Tuesday, December 12, 2023
Elder of ZiyonWhile I agree that the US is an exceptionally safe place for Jews, all indications are that things are getting worse, rapidly. And Levitz seems to be more interested in promoting his own political agenda than to discuss the real problems.
His first argument is flat-out wrong:
There are 7.3 million Jews in America. Only an infinitesimal fraction of American Jews suffer acts of prejudicial violence, vandalism, or harassment in a given year.
He's comparing the number of antisemitic hate crimes the FBI counts every year against Jews, and decides that it is minuscule next to the number of Jews in America.
But most antisemitism does not reach the level of criminal. The ADL survey of 2020 showed that a majority of US Jews experienced or witnessed antisemitism, 25% were personally targeted, and nearly one in ten had been victims of antisemitic assault!
Sweeping that under the rug is not analysis. It is propaganda. The number of crimes is an indication, not the sum total, of antisemitism.
And this survey was in 2020. Imagine what these responses would be today!
Levitz relishes going after antisemitism on the Right, and asserts that most philosemitism on the Right is really hidden antisemitism. But he simply pretends that there is none on the Left, by flatly saying that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism, when in fact it is just a masquerade for antisemitism. Yes, even when the anti-Zionism is from Neturei Karta, or socialists who are opposed to all nationalism but seem to spend all their time on Jewish nationalism, or Arabs who were antisemitic before Zionism existed.
Levitz is equally wrong when he says "calling for the establishment of a binational, secular democracy “from the river to the sea” is not anti-Jewish." Such a call was not anti-Jewish in 1935 but when there is already a Jewish state, calling for it to be dismantled and replaced with one where Jews would be a minority, where they will not have a Law of Return - which is the entire point - is indeed anti-Jewish.
He then tries to disprove the "horseshoe" theory that the far-Left as as antisemitic as the far-Right, based on a 2022 survey that had severe methodological flaws.
Levitz further says that "the existence of antisemitism within the pro-Palestine movement tells us nothing about the merits of the Palestinian cause." This is true in theory. But if antisemitism is baked into Palestinian nationalism from the start, then the story is a bit different. And not only were the Arabs in Palestine antisemitic long before modern Zionism, and not only was the first Palestinian nationalist leader the Mufti of Jerusalem an unrepentant Jew-hater, but some 97% of Palestinians today hold classic antisemitic attitudes according to the ADL global survey of antisemitism. Separating the two is willful deception.
Later, Levitz states as fact that Israel is guilty of apartheid, which is also an antisemitic argument - besides that fact that it is false, but the entire charge was created in order to demonize Israel with the worst possible charge of racism. The lie preceded the ridiculous footnotes and bogus arguments from Amnesty and HRW. So, yes, that is antisemitism too, and minimizing it is to deny the reality of what modern antisemitism looks like.
Sure, Levitz admits there is some antisemitism, and it is bad. But the thrust of the article is to downplay it while demonizing Israel himself. Which, in the end, justifies it.
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