The Lost Cause: Anti-Zionism, Oct. 7, and How Revisionist Movements Can Distort History

Every January, I study aspects of the American civil rights movement and pay tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. for bending the arc of our world toward justice. Since last year, I have been revisiting Lost Cause literature. Much to my surprise, the Lost Cause movement was popularized by universities and influencers in ways that are eerily similar to today’s resurgent antisemitism.

The Lost Cause is a popular revisionist movement that reframes the Confederate States in the US South as the victims of Northern aggression and Confederates as righteous and heroic actors of the United States Civil War. While the Civil War ended in 1865, many secessionists and Confederate sympathizers were determined to bring victory out of battlefield defeat through terrorism and a revisionist counter-narrative of the Civil War.  The tactics changed but the struggle for White Supremacy remained the same. The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) was founded in 1865 by former Confederate soldiers to realize the goals of the Lost Cause. As Charles Aycock, the former governor of North Carolina, later proclaimed, “From the mountains to the sea … we must disenfranchise the Negro.”

WEB Du Bois eloquently wrote in Black Reconstruction in America that the Lost Cause and its revisionist narrative was propelled for decades by elite American universities: “The real frontal attack on Reconstruction, as interpreted by the leaders of national thought in 1870 and for some time thereafter, came from the universities and particularly Columbia [University].” Du Bois further states: “The Columbia school of historians … has issued … sixteen studies of Reconstruction … all based on the same thesis, and all done according to the same method: first, endless sympathy with the white South; second, ridicule, contempt or silence for the Negro [italics added for emphasis].” As Du Bois concludes in his seminal book: “A nation-wide university attitude has arisen by which propaganda against the Negro has been carried on unquestioned.”

In addition to universities, influencers helped to mainstream the Lost Cause by disproportionately emphasizing the sins committed by Northerners and Southern blacks during and after the Civil War. From Birth of a Nation to Gone with the Wind to The Dukes of Hazard, the popular Lost Cause narrative celebrated Southern white culture and defiance of “outsider” meddling while downplaying the horrors of slavery and injustices of Black Codes and segregation. The occupying Union soldiers and administrators were labeled “the carpet bagger regime” and the Reconstruction “occupation” was viewed primarily as folly and oppressive.

Similar to the Lost Cause phenomenon, anti-Zionism is a popular revisionist movement that reframes the founding of Israel as a colonial enterprise and the Palestinians/Arabs as righteous and heroic actors of the ongoing conflict.  The reality is most Jews were forcibly expelled from what is modern day Israel into the diaspora by the Babylonians and the Romans, yearning for centuries to return to their sacred ancestral homeland, while many Jews remained in the area for millennia. Throughout the early to mid-1900s, Arab anti-immigrant activists in the Middle East pressured the British to restrict Jewish refugees in the British Mandate of Palestine, enabling millions of Jewish deaths in the Holocaust including 80 members of my family. Nevertheless, when the colonial British Mandate in Palestine ended, the Jewish Agency supported the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan to establish a Jewish and a Palestinian state.

Palestinian leaders and surrounding Arab countries refused to compromise and almost immediately attacked Israel in 1948.  The goal of the 1948 war against Israeli independence was, as clearly stated at the time, “to eliminate the Jews of Palestine, and to completely cleanse the country of them.”

Most neighboring countries are still determined to eliminate Israel as an independent nation, only tolerating a weak token Jewish presence in their midst. As Bobby Kennedy foresaw in 1948 after visiting the region, “They are determined that a separate Jewish state will be attacked and attacked until it is finally cut out like an unhealthy abscess.” Around 30 countries currently do not recognize Israel’s right to exist. A number of these countries openly support terrorism and exhibit a singular hatred of the Jewish state. Malaysia inscribes on its passports: “This passport is valid for all countries except Israel.” The Iranian president said he would “try to have friendly relations with all countries except Israel.” The Qatari government has given Hamas $1.5 billion over the past 10 years, and systemic antisemitism is woven into their country’s educational curricula.  Yet, Israel is widely vilified by the international community.

