Tag: antisemitism

Opinion | What The Women’s March Can Learn From Marc Lamont Hill

littlegoythings:

“My reference to ‘river to the sea’ was not a call to destroy anything or anyone. It was a call for justice, both in Israel and in the West Bank/Gaza. The speech very clearly and specifically said those things. No amount of debate will change what I actually said or what I meant,” he tweeted:

By Saturday, though, Hill’s stance softened.

“I take seriously the voices of so many Jewish brothers and sisters, who have interpreted my remarks as a call to or endorsement of violence, Hill wrote in an op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

“Rather than hearing a political solution, many heard a dog-whistle that conjured a long and deep history of violence against Jewish people. Although this was the furthest thing from my intent, those particular words clearly caused confusion, anger, fear, and other forms of harm. For that, I am deeply sorry,” Hill continued.

At a time when hate crimes against Jews are increasing at an alarming rate, Jews have been especially invested in showing up in activist spaces to work for equity and to dismantle systems of oppression in the United States.

However, we hear over and over again that Jews are feeling shut out over their support of Israel.

It is in this context that Hill’s apology was a welcome start. This mea culpa, which took responsibility for his use of a statement frequently viewed as an anti-Semitic dog whistle, was unequivocal.

“As a communicator, I must take responsibility for the reception of my message,” he continued, adding that his problematic choice of idiom distracted from the substance of his speech. Earlier this fall, Hill distanced himself from notorious anti-Semite, homophobe and misogynist Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam, tweeting his strong disagreement with Farrakhan’s anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-Semitic beliefs.

He fell short, though, of condemning Farrakhan outright, saying he preferred to critically engage him on issues than throw him away:

The leadership of the Women’s March could learn a lot from Hill.

Hill did not distance himself from his view of justice in the Middle East.

He did not apologize for his inflammatory statements in support of BDS or armed resistance.

He simply said, I used a phrase that you heard as an existential threat and that is not what I meant. I am sorry. I will do better.

When called out on his association with Farrakhan, he immediately acknowledged the Nation of Islam leader’s anti-Semitic and homophobic statements and distanced himself from them.

Contrast this to Tamika Mallory, the Women’s March co-director who, shortly after refusing to distance herself from Farrakhan, tweeted: “If your leader does not have the same enemies as Jesus, they may not be THE leader! Study the Bible and u will find the similarities. Ostracizing, ridicule and rejection is a painful part of the process…but faith is the substance of things!”

Opinion | What The Women’s March Can Learn From Marc Lamont Hill

Arsonist sets fires at 7 Brooklyn synagogues and Jewish schools: NYC councilman

littlegoythings:

The New York Police Department received reports of fires at seven Hasidic Jewish institutions in a single neighborhood in Brooklyn — around the same time vandals spray-painted “Kill All Jews” inside a reform synagogue in the same borough.

City Council Member Stephen Levin and State Senator Martin Dilan released a statement about the fires Friday afternoon.

Following in the wake of the Union Temple hate incident, antisemitism strikes again, this time in Williamsburg. Early this morning, the NYPD’s 90th Precinct received reports of fires at seven locations in South Williamsburg, all of them Hasidic  shuls or yeshivas.

Twitter Ads info and privacy

“Earlier this morning, NYPD’s 90th Precinct received reports of fires at seven different locations throughout South Williamsburg,” the statement read. “The perpetrator set fires at local yeshivas and synagogues in the predominantly Hasidic community.”

“Tragically, it would seem these types of attacks are becoming all too common,” the politicians continued. “Words and speech are as real as any weapon, and I again call on the current administration to unequivocally denounce every and all hate groups. We need to do everything in our power to deny hate safe harbor, whether in Pittsburgh, Charleston, or here in Williamsburg.”

The NYPD, along with the Williamsburg Shomrim, or volunteer neighborhood patrol group, reportedly arrested a man suspected of setting the fires.

The Friday morning vandalism at a Brooklyn Heights synagogue led to the cancellation of a progressive get-out-the-vote event that would have featured Broad City star Ilana Glazer.

