Media Analysis

Anti-Zionist Jews are ‘as deeply opposed to Jewish interests as our enemies’ — Bari Weiss

We have repeatedly pointed out that New York Times opinion editor Bari Weiss demands loyalty of American Jews to Israel on Zionist principle: we are one Jewish people, and the Jewish state reestablished Jewish sovereignty after the millennia. Her expectation is not so different from that of Donald Trump, who has said that Jews who vote Democrat are being “disloyal” to Israel.

Weiss’s new book, “How to Fight Anti-Semitism,” presses the point by attacking anti-Zionist Jews as enemies of the Jewish people, according to excerpts posted by cartoonist Eli Valley and the book’s publisher at Amazon.

Anti-Zionism is not just anti-Semitism because of current reality. Anti-Zionism is also anti-Semitism because of history… As many well-intentioned people look to understand why a very small but very vocal group of Jews seems as deeply opposed to Jewish interests as many of our community’s enemies, these Jews ought to be understood in context, as part of a long history of leftwing anti-Semitic movements that successfully conscript Jews as agents in their own destruction.

Weiss lumps these anti-Zionist Jews in with Stalinist Jews and other disloyals. “Whereas Jews once had to convert to Christianity, now they have to convert to anti-Zionism,” she writes.

Once again, this is Zionist doctrine. To be Jewish in the 20th/21st century means to support Israel. Weiss’s idea of “Jewish interests” is a familiar loyalty oath re Israel. Here is Irving Kristol on Jewish interests 46 years ago, very much in the same mode:

Senator [George] McGovern is very sincere when he says that he will try to cut the military budget by 30%. And this is to drive a knife in the heart of Israel… Jews don’t like big military budgets. But it is now an interest of the Jews to have a large and powerful military establishment in the United States.

Eli Valley tweets,

@bariweiss ‘s lies about the Jewish left—that we’re ignorant of our history, that we’re not motivated by Jewish values, that we’re concerned simply w/social acceptance—are an obscene replay of Trump’s antisemitic “disloyalty” trope. That it’s hyped by the Forward is astounding.

Valley refers to Batya Ungar-Sargon of the Forward. She has been promoting Bari Weiss’s book, and herself has sought to marginalize anti-Zionists as a lunatic fringe.

I think 95 percent of the American Jewish community is pro Israel. We are all still pro Israel. What we are not is willing to give it unconditional support… You can be pro Israel and criticize Israel, that is what it means to be an American Jew. We are no longer willing to give unconditional support.

Ungar-Sargon has herself posted excerpts from Bari Weiss’s book containing criticisms of the anti-Zionist left.  “It’s true that anti-Semitism on the left isn’t actively threatening Jewish lives. Instead it demands that Jews renounce other Jews/Jewish history or face moral condemnation in progressive spaces,” Ungar-Sargon writes. 

Passage from Bari Weiss’s forthcoming book on Anti-Semitism. Posted by Batya Ungar-Sargon
Passage from Bari Weiss’s new book, posted by Batya Ungar-Sargon.

“So now anti-semitism can be about hurting certain people’s feelings,” Scott Roth has remarked.

Will Menaker jibes: “It’s complicated and truly hard to say which is worse: being killed or having to face any criticism of Israel at all ever.”

Mairav Zonszein cites Weiss’s book in a tweet about the new definition of anti-Semitism: “I think it’s fair to say this is war.” And if it is, how many anti-Zionists have platforms in the mainstream media? Zero. So it’s a generational war of social media voices versus entitled establishment voices, on one of the great ideological issues of the day, Is Zionism a failure?

Thanks to Donald Johnson.

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Right. I, as a non-Jew and an American, would be happy / unaffected if every Jew on planet earth moved to the United States and contributed to and added to our national life. No one can argue with all of the art, books, music, movies, science, etc., produced by Jews in the United States.

And I would think most American Jews would actually think that’s a pretty good thing. “Hey, more people like me, or, at least, well-meaning co-religionists–cool!”

But apparently Weiss and many other Zionist bigots have been so twisted by the propaganda that’s infected their brains that they think that being a Jewish United States citizen requires magical blood-and-soil thinking about a completely unrelated area of land that they are only connected to via the magic of religious mythos, and a belief that one should oppress and destroy another, “lesser” people to uphold the Zionist Master Race.

This Weiss disagrees with Bari Weiss.

She echoes the doublespeak and redefinition of words to fit her preprogrammed warped moral compass.

Israel IS a Brutal Apartheid State that disingenuously pretended to believe in a fair 2 State Solution, but all along were just stalling, waiting for someone like Drumpf to come along and BURY it…

And the Zïonists who have aligned themselves with the White Supremacist in Chief literally are the Inbrèd Rèdneck Cousins of Judaism…

And there needs to be a Family INTERVENTION…

How’s that for a redefinition Bari???

BARI WEISS- “…as deeply opposed to Jewish interests as many of our community’s enemies….”

Is it good for the Jews? Anyone who conflicts with Jewish elite interests is viewed as an enemy, not a competitor or rival for power, but an enemy. This is naked sectarianism thinly disguised as essential defense. The elite as victims.

PHIL- “Is Zionism a failure?”

From my perspective, it has been spectacularly successful in achieving its power-seeking objectives.

“with Stalinist Jews and other disloyals.”

Real Jews are Czarists?