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Dear Neighbor, This week has been a very challenging time for our community. The attack on Temple Israel was an attack on my home in more ways than one. I have been a member of Temple Israel my whole life – my parents were married at Temple Israel, I went to Hebrew school at Temple Israel, I was bar mitzvah’d at Temple Israel, and one day, God-willing, I hope to be married at Temple Israel. Temple Israel shaped me and made me the person I am today, it made me a humanist, and someone who cares about people who are different from me. It is the kind of place that cultivates proud Jewish leaders who feel called to repair the world. It’s also a place I took for granted. It was just always there. Ever-present. But the prospect that it might not be has been more devastating than I can express. The other place that made me who I am is West Bloomfield. To know that most of the world first heard of our home this week because of the hate someone tried to inflict on us is wrong. I want people to know West Bloomfield by the heroism of Temple’s Security team, by our amazing police and fire departments, by our township leaders, by the way the Chaldean community sprung into action to defend the Jewish community, from the way that we will lift each other up and heal together, across communal lines. That is what defines West Bloomfield and makes it the amazing community that I love with all my heart and am so proud to be from and to represent. We are West Bloomfield Strong. In my first term, I introduced the Michigan Hate Crime Act and the Institutional Desecration Act. Because of these landmark laws, Michigan now has among the most stringent and toughest penalties for hate crimes against people and against houses of worship — of any state in the nation. As proud as I am of these laws, clearly, they are not enough to prevent hateful terror from reaching the very community I promised to protect. Prevention begins by better understanding the problem we face. Antisemitism operates differently than other prejudices. It is a flexible conspiracy theory that sees “the Jews” as behind any geopolitical conflict, economic injustice, social ill, or cultural rot – dealer’s choice. In the Middle Ages, antisemitism attacked Jews as Christ-killers. In the 20th century it attacked Jews as racial pollutants on society. Today, it attacks Jews as an illegitimate sovereign nation, as in the State of Israel. As I see it, the most common antisemitic conspiracy today is that Israeli interests control the U.S. government – through the Jewish diaspora, American synagogues, organizations like HIAS and political outfits like AIPAC. This matters because the attack on Temple Israel should not be understood as an attempt to quote “prevent Jews from worshipping in peace,” but as someone attacking Temple Israel because it is proudly Zionist congregation and support the State of Israel. When someone attacks a Jewish synagogue because they oppose Israel’s military actions, that’s antisemitism. When someone vandalizes a Jewish-owned business because they oppose Israel’s leaders, that’s antisemitism. When someone hounds and harasses Jewish elected officials because we refuse to disavow our support for Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people, that’s antisemitism. To be clear, no one is saying it’s antisemitic to criticize Israel. There are many sane and rational ways one can engage in critical conversations and debate about Israeli policies, politicians, or even the nature of American foreign policy toward Israel, as there is about any country, without invoking conspiracies that endanger Jews. But too many influential voices are actively choosing to speak recklessly and whip up hate against Jews, radicalizing far too many people, especially young people. Like many Americans, I believe Vladimir Putin’s Russia to be a criminal terrorist state, but when was the last time someone bombed a Russian Orthodox Church, vandalized a Russian Cultural Center, or beat up a Russian restaurant owner because they oppose Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine? It doesn’t happen. So why is it regularly happening to Jews all across America? All Jews, no matter what we think of Israel, its leaders, and its policies, are deserving of equal treatment under the law and equal treatment in civic, economic, social, cultural, and academic spaces. Anything else is pure, vile, dangerous antisemitism. The relationship between hate speech and hate violence is cause and effect. The more anti-Jewish hate speech and anti-Zionist conspiracies are normalized and mainstreamed, the easier it becomes for more people to view all Jews, collectively, as legitimate targets for violence. That means: condemning and marginalizing antisemitic rhetoric literally acts to counter violence. Conversely, when people are silent or permissive in response to antisemitism, or worse, actually feed antisemitic conspiracies, they are complicit in establishing a permission structure for further violence against Jews. The public and political leaders alike have a crucial responsibility to dial down their rhetoric, to take their rhetoric out of the space of conspiracy, and into the space of legitimate political debate. For example, saying “I vehemently oppose the policies AIPAC pushes and believe it has too much influence in Congress” has a profoundly different tone and impact than “Zionists control the entire U.S. government, and we must quash their influence.” One is a subject for debate, and the other engages in wholesale conspiracy that endangers Jews. This crisis of antisemitism and anti-Jewish violence we face did not arrive overnight. It arrived through the passivity and silence of far too many individuals and institutions. But we are not doomed to failure. There are tangible steps we can take here in Michigan to arrest this crisis of antisemitism, and to prevent the radicalization that too often leads to violence. That’s why I have partnered with the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab (PERIL) at American University to bring data-driven, research-based toolkits, trainings, and curricula on preventing hate, targeted violence, radicalization, and misinformation using a public health approach. PERIL’s prevention resources are available for free to the public, and I would like to see every school district in Michigan implement their award-winning K-5 digital literacy curriculum that equips our youngest students with the skills to be resilient against propaganda and misinformation. I am also working on legislation to create an office on hate crime and extremist violence prevention within the executive branch of Michigan government, similar to those that exist in other states, to bring together public and mental health professionals, law enforcement, faith leaders, education, sports, academia, technology, and social media, and establish a statewide strategy for preventing hate crimes and extremist violence here in the State of Michigan. Rooting out antisemitism, hate, and extremism from our society, and addressing radicalization requires not just a whole-of-government effort, but a whole-of-society effort, too. It is incumbent upon each of us, individually and collectively, to cultivate spaces among our families, our friends, our colleagues, where antisemitism, conspiracies, and hate have no purchase. We cannot and must not fail. As your State Representative, this is the work I will continue to do.
Sincerely, Noah Arbit State Representative Proudly representing West Bloomfield, Commerce, and the Lakes |