On March 15, 2022, Rabbi Dr. Ari Berman, the President of Yeshiva University, sent a letter to the university’s community called “Let’s Build a Better World Together.” In the email, he wrote about the “decision to cancel a student-scheduled guest speaker at Cardozo Law School, Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi. Dr. Abdulhadi is a professor who has supported violence by inviting students to meet with terrorists and even praised those who hijacked planes and held innocent civilians as hostages.“
Letter from Rabbi Dr. Ari Berman, President of Yeshiva University on blocking a terrorist supporter from speaking on campus, March 15, 2022.
The decision to bar a promoter of violence should be both easy and popular. Unfortunately, that is not the case.
Abdulhadi is a professor of Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diaspora Studies at San Francisco State University. In that role, she invited a member of a terrorist group to speak to her class and reportedly spoke in favor of the violent actions the speaker advocates.
That guest speaker was Leila Khaled, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a US State Department designated foreign terrorist organization (FTO). Khaled was the first female hijacker of a plane in 1969, and then again in 1970. She continues to argue for violence not only against Israel, but “Americans, and in general, the West, which supports Israel.”
Abdulhadi is not alone. Universities around the United States are happy to have terrorists and their supporters inculcate young minds, at least when it comes to attacking Zionists.
Promoting violence is never protected by free speech, no matter what The New York Times informs its readership. It is a sad state of affairs, that one has to admire and congratulate Yeshiva University’s stand against the advocates for terrorism, in a world unmoored from basic principles of civil society.
The Democratic Party has tried to become a “big tent” that welcomes all types of views into its ranks. As it has done so, it has given extremists positions of power and influence.
In February, New York State completed its redistricting. As part of the hustle-shuffle, the Democratic Party moved the pro-Israel community of Riverdale out of Rep. Jamaal Bowman’s district and into the progressive pro-Israel district of Rep. Ritchie Torres. In doing so, it helped boost support of Torres and keep Bowman from possibly losing his seat.
It also enabled Bowman to lean into the anti-Israel bile of his comrades in the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
Immediately after the Democrats expunged the vocal pro-Israel constituency from his district, Bowman withdrew his support of the Abraham Accords, which established diplomatic and trade relations between Israel and the countries of Sudan, Bahrain, Morocco, and the United Arab Emirates. One can expect Bowman to shortly echo his fellow anarchists with calls to defund the police and pushing schools to advocate Critical Race Theory.
Another member of the DSA extremist group who is elevated by the Democratic Party is Rashida Tlaib (D-MI). The notorious anti-Semite will be given the microphone to deliver a speech after President Biden – a fellow Democrat – delivers his state of the union address. The only other time that a member of a party gave a reply to the SOTU by a fellow party member was last year when Bowman did it.
Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) incites anti-Semitism in the same manner as Nazis, and is given committee assignments by the Democratic Party
The Democratic Party has similarly shielded Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), despite her repeatedly using anti-Semitic tropes. Rather than rebuke her, they condemned those who pointed out the obvious as ‘Islamophobes,’ and continued to let her sit on important committees.
The Democrats can continue to shout about former President Trump all day, but they should get crushed in the next elections if they continue to give platforms to radical politicians who proudly shout anti-Semitic venom and extremist policies.
“The Great Replacement” theory posits that White people are being replaced by non-White people in western countries including in Europe and the United States. The Anti-Defamation League asserts that its roots come from Europe roughly 100 years ago, and returned in 2011 in an article by French writer Renaud Camus. With the influx of Arabs from Africa and the Middle East into Europe and the United States in 2014 and 2015 due to the “Arab Spring,” various civil wars and rise of ISIS, the proposition gathered a considerable number of followers.
Among the far-right, Jews are considered far left progressives who are helping to bring in these foreigners. In the August 2017 “Unite the Right” rally, marchers chanted “Jews will not replace us,” not as a chant that the insignificant number of Jews could possibly outnumber White Christians, but as historian Deborah Lipstadt says, advanced the premise of the notorious forgery “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” that Jews are behind a global conspiracy for world domination and use various puppets to achieve their aims.
Among the far-left, Jews are portrayed as far too represented in positions of power. They point to the number of Jews in Congress, on the Supreme Court, as CEOs and owners of companies and sports teams. The alt-left progressives assert that Jews are White and are among the “ownership class” (Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers) who operate “behind the curtain… [to] make money off of racism.” (Rep. Rashida Tlaib).
