Media Analysis

Batya Ungar-Sargon links anti-Zionists to David Duke and synagogue murders

After an anti-Zionist student group disrupted a panel she was on last Thursday, Batya Ungar-Sargon, the opinion editor of the Forward, said the students protested the event because the three panelists were Jewish and that intellectuals who stood idly by or cheered on the demonstrators bear responsibility for the spike in anti-semitism and even synagogue murders.

Ungar-Sargon also made these claims: 97 percent of Jews are Zionists; anti-Zionists in the Jewish community are as anomalous as Trump supporters who are black; she is the “number one publisher of Palestinian voices in America”; she has “spent my entire career embedded in the Palestinian community;” and she has done more than anyone else you will meet to get Israelis to vote for Palestinian politicians.

Some who attended the event or protested it have disputed Ungar-Sargon’s version of events.

The panel took place at Bard College in the Hudson Valley on October 10 in a conference on racism and anti-semitism. Titled “Who Needs Anti-Semitism?” the panel featured Ruth Wisse, the Harvard Yiddishist; Shany Mor, a Bard teacher who formerly served as director of foreign policy at the Israeli National Security Council, an official body; and Ungar-Sargon.

The Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at the school disrupted the event for several minutes chiefly because Ruth Wisse has made anti-Palestinian statements.

The next day Ungar-Sargon was on a second panel titled, “Racism and Zionism: Black and Jewish Relations.” She gave a short speech denouncing the earlier protest as anti-semitic and the conference-goers as handmaidens of anti-Semitism, and then walked out.

Ungar-Sargon said in her speech (and a subsequent op-ed) that she told the protesters they had chosen the wrong panel to protest, they should save it for the Zionism panel.

Their response was that the discourse of anti-semitism is inherently bound up in the Israel question. You know who thinks that? David Duke thinks that. David Duke thinks that talking about antisemitism hurts Palestinians. David Duke thinks that the actions of one Jew are the responsibility of another Jew. Thus I, the number one publisher of Palestinian voices in America– The Forward, a Jewish newspaper where I am the opinion editor, publishes more op-eds by Palestinians than the New York Times, the Nation and the Washington Post combined– I, who have spent my entire career embedded in the Palestinian community, who have convinced more Israelis to vote for the Joint Arab List than you will meet in your life– I am worthy of protesting when I try to talk, not about Israel, but about antisemitism… It is because I am a Jew.

She went on to blame her fellow conference-members for standing idly by as anti-Semitism ravages the Jewish community.

I’m bothered by the cowardice of my fellow conference goers…. None of you could find the guts to stand up and call out a blatantly racist act. [You say] “Oh they were protesting Israel, they were protesting Zionists.” 97 percent of Jews worldwide are Zionists. 97 percent!…. Why do think that is? There are the same number of antizionist Jews as there are black women who voted for Trump. Some of the Jews here will reassure you that it is fine. Would you allow Diamond and Silk [black women who are Fox News hosts] to tell you what’s racist? You certainly should not. I’m horrified by your cowardice…. I feel shut down. What have you done to help Jews as antisemitism as spiked across the nation.. as Jews have been murdered at their place of worship, and orthodox Jews beaten to a pulp day after day in Brooklyn? You can say, “I sat idly by as Jews were protested for trying to talking about antisemitism. I allowed a Jewish woman to be held accountable for the actions of a country half way around the world where she can’t even vote, because of her ethnicity. I egged that protest on, I applauded it, then I went to a party.”

Adam Shatz of the London Review of Books was a speaker at the conference. He repudiated Ungar-Sargon’s claims on twitter:

I was there, and what provoked the protest wasn’t the fact that the discussion was about anti-Semitism, but that the speaker was Ruth Wisse, a notorious anti-Arab racist and unconditional defender of Israel and its occupation. The notion that this woman from the Forward was protested because she’s Jewish is preposterous. A great number of speakers were Jews who are deeply aware of anti-Semitism – Etienne Balibar, Marc Weitzmann and others. None were protested because they were Jewish, or speaking about anti-Semitism. I would say at least a plurality of the protestors were young Jewish students. It’s also remarkable how right-wingers and defenders of Israel who complain about the ‘victimology’ of Arabs and black people slide so easily into claims of victimhood themselves.

