I see a lot of leftists agog at the notion that Jewish communities are remaining “liberal” without joining their more revolutionary causes. At best they’re confused and irritated. At worst, they are using this as an excuse for anti-Semitism.

But here’s the thing. Historically speaking, Jews have been most safe under liberal moderate regimes. The far right and the far left have always targeted Jewish communities once they’ve been in positions of power. Even without gaining power, they’ve been likely to trade in anti-Semitic stereotypes, dog whistling, and fear-mongering.

So to the leftist (whether that’s Marxist, communist, anarcho-communist) groups out there, you need to clean up your own communities first. Jews have very little reason to believe that you have our backs. We haven’t done well when you’ve had any power. We’ve been murdered, sent to gulags, and assassinated. We’ve been scapegoated and had our ethno-religious expression punished and prohibited. Address that first. And maybe Jewish communities won’t be so wary.

I’m very much a radical leftist (somewhere in the vicinity of Rosa Luxemburg), but this is painfully true. Leftist communities have a huge antisemitism problem. I never go to political meetings, because I feel unsafe in those spaces, and I’m far from alone in that.

Leftists, clean your shit up.

they will not clean their shit up. they feel Jews need to be cleaned up. Cleansed, as the Communists did to Jews in Russia.

“Anti-Zionism is not antisemitism”

Proceeds to be antisemitic

I’ve said before. Anti-Zionists are virulent antisemites.

What the fuck is the "West Bank of Gaza"

Liddell, Miles. "It's Not Antisemitism" January 5, 2024. Digital media.

Gaza is not just a passing news item, nor a picture shared and then forgotten. Gaza is a constant pain, the voices of children stifled beneath the rubble, mothers waiting without hope, and fathers standing helpless before hunger and fear. What is happening here is not just numbers; it is homes erased from existence, dreams buried under the debris, and childhood stolen every day.

the numbers aren't adding up brother

Growing up in the Vermont school system we received very little Holocaust education.

The education we received was based in identification not with the Jewish victims, survivors, and partisans but with righteous gentiles who look on with pity at the plight of the Jews. I remember that on the quiet reading shelves in our fifth grade classroom there were three or four books of those little Holocaust memoirs Scholastic published in the 2000s; I was the only person who read any of them- we were not encouraged to read these books.

When it came time for the only Holocaust education I have had from my school we did not read those any of those Scholastic memoirs on the quiet reading shelf. We read Lois Lowry's "Number The Stars" a book focused on a non-Jewish girl whose family helps her Jewish best friend escape to Sweden. We were encouraged to see ourselves not as Ellen Rosen a girl whose country has become suddenly hostile and identity suddenly dangerous but as Annemarie Johansen a girl who "risks her life" to save her best friend and help her get to Sweden but will miss Ellen dearly. The thought of both reading this book and the later "Holocaust Book Club" was a sense of distant sadness for those poor Jews who are either not like us or people we can project our own feelings of persecution on to.

I was as a Jewish child conditioned by my school to see the suffering and persecution of my people as apart from myself. The opportunity to learn about the Holocaust as a catastrophe that befell my people, people who were vibrant and alive, people who fought for themselves and whose world was permanently changed by the things that were done to us and how we responded to them. I would like to finally gain the deep and personal understanding of the Holocaust that was not given to me by my school district.

I remember distinctly an incident in the first grade where a classmate and his mother were showing the class about Chanukah and I tried to share my own experiences of the holiday (the only one my mixed family celebrated). The only bit of their reaction that survives in my memory is as sense of disbelief and rejection. I had blonde hair grey-green eyes, olive skin and a Greek name; I was not the Jew these New Englanders thought of.

I feel this is style of understanding and attitude towards Jewishness more generally that I grew up around is part of what created an intense, almost depersonalized sense of disconnection from my people.

Now as an adult currently reconnecting with my Judaism in college I am beginning to feel a deep sense of loss and trauma I didn’t have to feel before. I am sometimes struck by a wave of grief loneliness and even though I know it is irrational… shame. I don’t know the language of our ancestors, I cannot pray in the language that some of our greatest thinkers believe the whole world is made from. I have never been to a high holy days’ service. I have this unshakable feeling that I will always be apart from my community and people. I also can’t help feel that to wish for this reconnection at all is silly, stupid and shameful that I am just pretending to be a person from somewhere who is part of a tribe and a people to hide the fact there is nothing under my skin; I am not real.

