Chemi Shalev and Jeremy Ben-Ami say that if Keith Ellison is defeated for Democratic Party chair, there will be a backlash against the organized Jewish community that has opposed a rising star; and that is bad for Jews. Ellison is shaking up the discussion of US policy.
Yakov Hirsch writes that if Jonathan Greenblatt of the Anti Defamation League is really concerned about Keith Ellison ‘implying” stereotypes about Jewish power, why is he exercising the most intrusive cultural, moral, and political power against Ellison? Hirsch explains it is because he is more concerned with maintaining a social construction of reality that serves Israel: Hasbara culture.
Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison pretends to be “more of a Zionist than Herzl, Ben-Gurion and Begin combined,” but if you go back to his record, “he is clearly an anti-Semite, an anti-Israel individual.” Haim Saban smears the DNC chair candidate at a fancy Washington dinner.
Sunday night demonstration in NY was a time to reclaim Judaism from the crotchety bastards who have taken up space at the head of the dinner table for too long, plugging their ears with their fingers and yelling “self-hating Jew” at any critic of Israel until they ended up so out of touch that they thought it was okay to give a guy like Steve Bannon a pass.
Alex Shams writes, “The failure of the University of Chicago – and other universities like it – to vocally defend the rights of its students to free speech, political activism, and to live in an environment free of racial and religious hatred is particularly disconcerting given the wave of Islamophobia that has overtaken the country in the last year, particularly in light of Donald Trump’s electoral victory.”
Details have been unclear on Donald Trump’s ever-shifting call for a discriminatory ‘Muslim registry’ in the United States. Some proposals target Muslim-Americans, others focus on Muslim immigrants entering the United States. Nevertheless, the prospects are certainly terrifying, regardless of what Muslim community will be at the mercy of the state’s surveillance apparatus. Sana Saeed, a journalist based in San Francisco, tells Mondoweiss that the fear she is seeing in her community “is real and devastating.”
Phil Weiss says that Jewish status is changing with the Trump election, but comparisons to the Holocaust are overblown and self-involved: “I can’t diminish that reaction, but no one with any influence is talking about a registry for Jewish names, as they are for Muslims. Or restrictions on Jewish emigration, as they do for Muslims. Or talking about the problems in the Jewish religion– as the new national security adviser and top strategist Bannon do. We misread history if we think that is coming to the US. Other dangers are much closer.”
President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team announced today that Senator Jeff Sessions, a right-wing hardliner on immigration, will be his attorney general, and that Michael Flynn, the anti-Muslim former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, will be his national security adviser. The moves signal that Trump is rewarding those who remained loyal to him during his tumultuous presidential campaign–and that he has no intention of backing down from his hardline positions on Muslims and immigrants.
Alan Dershowitz whitewashed Stephen Bannon a few days ago, but now belatedly discovers Bannon’s ‘anti-Muslim, anti-women’ bigotry is disqualifying
Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia–alongside a healthy dose of right-wing Zionism–go hand in hand among adherents of the Internet-savvy white nationalist movement that has supported Trump’s rise to power. The choice to bring Steve Bannon into the Oval Office, potentially alongside other anti-Muslim ideologues that have clustered around Trump, portends a dark future for the Muslim American community.