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Dennis Chinoy is a longtime Bangor resident.
As an American Jew, I watch in anguish as Israel commits crimes against humanity in Gaza, as documented by the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry. At home, I watch with alarm as my government wields allegations of antisemitism as a cudgel against Muslims legally in this country who peacefully protest those crimes.
I’m a third generation Jewish American. Though I lost no family members in the holocaust, I’m not unmindful of the scourge of antisemitism worldwide. My four grandparents were Russian Jews who fled their homes, not just for a better life but at risk of death because of their Judaism. My grandmother’s most enduring memories were of Cossacks and pogroms.
I also appreciate that antisemitism is not confined to Europe or the Middle East, that the U.S. has its own strong history of antisemitism, as well. I’m aware that my sense of security in the country where my grandparents found refuge can easily and suddenly prove to be illusory.
However, I don’t for a nano-second believe that Donald Trump, who said “there are very fine people on both sides,” after a white nationalist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, has a special place in his heart for Jews. Or, that he has my safety in mind when he and administration officials cynically conflate criticism of Israeli policy with antisemitism.
What we do have is a president who conflates himself with the nation, and disagreement with disloyalty, a president who warns: “We have the outside enemy, and then we have the enemy from within.” Today those “internal enemies” may be foreign nationals maligned as an antisemitic threat when expressing their support for Palestinian rights. Tomorrow’s domestic target could be me or any other Jew on an equally counterfeit pretext.
Trump declared just six months ago that Jews would be partly to blame if he were to lose the election. Thus far Jews have been spared being added to the enemies list but as we’ve seen for this president, with blame comes retribution.
It is possible to believe two things at the same time: That both Jews and Palestinians have legitimate historical claims to Israeli and Palestinian lands. That the Oct. 7, 2023 massacres were horrendous, and that Israel’s collective punishment of the Palestinian people, whatever its rationale, is horrific as well. And that hurling accusations of antisemitism to deflect revulsion at war crimes gives a bad name to well-founded concerns about the pervasive antisemitism that does exist in this world.
Were I to have these same words published under a different name, with a different ethnicity, or religious identification, or legal immigration status, no one would now be surprised if I were apprehended and whisked off to a Louisiana detention center, or even flown to an El Salvadoran prison. Until recently, concerns about abductions would be regarded as hysterical fear mongering. Now they are happening in plain sight.
We have arrived at a yellow star of David moment, in reverse, recalling the mythic legend of a Danish king wearing a yellow star in defiance of Nazi occupiers’ racist ideology. To be sure, Jewish public expression of solidarity with Muslims targeted by ICE for decrying Israeli crimes against the Palestinian population pales in comparison in terms of incurring risk. But it would be a start to unequivocally declare “Do not use brownshirt tactics in our name.”
So yes, I am deeply concerned about antisemitism. But I believe Jews in our country have far less to fear from those criticizing Israeli policy than from an administration whose minions may sooner or later be coming for all of us who don’t conform to their exclusionary vision of who matters and who doesn’t — whether we be immigrants, Muslim or Jewish, black, brown or indigenous, gay, lesbian or transgendered, or simply political opponents who won’t bend a knee to a president who demands tribute.