Lipstadt: Antisemitism Is a Bipartisan Problem

2025/01/28 Leave a comment

Another reminder and warning:

At the conclusion of my confirmation hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2022, I was approached by a member of the committee who asked which posed a greater threat, antisemitism emanating from the political left or the political right? The question did not surprise me. I had heard it often, long before President Joe Biden had nominated me to serve as the State Department’s special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, the position I held for the past three years.

I replied that it made little difference to me whence the antisemitism came, I was against it. I described myself as an “equal opportunity” hater of antisemitism. The senator who asked seemed satisfied with my answer.

As the new administration begins and I leave this position, I have come to see, more clearly, that this oft-debated left/right question — that is, which side is worse — often serves as a political smoke screen.

The problem is that many on both the left and the right fail to call out antisemitism when it appears on their side of the political spectrum: Too many on the left are silent when it rears its head on university campuses. Too many on the right fail to condemn the overt antisemitism expressed by white nationalists. When I encounter this, it is clear to me that the intent is not to fight antisemitism but to use antisemitism as a cudgel against political opponents.

This is far too narrow a prism through which to acknowledge, assess and call out this hateful phenomenon. In the past few years, having witnessed the continued harm of antisemitism worldwide, I have become convinced that these double standards, which reduce the fight against antisemitism to partisan bickering, obscure the far greater threat that is Jew hatred.

I now see the threat in a multitiered fashion. Antisemitism is, first and foremost, a peril to Jews, their institutions and their communities. Whether the attack is on a synagogue in Australia, soccer fans in Amsterdam or women in Kibbutz Re’im and at the Nova music festival near the Israel-Gaza border, Jews are the target. And this alone would make it a legitimate matter for governments to address seriously. But antisemitism poses a threat beyond the threat to Jews.

It also threatens democracy and the rule of law. The cornerstone of antisemitism is a conspiracy myth which holds that “the Jews” control the most powerful levers of society, in government, media, finance and more. This lethal belief posits that Jews seek to empower and enrich themselves at the expense of all others. One might be inclined to dismiss this outlandish myth as merely a wild fantasy. But it has served as the rationale for genocide. Millions have been murdered because of it.

Those who adhere to this conspiracy theory — who see power ceded, not to a legitimate government, but to a Jewish cabal — have lost faith in the rule of law and are looking for someone or some group of people to blame. They’re willing to believe that their votes do not help them, their leaders do not represent them and their institutions do not protect them. Their distorted worldview renders accountable, rules-based government an illusion.

We have repeatedly seen malign groups and governments using it as a means of deepening public division within societies and among countries. Russia has propagated antisemitic conspiracy myths to help justify its war against democratic Ukraine. Iran supports the terrorist groups Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis by helping them cultivate antisemitic ideologies to justify depraved violence throughout the region. Their primary goal may not be only to spread Jew hatred, but to use Jew hatred to sow societal divisions and make all of us doubt the political health and strength of the democratic world.

Anything that erodes the rule of law and undermines our national security must be confronted collectively. But when antisemitism is viewed through a left/right lens, we risk making it the subject of a partisan debate. In doing so, we obscure the global threat it poses.

My tenure at the State Department was dedicated to ensuring that world leaders commit to taking the politics out of this issue. In 2024, the United States led 38 countries and four international bodies in outlining the Global Guidelines for Countering Antisemitism. These guidelines represent a landmark global framework intended to tackle Jew hatred and outline 12 best practices for governments and civil society to identify and act against this scourge. The guidelines make clear: “avoid politicization.” By endorsing these guidelines, members of the international community vow to combat antisemitism not as a political issue, but as a moral and policy imperative.

And in 2023, the United States released our first National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism. The National Strategy calls on members of Congress from both parties to work together and condemn antisemitism in all its forms. As I reflect on my tenure, I am proud of the important partnerships that I have forged on both sides of the aisle. Together, we must recognize that antisemitism assaults the very principles that define our open, free and democratic society. Tackling the current surge of global antisemitism must remain a bedrock of bipartisanship.

When antisemitism leads to violence, as it all too often does, the question we must ask ourselves is: How will we — Jew and non-Jew, left and right, people of all persuasions and beliefs — unite and respond?

