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Since the Soviet Union, the Arab League boycott, and the Iranian Revolution, antisemites have tried to hide their anti-Jewish bigotry behind politically acceptable “anti-Zionism.”
Get two Jews in a room, get three opinions. True of most things, but one thing most Jews agree on is that Israel is the indigenous homeland of the Jewish people and that their connection to it is a core tenet of their Jewish identity. Despite this majoritarian view, there is a loud minority of radical anti-Israel Jewish voices. Although unrepresentative of the broad Jewish community, our detractors and the media weaponize them, turning them into “token Jews” used to attack Israel and sow division within the Jewish community. It’s time we ridicule them.
From the Soviet Union to the Arab League Boycott, from the Iranian Revolution to October 7th and anti-Israel protests today, antisemites attempt to hide their anti-Jewish bigotry behind politically acceptable “anti-Zionism”. Jews who support this charade willingly provide political cover for this generation’s loudest and proudest antisemites.
The normalization of anti-Zionist Jews in public life has three glaring issues:
1. Israel-hatred doesn’t exempt you from the Jewish collective future
Jewish life in the diaspora is directly dependent on the continued survival and flourishing of the Jewish state. Groups like Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), and If Not Now (INN), deploy and weaponize their Jewish identity in their anti-Israel activism. The effect? The re-assurance of non-Jewish groups that anyone can target Israel without fear of alienating the “Jewish community”. JVP and INN are a collection of radical left, mostly Jewish ideologues who use their ancestry to leverage attacks against Israel. They cite Jewish ritual, reference texts, and use our people’s language to validate their radical attacks against the homeland of the Jewish people, the state of Israel.
What they fail to realize is that their misplaced activism allows virulent antisemites to turn them into useful idiots. They’re ephemeral political fronts weaponized by antisemites until they no longer serve their purpose. Antisemites hate all Jews – “good Jews” or “bad Jews”, those from the right and from the left alike. So, if Israel ceases to exist, as JVP and INN desire, where will these Jews turn when antisemites inevitably turn on them? By normalizing and validating the progressive movement’s exclusion of Zionist Jews (most Jews) they are essentially digging their own graves.
JVP and INN should forever be contextualized properly and referred to for what they are – useful jesters for Jew haters around the globe. And once contextualized, they should be ridculed.
2. Institutions empowering “token” Jews endanger all Jews
Radical leftist orthodoxy continues to permeate American institutional life. This ideological capture is perhaps most obvious throughout American universities. Since October 7th, university leadership keen to balance the appearance of caring about antisemitism while maintaining their progressive bona fides, use token Jews as proof that their progressive agendas are not antisemitic. For example, recently, Stanford named Ari Kelman, a Jewish professor aligned with anti-Israel groups, and who concluded antisemitism wasn’t a problem on campuses in 2017 paper, as the Co-Chair of their Committee on Antisemitism.
In an effort to redefine what constitutes antisemitism, Kelman alongside Jewish Voice for Peace, argued that the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism is “flawed and overly expansive” and “silences Palestinian voices.” Deborah Lipstadt, the US Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Antisemitism called IHRA “one of the most fundamental tools we have to combat [antisemitism].” Stanford selected someone to combat antisemitism whose views are directly at odds with the State Department’s pre-eminent defender of the Jewish people. And after Kelman essentially offered his Judaism as political cover to defend San Francisco State University’s (SFSU) antisemitism, the school admitted to allowing antisemitism on its campus.
More recently, Harvard selected Jewish professor Derek Penslar, a known anti-Israel proponent, to lead an antisemitism task force on campus. In August, Penslar signed an open letter accusing Israel of running “a regime of apartheid” and employing “Jewish supremacism”. And following Claudina Gay’s resignation, Penslar downplayed the antisemitism on campus, telling JTA that outsiders had “exaggerated” the issue. As Larry Summers wrote, “Could one imagine Harvard appointing as head of anti-racism task force someone who had minimized the racism problem,” as Mr. Penslar has done with antisemitism at Harvard.” The double standard glaring.