As NYC Councilman Chaim Deutsch noted on Twitter, there have been multiple anti-Semitic incidents in the week since the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre.

The incidents include swastikas found graffitied in Brooklyn Heights and Manhattan’s Upper West Side, the vandalism inside Brooklyn Height’s Union Temple, an anti-Semitic license plate that was removed in Queens and a Jewish man being verbally threatened in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood.

In the Crown Heights incident, which was reported by the neighborhood’s Shomrim on October 30, three teens allegedly threatened to stab a Jewish man and “kill all Jews.”

I’ve just learned of several incidents of arson in Williamsburg this morning. From what I’ve been told, several Jewish synagogues and schools were targeted by an individual who set fire to the garbage inside and outside of the buildings.

During a Wednesday morning briefing, NYPD Chief of Detectives Dermot Shea noted that the department has seen “an increase in anti-Semitic hate crimes, particularly swastikas, on buildings in part of the city.”

“In last 28 days particularly, which is a little troublesome, we have seen an uptick in that category,” Shea said.

The New York Daily News reported that the NYPD had logged 116 anti-Semitic “bias incidents” as of October 7 — including 12 assaults.

Arsonist sets fires at 7 Brooklyn synagogues and Jewish schools: NYC councilman

freuds-cokedealer:

““Anti-semitism is a primitive critique of the world, of capitalist modernity. The reason I regard it as being particularly dangerous for the left is precisely because anti-semitism has a pseudo-emancipatory dimension that other forms of racism rarely have”

— Moishe Postone

Here’s the source of the interview. It’s in an honest-to-God Marxist publication, in case you doubt this guy’s Leftist credentials.

Skin in the Game: How Antisemitism Animates White Nationalism | Political Research Associates

Written by Eric Ward, a Black organizer against White nationalism.

“The resistance I have encountered when I address antisemitism has primarily come since I moved to the Northeast seven years ago, and from the most established progressive antiracist leaders, organizations, coalitions, and foundations around the country. It is here that a well-meaning but counterproductive thicket of discourse has grown up insisting that Jews—of Ashkenazi descent, at least—are uncontestably White, and that to challenge this is to deny the workings of White privilege. In other words, when I’m asked, ‘Where is the antisemitism?’, what I am often really being asked is, ‘Why should we be talking about antisemitism?’

"And indeed—why? Why, when the president of the United States appears bent on removing as many dark-skinned immigrants from the U.S. as he can, and when men who look like me are shot in the street or tortured to death in prison with impunity? Why, when the leadership of some mainstream Jewish communal organizations level false charges of antisemitism in order to silence critique—whether by Jews or non-Jews—of Israeli government policies? Why, after decades of soul-searching by Jewish antiracists has established a seeming consensus that Jews—with Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews posited as an exception—should regard themselves as White allies of people of color, eschewing any identity as a racialized people with their own skins at risk in the fight against White supremacy? Why, when Jews are safe and claims to the contrary serve to justify rather than to challenge racial and other oppressions […]? Why, when Jews of European descent are supposedly ‘White,’ have long been, will ever be?

"I can answer this question as I have been doing and will continue to do: antisemitism fuels White nationalism, a genocidal movement now enthroned in the highest seats of American power, and fighting antisemitism cuts off that fuel for the sake of all marginalized communities under siege from the Trump regime and the social movement that helped raise it up. To refuse to deal with any ideology of domination, moreover, is to abet it. Contemporary social justice movements are quite clear that to refuse antiracism is an act of racism; to refuse feminism is an act of sexism. To refuse opposition to antisemitism, likewise, is an act of antisemitism.”

Skin in the Game: How Antisemitism Animates White Nationalism | Political Research Associates

liberalsarecool:

Capitalism needs Imperialism.

War makes money for lenders. The lenders create nothing. Their profits come from stoking conflicts.

