The background to “Gentleman’s Agreement” adds to the story. It was produced by one of the few non-Jewish run studios in Hollywood (Daryl Zanuck’s 20th Century) as none of the others wanted to touch the novel on which the movie was based.
John Garfield (né Jacob Julius Garfinkle) plays Gregory Peck’s friend, a proud Jew and WWII combat vet who, in a memorable scene, gets into a fight with an antisemite who belittles the character’s wartime service. Peck’s character is a reporter who goes undercover as Mr. Greene to uncover the extent of social antisemitism and publish an article. There is a scene where the merits of going forward with the investigation is debated that, supposedly, tracked the discussion among (and was a critique of) those movie execs who had declined to produce the movie. Finally, Celeste Holm plays his loyal Jewish secretary (who believes Greene is in fact Jewish) and, towards the film’s end, utters a sentiment that complicates the movie’s general message nicely. She won an Oscar for her role.
It is also of note that around that time a US poll identified the group that presented the greatest danger to world peace was [drumroll] the Jews. It may be the gauzy view of hindsight, but there was plenty of antisemitism during the 50s and 60s, including the John Birch Society, Gerald LK Smith and the like. And, of course, the more “genteel” antisemitism of the social clubs and boardrooms persisted.
When I was a toddler in the 1950s, and walking with my parents over to my aunt's apartment in Castle Village, in Washington Heights, I saw a big sign on the well-manicured grass in front of the co-op complex Hudson View Gardens reading RESTRICTED and sounded it out, and my father told me what it meant.
The irony is, of course, that before the building of Castle Village, the genteel, immaculate Tudor pile of Hudson View Gardens really did have a priceless view of the Hudson.
Castle Village, with no "restrictions," forever spoiled the view.
The sign is long gone. To me, it seems like yesterday that it was there.
You claim that Jew hating never went away in America. But it did, at least as you note, in acceptable circles. it was déclassé, to use your own word.
Your false moral equivalence by mentioning Trump alongside Carter, Obama, and the Ivy League is a massive disservice. Jew hatred in this country has become acceptable again ENTIRELY. BECAUSE. OF. THE. LEFT.
Until Jews like yourself acknowledge this and criticize it, and drop the “it’s on both sides, it never went away” crap, our society will not address the problem as it needs to.
I agree with you. The problem exists on both ends of the political spectrum, but it’s the Left that are the social influencers in most of America, and hold the institutional power. The Center Right are the friends of Jews and Israel.The far Right is a fringe group. Trump is not an antisemite. He’s a friend of Israel. This slander is something that left leaning Jews keep mindlessly repeating. It’s neither accurate nor smart.
Everyone seems to forget that Trumps daughter converted, his grandchildren are Jewish, he brokered the Abraham accord, and put our embassy in Jerusalem! But the left keeps spinning the false narrative that he’s antisemitic!
Maybe Trump began to realize where those Left elites were taking our country! Hence their absolute hatred for him! I too was a flaming ass liberal in my 60s youth! She changed ones thinking- like my Dad used to say as I argued my liberal nonsense- “it’s ok honey, one day you’ll understand”. He was correct!
One can dislike Donald Trump for many things, among them his dubious business practices, the many bankruptcies that left others always holding the bag, his tendency to withhold payments to contractors et al. and then counter-sue them until they give up, his crooked college, his destruction of the Bonwit Teller friezes after having promised them to the Metropolitan Museum, the use of a family charity as his piggy bank, and so on -- but he is not antisemitic.
If anything, the problem with Trump is that he's really not for or against anything that doesn't affect his bottom line or, perhaps, his immediate family. That Ivanka is Jewish is a great relief.
You mean he’s a capitalist. Oh no! Like Warren Buffet or the fake Commie Walton clan or any of the billionaires the Democrats love. They do the same stuff. You think bankruptcy is different for anybody who starts dozens of businesses, some of which don’t survive? Please…
Trump himself is no antisemite. But he allowed the antisemitic fringes of the Right to become respectable and/or feel comfortable, leading to such events as the Tree of Life Massacre and the Charlottesville March in which participants chanted, 'Jews will not replace us.' In general, at this moment in time, the Left is more antisemitic, for sure. But the Right also contributes to the narrative.
“ But he allowed the antisemitic fringes of the Right to become respectable”
Sorry, this dog won’t hunt. Your other criticisms of Trump I disagree with, but at least you can make some case for. But this one is untrue on multiple levels, not least of which that in fact said fringes have never become respectable!
At least you understand that it is the left that is more antisemitic today. A shame you don’t realize that in fact it is FAR more antisemitic (in the U.S., anyway).