Source: Antisemitism Is a Bipartisan Problem

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Lipstadt hopes next Jew-hatred monitor is ‘barn builder, not barn burner’

2025/01/17 Leave a comment

Good reflections:

….Lipstadt told reporters she is proud that when she and Keyak, who are both political appointees, depart on Monday, the rest of the roughly 20 staffers—a mix of civil servants, foreign service staffers and contractors—will remain. That office structure will ensure continuity that the government previously lacked, she said.

One place that does need more change is the United Nations, according to Lipstadt.

“There are officials inside the U.N. who have engaged in overt antisemitism, but I don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater,” she said. “If we can start to get it to take this issue seriously, then that would be worthwhile. Its record has not been great.”

She told reporters that a long-stalled plan to fight Jew-hatred at the United Nations, which the global body worked on with Jewish groups, remains “in the works.”

“Is it serious? A plan could be serious, but it’s only a plan,” she said. “It’s what’s done to implement it.”

Lipstadt told reporters about a previously unreported exchange that she had with António Guterres, the U.N. secretary-general, at a Munich synagogue.

After thanking Guterres for meeting often with the families of hostages being held in Gaza, Lipstadt mentioned the frequent antisemitic remarks of Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur for Palestinian rights, who has drawn criticism from the U.S., German and French governments. Critics have said often that Guterres and the United Nations haven’t sufficiently denounced Albanese, who is considered an adviser to the global body and not an employee.

Lipstadt told reporters that Guterres said, within earshot of the press gaggle at the synagogue, of Albanese that “she’s a horrible person.” (JNS sought comment from Guterres.)

Fritz Berggren, a U.S. foreign service officer revealed to be the creator of a white nationalist website, is no longer a State Department employee, Lipstadt told reporters. More than 70 department employees had written to Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, in August 2021 calling for Berggren’s removal, but employment policies and laws appeared to protect Berggren.

“The legal details are not fully open, but it was an ending,” Lipstadt said. She didn’t specify if Berggren opted to leave or was fired.

Lipstadt and Keyak told reporters the person who carved a swastika into a State Department elevator in July 2021 has yet to be identified. The department’s headquarters in Foggy Bottom is closely guarded by officers, but there was no camera in the area of the elevator, they said.

The envoy was asked if Jew-hatred is more prevalent at the State Department after Oct. 7. Lipstadt said that mid-level staffers, who came out publicly against the department’s positions and policies on the Israel-Hamas war, shouldn’t be seen as antisemitic.

Her office faced “some internal resistance” from “some misinformed people,” who thought that it was essentially running cover for Israel, she added. She told reporters that no one ever approached her with such concerns.

She wouldn’t comment on or endorse a successor, but said only that she hopes the next envoy “will be a barn builder, not a barn burner.”

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to replace Blinken at the helm of the State Department, takes Jew-hatred seriously, according to Lipstadt. “That gives me hope on this issue,” she said.

“Some of the things I’ve done have been done quietly. Sometimes, they’ve succeeded. Sometimes, they haven’t. Speeches that were given, lines that were delivered, weren’t delivered,” Lipstadt told reporters. “I don’t want to speak out too much on everything. At some point, you’ll be dismissed as a partisan hack.”

Source: Lipstadt hopes next Jew-hatred monitor is ‘barn builder, not barn burner’

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Palestinian politicians lash out at renowned academics who denounced president’s antisemitic remarks

2023/09/15 Leave a comment

Sigh:

Palestinian politicians on Wednesday raged against dozens of Palestinian academics who had criticized President Mahmoud Abbas’ recent remarks on the Holocaust that drew widespread accusations of antisemitism.

They lambasted the open letter signed earlier this week by over a hundred Palestinian academics, activists and artists based around the world as “the statement of shame.”

The well-respected writers and thinkers had released the letter after footage surfaced that showed Abbas asserting European Jews were persecuted by Hitler because of what he described as their “social functions” and predatory lending practices, rather than their religion or ethnicity.

“Their statement is consistent with the Zionist narrative and its signatories give credence to the enemies of the Palestinian people,” said the secular nationalist Fatah party that runs the Palestinian Authority.

