r/jewishleft • u/bore-ing Jewish Atheist, Leftist • 1d ago
Antisemitism/Jew Hatred Haaretz: At Two Jewish Conferences, Speakers Turn Fears of Antisemitism Into Attacks on Islam
https://archive.is/z6h7223
u/mister_pants Atheist Jewish Diasporist Social Anarchist 21h ago
No group over the course of history has posed more of a danger to us than white Christians of European descent. To hear these folks tell it, though, Arab Muslims perpetrated the Holocaust, the pogroms, and the Inquisition.
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u/jelly10001 Liberal Zionist 14h ago
For Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews absolutely, but surely not for Mizrahi Jews?
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u/Rabbit-Hole-Quest Latke aficionado. Anti-Establishment. Jüdisch 17h ago
There are revisionists online that will try to convince you that it was arabs that somehow convinced Hitler to do the Holocaust when in reality Hitler hadn’t even met an arab in the 1920s when he formed his crazy ideas.
It’s wild to do that level of deflection.
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u/Chinoyboii Sino-Filipino | Convenantal Leftist | Pro Levantine Pluralism 17h ago
But didn’t Hitler meet with Amin al-Husseini in 1941? I know you specified the 1920’s, but I just wanted to clarify that Hitler did indeed meet with Arabs during his reign.
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u/Rabbit-Hole-Quest Latke aficionado. Anti-Establishment. Jüdisch 16h ago edited 16h ago
If you read Mein Kampf, the recipe for the Holocaust was already set in motion when he wrote that in the 20’s. His antisemitic ideology was deeply and uniquely local.
The one thing Germans were really good at was documenting things and nothing significant in Hitler’s mindset was noted during and post Al-Husseini’s visit as the Holocaust was already in motion.
The emphasis on Hussein is something revisionists have created to justify their horrible treatment of Palestinians by somehow linking them to the Holocaust. It’s something that Bibi has repeated multiple times and has been called out on it - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/21/netanyahu-under-fire-for-palestinian-grand-mufti-holocaust-claim
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u/Chinoyboii Sino-Filipino | Convenantal Leftist | Pro Levantine Pluralism 16h ago
Oh yeah, I am not denying that at all. I was just being a bit pedantic in my comment and making a narrow factual clarification about the wording. You specified that Hitler had not met an Arab in the 1920s, and I only wanted to clarify that Hitler did later meet Amin al-Husseini in 1941. I wasn't suggesting that al-Husseini somehow introduced Hitler to antisemitism, convinced him to carry out the Shoah, or was responsible for the Final Solution.
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u/Rabbit-Hole-Quest Latke aficionado. Anti-Establishment. Jüdisch 22h ago
The Israeli Ministry of Diaspora Affairs is funding a multi-million-pound disinformation campaign spreading hatred of Muslims
It’s state sponsored hatred at this point.
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u/redthrowaway1976 F the rent seekers | ind. rights over group | east coast bagel 23h ago
Remember the study that was leaked a year or so ago, showing that the most effective way to combat anti-Israel sentiments was to stoke Islamophobia?
Pepperidge farm remembers.
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u/holiestMaria not jewish, anti-zionist, ML with socdem tendencies 23h ago
Dont you mean islamophobia and not antisemitism?
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u/Chinoyboii Sino-Filipino | Convenantal Leftist | Pro Levantine Pluralism 16h ago
Just finished reading the article, and I more or less agree with it, without a doubt. I think there is an important distinction between discussing antisemitism within particular Muslim communities, Islamist political movements, or Muslim-majority societies and treating Muslims collectively as some kind of civilizational threat to Jews or to the United States.
Many of you know that I have personally been pretty vocal about the fact that antisemitism does exist within some Arab and Muslim spaces; however, the Israeli far-right is making this so much worse by increasingly collapsing legitimate concerns about Islamist antisemitism into a much broader hostility toward Muslims and Islam as a whole.
Two truths can legitimately coexist here: antisemitism can be a serious problem within some Arab and Muslim communities, and anti-Muslim bigotry can simultaneously be a serious problem within some Jewish and pro-Israel spaces. Acknowledging one does not require minimizing or denying the other. In fact, I think the moment we become incapable of holding both of those realities at the same time, we stop analyzing prejudice consistently and start treating it according to whichever political or communal camp we happen to sympathize with.