A Bard student who is a member of SJP and tweets under the handles Akiva Hirsch and Yung Perchik was one of the demonstrators. He also dismisses Ungar-Sargon’s claims:

First, you made a comment about the fact that we were protesting a panel that was about antisemitism, not Israel/Palestine. But Israel/Palestine was one of the things Wisse focussed on in her speech, the other being Black Americans.

Now while the members of Bard’s SJP, myself included, are not fortune tellers, based on the horrifically racist things Wisse has said in the past, we had a feeling that was how her speech was going to go. That’s a big part of why we decided to protest.

Another big part of why we decided to protest is you. You have made a name for yourself by silencing Black Jews, and we don’t take kindly to that.

The other reason is that Mor, the third person at this panel, was the director of foreign policy on the Israeli national security board. So because of that, the panel always had something to do with Israel….

As for your talk of feeling frightened by the conference’s other panelists approval of our protest imagine how frightened a Palestinian student would feel knowing that Wisse said “all Palestinian-Arabs do is breed, bleed, and advertise their misery”

And yet she still managed to make the cut to be invited to this conference. And if you want to talk about Jews being silenced and ignored, talk about the Ethiopian Jewish woman who was told by Wisse that Black Jews are treated just fine.

My last thought on the protest: as a White Jew, I will NEVER allow hateful bigots like Wisse to claim that they represent me, and I will do whatever I can to make sure that she and those who hold her same values don’t have a platform…

Last thing before I go to sleep: I derive no pleasure from protesting the only all-Jewish panel at the @Arendt_Center’s conference. But I can’t help the fact that they chose awful people for this panel, and no amount of being Jewish can fix someone’s awfulness.

Kenneth Stern formerly of the American Jewish Committee, now at Bard, was also at the conference and published a letter at the Forward disputing Ungar-Sargon’s op-ed’s claims.

I was in all the rooms she describes… At the Bard conference on Thursday, the students marched to the front and held signs. When one was asked to lower her sign so people could see, she did. When a couple of them interrupted the talk, security officers and deans were right there to ask them to leave, and they did without incident…

Ungar-Sargon was right to note that the panel the students chose to protest was all Jewish, but her leap to the conclusion that it was protested because it was all Jewish, or that perhaps there should have been some special dispensation from protest because it was all Jewish, is misplaced. It was exceptionally clear to me as an audience member that these students protested because they strongly disagreed with Wisse’s views. not because of her Jewishness….

Ungar-Sargon wrote that Wisse’s talk was only about anti-Semitism, not Israel. But Wisse did speak about Israel, and of course she has written about it extensively. Ungar-Sargon’s assertion that bringing Israel into a discussion of anti-Semitism is inherently racist is mind-boggling. I speak regularly to Jewish audiences and on college campuses about anti-Semitism, and generally say little about Israel up front, but Israel is the topic audience members — frequently from the right, politically — most often focus on in the question-and-answer period.

Rebecca Vilkomerson of Jewish Voice for Peace denounced the claim by Ungar-Sargon that anti-Zionist criticism of Israel is part and parcel of attacks on synagogues. No progressive should believe this, she said, and “to the extent they do they shouldn’t call themselves progressives AND that is the unfortunate success of repeating a lie so many times it feels true.”

Vilkomerson said the claim is being advanced by Bari Weiss of the New York Times, too.

This has gotta stop. It is dangerous. It cheapens & destroys any collective understanding of what antisemitism is, ignores and discounts racism and Islamophobia, and tries to undermine any proper attention to Palestinian human rights and Israeli culpability for violating them

MJ Rosenberg describes Ungar-Sargon’s version of the event as “lies” of an ideological character: “The worst thing about @bungarsargon’s lies about what happened at #Bard is that it detracts from the violent #antisemitism emanating from the right to focus on peaceful protest by #progressive Jewish students against the #occupation and its defenders.”

Dani Dayan, the Israeli consul general in New York, cheered Ungar-Sargon on.

“Batya and I disagree on many issues. But when a Jew is attacked by antisemites and responds this way – I stand up and applaud with admiration.”

Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL also applauds.

Bravo @bungarsargon for sharing how she encountered ugly #antiSemitism at @BardCollege — at a panel on anti-Semitism no less. It’s a case study on the very real issues facing Jewish students on college campuses today and shows how hate manifests on the far Left.

