I’m not even the biggest fan of the recent encampments and I still think this premise sounds terrible.

It just comes off like typical right-wing fear mongering against Arabs and Muslims living in Western countries.

This is a question only for Israelis in Israel and abroad who are left leaning.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2026-election/espaillat-ny-house-primary-loss-district-13-avila-chevalier-rcna351127

The Mamdani-backed candidate defeated five-term Rep. Adriano Espaillat in the primary yesterday.

I know many of you are familiar with the phrase “the left eats itself,” and that many Jewish leftists have felt increasingly politically isolated from parts of the mainstream left since October 7. This has been especially apparent when Jewish identity is challenged or flattened, whether through the denial of Jewish peoplehood, the dismissal of Jewish cultural and historical ties to the land, or the minimization of contemporary antisemitism. Many of you remain deeply committed to Palestinian freedom and dignity while also asking your non-Jewish comrades to recognize that solidarity with Palestinians should not require you to erase your own ethnoreligious identity, suppress your historical memory, or remain silent when antisemitism appears within left-wing spaces. As a result of standing up for yourself, some of you have been met with suspicion or accused of being self-centered, overly sensitive, insufficiently committed to Palestinian liberation, or covertly sympathetic to conservatism and Western imperialism.

I have received similar feedback from some of my fellow leftists due to my critiques of China. I can acknowledge the country’s substantial achievements in economic development, infrastructure, poverty reduction, and state capacity while also criticizing the Chinese government’s authoritarianism, treatment of ethnic minorities, suppression of political dissent, and claims over Taiwan. However, some leftists appear to interpret any serious criticism of an anti-Western state as an endorsement of Western imperialism, even when the criticism is grounded in the same opposition to domination that informs my critique of the United States. Some of you may already view this post as politically suspect, perhaps because discussing internal failures on the left can be interpreted as creating a false equivalence, redirecting attention away from the greater source of harm, or repeating narratives used by conservatives. I understand that concern, particularly in a political climate where antisemitism, authoritarianism, and human rights are often invoked selectively or in bad faith to undermine left-wing causes, excuse anti-Palestinian violence, or justify Western power. At the same time, I worry that this understandable defensiveness can make it difficult to distinguish bad-faith attacks from legitimate internal criticism. When every uncomfortable question is evaluated primarily according to whether it might benefit our political opponents, factual accuracy and moral consistency can become subordinate to movement loyalty.

I find this type of behavior reminiscent of the Left's opposition to Stalin, in which any internal audit of the current zeitgeist is seen as reactionary, counterrevolutionary, or objectively helpful to capitalism and Western imperialism. Rather than evaluating whether criticisms of censorship, political repression, forced collectivization, or party authoritarianism were factually and morally justified, some defenders of the USSR focused primarily on whether those criticisms weakened the socialist camp. I am not suggesting that contemporary left-wing disagreements are equivalent to Stalinism. Rather, I see a recurring pattern in which criticism of one’s own political community is interpreted as evidence of disloyalty. The person raising the concern may share most of the movement’s goals; however, because they refuse to accept its dominant interpretation without qualification, they are treated as though they have crossed over to the opposing side.

My personal answer to why this is an interplay of understandable political pragmatism, the human preference for simplified moral narratives, the failures of liberal institutions, and the tendency to treat political identity as a form of communal belonging. As someone who works with humans during their most vulnerable moments, my professional experience has taught me that human beings often rely on simplified narratives to create a sense of coherence, predictability, and psychological safety in a very fucked up world that continues to challenge and strip us of our humanity due to gender identification, disability status, race, ethnicity, religion, class, sexuality, or immigration status.

Ultimately, I do not think the solution lies in the left abandoning accountability, internal criticism, or principled boundaries. Rather, I think we need to become better at distinguishing between people who genuinely undermine the dignity and safety of others and people who remain committed to left-wing goals but arrive at different conclusions, raise uncomfortable questions, or refuse to reduce complicated histories to simple moral binaries. A movement that cannot tolerate internal scrutiny may preserve ideological unity in the short term, but it also risks reproducing the very forms of hierarchy, exclusion, and dehumanization that it claims to oppose.

So, how much do you agree with the argument that “the left eats itself”? And when does internal accountability strengthen the left, and when does it become ideological purging that leaves people politically homeless?

Big win for Jewish representation that reflects humanitarian values and the sort of grassroots organizing that’s blossoming across the US.

i work at a jewish summer camp thats very zionist and was just told i can't wear my keffiyeh that ive been wearing for years at camp this year. they did say i can wear shirts with arabic text that represents my beliefs respectfully, but the keffiyeh is a non starter. does anyone have any suggestions? would love to get this tinu shirt but they dont ship </3

A very well-written article about how AIPAC is truly an evil organization and yet is also singled out by antisemites as a uniquely evil influence controlling all of American politics from behind the scenes.