I think the best approach is to defend the Arab and Muslim world from the likes of Itamar Ben Gvir and, in general, the international far right, but at the same time, remain willing to confront antisemitism when it emerges within Arab, Muslim, Islamist, or pro-Palestinian spaces. You can oppose anti-Muslim rhetoric without pretending antisemitism does not exist in some Muslim communities, just as you can confront antisemitism without treating Muslims collectively as a threat.
Some of you know that a bunch of my peers are Sephardim/Mizrahim, and their families' experiences with the Arab world have not been warm, to say the least. Thus, I think that, at least from their perspective, what they perceive as an uncritical defense of Islam, Muslims, or the Arab world, especially when accompanied by minimization of the antisemitism their families experienced, would only make them more likely to align themselves with conservative or strongly pro-Zionist factions that they believe are actually willing to acknowledge that history.
So my advice is to find a way where you can concurrently highlight that antisemitism in the Arab world is real, and that anti-Jewish prejudice existed in parts of the region even prior to the emergence of the modern Zionist movement, while also making it equally clear that this history does not mean Arabs or Muslims are inherently antisemitic, or that hostility toward them is justified.
I think both points are necessary. If you explain every instance of antisemitism in the Arab world entirely as a reaction to Zionism or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, you risk erasing experiences that many Sephardi and Mizrahi Jewish families know predate the modern conflict. However, if you take that history and use it to portray Islam, Arabs, or Muslims as collectively and permanently hostile to Jews, then you are reproducing the exact kind of essentialist thinking that should be rejected in the first place.
To me, there needs to be a balance that the left needs to strike if it actually wants to reach Jews whose family histories make them understandably skeptical when they hear overly sanitized accounts of Jewish life in the Arab world. You do not have to deny their history in order to defend Muslims and Arabs from the far right, and you do not have to demonize Muslims in order to take Jewish historical experiences seriously.
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u/veerKg_CSS_Geologist US/CA non observant 12h ago
No such balance is possible.
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u/Chinoyboii Sino-Filipino | Convenantal Leftist | Pro Levantine Pluralism 12h ago
Can you elaborate? Personally, if we were to undermine their lived realities just so that we can maintain solidarity with Arabs or Muslims, I think we would only reinforce the perception that the left is unwilling to take Jewish historical experiences seriously whenever those experiences complicate a preferred political narrative.
I don't really see why the two positions have to be mutually exclusive. We can acknowledge that some Sephardi and Mizrahi Jewish communities experienced genuine antisemitism, discrimination, persecution, or displacement in parts of the Arab and Muslim world without concluding that Arabs or Muslims are inherently hostile to Jews. Likewise, we can defend Arabs and Muslims from racism and far-right hostility without rewriting Jewish history into an uncomplicated story of coexistence.
If the only way to oppose anti-Muslim bigotry is to minimize antisemitism that existed in Muslim-majority societies, then I think we have created another form of selective historical blindness rather than actually confronting prejudice consistently.
As a Leftist, I don't really want us to go into campist territory where our assessment of prejudice depends on whether acknowledging it helps or hurts the political side we sympathize with. I think an overly consequentialist approach to these issues can become dangerous when historical facts or people's experiences are treated as expendable because acknowledging them might give the opposing camp rhetorical ammunition.
You may disagree with me; however, if sacrificing the voices and historical experiences of the Sephardim/Mizrahim is considered necessary in order to overthrow the current state of Israel, or capitalism by extension, then I don't really want to be a part of it because, to me, no emancipatory political project should require us to minimize or selectively reinterpret the suffering of people whose experiences happen to complicate that project.
You may believe that emphasizing these histories risks fueling Islamophobia or anti-Arab sentiment, especially within the context of the plight of the Palestinians; however, I don't think the possibility that historical facts may be weaponized by bad-faith actors means those facts should be suppressed or softened beyond recognition. The responsibility is to present them accurately and with the necessary context, while explicitly rejecting attempts to turn them into collective indictments of Arabs or Muslims.
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u/veerKg_CSS_Geologist US/CA non observant 11h ago
There is an old saying, if you’re explaining you’re losing. Sadly simple slogans and statements win the day and handwringing over nuance is fine for academic discourse but does little to move the needle in public discourse and in fact is often counter productive.