Fatah officials called the signatories “mouthpieces for the occupation” and “extremely dangerous.”

In the open letter, the legions of Palestinian academics, most of whom live in the United States and Europe, condemned Abbas’ comments as “morally and politically reprehensible.”

“We adamantly reject any attempt to diminish, misrepresent, or justify antisemitism, Nazi crimes against humanity or historical revisionism vis-à-vis the Holocaust,” the letter added. A few of the signatories are based in east Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank.

In Geneva on Wednesday, Deborah Lipstadt, the U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, blasted Abbas’ comments as “overtly antisemitic” and distorting of the Holocaust. She said the open letter from the Palestinian academics was “stronger almost than what I had to say.”

“There’s no question about it: These kind of statements must stop, because they do nothing to advance peace, and worse than that, they spread anti-Semitism,” Lipstadt told The Associated Press outside an event on antisemitism attended by dozens of diplomats on the sidelines of a session of the Human Rights Council.

The chorus of indignation among Palestinian leaders over the letter casts light on a controversy that for decades has plagued the Palestinian relationship with the Holocaust. The Nazi genocide, which killed nearly 6 million Jews and millions of others, sent European Jews pouring into the Holy Land.

Israel was established in 1948 as a safe haven for Jews in the wake of the Holocaust, and remembering the Holocaust and honoring its victims remains a powerful part of the country’s national identity.

But the war surrounding Israel’s establishment displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, who fled or were forced from their homes in what the Palestinians call the “nakba,” or catastrophe. Many Palestinians are loathe to focus on the atrocities of the Holocaust for fear of undercutting their own national cause.

“It doesn’t serve our political interest to keep bringing up the Holocaust,” said Mkhaimer Abusaada, a political scientist at Al-Azhar University in Gaza City. “We are suffering from occupation and settlement expansion and fascist Israeli polices. That is what we should be stressing.”

But frequent Holocaust distortion and denial among Palestinians has only drawn further scrutiny to the tensions surrounding their relationship to the Holocaust. That unease may have started with Al-Husseini, the World War II-era grand mufti of Jerusalem and a Palestinian Arab nationalist. He was an enthusiastic Nazi supporter who helped recruit Bosnian Muslims to their side, and whose antisemitism was well-documented.

More recently, Abbas has repeatedly incited various international uproars with speeches denounced as antisemitic Holocaust denial. In 2018, he repeated a claim about usury and Ashkenazi Jews similar to the one he made in his speech to Fatah members last month. Last year, he accused Israel of committing “50 Holocausts” against Palestinians.

For Israel, Abbas’ record has fueled accusations that he is not to be trusted as a partner in peace negotiations to end the decadeslong conflict. Through decades of failed peace talks, Abbas has led the Palestinian Authority, the semiautonomous body that began administering parts of the occupied West Bank after the Oslo peace process of the 1990s.

Abbas has kept a tight grip on power for the last 17 years and his security forces have been accused of harshly cracking down on dissent. His authority has become deeply unpopular over its reviled security alliance with Israel and its failure to hold democratic elections.

The open letter signed by Palestinian academics this week also touched on what it described as the authority’s “increasingly authoritarian and draconian rule” and said Abbas had “forfeited any claim to represent the Palestinian people.”

Source: Palestinian politicians lash out at renowned academics who denounced president’s antisemitic remarks – Yahoo! Voices

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Historic levels of hate crimes are a threat to U.S. democracy, Lipstadt says

2022/05/24 Leave a comment

Of note:

The historic levels of hate crimes in the U.S. were devastatingly illustrated with a racist mass shooting last weekend at a supermarket that took 10 lives in a mostly Black neighborhood in Buffalo, N.Y. At the forefront of a global fight against hatred and racism is a special U.S. envoy, Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt. Her mandate at the State Department is to monitor and combat antisemitism.

DEBORAH LIPSTADT: But anti-Semitism morphs into other hatred.

FADEL: And when she and I spoke, we discussed how ugly prejudices in one community can feed and grow hate in another.

LIPSTADT: The rising threat of anti-Semitism, the rising threat of racism, the rising degree of conspiratorial thinking, it’s not just a threat to the welfare of specific groups in this country – we saw it against the African American community in a tragic, tragic way this past week – but it’s a national security threat. It’s a threat to our communal welfare. And the need is immediate. And the need is great.

