Attacks on Jews in New York. Again.
I really don’t know what to say:
An intruder with a large knife burst into the home of a Hasidic rabbi in a New York suburb on Saturday night, stabbing and wounding five people just as they were gathering to light candles for Hanukkah, officials and a witness said.
It was a terrifying scene, the officials and witness reported, saying that the violence occurred at about 10 p.m. as numerous people were celebrating Hanukkah at the home of the rabbi, Chaim Rottenberg, in Monsey, which is in an area with a large population of ultra-Orthodox Jews.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, visiting the rabbi’s home on Sunday morning, called the attack an “act of domestic terrorism.”
The New York Police Department said a suspect had been arrested in Harlem and was turned over to the authorities in Rockland County, which is northwest of New York City and where the attack took place.
This is not an isolated incident. There have been a series of anti-Semitic attacks in New York over the last week or so, to the point where the mayor beefed up police presence in Jewish neighborhoods. That’s not to mention the shooting at a Kosher market last month in Jersey City or the deadly mass shooting at the Tree of life synagogue last year.
What’s perhaps most disturbing is that these attacks don’t have a common origin. The Tree of Life shooting was carried out by a White Nationalist. The Jersey shooting was carried out by Black Hebrew Israelites. These recent attacks don’t seem to have much of a political motive other than raging anti-Semitism.
Because there is no united political motive, the media has been kind of quiet, perplexed about how to handle something that doesn’t fit into our current political moment of blaming one side and only one side for acts of bigoted violence. But I would submit that the correct answer is that both sides are to blame: the right for tolerating, if not stimulating, far-right identitarians. And the left for tolerating, if not stimulating, far-left identitarians.
But regardless of which political tribe, if any, we pin this on, it’s a scary moment. The last time I was really worried about anti-Semitic violence was in the 80s when a cross was burned on my synagogue’s lawn and a friend was beaten to a pulp for being the only Jew at his rural school. But Anti-semitism is never dead and never very far from us. The events of recent weeks are a stark reminder of that.
https://forward.com/opinion/437373/why-no-one-can-talk-about-the-attacks-against-orthodox-jews/Report
De Blasio is taking a lot of heat for it, in at least some circles.
NY Post articleReport
What happens when the medias biases come into conflict? The 24 hour news cycle finally shuts up.Report
I saw a surprising number of “it’s complicated” tweets from the blue checks on the twitters.
They were appropriately ratioed.Report
The real tragedy, of course, is that these attacks are being perpetrated by the wrong kind of people.Report
I’m interested to learn more about the attack in Monsey. I’m fairly familiar with the area — and if you read any of my writing here from way back when, the Jewish community in Monsey is very similar to the one I used to write about in my own town at the time (same religious following). There is a lot of conflict in that town between Monsey and the surrounding parts related to various issues with public schooling (Google East Ramapo School District for more info). I’m wondering if this may be related to any of that, which would seem to be a real and ugly escalation of the conflict.
In my own hometown of Teaneck, NJ, there was an alleged bias incident where a man confronted several people in a kosher bagel store, including knocking off one customer’s head covering. From what I saw, there was not enough evidence to support it being treated as an actual bias crime, though it sure as hell seemed motivated by anti-Semitism. Scary stuff.Report
Was it this one?Report
Yea, plus probably random comments on others’ posts. But Monsey is similar to KJ, if not more extreme (it was founded first). Monsey residents were “more successful” in impacting local politics, namely schools. As I understand it, at-large voting for school board members allowed Monsey residents to fill a majority of seats and vote for policies that strongly favor their community at the expense of the broader community, I believe putting the town near or into bankruptcy (you’d need to fact check the details though).
So, anger may be coming from multiple sources, some more legitimate than others. Of course, nothing justifies the violence and threats.Report
There was an article I wish I could find (perhaps it was in a Jewish magazine, even) that said since black people consider Yeshivish Jews as hyper-white that it’s somehow “different” and in need of hair-splitting nuance about how their growing presence is gentrification and not population growth mixed with othering. Jews are literally white at someone else’s convenience. Just like how Asians are white when staffing a tech company but POC when casting a movie.Report
https://forward.com/news/national/415385/is-a-string-of-attacks-against-brooklyn-jews-really-about-anti-semitism/Report
Just like how Asians are white when staffing a tech company but POC when casting a movie.
I can totally understand how people of Jewish descent would say something like “we’re not white! We’re people of color too!”
I have a more difficult time trying to wrap my head around the expectation that African-Americans be as willing to buy into this as white people are.
We spent enough time on “privilege”, after all.Report
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
When all you have is campus-style race politics, everything goes into one of two buckets.Report
“White” doesn’t really correspond so much to skin tone as the overall ability to read as “Normal American”.
Things like accent, dress, cultural references all add up to the ability to pass for “Normal American”.
So a heavily accented Asian who might have a slightly darker skin hue will be read as “Nonwhite” while a light skinned Syrian with a Brooklyn accent will be read as “White”.
Racial categories were always arbitrary, since the definition had more to do with marking out boundaries of privilege and outgroup than any objective taxonomy of humans.
At various points in American history, Germans, Italians and Irish were all considered nonwhite but now through the magic of assimilation have become white.
In 50 years Asians may be part of the dominant white America;
Or its equally possible that as they grow in power and wealth, they will become the threatening Other and the editors of Quillette will discover that they really did have lower IQ all along, or that IQ doesn’t matter but midachloriens really do, or whatever is needed to reassure white people that they are still the top dogs.Report
These attacks make me think of stochastic terrorism, where there isn’t a single source or direction, but a group of people who share a common hatred and self-motivate to take action.
Or maybe a better analogy is herd immunity. In a healthy society, ethnic hatred is kept at bay by immunizing enough people to where it becomes a taboo and few are able to fall into it. But when there is a threshold level of ethnic grievance, hateful people become emboldened and free to express things they never would before.Report
The problem with left-wing v. right-wing anti-Semtiism is that it rhymes but is not completely identical. It is relatively easy to understand why white supremacists dislike Jews based on the long history of European anti-Semitism. Understanding why some parts of the African-American community hate Jews is much more complicated. Hell, there are plenty of places without a history of Jews that somehow developed anti-Semitic literature of their own. See Japan at times.
