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!”

The Antisemitism that Keeps Me Up at Night

schraubd:

What is the type of antisemitism that keeps you up at night?

For me, believe it or not, it isn’t the violence. It isn’t Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh is scary, but – rightly or wrongly – I continue to think that this sort of antisemitism is and will remain a rare occurrence in the United States.

The antisemitism that gives me nightmares is a different sort, and requires some explaining. But the short version is that it’s the antisemitism of negative partisanship (or “the politics of hurt”).

Here’s what I mean by that. Antisemitic acts are sometimes done by people who don’t conceive of themselves as antisemites. In such cases, we’d expect that the reaction of Jews to those acts – the declaration that “this was antisemitic” and “this hurt us” – to count as a negative. The actor would not have desired that result, that his or her action elicited such a response would count against it. And even if the actor isn’t so chagrined, we’d hope that this would be the impact on social observers. If people see that Jews reacted negatively to something – that we thought it was scary, or unjust, or antisemitic, or what have you – then they’d be less favorably disposed towards whatever it was that caused us to react so poorly.

But this isn’t always what happens. Sometimes, in some cases, a poor Jewish reaction isn’t viewed as a negative. It’s viewed as a positive. It shows that you’re poking the right people. It shows you’re standing up to power. It shows that you haven’t been cowed. “If you’re taking flak, that means you’re over the target”, as the saying goes – a saying which assumes that those firing the flak are also the enemy to be targeted.

Consider Tamika Mallory’s infamous remark, in response to Jewish criticism of alleged antisemitism, that “If your leader does not have the same enemies as Jesus, they may not be THE leader!” Obviously, in context there was a specific antisemitic valence to the “Jesus” reference that has been much remarked on. But even if you strip that part away, there’s a deeper problem: Mallory is casting it as a point of pride that the Jews are critiquing her – are her “enemies”. It’s one of the ways she knows she’s on the right track. The victim-blaming template Ariel Sobel attributed to the Women’s March – where largely progressive Jewish criticism is transformed into a coordinated right-wing assault (itself an antisemitic maneuver of deep vintage) – is in the same vein. The goal is to make it so that when people hear these sorts of criticisms from these sorts of people, their instinct is to pull closer towards the object of critique. If they’re taking flak from Jews, then they must be over the target.

This is what keeps me up at night, because it subverts any possibility of effective Jewish political action in response to perceived wrongs. If it is a perk that Jews are upset, if it is a positive political sign, then it’s counterproductive for Jews even to try and communicate “this hurt us.” Expressions of Jewish hurt end up redounding to the benefit of those causing the hurt. What are we to do?

Particularly in political contexts, this can yield dangerous feedback loops. I have no doubt that Jewish dislike of Jeremy Corbyn cost Labour votes in some districts, particularly heavily Jewish neighborhoods. I also have no doubt that, on a national level, the perception that Jews dislike Corbyn gained him at least as many votes as it lost him. There are definitely people for whom the chasm between Corbyn and the Jews is how they know Corbyn is “THE leader”. The reason why Labour under Corbyn has so much trouble “quitting” antisemitism is because Labour is, in very real ways, aided by the perception that Labour under Corbyn antagonizes the Jews.

This has effects here at home too. Consider how Minnesota Jews might react to the Ilhan Omar doubletalk controversy I wrote about yesterday. Right now, the way I feel towards Omar, and the way I imagine many Minnesota Jewish community members feel, is something like the following:

We have serious problems with BDS, which for us has deep associations with antisemitism and antisemitic exclusion targeting Jews around the world. But beyond those substantive problems, it’s especially upsetting and disrespectful for you to come before a synagogue, say you find BDS ‘counteractive’, and then once the election is over say ‘actually, I’ve always supported BDS’ and pretend like you weren’t blatantly misleading us. The moderator “didn’t ask a yes or no question”? Don’t insult our intelligence. And add this to the ‘hypnotize’ tweet – which you’ve still never acknowledged has antisemitic resonances – and we’ve got some very serious concerns right now.

