Thursday, March 18, 2021
Elder of Ziyon
Dear Mr. President and Secretary Blinken:As Jewish leaders, we write to you at a moment of both fear and hope. We are deeply concerned about the antisemitic violence and rhetoric we have witnessed worldwide over the last few years. We are hopeful because your administration has an opportunity to choose a new approach in response to the urgency of contemporary antisemitism.
No, their statements have shown that they utterly ignore all antisemitism that comes from the Left, from Black people, from Palestinians and Muslims. Which is most of it.
At this pivotal moment, our society is reckoning with centuries of white supremacy and with new, globally networked right-wing extremist movements — problems we will only be able to face if we understand antisemitism’s role in white supremacist and ethnonationalist ideologies. We feel compelled to raise our voices because we see our fights at stake, too, in the question of how the U.S. government will define and pursue the fight against antisemitism in America and around the world.
No one - and I mean no one - minimizes the threat of right-wing antisemitism. No one supports Nazis or white supremacists. No one says that the US shouldn't do everything is can to dismantle violent far-right groups. Their emphasis on antisemitism from the right, and only the right, is their way of shielding and excusing most antisemites.
Antisemitism is a racial justice issue. We have seen antisemitic conspiracy theories used to undermine Black-led movements for justice: false and dehumanizing claims that posit Jewish responsibility for Black brilliance and in so doing endanger us all. Too often, the same people deploying those anti-Jewish conspiracy theories then wield accusations of antisemitism as a weapon against progressives, especially Black and Palestinian progressives who criticize the Israeli government. All the while, Jews of color and their experiences of antisemitism and racism at the intersections are ignored. We need an envoy who understands how antisemitism and white supremacy reinforce one another.
Everyone knows that far-right nutcases are also anti-Black. But antisemitism is not limited to them, as these people are saying.
Antisemitism is an economic justice issue. The U.S. economy is in crisis. Conspiracy theories that blame economic suffering on Jewish financial control are being used to obscure the structural inequities that plague our society. To tackle economic inequality head on, we need leadership that is clear-eyed about how antisemitism is used to scapegoat Jews for the failings of our financial systems, weaken trust in government-led solutions, and undermine movements to build an economically just future. We need an envoy who is prepared to counter antisemitism as part of the fight for a more just, inclusive economy.
Antisemitism is a climate issue and a migration issue. Antisemitic theories wrongly cast climate crisis-induced migration as a Jewish plot to replace the white race — an idea that the gunman who killed 11 Jews at prayer at Tree of Life in 2018 used to justify his violence. As we prepare for humane and just responses to climate migration, we need an envoy who understands the threat of eco-fascism and the role antisemitism often plays in eco-fascist ideology.
Antisemitism is a feminist issue. Antisemitic ideas are almost always intertwined with toxic, hateful ideas about sex, gender, and sexuality. Over and over, we have seen violence carried out by men who have been radicalized to hate both women and Jews — but the connections between antisemitism and misogyny are under-emphasized, to all of our detriment. We need an envoy who is committed to dismantling antisemitism and misogyny together.
This is beyond absurd. Now that they have badly defined what antisemitism is, they try to minimize the danger of even that, by placing Jew-hatred in "context." This means that the fight against antisemitism gets subsumed under general progressive issues which, we have seen over and over, always have a higher priority.
If you look at antisemitism as a feminist and economic and climate and migration issue, you no longer have any tools to fight actual Jew-hate. Antisemitism takes a backseat to every other issue. All you are left with are slogans that Nazis are bad, which is pretty much the depth of this entire argument.
For all of these reasons and many more, we demand that the Biden administration choose a Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism who will commit to treating the fight against antisemitism as part of the fight for just, multiracial democracy. We need an envoy who is willing to confront antisemitism wherever it occurs, transcending the shallow framing of “left and right” and understanding both the disproportionate threat of organized, violent white nationalist antisemitism and the complexities of antisemitism across communities.
This letter mentions far-Right antisemitism six times and all the others are ignored. Who are the ones who put the issue in a shallow frame of "left and right"?
Antisemitism is found everywhere. Throughout history, antisemites of all creeds, colors and political identities associate Jews with what they despise most. This is why far-Right antisemites call Jews "communists" while far-Left antisemites call Jews racists, colonialists and child-killers; Black antisemites will say Jews try to control their lives by controlling their livelihoods; Muslim antisemites will say Jews are cowards and enemies of Mohammed; Christian antisemites will call Jews Christ-killers; Black Nation of Islam followers will call Jews slave owners. If there is one hatred that unites the world, it is Jew-hatred.
The more you know about antisemitism, the more you realize that the people who signed this letter don't know the first thing about antisemitism.
For too long, antisemitism has been used as a justification for Islamophobic policies and for the targeting of advocates for Palestinian rights, here in the U.S. and around the world. We need a new approach, carried out by an envoy who has the integrity to build bridges between communities and movements.
The utter inability of these Jews to even acknowledge the existence of Arab antisemitism - after Jews were ethnically cleansed from all Arab countries - shows you that they are not really against antisemitism.
Denying any form of antisemitism is condoning it.
One other point: While every other kind of bigotry is defined by the far-Left as expansively as possible, antisemitism is defined as narrowly as possible. People who want to throw the Jews into the sea, or who claim that Blacks are the real Jews and Jews are imposters, or that the Jewish state is the most racist state in the world, are not denigrated. Nazis are bad - but poets of color or Leftist rock stars or Palestinian leaders who echo Nazi literature are celebrated and their antisemitism, when called out, is excused.
The last thing that Jews need is an antisemitism envoy who so grossly misunderstands antisemitism as the signatories of this letter.