“An injury to one is an injury to all” is a truism of left-coalition politics. I see why it is necessary. Yet no one has ever been able to answer me when I ask “what if one group in the coalition is perceived as injuring another group in the coalition?” Many years ago, the Bus Riders Union in Los Angeles decided to pass out anti-Israel stuff because our side doesn’t know how to keep to an issue and the Bus Riders Union decided that it was necessary to support Palestine in this case because “an injury to one is an injury to all.”
This of course ended up being self-defeating because it alienated a lot of Jewish Los Angelinos who might not ride buses but would be ordinarily sympathetic.
There are lots of issues with systematic racism against black Americans. Often other minorities are held up as better as a way to keep oppressing blacks. Jews and Asians are the typical “model minorities” in this regard. And yet the GOP always had serious issues with Jews staying largely in the Democratic column despite our material success. “Jews earn like Episcopalians but vote like Puerto Ricans” is an old line. So is James Baker famously declaring “fuck the Jews, they don’t vote for us anyway.”
So you get this uncomfortable situation where Jews are asked to take it for the team.Report
Coalition politics is always more difficult than ethnic exclusion, for the very reason you mention that often interests collide. I ran into the same problem in Occupy, when I found one of our group handing out flyers warning that “Big Labor” was going to hijack the cause.
This is why I react so strongly to the coy stance of the Bell Curve crowd who want to introduce the idea of ethnic determinism into our consciousness as a way of splitting us into competing groups.
Once you get comfortable with the idea that Ashkenazim are just somehow magically imbued with a good quality, it gets easy to think that way about all groups, and that’s the true end goal, to find some outgroup that can be legitimately despised.
I don’t have a clever answer to coalition politics other than to insist that things like the Palestinian issue be viewed as political problems between competing national interests, rather than a clash of ethnicities.Report
insist that things like the Palestinian issue be viewed as political problems between competing national interests, rather than a clash of ethnicities.
Man, if we could get the Palestinians on board with this, we might be able to get somewhere. Who’s in charge of insisting things to Palestinians?
(checks Wikipedia)
Oh.Report
You see this as a clash between Jews and Palestinians, or the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority?Report
I’m saying that it doesn’t matter how I see it.
What matters is how *THEY* see it.
And if they don’t see it the way that you insist it should be seen, then I’m wondering what follows from that.
(And, for the record, it doesn’t seem to me like they see it the way that you insist it should be seen. Remember when NPR ran this story? Do a word find for “hitler” if you want to find the relevant section.)Report
Of course, some American guy in Los Angeles is not going to find a solution to the Palestinian/ Israeli conflict.
But neither will the Los Angeles Bus Riders Union, or the Republican Party, or the Democratic Socialists of America; It isn’t our problem to solve.
They need to find one for themselves.
But when we Americans or commenters at OT are asked to weigh in with an opinion, we can certainly refuse to look at it and discuss it as a clash of ethnic tribes.Report
But if it is a clash of ethnic tribes, then refusing to look at it and discuss it as that is bad.
Like, you won’t even be able to ever find out if it is that if you just say “it’s not that, by definition”.
If it’s not that, wouldn’t it be easier to prove that it’s not that by looking at it and discussing it?
Jeez louise. This is the Progressive version of “I don’t see color.”Report
Was the American civil rights struggle a “clash of ethnic tribes”?
It certainly was, to some of the participants. In their eyes, it was a race war between white and black.
But that’s how the struggle was successful, by rejecting that logic.
White Americans joined with black Americans to insist that this was a political struggle to afford equal citizenship on all people.
So the logic of the white supremacists – “We white folks gotta stick together” was destroyed.
There are in fact both Israeli and Palestinian groups working together for peace; They are diminished now, and politically impotent.
But they exist, and destroy the narrative that this is a struggle of ethnic groups for supremacy.Report
The struggle was successful, was it?
I suggest that we do that when we look at Israel and Palestine. The tensions that remain are just, you know, dismissable. This problem was solved back in the 90’s.
By Bill Clinton.
I insist.Report
When I was in Singapore, I heard someone praise The Green Book as a good movie. Of course we know that a lot of African-Americans rightfully viewed the movie as whitewashing a complex story and possibly outright lying at the end about the relationship between the driver and the pianist.
But the person who liked the movie was not American and I am not sure if I can expect them to follow the nuances of American racism and current politics.
I think of this when you hear stories
about American minorities dismissing the Holocaust as an example of “white on white crime.” How much of it is because a lot of people really do not understand the nuances of anti-Semitism, how much is sincere belief, trolling, etc? Can we expect non-Jewish Americans to understand the long and deep nuances of anti-Semitism and Jews as others?Report
American minorities dismissing the Holocaust as an example of “white on white crime.”
For a subset of people, this might be true. I am not saying it is good by any means, only that this could accurately describe some people’s opinions. Were Imperial Japan’s actions in Manchuria racist? It depends on how you look at these things.
I will say that the concept “you can’t be racist to white people” is really not helping here.Report
Sorry, not very clear. I don’t think you have ever said anything about how you can’t be racist against white people, just that the general sentiment doesn’t help.Report
You should hear some of the derogatory things Swedes used to say about Norwegians. ^_^Report
Well, I have been on the receiving end of what the English call the Irish before…
(Funny thing though, I am both English/Irish and German/Jewish)Report
There was allegedly a professor at my college who was one of the random nuts you could find that said the Holocaust was nothing more than white on white crime. I never took a class with this professor. I only found out about them years after my attendance at the school. A friend from college brought it up when conservatives were in an outrage about new campus activists going out of control about something or other. My friend brought it up because he is Jewish but also invested in left coalition building and thinks of himself as being largely benefitted from white privileged. His view was the proper response to this is just to roll eyes at the statement (which allegedly everyone did) but also not give into conservative witch hunts.