In a healthy political environment for Jews, this sort of sentiment would be viewed as a negative for Omar. It would be damaging, if Jews in her community were reacting this way, that would be a sign she’d done something wrong. I’m not saying it should necessarily be fatal or unrecoverable – indeed, I think the opposite. In a healthy political environment, the fact that this would be viewed as a problem would motivate Omar to try to heal the damage and mend the rift. It would be bad for Ilhan Omar to be in a state where Jews were upset with her.

But does anyone have any confidence that, if such above sentiments were expressed, it would be viewed as a negative for Omar? Is it not possible, even likely, that such a reaction from Jews instead would be evidence that Omar was “bold”, was “independent”, was “unapologetically progressive” (even though, of course, the base of the controversy was actually that Omar had engaged in a pretty classic case of political weasel-wording)? Wouldn’t the Jewish reaction very quickly be recast as a right-wing reaction, even though most Minnesota Jews are quite consciously progressive? Wouldn’t many people be even more positively inclined towards Omar than they already were – proud to see her stand tall against the Jewish onslaught?

Again, this is speculative – we don’t know how, if at all, the Jewish community in Minnesota plans to respond to Omar, nor how Omar plans to respond to her Jewish constituents. And the possibility of turning converting Jewish opposition into political support doesn’t mean it’s a path that would be taken. A genuine ally would resist the temptation; even if the prospect of adulation for “standing up” to the Jews presents itself, she would not indulge because of her own accord she would be unhappy that Jews were unhappy with her.

Nonetheless, this prospect – and my fundamental lack of confidence that this prospect isn’t actually reality – keeps me up at night. David Hirsh wrote worryingly that – more than BDS, more than school or synagogue security, more than the future of relations between Israel and the west, more than anything else – “what really frightens me is that a generation of left-wing activists are being taught that the enemy is the Jews.” Even if you think that’s a little overwrought, I would endorse the notion that a generation of left-wing activists are being taught that if Jews are angry at them, that means they’re doing something right rather than something wrong.

Naively or not, the cornerstone of my resistance to antisemitism – what gives me the confidence that it can be resisted – is a firm belief in the possibility that empathic dialogue and open communication can change minds and alter behavior. I believe – again, perhaps naively – that most people don’t want to see Jews hurting, and hence that when we express hurt, people will be at least more inclined to change their ways.

If that’s wrong, if people – including the people in my community, including the people that supposedly are my most essential allies against Pittsburgh-style antisemitic violence – are excited, thrilled, empowered by seeing Jews in distress, then my entire edifice for fighting antisemitism crumbles. And that keeps me up at night.

via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/2DkuZCm

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.

Nearly all teachers I worked with habitually excuse Hitler

littlegoythings:

As an assistant teacher for 16 years, I encountered numerous examples of antisemitism being taught — sometimes unknowingly — in England’s classrooms. Nearly all of the teachers I encountered had uncritically absorbed antisemitic tropes at their universities and teacher training colleges, much of it dressed up as “anti-Zionism”.

For instance, Year Sevens are taught about the Black Death in RE, a lesson I often observed. Children were nearly always told that the Jews were blamed at the time for the plague, but this was rarely presented as an example of an antisemitic falsehood. Indeed, the teachers usually left open the question of whether the Jews really were responsible.

That meant that when the children were taught about the Holocaust in Year Nine, it was not uncommon for children to respond by saying, “But Sir! The Jews DID give us the Plague though… ‘coz you said so in Year Seven!”

For instance, Year Nines are often taught about the Holocaust in the context of why the Jews have been hated throughout history. But unless carefully presented, this “context” can often seem like an apology for Nazism, as if the Jews did something to deserve their misfortune.

Nearly all the teachers I have worked with who were born in the 1980s habitually excuse Hitler and undermine the unique historical horror of the Holocaust. The usual response to Hitler’s genocidal antisemitism is to explain that it was not just the Jews. Others suffered too. In the interests of “balance”, the teachers often point out that Hitler did good things as well as bad — he created jobs and made Germany great again, for instance.

