Selective outrage in response to antisemitism

Use of antisemitic cliches by progressives against strongly identified Jews has been ignored by the mainstream Jewish establishment.

by Matthew Hausman

When Haredi Jews were recently characterized on an Israeli television program as “bloodsuckers” burdening society, many secular Americans nodded their heads in agreement, unperturbed by the use of imagery similar to that invoked by antisemites through the ages. We have not yet seen their reaction to the odious video clip of a secular woman verbally attacking a haredi man on an Israeli bus, judging him a draft dodger due to his sidelocks black kippah and white shirt. Unbeknownst to her, he was a career officer.

Indeed, demonizing Orthodoxy is often part of a strategy employed to explain the lack of traction for liberal Judaism in Israel – even though many secular Israelis also reject ritually nontraditional movements.

Secular critics regard anti-Orthodox slurs as valid commentary and blame religion for any perceived divisions in Israeli society; and in the process, they often adopt progressive anti-religious (and anti-Israel) talking points as default truths – whether delegitimizing Jewish tradition and faith or endorsing revisionist claims that conflict with Jewish history.

And through it all, American progressives ignore a pervasive anti-Jewish bias that is entrenched within the political agenda they espouse and crass antisemitism that has infected the Democratic Party they embrace, and which they wrongly conflate with Jewish identity and core values.

But what are these core values? The truth is that most progressives have no clue because Jewish education, knowledge, and observance have eroded drastically among the non-Orthodox and within the communal Jewish establishment…

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