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Wednesday, January 08, 2025

Blind Allegiance: The Dangers of Uncritical Jewish Support for Social Movements (Judean Rose)


Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

Black lives matter. Of course they do. Everyone’s lives matter. But you don’t just go and support a group with an agreeable name without some due diligence. Or do you?

My progressive Jewish friends don’t seem to think any due diligence is necessary when it comes to being gung-ho for organizations like Black Lives Matter, or the Women’s March. If Black Lives Matter says it’s against racism then gulldarnit, my progressive Jewish friends are going to put a clenched fist BLM badge on their Facebook profile pic. If they think the Women’s March is for women, they’re going to put on a pink hat with a name that inwardly makes them feel thrillingly naughty as they outwardly express their righteous indignation.

These same progressive friends at some point take down the badges from their profile pics as the truth outs, as truth so inconveniently tends to do. Now they know: BLM is inherently antisemitic and anti-Israel—really the same thing. Were they sheepish when the Women’s March and the Chicago Dyke March excluded women and dykes if they happened to be Jews or Zionists? Or did they just quietly take down the badges on their profile pics and find something hopefully innocuous to support—something that doesn’t hate Jews or Zionists? (Good luck with that.)

But why didn’t they give these groups a thorough vetting before throwing their support behind them? The answer is pathetic: they didn’t believe that someone protesting racism could hate Jews. They didn’t believe that someone speaking up for women’s rights didn’t believe in Jewish women’s rights.

Even very, very intelligent Jewish women—women like Bari Weiss—were surprised when all the groups fighting against sexual violence, looked the other way when the victims of sexual violence were Jews. In her introduction to a podcast with Sheryl Sandberg to discuss the documentary Screams Before Silence, Weiss said, “Sheryl Sandberg watched the horrors of October 7th unfold and assumed that everyone she knew would rally against these unspeakable atrocities—particularly after reports of sexual violence and rape committed by Hamas started pouring in. But when she saw that many people didn't, or worse, that they denied it was even happening, she was stunned. She was particularly shocked that many of her would-be allies—prominent feminists and progressives in this country and around the world—stayed silent.”

During that same podcast, Sandberg described when drove her to make the documentary. “I never thought I would do this, and I wish this didn't have to be made. When October 7th happened, I was shocked. I think everyone was shocked. I was even more shocked afterward. The single most surprising thing I found was that in the weeks following, people started coming out with what I thought was clear evidence that this wasn't just mass murder; there was rape. Women were found naked and bloodied. Over and over, the stories were coming out, and what I then expected to happen is for people to say, ‘Oh my God, rape is never supposed to be used as part of war. No sexual violence is part of conflict.’ But that just wasn't happening.”

Sandberg made the video to convince the rape deniers who only deny rape when Jews are involved. But it didn’t much help. People who hate Jews hate them whether or not they are gang raped, tortured, kidnapped, and abused. They hate Jews whether or not they are Zionists, hate them whether or not they live in Israel.

“We made a video,” said Sandberg, “and that video went very viral. I tried to make that video really carefully. I mean, I have strong views on what's going on, but there were no views in this video. This video said, ‘No matter what flag you're flying,’ carefully including half Palestinian flags and half Israeli flags, ‘No matter what you believe, we have to stand united against the clear use of sexual violence.’

“Yet people were still not believing it. So, I helped organize a conference at the UN where we brought witnesses who stood there and cried and said, ‘Here's what I saw with my own eyes.’ Then I took those same witnesses to parliaments in Europe, where I felt they needed to speak out, but we still encountered some denial and significant silence.”

Bari Weiss details the various denials of October 7 rape even in the face of the rape videos that the terrorists proudly shared. “Max Blumenthal, a commentator and journalist, said that a woman’s body found naked from the waist down was simply because women at festivals like to dress in skimpy attire. Another example is the prominent British commentator Owen Jones, who said there's no evidence of rape. This is a guy with a million Twitter followers.