When I suggested to a teacher that we first talk about the positive influences of Judaism before introducing the Holocaust, she dismissed it on the grounds that “learning how successful they are might irritate some people”.

In GCSE History, antisemitism often slithers into students’ subconscious in ramshackle debates about the aftermath of the First World War. “You can understand why the German people were so angry with the Jews after the First World War, because if you fought in the trenches, lost your jobs and your businesses and you saw that the Jews were having an easier time of it, you’d be angry too,” explained one teacher, helpfully.

Because, of course, German Jews did not fight in the trenches, German Jews did not lose their savings, their jobs and their businesses. So, all Jews are cowards, all Jews are rich, all Jews have no right to get angry.

Visiting a school as a guest speaker once, I tried to explain to some teachers in the staff room how ridiculous Jewish stereotypes were. They immediately launched into a tirade about the “arrogant Jewish princesses” they had encountered growing up who got everything they wanted on “Daddy’s money”. A self-professed ‘lefty’ even complained that a street near her university was “wall to wall Jewish businesses”. One of these teachers boasted to me that she had taught the whole Holocaust ‘module’ without showing “one of those atrocity pictures once”. When I relayed this to a Jewish friend whose mother survived Ravensbruck, he said, “How can people know how bad it was without showing them how bad it was?” This same teacher, who claimed the Holocaust was “absolutely fascinating”, whispered to me, “we have to ask this question” and, instead of saying it aloud, wrote it down on her planner and showed it to me: Did they deserve it?

I was shocked. Do we ask this question about the Middle Passage? Do we ask it about the victims of 9/11? We do not. Incidentally, she had already taught her students about Israel and why its existence was so “controversial” and, as she explained to me, that’s why the desert question had to be asked. In her brain, the Holocaust and Israel had somehow become chronologically juxtaposed, with the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948 somehow causing the murder of six million Jews by the Nazis.

Alas, this kind of prejudice is not confined to the state sector. A young acquaintance of mine who attends a posh private school told me his history teacher joked that “Jews won’t fight” after he was asked if Jews had fought in the First World War. I armed the pupil with facts: the Roman Legion Regi Emeseni Iudeai; Cleopatra’s two generals; how, in the First World War, Jews were the largest ethnic group to fight for either side; how Anne Frank’s father, as well as the young lieutenant who awarded Hitler his Iron Cross, had fought for Germany. The boy told the class, the teacher smirked and said, “Well, you learn something new every day.” Maybe so, but very rarely do you learn anything about antisemitism from teachers.

I’m admiring the level of cognitive dissonance it takes to believe that Jews won’t fight in wars and that Israel is a military aggressor.

Nearly all teachers I worked with habitually excuse Hitler

CPS considers hate crime charges over Corbyn-supporting Facebook posts calling for violence against Jews

littlegoythings:

Prosecutors are considering bringing charges over six Corbyn-supporting Facebook posts calling for violence against Jews, The Telegraph can reveal.

The Metropolitan Police believes the anti-Semitic posts “meet the high threshold” required for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to launch hate crime proceedings.

It comes after specialist officers have spent the past six months trawling through hundreds of vile social media posts containing insults such as “Adolph (sic) you should have finished the job” and describing Israelis as “murdering Jew scum”.

CPS considers hate crime charges over Corbyn-supporting Facebook posts calling for violence against Jews

Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘good Jews’ are mostly dead | Opinion

littlegoythings:

Then a missing segment was released. In it, Corbyn gives the clearest explanation yet of how he sees the British Jewish community.

The “progressive Jewish element in Britain…opposed [the Balfour Declaration] on the basis that it would only bring problems for a lot of Jewish people,” he explained. Indeed, the progressive leadership in London was “actually Jewish trade unionists and Jewish people in the East End of London.” So far, so good!

But then something bad happened.

