“I implore you to look inside yourself [and] consider why your viewpoints make us so uncomfortable.”
For far too long, I considered myself more aligned with the left than the right. I tended to vote for “liberal” judges, Democrats at a national level and Republicans at a local level.
I ran across very similar sentiments starting in 2012 and have, over time, realized while I don’t share all views of Republicans I no longer share any views with Democrats.
You're way too kind Sir Richard. I'm still reflecting on what an appropriate response that bunch would require but I just can't get past the reality that they are truly a twisted bunch in dire need of medical intervention.
I do not consider myself a conservative—on many issues I continue to stand on the left. I am so tired of double standards, though. My child’s daycare is part of branch of an international organization. Many of the association’s administrators—and even some of the teachers—have adopted the BLM logo in their email signatures. Staff wear BLM gear and the BLM flag is hung outside the building. It is an individual’s choice to support causes such as BLM—of course—but I know this sort of open political display would not be allowed when applied to Trump, his logos and motos. I don’t like Trump myself, but the fact that many feel such double standards are appropriate remind me of the “holier than thou” stance described in the article. I simply do not like it.
Just ask them if they supported Trump freeing 5000 black men from prison when he signed the first step legislation into law. See what they say. What you may want to consider is reviewing their organizational policy's. They may be in violation of their own criteria. You can also reach out to Bari's organization FAIR. They might be able to provide some guidance. I think we all must fight back even through many of the limitations. If not, this mob will come for us all.
Thank you for the concern; I am already registered as a member of FAIR. Things are not so black and white given that my son loves his school. This is—as you can imagine—a priority of mine. From my personal interactions with his teachers, I do not get the sense that he is being indoctrinated in the classroom either. My issue is that his daycare is affiliated with a larger institution that has historically been in involved with altruistic causes in our neighborhood and city. I do not think it serves anyone when such causes become politicized. As such, I do not feel so inclined to contribute my time and money to their causes at the present moment. I feel there is in implication of ideological/political homogeneity for the community they serve—which is this really what bothers me. Of course, I see a link between this sort of attitude and the intolerance described by Mr Katz.
Because my daughter went to the same school 4 years ago and she really enjoyed her experience there and we had liked the teachers. We did not notice anything political until this year.
I have found myself going through the same process. Moreover, I can find many Republicans willing to listen and more than I realized who do agree with me. Andrew Klavan had a great interview with Dave Rubin earlier this week. I agree with much of what both say. Moreover, the true conservative Republicans I know are willing to respect disagreements and have deep conversations about them while my work friends can’t even articulate exactly why they support policies that most often fail those they are purported to exist for, even though they can admit they fail. They can’t articulate what the end goal of left wing narrative is. Mostly I’ve discovered my left wing friends are very shallow, and often very gullible. My Republican friends are the first to show up to actually help those in need while my Democrat friends can only manage to show up to scream at other people…………
Many of them lack courage. To large a RINO contingent. 13 vote for BIDENS BOONDOGGLE. We have political prisoners in America and only a few contest this. Trump was a fighter, and I loved him for it. Even Boebert , who I generally like, apologizes to that incestuous shit from Minnesota??!! I could go on
The Establishment Republican movement, chock full of RINOS and CINOS (Conservatives In Name Only) was a top-down, elite-driven movement that thankfully is being forcibly replaced by a grassroots-driven Nationalist/Populist Republicanism.
The Bush/Cheney/Romney/Ryan era is over - but a truly national-level leader of this new Republicanism has yet to emerge. Trump tried- but he has IMHO too much personal baggage to return and be that leader we need.
There's something in what you say. But though as a conservative I certainly do despise Soros, Schumer, et al. it has nothing to do with the fact that they're Jews. Come to think of it, I wasn't even aware that Schiff is a Jew. And after all, there are plenty of Jews like Ms. Weiss, Ben Shapiro, John Podhoretz, etc. to balance out the picture.
Thomas...Oh yes and let us not forget M Levin. My point being that the Soros et al, i was not even aware of them to be Jewish, but i can not give them the time of day, while not being aware of any religion.
