The Mainstreaming of American Anti-Semitism

Words deemed triggering to persons or groups designated as victims are routinely cancelled by the progressive establishment, but antisemitic stereotypes are tolerated, expected, and even encouraged. Antisemitism is acceptable on the political left, right, and all points in between and has been mainstreamed in academia, the media, and common culture. Despite herculean efforts by liberal Jewish leaders to blame today’s surging antisemitism on white supremacists, however, there is evidence to suggest it is increasing far more rapidly among progressives and the identity communities they champion.

Moreover, white supremacists are not responsible for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (“BDS”) Movement, Israel Apartheid Week, street violence against the Orthodox in New York City, or the targeting of Jews on campus. Progressives are.

The liberal establishment nevertheless does its best to ignore leftist and minority Jew-hatred and overlook the use of classical tropes and stereotypes by progressives, including members of the Democratic Congressional “squad.” Indeed, Bernie Sanders embraces Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, while others defend them against criticism over rhetoric deemed disparaging to Israel or offensive to Jews.

The prevalence of antisemitism has been on the rise since the Obama administration, when bias incidents and hate-crimes against Jews proliferated. Nevertheless, Mr. Obama avoided acknowledging the anti-Jewish hatred that permeated his progressive base and often led to violence.

And how has President Biden addressed his belated recognition of the problem? By establishing an interagency council “to better coordinate U.S. Government efforts to counter antisemitism, Islamophobia and other related forms of bias and discrimination,” according to a White House press statement. Despite lip service regarding the “threat to the Jewish community,” however, the statement failed to stress the historical uniqueness of antisemitism. By implying that Islamophobia and other sundry hatreds are “related forms of bias and discrimination,” it instead equated antisemitism with prejudices that are fundamentally dissimilar and inapposite.

Not all hatreds are equal and such implied comparisons are inaccurate and tone-deaf to the fear and pain caused by antisemitism. Indeed, hatred of Jews is the world’s oldest, most pernicious, and enduring of all prejudices, and it is historically distinct from Islamophobia, misogyny, and other forms of bias.

No other form of bigotry has persisted for so long, produced so much anguish, and been so consistently defended by its purveyors or blamed on its victims – whether in Christendom, the Islamic world, or either end of the political spectrum. And no other hatred is as multifaceted, as Jews have been persecuted for thousands of years based on religious, ethnic, racial, national, cultural, economic, and xenophobic stereotypes. In European and Islamic societies, Jews were treated as quintessential aliens, the ultimate outsiders.

Antisemitism is the only prejudice that is acceptable in all quarters – from the extreme right to the woke left. It is enabled by a UN that delegitimizes Israel as a Jewish nation and falsely accuses her of persecuting minorities, but ignores real atrocities that occur around the globe, including the slaughter of non-Muslims in Africa, discrimination against Copts in Egypt, and persecution of Christian minorities throughout the Mideast. It is also fostered by liberals who question Israel’s legitimacy, politicians who appease Islamist terrorists, and journalists and academics who use historical revisionism to blame victims instead of perpetrators.

Ironically, those who enable antisemitism are most vocal in condemning all hatreds generically. They decry racism but refuse to acknowledge the pervasiveness of Jew-hatred worldwide and in progressive society. Organizations that demonize Israel and validate Palestinian revisionism (like BDS) are applauded, while classical antisemitic conspiracy theories and blood libels (e.g., that the Israeli military targets civilians and children) are updated for modern consumption and repeated in mainstream publications and classrooms.

Falsely equating antisemitism with Islamophobia and other prejudices overlooks the fact that bigotry in the US is steadily declining against most minorities but drastically increasing against Jews. It also ignores that the most significant increase in Jew-hatred today is coming not from white supremacists, but from Biden’s political base, including leftists, minority communities, and the progressive wing of his own party.

Thus, expressing faux concern for Jews against this political backdrop – without conceding the uniqueness or ubiquity of antisemitism – bespeaks deception, ignorance, or cognitive dissonance. What it doesn’t represent is honesty or integrity.

Biden’s proposed interagency council seems as lacking in backbone as the anti-hate House Resolution sponsored by Congressional Democrats in 2019, which though initially intended as an explicit condemnation of antisemitism fell far short of the goal. That resolution was necessitated by antisemitic rhetoric from the Democrats’ side of the aisle; but they couldn’t muster enough support for its passage until they rewrote it as a generic proclamation against hate without specifically focusing on Jew-hatred. The final product was a diluted statement that failed to mention the specific slurs that had signaled the need for such a resolution in the first place. Though touted as a moral victory by House Democrats, it was desultory and ethically shallow.

Like his party’s anemic resolution in 2019, Biden’s interagency council lacks moral boldness, despite cheerleading from Jewish party loyalists. And its omnibus mission statement reflects the ambivalence of an administration that is blind to antisemitism when it comes from the left, has BDS supporters working in the White House, and seeks to appease organizations that promote terrorism (e.g., the PA) and regimes intent on destroying Israel and exterminating her people (i.e., Iran).

The Democrats cannot claim moral high ground when they can’t even acknowledge obvious antisemitism within their party ranks or political base. They only disgrace themselves by failing to do so.

Detractors can say what they want about former President Trump, but they cannot reasonably accuse him of antisemitism in light of his philosemitic record. It was Trump who ordered the US Embassy move to Jerusalem, made confronting antisemitism a State Department priority, and mended a relationship with Israel torn asunder by the Obama administration. It was also Trump who made possible the Abraham Accords, which exposed the revisionist underpinnings of the two-state solution by showing Israel capable of concluding economic and recognition agreements with Arab nations without the need to create a hostile Palestinian state.

One can disagree with specific policies of Israel, or any other country; but opposing her right to exist by denying Jewish history is antisemitic. So is falsely accusing Israel of human rights violations, while ignoring real abuses that occur in China, Cuba, Iran, and elsewhere. And so is supporting progressive Democrats who verbalize antisemitism without fear of party censure and endorsing UN resolutions intended to bolster apocryphal Palestinian claims by denying the Jews’ well-documented history in their homeland.

Though progressive Jews do not create antisemitism, their kneejerk tendency to defend political allies who deny Jewish historicity, delegitimize Israel, and falsely accuse her of human rights abuses does help facilitate its acceptance by the mainstream. In fact, many progressives believe antisemitism is simply a response to bad Jewish behavior, including the reestablishment of Israel at the supposed expense of Palestinians – a people without historical portfolio whose narrative was created to delegitimize the Jewish State by repudiating Jewish history.

Moreover, self-delusion plagues the nontraditional community – where many Reform and Conservative rabbis deleted the “Prayer for Israel” after the election of Netanyahu and his coalition of conservative and religious parties. Such delusion is further exemplified by those who criticize Netanyahu’s goal of reforming a court system that would not pass constitutional muster in the US – where the executive and legislative branches of government are responsible for appointing federal judges (not a committee in which a majority of nonelected officials wields such authority as in Israel) and where court jurisdiction requires standing and justiciability (which Israeli courts do not).

Liberals’ criticism of Israeli judicial reform actually contradicts the constitutional and democratic principles they claim to emulate and is more consistent with the progressive impulse to circumvent constitutional democracy through judicial subversion – and undermine Israel’s right to determine her own destiny.

Such tropes have infected the mainstream as US antisemitism has skyrocketed. Sadly, the situation is exacerbated by liberals who refuse to challenge the antisemitism of their political bedfellows, and instead lend credence to hoary clichés that undermine Israeli sovereignty and threaten Jewish continuity.

And most of them are too blindly partisan to see the connection.

©2023 Matthew Hausman, J.D. All rights reserved.