I have no idea whether this wonderful egalitarian man is Jewish or not. Why should I or anybody else care? What’s important to know about this man is that he is an egalitarian, on the side of the working class of all nations and religions and ethnic groups.
I am here calling on American working class1 Jews to do the morally right thing for two reasons: #1 It is the morally right thing. #2 It is the only way for working class American Jews to protect themselves from antisemites who aim to turn American non-Jewish working class people against American Jewish working class people by making “the Jews” a scape goat to be blamed for the suffering that the billionaire class is inflicting on the American working class.
As anybody who is paying attention to things no doubt has noticed, there is a sharp increase lately in disparaging remarks and memes and videos, etc. against “the Jews.” Sometimes the tone is quite threatening too. This antisemitism is driven by two things:
First, the righteous anger (that I share) against the horrible, cruel, immoral, inexcusable genocidal violence of the Israeli government against Palestinians in Gaza.
Second, the recent assertions (false, as I show here and here) that Israel forced Trump to attack Iran2—that Israel is the “tail” that wags the United States “dog,” that Israel is making Americans fight and die in a war for Israel.
The prominent individuals who falsely blame Israel for being the “tail” that wags the U.S. “dog” may or may not blame Jews in general, but nevertheless lots of other people who hear this assertion DO blame Jews in general (not just the Israeli government or just Netanyahu). They blame Jews in general for the suffering of ordinary Americans caused by our government’s decision to engage in warmongering instead of (as MAGA folks mistakenly thought Trump intended) using American wealth to make life better for ordinary Americans.
The reason they blame “the Jews” in general, not just the Israeli government, is obvious: Israel purports to be a state of the Jews. Netanyahu even announced that Israel was the ‘Nation-State Of The Jewish People And Them Alone.’
The fact, however, is that Netanyahu is flat out wrong; he’a a LIAR!
Israel is no more a state of, by and for ordinary Jews in Israel (or elsewhere) than the United States is a state of, by and for ordinary Americans; both are states of, by and for a billionaire ruling class. I prove this regarding Israel in my articles here and here and here. The fact is that the Israeli government is an ANTI-JEWISH-working-class government. It even oppresses Jewish Holocaust survivors living in Israel!
The billionaire class of Israel gets away with its horrible economic oppression of Israeli Jewish working class people by creating (with decades of violent ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the name of “the Jews”) a Palestinian bogeyman enemy that it uses to control the Israeli Jewish working class, by making Israeli Jews fear (and hence hate) Palestinians and view their actual oppressor—the Israeli billionaire class—as their protector against the “real enemy.” (I spell this all out in detail in my above-linked article.)
Dear American working class Jews: Please don’t let antisemites succeed in making you a scape goat! Do this instead, now!
Working class American Jews are being set up as a scape goat so the billionaire class can direct anger away from itself onto somebody else as the economic suffering the billionaires are inflicting on the have-nots increases. The only way that American working class Jews can avoid being a scape goat is by doing this:
Explicitly and publicly stand with the working class people of the world (all nations and religions and ethnicities) against those who oppress them (all nations and religions and ethnicities).
Explicitly and publicly condemn the Israeli government, and the Israeli billionaire class that controls it, for its violent attacks (now genocidal) on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, and its violent attacks on working class people in Lebanon and Iran, and its horrible economic oppression of Israeli working class people including Israeli JEWISH working class people as well as non-Jewish working class people in Israel.
Explicitly and publicly condemn the entire U.S. ruling billionaire plutocracy (including both the Jewish and non-Jewish billionaires) for their oppression of the American working class and support of the Israeli ruling class. Also condemn the billionaires for their divide-and-rule schemes to get away with their oppression of the have-nots.
Dear American working class Jews, if you do not start doing the above, then working class Jews in the United States (of which I am one too3) will remain a sitting duck for antisemites to attack when the American have-nots are looking for a scape goat to blame for the horrible Iran war and all the economic suffering that will be increasingly blamed on Israel.