With that said...i can now understand the dislike for the "et al group" and hence the dull behavior towards those Shumor/Schiffty type People...Nothing to do with RELIGION...na
They'll blame the Jews anyways. Let's be honest. Name one country where the Jews were not made the scapegoats when times got tough. The difference now is that the days of being loaded up into cattle cars is over. Jews have a strong powerful homeland they can go to. That's why Israel must stay strong. Jewish prominence has been proven to be meaningless once mob turns on the Jews. Even joining BDS won't save the self-loathing ones.
Classic...i did not have an interest in the article...read anyhow, and i was educated, good article.
Classic, you did a very good job filling-in. i am not one to see a religion, race or nationality in any negatory way. Does not make sense to me to damage another, but since you brought to "my" light that the likes of Soros, Schumer, Nadler, Zucker and Schiffty are ALL Jewish...Bamm, I do see why the Jewish are having such a problem these days...dang.
Please don't get me wrong , i still have no ill feelings towards any religion, race etc.
I can see that issues are not clear to many because they do not fully understand the other side, me included. As an example, "the Catholic Church does allow abortion", under condition of harm/death to the mother. i imagine that most do not view this as fact ...thanks
Michael Shellenberger writes in his new book: “Unlike traditional religions, many untraditional religions are largely invisible to the people who hold them most strongly. A secular religion like victimology is powerful because it meets the contemporary psychological, social, and spiritual needs of its believers, but also because it appears obvious, not ideological to them. Advocates of ‘centering’ victims, giving them special rights, and allowing them to behave in ways that undermine city life, don’t believe, in my experience, that they are adherents to a new religion, but rather that they are more compassionate and more moral than those who hold more traditional views.” Look inside yourself, indeed.
In the great tradition of "nine Jews, ten opinions," I must respectfully disagree with that first sentence. There's no purity test for admission to the Jewish race. Sadly, some Jews are vicious, nasty, lying leftists. Nevertheless, they are mishpokhe. (Family can be very annoying.) Some cousins you love, while others carry water for the goyim. But I do understand why you want to disown them.
What makes one a Jew? I'm descended from a radical Ashkenazi family going back generations. My Russian grandfather was a member of the Jewish Labor Bund. My father never learned Hebrew or had a bar mitzvah. He was, however, a union organizer. My parents were card-carrying members of the Communist Party until they got the memo about Stalin and dropped out. Through it all, I was raised to know I was a Jew, and to be proud of our "peasant stock." We never lit a Khanukah candle, but we spoke Yiddish at home. My uncle called it "speaking Jewish." In a rare moment of candor, my mother told me she didn't trust anybody who isn't Jewish. Was she a Jew?
Over the past five years I've dumped my leftist label due to the offensive ideological dogmatism exemplified by the roommates described in this article. I have no illusions about the authoritarian nature of Marxism. I do retain a few liberal aspirations, such as universal health care, abortion rights, and decent public education. But I retain them as a Jew. As others have noted, anti-Semites don't care if I have the letters BLM tattooed on my forehead. They will use those letters to make it easier to see my forehead in a crowd, and shoot me. On behalf of Gabriel Katz, I feel grateful (that he dodged a bullet), but also bereft and terrified, because we know where this all this self-hating Jew business leads.
Wow, I'm very impressed by you, but disgusted by your ex-roommates, and the Moishe House organization.
I was a fine arts professor, and after the Trump election, the schools were actually notifying us with "announcements" to read at the beginning of class, explaining where students could find counseling. This intolerance is being sown at every level of education, particularly higher education. I'm sure you know this, duh, as you're a recent grad...
but it's just amazing to me, that people can live in a society and have their interpersonal / personal experiences be overridden by the false narrative that half the US are racist, anti-LGBT, anti-science nimrods. These girls met you, lived with you for a span of days, and could still have those personal experiences be overridden by brainwashing, by some abstract association of ideologies.
Thank you for sharing your story. As far as I can tell, you have a very bright future ahead of you (your current job sounds very interesting, too!).
Ugh. So depressing to read what happened to you, Gabriel. Many on the left are accepting of everyone from pedophiles to felons driving through a Christmas parade killing innocent people. But conservatives? That’s beyond the pale for so many of them. It says so much more about them than you. Sometimes you just have to keep your chin up and burn that fucking bridge behind you.