This raises another problem with coalition politics. Maybe my response is more hot headed but what is the balance between not giving into conservative trolling and witch hunts while also holding your side accountable and not allowing for incorrect bigotry?Report
https://www.israellycool.com/2019/12/30/the-elephant-in-the-room/
The TLDR version is that there is a lot of anti-Semitism in the African-American community, and lot of it originates with the Nation of Islam in general and Louis Farrakhan in particular. A lot of white liberals are very reluctant to talk about this and try to either pass all anti-Semitic attacks to the Right and Trumpist, like DeBlassio is doing, or just keep quiet about it if they are more intellectually honest.Report
BREAKING NEWS
NEW PICTURES HAVE SURFACED SHOWING SYNAGOGUE ATTACKER PLAYING THE CIRCLE GAMEReport
What the hell does this mean?Report
Remember the circle game kerfuffle from a couple of weeks ago? It was strong evidence of a white supremacy problem in the various military academies.
I was making a joke about how nobody knows whether this was a hate crime or not while calling back to the circle game being obvious evidence of hatred and people who were denying that it was a “White Power” symbol were engaging in either passive or active denial of that fact.
Anyway, we should get back to talking about how this attack was complicated and how we shouldn’t just jump to conclusions.Report
Do you mean the knock out game?Report
Nope. The Circle Game.
Here’s a representative example:
Golly, that was just 10 days ago!Report
One thing that I have seen on the twitters about this is that there are two somewhat competing narratives:
1. The guy wasn’t really in his right mind. He’s mentally ill. While this presents pretty closely to a “hate” attack, the guy was actually *CRAZY* so we shouldn’t jump to conclusions. This is a mental health issue, deep down.
2. The only way that this could possibly be defended is to argue that the guy wasn’t in his right mind. Therefore, the people who want to defend this have to argue that the guy wasn’t in his right mind. Anything to avoid a “hate” crime between two competing intersectional types. It’s a tactic, it’s not the truth.
Anyway, NBC News reports that he’s being charged with a hate crime after investigators found anti-Semitic writings in his journals and that he googled “why did Hitler hate the Jews?” once last month and thrice this month.
Report
Almost by definition, all attacks like this are carried out by people with some sort of mental imbalance.
One of the hallmarks of mental instability is the attraction to very fringe religions or political ideologies that pit the group against the world at large.
But then we need to ask, has the number of unstable people surged? Or if not, what is setting these people off on such a familiar target?
Why for example are there not attacks on red haired Scotsmen? Or tiny cells plotting to blow up the Elks lodge?
These unstable people aren’t like the Son of Sam; He heard a singular message telling him to do things no one else thought of.
But these people, as different as they are, are hearing a familiar and all-too-common message , one that floats through our national discourse like a virus attaching itself to any host it can find.Report
Report
Not just the Jews, either:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/least-2-dead-1-wounded-shooting-texas-church-n1108311Report
Yeah, I saw that this AM.Report
Spiritual security. (but what’s up with the shoes on these Orthodox guys?)Report
I saw a tweet where a black guy was screaming something like “Wake up. The Jews owned the slave ships! The Jews in the media have been keeping us down for decades!” That’s probably some Farrakhan derived “history”, kind of like the Times 1619 project of weaponized disinformation.
The difficulty in fighting such things is that it would require teaching something to the ‘D’ students, who were ‘D” students because book learning bounced right off. They’ll be highly motivated to stick with their own narrative because the conspiracy theory keeps them fired up, and embedded right in it is the idea that media sources are key part of the conspiracy.
Checking this particular claim (Jews and slavery) brings up a 1995 article in The Atlantic about a book from The Nation of Islam, so the argument has been around for a while.Report
Several years ago, I was involved in a lawsuit brought by a black professor who, among other things, used to talk often about Aaron Lopez, a Jewish merchant from Providence who was a slave trader. I’m willing to bet that Lopez is the only slave trader 99.98% of people can name, largely because this character spoke so much about him. My second-seat was a WASP whose remote ancestor (a signer of the Declaration of Independence) was, in fact, a slave trader. She always worried that this would come out during the trial. Luckily, it didn’t.Report
Lux Alptraum, one-time CEO of Fleshbot, points out how complicated it is:
I’m surprised that she doesn’t have a blue check.Report
I can’t tell if this is parody. Do you think blue checks actually mean anything?Report
It’s more of a correlation thing than a causation thing.Report
Ahh….those are indeed words that could mean something. So my guess then is that you think the blue check really does mean something about something. That is an adorable right wing obsession as far as i can tell from those stewing about milo y or some such character.Report
I see that you, too, have mastered the subtle insinuation.Report
I had to look up Alptraum and Fleshbot to see if this was anything anyone needed to pay attention to. It wasn’t, and I could have put those 90 seconds of my life to better use. Still, whatever else one can say about this, if one felt the need to say anything, it isn’t all that “complicated.” It may not be correct, or particularly interesting, but it is far from “complicated.”Report
I thought her tweet did a great job of distilling what the “complicated” is among those who immediately jump to how complicated the situation is.
She may be wrong, she may be right, but she sure as hell is representative.Report
Maybe she’s “representative,” but what she says isn’t “complicated.” Unless you have low standards for complication.Report
Oh, what she says is more or less straightforward. “When we do it, it’s subtle and sophisticated, (unlike those other guys).”
As for the situation that inspired the tweets?
Well, opinions differ as to whether the machete attacks were straightforward or whether they were “complicated”. Those who want to know how in the hell the attacks were complicated can read Ms. Alptraum to get a representative answer.Report
Silly Jaybird, she hasn’t been designated a “correct thinker”, and at this rate, she probably won’t be.
It’s complicated.Report
Those who want to know how in the hell the attacks were complicated can read Ms. Alptraum to get a representative answer.
They might do that, or they might look at the facts as they develop and decide for themselves. But that’s too much like work and thought and patience. Retweeting people who have no claim on our attention is so much easier.Report
Oh, do you have additional developing facts that I could use to decide for myself as to what is “complicated” among those who need to point out how complicated the situation is?
I would be interested in reading them.Report
As it currently stands, the situation isn’t particularly complicated. Some mentally-ill guy who was off his meds harbored crazy anti-semitic beliefs and acted on them. Was he anti-semitic because he’s nuts or was he anti-semitic and nuts? I don’t know yet, and neither does anyone else. Maybe we’ll find out more. Maybe we won’t. Maybe he’s crazy enough to have an insanity defense to what otherwise looks like a straightforward hate crime prosecution; maybe he isn’t. Don’t know yet, but we’ll probably find out soon.
