Say hello to a major dose of classic anti-Semitism in the last place you’d expect to find it: on one of the Philippines’ most charming and idyllic islands.
It’s also the place where my wife was born and raised and where I fell in love with her some 20 years ago. So, you can imagine the pain and sorrow I’m feeling, both as a Jew and as her husband. I can’t, however, say I’m surprised.
Let me explain.
Chabad is an international Jewish organization with several chapters in the Philippines. Its mission: to encourage Jews, whether observant or not, to more fully embrace their religious and ethnic identities.
In Siargao, it also serves as a popular gathering place for young Israelis—many of them former soldiers—on vacation. Hence the problem: a burgeoning local movement to banish them from the island.
It didn’t start that way. The first niggles of discontent, in fact, were broadly aimed at foreigners in general who, some locals contended, were ruining the island’s rustic ambience. “Perhaps Siargao needs cleaning up,” one resident complained online. “Not only of pollution, but of foreign trash.”
It didn’t take long, however, for the chest-beating to focus on one nationality in particular: namely Israelis who, another Filipino complained, “are very loud and disrespectful!”
Then came the latest round of exploding heads, de-emphasizing Israeli behavior on Siargao altogether in favor of guilt by association with a “genocidal” nation. Not to mention, of course, the bizarre view of Jews as akin to Satan.
“What is happening here is a ripple effect of the war on the other side of the world,” writes Tokong, 27, the self-appointed guardian of Siargao’s cultural and religious purity, who claims to speak for its entire population. “Our neighbors are Christian and Muslim,” she continues, “who have lived side by side in peace for generations.”
Her solution: a petition to ban Chabad House, even though it’s a religious, not political, organization based in New York and not in Israel. Doing anything less, she believes, risks “another wave of modern colonization.”
To be clear, I understand—and, to some extent, even share—local fears regarding the foreign influx. “They’re bringing bad things to the island,” my Siargaunon wife said earlier this year, referring to the tattoo parlors, vape shops, alleged drug use, and bustling bars in General Luna. “It’s very different from when I was growing up.”
And I certainly can’t deny that some Israelis may have indulged.
But focusing solely on them is simply wrong. And politicizing the situation by likening it to an unrelated conflict worlds away is not only wrong, but wrongheaded. “Siargao residents unite in solidarity with Palestinians facing genocide, while standing against settler colonization of their island,” the Quezon City-based Philippine-Palestine Friendship Association ranted absurdly in a recent post lauding a “peace march” promoted by Tokong.
Which is especially disquieting given the historically good relations between Israel and the Philippines. Quezon City, in fact, has a sister city in Israel featuring an “open doors” monument thanking the Philippines for harboring Jewish refugees during World War II. And Israel is one of the few non-Asian countries allowing Filipinos visa-free entry.
“Filipinos are very nice people,” former Israeli Ambassador Ilan Fluss told me in an interview last year. “You couldn’t find nicer people anywhere on earth.”
Among other things, he and his successor, Dana Kursh, have fostered agricultural, educational, and cultural exchanges as well as encouraged two-way tourism. Not to mention offering emotional and financial support to the more than 30,000 overseas Filipino workers living in Israel, most of whom have refused to leave despite the recent tensions.
“I wouldn’t think of it,” one of them told me in August. “This is my home.”
It would be nice if, rather than demonizing Jews, Tokong and her friends tried making visiting Israelis feel at home too.
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David Haldane is an award-winning American author and journalist in with homes in Southern California and Northern Mindanao. His latest book is Dark Skies: Tales of Turbulence in Paradise. This column appears weekly in The Manila Times.