Their website says it’s a “pluralistic” community. That’s pretty much code for “except conservatives and zionists”. It’s like those signs that say “hate has no home here.” Sure, unless you’re conservative or zionist. Then, it’s totally ok to hate.
Very good piece. I’m not Jewish, but I really enjoyed reading it. Actually, the circumstance - intolerance of moderate or conservative viewpoints by the left, is characteristic of much more than just the Jewish community. Great article.
The Hellenized Jews in the wake of Alexander the Great were like the modern Ultrawoke and the comparison is informative.
In that time all the sophisticated people were speaking Greek and getting educated in Greece. They thought themselves superior and they tried to stigmatize those deplorable traditionalists who were still speaking Hebrew and practicing the old ways. After a tug of war between two Hellenized Jews named Jason and Meneleus (both Greek names) the temple was desecrated, repurposed as a temple to Zeus and Ba'al and practice of the Torah was forbidden. The Hellenized Jews completely sold out their own people, they loathed those deplorables and wanted them cast out.
I see quite a few parallels to America today. One worth noting is that the traditionalist Judas Maccabeus came and retook Jerusalem, and those Hebrew names seem to have been back in style ever since.
Similar thing went on in Germany leading up to the Holocaust, here in USA, and probably wherever Jews have gone. I guess it is human nature to want to assimilate.
Some of the Jewish commentary I encounter here and elsewhere is a little bit over my head. But this one strikes home. As an American of Irish descent, this kind of strife is a part of my family history. The epic of Ireland's struggle for independence has quite the dark side: It was not just a struggle to overthrow British dominance but a bitter sectarian conflict. The Irish v. the Anglo-Irish. The Free Staters v. the Republicans. Catholic v. Protestant in Ulster. My maternal grandmother came to America in late 1922, a refugee from the Civil War following independence that claimed more Irish lives than the War of Independence itself.
Mr. Katz's story interests me in another way as well: It illustrates the peculiar variant of doublethink that many progressive Jews employ to skate past the increasingly strident anti-Semitism of the broad Left. The Jews of Moishe House seem to think that they can embrace postmodern progressivism without giving up their essential identity as Jews. But their non-Jewish comrades demand exactly that sacrifice.
People like Ilhan Omar have convinced me of a principle of which I was long dubious: that anti-Zionism = anti-Semitism. I understand that there are Jews who reject Zionism on purely religious grounds. But secular anti-Zionism is ideological, not religious. It's an amalgam of age-old prejudice and postmodern theorizing about imperialism, colonialism, etc.—with the latter lending an illusion of respectability to the former. Ideological anti-Zionism is in fact a project genocidal in character whose aim is the destruction of the Jewish state. Why any Jew would sign up for such a project is honestly beyond me.
My only quibble with Mr. Katz's excellent piece is its title. A better one would have been "Jews vs. Judaism."
Excellent observation relative to American Jewry. While the majority of my life was spent on West coast, I did spend a chunk of my teens in Queens NY. Our neighborhood had a very large proud Irish American population and they were unabashed supporters of the IRA. Collection boxes for the cause included. Former NY congressman Peter King had an open relationship with some IRA leaders. This was never an issue and it would be unheard of to question someone's love of their ancestral homeland. Especially in a town like New York. But Jews are held to a different standard regarding their need and support of a homeland. Now that the terror cults have figured out that it is very difficult to defeat Israel and the Jews militarily, they just gave Israel a George Floyed problem. Even many young American Jews believe Israel is nothing more than an Arab land colonized by white Europeans. The BDS leaders have been brilliant in getting progressives primarily younger Jews to go along with that insanity. It is a serious problem and the Israelis know it. But the Israelis have no time for that nonsense. They will continue to win the war that will never end.
Such a moving piece. This sums up everything that is wrong with our society. I can't imagine being a young person and feeling so isolated and unaccepted over politics. I remember lots of late night political discussions in college (ohio)...some argued for and some against this or that. It was fun...we were grappling with who we were and what we believed...we never really got into a stew over it. We also didn't have ironclad talking points from twitter so conversations were more free...you could take long pauses to think up your next point. We even allowed ourselves to be convinced mostly just because we liked the person doing the convincing! Imagine!
