Phyllis Chesler: A rally against antisemitism is welcome, but will it slow America's antisemitism tsunami?
Almost 40 years ago, under a pseudonym, I began comparing the fate of American Jewry to that of European Jewry in the decade before the Holocaust. I was barely heard. Well, I was heard well enough to be cancelled by left and feminist groups and in certain publishing circles. Others, far more expert than I was, also began seeing what I saw.Jewish Activists Push Failed Leaders to Publicly Defend the Community
And now, here we are.
True, in May, Israel absorbed more than 4,000 rocket attacks – but it had the military power to fight back and to destroy many miles of Hamas's underground cross-border terrorist tunnels.
True, Israel has also faced Israeli Arab attacks, a fifth column if you will. It managed to quell these riots and attempted lynchings. Perhaps, as Efraim Karsh suggests, just such a fifth column endangers Israel's future more than external attacks do.
True, some individual Arab attacks on Jews continue, a handful of Israeli Jews have been murdered but this is known as the "matzav," the situation, one that is being "managed," not "ended."
In America, Jews are not managing the propaganda-cognitive war against us very well.
There are literally millions of internet sites in every language on earth, operating 24/7 to demonize the Jews and the Jewish state. University curricula, classrooms, and resolutions are being issued, sounding exactly alike, and condemning Israel as an "apartheid, colonial, settler" state. The United Nations, mainstream media, and Black Lives Matter allied with Free Palestine and Antifa forces are continuously demonstrating in our streets and being given media cover. "Progressive" Jews, including feminists, LGBTQIA folk, and postcolonial academics, are also on board with this way of thinking.
Where should we begin? For years, when I wrote about this situation, I'd say that it's "a quarter to midnight." Now, I must write, that we are long past midnight.
In our collective past, antisemitic demonization has led to pogroms and to a genocide. What is different now? Will all our brilliant and incisive exposes of the disinformation, all our rallies, be enough to stop the spread of Jew hatred?
I hope so, but I fear it will not.
It’s hard to ignore the simple fact that Jewish leaders have failed to stop or even slow the accelerating epidemic of Jew-hatred in America. Like failed generals fighting the last war, they have focused on Nazis and the political right — and have mostly ignored the changed battlefield for as long as they could. They have deliberately, out of political considerations, minimized the assaults coming from “progressives,” black antisemites, and radical Islamists. They failed utterly to understand how promoting tolerance of the intolerant may backfire.
In response to this failure, grassroots activists have been organizing to expose and to challenge established Jewish organizations. On June 21, 2021, Patti Munter published a scathing exposé of her Federation in Rochester, NY — a warning that establishment Jewish “leaders” in that city are not defending or protecting the community. And now we hear from activists in Raleigh, NC how they had to ignore bullying threats from their local Jewish Community and Relations Council and other Jewish leaders in order to confront a clear and present danger to the Jewish community.
“Deadly Exchange” is a vicious campaign that blames Israeli and American Jews for police assaults on American black people. It falsely claims that American police departments that take part in counter-terrorism and leadership training in Israel are actually trained to “terrorize black and brown communities” in America. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Yet promoters of a campaign to force city officials to boycott the Israeli training had a victory in Durham, NC, when on April 16, 2018, the city council voted to ban that city’s police department from participating in the Israeli programs.
Those who led the “Deadly Exchange” campaign were affiliated with Jewish Voice for Peace, an anti-Israel, pro-BDS organization that has partnered with antisemites like political activist Linda Sarsour and convicted terrorist Rasmea Odeh. By explicitly promoting Jew-hatred — particularly in black and brown communities — their efforts encouraged non-Jewish antisemites to come out of the woodwork, including a member of Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam, who called attention to the “Synagogue of Satan that’s always lingering in the background” and the “inordinate [amount of] control that some Jews have over the political system in this city.”
Those behind the Durham victory were encouraged to bring the campaign to its sister city, Raleigh.
Jonathan Tobin: The Jewish Stake in the Battle Against Critical Race Theory
Jews, like other Americans, have an interest in opposing these toxic ideologies—let alone their imposition on our educational system. The Jewish community ought to be particularly alarmed not only by the spread of such curricula, but also the effort to demonize those citizens with the temerity to stand up to the intellectual thugs who are behind them.Marxist, Extremist Support for Palestinian Terrorism Leads to Jew-Hate Throughout West
As we have seen in recent weeks in the wake of the latest fighting between Israel and Hamas, there is a direct connection between the acceptance of intersectional and critical race theory ideas and anti-Semitism. Those in Congress, the media and in the academy who are championing notions of white privilege and seeing race as the defining element of society are the same people who claim that Israel is an “apartheid state,” and that the Palestinian war to destroy the one Jewish state on the planet is a struggle against racist oppression. The distance between those lies and Jew-hatred is short; it is not surprising that acts of intimidation and violence, first on college campuses and now on the streets, have followed.
That ought to mean that those tasked with opposing anti-Semitism ought to be at the forefront of the effort against critical race theory education. Sadly, not only is that not the case, those agencies most vocal about the issue are lining up with the racial ideologues allied to the Black Lives Matter movement, not the parents, both Jewish (such as Elana Yaron Fishbein, who organized the No Left Turn in Education group) and non-Jewish in school districts around the country. The ADL opposed Trump’s executive order against race training and has continued to help demonize those opposed to such efforts. The same is true of the JCPA, the umbrella group of Jewish community relations agencies.
If there is anything we have learned in the last year, it is that critical race theory is an all-purpose permission slip for Jew-hatred. Since the divide on this issue has become one largely characterized by partisan affiliation, the ADL, the JCPA and many other liberal Jewish groups have lined up in favor of it and, more importantly, against those who oppose it.
This is madness. It is imperative that Jews join the movement to stop the twisting of American education in such a way as to undermine the cause of liberty, as well as endanger Israel and the Jewish community. That those who are supposed to be defending the Jews feel more comfortable accepting the partisan conventional wisdom about race theory is both a scandal and a tragedy.
For decades, most articles on the Middle East have portrayed Israel in a negative light, not as a democracy under constant threat. Willfully or not, they promote Jew-hate. Hamas is often described as a "Palestinian militant group," almost never as a terrorist organization.
Israel completely withdrew from Gaza in 2005. All the same, Israel is accused of imposing a "blockade" on the coastal strip -- without a mention that everything necessary for the residents of Gaza is allowed, or that what is being blockaded are deadly weapons. Also never mentioned is the extreme brutality of Hamas operatives towards their own residents of Gaza, who are all Arabs, or that the Palestinian Authority still supports and finances terrorism. The Palestinian Authority's rewards and incentives for murdering Jews are also always left out.
On June 24, The New York Times published yet another biased report: "Gaza's Deadly Night: How Israeli Airstrikes Killed 44 People". The Times stated that "on May 16, Israeli airstrikes destroyed three apartment buildings, decimating several families". It never noted that Hamas had attacked Israel, that Hamas uses civilians as human shields, or that Israel invariably warns residents in advance about buildings set to be destroyed, to provide time for the residents to leave rather than be injured or killed.
On May 18, when Israel was being subjected to some of the 4,000 missiles fired at it by Hamas, French Prime Minister Jean Castex... announced that he was "worried about the fate of the civilian populations in Gaza". He did not even touch on what Hamas and Iran are planning for Israel's population.