A N T “All those who are concerned or confused about contemporary I antisemitism will want to read this book. All those who think S E the situation is hopeless need to read this book. And all those M who think there is no problem must read this book.” I T Deborah E. Lipstadt, I Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish S and Holocaust Studies, Emory University M T O “Ken Stern has been out on the front lines of the fight against D antisemitism, and he knows how and where the battles have A been waged. He makes crystal clear what antisemitism is and Y how to devise the best strategy to fight it. And along the way you will meet some fascinating heroes, slackers, and knaves.” Morris Dees, cofounder and chief trial counsel of the Southern Poverty Law Center How It Is the Same, How It Is Different, and How to Fight It K e n n e t h S . S American Jewish Committee t e The Jacob Blaustein Building r n Kenneth S. Stern 165 East 56 Street New York, NY 10022 The American Jewish Committee publishes in these areas: •Hatred and Anti-Semitism •Pluralism •Israel •American Jewish Life •International Jewish Life •Human Rights www.ajc.org December 2006 $10.00 AJC AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE The American Jewish Committee protects the rights and freedoms of Jews the world over; combats bigotry and anti-Semitism and promotes human rights for all; works for the security of Israel and deepened understanding between Americans and Israelis; advocates public policy positions rooted in American democratic values and the perspectives of the Jewish heritage; and enhances the cre- ative vitality of the Jewish people. Founded in 1906, it is the pioneer human-relations agency in the United States. ANTISEMITISM TODAY How It Is the Same, How It Is Different, and How to Fight It Kenneth S. Stern AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE Contents To Margie, Daniel, and Emily Foreword v In memory of James O. Freedman (1935-2006) Introduction 1 A wonderful human being. Chapter One: What Is Antisemitism? 7 Kenneth S. Stern has been the American Jewish Com- Chapter Two: An Old Hatred mittee’s expert on antisemitism since 1989. Mr. Stern, an in New Circumstances 15 attorney, has testified before Congress, argued before the United States Supreme Court, and was an invited pre- Chapter Three: Durban— senter at the White House Conference on Hate Crimes. Antisemitism as Anti-Racism 23 Other books by Kenneth S. Stern: Chapter Four: 9/11 43 (1993) Holocaust Denial Chapter Five: Antisemitism Loud Hawk: The United States vs. The American Indian in the Arab and Muslim Worlds 55 Movement (1994) A Force Upon the Plain: The American Militia Movement Chapter Six: Antisemitism in Europe 70 and the Politics of Hate (1996) Chapter Seven: Denial of the Holocaust 78 Chapter Eight: Crafting a Working Definition of Contemporary Antisemitism for Today’s Monitors 96 Chapter Nine: Combating Antisemitism— ISBN 0-87495-140-2 The Importance of Strategic, Copyright © 2006 American Jewish Committee Venue-Specific Thinking 107 All Rights Reserved December 2006 Chapter Ten: United States Campuses 118 iii iv Contents Chapter Eleven: The Danger of Relying on Old, Unproven Gauges and Answers 136 Chapter Twelve: Looking Ahead in the United States 149 Foreword Chapter Thirteen: Conclusion 163 In February of 1906, in the aftermath of a series of pogroms in Europe, a group of prominent American Jews met in New York and Acknowledgments 170 discussed what they could do about rising antisemitism. From this Notes 172 meeting emerged the American Jewish Committee, America’s oldest human-relations organization. Index 203 While AJC’s mission has broadened in its 100 years to include combating all forms of bigotry and promoting democratic values glob- ally, antisemitism has remained one of its core concerns, and I have been honored to be its expert on this subject since 1989. I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s in New York, where anti- semitism was not a major problem that I encountered personally. There were minor irritants, such as the teacher at my private middle school who chastised me for not saying the Lord’s Prayer or singing Christian hymns during chapel. But these were years when the evening news showed blacks in the South being doused with fire hoses, beaten, even killed. That was true hatred and bigotry. By comparison, my teacher was merely an annoyance. I first experienced antisemitism in the late 1970s and 1980s. I was living in Portland, Oregon, working as a trial and appellate attor- ney. A right-wing group called the Posse Comitatus was particularly active, distributing antisemitic literature (with fraudulent quotations purporting to be from Benjamin Franklin and George Washington) in Portland’s Multnomah County Courthouse. While these people seemed like buffoons, they