People like them are beneath contempt. They're pathetic. If you can't debate someone openly and instead rely on claims of supposed harm to shut down someone else's ability to speak then you deserve no sympathy or understanding. Therapeutic totalitarianism at its worst.
Thanks for sharing this piece. I am saddened and disheartened by this behavior. I saw this infection the first time my daughters came back from college and there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight. Feeling unsafe and uncomfortable with political beliefs and using jargon like “anti racism” to evaluate human being is atrocious and soon becoming dangerous.
“I remember when Jewish kids were home doing their homework. What happened? What the hell happened to our smart Jewish kids? If, God forbid, their parents are no longer oppressed for a while, they run to where they think they can find oppression. Can’t live without it. Once Jews ran away from oppression. Now they run away from no-oppression. Once they ran away from being poor; now they run away from being rich. It’s crazy. They have parents they can’t hate anymore because their parents are so good to them, so they hate America instead.”
Wow, thank you for sharing your story, Gabriel. I’m so sorry you had to experience this, but admire your conviction to stand alone and stick to your principles.
:-(
“I implore you to look inside yourself [and] consider why your viewpoints make us so uncomfortable.”
For far too long, I considered myself more aligned with the left than the right. I tended to vote for “liberal” judges, Democrats at a national level and Republicans at a local level.
I ran across very similar sentiments starting in 2012 and have, over time, realized while I don’t share all views of Republicans I no longer share any views with Democrats.
“I implore you to look inside yourself [and] consider why your viewpoints make us so uncomfortable.”
My knee-jerk response would be “I implore you all to look inside yourselves and consider why you are such intolerant assholes.”
After a few days of calm and reflection, I'd have the same response.
You're way too kind Sir Richard. I'm still reflecting on what an appropriate response that bunch would require but I just can't get past the reality that they are truly a twisted bunch in dire need of medical intervention.
maybe go with "mendacious malevolent pricks" as an alternative, but asshole is all encompassing.
I do not consider myself a conservative—on many issues I continue to stand on the left. I am so tired of double standards, though. My child’s daycare is part of branch of an international organization. Many of the association’s administrators—and even some of the teachers—have adopted the BLM logo in their email signatures. Staff wear BLM gear and the BLM flag is hung outside the building. It is an individual’s choice to support causes such as BLM—of course—but I know this sort of open political display would not be allowed when applied to Trump, his logos and motos. I don’t like Trump myself, but the fact that many feel such double standards are appropriate remind me of the “holier than thou” stance described in the article. I simply do not like it.
Just ask them if they supported Trump freeing 5000 black men from prison when he signed the first step legislation into law. See what they say. What you may want to consider is reviewing their organizational policy's. They may be in violation of their own criteria. You can also reach out to Bari's organization FAIR. They might be able to provide some guidance. I think we all must fight back even through many of the limitations. If not, this mob will come for us all.
Thank you for the concern; I am already registered as a member of FAIR. Things are not so black and white given that my son loves his school. This is—as you can imagine—a priority of mine. From my personal interactions with his teachers, I do not get the sense that he is being indoctrinated in the classroom either. My issue is that his daycare is affiliated with a larger institution that has historically been in involved with altruistic causes in our neighborhood and city. I do not think it serves anyone when such causes become politicized. As such, I do not feel so inclined to contribute my time and money to their causes at the present moment. I feel there is in implication of ideological/political homogeneity for the community they serve—which is this really what bothers me. Of course, I see a link between this sort of attitude and the intolerance described by Mr Katz.
Then why do you support it?
Because my daughter went to the same school 4 years ago and she really enjoyed her experience there and we had liked the teachers. We did not notice anything political until this year.
I have found myself going through the same process. Moreover, I can find many Republicans willing to listen and more than I realized who do agree with me. Andrew Klavan had a great interview with Dave Rubin earlier this week. I agree with much of what both say. Moreover, the true conservative Republicans I know are willing to respect disagreements and have deep conversations about them while my work friends can’t even articulate exactly why they support policies that most often fail those they are purported to exist for, even though they can admit they fail. They can’t articulate what the end goal of left wing narrative is. Mostly I’ve discovered my left wing friends are very shallow, and often very gullible. My Republican friends are the first to show up to actually help those in need while my Democrat friends can only manage to show up to scream at other people…………
Republicans frustrate and sicken me but the current left is a totalitarian evil.
