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Related: About this forumAnyone is a subscriber of the Atlantic?
THE GOLDEN AGE OF AMERICAN JEWS IS ENDING
Interesting, long and frightening.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/04/us-anti-semitism-jewish-american-safety/677469/
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Anyone is a subscriber of the Atlantic? (Original Post)
question everything
Mar 2024
OP
Thanks. Is there a way to post several paragraphs? Or do they offer a "gift" for a story?
question everything
Mar 2024
#4
Ocelot II
(120,813 posts)1. I am - I've read the article, interesting and worrisome.
Everyone, Jewish or not (I'm not, and it was very enlightening for me), should read it.
question everything
(48,797 posts)4. Thanks. Is there a way to post several paragraphs? Or do they offer a "gift" for a story?
I don't and therefore cannot.
Ocelot II
(120,813 posts)5. Here's a link:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/04/us-anti-semitism-jewish-american-safety/677469/?gift=xvLgBqzb2OTKrrgtPA3CYgWesyXFbAzflC52BgZaB6c&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
A few paragraphs:
Among the brutal epiphanies of October 7 was this: A disconcertingly large number of Israels critics on the left did not share that vision of peaceful coexistence, or believe Jews had a right to a nation of their own. After Hamass rampage of rape, kidnapping, and murder, a history professor at Cornell named Russell Rickford said Palestinians were understandably exhilarated by this challenge to the monopoly of violence. He added, I was exhilarated. A student at the same university was arrested and charged with posting online threats about slitting the throats of Jewish males and strafing the kosher dining hall with gunfire. In Philadelphia, a mob descended on a falafel restaurant, chanting about the Israeli American co-owners complicity in genocide. Over the three-month period following the Hamas attacks, the Anti-Defamation League recorded 56 episodes of physical violence targeting Jews and 1,347 incidents of harassment. That 13-week span contained more anti-Semitic incidents than the entirety of 2021at the time the worst year since the ADL had begun keeping count, in 1979.
I dont want to dismiss the anger that the left feels about the terrible human cost of the Israeli counterinvasion of Gaza, or denounce criticism of Israel as inherently anti-Semiticespecially because I share some of those criticisms. Nor do I believe that anti-Zionist is a term that should be considered axiomatically interchangeable with anti-Semite. The elimination of Israel, in my opinion, would be a profound catastrophe for the Jewish people. But I have read idealistic critics of Israel, such as the late historian Tony Judt, who imagined that it could be replaced by a binational state, where Jews and Palestinians live side by side under one democratic government. That strikes me as naive in the extremeespecially after the Hamas pogrom of October 7and very likely the end of Jewish existence in the Levant. But not everything that is terrible for the Jews is anti-Semitic.
Anti-Semitism is a mental habit, deeply embedded in Christian and Muslim thinking, stretching back at least as far as the accusation that the Jews murdered the son of God. Its a tendency to fixate on Jews, to place them at the center of the narrative, overstating their role in society and describing them as the root cause of any unwanted phenomenaa centrality that seems strange, given that Jews constitute about 0.2 percent of the global population. Though it shape-shifts over time, anti-Semitism returns to the same essential complaint: that Jews are cunning, bloodthirsty, and mad for power. Anti-Zionism often takes a similar form: the dehumanization, the unilateral casting of blame, and the fetishizing of Jewish villainy.
Liberal Jews once celebrated Israel as the lone democracy in a distinctly undemocratic region. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus coalition of theocrats and messianists seems bent on shredding the basis for that claim. But many governments in the world share these undesirable traits. Still, no one calls for the eradication of Hungary or El Salvador or India. No one defaces Chinese restaurants in San Francisco because Beijing imprisons Uyghurs in concentration camps and occupies Tibet.
A few paragraphs:
Among the brutal epiphanies of October 7 was this: A disconcertingly large number of Israels critics on the left did not share that vision of peaceful coexistence, or believe Jews had a right to a nation of their own. After Hamass rampage of rape, kidnapping, and murder, a history professor at Cornell named Russell Rickford said Palestinians were understandably exhilarated by this challenge to the monopoly of violence. He added, I was exhilarated. A student at the same university was arrested and charged with posting online threats about slitting the throats of Jewish males and strafing the kosher dining hall with gunfire. In Philadelphia, a mob descended on a falafel restaurant, chanting about the Israeli American co-owners complicity in genocide. Over the three-month period following the Hamas attacks, the Anti-Defamation League recorded 56 episodes of physical violence targeting Jews and 1,347 incidents of harassment. That 13-week span contained more anti-Semitic incidents than the entirety of 2021at the time the worst year since the ADL had begun keeping count, in 1979.
I dont want to dismiss the anger that the left feels about the terrible human cost of the Israeli counterinvasion of Gaza, or denounce criticism of Israel as inherently anti-Semiticespecially because I share some of those criticisms. Nor do I believe that anti-Zionist is a term that should be considered axiomatically interchangeable with anti-Semite. The elimination of Israel, in my opinion, would be a profound catastrophe for the Jewish people. But I have read idealistic critics of Israel, such as the late historian Tony Judt, who imagined that it could be replaced by a binational state, where Jews and Palestinians live side by side under one democratic government. That strikes me as naive in the extremeespecially after the Hamas pogrom of October 7and very likely the end of Jewish existence in the Levant. But not everything that is terrible for the Jews is anti-Semitic.
Anti-Semitism is a mental habit, deeply embedded in Christian and Muslim thinking, stretching back at least as far as the accusation that the Jews murdered the son of God. Its a tendency to fixate on Jews, to place them at the center of the narrative, overstating their role in society and describing them as the root cause of any unwanted phenomenaa centrality that seems strange, given that Jews constitute about 0.2 percent of the global population. Though it shape-shifts over time, anti-Semitism returns to the same essential complaint: that Jews are cunning, bloodthirsty, and mad for power. Anti-Zionism often takes a similar form: the dehumanization, the unilateral casting of blame, and the fetishizing of Jewish villainy.
Liberal Jews once celebrated Israel as the lone democracy in a distinctly undemocratic region. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus coalition of theocrats and messianists seems bent on shredding the basis for that claim. But many governments in the world share these undesirable traits. Still, no one calls for the eradication of Hungary or El Salvador or India. No one defaces Chinese restaurants in San Francisco because Beijing imprisons Uyghurs in concentration camps and occupies Tibet.
question everything
(48,797 posts)6. Thanks a lot
samplegirl
(12,065 posts)2. I wish I did. My friend has it and sends
me articles. Thanks for posting.
hlthe2b
(106,329 posts)3. Here is the article in full ( I do subscribe, so I assume this is okay to post as I do the occasional WAPO)
question everything
(48,797 posts)7. That's perfect! Thanks!