This Is How Antisemitism Works

The radical left believes Jews in Israel are getting their comeuppance.

by Ben Cohen

Hamas’s sadistic attack on unarmed Israeli citizens has unveiled not only the terrorist organization’s deranged hatred of Jews, but much of the world’s too.

I have been thinking about how to convey the way it feels to be a Jew watching other Jews slaughtered live on social media, and to have most of whom you considered to be your political allies say nothing about it. Instead, activists on the left have focused on the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and insinuated that the Jews brought it on themselves. I’ve seen countless friends, colleagues and political commentators post messages of support for Palestine. Some have reposted images like this:

The image posted by the Black Lives Matter Chicago chapter is of one of the Hamas fighters parachuting into the music festival near Kibbutz Re'im celebrating the end of the Sukkot religious holiday. It is important for a number of reasons. But more on that later.

Opposed to violence on all sides

I have a long history of speaking out about the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. I believe it is immoral, brutal, and counter productive to the long term interests of Israel and its citizens. I have no issue with supporting Palestinians or their cause. But this is different.

Let us say for example, that the same events unfolded in Ukraine. Elite Ukrainian fighters crossed the border into Russia and attacked civilians at a music festival. They proceed to behead the festival goers, gang rape the women, and then storm into nearby Russian villages where they kidnap, torture then massacre entire families, including babies. Let’s say all of this is captured on social media and broadcast to the world.

Would you see, in the direct aftermath, images like the Black Lives Matter one above, or this supporting Ukrainian violence?:

Most people would be appalled by Ukraine’s depravity and would condemn it unequivocally. You could be against Russia’s barbaric invasion of Ukraine, but horrified by Ukrainians murdering Russian babies in their cribs.

With Jews it is different. You can post pictures of sadistic rapists parachuting into innocent music festivals and hail them as heroes. You can even call for them to be murdered.

Antisemitism is so deeply embedded in most societies that most people do not realize their own unconscious prejudices. This prejudice manifests itself in many ways, and in times like this Jews get to see it in all its glory.

The politics of oppression

Radical identity politics has provided many on the left with an ideological framework that allows them to exercise their unconscious prejudice towards Jews. Here’s how it works.

Radical identity politics posits there is a strict hierarchy of racial oppression almost exclusively based on skin color. Because Jews for the most part are white, their history of extreme racial persecution is ignored. The Holocaust? “This is white people doing it to white people,” said Whoopi Goldberg last year. “So y’all going to fight amongst yourselves.”

Jews then have “white privilege” and benefit directly from “white supremacy” (as I have been told personally on a number of occasions). Furthermore because Jews are often economically successful, they are as author David Baddiel notes “the only objects of racism who are imagined — by the racists — as both low and high status.”

“Jews,” he goes on in his book ‘Jews Don’t Count’, “are stereotyped, by the racists, in all the same ways that other minorities are — as lying, thieving, dirty, vile, stinking — but also as moneyed, privileged, powerful and secretly in control of the world. Jews are somehow both sub-human and humanity’s secret masters.”

So Jews aren’t just white, but super white.

This means when Jews die at the hands of officially oppressed people, they are getting their just comeuppance. The identity politics left aren’t necessarily celebrating the death of Jews, but they do regard it as less important than the deaths of Palestinians. And they are saying it publicly:

In the Left wing identity politics schema, people with white skin cannot be the victims of black and brown people. They are by default “colonial oppressors”, irrespective of their own history.

Not everything is about skin color

While I vehemently disagree with the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, there is a myth in left wing academia that it is some sort of European white supremacist project carried out by evil super white Jews. This is historic nonsense.

Israel’s fight against its neighbors has nothing to do with skin color. Many Jews in Israel are much darker than Palestinians (most notably the country’s sizable Ethiopian/Jewish population). Jews come from and have also lived in historic Palestine for centuries. The region has been fought over by empires for thousands of years, changing hands numerous times. In fact, Jews and Palestinians are essentially the same people with strong and traceable genetic links. Israel took land from Palestinians for the same reason the Egyptians took it in 1187, or the Ottoman Empire in 1516, or the British in 1922. They fought a war and kicked out the losers. This is the history of empire, and more recently the nation state. Had the Palestinians and other Arab countries succeeded in kicking them out over the past 80 years, we might be talking about Palestinian occupation of Jewish land.

Was any of this right? Of course not, but the Jews in Israel have no more or less right to live there than anyone else.

Contrary to the beliefs of left wing activists, Jews do not believe they are better than others because of their white skin. Their personal family histories show them otherwise. But left wing identity politics ideologues insist on filtering current events through their ludicrously narrow lens where oppression and conflict is always based on skin pigment.

Both sides

Hamas’s sickening act of violence is going to get more Palestinians killed, many of them entirely innocent. Israel will no doubt commit serious war crimes in its quest for vengeance, as it has done so often in the past. And they should be condemned for it because Palestinian life is no less valuable than Israeli life.

I will not blame Palestinians in Gaza for what is about to happen to them, just as I do not blame the Jewish babies for the inconceivable acts of violence done against them. Only a monster would do that.

Jews are not uniquely oppressed and their rights are not more important than anyone else’s. But they are an unseen minority subjected to hate from almost every segment of the political spectrum. We don’t want to have to explain why slaughtering Jewish children is wrong under all circumstances. It seems insane that much of the modern left thinks it can be justified, but here we are.

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