were no laughing matter, as various Posse members from different parts of the country were soon charged with criminal and violent activities. v vi Antisemitism Today Foreword vii One April a local neo-Nazi group identified every Jewish family Portland and was impressed that AJC was not driven by hysteria about in an Oregon college town and mailed each of them a hateful card on antisemitism or any other issue, but was committed to careful research Hitler’s birthday. I offered whatever help—legal or otherwise—I and honest and respectful debate. I published booklets about and con- could, but I wondered: How should the community respond to such ducted programs on how to combat bigotry on campus, in the media, hatred? Ignore it? Program against it? I did not know, but I was certain and in politics. I also wrote in-depth background pieces about the that the answer from a professional in the Jewish community—telling antisemites who were getting some level of traction—people such as the people in the small town not to worry because there were fewer David Duke, Louis Farrakhan, and Pat Buchanan, and movements card-carrying members of the Ku Klux Klan that year than in the year such as skinheads, the militias, and Holocaust deniers. before—was not sufficient. In the summer of 2000, I decided that it was time to begin a More troubling was the antisemitism among my friends in “pro- book about contemporary antisemitism. Some well-respected col- gressive” circles. After Israel invaded Lebanon in the early 1980s, there leagues and pundits had been arguing in the late 1990s that anti- were protests by the same people with whom I had worked on a wide semitism was “dead.” They asserted that Jews had unprecedented range of issues, from combating police brutality and homelessness to acceptance in American society, with Jews welcomed on boards of promoting tenants’ rights and American Indian sovereignty. I too was major corporations and serving as presidents of Ivy League universities critical of the Israeli government’s actions, but some of the Israel- that had, not too many decades ago, used quotas to restrict the num- related literature I saw at the rallies was eerily reminiscent of the mate- ber of Jewish students. Further, they pointed to the high rate of Jew- rial the Posse had been distributing about Jews, with assertions of Jew- ish-gentile intermarriage. If Americans were willing to have Jews in ish power, Jewish conspiracy, and ingrained Jewish venom toward their families, so much so that Jews worried about the basics of Jewish non-Jews. Yet while the Posse would not take offense if someone said continuity, how bad could antisemitism be? they were antisemitic, my friends on the left did not even want to dis- I agreed with their view that we American Jews were in a “golden cuss the matter. To do so, they alleged, would be a distraction from the age,” but I thought it dangerous to declare that antisemitism was a “real” work and would harm the progressive agenda. This reaction thing of the past. It was, rather, a very well-established hatred, and bothered me for a number of reasons. First, this refusal to discuss a there were new lies—such as Holocaust denial—and recurrent politi- serious issue came from friends and allies who were eager to discuss cal needs, especially in and related to the Middle East, that were likely just about everything else. Second, it showed that many on the left to breathe new life into antisemitism in the years ahead. At the least, I had a politically driven, as opposed to an analytical, understanding of thought it only responsible to take advantage of these good times to how bigotry worked. And, third, it proved that combating anti- plan how to counteract antisemitism in the future, rather than to semitism was not easily done. declare victory and ignore a problem with a 2,000-year history. When I joined the AJC staff a few years later, it was not to bean- The collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process in the fall of count swastikas or dissect the ramblings of the hateful fringe, but 2000, sure enough, was followed by increased antisemitism in Europe rather to focus on how key institutions react to, and can be empow- and an escalation in anti-Israel activity that frequently smelled of anti- ered to counteract, bigotry in general and antisemitism in particular. I semitism. There has been much written describing a renewed (some had been a lay member of the American Jewish Committee chapter in say “new”) antisemitism in the last few years, but little about how we viii Antisemitism Today must evaluate what should be done about it, and the logical and nec- The increasing frequency and severity of anti-Semitic essary prior step: whether we need to reevaluate how we think about incidents since the start of the twenty-first century, it.