Just because there exists a non-zero amount of antisemitism on the right doesn’t make it remotely proportional in terms of societal influence. The left-right antisemitism split not only isn’t 50-50 or 60-40, it ain’t even 80-20. Instead it’s somewhere between 95-5 and 99-1.
I think you're mistaken. Your percentages are surely off; Tree of Life and Charlottesville are fringes but by no means less than one percent of the Right. I'm really only saying that the danger to Jewish people is very real; the far Left and far Right are both very bad for us. I do not think at all that Trump himself is a danger, but I do repeat my assertion that he enables a comfort level among those who are. That is by no means an argument in favor of the Left, whom I despise.
If you want to count only heads, I concede the ratio of antisemites today *might* be as low as 80-20 leftist (though I’d still claim best guess is more like 92-8).
But in terms of societal influence, let alone respectability as a position within their political group, I stand by the at least 95-5 claim, and would posit that it’s really something like 98-2.
Yes, you are correct that the extremes on either side are bad for Jews. But the difference is that the numbers are *far* larger today on the left than on the right, and the respectability/influence of the position is *far, far, far* larger on the left than on the right.
Which is why it is such a big problem for folks today to equivocate and claim that it’s about as bad on both sides.
What is even more amazing is that Trump at one time was the darling of the Dem elite circle- like the Clintons, Oprah apparently begged him to go on her show- why their 180?
Trump himself was once a Democrat. He supported women's right to choose in interviews during his early days in the limelight. Looking for consistency and honesty in a politician or political party is a fool's errand!
1) Leftists value political power over everything else, and Trump stands in their way
2) Trump is vulgar
3) Trump fights using Dem tactics, and leftists can dish it out but can’t take it when that happens. Partly because they’ve always had the media on their side and aren’t used to having to deal with it.
This is correct. I never understood why many Jews continued to embrace the left when It was clear there was no common interest. The left envies Jews for what we Jews have achieved. And this the left hates Jews.
That achievement is based on hard work and leading decent lives. The left are not prepared to work hard or to compete. They just want to play the victim card.
“I never understood why many Jews continued to embrace the left when It was clear there was no common interest. The left envies Jews for what we Jews have achieved.“
On this point I disagree with you. Until relatively recently, most Jews had common interests with the left.
I’m Jewish (if you couldn’t guess 😀) and over 50. My family was mostly Democrat growing up, and I was too, until about age 30. I lived in Silicon Valley for decades, a *very* liberal place, and most of my non-Jewish friends there are liberals who neither hate nor envy Jews (and most of my Jewish friends there are also liberal).
I don’t think older liberals hate Jews at all. But they have refused to see the problem that the radical woke left is. The left has gotten continuously more leftist, radical and woke with oppressor-oppressed ideology that young leftists actually believe. See the October and December Harvard-Harris polls for confirmation of this age gap of wokeness and pro-Hamasness on the left.
Older liberals buried their heads in the sand re: woke, telling themselves it was about LGBT+ rights, and refused to understand that woke is based on radical, immoral DEI / Intersectionality / Critical Race Theory ideology where the evil rich white male Christian (and Jewish where applicable) implicitly-biased white patriarchy is responsible for all evil - and little good - in our zero-sum-power-based world, and that the oppressed PoCs are morally justified to use any and all means necessary to overthrow their oppressors.
To me the problem is three-fold:
1) Older liberals/leftists have refused to denounce radical woke ideology, and it now plays a very major, if not literally dominant, role on the left.
2) Dems in general and Biden in particular need the young woke to win elections, and in at least one state (Michigan) need Muslims to win elections, and have refused to denounce the radical “Israel is an apartheid state committing genocide and the oppressed PoC Palestinians are justified in ALL means used to overthrow their oppressors (including brutal terrorism)” ideology that academia has infected leftist youth with.
3) Traditionally liberal older Jews do not understand and/or refuse to accept that their il-liberal Democrat party is now willing to throw Jews under the bus to appease their radical left and the young part of their base if that’s what it takes to get elected, and continue to put their hands over their eyes and ears and repeat “Orange man is bad. Orange man is bad” as if that will address the problem.
Thank goodness for the Bill Ackmans of the world. I hope that more of my Jewish friends will actually “wake up” and listen to folks like him, but I fear they will not.
Even Bill Ackman's money might be too little, too late. Muslims and Marxists have been feeding cash to colleges for decades, and the results became clear this past October.
DEI and BLM ideology has filtered into even our country's best private schools. Ask teachers who haven't surrendered their common sense to pseudo-educational claptrap. The teachers' unions which everyone loves to hate have no sway in such schools. But years ago, Arab and Marxist funding completely corrupted our universities, and today's teachers and school administrators are well pickled in their doctrine. Extricating it might prove impossible.
