This is an article about the antisemitism discourse that is now taking place in Jewish and American politics. I will focus on a recent antisemitism controversy. In a speech to the Democratic Socialists of America national convention on August 1, “Squad” member Rashida Tlaib connected Gaza and Detroit when speaking of the worldwide battle of the powerful against the weak.
That comment and claims of other “tropes” led Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the Anti Defamation League, to accuse Representative Tlaib of Jew hatred.
“Stunning to hear @RashidaTlaib claim “behind the curtain,” those who prevent a “free Palestine” are the “same people” who exploit “regular Americans.” We’ve heard this kind of ugly #antisemitic dog whistling before, but it’s appalling when it comes from a member of Congress.
This is what Tlaib said. Here’s the excerpt of the DSA speech that the ADL posted. Emphases mine:
We also need to recognize– this is for me as a Palestinian-American. As I think about my family in Palestine, that continue to live under military occupation and how that really interacts with this beautiful Black city I grew up in, I always tell people that cutting people off from water is violence, and they do it from Gaza to Detroit, and it’s a way to control people, to oppress people, and it’s those structures that we continue to fight against…If you open the curtain and look behind the curtain, it’s the same people that make money, and yes they do, off of racism. Off of these broken policies. There is someone there making money. You saw it, it was so exposed curing the pandemic, because all those structures, everything that was set up, they made record profit while we were having some of the most challenging most difficult times in our lifetime.
Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL claims that when Tlaib says “they” she means “the Jews.”
Agree with Talib or not about the “1%,” but Tlaib is voicing a common worldview among certain parts of the left: It is the rich that are profiting from the misery of the rest of us. That’s why she mentions how the rich got richer during the pandemic.
Now, of all the people watching this video only a minuscule amount would think that Tlaib is thinking of or alluding to Jews at any point in the video. However, the “hasbara culture” self- appointed experts on antisemitism interpret her words to mean that the “they” does not mean the billionaires who are making record profits off “those structures.” No, she means Jews. The experts say that Tlaib is saying: Just as the Jews are oppressing the Palestinians in Palestine, when you look behind the curtain here, it’s the Jews who fuel our misgivings here too.
Like all previous incidents with Tlaib and other members of the Squad, there were other Jews and Jewish organizations defending her and even expressing outrage at the antisemitism charges. For instance, Peter Beinart, Rabbi Sharon Brous and J Street condemned attacks on Tlaib as “reckless” — constituting “vitriolic and divisive ads against women lawmakers of color.”
These Jews detected no dog whistles about Jews when watching the same video. To these Jews it’s self-evident that the “same people” making record profits whom Tlaib is alluding to are not “Jews.”
But it is the voices espousing the antisemitism charge that ring the loudest and drive the mainstream narrative. They speak for the Jews on antisemitism. For example, Bari Weiss wrote a book on antisemitism that got wide publicity in the Jewish community, Tablet writer Yair Rosenberg just released a video series on antisemitism, and Jeffrey Goldberg built a glowing career as a “never again” journalist. In American political culture these writers are thought of as authorities on antisemitism— they speak out of Jewish knowledge and Jewish historical lessons on antisemitism. Indeed after Greenblatt said he was stunned by Rashida Tlaib’s alleged dogwhistling, Bari Weiss retweeted this tweet by writer John-Paul Pagano in which he states as fact that Tlaib “alludes to a global Jewish “structure.”” Something Tlaib never did.
Bari Weiss’s and Yair Rosenberg’s claim to fame, and great utility too, is that they have the gift to recognize when tropes are antisemitic codes and when they’re entirely innocuous. For instance, Yair Rosenberg has offered himself as a code-breaker on Linda Sarsour’s supposed antisemitism.
Now take this tweet by the actress Gina Carano:
To the unlearned this looks like a trope and canard violation of the first order. But Bari Weiss knows better. She decided it wasn’t Carano’s “intent” to be antisemitic. Weiss can tell which “They” alludes to the “Elders of Zion” and when “they” has nothing to do with the Jews. After all Bari Weiss is an expert on the minds of the antisemites. Weiss rendered her judgment with the words, “intent matters.” And again Bari Weiss’s claim to fame is to know who intends to do what to the Jews.
While fair-minded people can agree that Carano did not intend to traffic in anti-Semitic tropes, Weiss wasn’t nearly so forgiving when it came to Rashida Tlaib’s true intent in criticizing the structures of record profitmaking. Weiss:
So many people have been willfully blind toward the worldview of this congresswoman. Facing the truth of it — and the silence of the majority of her colleagues–means giving up too much.
