From Ja’mie to Jerusalem: Redefining racism in the Israel debate

If the Middle East conflict is a race war between Arabs and Jews, does it mean supporters of Palestine, or Israel, are all being “racist”?

Abigail Wiley tells a personal story of getting drawn into the quicksand of that eternal dispute, in the spacious confines of the internet.

I FEEL COMPELLED to start with a spoiler alert for anyone who hasn't seen Chris Lilley's 2013 television series, Ja'mie: Private School Girl.

School Captain Ja'mie (Lilley in drag), believing that she's going to win a prestigious school medal, instead finds herself being questioned by school authorities about a compromising video she sent to a teenage boy from Africa in which she sings the school song while topless. Realising she cannot immediately come up with a satisfactory explanation, she accuses the teachers of targeting her for being in an interracial relationship.

This reoccurred when I saw a post shared on LinkedIn by someone I've known for more than 20 years. Let's call him Daniel (because that's his name). It was a link to an article by a student who had been asked to leave her Canberra sharehouse for being a Zionist — or, to use her own words, a ‘Jewish Zionist’. To protect her identity, I'll give her the pseudonym Ja'mie.

Ja'mie shared a letter she wrote to these housemates, stating that their action had ‘no other cause than racism’. It was accompanied by a brief author bio, alongside a photo of someone as White as I am. For reference, my matched foundation shade is “Victorian lead poisoning victim”.

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My main point, in writing this, is to criticise how consequences of one’s actions or political views can be dodged, by diverting to something else; specifically, here, by devising complaints about “racism”.

In rebranding her housemates' eviction of her for being a Zionist in terms of her being a “Jewish Zionist”, Ja'mie conveniently avoids taking responsibility for anything problematic the term represents — through shifting focus to the “Jewish” part. That identity most likely bothered her housemates not at all. Nothing in her article gave the merest hint of any problem over her race or ethnicity. The article certainly doesn't provide any examples to the contrary. So maybe the real issue was the Zionist ideology?

In the meantime, does it naturally follow that if any Jewish person comments on anything – and you disagree with that person's views – they can claim it's because of “racism”? On that thesis, consider whether Ja'mie would agree on points with Noam Chomsky, Katie Halper, Norm Finkelstein, Peter Beinart, Nathan Thrall, Hadar Cohen, Nora Barrows-Friedman, Sim Kern, Jon Stewart, Amy Goodman, Stephen Kapos, Nurit Peled Elhanan, Debra Winger, Ant Loewenstein, Aaron Maté, Omer Bartov; (and I'll have to stop here before my battery goes flat). If she objects to these Jewish commentators' views on Israel, we should then say that clearly it “has no other cause other than racism”.

Hey, I didn't make the rules; Ja'mie did.

I've spent a lot of my life in sharehouses in different cities, so I've seen a lot of sharehouse advertisements. Ideological alignment is among the most important attributes sought. Homes may be 420 (marijuana) friendly, queer friendly, SW (sex worker) friendly, Christian, vegetarian... I've certainly excluded myself or been rejected from households whose philosophy is too different from my own.

Although I've never met Ja'mie's former housemates, their mutual friends would have been able to identify them. I mean, it's Canberra, for goodness' sake: the city where it feels like there are only two degrees of separation from everyone. So she has left them somewhat exposed. We may understand a sense of hurt and humiliation over being rejected, or truly entertaining the idea it was a penalty for being Jewish, but Ja'mie's open letter doesn't seem to give any consideration to her ex-housemates' feelings, either.

In the past two years, we've heard a stadium full of soccer hooligans in Amsterdam chanting racist, genocidal slogans calling for “death to Arabs”, knowing that these people were likely all past or present Israel Defence Forces (IDF) soldiers in a position to achieve exactly that with impunity (before gleefully posing in their victims' ransacked clothing). Parents have seen the headless, emaciated bodies of children the same ages as their own, while hearing them callously dismissed as “human shields”.

I'm aware of people who've lost sleep and even gone on hunger strike as a result of these things, or their frustration at being unable to stop them. When someone who lives in your home expresses support for the ideology we've learned to associate with this horror, isn't it natural that this might affect your psychological safety? For comparison, imagine sharing your home with a supporter of the Rapid Support Forces or the Westboro Baptist Church.