Basic point taken, but be aware that there’s a long antisemitic history behind the idea that “the [money]lenders create nothing.” Throughout the middle ages, an Aristotelian argument that it is unnatural for barren metal to generate profit was used to denigrate the Jewish “usurers” who did lend money at interest because the Church forbade Christians to do so. But even while hating and despising them, Christians still made use of Jewish moneylenders – because sometimes they needed an infusion of cash to fund a project before it could start bringing in revenue, and it’s hard to convince someone to hand over their cash without the promise that there’s an eventual benefit in it for them. There’s only so far “Christian charity” can motivate people.

Please do not equate the system of capitalism – the profit motive as the (supposed) engine of societal prosperity, the exploitation of underpaid labor by the owners of enterprise – with the practice of lending money at interest. Yes, a lot of “financial services” seem to involve pointlessly moving money around in a way that profits no one but the bankers and a few very wealthy investors. Yes, there’s a lot of profit to be made in war – some for lending banks, who get to loan very large amounts of money to the government, an enormously wealthy and generally very reliable borrower, but mostly for manufacturers of military equipment. But big projects in art, science, medicine, and education – the construction of a museum, a lab, a hospital, a university – also require loans. Even if all enterprises were communally owned and the profits equitably shared among the workers, there would still need to be institutions that were willing to provide the initial influx of cash to pay for the materials and labor required to start the enterprise. Sometimes the lenders are ordinary citizens who buy government bonds; since there’s a return on the bonds, the people who buy them are still lending money at interest.

And no, it is no longer true that most of the people in the business of lending money for interest are Jewish. Nonetheless, the association persists in the popular imagination, and antisemitic conspiracy theories on both the Right and the Left still imagine that Jews control the international banking system as well as large swaths of the media and the political establishment, fomenting wars for their own profit. Warnings about the military-industrial complex are completely appropriate and need not provide any fuel to such conspiracy theories… but maybe don’t make it about moneylending in the first instance.

vermiciousyid:

fancynewaddress:

thecoppercow:

(link) 

A British Jewish charity building. Every single court and appeal found no doubt that these two were guilty. But Corbyn didn’t care.

Much like his letter in defense of the homophobic holocaust denying hate preacher (who was literally caught on tape and in his own blogs), or even Putin’s forces dropping a nerve toxin in an english town and killing an innocent British civilian while trying to get at an ex-spy – I suspect that actually, he knows full well they did it. He doesn’t actually doubt it. He knows the evidence is there, but this faux-doubt is his technique of slyly ignoring that.

When he talks about ‘miscarriages of justice’ or ‘looking at the facts’ (another Corbyn fave), it isn’t because he truly believes it. It’s because he secretly agrees with them, and wants to excuse them.

Jeremy Corbyn is an anti-Semite.

I don’t want to hear Corbyn supporters saying he isn’t antisemitic. Admit that you don’t give a shit about Jews if it nationalizes the trains. At least that’s honest. Well, except for those of you who hate Jews, straight up, and that’s what appeals about him.

tikkunolamorgtfo:

unaligned-valkyrie:

jessicamiriamdrew:

tikkunolamorgtfo:

panarchie:

unaligned-valkyrie:

So people are saying that Ruby Rose doesn’t identify as a lesbian (she’s very gay as far as I know) and isn’t Jewish so therefore shouldn’t play Batwoman. What the actual fuck. Can people please stop being offended just for the sake of being offended. Sure, whitewashing is an issue in Hollywood, and it’s something that needs to change. But, NEWSFLASH, someone’s religion doesn’t dictate whether or not they can play a character of that religion. 

This whole being offended by something because you feel like you should be offended is ridiculous. Actors are actors, they play a part. It doesn’t matter if they have the same religious background as that character, it doesn’t matter if they share the same sexuality of that character. They’re actors, they pretend, that’s literally their job. 

I’m not Jewish so it’s not my place to comment on this but maybe @tikkunolamorgtfo or @fromchaostocosmos could weigh in?