“Then there’s Briahna Joy Gray, who was Bernie Sanders’s press secretary in 2020. She said Zionists are asking that we believe the uncorroborated eyewitness accounts of men who describe alleged rape victims in odd fetishistic terms. She said, ‘Shame on Israel for not seriously investigating claims of rape and collecting rape kits.’ How do you understand the logic or the worldview that leads people to say things like that?

“Before this conversation,” said Weiss, “I checked in with some of the top feminist organizations in the country. Since October 7th, the National Organization for Women made a statement two months after the fact, which didn’t mention Hamas. UN Women, a group whose mission is to create an environment where all women can exercise their human rights, waited 55 days before saying anything. The International Committee of the Red Cross has issued nothing. I could go on for hours detailing the silence—or worse, weaselly statements where they fail to mention the perpetrators of evil actions.”

So much for “Believe all women.” (Perhaps they should change that to “Believe all shiksas.”)

As for Black Lives Matter, their adherents thought they were invincible. Probably because they saw how all my progressive Jewish friends were using that clenched fist badge on their Facebook pics. They saw how easy it was to pull the wool over our eyes under the guise of a fight against racism. But now we all know about the corruption of those at the top of the BLM food chain.

Take Black Lives Matter cofounder Patrisse Cullors, for example. Cullors resigned from the “charity” in 2021 after getting caught with her hand in the proverbial cookie jar. Back in June, the Washington Free Beacon reported that BLM is still reeling from Cullors’ abuse of power:

Black Lives Matter cofounder Patrisse Cullors resigned from the embattled charity in 2021, but the charity suffered from the excesses of her tenure well into 2023, according to a copy of its latest tax return obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

Under Cullors’s leadership, Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation doled out massive contracts to her friends and family, purchased a $6 million mansion in Los Angeles in 2020, and financed the purchase of an $8 million mansion in Canada in 2021. By the end of its 2023 fiscal year, the tax forms show, Black Lives Matter saw the $80 million windfall it raked in during the George Floyd riots of 2020 diminish to under $29 million as it hemorrhaged cash fulfilling lingering contractual obligations to Cullors’s associates.

Those individuals include Damon Turner, the father of Cullors’s only child, whose art firm Trap Heals received $778,000 from Black Lives Matter in 2023 despite performing no work for the charity that year.

But hey, Black Lives Matter, gulldurnit, so all those progressive Jewish women rushed to put up that clenched fist badge on their Facebooks. It made them feel good, like they were making a statement about their own goodness, I suppose. Because those badges certainly didn’t do a THING for black people or against racism. And neither did Black Lives Matter.

The Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), under whose umbrella Black Lives Matter falls (or at least did, originally), is drenched in Jew hatred. In its original 2016 platform, M4BL stated that “[the] US justifies and advances the global war on terror via its alliance with Israel and is complicit in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people,” that “Israel is an apartheid state,” and that “[the] US [has funded an] apartheid wall.”

The US justifies and advances the global war on terror via its alliance with Israel and is complicit in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people. The US requires Israel to use 75 percent of all the military aid it receives to buy US-made arms. Consequently, every year billions of dollars are funneled from US taxpayers to hundreds of arms corporations, who then wage lobbying campaigns pushing for even more foreign military aid. The results of this policy are twofold: it not only diverts much needed funding from domestic education and social programs, but it makes US citizens complicit in the abuses committed by the Israeli government. Israel is an apartheid state with over 50 laws on the books that sanction discrimination against the Palestinian people. Palestinian homes and land are routinely bulldozed to make way for illegal Israeli settlements. Israeli soldiers also regularly arrest and detain Palestinians as young as 4 years old without due process. Everyday [sic], Palestinians are forced to walk through military checkpoints along the US-funded apartheid wall.

