.
So both sides, if you will, I think we need to work on calling actually antisemitism out within their own party first before kind of pointing the finger at the other party. They’re both very good at pointing to the other party as being the more antisemitic party or having more antisemites. So that’s like really the starting point, and I say this again, AJC, we’re not a partisan organisation, but when it comes to the Democratic Party and especially those on the further left flank, if you will, of the Democratic Party, there are lessons from the UK, and we’ve talked about this, and we talked about this at length. We have a Political Affairs Department at AJC. We saw, you know, kind of watching from the other side of the Atlantic, what can happen when antisemitism is swept under the rug and, like, under the platform of anti-racism and therefore doesn’t exist. And I think some of those lessons can be applied to what we’re doing here in the United States, what we’re seeing. I think one lesson in particular, Carly, which I’ve heard from several people at CSC talk about as well, is a lack of understanding by other minorities about what happened with Corbyn. So, you know, there was institutional antisemitism in the Labour Party.
Some of these other minority communities did see Corbyn as their champion, and then not really knowing what was going on, saw the Jewish community kind of work to oust him, and that could lead to more antisemitism, like just kind of confusion. So what we’ll have to do here as we, you know, rightfully condemn things that certain members of Congress have said, certain members of the Democratic Party, of the Squad, for instance, have said, is be sure we explain what we’re doing and why we’re doing it and what we mean by it, as not to further alienate. You know, we’re not trying to foment Islamophobic sentiment. You know, explaining better what we’re doing and why we’re doing it to our allies, which is one of the reasons it’s so important to have our Interreligious and Intergroup Department at AJC, we also have a Muslim-Jewish Advisory Council that works on issues domestically with Muslims and Jews coming together, and this helps us make sure that those communities do know why we’re calling this out. And we’re calling it out, in part, because of what we saw, not only because it’s the right thing to do, we have to call it out, but because we saw it happened in the UK.
All right, a few days ago, I spoke with Oren Jacobson, and one of the things that I think is a real challenge is how Jews continue to be involved in progressive issues as elements of antisemitism become more pervasive in that space. So I’m sure you saw the photos from COP26, where, you know, the climate change protests has got Palestinian flags and blaming Israel for climate change despite it representing .2% of any damage to the environment, or whether it’s the Black Lives Matter movement and the statements made by some of that leadership. For progressive Jews, it’s becoming very difficult to find a home in a lot of the issues they care about. How do you and AJC engage in that progressive space and look to kind of tackle some of those issues?
I’m glad you mentioned Oren because those on the call who don’t know Oren Jacobson or Project Shema, it’s filling a gap. It really is filling a gap, and what you just asked, actually, is how do we understand the progressive space? How can the progressive space better understand the Jewish community? And when we’re raising the alarm bells on things that they might not really see, you know, where are those misunderstandings happening or coming from? I think what our goal as, you know, AJC, we’re relatively a centrist organisation, but we really need to make sure we’re fighting antisemitism, you know, in all places, including in progressive spaces, which often is ignored or denied or minimised, and that’s, you know, one of the biggest challenges. But we, as legacy organisations or bigger institutions, really do need to work on understanding how progressives think and see the world, and this is something that actually Oren speaks at length to about, you know, the progressive movement, really seeing the world through the lenses of white supremacy, colonialization, or imperialism, patriarchal structures, listening that there’s further trust that comes from groups who are Black or brown or oppressed, and when, you know, Jews are not seen in those groups, and therefore, their narrative or their message will not even be as trusted. And so I think it’s really going to have to be us understanding how they see the world and then using that language, right, and coming back in and saying that, again, that denying Israel’s right to exist is not progressive, right. Calling for an end of a Jewish state is actually not progressive ‘cause you’re putting a once-marginalized community back into a place of powerlessness.
You don’t want to do that, and really trying to like understand their worldview, calling out the double standards, you know, et cetera, and I think that level of awareness-raising can help. I do think something that, you know, Oren’s also shared is it’s still important for the Jewish community to show up in these spaces. I think sometimes we want to remove ourself. We feel like there’s a lack of reciprocity, where we’ve shown up, you know, in all of these different campaigns, and we feel like when May happened, when the Jewish community was under attack in the US and in the UK and around the world, we didn’t feel that same level of support, some of that actually had to do a lot with more ignorance and just not knowing what was happening. But I do think we need to continue to show up and also learn how they see the world so we can actually, with their own language, their own understanding, show where their holes are, show what the gaps are, show where there actually, you know, there is antisemitism, and that’s going to have to be the starting point.