FADEL: Since the attack in Buffalo, we’ve been hearing a lot about this racist conspiracy, the replacement theory. And when I hear that, I think back to Charlottesville, nearly five years ago, when we watched neo-Nazis and white supremacists march with torches and chant, Jews will not replace us. Can you just explain this debunked and racist conspiracy and its danger?

LIPSTADT: Sure. There is a belief amongst people such as the killer in Buffalo and too many others like him. And what they argue is that there is a concerted effort, a plan, a scheme to replace, to destroy white Christian culture, to turn white Christians into a minority by flooding their countries with either people from Africa, Muslims – in this country, people from, quote-unquote, “south of the border” – and to render white Christians a minority. But there’s something else that motivates them or that is part of that theory. They look upon people of color as inferior to white Christians. There has to be someone behind them making this happen. They are the puppets. But who is the puppeteer? And some of them will immediately say, it is the Jew, because in their eyes, Jews are not white. Or they will look for someone whom they believe has the financial resources, the malicious smarts, the ability to be – though small in number, to do this thing, to make this thing happen and to do it secretly. And they will come upon the Jews.

FADEL: And this idea, this conspiracy that has no truth to it, it’s not fringe anymore. It doesn’t feel fringe anymore.

LIPSTADT: You’re absolutely correct. There is an increasing percentage of the American population who believe this is really happening and who think that America’s identity is under threat. And whether they read it online, whether they hear it in the media, whether they hear it from certain politicians – but they believe it. This young man who committed this horrendous, horrendous act in Buffalo, he was radicalized online. Now, maybe in his home, you know, he heard certain things that made him amenable to these ideas. But it’s out there. And people have to recognize that it’s this panoply of hatreds that constitute this threat to our democracy and threat to our country and to national security and foreign countries as well.

FADEL: Your mandate is global, and we’re talking about the danger here in the U.S. But when you look at the world, how prevalent is this right now in 2022?

LIPSTADT: It’s extremely prevalent. And my mandate, of course, is global. I’m based in the State Department. But it becomes increasingly difficult to draw a strict dividing line. Or take Buffalo – the killer in Buffalo, the murderer in Buffalo, looked at, as a model, the Christchurch shooter who murdered people in the mosques. He plagiarized what he had written. He also said he had been inspired by the shooter in Halle, Germany, who, two years ago, on Yom Kippur – the Day of Atonement, the holiest day of the Jewish year – tried to attack a synagogue in which there were 70 or 80 worshippers. And but for a lock on the door, we would have had the largest massacre of Jews on German soil since the Holocaust. So it is a global threat, including in our own country.

FADEL: But I guess I struggle with – how do you combat an idea, whether true or not? – because you can’t imprison an idea out of existence. You can’t kill an idea out of existence. I mean, what do you do practically?

LIPSTADT: I’m a teacher. And I hope I can reach people. I’m not going to be able to change the minds of people who would pick up a gun, put themselves in full body armor and go to a supermarket on a weekend afternoon, where people are buying groceries and buying snacks to watch their nighttime movies or taking their kids for ice cream, and murder them. Those people I can’t reach. But I want to reach the people who don’t really understand this threat, the nature, the danger of these ideas and get them to understand and get them to understand something else as well. And this comes from my years of study and teaching and research about the Holocaust. The Nazis in Germany didn’t come into office in January, 1933, with a plan to murder Jews and saying, OK, we’re going to have gas chambers. Maybe some of them had that in the back of their mind, but that wasn’t what they were planning. They tested. They started first by burning books in May. Then they threw Jews out of civil service positions. And then, in 1935, they deprived them of their citizenship. And slowly but surely, in 1938, they had a nationwide destruction of Jewish property and killing of Jews. And they tested how far they can go. When can we be stopped? So you can’t wait until a Buffalo to try to stop it. You’ve got to stop it before.

FADEL: Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt is the special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism. Thank you so much for your time.