“It was Zionism that rose up, and Zionism that drove them [i.e. the Jews] into this sort of ludicrous position they have at the present time.” He then says, “for example,” and leads into the anecdote about the “thankfully silent Zionists” who “don’t understand English irony.”

This shows, beyond any reasonable doubt, that Corbyn was telling a story about British Jews, not just “Zionists.” That they used to be good comrades, when they were poor socialists, but then Zionism rose up and “drove them” to somewhere else.

Corbyn’s views on Zionism and Jews are best understood in the context of Marxist revolutionary history.The Soviets initially supported Zionism. However, that changed in 1967 when the official position became virulent anti-Zionism, tinged with anti-Semitism. Zionism was chauvinistic, racist and anti-Soviet, a front for neo-colonialism and supported by international Jewish power.

I am not convinced that Corbyn subscribes to the more extreme version – but it is helpful in understanding his views. He has spent a lifetime only speaking to those who share his worldview, which unfortunately means he has little access to or interest in competing narratives.This is a huge problem for the British Jewish community as whilst our grandparents may have been “good Jews,” we, apparently, are not.

Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘good Jews’ are mostly dead | Opinion

Met Police to investigate whether Labour members guilty of antisemitic hate crimes

littlegoythings:

Specialist officers will look into whether party members broke the law when making a series of offensive comments about Jews.

Cressida Dick, the Met Police commissioner, said she would ask hate crime experts to investigate after being presented with evidence of Labour members appearing to call for Jews to be murdered.

In one post, a member wrote: “We shall rid the Jews who are a cancer on us all.”

Referring to Jewish people as “devils” and suggesting the Red Sea would be an “ideal destination” for them, they added: “No need for gas chambers anyway as gas is so expensive and we need it in England.”

Another person called for a Jewish MP to “get a good kicking”.

A third wrote: “One cannot understand the state of the world without understanding Jewish power, and one cannot understand the nature of Jewish power until one understands the nature of Jewish thinking.”

But tell me again that it’s just legitimate criticism of Israel.

Met Police to investigate whether Labour members guilty of antisemitic hate crimes

Shocking film shows attendees of far-left ‘antisemitism’ talk making antisemitic statements

jewish-privilege:

Attendees of a far-left event on the subject of “Corbyn, antisemitism and justice for Palestine” were filmed making comments such as “the Jewish people do not exist”, and “if you walk around expecting to be treated like Jewish ‘scum’, that’s what’s going to happen to you.”

The event, which was held on Tuesday night at London’s Conway Hall, featured speakers such as Tariq Ali, Ben Jamal, the director of the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign and Richard Kuper of Jewish Voice for Labour.

The event’s description on social media claimed that “Criticism of Israel is being conflated with antisemitism in ways that threaten free speech and the right to protest while silencing Palestinian voices. We must vigorously oppose all forms of antisemitism, but we can’t let smears be used to silence criticism of the Israeli state.

“This meeting will discuss the importance of challenging any attempt at a witch hunt, strengthening the struggle for Palestinian freedom while maintaining zero tolerance for antisemitism and all forms of racism.”

Joseph Cohen of the Israel Advocacy Movement and a number of other pro-Israel activists were refused admission to the event.

However, footage filmed by Mr Cohen showed a number of people queueing to attend making antisemitic comments.

“Think of the Dollar – that’s all you care about,” one woman told a Jewish protestor.

“You like silver, you like gold, that’s all you care about.”

One person handing out a newsletter on behalf of the Communist Party of Great Britain, who claimed to be Jewish, was also selling books showing a swastika melded together with a Star of David, with the title “Zionism – a racist, antisemitic and reactionary tool of imperialism.”

He went on to say that “the Jewish people do not exist”, before attempting to put a pro-Israel campaigner in a headlock.

A smiling teenager informed Mr Cohen that he supported “I support Hamas. I support Nasrallah, I support Hezbollah.”