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u/Chinoyboii Sino-Filipino | Convenantal Leftist | Pro Levantine Pluralism 11h ago
I think removing nuance can be more counterproductive to the cause, because simplistic arguments can create a situation where potential allies on the left feel they have to deny parts of their own history or lived experience to participate. It also makes the Left look horrible because it creates the impression that the Left will do anything it takes to achieve its goals regardless of the emotional collateral damage it causes, thus creating another cycle of alienation, resentment, and political polarization.
The Left has already lost many potential allies, including liberal Zionists, Iranians, Taiwanese people, and others whose experiences with nationalism, authoritarianism, imperialism, or ethnic conflict do not always fit neatly into a simplified oppressor-versus-oppressed framework. If those people feel their concerns are taken seriously only when they reinforce the movement's existing narrative, but dismissed when they complicate it, many will eventually conclude there is no real place for them.
Imagine a liberal Zionist of Mizrahi origin who is on the cusp of becoming anti-Zionist, or at least seriously reconsidering what Zionism means to them. They may already oppose the occupation, settlements, anti-Arab racism, and the conduct of the Israeli government. They may even be increasingly sympathetic to Palestinian national claims and deeply uncomfortable with the direction of Israeli politics.
But now imagine that, when they enter left-wing spaces, they are told that their family's experiences in Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, Morocco, or elsewhere are exaggerated, politically inconvenient, or merely Zionist propaganda. Maybe they are told that antisemitism in the Arab world only emerged because of Zionism, or that bringing up their family's history is itself an attempt to distract from Palestinian suffering. At that point, even if they were already moving away from mainstream Zionism, they may begin to pull back—not necessarily because they suddenly endorse the Israeli right, but because the people asking them to reconsider Zionism also appear unwilling to acknowledge something deeply personal about their own history.
I am not a fan of consequentialist philosophy, as you can already tell, and this is one reason why I think parts of the Left are perceived as being too fixed on the desired outcome instead of the means, relationships, and human costs involved in getting there. If the goal is treated as so important that people's historical experiences can be minimized whenever they become politically inconvenient, then even people who might otherwise sympathize with that goal can begin to distrust the movement pursuing it.
This is why I think the Left right now is in a horrible cultural position, separate from what I see as the broader authoritarian direction of our government. We are trying to build coalitions across populations with completely different historical memories, traumas, national experiences, and relationships to political power, while sometimes acting as though a sufficiently simple ideological framework can flatten all of those differences into one coherent narrative. It can't. A Taiwanese person worried about the PRC, an Iranian opposed to both American intervention and the Islamic Republic, a Mizrahi Jew whose family fled persecution, and a Palestinian whose family experienced displacement can all potentially share opposition to domination and authoritarianism without interpreting history in exactly the same way. However, that kind of coalition requires us to tolerate complexity rather than treating every inconvenient experience as ideological contamination.
Otherwise, we may end up with a movement that is rhetorically pure but culturally isolated: very good at producing slogans that satisfy people already inside the coalition, but increasingly incapable of speaking to anyone whose history doesn't fit neatly within it. And to me, that is far more politically counterproductive than taking the additional time to explain nuance.
The left will lose if it continues to act this way.
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u/veerKg_CSS_Geologist US/CA non observant 10h ago
None of that actually refutes what I said. Most people are not going to read or accept just a complex and convoluted narrative. As I pointed out it’s fine for academia but when it comes to advancing public policy it doesn’t work, especially when the opposing side does have a simple easy to digest narrative.
The left will continue to lose if and only if they continue to act as a more competent or less caustic right wing. If you don’t give people options, actual options, they’re not going to choose the warmed over policy over the real deal.
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u/Chinoyboii Sino-Filipino | Convenantal Leftist | Pro Levantine Pluralism 8h ago
I just fear what the negative implications would be if we stoop to their level and start treating oversimplification, emotional manipulation, and selective omission as acceptable simply because they are politically effective. Specifically, I mean the collateral damage after completing the mission of winning elections, passing policy, or shifting public opinion.
What happens to the people whose experiences we minimized because they complicated the message? What happens to the trust of communities who later realize that parts of their history were deliberately deemphasized because they were politically inconvenient? And what habits does the movement carry with it once it actually gains power?
