As a non Jew who has lived with and worked for and with many Jewish people I’m appalled at the moral relativism, sophistry and downright racism applied to Jews. The discrimination against Jews is so evident as to be beyond questioning- campuses, the UN, in our political discourse- but when confronted with these uncomfortable realities the dissemblers resort to vague statements about settlements and “settler violence” or worse an inexplicable solidarity with Palestinians despite the long history of terrorist violence against Jews and widespread public support in Palestine for those atrocities. A convenient foil at best, a targeted, harassed and marginalized population at worst, Jews can never capitulate to becoming the benign socially acceptable version the left seeks to create and exploit.
Forgoshsake, thank you for your words, which coming from someone who is not Jewish, are appreciated. That is why it is all the more frustrating and annoying, when Jewish people are against their own people and Israel.
This is the height of Red-Green hypocrisy. Islamists embed Sharia-shaped claims into Western law, culture, policing, education, speech codes, migration politics, and street power, then demand that Jews surrender Zionism to remain acceptable on the Left. Western Europe already shows the result: surging antisemitism, cowardly institutions, and Jewish citizens forced to calculate where they can safely walk, worship, speak, and gather. America must stop this before the same poison hardens here. No movement gets to celebrate every minority’s collective identity while telling Jews their collective survival is colonialism. The West must refuse the bargain.
Excellent discussion. Thank you, Rabbi Abraham. Double standards and hypocrisy, as well as ignorance and a wish for self-righteous morality, all of these things combine to see the demonisation of Israel and of Jews.
Are Bernie Sanders and the wider activist structure around him the only Jews in the US that are “actively fueling antisemitism?
Schumer recently joined 45 of the Senate's 47 Democratic caucus members in signing a direct letter to Netanyahu demanding an immediate crackdown on West Bank settler violence and a thorough investigation into the deaths of American citizens.
Critics, primarily within the Israeli government and the U.S. Republican Party, argue that Schumer’s actions—particularly his public call for new Israeli elections—cross an established diplomatic line.
Sovereignty Violations:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies have explicitly stated that Israel is an independent democracy, not a "banana republic," and that foreign officials should not attempt to dictate its leadership or election timelines.
Political Pressure:
Detractors argue that a letter signed by 45 U.S. Senators regarding West Bank policies is designed to exert domestic political pressure on a sovereign ally during an ongoing conflict.
Schumer has defended his speeches and letters by stating he is criticizing specific politicians and policies that he believes harm Israel's long-term security, rather than undermining the State of Israel itself. Really? 🤔
The United States has a documented history of leveraging its political weight, financial aid, and diplomatic influence to steer the electoral or policy outcomes of its close sovereign allies.
1. Israel (Multiple Elections)1992 and 1996:
The George H.W. Bush administration openly withheld $10 billion in loan guarantees to signal displeasure with Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir's settlement policies, helping center-left candidate Yitzhak Rabin win the 1992 election.
In 1996, President Bill Clinton explicitly backed Shimon Peres over Benjamin Netanyahu, later admitting he tried to tip the scales to save the Oslo Accords.
2015: The Barack Obama administration was widely accused of interfering when a U.S. State Department grant was funneled to OneVoice, a non-profit group that funded V15, a campaign explicitly designed to unseat Netanyahu.
This! “When every other minority is encouraged to recover its history, honor its ancestors, preserve its identity, and articulate its collective aspirations, Jews are increasingly told that our collective aspiration is precisely the problem.
Everyone else may decolonize; the Jews must diasporize. Everyone else may recover ancestral identity; the Jews must transcend ours. Everyone else may describe inherited trauma as politically meaningful; Jews invoking Jewish history are accused of weaponizing it.”
The blatant and widespread hypocrisy of the Left, our media and institutions, is what has moved me to political homelessness, where I plan to remain until someone, anyone, has the sense to wake up and smell the hypocrisy and, as you said, accept Jews whole, not conditionally. Thank you, Rabbi, for articulating this so well.
Well said. Except I am voting Republican this election - sending a message that I am rejecting the direction the Dems are going . The choice becomes theirs.
A wonderful essay and strong follow up to Rubin’s essay. The “Anti-Zio” argument made by Progressives is a false flag. 95% of Jews are Zionists and those that are not, the “good Jew” is nothing more than being a self-hating Jew. But, still a Jew. Just ask Scott Weiner, the Progressive congressman from CA.