Hey.

Hey, listen to me.

There is an apocryphal story that goes like this:

Rabbi Eliazer, one of our greatest sages, grew up as a secular Jew. When he left his father's home at either 28 or 29, I can't remember, when he decided to study Torah he didn't even know the Shema. But we just read his commentary in the Haggadah.

Moses, our greatest prophet to whom G-d gave His rod and staff to lead us out of Egypt and who He gave the Ten Commandment did not even know he was a Jew until was an adult.

Hear me.

If they are real Jews? You are real. You are a real Jew.

If you want Hebrew? If you want to go to services? Do it. It's not to late. It's never to late

But even if you never do that? You stand up for us, you identify with us and you always have and so you are real. You are mishpocha. You are tribe. You are a Child of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, Leah and Rachel.

You are real.

If you want to be here, we are here for you and we want you here, to paraphrase the great sage Hillel - everything else is commentary

People love to say things like “Hiding Anne Frank was illegal, turning her in would have been legal” without like fully grasping the modern implications properly. You have tons of folks like “if WW2 happened today id have __” that do not realize what is happening around them.

We have this idolized AND sanitized version of what happened then, and so we do not recognize it when it happens now.

Resistance fighters assassinated nazis and blew up weapons and infrastructure and destroyed records and forged paperwork and raised secret funds and smuggled people in vehicles and yes, hid them in their homes.

“Well it’s sad he got sent to an ICE camp but he faked his permit :/“

Whoever helped him fake his paperwork did what fighters in ww2 did. People who cut through chain link fences do what fighters in ww2 did, people who blow whistles chasing after ice cars do what fighters in ww2 did, people who destroy arms factories and cop city cranes do what fighters in ww2 did, people unmask agents do what fighters in ww2 did.

People are doing it now! They’ve been doing it now! You keep saying “oh if this happened here__” it HAS! It IS!

What are you doing about it?

let's stop comparing people who entered the country illegally to Jewish citizens being genocided by their government with mama

I do not give you a permission to appropriate Anne Frank so you can defend people who forced their way into this country without consent or due process (and often committed horrible murders and rapes) being sent back home. that's not comparable to the murder of over 80% of European Jews and it's really fucked up that you're equating them

nor is it comparable to the many other populations (Roma, LGBTQ) who were murdered in the Holocaust - not sent home - MURDERED in their homes where they were existing as citizens completely legally.

the fact that you are making this comparison is actually really racist and fucked up on several levels and not just to Jews (since I'm fairly certain you're not the type who's going to have much sympathy for Jews)

so yeah keep Anne out your fucking mouth thanks

people seem to have convinced themselves that antisemitism is okay and it's so so fucking weird. like I saw an Instagram comment where someone was debunking some stupid conspiracy theory about a released hostage and they said "I don't like the Jews but -" sorry. pause. what. insane thing to say actually.

and I see it often from leftists and its like. Come on guys, we're supposed to be better than this. no wonder so many Jewish people have come to the conclusion leftists are unsafe to be around.

"Come on guys, we're supposed to be better than this."

Yup. I've been saying for years that it's depressing that Leftists have decided to live down to their bigotries rather than up to their principles, but that's where we are now.

Like... this might sound horrible, but I legitimately have more respect for the Right at the moment when it comes to these things. They don't pretend anymore that they're for "Law and Order" or "Family Values" or "Small Government" or anything that they used to hypocritically claim. Ever since Trump took over the party, they've been openly for naked power, corruption, and authoritarianism, and doing so quite honestly. They hate everyone who isn't them, they hate Jews, and they're extremely open about it and unashamed of it.

But the Left?

"We're for Women's Rights and against Rape... unless the victims are Jewish."

"We're for indigenous rights and Landback... unless it is for the Jews."

"We're against bigotry of all kinds... except for those filthy, child-eating, blood-drinking, economy-controlling Zios, of course."