I certainly agree that Ackman’s money alone ain’t gonna change much. But high profile Dem Jews “changing teams” can have a profound influence (and try to find Hanania’s Substack piece earlier this year about how even a handful of billionaire Jews changing teams might make a significant difference).
I only disagree with you re: the prime causality of Arab and “Marxist” funding having corrupted the universities. IMO leftists did this themselves, and the money followed and the cycle continued. And moderates on the left allowed it to happen, and a large number of them drifted along with em.
I had occasion to go to a wedding in Newport Rhode Island. Not my usual style. I was for the first and thankfully only time exposed to the top of the top. I have the face and name of a Jew. I could tell, some people were disgusted by me. But extremely polite.
Extremism in any form has been dangerous to the Jews. To ignore the risk from the right, when Trump has talked about good people on both sides or met Nick Fuentes for dinner imperils us more. Jews have thrived when moderate liberalism has informed governments. This is not an entirely partisan issue. I think it comes as a shock that the most dangerous and rapidly growing Jew hatred comes from people on the left that see themselves as warriors for justice and virtuous. I suppose this has always been the case. Nazism was embraced in the 1930s by “ principled” doctors and students.
"risk from the right, when Trump has talked about good people on both sides or met Nick Fuentes "
Left wing fact checker Snopes just admitted last week that Trump's"nice people " quote was not in reference to neo-Nazi at Charlottesville.
Trump's meeting with Nick Fuentes was a one off, when Fuentes appeared as an uninvited guest ( of Kanye West, who up to that time had not uttered antisemitic views).
You might contrast that with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who says he has dinner once a week with his uncle Leonard. I leave it to you to Google why Leonard Jeffries was fired from his teaching job at CUNY.
You might also want to Google the 2005 Annual Dinner of the Congressional Black Caucus in DC: invited keynote speaker Louis Farrakhan. Illinois Senator Barack Obama was seen chatting and joking with the keynote speaker.
Amazing how snopes finally checked for the truth! I’m hopeful, as the left has begun to eat its own and their house of lies and Misinformation sees the light of day!
That was another lie the left promoted! The debate - should have been the wake up call for Americans- how the main stream media has lied, covered up, made things up, for the democrats! We’ve been played big time!
…and not only that, it’s there in *tiny* numbers on the right compared to the MASSIVE numbers it has on the left, within academia and in people below 35 and especially below 25.
anti-Semitism was never "declasse" in acceptable circles:
California Club, the most exclusive private club in California didn't accept Jews until the late 1970s, when Harold Brown became the first Jew invited to join. This despite his modest accomplishments: President of CalTech, Secretary of Defense, PhD in Physics from Columbia but at the ripe old age of 19.
I attended SUNY Stony Brook on Long Island as an undergraduate 1968-72. Most of the undergrads were from LI or one of the five boroughs of New York, and at least half of them (it seemed, maybe more) were Jewish. I was, at the time, a lapsed Protestant from the Finger Lakes, and I got a real introduction to Jewish culture. Everything about the whole situation was completely Normal. I got familiar with NYC - which would not have become the great City that it was without its Jews - and in my own eyes, anti-Semitism was totally and utterly dead, a thing of the past, never to return, because in the aftermath of WWII it was completely taken care of. Then, about ten years ago or so, I began to hear about isolated, apparently random incidents of assaults on Jews. And I thought, "What??? Where is this coming from?" And now, since last October, I have been completely stunned by what I've heard and seen. To me, as an American, this was the most striking indicator that we have lost the Republic, or will lose it imminently. Michael, I can't tell you how my heart aches for you and your people.
Jimmy Carter did not invent that lie. He merely picked up on it. The former Soviet Union used subversion of language to promote antisemitism. Their tactic was to accuse Israel and Jews of those things they had suffered themselves, hence the libels of genocide and white colonialism. Their allies followed suit. Amnesty international did more than most to promulgate the lie of apartheid and foment antisemitism.
This book title is always the first thing I think of when I hear the "apartheid" libel. I wonder whether the Second Intifada is part of their definition of "peace".
"A second Holocaust, moreover, is unlikely to occur in an age in which nothing—certainly not a mass extermination such as the Nazis perpetrated largely in secret—escapes media coverage."
In fact, the media do not cover attacks against Jews and often do reframe attacks. A Hasid gets bashed by a black man in Williamsburg? Try finding that in The New York Times. Two Orthodox kids sitting on their stoop get spit on? Maybe you'll find it in The New York Post.
A black man travels from Queens to Kiryat Joel and stabs a rabbi? He's crazy! He can't be charged! (But not so crazy that he can't find public transportation to get him where he wants to go.)
A kosher grocery store in Jersey City is shot up? No problem, the terrorists are Black Hebrews, the Jews are taking over the neighborhood, there were mitigating circumstances.
