So on Friday, the New York Jewish Week’s Jim Besser lists "fellow travelers" among the "conversation enders" that signal when political speech has crossed a line, and I enthusiastically echo him.
And on Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu uses the phrase in his speech to the JFNA General Assembly:
We know from our history that attacks on the Jews were often preceded by attempts to dehumanize the Jewish people – to paint them as vile criminals, as the scourge of humanity. This is why the attempts by our enemies and their misguided fellow travelers to delegitimize the Jewish state must be countered.
As my 12 year-old would put it: Awk-ward.
For me and Jim, at least. Bibi punches way above our league, and can use whatever elisions he likes.
So let me explain why I, at least, hate the phrase.
Check out this Wikipedia entry, for instance. Not for authoritativeness (although it rings authoritative to me), but for how any attempt to define the term defies, well definition.
Consider its association with communists: Does it mean Communist card-carrier? Communist, but not a card-carrier? Unwitting Communist? Unwitting Communist enabler?
Now consider the latter three: If one is accused of being a Communist without evidence, it is incumbent on the accuser to provide evidence. In other words, to outline why the accused’s beliefs make him a Communist. The same goes for showing that someone is, wittingly or not, enabling Communists.
Establishing such proof is hard work, and conflations are easy.
But the point of "fellow traveler," I suspect in most cases, is not avoiding hard work: it is the use of vague, unprovable associations to demonize one’s political opponents (and making this all the more meta, Bibi makes his point in a speech about the delegitimization of Israel.)
Look, it’s the 15th anniversary of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin.
At the time, there were those on the Israeli left who conflated the entire right — inlcuding Bibi, above all — with Yigal Amir. No one used the phrase "fellow traveler," as far as I can recall, but it was the same conflation, with the same intended effect. Bibi, with a good deal of justification, resented this.
But consider: Would not the loose robes of "fellow traveler" have hung as handsomely upon Bibi as they do upon those he now casts them? Yigal Amir believed Oslo was deadly for Israel; so did Bibi. Yigal Amir participated in protests where Rabin was likened to a Nazi; so did Bibi.
And so on.
These conflations are calumnies, of course, but it works both ways.
If Netanyahu resents being cast together with a traitor who murdered an Israeli hero, so should he consider what the effects are of casting together loyal dissenters with those who would destroy Israel.
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