Both Hamas and Hezbollah are genocidal antisemitic terror groups, with Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, having said “"If they [the Jews] all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.“

Another man claimed that “every oppressive regime, the Zionists have been linked to,” while another called Mr Cohen, who is visibly Jewish, “a lecherous, satanic piece of s***…”

After the event, one attendee told Mr Cohen and others that “if you walk around expecting to be treated like Jewish ‘scum’, that’s what’s going to happen to you.”

She went on to accuse them of being part of the “Zionist lobby”.

“What makes me part of the Zionist lobby?” Mr Cohen asked.

“Because you think that there’s antisemitism in the Labour party,” she responded.

Shocking film shows attendees of far-left ‘antisemitism’ talk making antisemitic statements

Opinion | How Anti-Semitism’s True Origin Makes It Invisible To The Left

The Anti-Defamation League publishes an annual report on incidents of anti-Semitism in the United States. This year’s audit, made available in November, showed a significant increase in relation to the previous year: 2017 saw a 67% rise in anti-Jewish hate speech, harassment, vandalism and violence.

It’s a disheartening measure of a terrible phenomenon. Yet in the three months since the audit was released, it’s garnered little attention.

Some public comments hint at why. In a video for Jewish Voice for Peace posted to Facebook in April, the anti-racism campaigner Linda Sarsour addressed the issue. “I want to make the distinction that while anti-Semitism is something that impacts Jewish Americans, it’s different than anti-black racism or Islamophobia because it’s not systemic,” she said. “Of course, you may experience vandalism or an attack on a synagogue, or maybe on an individual level… but it’s not systemic, and we need to make that distinction.”

Underlying this pervasive point of view is the notion that Jews, who are often conflated with whites, should “check their privilege,” because anti-Semitism just isn’t as bad as other forms of racism. On campus, where the ADL notes an acute rise in anti-Jewish hostility, alarmed Jewish students are sidelined for being white and middle-class and the Holocaust is trivialized as “white on white crime.” …

This erasure of anti-Semitism isn’t simply callous. It exposes a huge moral failure at the heart of the modern left. Under the enveloping paradigm of “intersectionality,” everyone is granularly defined by their various identities — everyone, that is, except white Jews, whose Jewishness is often overwritten by their skin color. Not simply a moral failing, this erasure is deeply hazardous, inasmuch as the fight against racism happens by and large in sectors where the left perspective dominates — the academy, pop culture and much of the news media.

But this failure of the left is less a result of malice rather than unconscious wiring. As I will argue, the left is doomed to erase anti-Semitism because it’s ill-equipped to understand it.

For in a key sense, regular racism — against blacks and Latinos, for example — is the opposite of anti-Semitism. While both ultimately derive from xenophobia, regular racism comes from white people believing they are superior to people of color. But the hatred of Jews stems from the belief that Jews are a cabal with supernatural powers; in other words, it stems from the models of thought that produce conspiracy theories. Where the white racist regards blacks as inferior, the anti-Semite imagines that Jews have preternatural power to afflict humankind.

This is also why the left is blind to anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism differs from most forms of racism in that it purports to “punch up” against a secret society of oppressors, which has the side effect of making it easy to disguise as a politics of emancipation. If Jews have power, then punching up at Jews is a form of speaking truth to power — a form of speech of which the left is currently enamored. …

In addition to the belief in a shadowy group with the power to effect large-scale outcomes, conspiracy theories also reflect a worldview in which reality is the product of a timeless and cosmic struggle between good and evil. These kinds of dualistic narratives are especially enticing to groups that view themselves to be under existential duress … Jews under Roman occupation and early Christians under Jewish ostracism and gentile persecution developed theologies of the oppressed in which the devil and his demonic host squared off with God and his angels. …

The crude theology of the cosmic showdown between God and the devil, along with the stereotype of an anti-human, demonic collaborator, and life-and-death struggle over the forbidden knowledge of magic and heresy, fused to ignite the infamous persecutions of the European Middle Ages. These included the witch trials, the inquisitions of heretics, and the perennial persecution of Jews as child-murdering, blood-feasting, well-poisoning sorcerers and agents of Satan.

