Rep. Rashida Tlaib finds herself under fire from members of her own party yet again over remarks she made during an annual seminar organized by the group Americans for Justice in Palestine Action.
Western support for Israel is explained away by shared interests and realpolitik, but this elides an underlying anti-Palestinianism that motivates pro-Israel bias.
The abuse of antisemitism is nothing new, but we tend to forget that the Israel lobby is only able to get away with its baseless smears because of a deep-seated anti-Palestinianism.
We are U.S. Jews who are deeply troubled by a recent speech given by the Anti-Defamation League’s CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, in which he defames grassroots and civil rights organizations committed to Palestinian justice and falsely conflates anti-Zionism with far right and violent extremism. Jewish communities must embrace anti-Zionist and non-Zionist voices, along with all other voices for justice.
The latest escalation by the ADL against CAIR, Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, labeling them as antisemitic because they are anti-Zionist, is further proof of the ADL’s desperation. The ADL has long worked to secure total impunity for the Israeli government. For the Palestinian community, Zionism is the political ideology that has enabled their violent subjugation and systematic dispossession. People must be able to discuss and debate these issues without being falsely smeared as anti-Semites.
A recent hire by Canada’s Special Envoy to combat antisemitism has a history of fabricating claims of antisemitism to smear Palestine solidarity activists. This seems to confirm that the office’s true agenda is to simply shield Israel from criticism.
It is a cultural tragedy that Yair Rosenberg is the Atlantic’s antisemitism expert. He is an agitator. His job is to stir up the antiZionism=antisemitism and the BDS=antisemitism claims by baiting anti-Zionists, but when these discussions become real issues, he slinks away, because he is not prepared to defend the claims in a real world discussion. His baiting of the Institute for Middle East Understanding demonstrates that intellectual irresponsibility.
American Jews overwhelmingly support the renewal of the Iran deal, and very few American Jews consider Israel a political priority, according to a new survey of American Jewish voters.
As Doaa Alremeili watches Israel welcoming Ukrainian Jewish refugees who will join its army and oppress Palestinians, she dreams of getting out of besieged Gaza and studying in Egypt. “I have survived four wars so far. And every level gets more difficult to pass. In every war of them, I was unarmed, unprotected and waiting for death. I’m in my late twenties and I have never stepped out of Gaza. I don’t know what Jerusalem really looks like or the Pyramids or Mecca or Minnesota.”
Phil Weiss and Yakov Hirsch discuss the cultural sources of pro-Israel movements in American politics. Hirsch examines what he calls “hasbara culture” – the ways that a discourse of Jewish victimhood has conquered Jewish, Israeli, and even American political culture.