@unaligned-valkyrie, this is not simply an issue of “religion.” The Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group, i.e. “an ethnic group whose members are also unified by a common religious background.” Note the word “also” in that description—because unlike with Christianity, Islam, Buddhism etc. you can be ethnically Jewish without practicing Judaism as a religion. We’re demanding accurate cultural representation for our ethnic group, and the ability to be the centre of our own narratives. 

This isn’t “being offended for the sake of being offended.” Most Jewish characters are not presently played by Jews, which denies us the right to be present and visible in our own stories. I have never seen an adaptation of Anne Frank with a Jewish actress playing the role. Films about anti-semitism often star gentile actors. The message is that our culture and history is only important insofar as it can be commodified and used to entertain gentiles, but that we’re still not actually welcome when it comes to taking part in the sharing of our own narratives. 

Also, while we’re on the subject of acting and the co-opting of Jewish stories for non-Jewish audiences, like…do y’all realise that Jewish people can tell when somebody playing a Jew isn’t Jewish about 98% of the time and that it ruins the film/show/play for us? Yeah, it’s an actor’s job to act, but I’ve seen precious few gentiles do Jewish convincingly. You butcher our languages, our mannerisms, and our general cultural outlook the majority of the time, either completely missing what defines us or reducing us to base stereotypes. 

Sure, you can’t tell; you’re a gentile. Somebody saying “Oh I’m Jewish, this is my menorah!” is probably enough for you to buy the performance hook, line, and sinker. But us? WE CAN TELL, and sorry, but a piece of media featuring a Jewish character in a way where the person portraying them obviously doesn’t understand Jews is fucking alienating, and again: WE DESERVE NOT TO BE ALIENATED FROM STORIES THAT ARE ABOUT US. 

Like FFS we’re a tiny group that’s been shat upon for 2,000 years, can’t you guys just let us have a little bit of joy once in a while? 

we want to play our roles. i want to see a jewish lesbian character on tv and know that the actress has similar experiences to the character because she’s jewish and a lesbian. i want to go ‘hey, that actress has similar experiences to me!’ people hate me for not being straight, sure, but they also hate me, probably more so!, for being jewish. the two are deeply entwined and influence each other.

you can’t separate kate’s jewish identity from her lesbian identity. her jewishness is a key component.

we deserve to have iconically jewish characters played by jewish actors. we deserve to see ourselves in our stories.

I see now that the wording of my original post was wrong, and I am completely open to being educated. The ‘offended about being offended’ part wasn’t actually about the religious side of it, that was more to do with the sexuality. Yes, you should want to see yourselves in stories, and I obviously have no issue with that at all, but attacking the actress for being cast in the role (which people have to the point that she has quit twitter) isn’t the right way to go about it. 

Like I said, I’m open to being educated about things that I can’t know about as I’m not Jewish, so I’m learning on that point.

Thank you for listening. 

I mean, you *could* know that being Jewish is as much about ethnicity as about religion without being Jewish… but most Americans don’t. This is at least partly due to a successful effort in the U.S. by Reform Judaism, a movement that started in 19th-century Germany, to reframe Judaism as a religion like any other. They wanted Jews in Germany to be considered “Germans of the Mosaic faith.” We all know how well that went over in Germany… or maybe we don’t, if we think the Holocaust was a matter of religious rather than racial hatred.

In the 19th and even the mid-20th century, it made sense for Jews to try to be seen as just another flavor of white people, entitled to the same religious toleration that was enshrined in the First Amendment because of Europe’s wars between different denominations of Christianity. In the age of identity politics, when people are increasingly reckoning with the history of racism in the modern world, that story about what it means to be Jewish obscures important facets of our history. It also dangerously obscures the importance of antisemitism in the worldview of white supremacists active now in the United States. If you don’t realize that antisemitism is a kind of racism, not a kind of religious prejudice, then it makes no sense. Why are white supremacists always going on about power being concentrated in the hands of Jews, if Jews are mostly just white people who happen to have a different religion? (Other than that stuff about Jews promoting multiculturalism, which would seem kinda random if you don’t realize that they don’t consider Jews to be white.)