So COVID is, aside from the obvious difficulties, been difficult for the Jewish community in the antisemitism sense, whether it was the Zoom bombings early on, the ways of blaming Jews, you know, the fact that, actually, Moderna, Pfizer, Regeneron, et cetera, all have senior Jewish leadership, gave those who believe in conspiracy theories an awful lot of fodder. And now, we see in the anti-vax movement, you know, the Star of David and the yellow star as a tool, and it’s not just in the conspiracy theory side of it. You know, for those who see regular engagement on Fox News, for example, you know, the footage this week of Lara Logan talking about comparing Dr. Fauci to Mengele, to talking about, you know, the comparisons of the Holocaust. The anti-vaxxer movement has learnt to talk about the need and the prescription for vaccines through the lens of the Holocaust. Now, that’s a fairly new phenomenon in this space, you know, particularly tackling science. What do you think in the early days of this kind of movement? You know, before it takes hold and becomes casual conversation for people to start to reference this stuff? What can be done now to really kind of draw a clear line under this?
Since the beginning, we’ve been calling it out, issuing statements. If there’s been elected officials who’ve said things inappropriate, which have, unfortunately, been a lot. There’s been a lot of elected officials using inappropriate Holocaust conversations. We’ve tried fixing it. We can be in touch with them directly. We’ve created, you know, we’re creating policy papers on why Holocaust comparisons are inappropriate. So we really need to show that this is not making a statement about what you think about the science or the vaccine. It’s actually can be anti-Jewish, and I’ll explain, Carly, why, and your comment about Lara Logan reminded of this one, you know, the comparison of Josef Mengele to Dr. Fauci. If we don’t call these statements out which distort the Holocaust, what we’re doing is we’re, in some senses, normalising kind of a soft form of antisemitism, you know, kind of an unrealized form, and antisemites actually can hear that dog whistle. And I’ll explain what I mean. So while those who distort the Holocaust, which again, you know, systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators may not be antisemitic. I think, actually, many of them are not antisemitic in intent.
They don’t really know what they’re saying, but it’s crucial that they realise that when they make those comparisons, they are actually lessening what Hitler did, or what Mengele did, and the Nazi and their collaborators did. And they’re attacking Jewish memory, and they’re attacking Jewish identity, even though that might not be their intent, and these comparisons, though, are dog whistles to real antisemites because if Dr. Fauci is the same as Josef Mengele and all the experimentations that he did, you know, in Auschwitz and on twins and on children, if needing to be vaccinated is the same as being forced into a ghetto or being marked to be killed, as the Jews were in the Holocaust, what that is doing, in effect, is exonerating national socialism from guilt and responsibility, and antisemites will happily use that to deny the Holocaust and try to make antisemitism once again legitimate, and we can’t let that happen. And so I think there has been this sense of, like, why this frantic, you know, denouncing of these comparisons? Because we know where they can lead in other spaces, and that’s where we need to kind of continue this momentum to say that’s not appropriate.
So denouncement is one thing, and let’s say we err on the side of generosity and say a lot of this is rooted in a lack of education and a lack of understanding. You know, part of Shine a Light and the Five Pillars, a big part of it is around education, but, you know, there’s been a huge amount of effort, philanthropy, time, expertise poured into Holocaust education, into trying to educate Americans about antisemitism. And, you know, what I see when I see these, you know, educated elected officials, in the most part, and others come out with these kinds of statements is really, to me, it says that the education and the way we have been articulating the Holocaust isn’t getting through, whether that’s particularly with, as the generations pass and we lose the real Holocaust survivor perspective, you know, just the further you get from history. But the last year, I think, particularly with the anti-vaxxer movement, you know, it’s not necessarily, as you say, your diehard antisemite coming out with these words. So, you know, how do you think we tackle the education gap?
There’s a huge education gap, in part, in the United States, you know, it’s 50 states. It’s 50 educational systems, in many ways. What the challenge is, I think, is thinking that antisemitism, thinking about the Holocaust, really in very short-term, like, you know, I grew up in southern California. I went through California public schools. I did not learn about the Holocaust until I was in eighth grade. It was a quick chapter in an English class, and then I learned about it again, I think, again in 10th grade. And it was, again, not antisemitism for the whole history of it, but just antisemitism as it was in the racialized form, in Hitler’s racialized form of antisemitism leading to the Holocaust, and, you know, that’s kind of where it ended. And so there is this lack of knowledge about all of these things. There is an awareness, though, that Hitler, you know, and the Nazis were kind of the greatest evil, and the fact that people are aware of this, and they probably know more about the Holocaust than any other genocide, and the Holocaust is the most well-documented genocide in our history, so this is where they’re pulling from because they know that that’s what’s going to raise, you know, try to get attention. There’s reasons why they’re putting stars on themselves, saying they’re not vaccinated, 'cause they’re going to, in their minds, like this worse moment and trying to say that this is somehow similar.