"We're for personal safety and creating a society where nobody needs to walk outside afraid of being harassed for their identity... except for those disgusting Jews."

"We're for believing minorities when they say that they're being persecuted, profiled, and discriminated against... except for those lying, conniving Jews."

And on and on and on. The breathtaking depth of hypocrisy and abandonment of principle on the altar of Jew-hate from the Left is such that no Jew with any sense of self-preservation should feel safe around any Leftist. Not anymore.

We know that we can't stand shoulder to shoulder with you against the Right... because the Left will stab us in the back.

And how can we ever forget or forgive that abandonment of principle just to hate us?

Nazis to the Right of us, "Antizionists" to the Left of us, and here we are, stuck in the middle, homeless.

the sad fact of the matter is that most leftists view Jewish people as White People. They say it all the time, too: "go back to Poland," "European settler-colonialism," all of that shit. They've clocked Jewish people as White People and the Arabs as Brown People and so that makes any and all rhetoric against Jews Good and Pure and Woke. This is just how they talk about White People.

Welcome to the club, my fellow Eurasians of Caucasian Persuasion, I guess.

Not just White People, the ULTIMATE White People. Whiter than the Whites. They don't have to answer for the crimes of white supremacy, they'll just blame the world's favorite scapegoat! (a word we invented, by the way)

three different stories from different people in different countries, but reflecting a disturbing and undeniable trend.

Mixing with militants

Push to fight antisemitism before all is lost

(and another disclaimer, yes, I wish the author of the following tweet had quoted someone else, even if the quote is accurate)

this does not include what we know very well has also been happening in Italy:

Spain:

and the Netherlands:

to name a select few. (none of these are articles are anywhere close to comprehensive in regards to all the incidents that are happening). there is real worry for the future of Jewish life across Europe.

For centuries much of European culture has been built on antisemitism. Until quite recently Jews were literally being hunted for sport across Europe. The United States was the first country in the world to grant Jews equal rights. Long before the Nazis, the treatment of Jews as second class citizens at best and often as slaves ,the regular and systematic stripping of Jewish property, and the rape, torture and murder of Jewish people for entertainment or to let off steam was a regular part of European society.

By 1924 (when the United States introduced immigration laws to prevent more Jewish immigrants from coming) one third of European Jews had already fled to the United States, even though the journey was incredibly difficult and dangerous. That's how bad things were. And more would have come if that 1924 law hadn't gone into effect.

98% of the Jews who were murdered during the Holocaust were not in Germany, but rather in territories that the Nazis conquered. The Nazis were only able to find and round up these Jews because their friends and neighbors turned them in - and often even actively participated in the killing.

Most European countries have not acknowledged this history at all and have made 0 effort to eradicate antisemitism from their societies. And this is the result. Their culture is steeped in antisemitism that they never sought to change.

While the spark that ignited this is probably a sophisticated propaganda campaign being run by Russia and Iran (probably with China and Qatar adding fuel to the fire as well) it could not have caught on so well and been so effective if these societies were not already deeply antisemitic without any education to counter these attitudes.

Hello, leftist gentile. You are presented with the news of a horrific hate crime against Jewish people. Your task is to say "I condemn violence against Jewish people". If you put a but, then the saw trap goes off.

Please forgive me if I'm being ignorant here, but are there really people who will add a "but"? People who claim to not be antisemites, I assume? What could possibly come after that "but"?

but Israel.

One's opinion on what's happening in Israel justifies murderous and hateful behavior towards Jews everywhere, especially from people who claim not to be antisemitic.

this may help you understand why antizonism is always antisemitism:

please also read the following very excellent post:

the one on the left was based on the one on the right but progressives don't want to talk about that

It's very hard to get people on the political left and right to really think objectively about how the stability of western civilization, that we've all taken for granted far too long, came about, and what must be addressed and prioritized to stop it collapsing into violent anarchy, rape, murder, starvation and perpetual war.

Text found online, apparently from a book called "Selective Breeding and the Birth of Philosophy" by Costin Alamariu.

Jewish News of Northern California (Emanu-El, Jewish Community Bulletin)⁩, 26 January, 1968⁩ — ⁨Page 10⁩

source