Source: Historic levels of hate crimes are a threat to U.S. democracy, Lipstadt says

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Our Reaction to Anti-Semitism Is Both Overblown and Underdeveloped

2020/01/07 Leave a comment

A different perspective than that of Deborah Lipstadt (Jews Are Going Underground: Lipstadt) and the contrast between the USA and Europe, along with the need for all sides of the political spectrum to take antisemitism seriously.

Canada more like the USA but welcome comments and view:

We American Jews enter a new decade that feels like a much older one. Fresh off murderous and violent attacks on Jews in Jersey City, Monsey, and across Brooklyn, resurgent anti-Semitism and the resulting fear for our physical safety is for many American Jews a new phenomenon and one we never thought we would experience. Uncertainty is gripping the Jewish community and the new decade feels as if it will be a pivotal one for the quality and sustainability of American Jewish life as we know it. It strikes me that we are both overreacting and underreacting at the same time and need to recalibrate our approach.

What we have seen on the streets of the New York metropolitan area, and the fear that it has engendered, seems out of place here. It is reminiscent of scenes from European cities, where Jews are attacked for displaying outward signs of Judaism, or attacked for the offense of speaking Hebrew in public, or attacked in their homes for nothing beyond the crime of being Jewish. Orthodox residents of Crown Heights and Williamsburg are afraid to walk the streets or send their children to school. None of this is normal, none of this is acceptable, and it should not be treated as either. And it is not incumbent upon American Jews to find a solution; it is incumbent upon our elected political leaders and American society writ large to find a solution. When Jews are afraid to be Jewish, it says absolutely nothing about the victims and everything about the perpetrators and anyone or anything that abets them.

Yet while making sure that this problem is dealt with swiftly and comprehensively, it is also important to diagnose the breadth of the problem accurately. Deborah Lipstadt has forgotten more about anti-Semitism than I will ever know, but her speculation that American Jews may end up imitating medieval Spanish Marranos – hidden Jews who privately maintained their Judaism while outwardly appearing as Christian converts – by going underground strikes me as inapt. Spain’s Jews faced a choice at the end of the fifteenth century of expulsion, conversion, or death. The entire force of the Spanish state, intertwined as it was with the Catholic church, was brought to bear against the country’s Jews. Hiding one’s Judaism was not about avoiding potential danger, but in response to a fatal decree from absolutist monarchs. While a step down from the Inquisition and Torquemada, the environments created by the ruling class of Tsarist Russia that fomented pogroms or by Soviet leaders that sanctioned anti-Jewish discrimination were also the result of official state policies, of governments giving the green light to or directly leading anti-Semitic mobs.

Contrast that to the reaction of federal, state, and municipal governments to the anti-Semitic incidents in New York and New Jersey. They have been denounced by the president, governors, mayors, and members of Congress. Elected leaders have promised to devote resources toward combatting anti-Semitic attitudes and protecting Jewish institutions and have rushed to demonstrate solidarity with the Jewish community. Until words are turned into actions, we should withhold judgment on the seriousness and efficacy of these promises. But that the wall to wall reaction is to condemn anti-Semitism and evince a desire to remove its scourge demonstrates why the situation in the U.S. is a universe away from the ones that previous generations of Jews fled from in Europe.

As for Jews going underground in Europe today, it is indeed frightening and saddening. But it is unfortunately not a recent occurrence. It is the norm in Europe, whereas in the U.S. it remains the exception. I do not dismiss or make light of college students who feel compelled to downplay their Judaism or their Zionism. If it happens to even one person, that is one person too many. But we are not at the point in the U.S. where we have blast walls and machine gun-toting guards outside of our synagogues, where we have to ask a local for the address of a kosher restaurant that has no visible markings or identification as such, or where government officials issue warnings against wearing kippot in public, nor do I think we ever will be. Not for nothing is anti-Semitism described as the world’s oldest and most persistent hatred, and it should be clear to all American Jews that we will never be free of it entirely. Jews will be killed for being Jews, and it is small comfort to point out that such incidents remain exceptional. But it is premature to declare that it is open season on American Jews, that American Jewish life is fated to retreat behind high walls and closed doors, and that past is prologue.