We need to do a better job educationally, showing where the lessons of the Holocaust are appropriate. When we talk about never again, when we talk about the ethics of the Holocaust, making sure civil society speaks up to tyranny, and stands up, you know, bystanders aren’t bystanders, but they become upstanders, and how to do that. That’s where we need to do a better job of ensuring that connecting those inappropriate comparisons to contemporary antisemitism in the classroom at an early age, you know, as soon as it’s appropriate for children to learn about the Holocaust. That’s the gap. Like that really is at least one of the gaps that we’ve seen, and unfortunately, you know, Holocaust education is not mandated. We do know that even where it is mandated, it doesn’t necessarily mean that people remember it. We have studies even done by the Claims Conference that will show a very big lack of understanding about the Holocaust by Americans, but there are states that have better Holocaust education plans than others, and we’re hoping, AJC’s actually hoping, to work on them the next year and the year ahead, is encouraging more and more states to implement Holocaust education, but connect it to antisemitism, and there are Holocaust education bills out there today in the US that have included the IHRA definition in some form in trying to connect the Holocaust. The IHRA definition does mention, like, you know, denying the Holocaust, distorting the Holocaust in those examples, so there are connective pieces to what students will study in history and then its modern-day applications.
And we’ve seen some success in Boston this week, in fact, announced at one of the Shine a Light events on exactly that. We’ve touched on Christian antisemitism. In the last few minutes, how do you see antisemitism statistics within the Muslim community? And particularly, how much traction does Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam’s ideas get in that community in driving some of those messages?
It’s a good question. You know, we were able, for our survey that we just did on antisemitism in America and the threat of antisemitism in America, you know, we didn’t ask the question, like, you know, “Are you an antisemite?” Or, “How antisemitic is America?” And in fact, the Anti-Defamation League has done these studies before, really looking at kind of the global state of how antisemitic is this country? We did oversample Black Americans and Latino Americans, trying to understand their understandings of antisemitism. We did not oversample Muslim Americans. There were Muslim Americans who did respond to our survey, but the statistical, like the sample size was actually pretty small to make kind of bigger claims. Anecdotally, at least within followers of the Nation of Islam, when I first started in this role in April 2020, right, you know, beginning of the Black Lives Matter movement, right when George Floyd was killed, there were other more pronounced elements. I noticed it more, actually, antisemitism coming from Nation of Islam followers, you know, again, Louis Farrakhan is, like, you know, calling Jews “the Satanic Jews,” “the synagogue of Satan,” et cetera. I haven’t noticed it, from what I’m following, as much in this moment, but that doesn’t mean that it’s gone away.
I think in some ways, it’s kind of gone underground. There’s been a lot of calling out of Louis Farrakhan’s antisemitism. I think when a lot of influencers were reposting things that Farrakhan had shared during the summer of 2020, when we were, you know, again, the rightful fight for social justice, but unfortunately, there were some antisemitic elements in that fight. When the Jewish community and allies actually publicly said, “This is what he says and what he said,” many of those influencers actually did take down those statements, and we saw this with the Women’s March and some others, so we’ve had some successes there. The broader Muslim community, not the Nation of Islam community, but more of the Muslim immigrant community, we don’t have sound data at this point. We have our Muslim Advisory Council at AJC, but we don’t have sound data on how the Muslim communities think about Jews or about their Jewish neighbours or about antisemitism. What I can say is, just from a 30,000-foot view, antisemitism coming from within segments of the Muslim community, or Islamist antisemitism, is not as much of an issue here in the United States as it has been in Western Europe in the last 10 years. And we know, at least in the last decade, all of the attacks, maybe except for, I think, Halle, Halle, Germany on Yom Kippur, were committed by, you know, Islamist extremists against Jewish community. That is not, at least, the fatalities or the physical attacks, with the exception of something that happened in July in Boston, when a rabbi was stabbed multiple times, that was by someone in the name of Islam. We haven’t seen that as a source as pronounced, but the Jewish community still sees, kind of in this order, the far right as being the biggest threat, followed by antisemitism in the name of Islam as the second-biggest threat, and then antisemitism on the far left as the third biggest threat when we polled the Jewish community last month.
So in our final few minutes, one of the other elements we’ve particularly worked on this week is around engaging with corporations. You know, the American corporates have done a lot in the last few years on DE&I work and how they talk about minorities in the workplace, but what’s happened because of a lot of that programming, which was very necessary, is that antisemitism education has dropped off a lot of the curriculum, and the big push this week has been around using the material on the websites, the kind of short, two-minute video that we’ve done, and really push corporates to look at their curriculum and understand how and where they are educating about antisemitism. And, you know, yourselves, ADL, Project Shema, JLens, et cetera, have all been big partners in that, but one of the things I’ve noticed in the conversations I’m having with these corporates is it’s one of two answers. They either say, “Oh, well, we don’t do isms in general. You know, we talk about discrimination, or we talk about respect for each other, but we don’t do isms.” And what that means is we’ve kind of become so politically correct about the way we try and handle discrimination, is that we’re actually not really helping anyone understand any form of discrimination, or what they say is, you know, “Well, sure, when we do religious awareness, we’ll absolutely cover the Jews,” which kind of doesn’t really, neither one solves it. Now, you know, we’ve had 47 companies sign up this week as part of Shine a Light, and these are huge companies. These are YouTube and Twitter and Delta Airlines and AllianceBernstein, et cetera, and, you know, it’s been a huge effort, but it’s very much the start of it and not the end of it. And in the same way that we weren’t expecting Shine a Light to solve antisemitism in a week, we’re not expecting to challenge that corporate narrative in a week. But as someone who does engage with corporates and, you know, is responding to them, how are you finding corporate engagement around antisemitism and how they relate to it?