In this vortex of anti-Semitism, the far right and left are actively replacing Jews.
Consider the Supreme Court.
The liberal media is very excited that President Biden nominated a liberal Black woman to the court and informed its readership that White males make up one-third of the country but accounted for 94% of Supreme Court judges. This is a diversionary tactic of going back 200-plus years in time to make a point. A more relevant statistic would have been comparing the racial composition of judges since 1965, which is certainly much lower than 94% White males. Even more, it will likely show that the number of Jews far exceeds the their current size of 2% of the U.S. population. A disproportionate number of Jews are in law school so it is not surprising that a disproportionate percentage become judges and senators (most are former lawyers).
But current actions of both Republicans and Democrats are scrubbing Jews from the top bench.
Stephen Breyer (Jewish) is being replaced in 2022 by a Black woman, possibly Ketanji Brown Jackson, because Biden said “for too long, our government and our courts haven’t looked like America.“
Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Jewish) was replaced in 2020 by Amy Coney Barrett, a devout Catholic.
Merrick Garland (Jewish) was blocked from being considered for the court in 2016 as Republicans delayed the confirmation process until after the election to secure a conservative seat which went to Neil Gorsuch, a Protestant.
Elana Kagan is now the only Jew on the current Supreme Court, appointed in 2010.
While the Supreme Court could have had four Jews sitting at one time in 2016 with Breyer, Ginsburg, Garland and Kagan, there will now be only a single Jew on the highest court.
The Supreme Court in 2016 with three Jewish justices was ready to have a fourth (Merrick Garland). Due to Republican and Democratic actions, in 2022, there will only be a single Jew (Elana Kagan).
This dynamic is playing out in elected offices as well.
In 2022, there are ten Jewish senators, or ten percent of the senate, seemingly a large percentage. But the numbers are shrinking and likely going to continue to shrink.
Carl Levin (D-MI) died last year and replaced by a non-Jew, Gary Peters
Barbara Boxer (D-CA) seat is now held by Alex Padilla
Arlen Spector (R-PA) died in 2011 and his seat is held by Pat Toomey
Joe Lieberman (I-CT) left office in 2013 and was replaced by Chris Murphy
Al Franken (D-MN) left office in 2017 and was replaced by Tina Smith
Since 2011, there have been four Jews elected to the Senate: Richard Blumenthal (D-CT); Brian Schatz (D-HI); Jacky Rosen (D-NV); and Jon Ossoff (D-GA). Meanwhile, seven Jews have left: Spector; Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ); Herb Kohl (D-WI); Lieberman; Boxer; Russ Feingold (D-WI); and Franken. That’s a net loss of 23 percent.
The same has happened in Congress. Once reliable “Jewish seats” have gone to Black progressives. Eliot Engel (D-NY) was replaced by Jamaal Bowman (D). Nita Lowey (D-NY) was replaced with Mondaire Jones (D).
The Jews that remain are often mum on Jewish issues in the hopes of keeping their jobs.
Other Jewish politicians live in fear of their lives. Craig Greenberg, a Jewish Democratic candidate for mayor of Louisville, KY was shot at by a Black Lives Matter radical in February 2022. The would-be assassin was released less than 48 hours later after the radical group posted bail for the shooter.
Elected officials are pushing this diversity into the business world as well, often to the detriment of Jews.
In September 2020, California governor Gavin Newsom passed a law that requires publicly held companies headquartered in the state to include board members from underrepresented communities. That law defines “underrepresented” as “an individual who self‑identifies as Black, African American, Hispanic, Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander, Native American, Native Hawaiian, or Alaska Native, or who self‑identifies as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender.” Jews, the most persecuted minority in the world, did not qualify, as liberals consider Jews as over-represented.
Jews are in the cross-hairs of the extreme right and left, with both groups pushing to eliminate Jews from positions of influence.
The left-wing is promoting its notion of the “myth of meritocracy.” Black people are particularly offended at Jewish advances in various fields despite systemic anti-Semitism, as it dilutes their argument. They are left with the incorrect conclusion – like Whoopi Goldberg – that Jews are inherently White and don’t suffer from real hatred the way that Blacks suffer.