All that said, there have been too many recent instances of American Jews not taking the current moment seriously enough, and nearly all of them revolve around some form of excusing inconvenient anti-Semitism away. We have all seen this in doses over the past few years, with a camp that kicks into high gear over right-wing white nationalist anti-Semitism but is blind and deaf to the far left variety that inherently views Jews as oppressors, and a camp that has a hair trigger for the anti-Semitism of progressive intersectionality but is blinded to right-wing classically anti-Semitic stereotypes by the glow of the Jerusalem embassy. On both sides, this has to end. It cannot be that the far right and the far left, despite the chasm that separates their worldviews, can manage to be united in their sneering hatred of Jews while we Jews ourselves cannot manage to be united in combatting that hatred.

If your response to the Jersey City or Monsey attacks was that it is a complicated situation, you are not serious about anti-Semitism. If your response to any display of anti-Semitism is some form of whataboutism in insisting that the other side’s is worse or more dangerous, you are not serious about anti-Semitism. If you think that it is okay to rail about globalist Jews as long as you support Iron Dome or West Bank settlements, or that it is okay to rail against evil Zionists so long as you display phantom nuance by separating them from good non-Zionist Jews, you are not serious about anti-Semitism. And if your reaction to a politician who proudly stands next to Robert “Judaism leads people to an eternity of separation from God in Hell” Jeffress differs at all from your reaction to a politician who proudly stands next to Louis “Jews are the mother and father of apartheid” Farrakhan, you should think about whether you are more interested in combatting anti-Semitism or more interested in weaponizing it. If we want to make sure that anti-Semitism remains unacceptable, then we have to treat it as such no matter the source, the target, or the ostensible motivation.

Source: Our Reaction to Anti-Semitism Is Both Overblown and Underdeveloped

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Deborah Lipstadt wrote a new book on anti-Semitism. Then Pittsburgh happened

2018/11/19 Leave a comment

Good long and thoughtful interview, particularly on the enablers and the need to think outside one’s bubble:

The advance copies of Deborah Lipstadt’s new book, “Antisemitism Here and Now,” display a cover photo of a white supremacist carrying a tiki torch.

But that iconic image of the August 2017 white power rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, could now be replaced by another one: Police tape cordoning off the Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh. Or perhaps the row of cut-out stars displaying the names of that massacre’s 11 victims.

“Antisemitism,” written earlier this year and due out in February, offers a concise and comprehensive overview of the various forms of Jew-hatred that have reappeared or intensified during the past few years. And before Pittsburgh, there already was plenty to write about: anti-Semitic attacks in Europe; the “alt-right” in the US; the persistence of Holocaust revisionism and denial; whether and when criticism of Israel qualifies as anti-Semitic; and of course Charlottesville.

Then the shooting happened. For Lipstadt, the renowned Holocaust historian and Emory University professor, the tragedy in Pittsburgh was both a surprise and a reaffirmation of her warnings.

Lipstadt, 71, spoke with JTA in New York City this week about what the Pittsburgh shooting means for American Jews and how Jews should fight anti-Semitism. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

JTA: What are your thoughts about the book following Pittsburgh?

Lipstadt: I wasn’t surprised by Pittsburgh, but I was shocked. I wasn’t surprised because I kept saying something’s going to happen in our country, and had been happening.

It would be easy to say everything changes after Pittsburgh, and I do think everything changed for Jews, for synagogues. Any synagogue board that in the past 10 days hasn’t met to discuss security operations is crazy. That’s the new normal.

We had one incident, a horrible incident — it doesn’t characterize our whole country — but it is disturbing. I tell the story, the one I end the book with, of walking into shul with a little friend who’s now 6 1/2, and her mother said, “Say thank you to the police officer for keeping us safe.”

She’s going to figure it out soon enough. She’ll look across the street at the church dead opposite our shul and there are no police officers there. How do you recognize a shul now if you don’t know exactly what the number is or what the cross street is? Look for the police officers. Kids recognize that.

There will be kids who say what do I want to go to Hillel for? There will be parents who will say, you know what? Why should I take my kid to a place where there’s danger?

In your book, you focus largely on people who enable or minimize anti-Semitism, as opposed to hardcore anti-Semites themselves. Why is that?

It’s “farfaln” [Yiddish, roughly, for “a lost cause”] to try to change those people. I could write about David Duke from here until the cows come. I’m not going to change David Duke’s mind. We all know David Duke is a lowlife of the first order, but it’s the people who might be influenced by David Duke who I want to reach.

