Gerard Leval
History informs us that a two front war is very difficult to win. The campaigns of Frederick the Great, Napoleon and Hitler, amply attest to this. While usually the notion of a two-front war and its consequences is applied to military undertakings, by analogy it can also be applicable to other actions. Currently, there is one arena where this analysis seems particularly apt: the dramatic spread of antisemitism.
Traditionally, hatred of Jews has been the domain of ultra-conservative groups. It is indisputable that, over the course of hundreds of years, Jews have had to be on their guard against right-wing antisemitism. Royalists, reactionaries, authoritarians and Christian religious fanatics almost invariably found common cause in antisemitism. It was often only on the left side of the political spectrum that protection against the ravages of antisemitism could be found.
Among the most dramatic examples of this alignment occurred during France’s “Dreyfus Affair,” which engendered some of the most virulent political antisemitism of the modern era. It is those on the left who rallied to support Alfred Dreyfus, the Jewish army captain falsely accused of espionage against France, while the militarists, monarchists and anti-republicans spewed antisemitic hate. Similarly, with the rise of fascism in the 20th century, support for Jewish communities throughout Europe could often only be found on the left.
This pattern was so firmly established that it became ingrained in the psyche of Jews. On the strength of this historical experience, instinctively, Jews have tended to be more supportive of candidates from liberal parties. In the United States, that has usually meant votes for Democrats. It has also meant concomitant support for a multitude of left-wing causes of all types.
But history does not stand still. For years, I and others have expressed the need for the Jewish community to confront antisemitism where, in recent years, it has been most forcefully manifesting itself — from the extreme left. Few seemed to listen even though, for some time, anyone willing to look could see that the most virulent antisemitism has been sallying forth from the far left of the political spectrum. Whether in the United States or in other Western societies, antisemitism, often couched in terms of opposition to the policies of the world’s only Jewish state, Israel, has been part of the ideology of the hard left.
Too many on the left who profess to support the liberal virtues of human rights, equality and fairness have instead become advocates for anti-Western ideologies and have, in the process, found it convenient to intersect their perspectives with antisemitism.
Logically, the Jewish community should have confronted antisemitism at its new source. Extremists on the left needed to be challenged. Members of the so-called “Squad” and their followers, as well as academics and left-leaning journalists, who endlessly accused Israel and, at least by implication, members of the Jewish community, of an assortment of crimes, all needed to be confronted and challenged.
However, the obsession with traditional right-wing antisemitism remained too powerful for many in the Jewish community, and especially in the so-called organized Jewish community. Many major Jewish organizations whose focus has been combating antisemitism simply could not fathom that they needed to adjust their approach and to confront antisemitism from the left. They remained firmly focused on the age-old confrontations with the right.
Consequently, numerous have been those in the organized Jewish community who have simply failed to condemn the enthusiasm of the left-wing antisemites. And, beginning on Oct. 7, 2023, the weakly confronted anti-Jewish activity on the far left rose to a fever pitch.
Instead of expressing compassion for the victims of the savagery of the Hamas terrorists, many on the left promptly attacked the State of Israel and all of those who support Israel, in large part Jews. Public manifestations of antisemitism were unleashed to an extent not seen since the 1940s.
Unless confronted, antisemitism invariably engenders more antisemitism and the venom generated by this new wave of antisemitism has also aroused pockets of antisemitism that had lain hidden for two generations on the extreme right. Suddenly, some influential hard right-wingers, like Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes, seemingly coddled by even reputable conservatives such as Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, have begun shamelessly to regurgitate the defamatory antisemitism that had, for the most part, been repressed. Holocaust denial, international conspiracy theories and unremitting Jew hatred are once again emerging from the extreme right, where such hateful ideologies had lain mostly buried since the end of World War II.
A failure to stop left-wing antisemitism has provided a kind of legitimization to the purveyors of hate on the right. Until recently, even though antisemitism still existed on the hard right, an element of shame dampened the public dissemination of that antisemitism and limited it to a very few fringe groups. Failure to confront left-wing antisemitism has now provided cover for the reemergence of the more traditional antisemitism of the right.
The reluctance of many leaders of the Jewish community and others to address the virulent antisemitism of those on the extreme left has created that most unfortunate and difficult of circumstances: the need to fight a two-front war against antisemites, to wage a campaign simultaneously against those on the left and those on the right. Let us hope that this is a two-front war that can be won because there is no alternative.
Gerard Leval is a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of a national law firm.
