By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO — America’s Jewish community always knew that there was no vaccine or antidote for the disease of antisemitism, but prior to Oct. 7th, it felt the disease could be kept in check. “We developed a containment strategy, a firewall, to make sure that here we could keep it in the sewers, with the covers on,” Abe Foxman told a “Standing Together” symposium Sunday that was jointly sponsored by the American Jewish Committee and the Jewish Federation of San Diego.
Foxman, the former national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said, “We need to come together united now and develop a strategy. We need a strategy in this cockamamie, crazy world. We need to develop a strategy for the Jewish present, future, safety, and security, in a world temporarily without truth, without (supportive) media, without allies, without memory.”
The unity of which Foxman spoke felt palpable at the symposium held at the Hilton Bayfront Hotel amid heavy security. There was a time in the not-too-distant past when the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League eyed each other warily as they rivaled for contributors, programs, and recognition, but now here was Foxman, retired from the ADL but still very much identified with it, at an AJC event, sandwiched on stage between its national director, former Democratic Congressman Ted Deutch of Florida, and its San Diego regional director Sara Brown.
Deutch said social media and the instantaneous communication afforded by Internet make containing antisemites much harder, if not impossible. “It used to be if you were a garden-variety antisemite, a neo-Nazi, and you wanted to share this hatred, you could try to organize some march, but in reality you would meet people in a forest or in a Walmart parking lot and hand out flyers,” he said. “It is hard for things to really spread that way. Now because of social media, one person can spread their hatred.”
The AJC’s national leader said that following the massacre of Oct. 7, “while Israel was still in shock on Oct. 8 and 9, you saw an active effort to get people organized, to share information and to spread lies to defend the Hamas terrorists who slaughtered 1,200 people.’
“We talk about Holocaust revisionism; there was 10/7 revisionism happening on 10/8 on social media,” Deutch continued. “We have seen so many young people turn to Tik Tok for everything that they learn about 10/7 and for the first time thinking about Israel and the Palestinians and Hamas. It is all a really dangerous mix and we have to fight it, and we have to do it as a community. … We are up against an army of bots, nation states that spread misinformation. We’re up against a well-financed anti-Israel effort. It requires a lot of focus.”
Foxman mentioned another factor. He said the Anti-Defamation League “broke the back” of the Ku Klux Klan by getting states to outlaw demonstrators shielding their identities during marches and other kinds of protests. Until such laws were enacted, he said, bigots by day could pose as respectable citizens, but at night they put on their hoods. “Fast forward 50 years and masks are back,” he said. “That’s a major, major challenge. We need to find a balance between freedom of speech and civility because we’re the number-one targets today.”
Brown, who has taken the helm of the year-old reconstituted regional office of the American Jewish Committee, asked the two leaders where has the support from non-Jewish communities gone, those communities with whom the Jewish community stood side-by-side when fighting for their issues.
Foxman, who was hidden as a child during the Holocaust by a Gentile woman “who risked her life for four years to save me,” said there are a few people like her in every generation, while other people “are okay, but what do we do to get them to stand up?” He said that Jewish values have prompted our community to ally with various racial, gender, LGBTQ, religious, and ethnic groups as they fought for equality. He quoted the biblical admonition of “justice, justice shalt thou pursue,” and Hillel’s teaching that if we are not for ourselves, who will be for us, and if we are only for ourselves, what are we? as part of the Jewish ethos.
“This was the guiding light of Jewish defense and Jewish institutions,” he said, adding that the “shocking extent of the silence … is a sad lesson that we need to learn.” However, he added, Jews should continue to support causes that are right whether or not that support is reciprocated.
“Therefore the lesson for us first and foremost is that we have to be responsible for our defense, for our security, for our presence, for our interests,” Foxman declared. “It is a pragmatic lesson, a painful lesson, but better now than to find out later.”
Foxman complimented the Biden administration for taking the position that “antisemitism is not only your responsibility; we take the responsibility of fighting antisemitism.” Pointing out that he is now retired and not formally representing a non-profit organization, and therefore able to publicly support political candidates, Foxman looked at Deutch and then told the audience, “I can say that, he can’t.”
What Deutch could say—and did—was that “if you are standing with us and our community, we are going to tell you how much we appreciate it.”
Three non-Jewish elected officials introduced at that meeting were San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria, Councilmember Raul Campillo, and Sheriff Kelly A. Martinez. In a talk that preceded the Foxman-Deutch-Brown panel, Gloria recalled traveling to Israel, and meeting the mayor of Sha’ar Hanegev, Ofir Libstein, who was killed defending Kfar Aza, the kibbutz on which he lived.
Gloria said admiringly that Libstein had wanted to extend the prosperity of Sha’ar Hanegev, which is a partner city with the Jewish Federation of San Diego, to his Palestinian neighbors in Gaza. “We must never give an inch to the encroachment of antisemitism,” Gloria said. “We must push back.” He vowed to “always stand up with you on behalf of the City of San Diego.”
The Jewish Federation’s President and CEO, Heidi Gantwerk, followed Gloria to the podium. “Combatting antisemitism can’t just be the work of a few,” she said. “We all have to participate.” She said that the Federation, the ADL (which also has a San Diego regional office headed by Fabienne Perlov, who was in the audience), the AJC and other agencies are “working collaboratively, sharing best practices.” She noted that San Diego County’s Jewish community is over 100,000 people strong and recently raised over $8 million for the Federation’s Israel Emergency Fund.
Following the plenary session, attendees had their choice of one breakout session in the morning and another in the afternoon following a supplied vegetarian box lunch. These sessions tackled such topics as 1) “Dispute But Also Create, Ending Antisemitism on Campus,” moderated by Rich Leib, the chairman of the University of California Board of Regents. 2) ‘Reimagining Conversations About Israel and Antisemitism,” featuring Oren Jacobsen, the cofounder of Project Shema; 3) “Recognize & Report: Anti-Semitic Hate Crimes,” moderated by Heidi Gantwerk and including District Attorney Summer Stephan, and 4) “Combating Misinformation and Disinformation” with Katherine Keneally and Laurie Moskowitz, respectively with the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and LOREstrategies.
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Donald H. Harrison is publisher and editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com