The virulence of anti-Israel protests in America doesn't surprise me anymore. As a student of world history, it is clear that the masses never accept a more successful minority above them, especially if this minority belongs to a different religion.
For some very deeply ingrained historical reason, people have fewer problems accepting the social superiority of a different race (especially if it is lighter-skinned) than the real or perceived superiority of members of a different religion.
This is the deep root of antisemitism in democratic societies. Liberal democracies emancipate minorities from the legal handicaps that hinder their success. Once this happens, some religious minorities succeed far more than is tolerable for partisans of equality at any cost.
American Jews have supplemented their extraordinary socioeconomic success by equally extraordinary contributions in numerous other spheres of American life.
Alas, whereas other Americans may pay lip service to these accomplishments, it will often rankle them that members of another religion are so successful.
The antisemitism of white Christian Americans is inhibited by the fact that of all dynamics threatening the America they built, Jews are a minor factor (a college friend of mine correctly confided that without Blacks, the fate of Jews might have been very different in the Goldene Medine).
Nevertheless, many people belonging to so-called "oppressed minorities" loathe Jews not just as a more successful religious minority, but also as a magnifying mirror of all their own shortcomings.
Leftist Jews who desperately try to buck these trends by emphasizing the non-white credentials of American Jews breed the disdain of everyone: POCs consider this attitude paternalistic and opportunistic, whereas Whites start to wonder whether Jews are voluntarily helping to dig their own grave as well as America's.
The willing contribution of Jews to current antisemitic sentiments cannot be overestimated. I remember how many Jewish social justice warriors a decade or so ago railed against the "top 1% percent." Yet one doesn't need to read Stormfront to realize this 1% is disproportionately Jewish.
I don't have any problem with this fact: As a public school teacher, I know my salary today and tomorrow hinges on how much companies and high net-worth individuals prosper. As far as I'm concerned, I'd love all members of the top 1% to be trillionaires.
Alas, in a world where schools, universities, and (many) churches and synagogues teach and preach that wealthy people enjoy their wealth at the expense of others, it is not surprising that anti-elitism has now morphed into antisemitism.
Leftists argue that they are just 'anti-Zionists.' If they were really just 'anti-Zionists' they'd love Bernie Sanders, Judith Butler, and Peter Beinart. Instead, I have the clear impression that they eagerly bandy the endorsement of such Jews, while never appreciating, understanding, or even acknowledging the (misguided) Jewish ethical roots of these Jews' support for Israel's enemies.
The genie of antisemitism in America has left the bottle, and has infected mainstream journalism, academia, and culture. American Jews should realize that today's America eerily resembles late 19th-century France. Back then, French royalists and Catholic traditionalists hated the Third Republic as a 'Jewish state.' Today, the American left (and far-right) hates America's multicultural meritocracy as a 'Jewish system' too. The far-right hates America for being multicultural, while the left hates America for being a meritocratic, and thus unequal society.
Hatred of the Jewish state is just a proxy for hatred of American Jews' social, cultural, economic, and political success. American Jews would be wise to embrace a healthy conservatism that loves and defends all the virtues and traits that allowed them to be free and prosper in the United States of America we once knew.
This is the sole activism in the name of "tikkun olam" worth taking seriously.
Rafael Castrograduated from Yale and Hebrew University. A proud Noahide, Rafael can be reached at [email protected]