In the past, I haven’t much minded non-Jewish actors being cast as Jewish characters. Sir Ian McKellen and Michael Fassbender as Magneto is hardly an insult. And most Americans can’t tell the difference. But apparently we do need to start insisting on the ethnic dimension of Jewish identity. I look pretty white, for most purposes, but I’ve been identified as Jewish by non-Jews I’ve never met on the basis of facial features. That wouldn’t happen if Judaism was just another religion.

Why Are So Many Jewish Roles Going to Non-Jewish Actors? – Alma

whereintheworldiskamalakhan:

jewish-privilege:

Non-Jewish actors playing seminal Jewish characters isn’t exactly a new phenomenon. Charlton Heston played Moses in the 1956 film The Ten Commandments. Unknown child model Millie Perkins beat out 10,000 others to portray Anne Frank in the 1959 film adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank. And Sir Ben Kingsley famously depicted Itzhak Stern in the 1993 classic film Schindler’s List.

But in 2018, when there is so much focus on representation in Hollywood, is it still okay for Jewish characters to be played by non-Jews?

Jews continue to battle the stubborn stereotype that they “run” Hollywood. It’s true that over the last century, Jewish directors, producers, writers, and actors have made an indelible mark on our entertainment industry. Yet Jews still experience plenty of discrimination in Hollywood. There are certainly no shortage of offensive Jewish stereotypes depicted on-screen, from overbearing Jewish mothers to Jewish American Princesses to Nice Jewish Boys.

Further, the vast majority of mainstream Jewish stories seem to fall into one of three categories: persecution stories (Schindler’s List, Son of Saul), religious stories (A Price Above Rubies, One of Us), or downright stereotypes (The Big Bang Theory, The Nanny).

And most Jewish characters still remain bit characters. As Sarah Silverman put it to the Hollywood Reporter when asked about Jewish representation in film, “They don’t want to see us reflected in art, unless we’re the sassy friend that gives exposition to the main character, or the cunty first girlfriend before the guy learns what love can be.”

Silverman also shared that a well-known director told her that, thanks to her Jewishness, she could never be cast as a character who deserved love. Jewish women have traditionally been locked out of leading lady roles. Many a Jewish actress has changed her name to sound less Jewish, including Lauren Bacall (formerly Betty Joan Perske) and Winona Ryder (formerly Winona Horowitz). In fact, there is a long history of actors distancing themselves from their Jewishness to appeal more to the mainstream.

Jewish actors are often left with an impossible choice: abandon their Jewishness, or play into stereotypes. Even if they choose the second option, they could still be beat out for a role by a non-Jewish actor.

…ABC’s hit sitcom The Goldbergs portrays an All-American suburban family in the 1980s who barely acknowledges their Jewishness. The show’s creators were so worried about alienating their potential audience that they didn’t even mention that the title family was Jewish until season two. Of course, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Creator Adam Goldberg has admitted that being Jewish wasn’t a main part of his identity growing up. And for many American Jews, this non-secular depiction of Jewish cultural life likely rings true. Still, it’s glaring that outside of acting veterans George Segal and Jeff Garlin, there are no Jewish actors among the show’s nuclear family.

On Amazon’s Transparent — often lauded as the most Jewish show on television — Gaby Hoffmann and Jay Duplass play Jewish siblings. Neither is Jewish. When asked by Nylon what she thinks about playing a Jewish character as a non-Jew, Hoffman revealed: “I was raised by a lapsed Catholic, and I was raised in New York City, where my godparents and neighbors were Jewish, and I celebrated Yom Kippur and went to temple with them. If you grow up in New York, you know that old joke? You’re ‘Jew-ish.’ So I think there’s a continuum and a fluidity that we all feel really comfortable with as being sufficient.”

Meanwhile, Duplass told HuffPost Entertainment that Transparent creator Jill Soloway was struggling to find an actor to play Josh Pfefferman, “a wildly charismatic-slash-insecure, brilliant-stunted mid-30’s Jewish guy.” Duplass himself suggested several Jewish actors, which Soloway dismissed as “not right” for the role. Finally, she told Duplass, “It’s you. You are him. You’re going to play him.”