If the attacker isn't a good ol' boy, it didn't happen. Not according to most news outlets.
"A second Holocaust, moreover, is unlikely to occur in an age in which nothing—certainly not a mass extermination such as the Nazis perpetrated largely in secret—escapes media coverage"
Media coverage has absolutely nothing to do with it: there was plenty of media coverage Oct 7 and plenty of gloating about the Jewish victims on Oct 8 by Left wingers.
A second Holocaust is prevented only because the IDF defends Israel vigorously while, in the US, the Second Amendment provides American Jews the ability to do the same. As the Scottish historian Niall Ferguson once wrote, there would have been far fewer pogroms if Jews had the same aggressiveness as his Scottish compatriots throughout history.
photos. These guys train rigorously. They need support and more people to get involved. The only solution is self defense. The victim mentality is a nonstarter. It’s our job to take care of our families and communities. That’s the reality.
That doesn’t really work around the world.Local communities and individuals have to do some work to respond in real time. You can’t outsource your personal security. Just my opinion.
The solution - in modern western countries other than Israel, at least - is the complete extermination of woke / DEI / Intersectionality / Critical Race Theory from having respectability among the educated classes.
Antisemitism has and always will mark the entry ramp for the decline of civil societies. However, we will survive. The others are unlikely to make the cut. We have been steeled by generations of hate. We not only survive we prosper. At our core is the survival of the State of Yisrael. Yes, Am Yisrael Chai.
BTW the Saudis paid Carter to be a spokesman of hate. Look it up.
Unfortunately some of our biggest foes are the “as a Jew” Jews and the anti Zionist Jew! As we saw during the holocaust and on October 7, they are still Jews in the eyes of our enemies and will be treated accordingly by them as well!
The far left and the far right agree on one thing: They both hate Jews. That’s how you can have ignorant, brainwashed, left wing students being supported by the likes of David Duke.
Nope, the European Right is mostly pro Israel now, as Europe is threatened by the same Islamic forces that threaten Israel.
The ostriches are finally starting to pull their heads out of the sand as they compare the response to Oct 7 from the Democratic Left vs the Republican Right
“The far left and the far right agree on one thing: They both hate Jews. That’s how you can have ignorant, brainwashed, left wing students being supported by the likes of David Duke.’
No, you don’t get it. The radical ideology of woke / intersectionality / Critical Race Theory / DEI is why Jew-hatred is acceptable in America and the rich west.
You miss the point entirely when you dredge up powerless, utterly fringe names like David Duke.
I’ve always admired the movie Gentleman’s Agreement because it mirrors the world my first-generation Jewish-American parents described to me. Born in 1954 in Chicago I caught the tail end of that era and then lived the majority of my life in the mostly amicable second-half of the 20th century. But while Michael Oren gets some of the details wrong in his description of the movie he completely misstates the movie’s meaning of Gentleman’s Agreement, which was the unspoken commitment among the educated class to exclude Jews from their midst. In a world in which Jews are threatened with physical violence, the period of the Gentleman’s Agreement doesn’t seem so bad.
Ironically, I was watching Gentleman’s Agreement on the evening of September 11, 2001 (in Australia) when my daughter rang me and asked me if I was watching what was going on in New York. I switched channels and after several minutes saw the first of the twin towers collapse.
The most obvious problem with the apartheid analogy is that non-whites in South Africa were trying to become part of the broader South Africa. With Israel it's different: the intention is to destroy and replace Israel.
Count this Christian among those who will always oppose anti-semitism.
No true Christian would support genocidal Nazi Israel
The background to “Gentleman’s Agreement” adds to the story. It was produced by one of the few non-Jewish run studios in Hollywood (Daryl Zanuck’s 20th Century) as none of the others wanted to touch the novel on which the movie was based.
John Garfield (né Jacob Julius Garfinkle) plays Gregory Peck’s friend, a proud Jew and WWII combat vet who, in a memorable scene, gets into a fight with an antisemite who belittles the character’s wartime service. Peck’s character is a reporter who goes undercover as Mr. Greene to uncover the extent of social antisemitism and publish an article. There is a scene where the merits of going forward with the investigation is debated that, supposedly, tracked the discussion among (and was a critique of) those movie execs who had declined to produce the movie. Finally, Celeste Holm plays his loyal Jewish secretary (who believes Greene is in fact Jewish) and, towards the film’s end, utters a sentiment that complicates the movie’s general message nicely. She won an Oscar for her role.
It is also of note that around that time a US poll identified the group that presented the greatest danger to world peace was [drumroll] the Jews. It may be the gauzy view of hindsight, but there was plenty of antisemitism during the 50s and 60s, including the John Birch Society, Gerald LK Smith and the like. And, of course, the more “genteel” antisemitism of the social clubs and boardrooms persisted.