Right wing extremists believe that Jews are all far left-wing nuts undermining family values and trying to import people of color to replace a White and Christian America.
The extreme right and left are coalescing into a modern Henry Ford kind of anti-Semite, where political party bends but populist anti-Semitism thrives. Both groups are targeting Jews directly and indirectly, to remove them from public fora.
The war against the Jewish State began militarily at Israel’s inception, as the armies of five Arab nations invaded Israel in 1948 in a war to annihilate it. In June 1967, the Arab world attempted the same but failed spectacularly.
Since that time, the armed conflict by Muslim countries has continued with more modest ambitions, as the goal of destroying Israel is considered too remote a possibility, unless and until Iran obtains nuclear weapons. The violent attacks against Israel have mostly been about pestering and killing Jews to obtain concessions. The 1973 Yom Kippur war ushered in a willingness for Israel to hand the Sinai Peninsula back to Egypt, and Palestinian Arabs believe that the Second Intifada War made Israel abandon the Gaza Strip. The various Hamas wars from Gaza since 2008 and the political-terrorist group’s kidnapping of Israelis, secured the release of thousands of fellow terrorists and other modest gains.
The failure to destroy Israel did not make the Muslim countries accept its existence. In fact, it has done its utmost to deny its existence.
Immediately after the 1967 Six Day War, the Arab League passed the Khartoum Resolution declaring a policy of ‘Three No’s’: “no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it.” For the Arabs, the Jewish State had a name but was to be ignored until the Arabs could prevail at destroying the foreign presence.
In the 1970’s, the Arab League enlisted allies to their cause. Leveraging their control of the oil markets, and with a former Nazi sitting as head of the United Nations, the Muslim and Arab countries got the world to pass UNGA Resolution 3379 in November 1975 that declared that “Zionism is a form of racism.” This was an attempt to deny Israel’s legitimacy broadly.
Meanwhile, faced with the impossibility of destroying Israel, the Arabs and Muslims went after Jewish “soft targets,” like plane and boat hijackings (Dawson’s Field in 1970, Rome and Vienna airport shootings in 1985, and Achille Lauro in 1985), as well as blowing up Jewish community centers (Argentina 1994) and synagogues (Turkey 1986). If people inside Israel were too difficult to kill, the Muslim world came for the Jews around the world.
While the ‘Zionism is racism’ resolution was ultimately thrown out in 1991 due to the efforts of the United States, it simmered as the Oslo Accords of 1993 and 1995 anticipated a peace deal in September 2000. Instead of finally accepting peace, the Palestinians launched the Second Intifada War which only subsided with the erection of Israel’s security barrier in 2004-5. That led to two new movements which are unfortunately thriving today: the demonization of the Jewish State and the BDS Movement (Boycott, Divest and Sanction), both economic wars.
Demonization of Jews and Zionists
The 2001 Durban Conference against racism served as the global launch party to amplify and expand upon the prior “Zionism is racism” propaganda.
As the world no longer relied on oil as it had in the 1970’s, the Muslim Arab world hoped to convince the western world to join their war against the Jewish State based on democratic values, a sly and peculiar approach for autocratic regimes. The global conference advanced a new lexicon to vilify Israel with terms like “apartheid,” “settler-colonialism,” “ethnic cleansing,” “genocide,” and “crimes against humanity” to name a few. It similarly painted Palestinians as noble victims, misusing words like “desperate,” “resistance,” and “dignity.”
This approach is more insidious than used during the 1970’s and 1980’s which relied on far-flung violence. The violent attacks against Jews around the world by Arab Muslims made it difficult to portray the Palestinian Arabs as “desperate.” Instead, since 2001, the demonization tactic has penetrated the west through the education systems, the media and the democratic system itself.
The Arab world funneled billions of dollars and tens of thousands of students to universities including New York University, MIT, Columbia and Tufts. The donations funded Middle East Studies departments and Divinity schools with anti-Israel narratives. Due to this activity, college campuses have become hotbeds of anti-Semitism, often denying Jews the right to participate in public spaces as perceived Zionists and racists.
These young voices have been indoctrinated with a new anti-Zionist vocabulary and worldview over the past twenty years. They are now running the western liberal media, working at “human rights” organizations and voting for far-left anti-Zionist politicians endorsed by the Democrat Socialists of America.
