(RNS) — Tisha B’Av, which falls Tuesday (Aug. 13), is an annual fast day when traditional Jews mourn the tragedies that have befallen our people throughout history. The commemoration was first created to memorialize the destruction of the First and Second Temples, but it has continuously evolved into a commemoration of Jewish history seen through the lens of suffering and trauma.
As a child, I’d begin the day by tearing my shirt — a symbol of mourning — before listening to my mother, an Auschwitz survivor, share her experiences with friends and family. It was the saddest of days, meant to remind us of and return us to traumatic times the Jewish people have endured throughout our history.
On this Tisha B’Av, nine months after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, I hear unsettling echoes of my childhood fears of Jews being exiled from their land or murdered in pogroms. I hear the haunting melody of the Book of Lamentations, which is recited twice on this day: “Rivulets of tears flow from my eyes over the ruin of my beloved people. My eyes flow ceaselessly, without relief.”
This year, with Israel under threat from Iran, Hezbollah and others, Oct. 7 will be added to the list of tragedies we mourn together.
Sadly, it will also be added to the list of tragedies that are exploited for political gain.
On July 24, addressing a joint session of Congress, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a master class on how to deploy trauma for political purposes. He devoted a quarter of his speech to the suffering of the Jewish people — spanning from ancient massacres to the Holocaust, to threats from Iran and its proxies, and finally to Oct. 7, the Gaza war and the rising global anger toward Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to a joint meeting of Congress at the Capitol in Washington, July 24, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Netanyahu went on to conflate criticism of Israel with the perennial driver of Jewish trauma: antisemitism. “Just as malicious lies were leveled for centuries at the Jewish people,” he proclaimed, “malicious lies are now being leveled at the Jewish state.”
Netanyahu took aim at the International Court of Justice, which has ordered Israel to take measures to prevent acts of genocide in Gaza: “And don’t be fooled when the blood libels against the Jewish state come from people who wear fancy silk robes and speak in lofty tones about law and justice.”
Some liberal jurists, like former Chief Justice of the Israeli Supreme Court Aharon Barak, have argued that the ICJ’s warnings are exaggerated and unjust. But to call it blood libel, that ancient false accusation of Jews murdering non-Jewish children for rituals, is to seriously raise the stakes.
Netanyahu creates a false equivalence of the ICJ ruling with a classic antisemitic canard to evoke trauma and gain political advantage. It “can be politically advantageous to appeal to widespread experiences of trauma,” the political scientist Adam R. Lerner points out. Exemplifying this approach, Netanyahu uses trauma as a tool to imbue a feeling of existential threat and create an ethos of loyalty.
Just as Netanyahu generates fear of antisemitism in Israel, he exploits it to stave off his opponents in the United States.
Netanyahu pushes back on his American opponents by demonizing them. He associates those who criticize him with antisemitism, as he did when he invoked the Holocaust to blast The New York Times for criticizing the inclusion of far-right political parties in his governing coalition.
Most Americans have lost faith in Netanyahu and oppose his policies. Only 13% of Democrats, the party of the majority of Jewish Americans, have confidence in him.
Netanyahu’s strategy to counter his American opposition is to undermine the Democratic Party and, by extension, diminish the political influence of most Jewish Americans. To achieve this goal, he bolsters the Republican Party and its presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump.
Trump has become Netanyahu’s de facto proxy for painting Vice President Kamala Harris with an antisemitic brush since she became the presumptive Democratic nominee. Just days after huddling with Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago, Trump claimed that Harris “doesn’t like Jewish people” and called her husband, Doug Emhoff, who is Jewish, “a crappy Jew.”
A Trump administration would be a disaster for Jewish Americans. Trump’s positions clash with the issues that matter most to Jewish voters: abortion rights, gun control, climate action and, above all, the preservation of democracy. Trump himself has trafficked so much in antisemitism that Jonathan Greenblatt, head of the Anti-Defamation League, once chastised him: “We don’t need the former president, who curries favor with extremists and antisemites, to lecture us about the U.S.-Israel relationship. … This ‘Jewsplaining’ is insulting and disgusting.”
As the war in Gaza continues unabated, Netanyahu and Trump capitalize on a real spike in anti-Jewish hate and genuine concerns for safety to push a political agenda that contradicts the values of most Jewish Americans.
Amy Spitalnick, the CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, critiques this trauma-centered approach for its excessive emphasis on past trauma and the risk of retraumatization through the continual revisiting of painful events. She advocates using a trauma-informed lens to advance the democratic principles and policies at the core of American Jewish political engagement.
Using a trauma-informed lens allows us to acknowledge real fears without amplifying or sensationalizing them. It gives us the space to confront the difficult challenges Jewish Americans face, including navigating differing opinions within the Democratic Party on the Gaza war and addressing the antisemitism that has emerged in parts of the left. It also enables us to engage with traditional allies on the issues that matter most to us, issues around which we have common cause with other minorities and marginalized communities.
“The goal,” says Spitalnick, “should be staying at the table together with potential allies and partners — putting mistakes and differences aside where possible in pursuit of solutions to our common challenges.”
As I write, with the war dragging on and Israel under threat from Iran and Hezbollah, I pray for the trauma that must inevitably inform us to also heal. A seven-week period leading to Rosh Hashana (the Jewish New Year), known as the “Seven Weeks of Consolation,” begins today. This period is seen as a time of comfort and renewal after the mourning of Tisha B’Av.
These days are an opportunity to begin the process of renewal. That means integrating the trauma into our history but not being driven by it. It means raising voices of resilience and hope over those of trauma and fear.
(Jonathan Jacoby directs the Nexus Project, which works to counter the misuse of antisemitism as a political weapon. The views expressed in this commentary are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)
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