But if the “situation” is not this crazy killer and why he did what he did, but some larger political point someone wants to make about anti-semitism, this tragedy looks — so far — like a poor vehicle for it, and I haven’t seen many people worth listening to going there. Of course, I’m a technophobe who doesn’t do social media and doesn’t follow the Twitterati, so I’m not au courant on the musings of former porn site executives and the like. If anyone serious wants to take more than 280 characters to discuss how (or if) left-wing anti-semitism differs from right-wing anti-semitism, or why certain segments of the black community regard Jewish whites as different in some way from WASP or Irish or Italian or Polish whites, that might be interesting, and it might even be “complicated.” Until someone tries that, I won’t get exercised about quick, substance-free hits.Report
Well, if you don’t do the social media thing, you’re probably better off for it.
As someone who keeps up with the Twitterati, lemme tell ya: the anti-Semitism that is starting to show up against people of Hebrew descent in NYC is making waves.
The New York Daily News is writing about it:
The Daily Beast is talking about it:
Instead of going for the “it may be anti-Semitism, but it’s complicated” angle, The Atlantic is going for the “it may be complicated, but it’s anti-Semitism” angle:
So while normal people may be able to look at this and not see that it’s complicated, the twitters are not populated by normal people.Report
Do you have a point? Of course people are talking about recent anti-Semitic attacks, and nobody needs social media to know that. The first thing you cite the is the New York Daily News, a newspaper, my hometown paper, which I read in hard copy every day. Is anyone worth takinga seriously saying that this latest attack is “complicated,” or that it sheds much light on the actually complicated issue of the many different kinds of anti-semitism? No doubt some folks will jump on it in bad faith to try to, say, blame Trump, or liberals who don’t like Likud, or who won’t say anything bad about anyone black, or dismiss anyone who would rather talk about “complications” than the attack itself, but they don’t deserve to be taken seriouslyReport
If I have a point, it’s that the argument that it is not particularly complicated is an argument that is complicated by the number of people who are arguing how complicated it is.
If you want to argue that the people who are arguing that it is complicated are all people who we ought to know are not people that we should take seriously, then let me say: seriously: I’m down.Report
What is the “it” you keep referring to as “complicated”? And whatever “it” you mean, do you agree or disagree that that “it” is “complicated”? Or would you rather just posture without saying something definite enough to be held against you in the future?Report
A good question! Seriously, if I were sober, I’d probably be freaking out and looking for citations and whatnot.
As it is, I’m drunk enough to ask you if I’ve quoted any newspaper articles (SCROLL UP) and if I have (SERIOUSLY, SCROLL UP) then I’d say that whatever they’re talking about is what I’m talking about.
And if I hadn’t referred to any articles in the half second it takes you to scroll up, you can pretend that I have no citations for my assertions made all the way back in “last year”.Report
There aren’t any “citations and whatnot” that answer the question “What do you mean?” If you don’t want to say what you mean in your own voice and stand, or stagger, behind it, there’s no point in playing whatever your game is.Report
Oh, here’s what *I* mean:
For some reason a bunch of Serious People are arguing that the attacks are “complicated” rather than straightforward and simple.
One of the things that I am consistently interested in is the difference between a “THERE IS A PRINCIPLE AT STAKE HERE!” conversation and a “Well, you have to understand…” conversation.
A guy goes into a temple and attacks multiple people with a weapon.
And there are a *HUGE* number of responses to this that are not full-throated condemnation but are instead filled with to-be-sures and the importance of understanding context.
And, as I said, that sort of thing is fascinating to me.Report
Here’s an alternate take:
I think it’s “complicated” because a handful of conservatives, and in particular Jewish conservatives, are playing a variation of the “have you stopped beating your wife yet?” game. They’re basically asking Democrats a question: if you’re *not* anti-Semitic, then why are members of liberal communities attacking Jews? Then they point at Linda Sarsour and Al Sharpton.
That’s it. And it is complicated. Not primarily because of anything the Democrats have done but because the question – like HYSBYWY? – *sounds* like it should be easy to answer, but isn’t.Report
An interesting take but here’s my problem with it:
The news stories I linked to above are talking about the attacks rather than the “Republicans Pounce!” narrative.
It is absolutely true that there are a bunch of right-wingers telling on themselves by effectively yelling “see! It’s not just us!” but there are a bunch of organic stories coming out explaining that things are complicated. Maybe they look at the situation and say something to the effect of “jeez… Republicans are going to pounce on this…” and then get their stories out after that thought but still before the pouncing.Report
I don’t think this started as a Republicans Pounce thing so much as a Jewish conservatives (a lot of whom are neverTrumpers) Pounce thing. Neutral media outlets pick up on the pounce not to pile on, but because they think asking Democrats how they can claim they’re not anti-Semitic when Jews are being killed in Brooklyn is a substantively, as opposed to rhetorically or clickily, interesting question.Report
Can media that takes that approach really be described as neutral though? To me that’s the weirdly telling part of this, to the extent anything can be deduced from it.
Not that I’d call the outlets I imagine to be pouncing neutral (I refuse to use Twitter so admit to not having much insight into whether or how much thats happened).Report
Hrm. Interesting point.
And because it’s an interesting question, it inspires thoughtful people to write interesting answers.
Which, of course, are nuanced.Report
There’s also another set of conversations about whether having more police patrols in the at-risk neighborhoods will help or hinder “things”. There’s a whole lot of tap dancing going on in those, too.Report
Rashida Tlaib would be one of those complications. PJ Media story: Tlaib Blames Israel for ‘Jim Crow’ Policies One Day After Hanukkah Stabbing
She said:
Perhaps it’s one of the complications of intersectionality. Telling blacks that Jews are behind Jim Crow might be convenient for her, but it’s not convenient for anybody who has to walk down the street in New York. We used to insist that people in Congress, whether German, Irish, or whatever, leave their Old-World animosities and bizarre obsessions with ethnic vengeance back in the Old World, because here they have to represent everybody in their district. No more. Now the ethnic cleansing and multi-generational hatreds must be brought to our shores – because justice.
