Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair
An article appeared in an online newspaper that serves the southern Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts: “Fighting a hate with no boundaries: Jewish Federation of the Berkshires looking for support in its ‘Hate has no home here’ campaign” (Berkshire Edge, February 7, 2025). I agreed with the article’s premise that hate is a negative. The latter conclusion was fairly straightforward. The article’s main focus is about the rising tide of antisemitism, but then the article goes completely off the rails when it notes that “… since the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel, antisemitic incidents have increased throughout the country, including Berkshire County.” Then the article fell flat and left me searching for reasons why the article would, by what I consider a gross omission, place the October 7th attacks, which were horrendous, in a total historical vacuum. The article does mention other kinds of hate such as against immigrants and the LGBTQ community. But there is no discussion of Zionism and its effects on the Palestinian people.
But here, from the perspective of someone who has major credits in history and a graduate degree in reading, is the article’s chasm. There is absolutely no mention of Israel’s wars and military actions in much of the Middle East and particularly its genocide in the Gaza Strip and what appears to be its intent to annex the West Bank. There is no mention of Israel’s ongoing military efforts of over 3/4 of a century to expand its boundaries and seek a “greater” and Biblical Israel.
Sometime during the past several months, a billboard went up in one of the most upscale communities in the Berkshires with the same theme as the Jewish Federation’s program to work against antisemitism. Within the last few weeks that billboard has been replaced by a mundane commercial advertisement.
Two years ago I called a local synagogue and asked to speak to one of its two rabbis about an antisemitic incident I experienced on a neighbor’s land when a worker there, who was also a town official in the community where the property is located, told me that he was “Working on the land,” and that I was a near shit for allegedly committing what the worker considered inappropriate actions. One of the so-called inappropriate actions was a discussion about 7 months of heavy construction on the owners’ land that often involved Saturdays and Sundays. The “Working on the land” statement could have come right out of the “blood and soil” propaganda of white supremacy. The worker/town official’s verbal attack ends with his statement that I’m “known to the police.” The latter is of concern to me as an old New Leftist. My call to the local chief of police was not returned to learn whether or not this was a true statement. What amazed me most about this incident, however, was that the rabbi I contacted never bothered to return my call. This incident is one of many in the community where I live. It also involves bullying. My conclusion after reading the article cited above was that only some kinds of hate have no home here.
Those in power here, in the bluest of blue states, don’t like people who speak out. According to one select board member, a governing group similar to a town council, involving another person who dared to speak out on a local school issue: There’s a certain way of doing things here. What those in power here want is total and authoritarian control no matter how insignificant these issues may be.
And I am not alone in being categorized as a “near shit,” since in the blood and soil interchange cited above, there is another person in town who is a “total shit” according to the worker and was, or is, a member of a local affordable housing committee. I write a more in-depth account of this intolerance in “Welcome to the Bluest of Blue States,” CounterPunch, August 17, 2023)
Because of the rural nature of the area, schools are regional. On February 12th, a regional high school went into lockdown over threats made by a student. The Berkshire Edge contained a piece about the incident, which did not include the fact that a parent reported that a group of three students allegedly were involved and that an online manifesto produced by one or more of the students contained “a hate-fueled screed that includes antisemitic, and anti-gay sentiment.” (“Mount Everett School Locked Down Over Threat,” iBerkshires.com, February 12, 2025).
The conclusion here is that some programs to counter hate are valid, while the historical context of hate doesn’t matter at all. Also, it seems that it is okay to report on hate connected to students as long as the issue is not covered in its entirety.