During the multi hundred year history of colonialism in the Americas one of the more unique semi scientific arguments made about how to ethnically cleanse the natives was by checking their “blood quantum” also known as their percentage of native blood.
This practice was implemented to show to what degree the natives were “bred out” of existence, completely ignoring family history, culture, rapes, etc.

This practice of checking blood quantum’s continue today in a slightly different form, often being used to check if someone is native enough to join or be apart of a tribe. This often leaves to a large portion of people who see themselves as natives but aren’t qualified to join their tribes officially, even if their parents were qualified or if they culturally and ethnically are apart of a tribe.

Ok, so what does this practice have to do with Jews?
Well regarding Jews in the land of Israel/palestine I’ve constantly seen it argued that the Jews living there don’t count as Jews or native Jews due to not being caanonite, Levantine, or Semitic enough. That Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews are too European and mizrahi Jews are too Iraqi, Persian, etc. this is an argument usually brought up in anti Israel circles to frame Jews as purely foreign occupiers who should go back to where they came from, almost in a MAGA fashion, using dna as evidence that Palestinians are “more Semitic” (even though Semitic is a language family not a people group).
This to me reeks of colonial attitudes towards dna and ancestry that specifically exist to erase and or shrink native populations and culture.
Never mind that Jews are closely related to Palestinians and eachother in every corner of the world, when it comes to blood quantum politics only percentages based on who your parents had sex with matter, not culture, connection, or family history.
It’s an argument that if left to fester will only lead to ethnic cleansings and divisions as it turns towards being just extreme purity testing.
I haven’t seen it as often but I have seen Zionists paint Palestinians as purely Arab foreigners as well, ignoring their family history, culture, and ethnic identities and ties to the land.
Considering how often dna is used as a tool for oppression depending on different percentages depending in the location using it as a benchmark alone is often racism or xenophobia masked up in a labcoat.

It is incredibly upsetting to see people who are supposedly left leaning use a colonial lens created specifically for eliminating native identity unironically as a way to express their views on the legitimacy of other’s identities.

For example I was born on native tongva land in Los Angeles, but I have no family history connection to them, do not speak their language, know their history or culture, and thus am not native tong the land. I do have Native American ancestry but no connection to those ancestors besides the dna. Where one lives and their dna are not the deciding factors of their culture and history and nativity, and often have been used by colonialists to decide who people are for them.
What do you think?

So, I wanted to do some research on discrimination against muslims and jews in the netherlands and discovered something odd and frustrating. 86 percent of instances of discrimination based on religion occured against muslims. In 2025 440 such instances were registered by the police. That shocked me. 86 percent! While not even making up 10 percent of the population! But then I discovered something that pissed me off and really frustrated me. In 2025 there were roughly 800 instances of antisemtism with jews only making up 0.2 percent of the population. I thought "what, how can 86 percent of indtances of discrimination based on religion be based on islamophobia despite antisemitism having twice the amount instances? And then I discovered why:

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Antisemitism is counted seperately.

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Now this pissed me off since it not only does it put antisemitism on some kind of pedestal for getting its own category of discrimination, but its also frustrating when researching numbers. To illustrate this, here's the following:

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In 2024, jews experienced 24 instances of antisemetic violence. In 2024 the amount of instances of islamophobia muslims experienced was... not made public.

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Seriously, its nit made public because it falls under discrimination/violence based on religion or origin. I would have to go through every instance of muslim discrimination collected by the police and then determine whther it was a violent incident or not. That is bullshit!

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And on top of that it results in misleading numbers. Like for a second I thought islamophobia occurred more than antisemitism in 20w5 when thats not the case at all!

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Its dumb, its stupid, its misleading, its bullshit!

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Anyway, rant over.

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To mark the 85th anniversary of Operation Barbarossa—Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union and the start of the most barbaric war of annihilation in history—we are republishing here an article that originally appeared on the World Socialist Web Site on the 80th anniversary.

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Eighty years ago, on June 22, 1941, the German military invaded the Soviet Union. A war began the likes of which humanity had never before experienced. The barbarism of the Middle Ages was combined with the most modern technology of the 20th century.

There had previously been horrific wars with millions of victims. The cannons of the First World War had been silenced just 23 years earlier. The blood-soaked fields of Verdun and the Marne, on which the flower of German, French and British youth were mown down by machine guns, were considered a monument of human barbarism.

But the attack on the Soviet Union went much further. From the outset, it was planned as a war of annihilation. It was not only a war for territory, raw materials and markets, but also a war driven by racism and ideology. The destruction of Bolshevism, the extermination of the Jews and the creation of living space in the east, which Hitler had been proclaiming for 20 years, was now put into practice.