The 2001 Durban campaign, now 20-plus years running, has been very successful in not only demonizing Israel, but demonizing Zionists. Under this current version of “Zionism is racism,” Jews in Israel and around the world are no longer only being attacked by Arab Muslims but by their fellow citizens. While the legitimacy of Israel is still being denied, the focus has expanded to Israel’s supporters.
The movement seeks to boycott not only Israeli products but those companies that do business in Israel. It wants universities to bar Israeli professors and athletes to refuse to compete with Israelis.
It has even gone after its own, turning on Arab Muslim states which normalized ties to Israel such as the United Arab Emirates.
After failing to destroy the Jewish State militarily, the Arab Muslim world has gone through three stages to destroy it economically, with the current effort enlisting global support against all Zionists
The current Muslim and Arab war against the Jewish State is being fought everywhere, as Zionists of any religion or ethnicity are falsely branded “racists” who should be canceled. The intent is to pressure people and governments everywhere to sever ties with the Jewish State, making it vulnerable and weak by every measure.
The war against Israel has mutated since the country was founded but the goal remains the same: the end of the Jewish State. What has alarmingly changed now is that YOU are being asked to participate in that anti-Semitic endeavor by your neighbors, schools, media and elected officials.
The Whoopi Goldberg incident regarding her comments about Jews in the Holocaust took another turn as she was suspended from her show ,”The View,” for two weeks. Instead of being a teaching moment for everyone, it turned into another incident of ‘cancel culture.’
Whoopi is not a boldfaced anti-Semite who wants to see Jews harmed; she is ignorant about the Holocaust – and anti-Semitism – as are many uneducated, liberal, Black women.
The Pew Research Center conducted a poll of Americans in January 2020, about their knowledge of the Holocaust. The results were pretty stark.
Black Americans know much less about the Holocaust than other groups.
Four questions were posed to people – when did the Holocaust happen; how were ghettos used for Jews; that 6 million Jews were killed; and that Hitler was democratically elected in Germany. On average, Blacks got 1.2 questions right out of 4, compared to 2.5 for Whites and 1.7 for Hispanics.
Women are also less informed about the Holocaust, especially, adult women who knew much less than adult men.
The general level of education also correlates to an understanding of the Holocaust. While 84 percent of college graduates knew that the Holocaust happened between 1930 and 1950, only 55 percent of those without any college knew such fact. Only 29 percent of those without any college knew that Hitler was democratically elected.
Lastly, liberals are marginally more ignorant than conservatives regarding the Holocaust, according to the Pew study.
So consider Whoopi Goldberg, a liberal Black adult female who dropped out of high school. She falls into the intersectionality of ignorance as it relates to the Holocaust. In all probability, she knows remarkably little about the genocide of European Jewry, and her “views” on the subject are probably similar to other Black women without any college education.
Society should focus on the glaring failure of our schools and which people are given coveted platforms. Today, the ignoramuses we churn out are given soap boxes on mass media, and can do severe damage in spreading disinformation with “views” which are seemingly blessed and fact-checked by the major networks.
An anti-Zionist teacher was fired from the Westchester Reform Temple in Scarsdale, NewYork, and is now suing the institution. Religious organizations should support the Reform Temple in this lawsuit.
Jessie Sander wrote an article in May 2021 in which she “call[ed] for American Jewish institutions to revisit their educational philosophy and curriculum about Palestine and its history,” and that American Jews must stop their “racist practices and beliefs” and support of Israel (which she spelled each time with a lower case “i”) in its “settler-colonial violence” and “genocide in Palestine.” She added that “israel actively trains the actors of our military state to enact violence against our Black and Brown siblings,” portraying Israel as committing racist violence both in Israel and the United States.
A few weeks later she was hired as a Hebrew teacher at the Westchester Reform Temple before the school was aware of her writings. Once the administration found out about it, she was questioned and then dismissed. She is now suing the school for reinstatement plus compensatory damages.
February 6, 2022 New York Times article on a Jewish school firing an anti-Israel teacher
The New York Times covered the story in its typical anti-Israel jaundiced fashion. It noted that Sander is like many younger American Jews, who are not emotionally attached to Israel, as it cited a poll which found that 25 percent of Jews believed Israel to be an “apartheid state” and 22 percent said it was “committing genocide against the Palestinians.”