When selecting leadership and given the centrality of Israel for most Jews, institutions would be wise to listen to the fears and concerns of Zionist Jews. Committees, task forces, and organizations are constantly formed to combat “Muslim, Palestinian, and Arab hate” – lumping in ethnicity, religion and state-based hatred. But Jews aren’t afforded this same protection. Institutions who solely elevate Jews with anti-Israel views perpetuate this double standard.
3. Anti-Israel views are not pro-peace. They’re anti-Jewish future.
Since 10/7 it’s hard to find a “pro-Palestinian” rally that isn’t drenched in antisemitic rhetoric, anti-Jewish venom, or stereotypical tropes. Anti-Israel Jews, aligned with radical leftist ideology, have taken part in many of these rallies. They have joined the growing numbers who view the world through over-simplified binaries and hypothetical pyramids of power and oppression. These activists enthusiastically point to Israel as a unique perpetuator of oppression.
But JVP and INN activists have no interest in peace. One of their allies, Omar Barghouti, the co-founder and co-leader of the BDS movement, explains: “You cannot reconcile the right of return for refugees with a two-state solution. . . A return for refugees would end Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.” And he makes clear that this is precisely his goal. “Most definitely we oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine.” And he hails JVP as a “key partner in the BDS network.”
Sunlight is the greatest disinfectant, thus JVP and INN should be exposed as radical, fringe, and anti-peace. They harbor views that not only fail to represent the broad Jewish consensus, but they also directly endanger the Jewish people.
Since 10/7, what many Jews have feared for a long time has been made crystal clear–our place in the world is tenuous, our footing is fragile, and there aren’t many of us. Jews who openly call for the destruction of Israel threaten our future as a people, and we must see them as who they really are –tools that are used by the hands of our enemies.
Adam Milstein is an Israeli-American “Venture Philanthropist.” He can be reached at adam@milsteinff.org, on Twitter @AdamMilstein, and on Facebook www.facebook.com/AdamMilsteinCP.
Originally published in the Jerusalem Post.
There’s 3 kinds of anti-Zionist Jews in America:
1) The pretend black hat so-called Jews that march against the state of Israel with leftists and Muslims. These religious fanatics believe it’s a sin to form a renewed Jewish state prior to the coming of the Messiah. By the way, in the 5 Books Of Moses (ie. Torah) there’s no concept of a Messiah.
2) Spoiled Jews that live in comfort thanks to the literal distance between them and the reality of the Middle East. They haven’t a clue what the average Israeli has to deal with like calling the authorities when they see a lone bag on the street. As well as having to go through security at shoppers malls. Don’t forget these Jews have no steak in being part of the state of Israel, which Israelis participate in IDF draft and after that are active reserve members. These pretend Jews live in their own bubble and don’t even know what it’s like when Israel is under attack by its enemies.
3) Marxist Jews who are atheist as well as useful idiots for Muslims because they are illiterates in the history of the Middle East. They think European Jews displaced ethnic Arabs when the entire premise of Palestine is based on Roman Emperor Hadrian trying to erase the history of the Jewish people, their land and their religious heritage. Judah was a Jewish independent state when the Second Temple was standing, then the Romans invaded. After successive failed Judean revolts against the Roman occupation, Hadrian crushed Judea by murdering hundreds of thousands of Jews. He renamed the Roman province of Judea to Syria-Palaestina and renamed Jerusalem to Aelia Capitolina, this was approximately 100 hundred years after the death of Jesus (based on his death being in the year 30 CE). So ask these Marxist Jews when did the Arabs invade the former land known as Judah? Oh – only just 500 years later after Hadrian renamed the land to Syria-Palaestina! That’s right these Marxists call Jews colonizers, when it’s impossible to colonize your own biblical land. It’s the Arabs that came from the Arabian Peninsula, invaded the Holy Land and established their religious houses of worship on the Jewish Temple Mount because of their Islamic supersessionism. But it’s these Marxist Jews that know nothing and are useful idiots of Muslim propaganda that stand with Muslims against Israel.