Perhaps a wiser immigration policy would bar anyone who can’t let go of all that, and whose purpose in coming to America is just to extend some age-old battle to include neighborhoods over here.Report
“Telling blacks that Jews are behind Jim Crow…”
Of course, there are some people who grasp that “the Israeli government” is not the same as “Jews”.
But yeah, I guess that’s one of the complications.Report
(Chip, I’m not sure that pointing out how nuanced Tlaib’s statement was is the best play here. Just sayin’.)Report
The Israeli government might not necessarily be the same as the Jews but most Jews tend to be a lot more fond of Israel as a concept that Tlaib is and they don’t necessarily see it as a Jim Crow government. I personally don’t believe that many Palestinians merely want a multi-cultural secular democracy called Palestine, ignoring that the word Palestine is politically as loaded as Israel. Some of them might say this but all evidence suggests is that they want an ethnic-state of their own without any Jews. Some like Hamas are more explicit about this than others but Palestinian leadership has generally be contemptuous of any Jewish connection to the land. They demand a respect and tolerance that they will not reciprocate.
Considering that Hanukkah celebrates something of a war of national liberation for the Jews of Antiquity, making an anti-Zionist statement on it is ballsy move of contempt. Like even if you believe Israel to be the most evil country that ever existed, you should know that making such a statement would get a bad reaction from American Jews. That means either Tlaib was acted with intent or she is incredibly dense.Report
My comment was an objection to equating the Israeli government with “Jews”, and pitting “the blacks” against “the Jews” as being on opposing sides.
Tlaib’s comment was inflammatory (and maybe stupid or wrong) but it was directed at a government, not a people.Report
My comment was an objection to equating the Israeli government with “Jews”,
Along those lines, there’s a community of Jewish pundits who seem intent on obliterating the distinction between anti-Israel (or anti-Zionism) and anti-Semitic. For them, every criticism of Israeli policy is effectively an expression of hatred for Jews. Personally, I don’t see how this ends well for Jews, but I’m not Jewish nor am I a stakeholder in the outcome of those debates. It just strikes me as incredibly intellectually dishonest.Report
Well, part of that is that it’s often the same people saying the same things for the past 60 years, as if they might be obsessed with one particular issue. For those whose antenna are tuned to it, there would seem to be a pattern. For example:
Of course, there are some people who grasp that “the Israeli government” is not the same as “Jews”.
How often have we heard that earlier attacks weren’t directed against Jews, but at Jewish bankers? Oh, and Jewish “war profiteers”, and then “Jewish traitors”, or Jews of “dual loyalty”, or “the Jewish Lobby”, etc. They never mean all the Jews. But of course at a rally, everyone in the audience pumping their fists in the air knows they mean all the Jews.
Are there any Americans in New York or DC protesting China’s treatment of Muslims? Anybody protesting Poland’s continued occupation of what was eastern Germany? Anybody out protesting about Russia’s occupation of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine? Anybody protesting about Yemen or Turkey’s occupation of northern Syria? What about Sri Lanka, South Sudan, Boko Haram? Nada.
In fact, of the top 25 ongoing conflicts, the Israeli Palestinian conflict is at #25 for 2019 casualties, accounting for 0.1% of deaths.
It ranks behind:
the war in Afghanistan
the Mexican drug war
the Yemeni civil war
the Syrian civil war
the Kurdish-Turkish conflict
the Somali civil war
the Iraq conflict
the Libyan civil war
the Kashmir conflict
the Balochistan insurgency (Pakistan/Iran)
the Thailand insurgency
the Colombian conflict
the Naxalite-Maoist insurgency
the African allied forces insurgency
Nigerian conflicts unrelated to Boko Haram
the African Ituri conflict
the African Maghreb insurgency
the Boko Haram insurgency
conflicts in the South Sudan
the Northern Mali conflict
the insurgency in Egypt
the war in Donbass, Ukraine
the war in Catatumbo region of Venezuela and Colombia
Now most of that list changes pretty quickly over time, so really, the Israeli Palestinian conflict would probably rank below 100 on a list of conflicts since 1947. But the same people are always going on and on about it as the #1 issue facing the world, the root of all evil, etc. That’s a sign of obsession.
If I was at a rally to save the planet or free the nipple or oppose some Supreme Court pick, and the speaker started ranting about Jewish Nazi apartheid Jim Crow oppressors, or blood sucking vampires, or war mongering neocons, or international bankers, or pro-Zionist Jews controlling the media, or Jewish landlords being New York’s biggest problem, and yet not a one of those bigger conflicts gets mentioned. I would conclude that the speaker’s only real issue is a burning hatred of Jews. All the rest was just window-dressing to get people to listen to the anti-Semitic tirade.Report
I *am* Jewish, and this likewise drives me crazy and strikes me as intellectually dishonest.Report
I think its a fairly common phenomenon, i.e., “Criticizing me/my administration/ party is the same as criticizing my entire nation/ religion/ ethnic group”.Report
Well, one has to ask if a particular criticism of Tywin or Cersei Lannister’s foreign or domestic policy is really an attack on all Lannisters, and whether the person making the criticism does hate every last Lannister. Perhaps the latest outrage is just an excuse to indulge in yet another anti-Lannister rant. Perhaps the raging Cersei critic is obsessed with Lannisters, which is why they never brings up any of the other major plot lines. Did they complain when Daenerys Targaryen slaughtered entire cities and burned whole armies alive?Report
https://www.democracynow.org/2019/12/31/us_hate_crimes_gun_violence
The above article is a good example about how many liberals including many liberal Jews aren’t really dealing with the outbreak of anti-Semitic attacks recently. With the exception of the Tree of Life shooting and the Chabad-San Diego shouting, most of the rest have been done by African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans. That doesn’t fit the narrative that some people want to tell so they have to twist and turn the reality of what is happening to get the story they want rathe than deal with the fact that there is a lot of Jew hatred in the African-American community.Report
And in the Hispanic community. Many apparently still think the Spanish Inquisition was a good thing, since their only source of for how it went was Spanish priests. The poem on the Statue of Liberty was written by a women whose family fled to New York from vicious anti-Semitism in Latin America.
