In this week’s episode of “Top Story,” JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin discusses how the surge of antisemitism coming from the American left in the wake of the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7 can be countered.
He’s joined by journalist and author Ben Weingarten, who discusses how anti-Israel progressives have become the future of the Democratic Party. The author of a biography on congressional “Squad” member Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Weingarten discusses the mainstreaming of Jew-hatred in the name of progressive values rooted in critical race theory and intersectionality by academic and journalistic institutions. This movement undermines Jewish security and raises the question of how the U.S.-Israel alliance can thrive, or even survive, in the future.
Analyzing the forces that have come together against Israel, he says that “Jew-hatred is the glue that holds together” an unholy alliance of leftists and Islamists. While these forces are ultimately part of a war against the West and America, “Jews are the canary in the coal mine” in this battle.
Weingarten also spoke about the suppression of free speech on the Internet, as well as the reactions of figures on both the left and right to the Oct. 7 atrocities by Hamas on Israelis, with some minimizing the brutality or decrying U.S. support for the Jewish state. It has been “a clarifying moment,” he says, that shows where people truly stand on antisemitism.
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