Picture This

One of the many people I've encountered in my time on Google+ is an Israeli gamer, author and all-around funny guy. But one of his recent posts took a serious turn as he took "liberals" to task for claiming "that the American Left is my dear, dear friend while the American Right is one step away from nuking Israel and sending Jews to death camps..."It can be said to be a rant against "liberalsplaining," and it's likely a justifiable one.

But what struck me as the most interesting thing about it was the picture that came with it. Divided into four panels, it showed President Trump shaking hands with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and three pictures of former President Obama, shaking hands with Jeremiah Wright, Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan. Each of the pictures with President Obama in them was captioned with some anti-Israel or antisemitic remark attributed to whomever was in the photo with him.

The interesting bit about the content of the post was the reminder that for many Israeli Jews, apparently, supporting Jewish people and supporting the policies of the state of Israel are very similar, if not the same thing. But they really aren't the same in the United States for many people. To paint in broad strokes, the American Left tends to view Jewish people as yet another minority subject to the systematic oppression that has plagued many groups in the United States, while the American Right tends to view Israel as a necessary part of the (strangely, perhaps) hoped-for end of the world.

(As an aside, I found one Israeli Rabbi's take on end-times enthusiasm to be entertaining. When asked what he thought of the fact that for many Americans, supporting Israel was intended to lead to an outcome that would be bad for the Jews, not to mention the rest of the world's non-Christians, he basically pointed out that he didn't care. After all, since Christian prophecy was false anyway, Armageddon was never coming to pass, regardless.)

The interesting aspect of the picture was twofold. Firstly, there is a noticeable amount of antisemitism in the Black community in the United States. I don't know why that is, and I'm not really prepared to speculate on it. It was noticeable to me when I was growing up in the 1970s and 80s, but I never really asked about the causes. I simply assumed there was some sort of grudge there that I didn't understand, and went on about my business. But a lot of people who have been considered "leaders" in the Black American community have had to deal with the fallout of making statements considered hostile to Judaism, Israel or both. And it doesn't seem to be just something that the older generation carries. Younger campaigners for racial justice often point to the Palestinians as having gotten a really terrible, and ongoing, raw deal, which has lead to some friction between them as pro-Israel elements here and abroad.

And this brings me to the second thing that I found interesting about the pictures. In contrasting Presidents Trump and Obama as stand-ins for Right and Left in American politics, it also takes visible (if unintentional) aim at White and Black. White racists are often quick to point out what they understand as antisemitism in the Black community, both as a form of whataboutism and as a delegitimization tactic. While the point was that President Trump, despite whatever he may have done in the past, was being a friend to Jews and Israel at the moment, the picture did seem to evidence a selective memory for the past, conveniently forgetting both times when President Obama voiced support for Israel and when President Trump appeared to cozy up to antisemitic elements in the United States in order to garner votes.

So I wonder whether it would play into the current tensions between Black people and Jews here in the United States. I can see many Black people viewing things like this as proof that whatever grudge they have with Jews as being accurate, even if many others simply shrug their shoulders and move on. I also find using people like Messrs. Wright, Sharpton and Farrakhan as stand-ins for the American Left to be interesting. While, sure, I find it difficult to see them voting Republican, they're not so much Leftist activists as they are Black activists. I don't see any of them defining themselves by some position to the political Left of center. And while it may make sense for an Israeli to not really follow the divisions between, say, Leftist politics and Black nationalism, illustrating what are called out as faults on the Left with exclusively Black faces is the sort of thing that has lead to charges of racism in the past.

Maybe that's what it all comes down to. When in attack mode, people are rarely as careful in their selection of targets as others might wish. And so conflicts thrive, as more and more people, after becoming collateral damage, pile into the fray.