Would that expression be “have no stake?”
Otherwise well thought and written.
Yes, I was very tired when I posted my comment. I also made a type-O in the second paragraph with ‘shoppers malls’ rather than shopping malls.
The above post will be the last time I try to compose a thought late at night. I submitted my comment very early in morning ( I think it was close to 1 am), I don’t know why the time posted shows 10:59 am? Maybe that’s the time the editor approved of my comment.
Self-gassing momzers, as I call them. Don’t hold your breath waiting for them to give back their bar mitzvah gelt.
The Jewish far left should made persona non grata in the Jewish community
They are the modern Kapo. Jews willing to sell out other Jews for personal gain.
Their prototype, George Soros, was actually a teen age kapo in Budapest in 1944-45. He should have been strung up after liberation despite his youth. He is unrepentant and refers to that as “the happiest period in my life”
These Jews are the reason that so many Israelis really can’t be bothered with trying to explain the facts of Israeli life to them.. they not only don’t want to hear it, they wouldn’t even understand it. There is only one way these people can have a valid voice regarding Israel. Live there, become citizens if the state of Israel, and thus earn the right to vote. Otherwise, let Israelis decide what’s best for Israel. And shut up. We will manage without you.
These “Anti-Zionist Jews” are often not Jewish at all. I recall attending the Louisville Jewish Film Festival about 15 years ago and there was a duo protesting the inclusion of an Israeli film, passing out leaflets from “Jewish Voices for Peace”. Now the Jewish Community in Louisville is small (perhaps 9,000 people) and just about everyone knows everyone else at least by face, if not name- “Jewish geography” connecting people to others is a local pastime- “that’s Bess Cohn’s nephew who’s a law professor”, etc. I talked to at least half a dozen people after the film and no one had ever seen this duo before. The Consensus was that they were the non Jewish children or grandchildren of self hating Jews who are completely alientated from the community or (more likely) “activists” from the Prebyterian Church USA, which is headquartered in Louisville and which is one of the most vociferously anti Israel denominations.
If there were a handful of blacks who long for the days of minstrel shows (perhaps Justin Trudeau fans),, or LGBTQIA who support persecution of gays (aside from “Queers for Palestine” of course) wouldn’t the Left see them for what they are- twisted, pathetic individuals whose bizarre worldview is distorted by self hatred?
They are mosrim—traitors/informers. Jewish law says mosrim are worthy of the death penalty. I recently submitted a blog to Times of Israel pointing this out. Making clear that such a consequence could not and should not be the case in our day, I went on to make the case that the prayer said three times a day “and to slanderers let there be no hope” was how the Sages dealt with such Jews.
The blog was published and then taken down, with the explanation that, given that rabbis comments about mosrim lead to the assassination of a prime minister, the blog was inappropriate.
TOI seems to have gone woke.
TOI is leftist. I’m surprised you don’t know that.
They are J.I.N.O.s! They are vocal professional activists associated with BDS and protest alongside Communists from ANSWER, The Party for Socialism and Liberation, The Revolutionary Communist Party, and the CPUSA!
THEY ARE THE ENEMY WITHIN who always sides with our enemies!
Fortunately, they breed in tiny numbers. Clal Israel soon will be done with them.
It seems they are Jews in name only. Anti-Zion is anti-creation and rejecting where the Jewish race started, history, prophets, Holy Land, biblical sites, Judaism, and Jesus and his disciples preached the gospel to both Jews and Gentiles. Amazing how they know not to keep voting for the left which is their enemy. How many are delusional enough to put in place their exectutioners? Frank….You better believe it….the truth is going to be told, especially in these end times.
Millions and millions of Christians today love the Jewish people and will support them no matter what happens.