Much like at the height of Lost Cause influence, antisemitic and anti-Zionist sentiment today is being fueled by elite universities. University presidents refused to unequivocally declare that on-campus advocacy of genocide against Jews violates school codes of conduct. A Columbia University professor who declared Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel “resistance” has been rewarded rather than reprimanded: the anti-Zionist professor is scheduled to “teach” a course on Zionism! Professors and university-supported student organizations at places such as Harvard astonishingly blamed Israel for the horrors of Oct. 7, even before Israel’s military response, despite the government of Gaza explicitly declaring its desire to eliminate Israel through more such attacks.

It’s an upside-down time, where the party that seeks to commit genocide flips the script by labeling the party it wants to kill as evil and genocidal.

The anti-Zionist hostility on college campuses is palpable, as I observed during visits with my college-bound son. Numerous banners promote “the intifada” and decry “the Gaza genocide,” with no “free the hostages” or “free Gaza from Hamas/Iran” signs anywhere to be found.

Well-intentioned people usually gravitate to “the underdog” and social justice rhetoric. But what if the perceived underdog’s values or viewpoints are dangerous? And, what if the social justice slogans are misleading or nefarious? As Bob Dylan forewarns in Man of Peace, “sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace.” (A red flag for the well-intended: university professors and students echo former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, who participates in anti-Israel protests and claims the Jews are committing “genocide” against the Palestinians.)

Also similar to the Lost Cause, influencers today are legitimizing antisemitism and indifference to Jewish suffering. Eric Clapton’s recent claim that “Israel is running the world, Israel is running the show” epitomizes this perspective.  Throughout the world, musicians abandoned their hippie comrades in Israel. There has been no “We are the World” coalition to commemorate the Nova festival massacre or demand a return of the hostages taken from the peaceful music venue — even though Oct. 7, 2023, was the largest and most violent atrocity in music history.

A deliberate effort is underway to separate Jewish identity from Zionism, while branding Zionism as evil. Anti-Zionists hypocritically celebrate longstanding place-based connections of every identity group, except the Jewish Tribe.

Jews and the State of Israel are far from perfect. But Israeli efforts — along with shameful instances of egregious abuse, mistakes, and bigotry — should be viewed within the “bigger picture” context and without double standards. For instance, journalists and anti-Israel activists emphasize the number of deaths “on both sides,” implying moral equivalency or that a higher death toll on one side in and of itself shows the other side is wrong.

Yet, no reasonable journalist or human rights organization suggests that the Americans and English were the bad actors of World War II, even though the American military was segregated at the time, during “D-Day” the Allies bombed Nazi-controlled French villages and cities inadvertently killing over 20,000 French civilians, and an estimated 40,000 German civilians were killed by the American and English bombings of Hamburg. During and after the US Civil War, some white Union soldiers engaged in horrific behavior including instances of rape and pillaging of white southern communities. However inexcusable (and deserving condemnation), such misdeeds are no longer disproportionately emphasized or given equal footing with the perpetuation of slavery due to the waning influence of Lost Cause advocates.

Zionism is a Jewish liberation and self-determination movement that should be widely celebrated but instead is being quieted by antisemitic narratives and supersessionist religious theologies that erase Jewish indigenousness in the land of Israel. Historical documents and archeological findings undeniably prove a sustained Jewish presence in the land of Israel for thousands of years. Denying historical Jewish connections to the land of Israel is, as Yossi Klein Halevi states, part of an ongoing “war against the Jewish story” and should be viewed as a threat to indigenous people everywhere.

Zionists need to do a better job communicating the beauty of Zionism and history of the Jewish people, while not hardening our own hearts and minds in the face of adversity. Rising extremism within our own midst requires unequivocal condemnation and marginalization, including against Jewish-settler terrorism in the West Bank. We must cherish strength and security but continuously strive for peace and compromise, despite the long history of intolerance toward Jews and ongoing hostilities to Jewish sovereignty in the Holy Land.

Studying the Lost Cause offers opportunities to understand how harmful human beliefs and behaviors can become widely accepted. Long after the Civil War, American blacks and their allies were lynched, harassed, and intimidated to suppress black liberation. Universities and influencers for decades fueled anti-black hatred and oppression, while claiming to champion social justice. On the other hand, the abolition and civil rights movements show the difficult and ongoing efforts required to push back against slavery and Lost Cause themes. While the US Lost Cause and civil rights movements are unique experiences, Jews and our allies would be wise to learn from them to overcome our struggles for freedom and liberty.

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