Well. it's nice to be promoted from "existential threat to our democracy" to "the lesser of two evils." Thanks!
What, specifically, about Republicans “sickens” you? Are you sure you know what you are talking about?
Many of them lack courage. To large a RINO contingent. 13 vote for BIDENS BOONDOGGLE. We have political prisoners in America and only a few contest this. Trump was a fighter, and I loved him for it. Even Boebert , who I generally like, apologizes to that incestuous shit from Minnesota??!! I could go on
The Establishment Republican movement, chock full of RINOS and CINOS (Conservatives In Name Only) was a top-down, elite-driven movement that thankfully is being forcibly replaced by a grassroots-driven Nationalist/Populist Republicanism.
The Bush/Cheney/Romney/Ryan era is over - but a truly national-level leader of this new Republicanism has yet to emerge. Trump tried- but he has IMHO too much personal baggage to return and be that leader we need.
Any suggestions?
Love CINO!! Never heard it before!! Desantis is my clear favorite now. He punches back, but never “below the belt”.
Desantis would be great so would Cotton , Cruz, or Hawley.
A dream Administration would be Desantis and Cotton at the top, Hawley as AG, and Cruz on the Supreme Court!
There's something in what you say. But though as a conservative I certainly do despise Soros, Schumer, et al. it has nothing to do with the fact that they're Jews. Come to think of it, I wasn't even aware that Schiff is a Jew. And after all, there are plenty of Jews like Ms. Weiss, Ben Shapiro, John Podhoretz, etc. to balance out the picture.
Thomas...Oh yes and let us not forget M Levin. My point being that the Soros et al, i was not even aware of them to be Jewish, but i can not give them the time of day, while not being aware of any religion.
With that said...i can now understand the dislike for the "et al group" and hence the dull behavior towards those Shumor/Schiffty type People...Nothing to do with RELIGION...na
They'll blame the Jews anyways. Let's be honest. Name one country where the Jews were not made the scapegoats when times got tough. The difference now is that the days of being loaded up into cattle cars is over. Jews have a strong powerful homeland they can go to. That's why Israel must stay strong. Jewish prominence has been proven to be meaningless once mob turns on the Jews. Even joining BDS won't save the self-loathing ones.
Classic...i did not have an interest in the article...read anyhow, and i was educated, good article.
Classic, you did a very good job filling-in. i am not one to see a religion, race or nationality in any negatory way. Does not make sense to me to damage another, but since you brought to "my" light that the likes of Soros, Schumer, Nadler, Zucker and Schiffty are ALL Jewish...Bamm, I do see why the Jewish are having such a problem these days...dang.
Please don't get me wrong , i still have no ill feelings towards any religion, race etc.
I can see that issues are not clear to many because they do not fully understand the other side, me included. As an example, "the Catholic Church does allow abortion", under condition of harm/death to the mother. i imagine that most do not view this as fact ...thanks
A Classic line:
“When I explained that I am politically conservative, someone responded, “On purpose?””
Enjoyed the read….
Remember - it’s NOT you! Stay strong. Stay committed to your principles…
Don't give in. They hate all that will not align with their world view. It is impossible to reason with that bunch. They are evil.
Those girls weren’t Jewish. They’re leftists first, last and in between. Vicious, nasty, lying leftists. Uncomfortable my aunt Fanny.
Michael Shellenberger writes in his new book: “Unlike traditional religions, many untraditional religions are largely invisible to the people who hold them most strongly. A secular religion like victimology is powerful because it meets the contemporary psychological, social, and spiritual needs of its believers, but also because it appears obvious, not ideological to them. Advocates of ‘centering’ victims, giving them special rights, and allowing them to behave in ways that undermine city life, don’t believe, in my experience, that they are adherents to a new religion, but rather that they are more compassionate and more moral than those who hold more traditional views.” Look inside yourself, indeed.
In the great tradition of "nine Jews, ten opinions," I must respectfully disagree with that first sentence. There's no purity test for admission to the Jewish race. Sadly, some Jews are vicious, nasty, lying leftists. Nevertheless, they are mishpokhe. (Family can be very annoying.) Some cousins you love, while others carry water for the goyim. But I do understand why you want to disown them.