Of course, it’s possible that there were no Jewish actors available who fit Soloway’s vision of her character Josh. Still, as a viewer, it can be frustrating to see the few non-stereotypical Jewish stories on-screen depicted by non-Jews.

Jewish characters can be successfully portrayed by non-Jews, and have been for decades. But when those characters veer into stereotype territory, something feels off.

In the Netflix series Disjointed, Kathy Bates (who’s not Jewish) plays over-involved Jewish mother Ruth Whitefeather Feldman, who constantly pesters her son to hook up with his co-worker so they can hurry up and have “caramel babies.”

And despite purposely avoiding Jewish storylines, The Goldbergs’ creators seem to have no problem leaning into the Jewish mother stereotype, either. Wendi McLendon-Covey portrays Beverly Goldberg, a stay-at-home mom who meddles in every aspect of her children’s lives, often with increasingly disastrous results.

…There are certainly bigger fish to fry, what with the current rise of anti-Semitism and a fifth of millennials having never heard of the Holocaust. But representation matters. Stereotypes matter, especially when they’ve been so damaging to Jews in the past.

There may not be a hard-and-fast answer to the question, “What’s the deal with non-Jews playing Jewish characters, anyway?” But thanks to Hollywood’s sordid history of Jewish representation, there are still plenty of good reasons to ask.

Read 

Chelsea Levinson’s full piece at Alma.

It’s been a theme since the start of Hollywood. Hedy Lamarr wholly distanced herself from her Jewish heritage in order to make it in America. 

In order to be a romantic lead, you have to not look too Jewish, like Natalie Portman or Gwyneth Paltrow.

Why Are So Many Jewish Roles Going to Non-Jewish Actors? – Alma

Holocaust denier Art Jones walks precincts distributing anti-Semitic literature

antisemitism-us:

If you live in the 3rd Congressional District, Art Jones — a Holocaust denier, activist anti-Semite and Republican candidate for Congress — may be knocking on your door.

And he’s passing out literature that includes some positions that may
look friendly to supporters of President Donald Trump — writing that he
stands in support of building a border wall, getting rid of “sanctuary
cities,” repealing Obamacare and putting “America first.”

But Jones is also distributing information in which he writes there
is “extreme hatred of Jews for Christians.” In a separate flier, he
attacks his Democratic opponent, Rep. Dan Lipinski, D-Ill., for
co-sponsoring a bill in 2014 that sought to defend Israel against
academic boycotts.

“Just who is Lipinski serving — the people who elected him or his
Jewish/Israeli masters?” reads a flier left on some Southwest Side doors
earlier this month. Another flier states a “real Holocaust of Nuclear
War” will happen unless the country puts “an end to this craven
subservience to anything Israel demands of our government.”

Holocaust denier Art Jones walks precincts distributing anti-Semitic literature

Police punch Israeli academic in face after mistaking him for anti-Semite

I actually know the professor. I probably shouldn’t share his Facebook post narrating the event on here (since this article doesn’t give his name), but… the thing he thinks we should be most concerned about is the police brutality – not in the US, but in Europe, where most of us don’t expect it. When he asked to file a complaint, they threatened to charge him with resisting arrest – which was physically impossible, considering that they had knocked him to the ground and started punching him while he was flat on his back and unable to breathe.

Here’s the excerpt I’ll provide from his Facebook post: 

“One of the policemen came, took off my handcuffs, and told me that they captured the person who attacked us. Then the same policemen shouted at me in a didactic tone (in English): ‘Don’t get in trouble with the German Police!’ This was more than enough. I told the policeman sardonically, ‘I am no longer afraid of the German police. The German police murdered my grandfather. They murdered my grandmother. They murdered my uncle, and they murdered my aunt. All in one day in September 1942. So, alas, I am not afraid of them anymore.’ The policeman was baffled. I asked him for his name, and he refused to answer.”

Police punch Israeli academic in face after mistaking him for anti-Semite