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I hesitated before commenting on Daniel's post, fearing that I'd immediately become a target, but then I realised I was being a wimp by prioritising my own comfortable anonymity.

I recalled the International Court of Justice (ICJ) finding Israel to be responsible for apartheid in occupied territories, so I left this comment:

‘A White person being asked to leave a sharehouse for supporting apartheid is not “racism”.’

It was not too surprising to see a hostile message at the top of my LinkedIn feed next day.

“Moran D” knew my profession, not listed directly under my name, meaning she'd combed through my profile — immediately noted as an attempted doxxing. My specific workplaces aren't listed, thanks to past borderline stalking behaviour. This must have enraged Moran if she'd been hoping to encourage her contacts to bombard my employer with complaints.

I must say that I felt awfully important. I'd suddenly gone from being a very ordinary person, holding the same views on Gaza as the vast majority of Australians, to a justice-seeking public figure with enough clout to attract vitriol from strangers. I could finally count myself among people I'd long respected, such as Naomi Klein and Francesca Albanese, but with a lot less work or talent on my part.

In Moran D's post, addressing me directly despite being unable to tag me, she declares that Jews aren't White, because they're a ‘minority’ of 0.2 per cent and are ‘a people, not a race’. She also asks if I've ever seen a White Jew of African descent.

Actually, in Australia, it's now more like 0.4 per cent, the same as for Jehovah's Witnesses. Imagine that someone remarked on the Whiteness of a Jehovah's Witness of European descent and she responded thus: “You know, Jehovah's Witnesses are a minority, and there are Jehovah's Witnesses from Africa who aren't White, which means that I also can't be White.” You'd probably ask her to share whatever she was smoking.

“Minority” is not a synonym for “non-White”. Examples of other minorities in Australia are triplets, vegans, PhD holders, Family First voters, professional circus performers, Icelanders and people with Down syndrome. Members of these groups can also be White.

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Ja'mie isn't White because of her religion; she's White because she's low on melanin and because she may, therefore, enjoy the privileges of Whiteness in a society often hostile to those unable to claim it.

Moran goes on to express a hope that I don't have any Jewish clients, since I'd obviously discriminate against them for being Jewish. I didn't engage with this post, but do you know who did, by “liking” it? Daniel, who had known me for over two decades and had, in that time, never once been subjected to the slightest negativity from me on account of his religion, but who nevertheless supported a statement from someone who didn't know me suggesting that I would allow innocent cats and dogs to suffer – through my casual shifts at veterinary clinics – because their humans' religious beliefs differ from my own.

Basking in my newfound celebrity, I shared photos of Moran's post with as many people as possible and received a few unsolicited diagnoses on her behalf.

Was my reference to apartheid unfair? In Ja'mie's article, the existence of Palestinians is implied, which is far from a given among Zionists. She even claims to object to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and to want ‘all Palestinian people to have a home in Israel’, albeit in separate, adjacent countries. It almost sounds like her version of Zionism at least acknowledges and opposes its unpleasant aspects. However, she also “likes” Daniel's replies to me in which he insists that there is no apartheid.

Daniel's initial reply, by the way, was a blunt insistence that Israel isn't an apartheid state (because a random dude in Canberra evidently knows better than the ICJ), accompanied by a statement that Jews have historically been ‘excluded from Whiteness’, which certainly wasn't the case in apartheid South Africa, where White Jews enjoyed the advantages of membership of the most privileged of the four racial categories designated by the government — the Whites.

As someone who ate way too much cake last night, I concede that I'm in no position to offer life advice, but if I were, I would remind Ja'mie of the part of her article in which she claims to be a “proud” Zionist. If you really meant that, Ja'mie, just be proud. Hiding behind false accusations of racism gives the impression that you lack the courage of your convictions.

Actually, “be proud” is also the advice I'd give the original Ja'mie. Girl, you may be an objectionable person, but stop using this racism nonsense to divert attention from the real issue here: that entirely consensual behaviour with an age-appropriate friend isn't hurting anyone. Embrace your body positivity!

Abigail Wiley uses her real name but otherwise tries to keep a low profile, hoping to avoid abuses on the internet, which she will write about satirically and by way of complaint.