What makes one a Jew? I'm descended from a radical Ashkenazi family going back generations. My Russian grandfather was a member of the Jewish Labor Bund. My father never learned Hebrew or had a bar mitzvah. He was, however, a union organizer. My parents were card-carrying members of the Communist Party until they got the memo about Stalin and dropped out. Through it all, I was raised to know I was a Jew, and to be proud of our "peasant stock." We never lit a Khanukah candle, but we spoke Yiddish at home. My uncle called it "speaking Jewish." In a rare moment of candor, my mother told me she didn't trust anybody who isn't Jewish. Was she a Jew?
Over the past five years I've dumped my leftist label due to the offensive ideological dogmatism exemplified by the roommates described in this article. I have no illusions about the authoritarian nature of Marxism. I do retain a few liberal aspirations, such as universal health care, abortion rights, and decent public education. But I retain them as a Jew. As others have noted, anti-Semites don't care if I have the letters BLM tattooed on my forehead. They will use those letters to make it easier to see my forehead in a crowd, and shoot me. On behalf of Gabriel Katz, I feel grateful (that he dodged a bullet), but also bereft and terrified, because we know where this all this self-hating Jew business leads.
Wow, I'm very impressed by you, but disgusted by your ex-roommates, and the Moishe House organization.
I was a fine arts professor, and after the Trump election, the schools were actually notifying us with "announcements" to read at the beginning of class, explaining where students could find counseling. This intolerance is being sown at every level of education, particularly higher education. I'm sure you know this, duh, as you're a recent grad...
but it's just amazing to me, that people can live in a society and have their interpersonal / personal experiences be overridden by the false narrative that half the US are racist, anti-LGBT, anti-science nimrods. These girls met you, lived with you for a span of days, and could still have those personal experiences be overridden by brainwashing, by some abstract association of ideologies.
Thank you for sharing your story. As far as I can tell, you have a very bright future ahead of you (your current job sounds very interesting, too!).
Melissa... well put, thanks
Ugh. So depressing to read what happened to you, Gabriel. Many on the left are accepting of everyone from pedophiles to felons driving through a Christmas parade killing innocent people. But conservatives? That’s beyond the pale for so many of them. It says so much more about them than you. Sometimes you just have to keep your chin up and burn that fucking bridge behind you.
They believe that it was a red SUV that killed those innocent people. Just like a Stephen King novel. An evil car.
Their website says it’s a “pluralistic” community. That’s pretty much code for “except conservatives and zionists”. It’s like those signs that say “hate has no home here.” Sure, unless you’re conservative or zionist. Then, it’s totally ok to hate.
I’ve had terrible problems with my Jewish friends on the topic of Zionism. They take pride in virtue signaling at the expense of their own peoplehood.
Very good piece. I’m not Jewish, but I really enjoyed reading it. Actually, the circumstance - intolerance of moderate or conservative viewpoints by the left, is characteristic of much more than just the Jewish community. Great article.
The Hellenized Jews in the wake of Alexander the Great were like the modern Ultrawoke and the comparison is informative.
In that time all the sophisticated people were speaking Greek and getting educated in Greece. They thought themselves superior and they tried to stigmatize those deplorable traditionalists who were still speaking Hebrew and practicing the old ways. After a tug of war between two Hellenized Jews named Jason and Meneleus (both Greek names) the temple was desecrated, repurposed as a temple to Zeus and Ba'al and practice of the Torah was forbidden. The Hellenized Jews completely sold out their own people, they loathed those deplorables and wanted them cast out.
I see quite a few parallels to America today. One worth noting is that the traditionalist Judas Maccabeus came and retook Jerusalem, and those Hebrew names seem to have been back in style ever since.
Similar thing went on in Germany leading up to the Holocaust, here in USA, and probably wherever Jews have gone. I guess it is human nature to want to assimilate.
Some of the Jewish commentary I encounter here and elsewhere is a little bit over my head. But this one strikes home. As an American of Irish descent, this kind of strife is a part of my family history. The epic of Ireland's struggle for independence has quite the dark side: It was not just a struggle to overthrow British dominance but a bitter sectarian conflict. The Irish v. the Anglo-Irish. The Free Staters v. the Republicans. Catholic v. Protestant in Ulster. My maternal grandmother came to America in late 1922, a refugee from the Civil War following independence that claimed more Irish lives than the War of Independence itself.
