Jamaal Bowman Is Right

Claiming Israel speaks for Jewish people is dangerous

Last week, Politico ran a profile of New York House Representative Jamaal Bowman, who is facing a tough primary challenge in his district this Tuesday. Bowman is one of the most outspoken critics of Israel’s current policies in Congress. His opponent, George Latimer, has received significant funds from AIPAC, the major pro-Israel organization in the US. The Politico article therefore focused on Bowman’s Israel policy. It ended with Bowman saying this:

When you [as Israel] say you represent all Jews, and then you behave badly, it opens the doors for people to make the connection between what Israel is doing and Jewish people, which I think is freaking dangerous as hell.

A number of commenters, such as New York Democratic Congressman Daniel Goldman, pushed back vigorously against Bowman. Goldman argued that “Israel never ‘said it represents all Jews.’ Other commenters, like podcaster Blake Flayton argued that Bowman was blaming “Israel the country filled with Jews…[for] making the world unsafe for Jews.”

Goldman and Flayton are wrong; Bowman is correct. I’m going to try to briefly explain why.

Zionists do claim to speak for all Jewish people

First, Goldman’s assertion is easy to disprove. Zionists—Jewish and non-Jewish, far right and liberal—do in fact constantly claim that Israel speaks for and represents all Jewish people.

Netanyahu, for example, Israel’s far right prime minister, has repeatedly asserted that he speaks, not just for the state of Israel, but for all Jewish people everywhere. In 2015, following a horrific antisemitic terrorist attack in France which killed four people, Netanyahu said, “[Jews] know deep in their hearts they have only one country, Israel.” That same year one of Netanyahu’s top aides said that Netanyahu is “the leader of the Jewish world.”

Netanyahu is a particularly poisonous and egomaniacal figure. But these sentiments are not limited to just him. In 2006, Ehud Olmert, then Prime Minister of Israel, said Israel’s war against Hezbollah in Lebanon was “a war fought by all the Jews.” (Fact check: I am Jewish, and I was not involved in a war against Hezbollah in 2006.) The mission statement of the Israeli mission to the United Nations says, “Israel’s Permanent Mission represents the State of Israel, its citizens and the Jewish people on the global stage of the United Nations.”

Non-Jewish Zionists make similar arguments. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has said repeatedly that his support for Israel entitles him to Jewish people’s votes. In 2019, when Trump was president, he said that “any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat” exhibit “great disloyalty”—both to Israel and to Trump. He reiterated those sentiments this March, when he said that “Any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion.”

President Joe Biden never sounds as grossly antisemitic as that. But he too has suggested that Israel is core to the identity of all Jewish people. On October 12, shortly after Hamas’ 10/7 attack on Israel, Biden said, “Were there no Israel, no Jew in the world would be ultimately safe. It’s the only ultimate guarantee.” He’s made the same argument on numerous other occasions—an argument that flat out states that American Jewish people have more of a stake in Israel (it guarantees our safety!) than in their own country.

In a lot of ways, finding these smoking gun quotes understates the extent of the problem. The argument that Israel represents all Jewish people is a core claim used to justify Israeli occupation and violence. It is commonplace and ubiquitous.

Israel is frequently presented as the natural, irrefutable response to the Holocaust, as if six million Jews—many of whom were adamantly opposed to Zionism—justify any and all of Israel’s actions, past and future. Jewish people who speak against Israeli policy are regularly smeared as tokens or told they don’t really understand Judaism or that their voices don’t count. Jewish identity is regularly referenced by Zionists (again, Jewish and non-Jewish) as if it is continuous with and identical with Zionism and with support for any and every Israel policy. Non-Jewish Zionist New York Congressman Ritchie Torres, for example, recently said on Twitter that he supports Israel not because he is afraid of AIPAC funding a challenger, but because he is “afraid of disappointing Jewish mothers.” (Fact check: not all Jewish mothers support Israel’s current policies.)

Treating Jewish people as a monolith is antisemitic and dangerous

There is, then, overwhelming evidence that Zionists (again, Jewish and non-Jewish) conflate Israel with all Jews in order to defend Israel and deflect criticism. And, as Bowman says, this is dangerous.

Blaming all Jews for anything done by one Jew or by some Jews is definitionally antisemitism. It creates grounds for collective guilt, collective punishment, antisemitic stereotypes, and antisemitic violence. The Nazis would highlight actions by Jewish criminals (and make up criminal charges against Jewish people) in order to claim that all Jewish people were dangerous and deserved to be executed. Christians for centuries claimed that Jewish people killed Jesus, and used that as an excuse for pogroms and violence against Jewish people (often on Christmas or Easter.)  

It's very important, then, for public messaging from Jewish institutions and from Jewish and non-Jewish leaders to emphasize that Jewish people are not a monolith. In particular, it’s important to emphasize that Jewish people as a whole are not responsible for Israel’s actions.

Israel is a state; states often do ugly things. Israel has in the last six months killed and injured some 120,000 people in Gaza, the vast majority of them women and children, through bombing, displacement, and the withholding of humanitarian aid and food. The state of Israel did that—not Jewish people as a whole.

But again, as Bowman says, Israel itself, and Jewish and non-Jewish Zionist leaders, constantly assert that Israel acts on behalf of and in the name of all Jewish people. Instead of emphasizing that Jewish people are not Israel, Israel insists that Jewish people as a whole are Israel.

Israel does this again to deflect criticism and justify its actions; it utilizes Jewish history of oppression to suggest that its own violence and war crimes are justifiable and necessary. But in using Jews everywhere in the diaspora as a shield, it makes those Jews a target. Zionist leaders in Israel and outside of Israel have engaged in what is effectively a massive antisemitic propaganda campaign the goal of which is to flatten Jewish identity into Israel and make Jewish people collectively responsible for Israel’s actions.

Bowman is not blaming “Israel the country filled with Jews…[for] making the world unsafe for Jews.” He is blaming Zionist propaganda for flattening Jewish identity, creating Jewish stereotypes, and putting Jewish people in danger. And the responses to Bowman, by conflating Israel and Jewish identity, advance this same propaganda! Bowman tries to separate Jewish identity and Israel in order to point out that all Jews are not the same, and that treating them as such is antisemitic. And Zionists like Blake Flayton respond by insisting that Israel and Jews are too the same—as if erasing differences in the Jewish community somehow makes Jewish people safer.

People who commit antisemitic acts or who spread antisemitic smears are choosing a moral evil and are responsible for that evil. We all know, though, that propaganda can call people to their hate, and can motivate people to do immoral things. It is wrong for people to blame Israel’s actions on all Jewish people. But if that is the case, then it is wrong for people like Netanyahu, and Trump, and Biden, and Daniel Goldman, and the Israeli mission to the UN to insist that Israel speaks for, or is the core identity, of all Jewish people.

Flattening the identities of Jewish people is dangerous. Claiming Jewish people have collective responsibility for Israeli actions is dangerous. And Zionists do both of those things all the time. That makes Jewish people in the diaspora less safe. It makes me less safe. That’s Bowman’s point. And he’s right. Which is one reason I very much hope he wins his primary tomorrow.