The explanation to this tweet is that according to Weiss, for two thousand years “antisemitism” has been constantly morphing into new forms. The newest form, according to hasbara culture, is connecting the oppression of minorities here with the oppression of Palestinians there. It is the Jews that are behind making money off the rest of us. (Similarly, critics of Israeli police training American police departments led to accusations of the critics being guilty of the antisemitic “trope” that Jews oppress blacks.)
It must be emphasized that even though Tlaib is being accused of being the hater, objective people understand that Rashida Tlaib is the victim rather than the victimizer in these incidents.
She literally can’t talk about Israel without being accused of really meaning “the
Jews.” It is this frustration that led her to tweet “I’m so tired of this shit.”
And ironically and preposterously it is Bari Weiss, who is herself at “the “cutting
edge” of the ideological war against cancel culture, who is doing the
most egregious canceling– trying to get Rashida Tlaib out of Congress.
Weiss is claiming to know what Tlaib really means when she speaks. What her intent is. But why should we believe what Weiss tells us about what’s going on in Tlaib’s head? As I argued and will continue to demonstrate, Bari Weiss should not be the person to tell us what Tlaib really means.
Tlaib is in an Orwellian predicament. She has no real defense against people like Bari Weiss. Weiss and the head of the ADL Jonathan Greenblatt have more cultural influence about what Tlaib means than Tlaib herself does. Tlaib’s explanations and defenses are irrelevant. Once the Squad are thought of as “antisemites” it becomes ok in American and Jewish culture to incite the most virulent hatred towards them.
That’s how to make sense of AIPAC’s toxic attack ads on Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar.
These ads are not mere negative campaigning; they are hate mongering of the most dangerous kind.
And this hatred is only possible because of the revered judgments of Jews like Greenblatt and Weiss.
In my next article, on Yair Rosenberg’s anti-Semitism video series, I will expose how it is that the wrong people have gained the most authority on antisemitism and what the terrible consequences of that authority are for the rest of us. Hopefully when I’m done there will be less hatred in the world.
““Stunning to hear @RashidaTlaib claim “behind the curtain,” those who prevent a “free Palestine” are the “same people” who exploit “regular Americans.” We’ve heard this kind of ugly #antisemitic dog whistling before, but it’s appalling when it comes from a member of Congress.”
greenblatt , why don,t you call your org what it is.
Anti Defamation of Jews League –to the exclusion of all others.
Greenblatt , just like Sly Abe Foxman, is willing to insult the memory of the victims of the Holocaust to line his pocket.
Shameful cruds.
“Agree with Talib or not about the “1%,” but Tlaib is voicing a common worldview among certain parts of the left: It is the rich that are profiting from the misery of the rest of us. That’s why she mentions how the rich got richer during the pandemic.”
https://theintercept.com/2021/08/16/afghanistan-war-defense-stocks/
$10,000 Invested in Defense Stocks When Afghanistan War Began Now Worth Almost $100,000Was the Afghanistan War a failure? Not for the top five defense contractors and their shareholders.
Throughout the years we have seen politicians and journalists demonized, attacked, and ultimately fade away and silenced, by a very vicious bunch of lobbyists and zionists, in a country supposedly giving its people the right to free speech. It is a very orchestrated and coordinated attack, and it is also cowardly, as they take advantage of the control they have over politicians and the media, and spit and spew, at those who dared to criticize Israel, bring focus to its endless crimes, and they use that anti-semitic card to twist and make it all look like an attack on the Jews. There is no doubt, this is intimidation and making an example of anyone who does not toe the line.
I remember Helen Thomas, a beloved journalist, who worked for decades in the White House through many President, spoken to very kindly by all, and even the Presidents were amused by her crankiness when she was older, who at the end was vilified, insulted, attacked, and treated so badly by those she spoke honestly about:
“n a later interview on CNN, on The Joy Behar Show, Thomas defended her comments. In response to Behar’s question of whether she was an antisemite, Thomas replied: “Hell no! I’m a Semite, of Arab background.” She then said of Israelis: “They’re not Semites.”[59]
In addition, Thomas said in the CNN interview: “Why do they [Jews] have to go anywhere? They aren’t being persecuted! They don’t have the right to take other people’s land.”[59] When asked if she regretted the comment, she said: “We have organized lobbyists in favor of Israel, you can’t open your mouth. I can call the president of the United States anything in the book, but you say one thing about Israel and you’re off limits.”[59]
She spoke the truth and died a sad lady because of the same attacks we see now going on against Rashida Tlaib, Ilham Omar, and others. They did not even spare an old woman in her final years of her life.
Are Bari Weiss et alia saying that all the rich people who have gotten richer during the pandemic, all the people profiting from other people’s poverty, are Jewish? Really?
The “dog whistle” claim is very useful. As far as I can tell, you don’t have to prove it, and it can’t be falsified.