JVP Got One Thing Right

Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), the fringe Anti-Zionist organization that tenderly serves up their Jewish identity to those that seek to exploit it, stoked fresh controversy this month with their latest event: a panel discussion about anti-Semitism featuring controversial anti-Zionist figures Rashida Tlaib, Marc Lamont Hill and Peter Beinart. The panel took place on December 15 and can be viewed on JVP’s Facebook page.

The panel was mostly an incoherent mess of hollow platitudes focused on intersectional messaging. JVP continued to deny the well-documented history of anti-Zionist persecution of Jews, thus undermining important insights into the threat of anti-Semitism in 2021.

Before the panel took place, activists in the Jewish community announced a competing panel with a group of fantastic and well-informed people. The selling point? The members of this panel would be Jewish, as opposed to JVP’s panel, which included a majority of non-Jewish voices.

During JVP’s panel, the question of the panel’s representation was briefly touched upon. The panelists concluded that discussions about anti-Semitism and defining anti-Semitism should not be confined to Jewish voices only. By contrast, the message from the competing panel and other prominent Jewish voices on social media was that only Jewish voices should be heard on panels about anti-Semitism.

On this point, JVP is correct, as painful as that is to admit.

Of course, Jewish voices play a vital role in all discussions about anti-Semitism. It’s through the experience of Jews that we’re better able to understand how anti-Semitic ideas manifest into hateful harassment, vandalism and violence. However, anti-Semitism is a multi-faceted and unique political force, implicated in some of the most pivotal events of the previous millennium. It is counterproductive and false to suggest that only Jewish people could or should speak about the centuries-old plague of anti-Semitism.

It is counterproductive and false to suggest that only Jewish people should speak about anti-Semitism.

Furthermore, anti-Zionists have frequently weaponized the very position that Jews are, by default, natural authorities on the vast history and various manifestations of anti-Semitism. Anti-Zionists have tokenized fringe Jewish voices to silence concerns from the Jewish community. Soviet Jewish anti-Zionists, for example, were used by the Soviet Union to legitimize its anti-Semitic propaganda. This argument prioritizes identity over actual substance and ideas, and we’re correct in pointing it out as problematic. So why would we emulate their approach? Judging the value of an opinion based solely on whether or not the person offering it is Jewish paves the way for further tokenization of Jewish voices.

Stipulating that only Jewish scholars should be included in discussions about anti-Semitism also leaves out crucial experts. In 2016, for example, I started writing and directing a documentary called “The Conspiracy Libel,” which contextualizes anti-Semitic conspiracy theories at different places and periods in history. One of the scholars that appeared in the film was Professor Graeme Garrard of Cardiff University, who specializes in French history and the French Revolution. He is not Jewish, but as a scholar of that period, he has the credibility to describe the way in which the Revolution impacted the people that experienced it, including Jews.

Similarly, during the crisis surrounding anti-Semitism in the United Kingdom’s Labour party, some of the most outspoken critics of former leader Jeremy Corbyn’s worldview were non-Jewish writers and activists, such as Euan Phillips, spokesperson for Labour Against Anti-Semitism. Phillips is not Jewish, but if anyone were to organize a panel discussing Corbyn’s anti-Semitism, he should be one of the first people contacted. Not including Phillips because he is not Jewish would be an unnecessary hindrance to our effort to educate and to combat anti-Semitism.

Beyond reducing the number of voices in the discussion, demanding that only Jewish voices should be heard in discussions about anti-Semitism reduces it to a threat that could only be understood by people who have experienced it in the present. This is a profound mistake. Anti-Semitism should not only be understood as a present danger to Jews (though, of course, that’s true) but also as a historically persistent set of dangerous impulses that could bubble up anywhere in any form, threatening whatever society it takes hold. Non-Jews have a stake in this fight, too, and including their voices would strengthen our outreach efforts, increase awareness and add new minds to the ongoing conversation.

Anti-Semitism always ends with hatred of the Jews, though this is not where it always starts. Anti-Semitism starts with irrational theories and ideas about how power is wielded in a given society, especially during times of turmoil. In our attempts at education and action against anti-Semitism, we must not limit ourselves with milder expressions of irrationality like proposing that the history of anti-Semitism could only be relayed and taught by Jewish voices.

Let us continue to fight with facts, history and an understanding that anti-Semitism is a human problem that threatens all people. Rather than only cheer for Jewish-only panels, we should be equally inspired by non-Jewish students of history that share our concerns about the threat of anti-Semitism.

JVP got one thing right. Let’s be better.

Joe Duenas is an independent filmmaker and freelance journalist.