How do liberals talk about Israel without sounding like maga?

I was telling you the other day about how the president is not losing the support of maganites because of the perception of his betrayal of abstract principles. If principles were the problem, well, no problem. Maganites don’t have any. They could have moved from anti-war to pro-war as easily as Donald Trump did. 

America First is not rooted in concepts like sovereignty, national security and the international order. (Those came later to give it an intellectual gloss.) America First is rooted in antisemitism. It seems to maga that Israel (or “the Jews”) controls Donald Trump. Supporters are mad, but not because he was insufficiently anti-war. They’re mad because he was insufficiently anti-Jew.

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This development deepens an existing problem for liberals and Democrats. Fact is, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did pressure Donald Trump into attacking Iran. He has desired war with Iran for 20 years, especially recently. He apparently believes it will prevent him from being convicted for corruption. His actions are questionable, to put it mildly, but there is still a reluctance among liberals and Democrats to criticize. It feels antisemitic – or at least it feels like something maga would do.

How do we talk about the reality of Netanyahu’s influence on US policy, foreign and domestic, without appearing to be motivated by the same fear and paranoia that’s animating America First, which is to say, how do we talk about Israel without sounding like we believe in a “Jewish conspiracy against the United States”?

I don’t want to overstate the problem, as I’m asking the question in the middle of what appears to be a major shift in public sentiment. For the first time since it began asking the question, Gallup found in February that more Americans sympathize with Palestinians than they do with Israelis, a consequence almost certainly of the atrocities committed by Israeli forces in Gaza. The trend has potential for growth as Americans become more aware of Netanyahu’s expansionist ambitions. Under cover of Donald Trump’s attack on Iran, Israel invaded southern Lebanon.

But I think there needs to be a space created for liberals and Democrats to not only talk about Israel but to learn how to talk about Israel – a space cleared of the distortions of conspiracy theory, propaganda, myth, historical assumptions and so on. Toward that end, I got in touch with Nathan Goldwag, a writer, archivist and founder of Goldwag’s Journal on Civilization. What follows is the first in a two-part conversation I had with him.

I think liberals are in a bind. They can see that Israel is not acting in good faith. With its invasion of Lebanon, as the AP called it, it even seems to have an imperialist agenda. Yet there’s a fear that being critical of Israel is antisemetic. What can we do to create a space between liberals and antisemites? 

This is a tension I recognize from growing up in a liberal Jewish community — the desire to defend and protect a nation we identify with, that is defined by our religious and cultural connection, but that simply does not abide by any of the standards or principles that we claim to believe. 

If you believe a state should not deny 33 percent of its population self-determination or self-government based on ethnicity, you cannot support the Israeli state anymore than you can support apartheid South Africa or the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

David Ben-Gurion is often quoted as saying, “when Israel has prostitutes and thieves, we'll be a state just like any other,” and I think we should take that seriously. Zionism, for better or worse, succeeded. The Jewish state is not a hypothetical thought experiment. It is a real place governed by real people with real laws, and we should remember that and treat it as such.

Too much of this discourse, in my experience, centers on abstract questions of philosophy and ethics, rather than on the details of practical politics. We argue about whether “Zionism” is “good” or “evil”, or make sweeping and unfalsifiable claims about the history and morality of whole people, but very little of that, to my mind, matters. 

Zionism is no more evil than any other nationalist movement, but that does not excuse crimes committed in its name any more than we believe the collaboration of the Ustaše with the Nazis in World War II legitimates the Serbian genocides of the 1990s. 

Our goal as liberals should be to encourage foreign policy in line with our values, one that contributes to the creation of the world we want. Our policy towards Israel, as a state, should reflect that.

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Another challenge comes from the left. Some progressives are so critical of Zionism that they often use language similar to the right’s anti-Jewish rhetoric. At the same time, these progressives make a good point – that a state dedicated to equality for all is better than a state that privileges some people over others. Can this tension be resolved?

The Prussian military strategist Carl von Clausewitz once wrote that "everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult,” and I think the same applies to politics. It is easy to say “you can be an antizionist without being antisemitic,” but putting that into practice is harder. As I have tried to explain to people, if you use the word “Zionist” as an insult, many (perhaps most) Jews are not going to interpret that as a political critique but as a slur. 

Orthodox Jews who get “free Palestine!” screamed at them on the street rightfully do not see that as a call for national self-determination, but as a thin veil for racial harassment, the same way you would understand screaming “down with Islamism!” at a random woman in a hijab on a New York sidewalk.

To me, increasingly, so much of this can be traced to the way in which the modern language of politics in so many internet subcultures is just slurs, invective and conspiratorial paranoia. 

There is endless debate over who exactly you’re allowed to be bigoted towards, but the structure of the conversation is almost always couched entirely in terms of bigotry regardless. 

You can witness similar conversations where leftists treat all Taiwanese or Ukrainians as genetically fascist, because of the crimes of the Kuomintang or Stepan Bandera, respectively, and I’ve had liberals say Palestinian self-determination is illegitimate because the PLO took support from the KBG or the Ba'ath Party. 

I’m reminded of the controversies over streamer Hasan Piker, who has gotten into trouble for calling Haredi Jews “inbred” and for complaining about “Zionist Pigs.” His supporters have defended him by pointing out that he uses similar language to refer to anyone he dislikes — but is that really better? 

Maybe we shouldn’t do that.

I think a lot of confusion can be cleared up with clear language. Rightwing Jews allege any criticism of Israel is inherently antisemitic. The press corps sanitizes the actual antisemitism at the heart of America First. Meanwhile, elite Democrats are still talking about Israel nostalgically, as if the history of antisemitism justifies war crimes and imperialism. Thoughts?

More than anything else, what I want to see from this discourse is clarity and precision, instead of vague debates about hypotheticals. I was involved in Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions activism in 2011-2012, in high school, and so much of the debate remains identical, just the same cliches and shibboleths repeated ad infinitum — two-state solution, Jewish and democratic, eternal and undivided capital of Jerusalem, legitimate security concerns, etc, etc, until they stop having meaning. In my own writing, I have consistently tried to drill down into specifics — what are our concerns, how do we want to see them addressed? 

Do we care about Israel and Palestine as rhetorical cudgels to wield against our philosophical foes, or as a real place containing real human beings who have real hopes and dreams and rights that need to be protected? If the latter, how do we go about that?

I think the key is having principles and strong beliefs, and sticking to them. I believe Israel is an apartheid state, and that is wrong. I believe antisemitism does not justify the crimes of the Israeli government towards Palestinians, and I believe the Israeli oppression of Palestinians does not justify antisemitism. 

In all of this, it’s vital to remember that the goal here is not just winning an argument. It’s achieving some measure of peace, justice and equality for everybody. That should be our lodestar.

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