Millstein, you make a blanket statement that Israel is the indigenous homeland of the Jewish people. Which Jewish people? You aren’t indigenous to Israel and 99.9% of European Jews aren’t indigenous to Israel. You, your parents, grandparents, great parents and on and on aren’t from Israel.
You are indigenous to Europe. France, Russia, Germany, etc.
You can certainly be anti Zionist and not be antisemitic. In fact, when Zionism was first being introduced overwhelmingly the majority of Jews were against it. Einstein, Orthodox Jews, etc, were all against Zionism.
That changed when they understood that they continued attacks against Jews in Europe posed a grave danger to them. The Holocaust started to change Jewish minds that maybe Zionism was in their best interest. It had nothing to do with any Jew saying they were longing for their ancestral homeland nonsense. Many Jews fled not to Israel, but to Brooklyn NY, Argentina, etc.
I don’t condone the antisemitism that is happening today. I do support Israel over Hamas, but I’m not going to pretend that people who have been in Europe for thousands of years are indigenous to the Middle East. That is a fairy tale of epic proportions
You have overlooked the actual definition of “indigenous, ” which follows:
I”ndigenous Peoples are distinct social and cultural groups that share collective ancestral ties to the lands and natural resources where they live, occupy or from which they have been displaced.”
It is beyond dispute that (1) the Jews are a distinct social and cultural group, (2) that share collective ancestral ties to the land of Israel, (3) from which they were displaced by the Roman slaughter and conquest of Jerusalem in 70 AD, some 600 years before the birth of Muhammad.
If you are really Jewish and really care about Israel, you should try googling before fabricating baseless arguments that favor Israel’s enemies.
Ceasefire after all the RABID ANIMALS are EXECUTED.
GOD BLESS ISRAEL.
Adam, I grew up in the Labor Zionist family. My youth group was Habonim, the builders, who built numerous Kibbutzim throughout Israel. Just getting back now after volunteering for 6 weeks in any and every agricultural activity my older body could stand, I find it heart breaking that I ever spent 17 years on a kibbutz, and despise the organization, that brought me there. There has been a year program that brought before college youth to work on a Kibbutz or these days since there really is no longer many who take in workers not from Southeast Asia, when the war just broke out the group decided that the kids were not safe in Israel, so what did they do, moved them to South Africa. Our one Jewish homeland is hurting as I never felt before and I went thru the Yom Kippur war and again the war in Lebanon in 1982, but never like this. Where is the movements of yesterday who started Kibbutzim that are in dire need of workers to pick the fruit with yields that I could have only dreamed about, in South Africa, Labor Zionists became Ameinu and now decide to merge with anti-Zionists Americans for Peace Now. The funny part to me is how many of those who grew up and continued on to Ameinu and other anti-Zionists who screamed Labor Zionist are now some of the wealthiest people I know of. I learned a long time ago to be a socialist you do need a lot of money. So these people are dead to me, for years want nothing to do with them. Constantly getting Whatsapp msg to include them for me not a chance. As I said the one Jewish homeland is hurting, so many of the people I talked to there feel abandoned, as if they feel there is no future. I am begging anyone who feel a responsibility to the only Democracy in the Middle East find the money, find the time and go to Israel for a week, 10 days or whatever you can so the people of Israel do not feel at a time with so much misery they are alone in the world.
The anti-Zionist “Jews” (aka “useful idiots” for antisemites) are today’s kapos, to pit it lightly – those who do immense damage to their fellow Jews and all of humanity, those who dance with the devil out of geur malicious hate )and rabbid self-hate), — for a variety of reasons that can keep psychiatrists busy until the end of time.
Appropriate response?
Rewire their brains, implant computer chips that deliver directly to the cerebellum 1000 watts of compassion and respectful thoughts for others, reprogram their impulsivity to not act negatively on their fears, educate them,
If it still doesn’t work?
Call 1-800-eat s””t and lock them up in a prison with sadistic cannibals.