In recent months, as conflict over the Gaza war has caused rifts on American college campuses, including at UCLA, where I attend, I’ve been thinking a lot about Grace Paley’s 1991 story, “Three Days and a Question.” In this short, autobiographical tale, the Jewish-American writer and activist narrates three scenes that take place over three days on the streets of New York. In each scene, a traumatized person holds out their arms. As the title suggests, Paley’s story poses sharp questions rather than easy answers. Questions about Jewish identity, anti-Semitism, the difficulties of unity remain as pressing as they were when Paley wrote it. (She died in 2007.)
All three scenes Paley recounts still resonate 30 years later, but the first is eerily familiar to our moment of conflict. The story begins as follows.
“On the first day, I took part in a demonstration against the arrest in Israel of members of the Israeli gang Yesh Gvul who refused to serve in the occupied territories. Yes, the meaning of Gvul is: There is a limitSimilar to today’s campus protests, this demonstration, which took place during the first intifada, was attended by large numbers of members of the media, including female news anchors.
“‘What do you think?’ asked Caster. ‘ you Think about it,” she asked a female passerby, about my age.
“‘Anti-Semite,’ the woman said quietly.
“The announcer said, ‘But they’re Jewish.'”
“‘Anti-Semite,’ the woman said a little louder.”
At this point, one of the demonstrators came forward and confronted passersby in heavily accented English. “Are you crazy? Well…listen to what we’re saying… Well, all of us Jews can say that. It’s me,” he said. It was me? Look! He held out his arm. “Look at this.” The passerby refused. But the demonstrators are reluctant. “Look at my number, what they did to me. My arm… you have no right.” She remains unmoved. “‘Anti-Semite,’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘I hate Israel,'” the protester, revealed to be a survivor tattooed by the Nazis, answered hopelessly. Ta. “No, no, he said, you idiot. My arms…you’re afraid to see…my arms…my arms.”
Pro-Israel protesters marched outside the campus of the University of Southern California earlier this month.
(Jae C. Hong/AP)
Many Jews will be familiar with the scene Paley painted. Whether on social media, in family discussions, or on campus, versions of internal Jewish conflict have been a constant feature of our lives since October. 7 Moments — Actually, they’ve been like that for a while. The horrific events of October 7 and Israel’s devastating war on Gaza have exacerbated tensions among American Jews over how to think about Zionism, Jewish identity, and Jewish ethics. While the mainstream Jewish community remains staunchly supportive of Israel, polls also show a widening generational divide with many young Jews supporting the Palestinian cause. Across the United States, Jewish students and faculty are on both sides of fences erected on campuses around Palestinian Solidarity encampments. Perhaps the divisions among Jews have never been more pronounced in this country.
Paley’s story also presciently anticipates an increasingly prominent phenomenon: the weaponization of accusations of anti-Semitism to suppress dissent to Israeli actions. As Paley highlights, even critics who have had the most extreme personal experience of anti-Semitism, namely deportation to Auschwitz, can be accused of anti-Semitism. Paley appears to have known for decades how politically influential and significant the issue of anti-Semitism would be.
Today we are faced with a situation where the accusations made by Paley’s passersby may have legal effect. On May 1, the House of Representatives passed the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act. If the bill passes the Senate and is signed by President Biden, it would add federal anti-discrimination law to the International Holocaust Remembrance Organization’s controversial “A Working Definition of Anti-Semitism.Beyond the ambiguity of the definition itself, the agency’s definition is susceptible to abuse because of the illustrative examples that accompany it, which disproportionately equate forms of anti-Semitism with criticism of Israel and Zionism. If signed into law, critics of Israel will be even more vulnerable than they are now.A look at Mr. Paley’s predictions and how we’re actually playing out. in germanabsurdly many Jews will be targeted as anti-Semites.
But Paley’s story goes beyond this disturbing encounter between protester and accuser. Her last two illustrations reveal that she is more broadly interested in how her confrontation with suffering and injustice causes discomfort. On the second day, the narrator meets a young man with AIDS. He offers money by baring his arm and showing the lesions. “No one is helping me. … Look at my arm. … Have you seen the lesions? That’s what people see.” On the third day, a Haitian taxi driver told He stopped a passenger, put his bare arm over the passenger compartment, and asked why refugees from his own country were being denied entry. “Why this skin, this black skin? Why do you hate this skin so much?”
The story ends with Paley’s own question: what could it mean, she asks, to have been confronted with an unsettling encounter with “that gesture, those arms, for three days in a row?” Her questions are our questions too: questions about how we should respond to excess suffering, conflicts with kin and colleagues, and clashing narratives about war and peace. Rather than offering easy answers, Paley’s story helps us understand discomfort as a necessary element of solidarity.
Today’s protests over the war in Gaza, like those described by Paley, are sparking outrage and accusations of anti-Semitism. Indeed, it is alarming to confront the reality of political violence. Gaza is not the only place of suffering on earth. There’s more than enough throughout. But if we look away or try to look away, like the passerby who mutters “anti-Semite” in the first scene, we risk becoming complicit in the injustices unfolding around us. Whether it’s outside your door or thousands of miles away.
Michael Rothberg teaches English, comparative literature, and Holocaust studies at UCLA.
