In a recent essay, I interrogated collective responsibility as one of those dangerously predictable historical mechanisms that keeps returning, not through scattered anecdotes but through patterns that reappear under shifting political language. Since that piece appeared, two unrelated news stories have provided a clear window onto the same mechanism at work in our own time.

The first comes from a recent New York Times report. Across Europe, Jewish museums have seen attendance fall, security threats rise, vandalism increase, harassment grow more common, and staff exhaustion set in, all in the years since October 7, 2023. Directors describe a stubborn public misconception: institutions dedicated to documenting centuries of Jewish life in places like Belgium, Denmark, Germany, and Austria are now being treated as if they were outposts of the State of Israel. These are museums funded mostly by local taxpayers and focused on local history, yet some people now stay away because simply walking through the doors is read as an endorsement of Israeli government policy.

The second story took place thousands of miles away in San Francisco. California State Senator Scott Wiener, who is Jewish and one of the country’s leading voices on LGBTQ rights, has openly criticized Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, backed a ceasefire, opposed unconditional military aid to Israel, and even described Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as genocide. 

None of that spared him. 

While trying to join the city’s annual Trans March he was surrounded, followed, touched, shouted at, and personally berated until he left for his own safety.

Among the accusations thrown at him was the claim that he had “Zionist handlers.” Whatever one’s views on Palestinian statehood, the march itself, or Wiener’s politics, the episode stood out precisely because his easily verifiable public record did not matter. 

He was treated not as an individual officeholder but as a convenient stand-in for a state. At first glance the two stories seem unrelated. One concerns cultural institutions and local heritage; the other, electoral politics in........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)