ADL survey of anti-Semitic attitudes in America. Blacks score about double the whites (14% vs 8%), but foreign born Hispanics are at 36%. That can make for a volatile mix, especially when you toss lots of Muslims into the same neighborhoods, and then have them attend rallies where fiery Palestinian speakers tie everything up in a nice bow for everybody, while the mainstream press just shrugs its shoulders and says “It’s complicated.”Report
Well, you’ve convinced me.
America still has a problem with prejudice and bigotry, and the media needs to spend a lot more time discussing it, identifying where it exists, and working toward ways to protect minorities and make bigoted expressions socially unacceptable.Report
This assumes the media has the tools to do that in any sort of principled or effective way.Report
George got his link from the media, and now here we are, talking about it.
Seems pretty effective to me.Report
I’m a little confused by what is being argued here. It seems that there has been a string of recent anti-Semetic attacks in the greater New York area, though they appear unrelated. At least some of these have been committed by African-Americans and it is presumed they are liberal/left. And the issue is that… the liberal/left has not appropriately condemned these attacks because of who is perpetrating them? Maybe my perspective is non-representative because I live in the greater New York area and many of my friends are Jewish (and many of my friends who aren’t Jewish have many friends who are Jewish), but I’ve seen pretty universal condemnation.
Can anyone point to liberals saying the “wrong things”? Besides the Fleshbot CEO that no one seems to have ever heard of.Report
For my part, I am waaaaay tipsy to offer you anything close to the rigor that I imagine might be held against me in the future so I am going to have to decline.
In the meantime, I hope you have an awesome new year with some awesome music.
In the very short term, I can offer you:
Meg Meyer’s cover of “Running Up That Hill”
Foals “Exits”:
And If those are all too vaguely 2019 for you, here’s the best 2020 songs according to the Top 10 kinda folks:Report
And the issue is that… the liberal/left has not appropriately condemned these attacks because of who is perpetrating them?
The condemnations have a lot of weird side conversations as part of them. The importance of making distinctions between anti-Semitism that comes from the left and anti-Semitism that comes from the right, for example.
Can anyone point to liberals saying the “wrong things”?
Hey, I’ve got…
Besides the Fleshbot CEO that no one seems to have ever heard of.
Oh. Now I have to do research…Report
(If you were asking seriously, this entire thread was making the rounds the other day.)
On one level it feels like an attempt to change the subject.
Yes, this was bad… but let’s talk about something else that is worse instead.Report
Not sure I agree. They ARE different in some key ways. Not morally — both are wrong and wrong is wrong — but in where they emanate from and how we should respond are very different. Doesn’t that matter?
Were the Boston bus riots equivalent to Southern night riding?Report
Also, aren’t we often told by the right that FUNDAMENTALIST ISLAMIC TERRORISM is different from other forms of murder? Hell, even other forms of terrorism?
Also, does it matter that the woman you quoted is of Jewish ancestry? If the targets of these attacks feel differently about them based on their source, is that worth anything?Report
Now imagine that someone brought up FUNDAMENTALIST ISLAMIC TERRORISM and the response was something to the effect of “Of course nobody supports terrorism and it’s insulting to assume that they would. But George Tiller was murdered in a church by a society that has been engaging in stochastic terrorism against women who want to control their own sexual destinies and we, as a society, have not ever grappled with that and it’s in the fields fertilized by Fundamentalist Christian terrorism that these seeds of Fundamentalist Islamic terrorism are sprouting.”
There are some serious conversations that ought to be had about religion and violence. We probably have done an awful job about talking about such things.
But if there is an abortion doctor who gets shot tomorrow, I’d hope that we’d be able to avoid discussing 9/11… even if, someday, we’d need to talk about religious extremism in all its myriad forms.
There are significant difference between right anti-Semitism and left anti-Semitism but pointing out how left anti-Semitism shouldn’t be conflated with right anti-Semitism after we find out that the assailant was googling why Hitler hated the Jews before the attack is weird.
And, to be frank, a lot of it feels like “yes, this should be condemned but you don’t have the moral authority to condemn it and now I’m going to talk about your lack of moral authority for a while.”Report
You know the “both sides do it” criticism of arguments that pops up from time to time?
That’s pretty adjacent to what she’s doing here. Sure, we had a black guy attack a Jewish synagogue… but, to be sure, both sides do that.Report
For whatever it’s worth, you seem more focused on the liberal response to these acts of anti-semitism than on the anti-semitism itself.
Everywhere I look, I see condemnation of the acts and sympathy for the victims.Report
One thing I’ve noticed within a part of the conservative community, and in particular Jews within the conservative community, is a perceptible shift in blame for the rise in anti-Semitism in the US. It isn’t due to the increased political power of the alt-right and Trump’s approval of the “very good people” in Charlottesville, but instead it’s due to Ihan Omar and Linda Sarsour saying bad things about Israel. It’s bizarre, but certainly not unexpected.Report
I think that that isn’t *THAT* unreasonable.
If you only have to worry about the right-wingers being anti-Semitic, you know that, hey, you’ve got your allies on the Left.
When the Left starts saying some stuff about the importance of BDS and South Africa and starts explaining how left anti-Semitism is much more bespoke than right anti-Semitism, at that point, you start to freak out a little. Just a little. Make sure you know where the exits are, that sort of thing.Report
Jaybird, you’re playing the HYSBYWY? game I outlined above.Report
Hey, I’m just arguing against “it’s bizarre” by saying that it ain’t.Report
“When the Left starts saying some stuff …”
We have issued no such statement.Report
“One thing I’ve noticed within a part of the conservative community, and in particular Jews within the conservative community, is a perceptible shift in blame for the rise in anti-Semitism in the US. ”
Hey remember how there was a Rise In Anti-Semitism In The US right after Trump was elected and it turned out that half of it was some dude trying to do his ex-girlfriend dirty and the other half was some dude in Israel trolling everybody?Report
There was anti-Semitism yesterday, there’s anti-Semitism today, and there’s going to be anti-Semitism tomorrow.