Those aren’t “beliefs” any more than Holocaust denial is a belief. They are simply wrong. When 25 percent of a class gets a question wrong on an exam, we don’t reorient the narrative to accommodate the incorrect.
Schools must be able to evaluate the teachers they hire and whether they pose a threat to the students and mission of the institution. This teacher was not simply stating that she was concerned about Palestinian self-determination but sought to change the “educational philosophy and curriculum” with her false impressions about the state of Palestinian “genocide.” Together with her deliberate refusal to capitalize the state of Israel, the institution was rightly concerned about what she was going to teach in her classes.
While liberal anti-Zionists like Peter Beinart may run to defend this teacher, it is important for other religious denominations – especially the Orthodox – to rally to the side of the Reform Temple.
Jewish institutions have long hired a variety of people from different backgrounds. Yeshiva University, the flagship Jewish university in the United States, hires many non-Jewish faculty. Jewish Day Schools hire people with a range of political views from conservative to progressive.
But they do not hire someone who seeks to instill a false narrative into the cirriculum.
Yeshiva University, the Orthodox Union, the Rabbinical Council of America and other Orthodox organizations do not always have an opportunity to bond with the Reform movement. These mission-driven groups – as well as non-Jewish ones – should rally to support the Westchester Reform Temple in the suit by an anti-Israel extremist, in an important defense of their religious rights.
Holocaust denial is so commonplace, that we don’t contemplate its uniqueness. There is no other broad-based denial of a particular event in history other than the genocide of European Jewry, even while Survivors are still alive.
Why is that?
Certainly there is bigotry and racism. But many people harbor biases against a group and still do not deny their history.
A person may dislike Black people but won’t deny that there was Black slavery. A person might be a misogynist, but will readily admit that women once did not have the right to vote.
Yet the deliberate effort to deny Jewish history happens so frequently, that even the United Nations General Assembly – no friend to the Jewish people – passed a resolution to combat this evil.
Why do people deny and falsify Jewish history?
A Religious Perspective: Change in Gospel and Fake History
Christianity views itself as an extension of Judaism. The Christian Messiah was a himself a Jew in Jerusalem, who took the religion in a new direction. The Christian bible is called the ‘New Testament,’ built upon the ‘Old Testament’ of the Jews.
For centuries, Christianity viewed Jews as those who rejected their Messiah. Until the Second Vatican Council in 1965, Catholic doctrine felt that Jews should be punished for killing Jesus and continuing to reject him.
Muslims’ approach to Judaism is quite different. Islamic tradition views the Hebrew Bible as a complete fabrication. They believe that Abraham’s covenant ran through his son Ishmael, the patriarch of the Arabs, not Isaac.
It is therefore not surprising that Muslims are twice as likely to harbor anti-Semitic attitudes as Christians according to an ADL poll. That the Islamic Republic of Iran mocks the Holocaust as a fabrication can perhaps be seen through the lens that it views itself as the vanguard of Islam, which rejects the entire story of the Jewish people from its foundation.
Christians falls into two camps: those who accept the Second Vatican Council and are not likely to deny the Holocaust, and the “ultra-traditionalists” – like some of the people from the Society of St. Pius X – who actively deny the Holocaust. This second group are angered that the Church altered its own foundational texts and the history of Jews and Jesus, so they actively deny the genocide of the Jews.
For Muslims and ultra-traditionalist Christians, Jewish history is either built on a fiction, or has become fictionalized, so think nothing of denying Jews of their history.
A Secular Perspective: Schemers and Scapegoats
The falsification of Jewish history occurs outside of religious denominations as well.
“The Protocols of The Elders of Zion,” was a notorious anti-Semitic forgery written in the Russian Empire in 1903. It attempted to portray Jews as schemers who were plotting to create havoc to control the world through the banks, media and provoking wars. It spread throughout the world by radical anti-Semites including Henry Ford and the Palestinian terrorist group, Hamas.
While some people might hate Hindus, no one took time to create a false document about Hindu community leaders to make them look evil.
So why the Jews?
Jews were often viewed with suspicion because of their position.