One small item that caught my eye in the essay. Judaism is not a religion and a people. We are a people based on a religion. As noted, much of the religion is based on our history, our collective memory which has sustained us for 2,000 years in the Diaspora. The “laws”, our religious commandments which taught us ethical and moral behavior as part of our religion is the foundation of Christianity. Unfortunately, Islam rejected many of the ethics/morals and sees their warped morality as a “supersedence” to most of the world’s mores and values.
Dara Horn has the best “definition” of the Jewish People - an ancient joinable tribe with a shared history, language, culture and ancestral homeland. In Hebrew, it’s one word: “Am”. The terms “religion” and “nationality” are modern terms from the Enlightenment, which Jews predate by millennia. Our foundational texts and ideas were more a political statement and covenant than a “religion”, because their overall message is that we don’t bow to earthly tyrants. That was and has always been the reason tyrants - or power-seekers - hate us and try to kill us. Read Dara Horn’s “People Love Dead Jews” and her new book, “The Final Solution to the Jewish Question - a love story for the living.”
Thank you for this comment. My only “rebuttal” is the assertion that “religion” is a modern concept from the Enlightenment.
Clearly, any society, whether modern or ancient, that believed in a god or gods had a religious aspect.
Certainly, the foundation of Judaism is no different, in fact, one of the main tenets of Judaism at its foundation and founding is the concept of one God, an “invisible”, all knowing and powerful god.
Further, it is one of Judaism’s gifts to the world: the concept of monotheism.
Otherwise, I love Dara Horn and her writings are important and timely (tho, need to confess I’ve not read her latest).
"The politically acceptable Jew is always welcome. There is only one condition: They must first demonstrate that when Jewish particularism collides with the ideology of the moment, they will choose the ideology."
What woman would accept a man telling her what it means to be a woman? Or a Caucasian telling a Black what the Black experience in America is like.
When you allow others to define you rather than define yourself, you abandon your right to be yourself.
Jewish particularism is a verbal dodge to delegitimize Jews and Jewishness. A more accurate term would be Jewish distinctiveness.
What distinguishes any individual, group, corporation, political party, nationality, or religion from another is its distinctive attributes. The call to Universalization is the call to homogenization, which requires a Procustean bed. Thanks, but I'd rather not measure up to someone else's standards.
Just like every other anti-Zionist, you assign no blame whatsoever to the impasses that exist to the Arab and Iranian interlocutors who supported the Palestinians for decades in their attempts to destroy Israel and certainly zero agency for Palestinian terrorism, bad leaders and worse decisions. The proximate cause of Israeli move to the right has been Palestinian terrorism and refusal to consider a peace that may be imperfect for both sides. We can all agree that the British and French screwed things up going back over a century. However, that does not give the Palestinians license to refuse, refuse and refuse again and continue with a terror regime and expect no push back from Israel. Unfortunately, the settlers are pushback! Once the international community requires agency of the Palestinians for their bad decisions, calls out the terror regime and cuts off aid for the terrorism and pay for slay and required educational reform then do not expect much change to the situation. Remember, the Jordanians hail from Saudi Arabia where the Saud family kicked them out. As a result, the Brit’s gave 79% of the League of Nations mandate to the Hashemites with discussing with the LoN’s. This hurt both Jews and Palestinians.
If you live in USA, AUS, NZ are you ready to move back to where your ancestors came from or do you only require that of Jews? If you are European, are you ready to accept back the billion people I. The above areas who hale from Europe. That is no different than telling the 35% of Ashkenazi jews to return to Europe. You don’t understand that 60-65% of Jews in Israel are Sephardim ethnically cleansed from ancient Arab lands where they’d lived for 2500 years. Financial compensation which has been estimated at $300 Billion? I think not. You have one rule for Jews and a different one for everyone else, that has a name and you know what it is!
You live in fantasyland buddy. And btw, Jews are indigenous to Israel. I have one question For you, if Israel existed as it does now for 2000 years and then by some miracle the people you refer to as Palestinians get control back would they now be considered indigenous or not. If no, then I’ll give a smidgeon of credit and a quarter to help resettle them. If you say yes then once again there is your double standard. They are indigenous but Jews are not. Cannot you not see the inconsistency of your fallacious logic?
As a non Jew who has lived with and worked for and with many Jewish people I’m appalled at the moral relativism, sophistry and downright racism applied to Jews. The discrimination against Jews is so evident as to be beyond questioning- campuses, the UN, in our political discourse- but when confronted with these uncomfortable realities the dissemblers resort to vague statements about settlements and “settler violence” or worse an inexplicable solidarity with Palestinians despite the long history of terrorist violence against Jews and widespread public support in Palestine for those atrocities. A convenient foil at best, a targeted, harassed and marginalized population at worst, Jews can never capitulate to becoming the benign socially acceptable version the left seeks to create and exploit.
