“Include Jews in your activism.”
What do you hear when people say this? And what are you basing it off of? Knowledge, understanding, and information, or bias and stereotypes that you haven’t examined yet? The truth is, most people are too busy criticizing, interrogating, and shutting out Jews to have any idea of where this request is actually coming from. So for one minute, take a step back from what you think you know or understand about the modern Jewish struggle, because the truth is, you don’t know it. And you aren’t going to know it until you take the time to learn about it.
People ignore or erase the context of the request to “include Jews in their activism,” if they ever bothered to take the time to learn it in the first place. Not only are our calls for help and support being ignored at best, and twisted into something devious and conniving at worst, our request to be a part of other movements and other groups have been consistently and increasingly rejected. I’m going to provide a non-exhaustive list of what I’m talking about here.
- The Women’s March: Jewish women were pushed out of the organization by repeated antisemitism from leadership.
- Vandalisms, fires, and shootings of Jewish places of worship, kosher markets, and Israeli-owned businesses.
- Antisemitic boycotts of Israeli- or Jewish-owned businesses, like Manny’s in Valencia—a cafe run by a queer Jew and intended to be a progressive community space for the queer community and POC.
- Jews being turned away from the Chicago Dyke March in 2017 for bringing a Jewish Pride Flag
- The 2019 Dyke March in Washington DC banning Jewish stars as a nationalist symbol
- Widespread erasure/denial of the antisemitic nature of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida
- “No Zionists Welcome” included in signs and flyers for various Black Lives Matter marches
This list is incomplete both because I could go on for too many pages and because it is still growing. Not only is the progressive community ignoring our quite immediate need for support today, it has been ignoring our concerns about the way Jews are being pushed out of progressive spaces, organizations, and events. And now today, when we really need help, the question comes in: “Where have the Jews been, and why aren’t they helping other people?” That is the question that really hits me like a gut punch. We have been there. We, as a community, have always been there. But we are being forced to become more and more invisible and hidden when we are. We have been trying to be included since before it was about our own immediate safety, and have been repeatedly rejected and forced into hiding our identities in these spaces. We have been pushed into hiding in all progressive spaces, and then ignored because we aren’t visible in them.
It isn’t lost on me how many antisemitic tropes this situation brings into play, or how ready so many progressive people are to deny the fact that they could be influenced by thousands of years of bias and bigotry against the Jews. So I’m going to challenge you. Why are you so ready to assume that Jewish requests for inclusion are selfish? Why are you so ready to believe that Jews are absent from these movements when you don’t even know how to spot a Jewish person, or make one feel safe enough to let you know they are Jewish in the first place? Why are you so convinced that there is ill-intent behind our cries for help?
Could it be a preconceived notion of Jews as selfish that makes you erase our desires to show support for other communities? Could it be a bias that Jews are greedy and only out for themselves that makes it so easy to assume we haven’t been there all along? Could it be that you view Jews as having undue privilege, making it easier to erase the fact that we are being deliberately and forcibly removed from spaces that are not about protecting Jews, and those of us who aren’t leaving are being forced to hide?
One of the primary ways antisemitism shows up is in harmful double standards. So I’m going to ask you, why would you somehow be immune to the bias of antisemitism if you can see the ways you have been conditioned into racism, sexism, and ableism? Why does it seem impossible that you could hold those biases, biases that go back for millenia; biases that permeate all cultures, regions, and groups regardless of how much power or privilege they do or do not hold. What is it about antisemitism that makes you feel immune to it?
Jews are demonstrated as the worst version of the enemy. To the white supremacist, we are the puppet masters pulling the strings of all POC fighting for their humanity. In progressive circles, we are often seen as the ultimate and most evil white supremacists and colonizers. The Jews are targetted from both sides, both creating a conspiracy theory that places the Jews in a position of ultimate and undeniable power that needs to be squashed.
We all know that this is only going to change if we can finally unite against a common enemy. But at the end of the day, that common enemy is either going to be white supremacy or the Jews. The clock is ticking for us, and it is well past time to make a decision.
Balance Without Scales 