Friday, February 11, 2022
From Ian:
Gil Troy: Jew-Hatred in America: Not as Bad as Jews Think, Not as Good as it Could Be
Gil Troy: Jew-Hatred in America: Not as Bad as Jews Think, Not as Good as it Could Be
Although Zionists hoped that establishing Israel in 1948 would eliminate antisemitism, the Arab-Israeli conflict unleashed new waves of Jew-hatred. Professor Judea Pearl calls this Zionophobia, noting that the vicious, irrational hatred against Israel and Zionists is as illegitimate as the vicious, irrational hatred against the Jews underlying it. Clearly not every Muslim is antisemitic, and not every Palestinian is antisemitic, but there are many haters, often wearing keffiyehs as their symbol, who clump together Islamism, pro-Palestinianism, anti-Zionism, and antisemitism. The most publicized antisemitic violence in America this past year represents this second strain. Particularly worrying were the Palestinian protesters who turned violent during the Israel-Gaza conflict in May, beating Jewish sushi diners in Los Angeles, pummeling a Jewish cyclist in Times Square, and pelting a Miami family with garbage, rape threats, and curses, including “Free Palestine, f--- you Jew, die Jew.” There seem to be far fewer antisemitic Jihadists, like the Texas hostage-taker—or like the Seattle Jewish Federation shooter in 2006, who killed one and injured five, while berating “the Jews” for supporting Israel. Such Jihadists threaten all Americans. Still, 86 percent of Jews surveyed identify “extremism in the name of Islam” as an antisemitic threat.Jonathan Tobin: Jewish institutions shouldn't hire antisemites
Fighting Islamist antisemitism is harder for American Jews. Many fear being tagged as Islamophobic. The antisemitism of the Left, centered on American campuses, but now finding a welcoming home on the margins of the Democratic party and in many intellectual circles further confuses. Stemming from a two-centuries-long addiction some leftists and Marxists have had to antisemitism, this Jew-hatred hides behind a critique of Israel and support for the Palestinian cause. Over the last 40 years, empowered by identity politics and the passions stirred by the Middle East impasse, these Jew-haters have turned increasingly self-righteous. Often masking traditional anti-Jewish tropes behind modern human rights talk, insisting “we’re not antisemitic, we’re only anti-Zionist,” they feel validated by their alliances with a few far left-wing Jews and other social justice warriors. But it defies logic that when Black Lives Matter emerged with a manifesto in 2016, it only had one foreign policy plank—targeting Israel. There is no justification for seeing cartoons and protest signs, after George Floyd’s murder, blaming the Israeli army for centuries worth of American racism and police brutality. This “deadly exchange” campaign on campuses and elsewhere was characterized by the chant reeking of the medieval blood libel: “Israel we know you—you murder children too.”
Many liberal Jews feel torn. They want to ally with these social justice crusaders on other missions. They support many of their goals. Yet most—not all—Jews note how the obsession with the individual Jew has now become the obsession with the collective Jew (Israel). Many accusations, slurs, caricatures, and now memes recycle—and update—traditional anti-Jewish libels about Jews being rich, privileged, powerful, sinister—and bloodthirsty.
For some Jewish liberals, the confusion even extends into the fourth battlefront, against the crass antisemitism of the street. Most people can recognize the bullying of Orthodox Jews in their own neighborhoods, the vandalizing of synagogues, schools, and cemeteries, as unconscionable crimes. Yet, during a spate of Jew-beatings in 2019, one progressive rabbi tweeted: “the horrible attacks on Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn & elsewhere likely relate to long-term tensions & don’t fall easily into left/right category. Not parallel to white nationalists whose beliefs are based on antisemitism.” This activist clearly was more comfortable fighting antisemitism from the Right than acknowledging the antisemitism of her allies on the Left.
It is not politically correct to say but it is true: the violence epitomized by grainy video capturing some street thugs usually targeting Orthodox Jews, mostly in the New York area, is not random. Just as Trump’s rhetoric emboldened some Jew-haters online, certain ideological trends and conversational undercurrents in their communities embolden these criminals on the street. Some of the trends are universal or fester worldwide, from the jealousy of the “have-nots” to the obsessive demonization of Israel. Some trends find validation in modern progressive discourse, including the new, sweeping, stereotype of Jews as having “white privilege,” even though so many Jews—especially Israelis—are not white, not rich, and not free of Jew-haters. And some trends reflect certain African-American tropes, especially the obsession with Jewish shopkeepers and landlords—accusations fueled by demagogues like Louis Farrakhan and denounced by other prominent African-Americans like the basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
Finally, the instinctive, underlying, genetic antisemitism of yesteryear still lives. It has shrunk. It remains mostly underground. It has often been forced to coexist uncomfortably with Jewish friends and relatives. But what we might call the antisemitism of the country club or the golf cap, that age-old sense that the Jews are too different, too aggressive, too grabby, to be fully accepted in polite society survives. A recent ADL poll found that 61 percent of Americans agree with at least one of eleven statements about Jews, with accusations of clannishness, ambitiousness, and dual loyalty toward Israel most popular.
