Antisemitism is sadly very much alive and well in the US, but conservatives want you to believe it is located in the placard-waving crowds at pro-Palestine rallies, or the student protests on college campuses, rather than within their own bigoted ranks, where talk of ‘great replacement’ and Nazi-looking salutes are all the vogue right now.
The conservative moment in the US has even taken to declaring liberal Jewish critics of Israel as not Jewish enough, says one leading Jewish expert on antisemitism, who warns against the conflating of antisemitism with anti-Zionism.
“It’s called us JINOs, ‘Jewish in name only,’” Lara Friedman, President of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, tells Mehdi on ‘Mehdi Unfiltered.’
“It's a framing that started not with this Trump administration, it was there during the Biden administration, was there during the previous Trump administration… it has almost become a cult-like fealty that is demanded to Zionism and the state of Israel.”
Friedman has not been shy to point out the hypocrisy displayed by people who are outraged by phrases like “from the river to the sea,” but are seemingly unbothered by Nazi-looking salutes on stage here in the US.
“That brought forth the biggest wave or tsunami of vitriol against me I've ever experienced, which really boiled down to ‘shut up you… and fill in your epithets’ followed by the word ‘Jew’. Outright anti-Semitism, including from Jewish people,” she says.
Some of the concerns and fears that members of the Jewish community in the US are feeling right now are based on real trends, Friedman says, but those concerns and fears are aimed at the wrong group.
“The people that they are afraid of are not the right wingers who…attacked a synagogue in Pittsburgh. The people they're afraid of are the people who are trying to speak out for Palestinian lives and rights.”
If you are a paid subscriber, you can watch the full interview above to hear Friedman explain the way in which the right’s cynical cozying up to Israel is a way of laundering antisemitism, the dangerous threat posed to free speech by the controversial IHRA definition of antisemitism, and why everyone should pay attention to what Steve Bannon and Elon Musk are saying and doing.
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