Cullors, back in 2015, while speaking as a guest lecturer at Harvard Law School's 'Globalizing Ferguson: Radicalized Policing and International Violence' forum, opined that people must "end the imperialist project that's called Israel." “Palestine is our generation's South Africa. If we don't step up boldly and courageously to end the imperialist project that's called Israel, we're doomed.”

Is this really what my progressive Jewish friends, relatives, and acquaintances wanted to support as they watched BLM gain momentum? Did my fellow Jews support an end to Israel? Probably not. But they hadn’t bothered to check what BLM actually stands for. Black Lives Matter was a sentiment that brooked no criticisms or doubts about the respectability of the group going under the mantle of that oh-so-progressive-sounding name.

That same year, Cullors and her friends organized a solidarity trip to Nazareth called “Ferguson to Palestine.” To liven things up, they did a flash mob “specifically calling for the boycott, divestment, and sanctions of the state of Israel. We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it’s won.”

Here’s some of the other Jew-hating bullpucky they spouted:

We came here to Palestine to stand in love and revolutionary struggle with our brothers and sisters. We come to a land that has been stolen by greed and destroyed by hate. We learn of laws that have been co-signed in ink but written in the blood of the innocent. We stand next to people who continue to courageously struggle and resist the occupation. People continue to dream and fight for freedom. From Ferguson to Palestine, the struggle for freedom continues.

We who believe in freedom cannot rest. We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it’s won. We who believe in freedom cannot rest.

We sit in a sea of settlements while the sound of suffering is lost in the listening, as the voices of heartache hail the power of presence. People are portals, passports to heaven. Here is a protest in the form of a prayer. God is in the holy water lining the lower lids of a child’s eyes, a tear running against a cheek in Old Jerusalem. The lonely storyteller sits on a leaning chair in the market.

God is a woman holding a crying baby in her arms at a checkpoint, waiting at the gates like cattle. God is in the rubble, with gnarled hands rinsing in an open fire. A journey of dreamers sings through empty streets in Bethlehem. We survive in the telling, unafraid. We survive in the telling.

What if the occupations drain the Palestinians who had thrills underneath their teeth, and they suddenly awoke to see the ships at the Bay of the West Bank shore, discovering that the occupation existed no more? What if Zionism is the second coming of Christ? Destruction is the matriarch of sight, for if we are the Messiah, then God is not white. What if life is the afterlife, and we are already dead? The footage of the moment loops in your head, replaying until you die for the second time.

What a power influence your intelligence and mind, and those with lesser means—the oppressors. Would you still steal this land under that pressure?

Free Palestine! Palestine and Ferguson in the occupation. Ferguson and Palestine, we fight to free our nations.

Black lives matter! Black lives matter!

I believe! I believe!

They know that we know. They know that we win. We are all right.

Group hug! Come on!

Black lives matter! Black lives matter!


See? As long as you say it under the rubric of “Black Lives Matter!” you can say any gulldurned hateful lie you can think of. It’s all good. Good enough for my progressive Jewish friends to not bother to even do a rudimentary check of what these people are plugging—and they ain’t plugging DEI—they’re plugging antisemitism.

There really was such a wealth of material out there, attesting to the disingenuousness and horrifically hateful views of BLM. If only my progressive Jewish friends had been interested in examining even a modicum of the evidence. In 2016, for example, several horrible people made a film comparing anti-black racism, to “Palestinian” suffering under the supposed thumb of Israel.

From Moment Magazine:

Stragglers arrive; extra seats are formed into rows, and even more latecomers will be forced to stand. The lights dim, and a video recently released on YouTube begins to play on the projection screen. Entitled When I See Them, I See Us, it features activist-scholars Angela Davis and Cornel West, musician Lauryn Hill, actor Danny Glover, writer Alice Walker and dozens of other prominent activists, Palestinian and black. Narrators recite the title in rhythmic repetition as the activists hold up a series of slogan-bearing signs: “Racism is systemic. Its outbursts are not isolated incidents.” “Your walls will never cage our freedom.” “End state racism.” “Gaza stands with Baltimore.” Photos of dead Palestinian children alternate with photos of black victims of police shootings and scenes of Gaza rubble.