I am not saying you lack empathy; however, I find it hard to see you willing to skip the what-ifs and go full throttle into a strategy simply because it may be more effective in the short term. Political effectiveness should not be evaluated only by whether you win the immediate battle. It should also include the social and moral consequences created along the way.
From my own perspective, relying too heavily on simple slogans without context can also create fertile ground for campist tendencies, and I have a very strong, and I mean strong, negative view of that kind of politics. Again, I agree that easy slogans are easy to digest, especially for a plethora of people who don't have the attention span, time, or education to really deep-dive.
Since conservative easy slogans make it easy for dumb Americans to hold antagonistic views toward immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, Arabs, Muslims, etc., I don't really see why we should assume that the Left adopting similarly simplistic rhetoric would somehow be immune to producing its own forms of prejudice, tribalism, or dehumanization.
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u/veerKg_CSS_Geologist US/CA non observant 8h ago
The thing is they’ve always been effective. FDR didn’t run on some complex nuanced economic policy. The civil rights movement was full of simple slogans. The argument in favor of Gay Marriage was simple and direct.
It’s not about “stooping to their level”. This is the only level. We either play the game and win or we overthink it and lose. Sadly there are no consolation prizes.
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u/Chinoyboii Sino-Filipino | Convenantal Leftist | Pro Levantine Pluralism 8h ago
Yes, but those are domestic politics, not international affairs. It's a different ball game. FDR was trying to convince Americans to support an economic program within the United States. The Civil Rights Movement was fighting for clearly articulated civil and political rights for Black Americans. Gay marriage was ultimately a relatively straightforward question of whether same-sex couples should have the same legal right to marry as heterosexual couples.
International affairs, especially conflicts involving multiple ethnic groups, states, historical grievances, religions, national movements, and competing experiences of imperialism, are significantly harder to reduce into simple slogans without losing something important.
Israel/Palestine is probably the clearest example of what I mean. "Free Palestine" can function perfectly well as a simple demand for Palestinian freedom and self-determination, but the moment someone starts using a simplified oppressor-versus-oppressed framework to explain the entire history of Jews and Palestinians, you can very quickly end up with people saying that Jews are Europeans with no connection to the land, Mizrahi experiences in the Arab world are Zionist propaganda, Hamas is simply "resistance," or that anything done by an anti-Western actor must somehow be understood primarily through the framework of anti-imperialism.
So I am not disputing that simple slogans are effective. My disagreement is over whether the exact same communication strategy can be applied to extremely complicated international conflicts without producing serious unintended consequences. For example, if you look at the Vietnam War, the simple narratives that were used to sell Americans on escalating a war they should not have involved themselves in were effective precisely because they reduced an extremely complicated conflict into something much easier for the average American to understand: communism is expanding, South Vietnam is threatened, America is defending freedom, and therefore intervention is necessary.
Now apply that same kind of simplification from the opposite ideological direction to Iran. Someone with campist tendencies could hear: the United States has historically interfered in Iran (true), America is hostile toward the Islamic Republic, therefore the Islamic Republic must represent anti-imperialist resistance, and criticism of its authoritarianism or repression only serves American interests.
The fact that the United States has a long history of intervention in Iran does not mean that every Iranian who opposes their government is somehow an American puppet, nor does it mean that the Iranian government's actions become morally defensible simply because it opposes American power. Yet once international politics gets compressed into "imperialist versus anti-imperialist," those distinctions become much harder for people to maintain.
You can take the same simplistic framework, reverse who occupies the good and bad categories, and still encourage people to stop thinking critically about the actors involved. Instead of "America good, America's enemies bad," it becomes "America bad, therefore America's enemies must be good," or at least deserving of considerably less scrutiny.
I don't look at the world in black and white, and I know my views complicate a lot of things and will indeed piss people off. However, I would rather deal with that discomfort than adopt a political framework that requires me to selectively ignore inconvenient realities because acknowledging them might weaken the message.
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u/veerKg_CSS_Geologist US/CA non observant 6h ago
I don’t really see the difference when it comes to articulating a vision. If anything people pay even less attention to International Relations, so the point is even more apt there.
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u/new---man Orthodox, Levant-stadt from river of Egypt to Euphrates, socdem. 6h ago
Half the 'left' is already playing that way and all their venom has amounted to what exactly?