As far as Jessie Sander is concerned, she's being persecuted for her "political beliefs." She was hired by the Westchester (New York) Reform Temple last July but was fired 15 days later after the synagogue leadership was made aware of a blog post she co-authored a few months earlier when the Hamas terrorist group was raining down hundreds of rockets and missiles on Israeli towns and cities. Titled "israel [sic] Won't Save Us: Moving Toward Liberation," it contained a litany of lies and libels directed at the Jewish state, whose name the bloggers refused to capitalize.That ‘Palestinian Holocaust'
It spoke of the duty of "white American Jews" to support Palestinian liberation and rejected the right of the 7 million Jews of Israel to self-determination in their ancient homeland as "racism." Ignorantly declaring that Zionism was alien to Judaism, it also opposed all American aid to Israel. The article also repeated the "apartheid state" smear, and falsely accused Israel of committing "genocide" and "state-sponsored murder." As if that wasn't enough, it then repeated the antisemitic blood libel invented by Jewish Voice for Peace claiming that the Jewish state is training U.S. law enforcement personnel to murder African-Americans on the streets of American cities.
Nevertheless, in an article about Sander's lawsuit to get her job back, The New York Times characterized this litany of conspiracy theories and lies in a feature about her plight as merely a case that was about "a Jewish teacher" who "criticized Israel."
The notion that a person capable of spewing such bile at fellow Jews should be entrusted with the Jewish education of the children of families affiliated with this synagogue seems like the stuff of parody. But in the view of the Times, it was worth more attention that it routinely gives to violent attacks suffered by Jews in the Greater New York area. That this so speaks volumes about the way the paper is influenced by its increasingly left-wing staff and far-left Jews like Peter Beinart, who are doing their best to legitimize anti-Zionism as a normal thing for respectable liberal American Jews to support rather than complicity with antisemitism.
Indeed, it puts the Times in the same camp as the radical Jewish Currents publication where Beinart is also affiliated. That online magazine featured an article about the supposed injustice dealt to Sander on its home page, alongside another piece in which the expulsion from Britain's Labour Party of supporters of its antisemitic former leader Jeremy Corbyn was lamented.
Elder of Ziyon has taken note of a recent article in “the most influential newspaper in the Arab world” that calls into question the real Holocaust – the murder of six million Jews – and instead, claims that the “worst calamity” of the 20th century was the “Palestinian Holocaust.”
His article can be found here: “‘Most Influential Arab Newspaper’ says ‘Palestinian Holocaust’ worse than …The Holocaust,” Elder of Ziyon, January 30, 2022:
Ad Dustour is a pro-government Jordanian newspaper that was declared as the most influential newspaper in the Arab world in Industry Arabic’s latest rankings. It is partially owned by the Jordanian government itself, so it will never say anything that goes against official government policy.
Ad Dustour is not some disreputable checkout-counter tabloid; the Jordanian newspaper, chosen as the ”most influential newspaper in the Arab world,” must be taken seriously, even when it spouts nonsense. It can run articles like this, that question the Jewish Holocaust and bewail the real “worst calamity of the 20th century,” the “Palestinian Holocaust,” and be taken seriously by its benighted audience across the Arab world.
That includes Holocaust denial.
Columnist Rashid Hassan not only casts doubt as to whether the Holocaust actually occurred, but he parrots a claim that the “Palestinian Holocaust” was the worst calamity of the past century.
More than the Shoah. More than Cambodia or Rwanda or Darfur.
The Shoah claimed the lives of six million Jews. The Khmer Rouge killed between 1.5 and 2 million people in Cambodia. In Rwanda, between 500,000 and 800,000 Tutsis were killed by Hutus. In Darfur, the Arab Janjaweed killed between 80,000 and 500,00 black Africans. In the Bangladesh war for independence in 1971, the Pakistani army and Islamist collaborators killed between 300,000 and three million Bangladeshis. During the Ukrainian Terror-Famine, or Holodomor, of 1932-1933, between seven and ten million people starved to death. During the Stalinist repression of 1937-1938, between 700,000 and 1.2 million Soviet citizens were murdered — a small part of the total of 40 million people are believed to have died because of Stalin’s murderous rule throughout the 1930s. About 80 million Chinese died unnatural deaths when Chairman Mao ran the country, most of them in the famine following the Great Lea Forward. But what are all these, compared to the “worst calamity of the 20th century” – the “Palestinian Holocaust”?
He writes about how Holocaust Remembrance Day is a cynical ploy by Israel to gain sympathy and distract the world from the real genocide.
