As mourners in Pittsburgh planned multiple funerals last month, the Left was busy blaming Donald Trump.
They could have focused on the several-thousand-year-old history of anti-Semitism, the radical Left’s rising hatred of Jews, and academic bias against all things Israel. But it was far more convenient to harp on Trump, the most supportive president of the Jewish people and Israel the U.S. has ever had, as Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer characterized him.
Anti-Semitism is not a new phenomenon. But while conservatives condemn anti-Semitism on the right, too many liberals stay silent in the face of anti-Semitism on the left.
In 2002, I took a brief survey of Jewish professors about the pervasive acceptance of anti-Western, anti-Israel, and anti-conservative ideas on campus. I had encountered these attitudes at a woman’s conference where I presented a paper. I wanted to know if my experience was an anomaly or common.
The responses were disturbingly confirming. “I have given up,” a former UN staff member said to me. “When I go to left-wing circles, I don’t tell them that I am Jewish or I couldn’t do my work.”
A former member of Pittsburgh’s NOW told me the organization was taken over by, in her words, “radicals.” “The final straw, for me,” she said, “was when NOW marched with Palestinians to protest some Israeli activity. I sent in a letter of resignation. I am talking at least 30 years ago.”
A non-Jewish colleague, who asked not to be identified, remarked to me that, at her university, support of non-feminist causes harms one’s chances at getting tenure, being promoted, or gaining friends in Women Studies Programs. The “non-feminist” cause she mentioned? Support of Israel.
Another colleague told me that while she was finishing her doctorate, she stayed away from any political comment that would reveal she was conservative or pro-Israel.
Long-established feminists worry about these attitudes. Alice Sparberg Alexiou of Lilith told me a number of years ago that Lilith, a Jewish feminist magazine, had noted this trend for more than a decade. She said one of the reasons the magazine was founded was to counter it.
Brooke Goldstein of the Lawfare Project recently said to me in a conversation, “Jews must stop expecting other people to advocate for their own civil rights. Jews are wonderful for other communities, but we are too afraid to stick up for ourselves, to march for ourselves.”
Often media doesn’t report on the Left’s anti-Semitism. At the 2016 Democratic Convention, the DNC sponsored a BDS event where American and Israeli flags were burned. There, in a speech supporting BDS, Georgia Representative Hank Johnson called Jews “termites.” This incident occurred two years before Farrakhan’s recent rant. Although Johnson later said his word choice was “poor,” he was not asked to step down nor was he censored. There was no outrage or even coverage outside of Jewish media circles.
Ignoring anti-Semitism works even in Starbucks, which refused to collaborate with the ADL for minority training because Tamika Mallory, a Woman’s March leader, protested. Brooke Goldstein noted on a radio show this year that “progressive space is now becoming a very regressive space and being taken over and hijacked.”
Intelligent and polite dialogue today seem to be on the endangered species list. Last month, through a Facebook gardeners’ group, I offered to share perennials for a communal garden. Someone took up my offer and, when she arrived at my home, immediately began complaining that conservatives don’t like gardens. I responded by telling her I was a conservative and a garden lover.
Even though we had only just met, she condemned me for having conservative views. “You are smart and educated. How can you be conservative?” she asked me.
After I gave her some bulbs and plants, she climbed into her CRV. “I just can’t talk to people I don’t agree with,” she said to me out her window.
I demurred. “We can learn from those we disagree with and continue to seek common ground, like our gardens. This is what happens in a democracy.”
“Can’t do it,” she said and drove off.
This disturbing groupthink weakens our democratic open society. Together, we need to condemn hatred wherever we find it, right or left. We must realize the decade-long rise in anti-Semitism is fueled by anti-Israel distortions and traditional hatred of Jews, not by the 2016 Trump election, as claimed by the progressive Left and its backers.
As we mourn the murdered in the Tree of Life synagogue, we are struck that the Left has failed to protect its ideals when it comes to the Jews. And on this count, we must judge them.