If you do what I urge you to do, then it will be extremely difficult for antisemites to portray working class Jews as the enemy of working class people. But if you don’t do what I urge you to do, then it will be very easy for antisemites to be persuasive. Surely you do not need me to explain to you why this is so, right?
What will you do?
Your call!
I am using the phrase ‘working class’ in the very broad sense to mean people who are not in the ruling billionaire class and do not have the kind of power in society that billionaires and those beholden to them (CEOs, top government officials, generals and so on) hold and who do not want to keep society extremely unequal to benefit the few at the expense of the many.
There was a long NYT article that reported in detail the meetings (at which Netanyahu and the head of Israel’s Mossad were present as well as key cabinet secretaries) that led to Trump ordering the attack on Iran on February 28. What this NYT article reported was NOT (if you read it carefully) that Netanyahu ordered or demanded or forced Trump to launch the attack but rather that Netanyahu told Trump that the attack would succeed if it were carried out quickly (in part because it was known where Iran’s Supreme leader would be on February 28 and hence could be killed easily.) Yes, Netanyahu wanted Trump to attack Iran. But Trump on his own wanted to attack Iran; Netanyahu merely told him things to make him think the time was right to do it.
Although I do not subscribe to the Jewish religion and never attended a synagogue nor was I ever bar mitzvah-ed (the ritual ceremony by which a 13 year old Jewish boy “becomes a man”), and although I do not personally identify as a Jew, I am nonetheless a person all of whose ancestors, to my knowledge, did identify as being Jews; so I suppose antisemites would say I am a Jew.
Very timely and insightful article, John! My father and his family were central European secular Jews who manage to emigrate to the US. Although I, like you, never identified with Judaism or practiced it in any form, anti-Semitism always felt like a shadow threat, having the knowledge of what my father’s family went through. I consider the extreme anti-Jewish propaganda that is being broadcast at Westerners daily, bolstered by the actual actions of the Israeli Zionist government and their minions, to be the precursor to just the scapegoating that you are referring to. Unfortunately, my own experience with the many Jews I have known over the years, is that US Jews (at least) are among the absolute most brainwashed people on the planet Earth. Their relative success among the have-nots of the US, coupled with the history of the mass murder of Jews in Europe in the mid-20th century, have made them an easy population to shape the opinions of. Although I have no real knowledge of any religion, the little reading I have done about Judaism indicates part of their religious doctrine is a retreat into tribalism, promoting a separation of Jews from others. All of this, imo, will make them an easy target when the Rulers look for a scapegoat to turn the rest of the US working class against. The Victoria Nulan’s, Richard Perle’s, Ronald Lauder’s and their ilk, will naturally be spared, having served their Rulers (not exclusively Jewish or Zionist) needs. What is surprising to me is that during the Vietnam Era when I was in SDS there were large numbers of Jewish students with progressive (in the classical sense of the word) ideals and who were among the strongest and bravest of the fighters (John Levin, for example, was one of the three leaders of the SF State Strike, which is the longest student strike in the history of the US and was bloody and protracted. I knew John well and worked with him at the time). What has happened to that segment of the Jewish population? Do you have any idea?
What you are seeing is entirely real and is also part of a broader witch hunt. There are leftists, Marxists and others who readily acknowledge that Jews have been central to the pro Palestinian cause, but others who imagine a monolithic and united Jewish nation beyond Israel. By collaborating directly with known Nazis, Netanyahu’a coalition and its supporters have endangered all Jews. The questions no one wants to answer is why the 3rd generation Nazi “Technate” choose Gaza as a testing lab for military AI applications used on human beings? Why did Israel allow it? Throughout history royalty has found ways to “blame it on The Jews” now the actual dirty work is done by Israel and can be blamed easily on Jews in general regardless of class or politics. The latest twist is fundamentalists throwing patriarchal and literalist interpretations of scripture into the mix while claiming anti-Trump/Epstein sentiments. Things I remember talking about 28 years ago are news again.