When I was a toddler in the 1950s, and walking with my parents over to my aunt's apartment in Castle Village, in Washington Heights, I saw a big sign on the well-manicured grass in front of the co-op complex Hudson View Gardens reading RESTRICTED and sounded it out, and my father told me what it meant.
The irony is, of course, that before the building of Castle Village, the genteel, immaculate Tudor pile of Hudson View Gardens really did have a priceless view of the Hudson.
Castle Village, with no "restrictions," forever spoiled the view.
The sign is long gone. To me, it seems like yesterday that it was there.
You claim that Jew hating never went away in America. But it did, at least as you note, in acceptable circles. it was déclassé, to use your own word.
Your false moral equivalence by mentioning Trump alongside Carter, Obama, and the Ivy League is a massive disservice. Jew hatred in this country has become acceptable again ENTIRELY. BECAUSE. OF. THE. LEFT.
Until Jews like yourself acknowledge this and criticize it, and drop the “it’s on both sides, it never went away” crap, our society will not address the problem as it needs to.
I agree with you. The problem exists on both ends of the political spectrum, but it’s the Left that are the social influencers in most of America, and hold the institutional power. The Center Right are the friends of Jews and Israel.The far Right is a fringe group. Trump is not an antisemite. He’s a friend of Israel. This slander is something that left leaning Jews keep mindlessly repeating. It’s neither accurate nor smart.
Everyone seems to forget that Trumps daughter converted, his grandchildren are Jewish, he brokered the Abraham accord, and put our embassy in Jerusalem! But the left keeps spinning the false narrative that he’s antisemitic!
Maybe Trump began to realize where those Left elites were taking our country! Hence their absolute hatred for him! I too was a flaming ass liberal in my 60s youth! She changed ones thinking- like my Dad used to say as I argued my liberal nonsense- “it’s ok honey, one day you’ll understand”. He was correct!
One can dislike Donald Trump for many things, among them his dubious business practices, the many bankruptcies that left others always holding the bag, his tendency to withhold payments to contractors et al. and then counter-sue them until they give up, his crooked college, his destruction of the Bonwit Teller friezes after having promised them to the Metropolitan Museum, the use of a family charity as his piggy bank, and so on -- but he is not antisemitic.
If anything, the problem with Trump is that he's really not for or against anything that doesn't affect his bottom line or, perhaps, his immediate family. That Ivanka is Jewish is a great relief.
You mean he’s a capitalist. Oh no! Like Warren Buffet or the fake Commie Walton clan or any of the billionaires the Democrats love. They do the same stuff. You think bankruptcy is different for anybody who starts dozens of businesses, some of which don’t survive? Please…
Trump himself is no antisemite. But he allowed the antisemitic fringes of the Right to become respectable and/or feel comfortable, leading to such events as the Tree of Life Massacre and the Charlottesville March in which participants chanted, 'Jews will not replace us.' In general, at this moment in time, the Left is more antisemitic, for sure. But the Right also contributes to the narrative.
“ But he allowed the antisemitic fringes of the Right to become respectable”
Sorry, this dog won’t hunt. Your other criticisms of Trump I disagree with, but at least you can make some case for. But this one is untrue on multiple levels, not least of which that in fact said fringes have never become respectable!
At least you understand that it is the left that is more antisemitic today. A shame you don’t realize that in fact it is FAR more antisemitic (in the U.S., anyway).
Just because there exists a non-zero amount of antisemitism on the right doesn’t make it remotely proportional in terms of societal influence. The left-right antisemitism split not only isn’t 50-50 or 60-40, it ain’t even 80-20. Instead it’s somewhere between 95-5 and 99-1.
I think you're mistaken. Your percentages are surely off; Tree of Life and Charlottesville are fringes but by no means less than one percent of the Right. I'm really only saying that the danger to Jewish people is very real; the far Left and far Right are both very bad for us. I do not think at all that Trump himself is a danger, but I do repeat my assertion that he enables a comfort level among those who are. That is by no means an argument in favor of the Left, whom I despise.
I said *with societal influence*.
If you want to count only heads, I concede the ratio of antisemites today *might* be as low as 80-20 leftist (though I’d still claim best guess is more like 92-8).
But in terms of societal influence, let alone respectability as a position within their political group, I stand by the at least 95-5 claim, and would posit that it’s really something like 98-2.
Yes, you are correct that the extremes on either side are bad for Jews. But the difference is that the numbers are *far* larger today on the left than on the right, and the respectability/influence of the position is *far, far, far* larger on the left than on the right.
Which is why it is such a big problem for folks today to equivocate and claim that it’s about as bad on both sides.