Farrakhan, he’s a disgusting excuse for a human being. But it’s the people around him, Linda Sarsour, [Women’s March co-chair] Tamika Mallory, who have the voice of the press, who are listened to. They’re enablers. The enablers are much more dangerous to me than the people we recognize.

On some level, it’s the non-Hitlerian kind of anti-Semite, the one who doesn’t quite present as an anti-Semite, who’s much more dangerous because that’s the person who’s going to have access to the public.

How do you view Linda Sarsour’s activism and fundraising on behalf of Jewish causes, and her collaborations with progressive Jewish groups?

There are lots of people who proclaim they’re against anti-Semitism — “Pittsburgh? Terrible!” Linda Sarsour, you know. At the same time, on the other side of her mouth, she’s talking about don’t humanize Israel and when you wear a Jewish star it makes me feel unsafe. She’s talking out of two sides of her mouth.

[At an event in September, after criticizing Israel, Sarsour said, “If you’re on the side of the oppressor, or you’re defending the oppressor, or you’re actually trying to humanize the oppressor, then that’s a problem…” In 2017, speaking at a march protesting racism, Sarsour said, “I’m going to be honest, there are instances of things that happened to me at this space that made me feel unsafe.” Some people took that as a reference to Zionist signs.]

I don’t trust people like that. One of the reasons I’m particularly not trusting of someone like that is that there are so many Jews on the left who come so cheap. They wrote me, “Look, Linda Sarsour criticized Pittsburgh, look, she’s helped to rebuild a cemetery,” etc. Give me a break. Anyone who’s not going to criticize what happened in Pittsburgh … someone gets credit? OK, so she’s raising money to help rebuild a cemetery, that’s very nice. But at the same time she’s making awful statements about Jews. Not just about Zionists but about Jews.

Farrakhan, he called Jews termites, and Linda Sarsour and Tamika Mallory and leaders of the Women’s March are embracing him and praising him. He called us termites. How much more do you need?

On the right, is a person with 50 Twitter followers who sends a meme something we really need to be concerned about?

If it were one person with 50 followers I’d say let’s get a life. But it’s not one person with 50 followers. It’s 500 people with 50 followers and one of them with a thousand and another, like a Richard Spencer, who figures out how to take those 50 and 50 and 50 and turn them into something more acceptable and more mainstream.

It’s a ripple effect. The internet can be a weapon or it can be a great tool for connecting people. Given that we now have the internet, given that these right-wingers have learned how to use it, they have a tool they didn’t have before.

The thing that really galvanized it was, of course, having a president who — I don’t know if Donald Trump is an anti-Semite, I doubt that he’s an anti-Semite. But that’s the wrong question to ask. The question to ask is, does he enable anti-Semites?

[Lipstadt then refers to anti-Semitic abuse from Trump supporters directed toward reporter Julia Ioffe, who wrote a critical profile of Melania Trump in 2016.]

That would have been the moment for him to look straight into the camera and say, “Listen, this is not how I want to win the presidency. This is not what America is about.” Instead he said “I have no message for them.” [Trump told CNN, “I don’t have a message to the fans.”]

You have a president who glorifies violence. You have this violence, this glorification of violence. You put it together with white nationalism, white supremacy. At the heart of that white nationalism is a deep-seated anti-Semitism.

You criticize activists who lead the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or BDS, against Israel. But could you explain why you also have harsh words for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, who they oppose?

Bibi has done a number of things. First of all, his welcoming and embrace of [Hungarian prime minister] Viktor Orban, who has been pushing this Soros imagery [billboards criticizing the liberal Jewish philanthropist George Soros] and cracking down on the Jewish community of Budapest in a horrible, horrible way.

No. 2, what happened with the critics of BDS and that policy of keeping them out [of Israel]. Not only is it antithetical to Israel being a democracy, but it steals us of our best argument against BDS. BDS says “shut down the conversation, don’t bring anybody who might disagree with you,” and we say “no, open up the conversation.”