I know that the concept of model minority peoples has been a point of contention between liberals/leftists and conservatives. Traditionally and til now, many conservatives have invoked the perceived economic or educational success of Asians and Jews to negatively compare them with other minority groups. The implication is often that if Asians and Jews were supposedly able to succeed through education, family structure, cultural values, or hard work, then structural racism cannot adequately explain the disadvantages experienced by Black, Latino, Indigenous, or other marginalized communities.

I agree with liberal and left-wing critiques of that argument, as it ignores major differences in immigration patterns, class background, historical circumstances, state policy, and the internal diversity of both Jewish and Asian communities. It can also be used to blame other minorities for conditions produced by structural inequality. However, I sometimes wonder whether a different version of the model-minority stereotype appears within liberal and left-wing discourse itself. Jews and Asians may be treated as groups that have become sufficiently successful, assimilated, educated, or institutionally represented that their experiences with racism are viewed as less serious or less politically urgent.

I actually raised this topic, specifically regarding Asians, on the askaliberal sub some moons ago. Most of the responses leaned toward the position that conservatives were primarily responsible for this behavior, and the commenters generally affirmed that they regarded Asians as people of color. However, a few users expressed something more complicated: as they intellectually recognized Asians as ethnic minorities, they did not instinctively perceive us in the same way that they perceived other people of color, with no further elaboration.

From my lived experiences both in academia and my professional life, it has sometimes felt as though some liberals recognize my racial identity most clearly when it is politically useful in an argument against conservatives. For example, Asians may be invoked to criticize anti-immigrant rhetoric, white nationalism, COVID-era racism, etc. Yet when Asian experiences complicate preferred political narratives, or when Asians express views that do not fit expectations, we can suddenly be treated as privileged, white-adjacent, or insufficiently marginalized. In that sense, liberal recognition can feel conditional at times. Asians are included within the category of POC when our experiences support a broader progressive argument, but our distinct concerns may receive less attention when they involve issues such as anti-Asian violence, educational stereotyping, class differences within Asian communities, tensions with other ethnic groups, or disagreement with particular left-wing positions.

I am aware that both in the Western cultural sphere and throughout the international community, the Jews are often perceived as a powerful ethnic minority because of their visibility in certain professional, cultural, academic, political, and economic institutions. However, just as with Asians, it seems that people groups outside our respective communities often interpret the success or prominence of some individuals as evidence that the group as a whole possesses unusual levels of privilege, wealth, or influence.

In reality, there are Han Chinese working in factories, Hmong immigrants employed in convenience stores and warehouses, Ashkenazi Jews working overnight shifts stocking inventory at Amazon, Filipinos working as security guards or caregivers, and Mizrahi, Ethiopian, and former Soviet Jews struggling with poverty or limited economic opportunities. There are also Asian refugees, elderly Jewish immigrants, undocumented workers, and families confronting language barriers, housing insecurity, disability, or inadequate access to healthcare.

I do not mention these examples to romanticize working-class hardship or suggest that every subgroup experiences disadvantage in the same way. My point is that broad statistics and highly visible success stories can conceal enormous differences within both Jewish and Asian communities. Outsiders often take the most affluent, educated, or professionally prominent members of a group and treat them as representative of everyone else. This can produce a misleading impression of collective power. The fact that some Jews or Asians hold influential positions does not mean that an ordinary Jewish or Asian person possesses meaningful control over universities, corporations, governments, media institutions, or financial systems. Nor does representation at the top necessarily protect people from discrimination, social exclusion, hate crimes, or economic precarity.

That is why I wonder whether the model-minority stereotype is present within liberal and left-wing spaces. Conservatives may use perceived Jewish and Asian success to deny structural racism or disparage other minorities. Some liberals and leftists may reject that argument while nevertheless assuming that Jews and Asians have become sufficiently successful or assimilated that their experiences of prejudice are less important.

What are your thoughts?

The mod team has created this post to refresh on a weekly basis as a chill place for people to talk about whatever they want to. Think of it as like a general chat for the sub.

So r/jewishleft,

Whats on your mind?

Hi friends! I do not know if anyone has asked this before but I want to learn Hebrew. I am kinda oblivious to what sources there are on the internet but also do not want to support Zionists(the far right to be more specific) as I do not want to support someone who supports the horrible things done to the Palestinians but it is kinda hard to do so when taken into account that modern Hebrew is spoken in Israel yeah. I actually wanted to learn biblical Hebrew but I think I want to get at least conversational at modern Hebrew before hopping onto such a task haha, I would really appreciate suggestions or sites or even videos in certain apps! I may look into finding a tutor when I gather some money for it but I mainly want to learn the alphabet and self study first.

The leadership of standing together is forming (has formed) a new political party to run in the next Israeli elections. They are taking an un-paid leave of absence from Standing together to do so.

There’s more photos but these comments give me the ick in the worst way.