Tipsheet

In Face of Anti-Semitic Hate Crime Surge, 'Progressives' Embrace Whataboutism

Guy Benson
Guy Benson  |  May 24, 2021 1:05 PM

I'm not sure why anyone is surprised. There is an intense and growing hostility to Israel on the hard Left, and there's quite a bit of overlap between "anti-Zionists" and anti-Semites. In many cases, the former phenomenon is the modern, politically acceptable manifestation of the latter. When Rep. Ilhan Omar spewed some flagrantly anti-Semitic rhetoric a few years back, Democrats' left-wing base rallied to her cause and successfully pressured Nancy Pelosi to rewrite a condemnatory resolution to de-emphasize Omar's anti-Semitism by expanding it into a watery denunciation of many forms of bigotry. It was deliberately transformed from a specific rebuke of anti-Semitism to a meaningless "all hate matters" document. "All lives matter" is an offensive reply to "Black lives matter," they say – and I've come to better understand why many people believe that. Yet it would appear that the progressive Left's go-to reaction to rank anti-Semitism, including Jews being hunted down and beaten in the streets, is to "all lives matter" the problem. It's not a coincidence that prominent leftists in American politics have chosen to castigate rising anti-Jewish hate, but not without mentioning Islamophobia in the same digital breath: 


This, but also this other thing. "Whatabout" Islamophobia? Anyone surprised to see members of the Squad embracing this deflection – especially one who refuses to meet with her local community's Jewish newspaper? One observer notes that this was the same playbook used by Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, as his Labour Party was overrun by far-left anti-Semites, en route to an electoral shellacking from which the party has still not recovered: 


No wonder some American liberals are nervously eyeing Labour's decline these days. More mainstream and old guard Democrats remain much better on this issue, and on the US-Israeli alliance more broadly, but the ascendant progressive generation and movement represents a horse of a different color. Democrats are fracturing over Israel, and the openly pro-Palestinian contingent already outnumbers the clearly pro-Israel one, according to this new poll: 


Among all Americans aged 18-29, not just Democrats, solidarity with the Palestinians narrowly eclipses solidarity with Israel – the only age bracket in which that is the case. Allahpundit and others are also noting that the hard Left is sometimes willing to furiously condemn anti-Semitism, depending on the identity of the perpetrator: 

When it’s a white supremacist rather than a Palestinian sympathizer who’s attacking Jews, they’re clear as a bell about who the victim is...Given how progressives race and victimization, and the tendency to map U.S. domestic politics onto the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, it’s apparently intolerable for some leftists to treat Jews as the victims in a confrontation with Palestinian sympathizers even when Jews are getting jumped by morons in keffiyehs carrying Palestinian flags. The best we’re going to get from the woke brigades on that is "anti-semitism and Islamophobia are both wrong."

We've seen similar...hesitancy on the Left, including within the news media, to talk about anti-Asian hate crimes and assaults that are carried out by non-whites. The woke grievance hierarchy of victimhood is a complex beast. I'll leave you with this. No remorse: 

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And may I remind you that the "anti-Zionists" are effectively, if not openly, propagandizing on behalf of Hamas, the genocidal terrorist organization that admits targeting civilians deliberately: 


But the Jewish state is at fault, you see, for defending its people while bending over backward to minimize harm to civilians. What a twisted mindset.