American Jews are facing an unprecedented crisis of antisemitism, but according to JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin, that’s just part of the problem. What’s also wrong is that the majority of American Jews who identify as politically liberal don’t seem to understand that continuing to support a party and movement that spreads blood libels about them—and defines them as “white” oppressors—is, at best, self-sabotage, and, at worst, suicidal.
He’s joined in this week’s episode of “Think Twice” by journalist Batya Ungar-Sargon, author of the new book, The Jews and the Left. Ungar-Sargon argues that a principal reason why Jewish liberals were unprepared for the surge of antisemitism in the wake of the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, was that they fundamentally misunderstood their place in America. From the beginning of the American republic, Jews have always been equal partners, not a tolerated and discriminated-against minority.
In her book, she makes the case that American exceptionalism is real and that the belief that Jews were, like racial minorities, among the oppressed is wrong.
Jews found themselves on the political left in the mid-20th century because Democrats supported the rights of labor and civil rights, plus they were associated with the war against the Nazis.
But in the 21st century, the Democrats are no longer the party of the working class, she says, but rather of the credentialed elites. What’s worse, the woke hijacking of the party has led to a situation where the reigning orthodoxy on the left puts Jews and Israel in the intersectional cross-hairs. That is why after the Oct. 7 atrocities, the American left, which now dominates the Democrats, took sides against Israel, and was ready to tolerate and even encourage Jew-hatred.
Ungar-Sargon believes that the response to this crisis on the part of liberal Jewish organizations that make up the Jewish establishment is not merely inadequate, but wrongheaded. It counsels Jewish students to “shelter in place” and not resist the antisemitic mobs, as opposed to standing strong in their Jewish identity and pride.
Jews must, she believes, “get off their knees and fight.”
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