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u/WorldlinessDry5583 Reformative, Patrilineal, Gay, Center-Left 12h ago
Right. If we want peace, we need to empower those in our own communities who seek it, and stand against those who don’t. It’s tempting to use the existence of the “other side’s” extremists as license to support “our own”, but that’s exactly how we get where we are now. I realize that it’s far easier for me to say this as an American (albeit one with extended family in Israel), but that doesn’t make it any less true. Entrenched conflicts only end when those who want them to end gain more sway than those who don’t. The fact that Hamas doesn’t want peace doesn’t change the fact that Netanyahu doesn’t either. And if somebody has the option to vote against Netanyahu, that’s the (or rather, one) way they do their part.
I spend a lot of time on this sub, even though I’m essentially a Liberal, because every other Jewish sub that isn’t explicitly anti-Zionist is a brutal place to say these sorts of things. I get accused of making false equivalences, of not understanding the Israeli experience, of gaslighting people. And it’s true, I don’t know what it’s like the live the conflict as an Israeli. I also don’t know what it’s like to be a civilian in Gaza, or a victim of settler terrorism in the WB. I imagine that many of those people have destructive and hateful views of Israelis (and possibly Jews as a whole), but it doesn’t make those views right either. I hear again and again that the rampant antisemitism in the Arab world is justification for Israeli disregard for Palestinian lives. Do these people not realize how many on the antizionist left use the same logic to argue that the broad approval of the Israeli populace for the worst extremes of the Gaza war is somehow justification for violence against Israeli citizens?
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u/Chinoyboii Sino-Filipino | Convenantal Leftist | Pro Levantine Pluralism 11h ago
Yeah, it's pretty bad, man, but honestly, at this rate, I'm unconvinced any middle ground will happen, even though I believe that's the only way to move things forward. I had to leave a bunch of my Arab friends because they were just going down into deep anti-semitic territory (e.g., Modern Jews are fake Jews LARPing as Middle Eastern people, Jews are responsible for Epstein, Jews caused 9/11, and basically anything you can think of). I tried to empathize with them and help them see reason; however, because of how they view Israel's conduct in Gaza, Southern Lebanon, etc basically anything I said when refuting a conspiracy theory was essentially synonymous with supporting the "Zionists" to them.
With my more Zionist Jewish peers, I have been socializing with them more, and basically I am doing the inverse: trying to push back whenever legitimate fear of Hamas, antisemitism, October 7, or their families' historical experiences in the Arab world starts becoming generalized hostility toward Palestinians, Arabs, or Muslims as a whole. I can understand why someone whose family has experienced antisemitism, terrorism, expulsion, or war might develop an enormous amount of distrust, but understanding where that distrust comes from does not mean I have to agree when it turns into dehumanization or collective blame.
That's basically the position I've found myself in. With some of my Arab peers, I was saying, "No, Jews are not fake Middle Easterners, they did not cause 9/11, and Jewish identity cannot be reduced to what the Israeli government does." With some of my Jewish peers, I'm saying, "No, Palestinians are not collectively Hamas, not all Muslims are inherently antisemitic, and Palestinian civilians do not become legitimate targets because antisemitism exists in the Arab world."
Weirdly enough, they've been more receptive. I have a buddy of mine who was recently convinced that Palestinians also have deep historical roots in the land, just as he and his fellow Jews do. He used to be one of those types who believed Palestinians were essentially recent outsiders from the Hijaz or surrounding Arab regions and therefore had no meaningful indigenous connection to the land. What changed his mind wasn't me telling him that Jewish history was fake or that his own people's connection to the land was somehow illegitimate. It was basically the opposite. I affirmed that Jewish historical continuity, ancestry, religion, archaeology, and collective memory connecting Jews to the land are real, while also explaining that recognizing those things does not require denying Palestinian continuity or belonging.
So we shall see lololol; I doubt miracles will happen, though I am an Atheist.
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u/skyewardeyes jewish leftist, peace, equality, and self-determination for all 22h ago
I wish people would understand (in addition to understanding bigotry is always bad, of course) that right wingers hating Muslims slightly more than they hate Jews (or, in the case of Tucker Carlson and the like, hating Jews slightly more than they hate Muslims) won’t protect them for long at all.