Wednesday, May 25, 2022
Elder of Ziyon
It would be great, if not a huge accomplishment, for everyone in the American Jewish community to jointly condemn the right wing antisemitic conference held in Hungary, and if there are American Jewish organizations who decline to condemn the conference, they should explain why.He's referring to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) that was held in Hungary over the weekend.
The conference was not antisemitic. There is plenty to criticize about holding an American conservative conference in Hungary, and about the choice of speakers, but that doesn't mean that the conference itself or the attendees are antisemitic, and it is libelous to say so.
But that's not the truly offensive part of Schatz's tweet.
Schatz is demanding an ideological purity test for all Jews - we must condemn what he doesn't like, and if not, we must explain why. He is implicitly saying that Jews who do not condemn the conference of being disloyal; only Jews must condemn the conference, only Jews must prove themselves to be against what he considers to be antisemitism, not everyone else. (Schatz himself is Jewish.)
Beyond that, the idea that if you don't condemn something you condone it or support it is thoroughly offensive. By his standards, he must condone child pornography, wife beating and homophobia, because he has never condemned them, at least not on Twitter. He must explain why!
There is also a huge amount of hypocrisy here. Schatz pretends that he is showing his strong opposition to antisemitism, and he claims he has "condemned all antisemitism." But he hasn't. He considers left-wing antisemitism to be mere criticism of Israel, and he falsely accuses those who insist on everyone condemning it to be trying to silence legitimate criticism of Israel:
He is accusing some members of Congress of trying to use antisemitism as a cudgel to accomplish political goals - which is exactly what he is doing in his own tweet!
The idea that Zionists claim that all criticism of Israel is antisemitic is itself a slander. No one does. Criticism of Israel's policy on Ukrainian immigrants or funding Arab communities or allowing Palestinians in Area C to build is perfectly legitimate. No one is "killing debate."
When Americans publicly support Islamic Jihad and Hamas on the streets of New York, that is not "criticism of Israel" - it is a call to genocide and to ethnically cleanse Jews from the Middle East. Schatz has never condemned that. And that is exactly what Schatz's tweet is defending, consciously or not.
So not only is Schatz imposing a loyalty test to American Jews, he is defending those who want to destroy Israel as not being antisemitic.
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