But the liberal response is an indicator of things that will happen in the future to a degree that anti-Semitism won’t be.Report
This is an interesting response. I just wrote on the other thread I agree with Saul (and I’m sure others) who note that anti-Semitism is often used as a prop to attack one’s enemies. This isn’t unique to anti-Semitism but what does seem different is that both sides seem to do it, meaning the Jews as a whole are not fully embraced by either side and neither truly takes up the cause of eradicating anti-Semitism. So, if that is your point — or part of your point — I’m in agreement. What makes what you say here interesting is that you seem to acknowledge that if anti-Semitism is going to be truly resisted, it is going to be from the left. Do I have that right? If so, why do you feel that way?Report
Not exactly. It’s more that the whole Conspiracy Theory types wrt Jews (“Jews run the banks, Jews run Hollywood”) has been on the right. The neo-Nazis, the White Supremacy types. They’re the right-wingers.
The evangelicals who are big supporters of Israel and unironically refer to Jewish people as the Chosen People of God also tend right-wing.
But the reliably anti-Semitic types are reliably off in their reactionary corner.
Historically, it’s when the “left” starts making noises about Jews that things have started to turn.
As such, I’d look at statements about the “Progressive Stack” and “punching up” really closely and notice that, hey, “I’m not white!” is something that only the WASPs agree with.Report
But this is where I think the differences DO matter. These attacks came from people (we can reasonably assume are likely) on the left but they aren’t rooted in any particular left-wing ideology. In my own observations, anti-Semitism among African-Americans comes in to main flavors: religious based, namely Nation of Islam and related ideologies and what I’ll call “low man on the totem pole” situations. African-Americans and Jews are both historically marginalized groups in America and were/are often pitted against each other to see who got to be slightly higher up on the social ladder. I don’t think Black parents are sitting at the dinner table teaching their children, “Now remember… the Jews are an inferior race of people.” What I think is far more likely to happen is a poor Black neighborhood and a poor Jewish neighborhood border each other and both have streets riddled with pot holes and, hey, the neighborhood over THERE got their streets repaved and we didn’t and you know why THAT is, right???
And this matters because the way in which we respond is based on what the underlying cause is.
Again, does ANY of this make anti-Semitism acceptable? No, no, and no again. And I do wish the left was willing to engage this conversation more thoroughly.
But I don’t think anti-Semitism in the Black community is an ideology* as much as it is a thing that happens in certain contexts. So I don’t think we risk the ideology spreading but I do think we risk it continuing to be a thing that happens if we don’t address why and how it is happening. My town did this by bringing together the Black and Jewish communities and helped foster alliances rather than competition and things got much better (though still aren’t perfect).
* Nation of Islam type stuff is an ideology and very different, but not something I’ve confronted in real life so I don’t feel well positioned to speak on it.Report
This is why I brought up the Boston Bus Riots earlier. If you look into it, it wasn’t that the Irish were uniquely racist. It’s that the Irish were among the lowest whites on the totem pole so when it came time to integrate schools, the powers-that-be decided they’d just throw the poor Irish and poor Blacks together and allow them to deal with whatever issues arose. The problem manifested as racism and racism was certainly a part of it, but it was also the result of economic issues and pitting two marginalized groups against one another.Report
Here is a story from a few days ago:
NYPD Investigating 9th Anti-Semitic Attack Reported This Week
In my own observations, anti-Semitism among African-Americans comes in to main flavors: religious based, namely Nation of Islam and related ideologies and what I’ll call “low man on the totem pole” situations.
This is why I would pay close attention to stuff like the “Progressive Stack” and “punching up”.Report
I don’t know what you mean by the “progressive stack”.
I do reckon there is some perception that Black anti-Semitism is a form of punching up. I would reject that framing device but, hey, that’s just me.Report
I think I’m beginning to understand your point.
It is less about how big an issue Black anti-Semitism is and more about how permissive of Black anti-Semitism the left is and, with it, what that says about the left’s feelings more broadly on anti-Semitism. Do I have that right?
If the left just ignores or poo poos Black anti-Semitism, that isn’t good but it is unlikely to make things considerably worse (on a systemic level… obviously the individuals being attacked are greatly harmed). If the left starts going all in with, “Well, you have to understand…” we run the real risk of anti-Semitism finding more foot holds in new places and tides turning. Am I getting that more-or-less right?Report
There was a David Klion (of The Nation) tweet going around a few days ago that said:
As a fan of a reduced police presence, I certainly understand what he was trying to go for…
But, quite honestly, if I were in the community, I’d be googling stuff like “bug-out bags”.
Not because I think that something is going to happen, but just, you know, better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.Report
Is it possible Klion and deBlasio are BOTH right?
That police presence SHOULD be increased to protect Jews and also done in a way that doesn’t exacerbate existing tensions between cops and Blacks?Report
“Is it possible Klion and deBlasio are BOTH right?”
Sure, but Klion describing things as “security for Jews against POC”…doesn’t sound like he wants to be right in the way that you’re suggesting he could be.Report
He referred to the optics of that. I read that as how people are going to perceive it.Report
The Progressive Stack is a thing. You know those online “HOW PRIVILEGED ARE YOU?” tests? It’s like that, but somewhat more formalized.
Report
I’ve always argued that privilege is…
A. A noun, not an adjective
B. A spectrum, not a binary
C. Contextual and relative
I — a white, sis, straight, Christian, able-bodied male — possess lots of privilege in most circumstances. But in some, I do not or possess less at least — I’m far more likely to be suspected of being a ne’er-do-well in my professional field than a woman.
So I guess that means I don’t subscribe to the progressive stack.Report
I’m not arguing for it.
I *AM* arguing for looking out for it.Report
So, I want to again try to clarify your position because it still feels like your engaged in a little bit of advantageous left-bashing but I want to offer the benefit of the doubt that you’re not.
Is your concern closer to “liberals are the real anti-Semites”?
Or is your concern closer to “liberals need to balance whatever understanding they may encourage for Black anti-Semitism with a strong repudiation of Black anti-Semitism lest they offer further refuge for anti-Semitism writ large”?
I think you mean the latter and I’d agree. But I have to be honest a lot of what you’re saying reads like the latter. And if your goal is to convince liberals to be better, you may want to be mindful of how you’re reading.Report
Eh, not so complicated.