NO. IT’S. NOT!!
Respectfully.
What is even more amazing is that Trump at one time was the darling of the Dem elite circle- like the Clintons, Oprah apparently begged him to go on her show- why their 180?
Trump himself was once a Democrat. He supported women's right to choose in interviews during his early days in the limelight. Looking for consistency and honesty in a politician or political party is a fool's errand!
“why their 180?”
Well, the answer to that question is very simple:
1) Leftists value political power over everything else, and Trump stands in their way
2) Trump is vulgar
3) Trump fights using Dem tactics, and leftists can dish it out but can’t take it when that happens. Partly because they’ve always had the media on their side and aren’t used to having to deal with it.
Exactly. It’s the usual big lie.
Correct.
This is correct. I never understood why many Jews continued to embrace the left when It was clear there was no common interest. The left envies Jews for what we Jews have achieved. And this the left hates Jews.
That achievement is based on hard work and leading decent lives. The left are not prepared to work hard or to compete. They just want to play the victim card.
“I never understood why many Jews continued to embrace the left when It was clear there was no common interest. The left envies Jews for what we Jews have achieved.“
On this point I disagree with you. Until relatively recently, most Jews had common interests with the left.
I’m Jewish (if you couldn’t guess 😀) and over 50. My family was mostly Democrat growing up, and I was too, until about age 30. I lived in Silicon Valley for decades, a *very* liberal place, and most of my non-Jewish friends there are liberals who neither hate nor envy Jews (and most of my Jewish friends there are also liberal).
I don’t think older liberals hate Jews at all. But they have refused to see the problem that the radical woke left is. The left has gotten continuously more leftist, radical and woke with oppressor-oppressed ideology that young leftists actually believe. See the October and December Harvard-Harris polls for confirmation of this age gap of wokeness and pro-Hamasness on the left.
https://harvardharrispoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/HHP_Oct23_KeyResults.pdf
https://harvardharrispoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/HHP_Dec23_KeyResults.pdf
Older liberals buried their heads in the sand re: woke, telling themselves it was about LGBT+ rights, and refused to understand that woke is based on radical, immoral DEI / Intersectionality / Critical Race Theory ideology where the evil rich white male Christian (and Jewish where applicable) implicitly-biased white patriarchy is responsible for all evil - and little good - in our zero-sum-power-based world, and that the oppressed PoCs are morally justified to use any and all means necessary to overthrow their oppressors.
To me the problem is three-fold:
1) Older liberals/leftists have refused to denounce radical woke ideology, and it now plays a very major, if not literally dominant, role on the left.
2) Dems in general and Biden in particular need the young woke to win elections, and in at least one state (Michigan) need Muslims to win elections, and have refused to denounce the radical “Israel is an apartheid state committing genocide and the oppressed PoC Palestinians are justified in ALL means used to overthrow their oppressors (including brutal terrorism)” ideology that academia has infected leftist youth with.
3) Traditionally liberal older Jews do not understand and/or refuse to accept that their il-liberal Democrat party is now willing to throw Jews under the bus to appease their radical left and the young part of their base if that’s what it takes to get elected, and continue to put their hands over their eyes and ears and repeat “Orange man is bad. Orange man is bad” as if that will address the problem.
Thank goodness for the Bill Ackmans of the world. I hope that more of my Jewish friends will actually “wake up” and listen to folks like him, but I fear they will not.
Even Bill Ackman's money might be too little, too late. Muslims and Marxists have been feeding cash to colleges for decades, and the results became clear this past October.
DEI and BLM ideology has filtered into even our country's best private schools. Ask teachers who haven't surrendered their common sense to pseudo-educational claptrap. The teachers' unions which everyone loves to hate have no sway in such schools. But years ago, Arab and Marxist funding completely corrupted our universities, and today's teachers and school administrators are well pickled in their doctrine. Extricating it might prove impossible.
I certainly agree that Ackman’s money alone ain’t gonna change much. But high profile Dem Jews “changing teams” can have a profound influence (and try to find Hanania’s Substack piece earlier this year about how even a handful of billionaire Jews changing teams might make a significant difference).
I only disagree with you re: the prime causality of Arab and “Marxist” funding having corrupted the universities. IMO leftists did this themselves, and the money followed and the cycle continued. And moderates on the left allowed it to happen, and a large number of them drifted along with em.
“First, they came for the trade unionists…”
I can’t figure it out either! Well I can but it a futile endeavor!
I had occasion to go to a wedding in Newport Rhode Island. Not my usual style. I was for the first and thankfully only time exposed to the top of the top. I have the face and name of a Jew. I could tell, some people were disgusted by me. But extremely polite.
