O pinion
An American Muslim Leader Said Zionist Jews Can’t Be Trusted
Allies. Jews and Muslims Who Work Together Know Better
BY YEHUDA KURTZER
A LONG-SIM MER ING
conflict between
CAIR, the Muslim-American civil
rights organization, and the
Anti-Defamation League has
now reached the boiling point.

A Bay Area CAIR leader
dismissed the ADL and groups
like it as “polite Zionists”
who could not be trusted as
allies. ADL’s CEO, Jonathan
Greenblatt, fired back, calling
her comments “textbook
vile, antisemitic, conspiracy-
laden garbage.”
It would be a mistake to see
this as a mere spat between two
organizations. It reflects what
could be an alarming turning
point in Jewish-Muslim
relations in America, and a
symptom of how polarization
can undermine civil society.

All of us who care about what
Muslims and Jews could do
together should take note and
work to repair the damage that
is being done.

In late November, Zahra
Billoo, CAIR’s San Francisco
director, delivered an address
at the conference of American
Muslims for Palestine. First,
Billoo drew a straight line
between support for Israel and
an array of American social ills,
including the killing by police
of innocent Black and brown
Americans. Those charges play
on tropes that have become
commonplace in far-left
criticism of Israel and the
Israel-America relationship.

10 DECEMBER 30, 2021
But Billoo went much
further, directing her listeners
to be cautious about “polite
Zionists,” naming Jewish feder-
ations, “Zionist” synagogues
and Hillel chapters whose civil
society world she said masks
an Islamophobic agenda.

Similarly, American Muslims
for Palestine had just published
a report that neatly divides the
Jewish community between
those to avoid — including the
organizations listed above, as
well as my organization and
others — and those it was
“safe” to work with. Both AMP
and Billoo placed Jewish Voice
for Peace and IfNotNow as the
only Jewish organizations on
the “good” list.

For those of us familiar with
interfaith work, this separation
of “good” and “bad” groups is a
familiar and pernicious rhetor-
ical and political strategy. It
happens to American Muslims
all the time, especially since
9/11, when others who are
suspicious of them and their
motives demand they pass
litmus tests. Such tests are
understandable: It is hard to
engage with “the other,” so we
often try to understand others
through the prism of our own
commitments and catego-
ries. Interfaith engagement,
meanwhile, can be a strategy
for building political power.

And when the goal is to amass
power, it is not surprising that
groups would instrumentalize
“the other” toward that end.

Doing so is very, very
dangerous. To divide American
Jews this way — between the
vast majority of American
Jews who identify with Israel
and are thus characterized as
dangerous and duplicitous, and
the small dissident minority
who are “kosher” — has two
major problems. The first is that
Jews, no less than anyone else,
should have the right to narrate
the complexities of our own
identities. We American Jews
do overwhelmingly support
Israel in one way or another,
and most of us are comfortable
with identifying as Zionist. Yet
we exhibit enormous diversity
concerning what those attach-
ments mean to us and how
they obligate us.

The overwhelming majority
of Jews in the world see the
emergence of a Jewish state as
something that changes the
meaning of being Jewish and
see ourselves attached to that
story in one way or another.

Our interfaith friends need to
approach this aspect of Jewish
identity with curiosity, rather
than dismissing it out of hand
through a predetermination
of what Judaism is “supposed
to be.”
Secondly, this caricature
of American Jews and our
commitments strips us of the
capacity to build relation-
ships with our Muslim friends
and neighbors — relation-
ships that could be rooted in
compassion and could even
lead to us interrogating our
own commitments. Urging
American Muslims to write off
the majority of American Jews
as enemies from the start is
to foreclose any possibility of
serious interfaith work, and it
undermines relationships that
could be politically valuable
for American
Muslims. The strategy is as counterpro-
ductive as it is dehumanizing.

I am not primarily
concerned with CAIR, but
rather hope that this kind of
thinking does not become
normative in Muslim spaces
(which at present, I do not
believe it has). I am grateful
to know Muslim leaders, like
my friend and colleague Imam
Abdullah Antepli, who are
speaking out to rebuke CAIR,
AMP and their leaders for
misrepresenting American
Islam, and instead are trying
JEWISH EXPONENT
to forge new paths forward.

After all, the best critiques of
any group or movement comes
from leaders inside their
own communities.

This has been the approach
of our Muslim Leadership
Initiative program at the
Shalom Hartman Institute
since it began: to invite Muslim
leaders into the internal conver-
sation of the Jewish people, and
especially our debates about
Israel and Zionism. Resilient
relationships are built through
trust and character witnessing
rather than through demar-
cating red lines at the outset.

What I fear most, however,
is how we as a Jewish commu-
nity act in a moment like this.

Some of my ire is reserved
for the Jewish organizations
named by AMP and the Billoo
speech as “good” Jews and who
are relishing the designation.

I mean, sure: Everyone wants
to be liked, and I understand
the political logic of using
external allies to help fight
battles inside your community.

Allies are allies, I suppose, but
these groups are welcoming
endorsements from those who
are actively and dangerously
delegitimizing the majority of
world Jewry. In doing so, these
“good” Jews are giving aid to
an antisemitic stratagem.

I desperately hope the
mainstream Jewish commu-
nity — those of us named as
the bad Jews — will not allow
the focus on CAIR and its
failings to thwart the work we
absolutely must continue doing
to build stronger and more
resilient intergroup relation-
ships. This is how polarization
works: Extremists exploit fear
to create divisions, and they
reap the returns when the
massive middle is scared away
from the important work of
seeking common ground.

I appreciate
that organizations like the ADL
need to confront CAIR in a
moment like this and call out
the antisemitism, but I would
hate to see this incident under-
mine years of patient work
— by the ADL and many other
organizations — in reckoning
with the past and building
trust. It would be catastrophic
if positive Muslim-Jewish
engagement in America were
to be sabotaged by individ-
uals and organizations unable
to imagine
alternatives to acrimony.

There is so much work
to be done. Muslim-Jewish
relations took on extra political
significance with the rise of
antisemitism and anti-Muslim
hatred since the 2016 election.

The Israel-Palestine conflict
continues to be exploited
not just by marginal Jews
and Muslims but by other
Americans, including in
Congress, to divide us. This
exploitation is especially sad
and ironic since America could
genuinely be one of the few
places on earth where Jews
and Muslims might forge an
extraordinary bond. Even in
Israel-Palestine, a future for
peace and justice for all its
inhabitants will need to be built
by Jews and Muslims together.

If, like me, you are a
member of the Jewish commu-
nity alarmed by the CAIR
story, don’t let it undermine
your efforts in realizing such
a future. Let their leaders
navigate their own leadership
failures, and let’s not make it
harder for them by drowning
them out. Instead, let’s lead
our communities and ask,
“What can we do to strengthen
the relationship
with American Muslims?” l
Yehuda Kurtzer is the president
of the Shalom Hartman Institute
of North America and host of the
Identity/Crisis podcast.

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