When the three-minute video ends—directing viewers to the website blackpalestiniansolidarity.com—the room bursts into applause. Dajani introduces the guest speaker for the evening, Reverend Graylan Scott Hagler, the senior minister of the Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ in Washington, DC. From his temporary pulpit, Hagler weaves a web of parallels—the walls of a maximum-security prison in Massachusetts to Israel’s separation barrier in the West Bank; property destruction in Baltimore in the wake of the death of Freddie Gray to the first and second intifadas. His voice frequently reaches sermon pitch, his audience full of nodding heads, murmurs of approval, snapping fingers, and calls of “Yes.”

For all my progressive Jewish friends who so proudly displayed BLM FB badges until they didn’t, here’s a taste of that film script:

When I see them, I see us.

Every 28 hours, a Black life is stolen by police or vigilantes in the U.S. Every two hours, a Palestinian child is killed in Israel's attacks on Gaza.

Eric Garner, 43 years old, father of six, grandfather, friend. Seven-year-old killed when an Israeli missile struck her home. Hashem Abu Maria, 45 years old, father of four, human rights worker. Ayanna Jones, seven years old, killed in her sleep by Detroit police.

I see us—harassed, beaten, tortured, dehumanized, stopped and frisked, searched at checkpoints, victims of administrative detention, youth incarceration. When I see them, I see us—from Rikers Island to Ophir Prison, from Raeford to Chicago, lives are being stolen.

Remember them. We are not statistics. We are not collateral damage. We have names and faces: Sakia Nadeem Kimani, Renisha Muhammad. They burned me alive in Jerusalem. They gunned me down in Chicago. They shot out our water tanks in Hebron. They cut off our water in Detroit. They demolished our homes in New Orleans. When I see them, I see us.

They see our rooms as dangerous, label us as demographic threats. They sterilize us without our knowledge and mark our children as criminals. We say no to all forms of oppression in U.S. cities and on the streets of Palestine. We respect the uniqueness of our struggles and our varied histories. When I see them, I see us—resilient, steadfast, determined.

I see who we were meant to be: alive, free, liberated, mapping out our destiny. I see hope, strength, love—a place where our children can dream. I see a road, a partner, a family, a world where we can rise and be seen.


Now, with Cullors out of the picture, it has become clear that the BLM people need a new Jew-hater in charge. Which is why they just hired Yonasda Lonewolf!

The Washington Free Beacon reports:

Black Lives Matter Grassroots announced in a New Year's message to its supporters on Thursday that it hired Yonasda Lonewolf, a rapper and activist with close ties to Farrakhan, as a "special projects specialist" to help the group as it works to "claim victory over the white-supremacist systems designed to kill our people." Black Lives Matter Grassroots said in the message it would enter 2025 with "the revolutionary spirit of our Haitian forebears" and featured an image of Haitian revolutionaries in the early 1800s lynching French military officers.

Lonewolf doesn’t shy from her devotion to Farrakhan, who has praised Adolf Hitler as a "very great man" and casts Jews as "termites" and "enemies" who control black people. She professed her love for Farrakhan in a 2016 Facebook post and later, in a 2020 Instagram post, described the minister as "my grandfather Min. Farrakhan who also eased my spirit." In 2023, Lonewolf attended Farrakhan’s annual keynote address, where she told the ministry’s propaganda website that she felt "rejuvenated" by his message.

"We are all under attack right now, and it’s the fight against good and evil, at the end of the day," Lonewolf told the Final Call, the Nation of Islam's official publication. "The fact that we still have a great leader amongst us is a testament that he’s standing, that we need to be able to continue." Other Farrakhan devotees interviewed in that article praised the Nation of Islam leader's stand against "the Satanic Jews" and "the Jewish powers that be."