Carly, yes, I think it’s almost a new question in the last, like, few years, and I’ll be very, you know, full transparency: I’m very new engaging the corporate space. You know, my whole background is with government engagements, foreign government, and then domestic government engagement on the issue of antisemitism, as well, to a lesser extent, tech platform engagement. But when we look at the history of, like, corporate culture, or, you know, corporations being specifically involved, even that’s, you know, very new. In the last decade or so, it’s just really, some starting to sense that, you know, “Maybe we should say something about what’s happening in the world or going outside the workplace.” And really, just in the last couple of years, and I know this from other experts in the field, for instance, like the Tanenbaum Institute that does a lot of these trainings for corporations, they’re much further ahead in training corporations on these biases, but even in the last couple of years, as more and more employees of companies, right, employees of companies demanding that where they work take a stance on important issues, on social justice issues, et cetera, we’re seeing this change in how the companies are responding. And so then, we saw, and again, after George Floyd was murdered, companies coming out and saying something, which was all righteous in many ways, like coming out, condemning racism.
We saw them coming out with anti-Asian hate statements. I think the challenge, though, was, for instance, when the Jewish community was under attack, and the expectation was that those same companies would come out and support the Jewish community, just like they had in the past for other communities, and there was that silence. Then, it was this question of where does antisemitism fit in? Is it even part of this narrative? Does DEI, again, do they see Jews as just a religious group? Which we know that they’re not, and we know that Jews aren’t just white. There’s a diverse group, you know, of Black and brown and Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews, et cetera, and again, the lack of knowledge about where Israel can fit in. So I think this is the starting point, really, to share that antisemitism does need to be part, in some way, of DEI frameworks, and we’re just scratching the surface of right now, but these companies are going to need resources. They’re going to need people to help them understand what this actually is if they want to take those steps forward.
Holly, thank you. I know that you had a hard stop and have another session to get to, so we’re going to say thank you. I’m going to hand back over to Wendy briefly, but thank you to you and AJC for all your support for Shine a Light Week, and it’s certainly been a huge part of our success.
My pleasure, Carly, thank you.
Thank you very much for an outstanding presentation, extremely informative. One quick question, either you or Carly, to answer: what surprises have come out of Shine a Light this week?
I think, probably, the key thing is that actually, once you can sit people down and engage in a discussion, actually, you can make a lot of progress. You know, the whole point of Shine a Light was not to be a, like, megaphone debate. It was supposed to be, as much as you can, a positive engagement around antisemitism. You know, if you look at the website, if you look at all the material, this is not about victimhood. This is about saying, “America, your Jews want to tell you that there’s a problem, and now, we want to offer you material, engagement, conversation, expertise, to actually start to understand that.” Because I think what we’ve all seen is a lot of antisemitism in America is actually coming from a place of ignorance or a place of assumption, and actually, when you extend a hand and say, “Let me show you why this is a problem,” actually, we’re making a lot more progress than I think, perhaps, we do with a kind of gotcha, you know, grabby headline, you’re now dead to us kind of approach to antisemitism. So, you know, there are some people who are diehard antisemites, and it doesn’t matter what you say, and that’s okay. They’re a small minority, we don’t need to worry about that, but I think actually looking to engage with those who just don’t understand, you know, that’s what I think has been the biggest surprise and success. Holly, I don’t know if you agree.
No, absolutely. I was going to say that there is a willingness. Sometimes, there’s just confusion of that it’s a problem, and I think once we show them what’s happening, there’s more of a willingness to engage, but it’s going to be a long process, you know. Carly knows this is going to be a long process, but we’re in this, that’s what we’re here for.
Well, we’re certainly shining the light on the narrative at the moment in every sphere. So this is very exciting. Well done on a fabulous initiative. We’re very proud to be partnered with all different organisations. I felt especially proud when I saw those beautiful billboards up in Times Square. It just looked so optimistic, you know, and so as I’m onwards and upwards, and good luck to everybody, and thank you, Holly, for joining us tonight, and thank you, as always, Carl and Lauren. Thank you very much to all of you and to all our participants. On that note, I’ll say night-night.