Forgoshsake, thank you for your words, which coming from someone who is not Jewish, are appreciated. That is why it is all the more frustrating and annoying, when Jewish people are against their own people and Israel.
Eternal vigilance Nathan, that’s all we have.
This is the height of Red-Green hypocrisy. Islamists embed Sharia-shaped claims into Western law, culture, policing, education, speech codes, migration politics, and street power, then demand that Jews surrender Zionism to remain acceptable on the Left. Western Europe already shows the result: surging antisemitism, cowardly institutions, and Jewish citizens forced to calculate where they can safely walk, worship, speak, and gather. America must stop this before the same poison hardens here. No movement gets to celebrate every minority’s collective identity while telling Jews their collective survival is colonialism. The West must refuse the bargain.
I have answers, vote Republican, stand with Trump and Israel. 🇮🇱🇺🇸
Excellent discussion. Thank you, Rabbi Abraham. Double standards and hypocrisy, as well as ignorance and a wish for self-righteous morality, all of these things combine to see the demonisation of Israel and of Jews.
Are Bernie Sanders and the wider activist structure around him the only Jews in the US that are “actively fueling antisemitism?
Schumer recently joined 45 of the Senate's 47 Democratic caucus members in signing a direct letter to Netanyahu demanding an immediate crackdown on West Bank settler violence and a thorough investigation into the deaths of American citizens.
Critics, primarily within the Israeli government and the U.S. Republican Party, argue that Schumer’s actions—particularly his public call for new Israeli elections—cross an established diplomatic line.
Sovereignty Violations:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies have explicitly stated that Israel is an independent democracy, not a "banana republic," and that foreign officials should not attempt to dictate its leadership or election timelines.
Political Pressure:
Detractors argue that a letter signed by 45 U.S. Senators regarding West Bank policies is designed to exert domestic political pressure on a sovereign ally during an ongoing conflict.
Schumer has defended his speeches and letters by stating he is criticizing specific politicians and policies that he believes harm Israel's long-term security, rather than undermining the State of Israel itself. Really? 🤔
The United States has a documented history of leveraging its political weight, financial aid, and diplomatic influence to steer the electoral or policy outcomes of its close sovereign allies.
1. Israel (Multiple Elections)1992 and 1996:
The George H.W. Bush administration openly withheld $10 billion in loan guarantees to signal displeasure with Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir's settlement policies, helping center-left candidate Yitzhak Rabin win the 1992 election.
In 1996, President Bill Clinton explicitly backed Shimon Peres over Benjamin Netanyahu, later admitting he tried to tip the scales to save the Oslo Accords.
2015: The Barack Obama administration was widely accused of interfering when a U.S. State Department grant was funneled to OneVoice, a non-profit group that funded V15, a campaign explicitly designed to unseat Netanyahu.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/us-strategists-obama-campaign-interference-backfired-395105
It beggars belief at times - great comment.
This! “When every other minority is encouraged to recover its history, honor its ancestors, preserve its identity, and articulate its collective aspirations, Jews are increasingly told that our collective aspiration is precisely the problem.
Everyone else may decolonize; the Jews must diasporize. Everyone else may recover ancestral identity; the Jews must transcend ours. Everyone else may describe inherited trauma as politically meaningful; Jews invoking Jewish history are accused of weaponizing it.”
The blatant and widespread hypocrisy of the Left, our media and institutions, is what has moved me to political homelessness, where I plan to remain until someone, anyone, has the sense to wake up and smell the hypocrisy and, as you said, accept Jews whole, not conditionally. Thank you, Rabbi, for articulating this so well.
Well said. Except I am voting Republican this election - sending a message that I am rejecting the direction the Dems are going . The choice becomes theirs.
Scratch a progressive and you will find an anti-Semite, even if the progressive is a Jew. Any Jew that votes for a Democrat is an idiot.
Total idiot.
A wonderful essay and strong follow up to Rubin’s essay. The “Anti-Zio” argument made by Progressives is a false flag. 95% of Jews are Zionists and those that are not, the “good Jew” is nothing more than being a self-hating Jew. But, still a Jew. Just ask Scott Weiner, the Progressive congressman from CA.
