Antisemitism and Scapegoat Confuzzlement
By Fighting Antisemitism the White House Scapegoats Universities
Wednesday evening, May 21, 2025, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim who worked at Israel’s embassy in Washington were gunned down as they exited an event at the Capital Jewish Museum. The killer was heard to chant, “Free, Free Palestine,” when arrested. Immediately the US President tweeted that this was an act “based obviously on antisemitism.” This deplorable event provides the context for what I would like to say next.
Through discourse clarification I have repeatedly issued warnings: don’t believe the lies! Some of us tell falsehoods more frequently than others, but it’s a shared human trait that we lie in order to cover up our sin. When we pursue evil, we lie to make others think we are doing something good. I call this self-justification. Sometimes self-justification is accompanied by a victim, someone made to suffer in the name of the good. That victim is called the scapegoat.
What do you get when you defend one scapegoat in order to justify creating a new scapegoat? Confusion? Puzzlement? Confuzzlement?
It is good to fight against antisemitism
If you’ve not yet read Senator Chuck Schumer’s new book, Antisemitism in America: A Warning, I recommend it. In an almost paradoxical mood, the Honorable Chuck Schumer affirms that the period following World War II has been good for Jewish life in America while, at the same time, he warns us that the specter of anti-Jewish hatred is casting a new shadow.
“Now more than ever before in my lifetime, I fear the danger of rising antisemitism. We live in troubled and turbulent times; people are looking for something and someone to blame. Extremism and bigotry on the American right are growing more powerful….I worry also about the larger American left, which may look the other way and be too complacent or forgiving about those who exhibit antisemitism within their ranks (Schumer, 2025,153-154).
It is paramount that all non-Jews gather in solidarity around our Jewish friends and neighbors to ward off this emerging threat. Such a commitment is absolutely necessary for Jewish safety as well as the safety everyone in our democratic community. In brief, it is good that all Americans together fight and defeat the forces of antisemitism.
Anti-Anti-Semitism as justification for scapegoating others
Whereas in decades past our Jewish friends were scapegoated by the dominant society, something unpredicted is now happening in America. In the name of fighting antisemitism, others are becoming scapegoats for White House tyranny.
The White House has selected student activists on university campuses for harassment and even deportation. Foreign students wake to find their visas revoked. They are arrested and then sent via airplane to remote destinations so that family and friends think they have disappeared. What is the justification for denial of due process for this segment of our population? It is fighting antisemitism.
Anyone voicing public sympathy for the civilians in Gaza are dubbed by US government authorities as supporters of Hamas and enemies of Israel. Activists are labeled “anti-Semitic” and this justifies arrest and deportation.
This is part of a larger government plan to silence universities, to smother voices of dissent rising from faculty and students. As of this writing the US Department of Education has warned legal action against 60 American universities, cuting Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to protect Jewish students on campus.
On the face of it, this appears noble. The US government fights against antisemitism. Hooray! But the actual experience on campuses is one of aggression, bullying, and harassment. Under the banner of anti-anti-Semitism, the White House seeks to control the ideological bent of faculty and curicula. We’ve begun to see incarcerations by secret police of persons not categorized as antisemitic.
What we have here is self-justification and scapegoating (Peters 1993). The White House justifies denial of due process and discrimination against selected students and faculty because it does so in the name of anti-anti-semitism. In the name of protecting the rights of Jews, a new scapegoat has been created.
Jewish rabbis fight both antisemitism and the new scapegoat policy
This systematic confusion of antisemitism with sympathies for Gaza war victims is not misinformation. It’s disinformation. It is perpetrated by the Heritage Foundation’s Project Esther (PE). PE floats a conspiracy theory: an “anti-American pro-Palestinian movement is part of a global Hamas Support Network (HSN) that is trying to compel the U.S. government to abandon its long-standing support for Israel.” In short, anyone who feels compassion for Palestinians being bombed and starved in Gaza are part of the “global Hamas Support Network.” This renders them elligible for arrest as terrorists, according to the White House.
Might American Jews object? Yes, indeed.
According to Religious News Service, “550 US rabbis sign letter condemning Trump's antisemitism policy.” The document is actually “A Call to Moral Clarity: Rejecting Antisemitism as a Political Wedge.” Yes, to be sure, all Americans must fight against antisemitism. Yet, this noble cause must not become a justification for scapegoating university students and immigrants.
“We cannot allow the fight against antisemitism to be twisted into a wedge issue, used to justify policies that target immigrants and other minorities, suppress free speech, or erode democratic norms. Antisemitism is real, and it must be fought, but not by those who traffic in its imagery and tropes to suit a partisan political agenda.”
The protection of one ethnic group is tied inextricably with the protection of every such group in a democratic society. There is but one God and one human race.
“We affirm the Jewish teaching that “God is One” — a reminder, as Rabbi Elliott Tepperman teaches, that our liberation is bound up with the liberation of all people….We must stand firm in our values: protecting democracy, defending the vulnerable, and building a society where no community is used as a political pawn — because we are only safe when everyone is safe.”
Conclusion
The White House is telling us a lie. This lie is meant to confuse. On the one hand, the White House tells us it is protecting Jews from being scapegoated. On the other hand, this very defense of Jews justifies the creation of a new scapegoat, namely, faculty and students who show sympathy for the bombing victims in Gaza. And perhaps others with different reasons to publicly criticize the current administration will sone be made scapegoats under the same justification. Defending one scapegoat justifies creating a new scapegoat.
I would like to thank the 550 rabbis and cantors for their integrity in trying to ferret out the truth and to clarify my confuzzlement.
Substack PT 3283 Antisemitism and Scapegoat Confuzzlement
Wounded Child No Surviving Family
The Politics of Sin in Washington
Hate and Lies about Hate
Meet Ted Peters. Ted Peters posts articles and notices in the field of Public Theology. He is a Lutheran pastor and emeritus professor at the Graduate Theological Union. His single volume systematic theology, God—The World’s Future, is now in the 3rd edition. He has also authored God as Trinity plus Sin: Radical Evil in Soul and Society as well as Sin Boldly: Justifying Faith for Fragile and Broken Souls. In 2023 he published. The Voice of Public Theology, with ATF Press. This year he has published an edited volume, Promise and Peril of AI and IA: New Technology Meets Religion, Theology, and Ethics (ATF) and along with Arvin Gouw an edited collection, The CRISPR Revolution in Science, Religion, and Ethics (Bloomsbury 2025). See his website: TedsTimelyTake.com.
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References
Peters, Ted. 1993. Sin: Radical Evil in Soul and Society. Grand Rapids MI: Wm B Eerdmans.
Schumer, Chuck:. 2025. Antisemitism in America: A Warning. New York: Grand Central.