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How Did Jews Become the ‘Oppressors’ in LGBT and Feminist Social Justice Spaces?

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MAY 1 2017: Marches & rallies in support of labor, healthcare & immigrants throughout Lower Manhattan. Arab-American Association President Linda Sarsour – Shutterstock

Ariel Sobel has become a powerful, critical voice against the rise of anti-Semitic sentiments that have themselves become troubling and powerful undercurrents in both feminist and LGBT circles. Her recent op-ed in the Jewish Journal which is a calculated point by point rebuttal of many of Linda Sarsour’s views entitled, OMG, Just Shut Up: An Open Letter to Linda Sarsour.

Among Sarsour’s greatest hits that she calls out:

1. You were complicit in the face of Louis Farrakhan’s undeniable anti-Semitism, delivering a speech at a 2015 rally organized by him in his celebration.

2. You victim-blamed Jews for complaining about your organization’s relationship with Farrakhan, painting them as part of a right-wing conspiracy.

3. You asked Jews on Facebook: “What work are we willing to do and are we willing to be open to the true idea that members of the NOI [Nation of Islam] are not all anti-Semites? Are we cool with broad brushing a whole group?”

4. When Elder Kirsten John Foy told a Jewish woman, “You’ve got wicked spirit laying upon your heart. I pray them bound and cast from you by the blood of the lamb of God, Jesus Christ,” you applauded him and replied, “You are too blessed to be stressed.”

5. You proudly associate with Bishop Talbert Swan, another open anti-Semite, who has written a book advocating for conversion therapy, which directly leads to the suicides of LGBTQ youth.

6. You told Jews to boycott the Forward, a nonprofit Jewish publication that even has defended you in its pages.

7. You created lists of “good Jews” versus the “bad Jews” in your attack on the Forward.

8. You threw a temper tantrum over the announcement of a black-Jewish caucus, encouraging more division between two communities of which you are not a part.

9. You vilified the most respected organization fighting anti-Semitism, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), leading it to be expelled from diversity training at Starbucks — while you used security from the Nation of Islam.

10. Oh, yeah. Hiring security from the Nation of Islam.

11. When a Jewish grocery in Winnepeg, Canada faked anti-Semitic vandalism, you exploited that it was staged in order to attack the ADL for condemning the bigotry, before the fraud was exposed.

12. You suggested Jewish progressives harbor divided loyalties to Israel over their values.

13. You commented on an anti-Semitic tweet that told Jews their homeland is Poland and Brooklyn to “hey, hey leave Brooklyn out of this.” 

14. You enthusiastically co-signed an article that accused Jews of waging “profound war on black people and people of color.”

15. You erased the Jewish heritage of Jesus on multiple occasions — which contributes to Christian anti-Semitism.

16. You claimed Jews who complained when you reframed Jesus as a Palestinian are against a black actress playing the Little Mermaid and support human rights abuses against migrants at the U.S. border.

Back in February, in a piece she penned for The Forward, the oldest and most trusted Jewish news source in the country, in an Op-Ed entitled Ilhan Omar Is Right: Anti-Zionist Jews Don’t Speak For Us, Sobel wrote:

In the wake of Rep. Ilhan Omar unfortunate tweet and apology, a host of anti-Israel Jewish groups leapt to her defense. It was the usual suspects, including the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peacethe anti-Occupation group IfNotNow, and Jews for Racial and Economic Justice.

These groups were quick to defend Omar on the grounds that she had said nothing wrong — even after she apologized.

“We have your back,” IfNotNow tweeted at Omar, while JVP launched the “#IStandWithIlan campaign, cheering its success days after Omar’s unequivocal apology. “We Stand Against Anti-Semitism, And We Stand With Ilhan Omar” read a JFREJ open letter.

But anti-Zionist groups rushing to absolve Omar of wrongdoing lack the standing to grant her absolution, for the simple fact that they do not represent American Jewish life and culture. The opposite: They are regarded as fringe organizations by the mainstream Jewish community.

According to recent polling, just 3% of American Jews identify as “not pro-Israel,” while 92% — 92%! — identify as pro-Israel.

The Forward

Sobel and I talked about how this troubling anti-Semitism became normalized as part of the conversation connecting unrelated disparate ideas.

