Movement Suffused With Antisemites Denies It Antisemitic

“When you cite facts about the ubiquity of antisemitism in the pro-Palestine movement, you smear us.”

New York, January 13 – A collection of organizations, activists, and ideologues supporting the Free Palestine cause, which attracts every manner of Judaeophobe, insisted today that their push to remove the world’s only Jewish state from the map has nothing to do with antipathy toward Jews, and that the prevalence of Jew-haters in their ranks results from unhappy coincidence but certainly not an inherent problem with the cause or the people who support it.

“We have nothing against Jews,” argued Ali Abunimah, whose Electronic Intifada site glorifies violent attackers of Jews and posts tendentious content opposing Jewish sovereignty in the ancestral Jewish homeland. “We criticize only those who condone the oppression of Palestinians. The fact that our movement draws antisemites from all over the world and affords them a banner under which to unite, and a cloak in which to veil their bigotry and support for terrorism, means nothing about our movement. We promote human rights.”

“Jews are welcome in our movement,” insisted Linda Sarsour, formerly of the Women’s March. “All they have to do to gain acceptance is renounce any conviction that Jews deserve a secure, sovereign place of their own in the cradle and focal point of their history and culture. Also to agree to sit with those who see Jewish safety as secondary at best in the struggle to make the world a better place, and sometimes not a value at all. It’s annoying, frankly, that we get accused of antisemitism just because our cohort brims with Jew-hate so powerful that our protestations of anti-racism can’t contain it. When you cite facts about the ubiquity of antisemitism in the pro-Palestine movement, you smear us.”

Organizers have long struggled to establish in the public mind a separation between the antisemitic thugs who populate every anti-Israel protest and anti-Zionism itself, with only mixed success. “It’s a difficult balancing act,” explained Students for Justice in Palestine UC-Davis chapter head Awad Afflem. “We don’t like the depictions of us as hateful, violence-glorifying bigots, but without the hardcore antisemites, our events attract maybe two or three people, and that’s not enough to generate real impact and change. Circumstances force us to choose between having no appreciable effect or having an effect that yes, puts pro-Palestine concerns on the map, but also makes Jews afraid. Once upon a time no one cared about that, but now we have to at least pretend. Usually I address it by blaming Zionists.”

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