The Woke Threat to America— and to American Jews
A century ago, anti-Semites sought to deny entry to Jewish immigrants on the grounds that they lacked the superior character traits of Northern Europeans who had populated this country in the 18th and 19th centuries and brought it to greatness. Now Jews face discrimination because they allegedly are co-conspirators with white supremacists or are simply part of the undifferentiated mass of American whites, the oppressor class.Bari Weiss: We Got Here Because of Cowardice. We Get Out With Courage
The name-calling and stereotyping are bad enough, but if the equity agenda is broadly enacted, Jews will find few opportunities to land jobs in the civil service, education (especially in higher education), corporate America, and the innovation-based, creative economy emerging today. After all, Jews constitute only 2 percent of the population, but they are overrepresented in these fields. In the cause of pursuing equality of outcomes, quotas are now proposed as the solution to ensure proportional representation by every subgroup in every sector of the economy. Jews have seen this movie before: Their numbers at European universities were limited, as was their representation in the civil service of some countries; during the interwar era and well into the 1950s, American universities placed unofficial but very real quotas on Jewish enrollments on both the college and graduate-school levels. Under the “equity” regime, Jews will face the same obstacles. For a small minority population, this would lead to marginalization and downward mobility, and eventually emigration to countries that value merit.
The high-minded Jewish defenders of the “intersectionality” and “white privilege” (or “white supremacy”) industry are right about one thing: These terms and their implications are not sufficiently understood. In the name of these ideas, Jews are cast as part of the white, oppressor class, and their achievements through hard work, merit, and investment in vital institutions are denigrated. If Jews do not wake up to the threat that progressive ideology poses to their way of life in America, they will find themselves on a steep slope of downward mobility, or worse. For Jews, nothing less than their equality is at stake.
They are not alone. Other American minorities also have much to lose if these ideas gain traction. Hispanic Americans have been redefined by progressives as nonwhites and given a new name that means nothing to them—Latinx. This catch-all effaces the very real cultural, ethnic, and historical distinctions among immigrants of various Latin American origins. Even more damaging stereotyping now is applied to Asian Americans, perhaps the greatest victims of the progressive ideology. Arriving in the United States as poor immigrants from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Taiwan, China, South Korea, Vietnam, and other countries, these newcomers invested themselves in hard work and transmitted a strong work ethic to their children, with the result that their offspring have risen rapidly. Now these same Asian Americans are told that they actually are “white allies,” accomplices of the white oppressor group whose advancement in society should be limited by quotas and their earnings redistributed. As cases making their way through the courts make clear, some of these minorities are fighting back. A still silent majority of white and black Americans also does not accept the assumptions undergirding woke ideas.
Jews, once again, are the canary in the mine, but if they engage in the battle of ideas, they will find large numbers of allies prepared to marginalize the woke ideology threatening our country.
Courage means, first off, the unqualified rejection of lies. Do not speak untruths, either about yourself or anyone else, no matter the comfort offered by the mob. And do not genially accept the lies told to you. If possible, be vocal in rejecting claims you know to be false. Courage can be contagious, and your example may serve as a means of transmission.
When you’re told that valued traits such as industriousness and punctuality are the legacy of white supremacy, don’t hesitate to reject it. When you’re told that statues of people such as Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass are an offense to Americans of color, don’t politely nod along. When you’re told that “nothing has changed” for African Americans, don’t dishonor the memory of civil-rights heroes by agreeing. And when you’re told that America was founded to perpetuate slavery, don’t take part in rewriting the country’s history.
America is imperfect. I always knew it, as we all do—and the past few years have rocked my faith like no others in my lifetime. But America and we Americans are far from irredeemable.
The motto of Frederick Douglass’s anti-slavery paper, the North Star—“The Right is of no Sex—Truth is of no Color—God is the Father of us all, and all we are brethren”—must remain all of ours.
We can still feel the pull of that electric cord Lincoln talked about 163 years ago—the one “in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.”
Every day I hear from people who are living in fear in the freest society humankind has ever known. Dissidents in a democracy, practicing doublespeak. That is what is happening right now. What happens five, 10, 20 years from now if we don’t speak up and defend the ideas that have made all of our lives possible?
Liberty. Equality. Freedom. Dignity. These are ideas worth fighting for.
Elisha Wiesel [WaPo]: Elie Wiesel's Legacy Includes Unapologetic Zionism
What would my father have thought of being carved into a church?
Today a likeness of my father — author, activist and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel — is being unveiled in the stonework of the Washington National Cathedral. My family and I are deeply grateful to Dean Randy Hollerith and all the leadership at the cathedral for this profound measure of respect. It is good to see that five years after his passing, my father is still being recognized for his global work for human rights and his singular message of hope amid darkness.
But I wrestled with this honor, and I think he would have done the same.
My father - author, activist and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel - didn't advocate just for the people of Kosovo, Darfur and Cambodia. He also supported Israel and defended her right to exist in peace and security. My father understood what it meant to live in a world without a Jewish state, and he saw the anti-Zionist movement as an extension of millennia-old anti-Semitism, which unfortunately is becoming more common and acceptable today.
Accusers throw the word "apartheid" at Israel, ignoring that thousands of Arabs serve voluntarily in the Israel Defense Forces and take their oath on a Koran or New Testament. Some celebrities charge Israel with ethnic cleansing, disregarding that as of 2017, the population of Palestinian citizens in Israel is more than nine times as high as it was in 1948. Meanwhile, almost all states in the Arab Middle East are Judenrein - "cleansed" of Jews.