Extremism in any form has been dangerous to the Jews. To ignore the risk from the right, when Trump has talked about good people on both sides or met Nick Fuentes for dinner imperils us more. Jews have thrived when moderate liberalism has informed governments. This is not an entirely partisan issue. I think it comes as a shock that the most dangerous and rapidly growing Jew hatred comes from people on the left that see themselves as warriors for justice and virtuous. I suppose this has always been the case. Nazism was embraced in the 1930s by “ principled” doctors and students.
"risk from the right, when Trump has talked about good people on both sides or met Nick Fuentes "
Left wing fact checker Snopes just admitted last week that Trump's"nice people " quote was not in reference to neo-Nazi at Charlottesville.
Trump's meeting with Nick Fuentes was a one off, when Fuentes appeared as an uninvited guest ( of Kanye West, who up to that time had not uttered antisemitic views).
You might contrast that with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who says he has dinner once a week with his uncle Leonard. I leave it to you to Google why Leonard Jeffries was fired from his teaching job at CUNY.
You might also want to Google the 2005 Annual Dinner of the Congressional Black Caucus in DC: invited keynote speaker Louis Farrakhan. Illinois Senator Barack Obama was seen chatting and joking with the keynote speaker.
God bless you, President Trump!
Amazing how snopes finally checked for the truth! I’m hopeful, as the left has begun to eat its own and their house of lies and Misinformation sees the light of day!
I'm not optimistic: Pravda in the Soviet Union kept spewing propaganda until the end and Granma in Cuba does the same.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-very-fine-people/
That was another lie the left promoted! The debate - should have been the wake up call for Americans- how the main stream media has lied, covered up, made things up, for the democrats! We’ve been played big time!
The right wing version, which often includes Holocaust denial, is still there but it’s not respectable.
…and not only that, it’s there in *tiny* numbers on the right compared to the MASSIVE numbers it has on the left, within academia and in people below 35 and especially below 25.
anti-Semitism was never "declasse" in acceptable circles:
California Club, the most exclusive private club in California didn't accept Jews until the late 1970s, when Harold Brown became the first Jew invited to join. This despite his modest accomplishments: President of CalTech, Secretary of Defense, PhD in Physics from Columbia but at the ripe old age of 19.
That you have to go back almost 50 years to find an example to support your point… proves (or at minimum buttresses) mine.
This article is heartbreaking.
I attended SUNY Stony Brook on Long Island as an undergraduate 1968-72. Most of the undergrads were from LI or one of the five boroughs of New York, and at least half of them (it seemed, maybe more) were Jewish. I was, at the time, a lapsed Protestant from the Finger Lakes, and I got a real introduction to Jewish culture. Everything about the whole situation was completely Normal. I got familiar with NYC - which would not have become the great City that it was without its Jews - and in my own eyes, anti-Semitism was totally and utterly dead, a thing of the past, never to return, because in the aftermath of WWII it was completely taken care of. Then, about ten years ago or so, I began to hear about isolated, apparently random incidents of assaults on Jews. And I thought, "What??? Where is this coming from?" And now, since last October, I have been completely stunned by what I've heard and seen. To me, as an American, this was the most striking indicator that we have lost the Republic, or will lose it imminently. Michael, I can't tell you how my heart aches for you and your people.
I never realized the Jew hater,Jimmy Carter, wrote a book declaring Israel is an apartheid state. Now I know where that lie came from. Thank you.
Jimmy Carter did not invent that lie. He merely picked up on it. The former Soviet Union used subversion of language to promote antisemitism. Their tactic was to accuse Israel and Jews of those things they had suffered themselves, hence the libels of genocide and white colonialism. Their allies followed suit. Amnesty international did more than most to promulgate the lie of apartheid and foment antisemitism.
Thank you.
Carter's book "Peace, not apartheid" led several board members of the Carter Center to resign in protest.
Carter replied to the criticism by helpfully pointing out most of the book reviewers were Jewish.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine:_Peace_Not_Apartheid
This book title is always the first thing I think of when I hear the "apartheid" libel. I wonder whether the Second Intifada is part of their definition of "peace".
"A second Holocaust, moreover, is unlikely to occur in an age in which nothing—certainly not a mass extermination such as the Nazis perpetrated largely in secret—escapes media coverage."
In fact, the media do not cover attacks against Jews and often do reframe attacks. A Hasid gets bashed by a black man in Williamsburg? Try finding that in The New York Times. Two Orthodox kids sitting on their stoop get spit on? Maybe you'll find it in The New York Post.
A black man travels from Queens to Kiryat Joel and stabs a rabbi? He's crazy! He can't be charged! (But not so crazy that he can't find public transportation to get him where he wants to go.)
A kosher grocery store in Jersey City is shot up? No problem, the terrorists are Black Hebrews, the Jews are taking over the neighborhood, there were mitigating circumstances.