The Jewish diaspora spread a small people to the corners of the earth. While some assimilated and converted (forcibly and otherwise), many held on to their traditions. They did so in clustered communities – both voluntary and forced – to facilitate the production of kosher foods and participate in communal prayer.
That insularity bred suspicion. A small group that insisted on holding onto an unpopular belief system either lived on one extreme of abject poverty or became leaders in various professional fields. They were resented for both because they were considered as foreigners.
Anti-Semites were ready to embrace the Protocols forgery. They jumped at the opportunity to believe blood libels that Jews stole babies for baking matzah or were behind the Black Death. Jews were considered aliens in their midst, and easy scapegoats for the root of problems. Falsifying history helped foster that foreigner narrative, and an evil one at that.
The foreigner label attached to Jews everywhere, including in Ethiopia where Black Jews were called “falashas,” which means “foreigners” in Amharic.
In small, cloistered communities stretched around the world, Jews were vulnerable. Their non-Jewish neighbors were able to cast their opinions onto this minority, and craft stories to enlist others to embrace their hatred. Jews were left protesting the absurd charges to an audience that was both instigator, prosecutor and judge at once.
The secular falsification of Jewish history is anchored in xenophobia, and a desire to expel the foreign bodies, whether they be the “unclean,” poor Jew, or the “powerful,” puppet-masters “behind the curtain,” exploiting the noble masses for profit.
1,000 years of Jewish expulsions
The unique nature of denying and falsifying Jewish history is embedded in Muslim and ultra-traditionalist Christian religious bias as well as anti-Semitic xenophobia. Holocaust education will not cure those ills.
Whoopi Goldberg, a liberal Black popular personality on television described the Holocaust of European Jewry as matter of “White people doing it to White People,” and therefore not a matter of racism. From her vantage point, the Jews were not an “other,” a people apart, but merely a group of White people that other White people didn’t care for. For Whoopi – and many Black people and liberals – Jews are White, and possess power and therefore cannot claim racism.
To set the matter straight, the Nazis did view the Jews as an inferior race. Here is just one section of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, in his introduction to the Jew:
“One day when I was walking through the inner city, I suddenly came upon a being clad in a long caftan, with black curls. Is this also a Jew? was my first thought. At Linz they certainly did not look like that. Secretly and cautiously I watched the man, but the longer I stared at this strange face and scrutinized one feature after the other, the more my mind reshaped the first question into another form : Is this also a German?
“As was my custom in such cases, I tried to remove my doubts by reading. For the first time in my life I bought some anti-Semitic pamphlets for a few pennies. They all started with the supposition that the reader already knew the Jewish question in principle or understood it to a certain degree. Finally, the tone was such that I again had doubts because the assertions were supported by such extremely unscientific arguments. I then suffered relapses for weeks, and once even for months. The matter seemed so monstrous, the accusations so unbounded that the fear of committing an injustice tortured me and made me anxious and uncertain again. However, even I could no longer actually doubt that they were not Germans with a special religion, but an entirely different race; since I had begun to think about this question, since my attention was drawn to the Jews, I began to see Vienna in a different light from before. Wherever I went I saw Jews, and the more I saw of them, the sharper I began to distinguish them from other people. The inner city especially and the districts north of the Danube Canal swarmed with a people which through its appearance alone had no resemblance to the German people.“
The entirety of Hitler’s work is a screed against the Jews as an entirely alien being, vile in every form. His propaganda machine borrowed from the prior works of anti-Semites, and expounded upon them, riling up a continent to exterminate these foreign beings from their midst.
The matter of whether Jews are a different race is not the point. To debate that matter is to give air to noxious evil. The Whoopi comments which were broadcast to millions, must be considered for other insights:
Holocaust ignorance and denial on various platforms
Non-Anti-Semitic Black Perception of Jews
Holocaust Ignorance and Denial on Various Platforms
A few days ago was Holocaust Remembrance Day, and the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution against Holocaust denial. The resolution pointed out “the global and open nature of the Internet and the significant role of social media in spreading information,” but failed to discuss how the distortions about the Holocaust occur regularly in the mainstream media, both in the news and on popular shows like Whoopi Goldberg’s “The View.”