Most of all, the Polish law [criminalizing blaming Poles for collaborating with the Holocaust]. When the Polish law came out, Israel was appalled and was absolutely critical of Poland for this law. But then they announced with great fanfare, with Bibi at the table, we’ve worked things out with Poland, and Poland is changing the law so that it’s not as offensive.

What they had done is essentially changed the punishment from criminal to civil, but at the same time taken away protections for professors and artists.

This bending to Poland on this law was realpolitik. Bibi did it because he wants Orban in Hungary and whoever’s leading the Polish government at the moment, and Austria, to be his friends. Now you can say that’s realpolitik, but don’t do that and then claim Israel is the primary spokesperson and the address for fighting world anti-Semitism when you have coddled an anti-Semite like Orban, when you have made room for a soft-core Holocaust denial law like the Polish law. When you’re talking about anti-Semitism, there’s a red line.

You criticize people on both left and right, anti-Israel activists and the Israeli prime minister. Do you feel like you’re fighting a losing battle trying to carve out space in the middle?

I call it as I see it. If I thought it was a losing battle I probably wouldn’t do it.

I think there are a lot of Jews who feel like I do. I think there are a lot of Jews who will read half the book and remember half the book, who will be appalled when I’m putting down the right and love it when I’m putting down the left and be appalled when I’m putting down the left and love it when I’m putting down the [right].

I’m not out to win a popularity contest. I hope I’m not a voice crying out into the dark. I didn’t write the book to convince people who already know what they think. If the book makes people a little bit uncomfortable, and makes them reassess where they are and what they’re doing and where they see things, that’s good, too.

So what should we do to fight anti-Semitism?

I compare anti-Semitism to herpes. For most of the time we’ve had herpes, it couldn’t be cured. And if you were suddenly under stress, boom, up would come a herpes infection. Anti-Semitism is like herpes. When a society is under stress, it appears.

I would say the following things: They won’t cure it, but at least it might help alleviate it.

Don’t see anti-Semitism only on the other side of the political transom from which you are located. All these Jews on the left who suddenly, when Trump was running, saw anti-Semitism on the right and began to get all upset about that. And they weren’t wrong. But they had a patch on.

All those people on the right who are now saying Pittsburgh was a one-off, but we really should be worried about BDS. Of course we should be worried about BDS, but if you’re on the right you can have a conversation with those people. If you’re on the left you can try to have a conversation with those people.

If you’re only seeing it on the opposite side of the transom, you’re instrumentalizing this for political purposes.

I call for civil society. It used to be we could take our lead from government and leadership. We can’t. So it becomes incumbent on civil society to take a role.

A healthy democratic society cannot tolerate anti-Semitism and racism. If that is festering in its midst, it says something is unhealthy about the society. It’s not just Jews for whom this is dangerous. This should terrify you. Because if this is happening to Jews, it may start with the Jews but it doesn’t end with the Jews.

Source: Deborah Lipstadt wrote a new book on anti-Semitism. Then Pittsburgh happened

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Didn’t Slam Anti-Semitism On the Left? Don’t Expect Credibility When You Slam It On the Right: Lipstadt

2016/11/28 Leave a comment

Deborah Lipstadt, the Holocaust scholar and subject of the film Denial, about her libel trial with Holocaust denier David Irving, expresses it well:

For American Jews, particularly those aligned with the new administration, to remain silent is to send a signal that anti-Semitism and racism can be tolerated — and injected into the heart of American politics. Expediency, or tactical thinking, can have its place. But in this case, it is completely trumped by the need for honesty — and a bit of backbone.

The established leadership (with the exception of ADL) failed this first test regarding the Trump administration. Only after an outcry from many quarters — including from the editor of this publication — did they begin to issue somewhat lukewarm condemnations.

Yet it’s not only anti-Semitism from the right, but also anti-Semitism from the left, that should have been met with steel, not mush. The protesters from the left end of the political spectrum have also failed a test. Let’s hope they’ll do some soul-searching, too. Sadly, given the tenor of recent events, Jewish organizations from all ends of the political spectrum will probably have other opportunities to stand up. Let’s hope they do. Far more than just their already wounded credibility is at stake.

Source: Didn’t Slam Anti-Semitism On the Left? Don’t Expect Credibility When You Slam It On the Right. – Opinion – Forward.com

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