Erika Dreifus

“There is no other ethno-cultural minority in America targeted with such ferocity from the left and the right. No other group is simultaneously branded as complicit in white supremacy and as false assimilators who threaten white ascendancy. And there is little that is new here; one need only look at late nineteenth-century political discourse to see how Europe’s Jews were simultaneously attacked by the communists as exploiters of the proletariat and by the proto-fascists who warned of the coming racial war between Aryan and Jew. The Zionists who emerged in this context believed that Jewish statehood would end anti-Semitism; that the Jews would henceforth be a ‘normal people’ with a homeland, a flag, a language, and a destiny. They were wrong. If anything, the Jewish state has compounded the ways in which anti-Semitism is articulated today. The Alt-Right’s ‘Jews will not replace us’ and Steven Salaita’s ‘there’s not enough space in the world for both Zionism and Palestinians’ could have been articulated a century ago with little revision.”

Source: Jarrod Tanny, “The Loneliness of the Liberal Zionist” (Forward)

“The sheer bluntness of far-right anti-Semitism makes it easier to identify and stigmatize as beyond the pale; individuals like David Duke and the hosts of the “Daily Shoah” podcast make no pretense of residing within the mainstream of American political debate. But the humanist appeals of the far left, whose every libel against the Jewish state is paired with a righteous invocation of ‘justice’ for the Palestinian people, invariably trigger repetitive and esoteric debates over whether this or that article, allusion, allegory, statement, policy, or political initiative is anti-Semitic or just critical of Israel. What this difference in self-definition means is that there is rarely, if ever, any argument about the substantive nature of right-wing anti-Semitism (despicable, reprehensible, wicked, choose your adjective), while the very existence of left-wing anti-Semitism is widely doubted and almost always indignantly denied by those accused of practicing it.”

Source: Jamie Kirchick, “The New Jew Hatred: Right and Left” (Commentary)

“The aforementioned invitation arrived several moments later, to myself and other editors at Tablet, strongly suggesting that it had more to do with stanching the bleeding of a public relations problem that seriously resolving a brutal moral error. Even more insulting and infuriating is the fact that the invitation suggests that the New School sees this as a matter of balancing out two equally legitimate sides, each with its own point of view.”

Source: Liel Leibovitz (Tablet)