Friday, February 05, 2021
From Ian:
The Flames of Anti-Semitism Are Growing Higher, Fueled by Both the Left and Right
Nick Cohen: Why Jews don’t count to the ‘anti-racists’
The Flames of Anti-Semitism Are Growing Higher, Fueled by Both the Left and Right
The idea of “white privilege”—unfair, all-encompassing advantages inherent to white people at the expense of others—has been gaining currency for years in universities, media, and as part of the official curricula in government bureaucracies and corporate HR departments. But the notion of “white privilege” became even more prominent and widespread during the 2020 summer of protest—including among many liberal Jews, whose worldview is influenced by publications like The New York Times, and The Washington Post, and other elite institutions that have endorsed progressive dogmas of racial guilt. Branching off from the white privilege discourse, the hashtag #JewishPrivilege trended on social media in mid-June, attempting to cast Jews as the most powerful and oppressive of all peoples. The hashtag may have originated with far-right groups but it quickly insinuated itself into the far left, pointing to a cross-ideological obsession with Jews as all powerful agents of injustice and shadowy manipulators of global affairs.
Back Lives Matter-inspired protests also served as backdrop for the destruction of Jewish property and violent anti-Semitism. On May 30, rioters spray painted “fuck Israel” on Congregation Beth Israel in Los Angeles, where “protesters” targeted Jewish businesses with anti-Semitic graffiti and looting. It was too easy for groups with an anti-Jewish agenda—the hard left, Nation of Islam, and others—to make common cause with protesters, who accepted Israel and the Jews as another embodiment of the systemic subjugation they were trying to destroy.
Vivid examples were provided by the July anti-Israel “Day of Rage” protests across 35 cities, which rode on the powerful momentum of BLM. Ostensibly aimed at Israeli territorial policies, Day of Rage rally leaders, like the Harvard student who led one in Washington D.C., proclaimed the Palestinian movement to be “intrinsically tied to Black Lives Matter.” Hordes alternated chanting support for BLM and condemnation of Israel for child murder. At rallies in Brooklyn, chants of “Black lives matter” intertwined with “Death to Israel!” Building on the trendy anti-police sentiment, a protester with a microphone received wild cheers for: “When I saw that precinct burn, I felt closer to a free Palestine!”
The ideological fervor that mixed hostility to American law enforcement with vitriol toward Israel—as if they were two parts of a single system—was especially acute on American campuses. At the University of Southern California in June, students motivated by George Floyd’s death led a campaign of anti-Semitic abuse against the student council vice president, Rose Ritch, for her basic support of Israel. It started when the council was chided for insufficient diversity among its leadership. Its president immediately posted on Instagram that he recognized he was a “person of privilege,” inviting fellow students to educate him about race, and announcing greater outreach to diverse student groups. When Ritch did not individually respond, she was charged with being “outspoken on issues that alienate Palestinian Trojans.” This unexplained accusation was enough to incite a push for her impeachment and a barrage of abuse. Ritch feared for her own safety and ultimately resigned from the student council.
According to Yael Lerman, legal director for the pro-Israel group StandWithUs: “Since the protests started in the spring and summer, we’ve seen a one-third increase in reported instances of campus anti-Semitism.” The already alarming rise in online anti-Semitic attacks on high schoolers also appeared to increase this summer, said Lerman. The spike was largely driven by threats and hate comments on TikTok and Instagram, which Lerman tracks through reports sent to her organization by targeted students.
Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader and aging icon of American anti-Semitism, delivered a highly anticipated Independence Day speech—his “message to America”—in which he described Jews as “Satan” and the “enemy of God” and threatened Jews with their potential destruction.
Nick Cohen: Why Jews don’t count to the ‘anti-racists’
David Baddiel’s Jews Don’t Count is out this week; a piercing 28,000-word essay that throws you back to the age of pamphlet wars. His central and unanswerable contention is that, in a time of identity politics, when every persecuted minority is listened to, there is one ethnic minority large numbers of progressives do not want to hear from: Jews, one of the most persecuted minorities in history. Baddiel builds his argument by weaving in examples so skilfully all but the most bigoted reader has to accept he has a case. A few are familiar. The people on the UK left who stuck with Jeremy Corbyn after he defended a mural showing hook-nosed capitalists, that might have come straight out of Nazi Germany. But many are drawn from a world that is unfamiliar, to me at any rate. I never knew, for instance, that Alice Walker, author of the idolised novel, The Colour Purple, took the time and trouble in 2017 to sit down and write a poem bubbling with hate entitled ‘To Study The Talmud’.The Tamimi scandal on-air apology delivered to BBC Arabic's Trending viewers by the show's presenter
“Are Goyim (us) meant to be slaves of Jews, and not onlyIt was grotesque. But the idea that an African-American author could ever be cancelled for racism against Jews remains unthinkable to right-thinking people, even though Walker went on to endorse the works of David Icke, whose anti-vax lies could incidentally lead to the deaths of, among others, a disproportionately high number of black people suffering from Covid-19. In 2019, a musical version of the Colour Purple came to the UK. There was a hell of a fuss because Seyi Omooba, one of the cast, had once written an anti-gay post. The producers fired her, of course. Omooba’s prejudice was unforgivable, while Walker’s was, if not quite forgivable, then a matter of no consequence.
That, but to enjoy it?
Are three year old (and a day) girls eligible for marriage and intercourse?
Are young boys fair game for rape?
They tolerate the revival of medieval hatreds because they think all Jews are rich – itself a throwback to the Nazi and Communist stereotype of the Jew as banker and the medieval stereotype of the Jew as usurer. ‘Anti-Semitism, at this point in history, is primarily experienced as prejudice and hostility towards Jews as Jews, largely without aspects of material dispossession (such as structural unemployment) that manifest in other forms of racism,’ explained the communist writer Ash Sarkar, who had the grace to go on to criticise the 'left’s lack of literacy' on anti-Semitism.
Too many on the left think that Jews are rich and white therefore we should not worry overmuch about them. Except that not all Jews are rich or white. And even if they were, their richness and whiteness does not spare them from violence and murder.
For background, see yesterday's post: "04-Feb-21: The BBC is sorry they showcased a terrorist. But do they actually grasp the problem?"
The translation of the Arabic that follows (unedited, unchanged) was provided to us by BBC management. The speaker is BBC Arabic’s Rania ‘Attar; one of Trending’s regular presenters.
On 8 October, BBC Arabic’s Trending programme item on social media reactions to a phone call made by Ahlam Tamimi to a Jordanian radio station. Trending then broadcast a short clip recorded with Tamimi.
This item was in breach of the BBC’s editorial guidelines. Tamimi was convicted on terrorism charges and sentenced to multiple life sentences in Israel for an attack that killed 15 civilians including eight children, she is on the FBI’s most wanted terrorist list and is a member of an organisation proscribed by the UK and several international governments.
Therefore, any contact with her should have been approved in advance by senior editors in the BBC, as per our editorial guidelines. That approval was not sought and would certainly not have been given.
This item should not have been shown. It was a clear breach of our editorial guidelines and we apologise for it.
The BBC video clip is published here with the express permission of BBC management.
Our additional comments will be posted here in the coming hours.
Tel Aviv, February 4 - Political groups at the extremes of Israeli society with a small following cautioned today that the representative, accountable nature of the country's political system risks collapse unless those groups exert some control over the government.
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