I Didn’t Realize It Would Be THIS Easy To Sanitize My Jew-Hate As A Progressive

By Itbah al-Yahud

When I joined the progressive movement, I knew it would not be difficult to use it as a defense against accusations of antisemitism, but I must admit I had no idea it would be nearly this easy.

To the casual observer, a progressive attitude welcomes identity groups of all kinds and strives for equality for all. Being a deep loather of Jews, especially Jews who believe they can self-determine in their historic homeland as if they are like everyone else, I naturally assumed the inclusiveness might force me to at least pretend I hold views other than the ones I really do hold, but that has not been the case. As it turns out, the one group you’re allowed, even encouraged, to hate, is the Jews. You just have to couch it in other terms. I had found an ideological home.

Of course in retrospect I should have been able to see how rife the movement is with antisemites, closet or not. Most ideologies need an enemy, and why create a new one when the Jews are so conveniently there already? But the key lies in always painting the Jew, and of course the Jewish State, as irredeemably oppressive of the less-powerful, and all others’ violations in that regard, no matter how heinous, get a pass. It’s a silly trick, and it shouldn’t work so well or so frequently, but it does. Perhaps I underestimated the level of underlying Jew-hate that already persists in the media. Because damn, this is easy.

But I think there is some cleverness in the technique of accusing those who accuse people of antisemitism of trying to silence legitimate criticism. I haven’t done a study or anything, but does anyone actually think anti-Jewish, even merely anti-Israel, rhetoric, is suppressed in the West? Or anywhere? If so, it should be hard to find. But it’s almost as easy to find expressions of Jew-hate as it is to disguise that Jew-hate as concern for Palestinians, or whatever. What’s actually difficult is to find anyone in this movement who genuinely cares about the Palestinians beyond some need to vilify Israel. Mostly because the rest of us hound such people out of the movement as traitors, but you hear what I’m saying.

And wouldn’t you know it: in this entire article, I somehow forgot to replace every occurrence of the word “Jew” with “Zionist.” Funny how that happens all the time.

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