One small item that caught my eye in the essay. Judaism is not a religion and a people. We are a people based on a religion. As noted, much of the religion is based on our history, our collective memory which has sustained us for 2,000 years in the Diaspora. The “laws”, our religious commandments which taught us ethical and moral behavior as part of our religion is the foundation of Christianity. Unfortunately, Islam rejected many of the ethics/morals and sees their warped morality as a “supersedence” to most of the world’s mores and values.
Dara Horn has the best “definition” of the Jewish People - an ancient joinable tribe with a shared history, language, culture and ancestral homeland. In Hebrew, it’s one word: “Am”. The terms “religion” and “nationality” are modern terms from the Enlightenment, which Jews predate by millennia. Our foundational texts and ideas were more a political statement and covenant than a “religion”, because their overall message is that we don’t bow to earthly tyrants. That was and has always been the reason tyrants - or power-seekers - hate us and try to kill us. Read Dara Horn’s “People Love Dead Jews” and her new book, “The Final Solution to the Jewish Question - a love story for the living.”
Thank you for this comment. My only “rebuttal” is the assertion that “religion” is a modern concept from the Enlightenment.
Clearly, any society, whether modern or ancient, that believed in a god or gods had a religious aspect.
Certainly, the foundation of Judaism is no different, in fact, one of the main tenets of Judaism at its foundation and founding is the concept of one God, an “invisible”, all knowing and powerful god.
Further, it is one of Judaism’s gifts to the world: the concept of monotheism.
Otherwise, I love Dara Horn and her writings are important and timely (tho, need to confess I’ve not read her latest).
To paraphrase Dara Horn, if there’s one thing people love more than dead Jews, it is defenseless ones.
As a 1/8 Jewish Catholic, I recall that German Jews in the 1920s were the most assimilated Jews in the world. How'd that turn out?
"The politically acceptable Jew is always welcome. There is only one condition: They must first demonstrate that when Jewish particularism collides with the ideology of the moment, they will choose the ideology."
What woman would accept a man telling her what it means to be a woman? Or a Caucasian telling a Black what the Black experience in America is like.
When you allow others to define you rather than define yourself, you abandon your right to be yourself.
Jewish particularism is a verbal dodge to delegitimize Jews and Jewishness. A more accurate term would be Jewish distinctiveness.
What distinguishes any individual, group, corporation, political party, nationality, or religion from another is its distinctive attributes. The call to Universalization is the call to homogenization, which requires a Procustean bed. Thanks, but I'd rather not measure up to someone else's standards.
It’s not an occupation, bastard JINOS!!
Just like every other anti-Zionist, you assign no blame whatsoever to the impasses that exist to the Arab and Iranian interlocutors who supported the Palestinians for decades in their attempts to destroy Israel and certainly zero agency for Palestinian terrorism, bad leaders and worse decisions. The proximate cause of Israeli move to the right has been Palestinian terrorism and refusal to consider a peace that may be imperfect for both sides. We can all agree that the British and French screwed things up going back over a century. However, that does not give the Palestinians license to refuse, refuse and refuse again and continue with a terror regime and expect no push back from Israel. Unfortunately, the settlers are pushback! Once the international community requires agency of the Palestinians for their bad decisions, calls out the terror regime and cuts off aid for the terrorism and pay for slay and required educational reform then do not expect much change to the situation. Remember, the Jordanians hail from Saudi Arabia where the Saud family kicked them out. As a result, the Brit’s gave 79% of the League of Nations mandate to the Hashemites with discussing with the LoN’s. This hurt both Jews and Palestinians.
If you live in USA, AUS, NZ are you ready to move back to where your ancestors came from or do you only require that of Jews? If you are European, are you ready to accept back the billion people I. The above areas who hale from Europe. That is no different than telling the 35% of Ashkenazi jews to return to Europe. You don’t understand that 60-65% of Jews in Israel are Sephardim ethnically cleansed from ancient Arab lands where they’d lived for 2500 years. Financial compensation which has been estimated at $300 Billion? I think not. You have one rule for Jews and a different one for everyone else, that has a name and you know what it is!
You live in fantasyland buddy. And btw, Jews are indigenous to Israel. I have one question For you, if Israel existed as it does now for 2000 years and then by some miracle the people you refer to as Palestinians get control back would they now be considered indigenous or not. If no, then I’ll give a smidgeon of credit and a quarter to help resettle them. If you say yes then once again there is your double standard. They are indigenous but Jews are not. Cannot you not see the inconsistency of your fallacious logic?