Various forms of anti-Semitism and Holocaust distortions are also becoming mainstreamed in American politics from the likes of Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). It is important to call it out everywhere and not pretend it is only promoted on social media.
Non-Anti-Semitic Black Perception of Jews
There are certainly a large number of Black anti-Semites like Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam, who attracts loyalists like Keith Ellison and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA). Whoopi should not be dumped into this anti-Semitic camp.
Whoopi, as well as many Blacks and liberals, perceive of Jews as White, powerful “one-percenters.” They see American Jews and Israeli Jews as oppressors of Black and Brown people for profit, as stated by Tlaib to her loyalists in the Democratic Socialists of America. Marc Lamont Hill claims that only the powerful can be racists, both making it impossible for Black people to be racists, and that Jews cannot be the victims of racism since they’re White and powerful. This twisted logic has permeated the mindset of those who are not openly anti-Semitic and anti-Israel.
The reality is that an average Jew in the United States is over 40 times more likely to be attacked than an average White person. Proportionately, Jews suffer more hate crimes than Blacks as well. These are plain facts.
Jews are marked as “the other” by White Supremacists as well as Blacks. It binds KKK leader David Duke with Ilhan Omar in their open hatred, but also blinds others like Whoopi Goldberg.
Black people insist on holding the mantle of Victims of Preference, and cannot let such security blanket drop for a moment, even when discussing the Holocaust on broadcast television.
Whoopi apologized for her Holocaust remarks that offended people but missed the opportunity to teach people about the common evil of racism and anti-Semitism: don’t turn your neighbors into “others” to demonize and despise. Jews suffer from “othering” around the world, and this Black liberal should educate her listeners to stop doing it to Jews themselves.
On January 20, 1942, Germans met in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee to develop the “Final Solution to the Jewish Problem.” The persecution of Jews was already well underway, and on that day, the Nazi regime put into place a program to push the Jews to extinction. They succeeded in wiping out nearly all of the Jews in Europe, about one-third of global Jewry.
Since the end of World War II, the Arab and Muslim world picked up the fight to “the Jewish Problem.”
The Arabs in Palestine were successful in lobbying the British in impeding Jewish immigrants desperate to leave the Holocaust in Europe with the “White Papers”, likely causing well over 100,000 Jewish deaths. The remaining Holocaust survivors landing on the shores of Palestine after World War II were very vulnerable targets. The Palestinian Arabs enlisted the help of neighboring Muslim countries to complete the genocide of the Jews, killing nearly one per cent of the region’s Jews in the 1948-9 Arab-Israeli War. The Arabs then ethnically-cleansed all Jews from the lands they seized, and forbade Jews from visiting their holiest locations in the Old City of Jerusalem.
Angry at the survival of the Jewish nation, Muslim Arab countries purged their Jews. Roughly 99% of the region’s Jews were forced out, an estimated 850,000 Jews, a total which excludes the Jews who fled Afghanistan and Iran.
Algeria 140,000
Egypt 75,000
Iraq 135,000
Lebanon 5,000
Libya 38,000
Morocco 265,000
Syria 30,000
Tunisia 105,000
Yemen 55,000
Arab countries attempted to kill all of the Jews in Israel again in 1967, though they failed spectacularly. Stinging from the loss, the Arab League adopted the Khartoum Resolution which called for “no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel and no negotiations with Israel.” The Arabs soon launched another war against Israel – during Judaism’s holiest day, Yom Kippur – in 1973, while pushing the noxious idea that “Zionism is a form of racism” at the United Nations under the watch of former Nazi, Kurt Waldheim, who was serving as the UN Secretary General.
Meanwhile, Christianity rethought its complicity in the European Holocaust and declared in 1965 that Jews were no more responsible for the death of Jesus than anyone else, and declared clearly that Jews should not be persecuted. Less than 25 years later, the “Iron wall” in the Soviet Union crumbled and allowed thousands of Jewish “refuseniks” to leave the country to Israel and elsewhere.
But the bile in the Arab Muslim world did not let up during this time, even as Egypt made peace with Israel in 1979.
The Palestinians declared themselves to have an independent state in 1988 on all of the land of Israel including the “West Bank” and Gaza, a move which was rejected by much of the western world. At the same time, Hamas introduced its foundational charter calling for the death of Jews and complete destruction of the Jewish State. The group (and other Palestinian terrorist groups) became immensely popular and received funding from Iran and Syria.