As to the pink pussy hats, they were all the rage with progressive Jewish women. But that didn’t go very well, either.

From Barbara Kay in the National Post:

It should be obvious to progressive Jewish women by now that the Women’s March, an allegedly feminist movement, which allegedly supports the rights of all women, just isn’t into Jewish women. To progressive ideologues, Jews are burdened by the original sin of Zionism, whether they are pro-Israel or not.

This was made very clear in June 2017, at the Chicago Dyke March, when three Jewish LGBT Pride marchers carrying flags adorned with a Star of David (similar to, but not the flag of Israel) were ousted from the parade. This was an act of pure anti-Semitism by radical feminists. 

In fact, at the event in question, the 21st annual Chicago Dyke March, a member of the group said that the women were told to leave because the flags “made people feel unsafe” and that the March was both “anti-Zionist” and “pro-Palestinian.”

Two years later, things had not much (read “not at all”) improved. But at least the rules of the 2019 DC Dyke March were clear.

From JNS (emphasis added):

The DC Dyke March, returning to Washington, D.C. on Friday after a 12-year absence, will prohibit Jewish and pro-Israel pride symbols, including flags.

“Jewish stars and other identifications and celebrations of Jewishness (yarmulkes, talit, other expressions of Judaism or Jewishness) are welcome and encouraged. We do ask that participants not bring pro-Israel paraphernalia in solidarity with our queer Palestinian friends,” Yael Horowitz, a Jewish organizer of the D.C. march, told A.J. Campbell, who wanted to bring a Jewish Pride flag to the march, in a Facebook message, reported The Washington Post.

The progressive Jews I know are on the whole, accomplished professionals with Ivy League educations. Why then, do they completely lack the ability to see when they’re being taken for a ride? How is it that they’re so quick to support what isn’t? BLM isn’t about equal rights for black people. It’s about misusing funds and hating Jews. The Women’s March and Dyke Marches aren’t about women or dykes. If it were, Jews and their symbols showing up in solidarity would be welcomed. After all, what does Israel have to do with the women’s rights movement in the United States?

Answer: not a thing. It’s not even intersectional. The marches are a pretext to hate whatever floats their hate boat. Straights, whites, Jews, Donald J. Trump . . . whatever they hate most at the moment. None of it hangs together in any cohesive form whatsoever.

In the run up to the election, a friend explained to me that she could not vote for Trump because she feared her elementary school-aged granddaughter would someday not be able to get an abortion as a result. But Trump didn’t do anything with abortion in his first term, and has no intention of having much to do with it now. It’s not even a thing. He’s leaving it up to the states to decide these things for themselves.

And guess what, they already have. There is no place in America where a woman cannot get an abortion where there is a risk to the life of the mother. In fact, there are very few places in America where the usual exceptions are not in place. 


But you know, Kamala Harris told them otherwise, so they believe her. And voted for her. Because they are Jewish progressives, so they embrace whatever cause they are told is progressive without even the smallest effort made at verifying the facts. 

Are they aware that Kamala Harris supports student protests against “Israel’s genocide in Gaza” and tells them they have a right to “their truth?”

 

Probably not. Again, because they don’t care. What they care about is the appearance of being consonant with progressive values. They want to belong, so when others scream BLACK LIVES MATTER, they put those badges up on their Facebook pages. And when Kamala tells them that Donald J. Trump wants to control their bodies, they vote for her, despite her hatred of their homeland and the people who live there. They comfort themselves by saying, there's no way she hates Jews. Her husband is Jewish!

Will Jewish progressives wake up in time to save themselves? Probably not. They are too intellectually lazy to perpetuate their own species. That expensive education their Yiddisher parents paid for is basically a framed diploma on a wall. They graduated a long time ago, and no longer have to use their brain cells to dig deep and critically think about anything much at all.

Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

    
 

 

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