#progressive antisemitism

I have yet to see anything on Tumblr about this specific topic yet but its still fairly new and developing but it NEEDS to be brought up. So I guess thats me this time.

There was a full on antisemitic protest outside of the Wilshire Boulevard Temple in K-Town in Los Angeles, complete with antisemitic slurs A La David Duke style, threats and acts of violence, intimidation and even doing this in front of their own children they brought to the protest scaring the fucking crap out of their own kids, allegedly in the name of Palestine and Palestinian children.

The synagogue, like many, is ALSO A CHILDRENS SCHOOL. And at the time HAD CHILDREN, TODDLERS, INSIDE. Who ended up on LOCKDOWN terrified because of these fucks. Also to add the children where there for things separate to the even they where "protesting", such as a mommy and me class.

And you know what event they where protesting? Safety. It was an event to teach both Jews and Koreans of K Town safety tips. They harassed, terrified and threatened literal toddlers calling the people inside "genocide supporters" over a fucking safety tip meeting. They painted the inverted red triangle, used by Hamas to mark their targets, over a school for children. While allegedly protesting for children.

This is a sick sick insanity tbh.

It's an unspoken (and sometimes spoken) idea in the Jewish community that, from the perspective of history, we're basically on our own at the end of the day. Though I do believe there are righteous among the nations (so to speak), as a population, social justice people have not dissuaded me of this anxiety - everytime I hear "oh x can't be antisemitic because they're [other marginilized identity]" I note that person has decided to write passes for antisemites. When Jews are told "oh but [other form of bigotry] is the REAL issue" I hear the speaker telling me they can't bear to consider us specifically, as a traumatized community in our own right. If I speak up about how another marginilized person inflicted antisemitic harm onto me, I'm more likely to be chastised for presumed bigotry on my end than for the inflictor of antisemitism to be held accountable (I must reflect my own biases, it's presumed bias to ask the same of goyim). The same people who go "uwu punch Nazis" refuse to examine, even in passing, the blood libel in their midst.

People can be right about one thing and wrong about another. They can be legitimately marginilized in their own right while still using systems of oppression against others. This applies to so many things, and antisemitism is certainly not an exception.

By NAYA LEKHET

Other strategies to combat anti-Zionism include demonstrating that Jews are the indigenous people of the Land of Israel, thus opposing the claim that Zionism is a form of settler-colonialism. The logic here being, a group of people who are indigenous cannot be colonists. While this is true, that is, that Jews are very much the indigenous people of Israel, it reinforces the progressive framework that power equals guilt. 

A third dominant strategy is to influence Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs in universities, hoping that in the mandated anti-racism and anti-discrimination trainings, DEI officers would include the long-suffering Jews. But as Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, founder of AMCHA recently writes, “it turns out there are numerous problems involved in trying to address antisemitism within a DEI framework... as a practical matter, DEI programs limit their ‘equity’ and ‘inclusion’ efforts to certain identity groups, which rarely include Jews.”

Focusing predominately on marginalized groups, DEI programs are not equipped to deal with the fact that for American Jews, “this is no longer the case.” DEI frameworks necessitate a worldview in which only marginalized people matter. By extension, Zionists, who are Jews with power, not only do not matter but must be dealt with opprobrium. This is not an opinion. It is a fact. In December 2021, the Heritage Foundation published a troublesome finding in which DEI staff harbor antisemitic views toward Israel and Zionism.

What, then, is the solution? At the forefront of this battle is the Institute for Jewish Liberal Values, founded by David Bernstein, whose 2022 book Woke Antisemitism: How a Progressive Ideology Harms Jews documents how the sweeping ideology of progressivism has given fertile ground for contemporary Jew-hatred, anti-Zionism, to flourish. Identifying a correlation between progressive ideology and antisemitism, Bernstein’s important work sheds light on how and why Zionism is perceived to be racism as progressive ideologues espouse the notion that people with power can be racists.

Naturally, the solution would be to disprove that Jews are privileged, or rather prove that they are beleaguered. But we are not. In numbers alone, we are, indeed, a minority. But we are successful; moreover, Zionism is the realization of the Jewish people’s will to take its rightful place among the nations: to establish secure political borders under the aegis of self-determination.

Antisemitism, in the form of anti-Zionism on the progressive left, is not an issue exclusive to college campuses. It is a common feature of progressive spaces: Pro-Israel students, activists, and staff at progressive organizations are forced to make a false choice between their Zionism and their progressivism in order to be included in movements meant to create a better world. I’ve seen and experienced this dynamic play out firsthand in over a decade of work in various progressive organizations. In today’s American progressive movement, Zionism, a progressive victory of self-determination for the Jewish people, has come to represent the antithesis of progressive values.

Why are we so afraid to delve into the problem of antisemitism on the political left? Of the exclusion of Jewish students on campus when they identify as proud Zionists, the rejection of Jewish participation in a marches meant to celebrate diversity and acceptance, the unwillingness to address the progressive movement’s most pressing issues side by side with Jewish organizations, the complete erasure of the Jewish connection to their indigenous homeland in Israel, and the idea that denying the legitimacy of the Jewish state is anything short of clear and blatant antisemitism? Why can’t we talk about it — all of it?

Is it because antisemitism on the political right is an existential threat to the Jewish people? There’s no argument that antisemitism on the right deserves our urgent attention. Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL compared it, in a 2021 Washington Post op-ed and again in the CNN special report, to the tornado that unceremoniously torches your community. But the antisemitism on the left — the kind Greenblatt compared to the slowly emerging threat of climate change — influences how society understands and engages with our community. We need not create a hierarchy of threats — we must name each one plainly, and address each in turn.

When I encountered it in real life I was in a really vulnerable spot, teetering back and forth between living-on-the-street homelessness and someone putting me up temporarily, and I put up with a lot. Heard things like "I don't know why we tiptoe around the fact that Jews are the problem" and raising my objection and hearing "Oh, I don't consider you Jewish. You're one of the good ones." In DC, among people who saw themselves as basically good, empathetic and justice-oriented.