An 18-year-old walks into a grocery store in Buffalo, New York and opens fire, killing ten. On the barrel of his gun is written a racist epithet so offensive that most media simply refer to it as the “n-word.”
Israeli police brutally assault mourners at the funeral of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. They rip the Palestinian flag off the hearse carrying Abu Akleh’s coffin.
Two events, worlds apart. What could they possibly have in common?
After all, the Buffalo shooter, Payton S. Gendron, was an avowed antisemite who feared that Jews and Blacks and people of color were seeking to “replace” whites. Another symbol on his gun, the number 14, evoked a white supremacist credo, “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” He was a criminal.
According to the Israeli police they were seeking to “facilitate a calm and dignified funeral.” What could their behavior possibly have to do with that of an unhinged racist who perceived those who were different from him as a mortal threat and, as a result, felt justified in turning to violence against them?
Women mourn at a memorial for victims near the scene of the shooting at a TOPS supermarket in Buffalo, New York BRENDAN MCDERMID/ REUTERS
Gendron has been linked to a 180-page manifesto in which he praised other racist gunman including Robert Gregory Bowers, the man who attacked the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in which 11 people died and six others were wounded. How could he possibly have anything in common with a police force empowered to protect a people he deplored?
Yet: the underlying impetus behind both assaults was hatred fueled by fear of the “other.” Yes, both Gendron and the Israeli police acted with reckless disregard human life or decency. Yes, the police and Gendron were both actively protecting a world view in which people of different races and creeds were seen as lesser, in which denying them basic freedoms, even depriving them of life, has become commonplace.
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Yes, the white replacement theory espoused by Gendron was promoted by right-wing media like Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News. And yes, when Fox star Tucker Carlson was attacked for espousing “white replacement theory,” his defense was to cite the case of Israel: “It is unrealistic and unacceptable to expect the State of Israel to voluntarily subvert its own sovereign existence and nationalist identity and become a vulnerable minority within what was once its own territory.”
And as repulsive as Carlson’s comments were, the logic that brought him to cite Israeli views toward Palestinians was akin to American white supremacists’ views toward non-Christians and non-whites is easily understood.
The racism and hate-mongering of right-wing media in both countries is linked directly to political parties in the U.S. and Israel who have tapped into race hatred and fears to fuel their popularity, in the case of the U.S., the GOP, and in particular Donald Trump’s MAGA movement, and in the case of Israel, the coalitions on the right that supported Bibi Netanyahu and now support Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando, Florida, earlier this year MARCO BELLO/ REUTERS
Indeed, these powerful political movements and their media benefactors, acolytes and amplifiers have worked to institutionalize their intolerance. That is the case whether it is manifested in the U.S. by efforts to disenfranchise voters of color, by a border wall, or putting children in cages, or if it is manifested in Israel by a system that has, accurately, been condemned as imposing a system of apartheid, of second-class citizenship, limited rights and serial violence against Palestinians.
No, Gendron was not working for the state when he committed his crime as the Israeli police were when they brutally and unjustifiably attacked grieving mourners. But his racism was directly linked to a powerful political movement in the U.S. – the same movement that put a gun in his hands – just as was the case for the Israeli police who clubbed pallbearers and denied a decent funeral to a widely respected Palestinian-American citizen who deserved so much better.
Of course, it is easy to link these two acts because both were indecent, repulsive, offensive to any standard of morality. And there is a danger in conflating events merely because they occur close to one another in time. It would be a mistake to do so if such analogizing minimized one crime or misrepresented another.
An Israeli soldier chases a protester in the Masafer Yatta area in the Israeli-occupied West Bank at a demonstration against a recent Israeli High Court decision to evict 1,000 Palestinian villagersMOSAB SHAWER – AFP
That said, it would also be a mistake to fail to see the similarities when the two acts are in fact associated with toxic movements that represent a profound threat to the countries in question, especially when those two countries are as closely associated as the U.S. and Israel.
Both acts flowed from irrational hate fueled by ethno-nationalist politicians who have made crimes like these ever more likely, offered the predicate for the attacks (even if the monstrous behavior was very different in nature), and one way or another made available the weapons used in the crimes.
(And before you say no one died in the Israeli attack, how many innocent Palestinians have died without justification at the hands of the Israeli police or the military? We do not know exactly whose bullet killed Shireen Abu Akleh yet, but it is too easy to cite other cases. We also know that the investigation into her death is likely to be inconclusive and such crimes will continue, often as a result of an Israeli institutional calculus that regularly values Palestinian lives at a fraction of the worth attributed to that of any Israeli.)
A Palestinian journalist in Bethlehem protests the death of veteran Al-Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, shot dead while covering an Israeli army raid in JeninHAZEM BADER – AFP
I am well aware that some will discount such analysis as being the kind of American Jewish statement critical of Israel or Zionism that is often equated with antisemitism by those on the Israeli right. They, like those on the American right, are allergic to dissent and inclined to question the character of their opponents.
But if Zionism means supporting the sort of state racism that it was create to escape, then supporting it and turning a blind eye to abuses and the corrupted values behind them is in fact, the real act of antisemitism.
Just as in the Republican Party in the U.S., many in the right wing of Israel’s government have lost their way, and are damaging their country more than their enemies could. And just as in the U.S., the cure is to set aside euphemisms and both-sidesism and excuses and to acknowledge that both our countries are suffering the institutionalization of forms of racism that runs contrary to our espoused values, even if it is hardly contrary to the actual truth of the history in either nation.
David Rothkopf’s latest book is “Traitor: A History of Betraying America from Benedict Arnold to Donald Trump.” He is also a podcast host and CEO of The Rothkopf Group. Twitter: @djrothkopf
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