By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO — The creator of the viral video “I’m That Jew,” shown above, said Wednesday that if Jews stand up and identify who we are — a diverse, non-stereotypical, pluralistic people — it can change the narrative about Jews and put the lie to the ravings of the antisemites.
“We basically have been dehumanized,” Eitan Chitayat said in a Zoom interview from Tel Aviv. “We have been boiled down to apartheid lovers, to colonialists, to genocide enablers, and this has to stop. The only way it will stop is if one person at a time in the private sector, in our own individual lives, start saying ‘We’re Jewish,’ or ‘I’m Jewish!’ Let’s start there.”
Chitayat will appear with Israel’s President Isaac Herzog in a free webinar sponsored by a panoply of Jewish defense groups at 10 a.m. Pacific Time on Sunday, August 25. To register, click here.
“We need to be more comfortable with it because when you don’t express what being Jewish is to you, then other people who are not Jewish and who don’t like us, hijack our narratives,” Chitayat said.
There are many ways to be Jewish, Chitayat noted. “I’m not a religious Jew. I am very secular, but I am a proud Jew. If we have kids who are afraid to say that they are Jewish, it is because they don’t have a safe space to be able to say it. We, as the Jewish community, have not provided it for them. Providing for them means taking on the haters; it means taking on people who are spreading such awful lies about us — whether it is Students for Justice in Palestine, or people on the far, far right.”
Students “need other people to say that they are Jewish,” Chitayat continued. “They need people to lead by example. They need Jewish allies who are comfortable in their own skins.”
Chitayat, 52, was born in Israel to an Iraqi Jewish father and a Bulgarian Jewish mother. He grew up in Hong Kong and Great Britain, worked in advertising agencies in Boston and New York, and then moved back to Israel 15 years ago, where after working as an executive creative director for an advertising agency, he opened his own boutique branding agency.
He has been a presence on social media, including YouTube on which he posted a video about the Oct. 7 toll of death and destruction in Kfar Aza, a kibbutz in Sha’ar Hanegev, San Diego’s sister city. To watch it, click here.
One group that has been loudly proclaiming its members’ Jewishness is Jewish Voice for Peace, which has aligned with anti-Israel Palestinians and their allies.
“From the little I know about them, they are Jewish and many of them have a seat at the table, and rightly so,” Chitayat reflected. “Personally, my opinion of them is they are selling out the Jewish people and they don’t represent the true voice of the Jewish people because the true voice of the Jewish people is first and foremost to survive as the Jewish people. I think that their actions are leading to the end of the Jewish people.”
He said, “I am all for coexistence. I am all for the rights of everyone, but you’ve got to speak about the rights of everyone, which includes the Jews –especially this past year. I think it is fine to fight for Palestinian rights. I partnered with Leonard Cohen and created a lot of pieces to further his Initiative for Peace. I have mentored Palestinians passionately for a little while, and I have been an activist for peace most of my life,” Chitayat continued. “I’ve never gone with the right wing like [Benjamin] Netanyahu in my life. It’s important to fight for people who can’t fight, but not at the expense of your own survival — and I think that is what they [JVP members] are doing.”
Fourteen Jewish organizations are listed as endorsing the Sunday, August 25, webinar with President Herzog and Chitayat. They are Combat Antisemitism Now, South African Jewish American Community, PeerK12, Adopt a Family Foundation, Jewish Community Center, Israeli American Council, Hillel, Yiddish Arts and Academic Association of North America, American Jewish Committee, Aish Ha Torah San Diego, StandWithUs, Anti-Defamation League, Jewish Institute for Liberal Values, and Ken Jewish Center. Chitayat said he has liaised with Jewish activist Nicole Bernstein of San Diego to help put the event together. “She has been a force,” he said. “I really respect her and what she is doing.”
*
Donald H. Harrison is publisher and editor of San Diego Jewish World.