When Europe entered the modern era, Jews shed this company. Industrialization, urban migration, democracy, and the flourishing of science weakened the otherworldly framework many used to understand the world. Witches and heretics faded in relevance. But the Jews survived, though the role they played in the gentile imagination changed to reflect the times.

As they were emancipated, Jews loomed as direct competition in economic and political life. As the pre-eminent historian of anti-Semitism, Robert Wistrich, writes, “Alongside the dominant cultural matrix of late-nineteenth-century nationalism, volkisch racism, and imperialism,” a new “populist social dimension” recast Jews as collaborators with the secular demons of laissez-faire capitalism and liberal democracy.

Thus, as the center of civilization shifted from church and king to the nation state, anti-Semitism, at least outwardly, lost its religious focus. Foes of the Jews who aspired to power cast them as diabolical puppeteers who controlled the state; anti-Semites in power libeled them as seditious parasites who undermined it. This was the milieu that produced the foundational document of political conspiracism, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

Purporting to be the minutes of an international meeting of evil Jewish elites, “The Protocols” was a detailed outline of how the Jews would enslave and exploit humankind. First circulated in the Russian Empire, it was then exported by charlatans and military officers and spread throughout the world. Effectively the first “fake news,” the pamphlet, which [historian Norman] Cohn memorably called a “warrant for genocide,” still flourishes today, especially in Arab and Muslim countries. …

[I]t’s anti-Semitism’s source in conspiracy theory that renders it so different from non-conspiracist forms of racism, like anti-blackness. As with most racism, anti-black bias constructs an underclass to be exploited or avoided. It positions blacks as inferior to whites and charges them with stereotypes that signal weakness: They are libeled as lazy, stupid, lustful, criminal and animalistic.

The conspiracy theory of anti-Semitism turns this on its head. The Jew becomes a magical creature: brilliant, cunning, greedy, stealthy, wealthy and powerful beyond measure. Anti-Semitism imagines a diabolic overclass to be exposed and resisted.

Take it from the experts. In Article Twenty-Two of its charter, Hamas describes the preternatural power of the worldwide Jewish cabal:

“With their money, [the Jews] took control of the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others. With their money they stirred revolutions in various parts of the world with the purpose of achieving their interests and reaping the fruit therein. They were behind the French Revolution, the Communist revolution and most of the revolutions we heard and hear about, here and there. With their money they formed secret societies, such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, the Lions and others in different parts of the world for the purpose of sabotaging societies and achieving Zionist interests. With their money they were able to control imperialistic countries and instigate them to colonize many countries in order to enable them to exploit their resources and spread corruption there.”

Above all else, anti-Semitism is a conspiracy theory about the maleficent Jewish elite. And it’s this that makes it easy to disguise as a politics of liberation, or, at least, to embed anti-Semitism quietly in efforts for social justice. …

For its part, JVP [Jewish Voice for Peace] launched a national effort to promote the idea that Israel teaches U.S. law enforcement how to inflict “systemic” racism on people of color, “including extrajudicial executions, shoot-to-kill policies, police murders, racial profiling, massive spying and surveillance, deportation and detention, and attacks on human rights defenders.”

It’s critical to note that Americans are not accustomed to recognizing, let alone understanding, a sizable portion of anti-Semitism, because it typically doesn’t resemble anti-blackness — the horrific down-punching form of racism that haunts American history and reverberates into the present.

But this blindness doesn’t just make space for anti-Semites to operate domestically; it occludes our sense of the history of other parts of the world. (Do you remember the concept of conspiracy theory coming up during your education on the Holocaust? Me neither.)

Anti-Semitism is a poor man’s revolution. And so long as it doesn’t present as a far-right or “alt-right” cartoon, it often flies under our radar.

Opinion | How Anti-Semitism’s True Origin Makes It Invisible To The Left