Iran and its proxies like Hezbollah, together with Palestinian Arabs, targeted and killed thousands of Jews around the world in the following decades. Iranian leaders have continued to hold Holocaust denial conferences, call for the destruction of Israel and pursue nuclear weapons and long range ballistic missiles.
On the 80th anniversary of the Wannsee Conference, the United Nations approved a resolution condemning Holocaust denial, with only Iran standing in opposition. The story was covered by The New York Times and other media outlets which wrote about the resolution and described today’s prevalent “right-wing” anti-Semitism and completely ignored that the vast majority of anti-Semitism stems from the Islamic world.
Not only will Muslim anti-Semitism not go away by ignoring it, but it may enable the leading state sponsor of terrorism and Holocaust denial to obtain weapons of mass destruction to carry out another genocide of the Jews.
A British Muslim flew thousands of miles to take Jewish hostages in Texas in an attempt to secure the release of Aafia Siddiqui, a noted anti-Semite serving time for trying to kill American soldiers and plot a mass casualty attack in New York City. The hijacker, Malik Faisal Akram, yelled at the people praying on a Sabbath morning in synagogue, “Jews control the world, Jews control the media, Jews control the banks,” and said that the Jews “can call President Trump and he will do it [release Siddiqui] because Jews control everything.“
But The New York Times deliberately omitted that Akram and Siddiqui were Muslim or even the word “anti-Semitism” in its coverage. The Associated Press would similarly not describe the Jew hatred of Siddiqui in a long profile of her.
The New York Times article on January 17, 2022 about the hostage taking in a Texas synagogue. No Times article mentioned the word “anti-Semitism” regarding the hostage taker or the terrorist he tried to free.
The Times has an established track record of ignoring Black and Brown anti-Semitism for two principle reasons: the liberal paper does not want those communities to draw the attention of law enforcement which it thinks over-police those communities, and it seeks to label racism as a purely White and Republican phenomenon, in the hopes of securing more votes for liberals and minorities.
The left-wing media gives Muslim anti-Semites and anti-Zionists a platform, such as CAIR-San Francisco Bay Area Executive Director Zahra Billoo, who has been flagged by the Anti-Defamation League for comments like “pay attention to the ‘polite Zionists,’ … We need to pay attention to the Anti-Defamation League. We need to pay attention to the Jewish Federation. We need to pay attention to the Zionist synagogues. We need to pay attention to the Hillel chapters on our campuses. …know your enemies, and I’m not going to sugarcoat that they are your enemies.”
Discussion by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) on November 10, 2021 including popular anti-Zionist Linda Sarsour, seeking the release of Aafia Siddiqui. Sarsour is a favorite of the Times who affectionately calls her a “Brooklyn homegirl in a hijab.”
But in the end, liberals have placed Muslims alongside Black and Brown people in the category of Victims of Preference. They will not disturb their protective shield around these groups, even if they commit heinous crimes.
That is why left-wing politicians call out anti-Semitism and lump it together with racism and Islamophobia – not because they think that Jews suffer like their Victims of Preference, but as a means TO PROTECT the VOPs, even as the Jews uniquely suffer.
What makes the absence particularly appalling, is that the liberal press did not have to make the statement itself, but could just have simply quoted Democratic President Joe Biden who said of the attack “let me be clear to anyone who intends to spread hate — we will stand against anti-Semitism and against the rise of extremism in this country.” Instead, the paper just use a quote in an article on January 18 where he called it an “act of terror.“
The New York Times quoted President Biden on January 18 as saying it was an “act of terror,” and not using his statements about anti-Semitism.
The New York Times, the most popular digital news source in the world where over 90% of its viewership is Democratic, is educating its liberal readers that minorities cannot be racists or anti-Semites. It is part of its ‘2019 Project’ on White Supremacy, which is concluding that “American Jews are now part of the ownership class,” as Randi Weingarten, President of the powerful American Federation of Teachers union said. While Jews may be a numerical minority, they are in the one-per centers and in cahoots with the White ruling class, and are therefore an integral part of the problem. More succinctly, the alt-left is attempting to educate people that Jews are the only persecuted minority who actually deserve it.