If the attacker isn't a good ol' boy, it didn't happen. Not according to most news outlets.
"A second Holocaust, moreover, is unlikely to occur in an age in which nothing—certainly not a mass extermination such as the Nazis perpetrated largely in secret—escapes media coverage"
Media coverage has absolutely nothing to do with it: there was plenty of media coverage Oct 7 and plenty of gloating about the Jewish victims on Oct 8 by Left wingers.
A second Holocaust is prevented only because the IDF defends Israel vigorously while, in the US, the Second Amendment provides American Jews the ability to do the same. As the Scottish historian Niall Ferguson once wrote, there would have been far fewer pogroms if Jews had the same aggressiveness as his Scottish compatriots throughout history.
https://magenam.com
https://jewscanshoot.org
I see my buddy there in the Magen am website
photos. These guys train rigorously. They need support and more people to get involved. The only solution is self defense. The victim mentality is a nonstarter. It’s our job to take care of our families and communities. That’s the reality.
The only solution is the real Final Solution to the Jewish Question - the State of Israel and the IDF.
That doesn’t really work around the world.Local communities and individuals have to do some work to respond in real time. You can’t outsource your personal security. Just my opinion.
The solution - in modern western countries other than Israel, at least - is the complete extermination of woke / DEI / Intersectionality / Critical Race Theory from having respectability among the educated classes.
For Israel, I agree with you.
Antisemitism has and always will mark the entry ramp for the decline of civil societies. However, we will survive. The others are unlikely to make the cut. We have been steeled by generations of hate. We not only survive we prosper. At our core is the survival of the State of Yisrael. Yes, Am Yisrael Chai.
BTW the Saudis paid Carter to be a spokesman of hate. Look it up.
Thank you for your strength
Unfortunately some of our biggest foes are the “as a Jew” Jews and the anti Zionist Jew! As we saw during the holocaust and on October 7, they are still Jews in the eyes of our enemies and will be treated accordingly by them as well!
Today there is Jewish Voice for Peace.
In Nazi Germany there was Max Naumann and his League of German National Jews, which supported the rise of the Nazis as the German national resurgence
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Naumann
Hopefully Israel's "enemy" is radical Islamism and not the entire rest of the world.
The comedy version of this concept was written by Sholem Aleichem in 1920 entitled: Shver Tzu Zayn A Yid - שוער צו זיין א ייד - It’s Hard to Be a Jew.
They should be done in repertory.
May God bless and keep Israel, for all of us. Amen.
The far left and the far right agree on one thing: They both hate Jews. That’s how you can have ignorant, brainwashed, left wing students being supported by the likes of David Duke.
We’re the great unifiers! ☹️
Seems as though David duke and Louis Farrakhan are on the same bus. It’s a short one
Nope, the European Right is mostly pro Israel now, as Europe is threatened by the same Islamic forces that threaten Israel.
The ostriches are finally starting to pull their heads out of the sand as they compare the response to Oct 7 from the Democratic Left vs the Republican Right
https://www.dw.com/en/where-do-europes-far-right-parties-stand-on-the-israel-hamas-conflict/a-67465217
“The far left and the far right agree on one thing: They both hate Jews. That’s how you can have ignorant, brainwashed, left wing students being supported by the likes of David Duke.’
No, you don’t get it. The radical ideology of woke / intersectionality / Critical Race Theory / DEI is why Jew-hatred is acceptable in America and the rich west.
You miss the point entirely when you dredge up powerless, utterly fringe names like David Duke.
I’ve always admired the movie Gentleman’s Agreement because it mirrors the world my first-generation Jewish-American parents described to me. Born in 1954 in Chicago I caught the tail end of that era and then lived the majority of my life in the mostly amicable second-half of the 20th century. But while Michael Oren gets some of the details wrong in his description of the movie he completely misstates the movie’s meaning of Gentleman’s Agreement, which was the unspoken commitment among the educated class to exclude Jews from their midst. In a world in which Jews are threatened with physical violence, the period of the Gentleman’s Agreement doesn’t seem so bad.
They seemed to have failed entirely in their mission to exclude Jews from the educated class. F ‘em
Ironically, I was watching Gentleman’s Agreement on the evening of September 11, 2001 (in Australia) when my daughter rang me and asked me if I was watching what was going on in New York. I switched channels and after several minutes saw the first of the twin towers collapse.
The most obvious problem with the apartheid analogy is that non-whites in South Africa were trying to become part of the broader South Africa. With Israel it's different: the intention is to destroy and replace Israel.
Perhaps I'm missing something but, Mr. Ambassador, are you implying that Donald Trump is antisemitic? If so, you are regrettably wrong. Good grief.