Mr. Katz's story interests me in another way as well: It illustrates the peculiar variant of doublethink that many progressive Jews employ to skate past the increasingly strident anti-Semitism of the broad Left. The Jews of Moishe House seem to think that they can embrace postmodern progressivism without giving up their essential identity as Jews. But their non-Jewish comrades demand exactly that sacrifice.
People like Ilhan Omar have convinced me of a principle of which I was long dubious: that anti-Zionism = anti-Semitism. I understand that there are Jews who reject Zionism on purely religious grounds. But secular anti-Zionism is ideological, not religious. It's an amalgam of age-old prejudice and postmodern theorizing about imperialism, colonialism, etc.—with the latter lending an illusion of respectability to the former. Ideological anti-Zionism is in fact a project genocidal in character whose aim is the destruction of the Jewish state. Why any Jew would sign up for such a project is honestly beyond me.
My only quibble with Mr. Katz's excellent piece is its title. A better one would have been "Jews vs. Judaism."
Excellent observation relative to American Jewry. While the majority of my life was spent on West coast, I did spend a chunk of my teens in Queens NY. Our neighborhood had a very large proud Irish American population and they were unabashed supporters of the IRA. Collection boxes for the cause included. Former NY congressman Peter King had an open relationship with some IRA leaders. This was never an issue and it would be unheard of to question someone's love of their ancestral homeland. Especially in a town like New York. But Jews are held to a different standard regarding their need and support of a homeland. Now that the terror cults have figured out that it is very difficult to defeat Israel and the Jews militarily, they just gave Israel a George Floyed problem. Even many young American Jews believe Israel is nothing more than an Arab land colonized by white Europeans. The BDS leaders have been brilliant in getting progressives primarily younger Jews to go along with that insanity. It is a serious problem and the Israelis know it. But the Israelis have no time for that nonsense. They will continue to win the war that will never end.
Such a moving piece. This sums up everything that is wrong with our society. I can't imagine being a young person and feeling so isolated and unaccepted over politics. I remember lots of late night political discussions in college (ohio)...some argued for and some against this or that. It was fun...we were grappling with who we were and what we believed...we never really got into a stew over it. We also didn't have ironclad talking points from twitter so conversations were more free...you could take long pauses to think up your next point. We even allowed ourselves to be convinced mostly just because we liked the person doing the convincing! Imagine!
Social media has been the nail in the coffin of American society.
Sounds perfect. Especially the No Twitter part.
People like them are beneath contempt. They're pathetic. If you can't debate someone openly and instead rely on claims of supposed harm to shut down someone else's ability to speak then you deserve no sympathy or understanding. Therapeutic totalitarianism at its worst.
What is worse of course is the the Moishe House organization supporting them. Shame on them.
Great essay, I have felt a lot of tension in my Jewish community as a police officer. Comparing ultra progressive Jews to Hellenized Jews is apt.
Thanks for sharing this piece. I am saddened and disheartened by this behavior. I saw this infection the first time my daughters came back from college and there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight. Feeling unsafe and uncomfortable with political beliefs and using jargon like “anti racism” to evaluate human being is atrocious and soon becoming dangerous.
“I remember when Jewish kids were home doing their homework. What happened? What the hell happened to our smart Jewish kids? If, God forbid, their parents are no longer oppressed for a while, they run to where they think they can find oppression. Can’t live without it. Once Jews ran away from oppression. Now they run away from no-oppression. Once they ran away from being poor; now they run away from being rich. It’s crazy. They have parents they can’t hate anymore because their parents are so good to them, so they hate America instead.”
Philip Roth, American Pastoral
Great novel, perhaps my favorite among Roth’s books.
Wow, thank you for sharing your story, Gabriel. I’m so sorry you had to experience this, but admire your conviction to stand alone and stick to your principles.
These people are Wokeatollahs. I'm a liberal and a Jew and their actions disgust me. Shame on them.
Wokeatollah is my new favorite slur.
Thanks. Glad to be of service :-)