Mairav Zonszein writes:

If this is how the @ADL does its research into what constitutes an anti-Semitic incidents, it calls into question everything they do.

I believe Ungar-Sargon’s claims are tactical: she is alarmed at the growing support in progressive circles for anti-Zionism and wants to stem the tide. To do so, she claims that anti-Zionism is a self-hating 3 percent fringe in the Jewish community, like black Trump supporters. This is a wobbly number: Ungar-Sargon herself said last November that 95 percent of Jews are Zionists; now she says 97 percent.

In fact, a growing number of vocal, younger Jews is openly questioning the need for “the Jewish state” and saying the Zionist ideology is racist. Jewish Voice for Peace is a burgeoning justice group, and it is anti-Zionist. The young Jewish group IfNotNow is also burgeoning, and includes some anti-Zionists.

These progressives obviously have traction inside American politics; 56 percent of Democrats say they would support sanctions against Israel over its settlement project. Two supporters of boycotting Israel are now in Congress, and party leaders have been fighting this trend vociferously.

It is also true, as Michael Koplow, a liberal Zionist says, that the Jewish community is largely Zionist, and the establishment organizations are committed to that ideology: “[E]very major American Jewish organization of any significance supports Israel not only in practice but specifically as a Jewish state and… over 90% of American Jews say they have favorable feelings toward Israel.”

Thanks to Dave Reed, James North, Scott Roth, and Donald Johnson.

Correction: This post initially stated that Kenneth Stern’s letter was written by Natasha Roth. Apologies to both writers!

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I usually don’t comment on a persons looks, but I was immediately reminded of a brunette Ann Coulter.
Does Ann have a sister?

Very interesting and relevant:

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/betty-mccollum-minnesota-israeli-palestinian_n_5d926349e4b0e9e760514c1f?ri18n=true

“The Minnesota Congresswoman who Can Criticize Israel” Huffington Post, Oct. 11/19
By Jessica Schulberg.

“St. Paul’s Betty McCollum is radically progressive on U.S. policy towards Israel. Why don’t you ever hear about it?”

EXCERPT:
“Over the past few years, one member of Congress has stood up to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), denounced Israel’s policies, which she likened to ‘apartheid,’ and pushed laws that would place humanitarian conditions on U.S. military aid to Israel. Human rights advocates praise her, and she is popular in her progressive district. But she is neither the face of the progressive left nor the bogeyman of Fox News. Unless you’ve lived in Minnesota — or read MinnPost — there’s a good chance you’ve never heard of her.

“Her name is Betty McCollum, and she has represented St. Paul for almost 20 years.

“President Donald Trump — who loves to attack Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), one of the first Muslim congresswomen, for her criticism of Israel — has never once tweeted McCollum’s name. That the Democratic congresswoman who leads the vanguard of progressive U.S. policy toward Israel in Congress is not the subject of constant bad-faith attacks from the right is a testament to her pragmatism. But it also exposes the inconsistency of the outrage campaign directed at Omar and the other members of the so-called ‘Squad,’ a group of progressive first-term lawmakers who are all women of color.”

PS.
Separately, so as not to confuse the issues: in fact Zionism can be defined very clearly by three necessary tenets:

1 . That Jews are Jewish even if non-religious (consistent with the hereditary character of the religion),
and, as a corollary of the above, “Jews” are a constitutive “people” with a mythical common ancestry, albeit no common culture or territory. The above is not Zionism yet, of course, but (mytho-)racial nationalism;

2. The belief in Romantic nationalism, ie that each “people” of putative common ancestry (or language, or culture) must have its own national-supremacist state in an exclusive territory. This belief is shared by several nationalist ideologies based on an existing common territory;

3. The belief (and practice) that violation of the basic laws of civilized coexistence is justified by point 2, above.

“ Natasha Roth formerly of 972 was also at the conference and published a letter at the Forward disputing Ungar-Sargon’s op-ed’s claims.”

This is wrong. The letter is by Kenneth Stern. What makes that interesting is that he is a Zionist and not allied with the students, but is evidently an honest man.

The Zionists feel such a desperate need for anti-Semitism, and specifically of the left-wing variety, that they will go to any lengths to fake it.