I’m mocking the tendency to leap to “well, you have to understand…” on behalf of something that would be easy as pie to condemn if someone reported “whoops, as it turns out, the assailant was a Mormon from Idaho.”Report
Mockery will surely help.Report
See it as “raising awareness”.
Report
They have deleted that tweet and apologized and replaced it with a new tweet.
Report
Ah, Jacobin. Jacobin, Jacobin, Jacobin…
Report
So, yea, you definitely just want to shit on the left. Cool beans. Enjoy.Report
Well, let’s just say that my attitude is complicated.Report
Nobody shits on the Jacobin Left, like the anti-Jacobin left:
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2020/01/a-land-beyond-self-parody
“We’re not the Anti-Trump Democratic Socialist Left; We’re the Anti-Trump Social Democrat Left!”
“Shitters!”Report
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/05/nyregion/anti-semitism-solidarity-march-nyc.html
Are these the folks on the left who are doing it oh so wrong?Report
No, I’d say that they’re doing it right.
They’re coming out and saying “this is bad” without stopping to explain how complicated it is. Lemme read it again and see if they stopped to talk about the legitimate concerns shared by some of the people who share traits with the attackers…
Nope. They didn’t do that.
Good for them.Report
“you seem to acknowledge that if anti-Semitism is going to be truly resisted, it is going to be from the left.”
I think his point is that when a black person is assaulted and a white person says “yeah that’s bad but you have to understand the situation” that white person gets fucking roasted, and here’s jews being assaulted and people saying “yeah that’s bad but you have to understand the situation” and we’re supposed to nod and agree and mutter “yes yes, quite, very much indeed”Report
That’s a good way to summarize it if indeed that’s his point. I wish he had said it like that way back when.Report
Adam Smith taught us long ago that the division of labor was a mighty force for economic progress. It would be perverse to criticize a person whose job is to sharpen the points of pins by saying that planting wheat is more important. Indeed, it is, but not everybody has to do everything all the time. We’re better off dividing our labor.
I think the same insight applies to moral progress. The division of labor contributes there as well. Just this morning, I read an account of the Justice Department’s strange decision to prosecute the Monsey stabber under 18 USC 247 rather than 18 USC 249. It did not include any condemnation of the stabber, or of anti-semitism in general. (The author, for what it is worth, is Jewish.) I do think it safe to assume, however, that he condemns both. But is that the best use of his time and talent, or are we better off if he does what he is good at and explains an issue most of the rest of us would not otherwise understand? The answer seems obvious to me.
Somebody out there is likely already to be putting a great deal of work into figuring out whether the Monsey stabber, who is clearly otherwise guilty of attempted murder and some federal hate crime, is crazy enough to have an insanity defense. I’d be surprised if that person’s contribution to our understanding of the matter will include, or would be improved by including, denunciation of the obvious badness of what the Monsey stabber did, whatever his mental state.
Likewise, if some people take the opportunity afforded by these recent incidents to discuss the many flavors of anti-semitism, the differences between them, and, perhaps, the different strategies for dealing with them, which really is, unlike the Monsey stabbing itself, “complicated,” I don’t insist that they insert a paragraph condemning what no one supports. But then again, I don’t see myself as the schoolmarm setting the bounds of public discussion.Report
Perhaps one of the stumbling blocks that needs to be addressed is the long-held leftist (commonly taught on campus) idea that blacks cannot be racist, because they conveniently defined racism so that only refers to rich privileged people looking down on poor non-privileged people.
That position shields SJW POC from being called out on some wildly blatant racist attitudes, and they’re not a bit shy about invoking the “rule”. It also let’s rampant racism in minority communities go completely unchecked, since there’s no push back or even questioning of it. There’s quite a lot of intellectual investment in that position, both in academia and in various social circles, including a lot of political circles. To question the “rule” is to “whitesplain” and various other no-no’s.
This makes addressing the New York attacks head on quite difficult, because what’s at risk in admitting that blacks can, in fact, be racist, is that huge investment in the idea that they can’t. If that tenet of social status and discourse collapses, a whole lot of other cards built on it will likewise potentially collapse.
Such a collapse would risk a regression back to the 60’s, when some prominent people asserted that people should be judged on the content of their character instead of the color of their skin. That might prove disastrous to lots of vested interests.
And so we have lots of tap dancing, or as Matt Damon might say from Mars, “I’m gonna have to nuance the heck out of this.”Report
If you want to take the opportunity presented by the recent attacks to talk about those things, preferably with someone who actually holds the position you’re attacking, be my guest. Division of moral labor, and all that. I have zero interest in talking about talking rather than talking, period, but that’s just me. I don’t make any claim to pronounce on the proper topics of public discourse.Report
Do you get the feeling that if blacks or left-fringe groups attacked synagogues on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and white right-wing fringe groups attacked synagogues on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, with perhaps Muslims tasked with Sundays, a whole lot of pundits on media panels would be overjoyed that they’d get to wag fingers at each other for the next year or so?
I get that feeling.Report
“You know the “both sides do it” criticism of arguments that pops up from time to time?”
Thing is, this hasn’t even got to “both sides do it”, this is “our side has righteous responses to historical oppression, your side viciously attacks the targets of their bigotry”Report
And then there’s this from the UK pro-solidarity protests in the wake of attacks on Jewish shops.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riDP1JUmCocReport
But Brawndo’s got what plants crave.Report
I saw a couple of interesting pieces today.
Commentary Magazines editor says Victimhood Culture Lead to Anti-semitism.
And The Lid has a more in depth article, How Did The Black-Jewish Civil Rights Alliance Become African-American Antisemitism?
I found the latter one highly informative.Report
I don’t quite see why “My side isn’t the only one that hate Jews” is such a big win.Report
It’s irritating how right-wingers are so eager to pounce, isn’t it?Report
Always has been, going back at least to Nixon and his drunken doppelgänger. They support a TV network, a publisher, innumerable radio shows, and Ben Freaking Domenech just to provide them pouncing points.Report
Vox has a good article on the conspiracy theories behind the recent attacks:
https://www.vox.com/2020/1/3/21039446/anti-semitism-anti-orthodox-farrakhan-conspiracy-theories-bipartisanReport