#Gaynrd: I have seen very few women, Jewish or not, take on Linda Sarsour, the way you have. There seems to be a sort of fear from both sides that either you’re going to be labeled either anti-Semitic or anti-Muslim (and funnily enough, probably for the same reasons) rather than addressing the elephant in the room: why it’s become OK to be anti-Israel or anti-Semitic in both the women’s movement and in LGBT circles. Talking about Israel in any positive ways or defending it and you’re called a Nazi.

Ariel Sobel: I actually think that many Jewish women have been having a candid conversation regarding Linda Sarsour’s anti-Semitism. She is utterly despised by Jewish people across the political spectrum. When she was asked by a fringe group to lead a panel on the subject, over 20,000 Jews signed in protest. The Women’s March lost around 300 sponsors, including the Southern Poverty Law Center and DNC because of the bigotry she and Tamika Mallory have shown towards Jews. I personally have no fear about it because I am extremely clear that hateful Islamaphobic rhetoric against her is disgusting and never engage in it. My childhood best friend is Muslim. I babysat her baby sister. I don’t say that to declare “I have a Muslim friend” but to bring up that I talk with her about these issues a lot – her family actually really dislikes Linda Sarsour. I also have a lot of family who is Iraqi. Iraqi (and Iranian Jews) have been deeply impacted by anti-Semitism in the Muslim world. That hate has resulted in exile, extermination, and dehumanization. For them, not discussing it because it’s uncomfortable is not an option.

It’s funny because both people who are pro-Israel and anti-Israel get called a Nazi. Last week, I received an Instagram message from someone who called me an “anti Muslim white supremacist Jew cunt.” He also called me a “zio” which is actually a white supremacist term for Jews that was coined by David Duke. 

I was afraid of speaking out about these issues for a long time, but the support I’ve received from Jews – the people who reach out and thank me in real life or teens who vent to me about anti-Semitism on Twitter – makes it worth it.

To answer the latter portion of your question: 

Anti-Semitism has become acceptable in social justice spaces for several reasons.

1. People interested in social justice are very poorly educated on anti-Semitism and can’t recognize it. Rather than anti-Blackness or homophobia, which seeks to dehumanize those minority groups, anti-Semitism paints Jews as superhuman. We control everything and are ultra-white and privileged. It’s a conspiracy theory more than a prejudice.

2. In social justice spaces, Jews are portrayed as the oppressor. So it’s fine to dehumanize, delegitimize them.

3. We have projected American systems onto the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We see in it the problems our nation has. In America, that’s colonialism. In South Africa, that’s apartheid. But Jewish people have indigenous ties to Israel. We were there before Palestinians starting living there under Ottoman rule. It’s not like a European people coming to colonize Native Americans – we are coming home. That doesn’t mean that Palestinians don’t deserve full rights as people or that the Israeli government is any bit less problematic than that of America. But it is overly scrutinized because of anti-Semitism.

Also, the media portrays Israel as a white nation. The majority of Israelis are Mizrahi Jews – people indigenous to the Middle East. Most of them are descended from refugees of anti-Semitic violence. But people have carefully attached being anti-Israel as another bullet point in the social justice platform, so many who know nothing about the conflict or Jewish people are virulently anti-Israel in a way that is blatantly anti-Semitic.

#Gaynrd: Because of Linda Sarsour, Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, has found a new audience when it was shrinking for years.

Sobel: Farrakhan is a poverty pimp who preys on black people to promote his anti-Semitism.

Also, Farrakhan has nothing to do with Israel. His anti-Semitism revolves around blaming Jews as the oppressors of Black people, the architects of the slave trade, and that Jewish people in Hollywood make people gay and trans.

#Gaynrd: A lot of academics, criticize traveling to Israel given the divesture movement on campuses, and compare it the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa in the 1980s.

About BDS: ask them if they would tell a Muslim person not to visit their holy sites because they, as Christians, didn’t agree with the politics of Saudi Arabia. Israel has the holiest sites in Judaism and most American Jews have family there. Tell them to check their privilege. Also tell them how it is not like apartheid (as I mentioned above) and I would question why are they only concerned about the Jewish state.

I always speak out now, because I can speak with enough information on the subject. It’s important to use social justice rhetoric back at them and speak their language so they realize how problematic they are.

Ariel Sobel is a screenwriter, filmmaker and activist, and won the 2019 Bluecat Screenplay Competition. Visit her website here and follow her on Twitter.

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