Remember when the Tea Party movement that formed under President Barack Obama was maligned as a racist haven for white supremacy by many of the same people who are now studiously avoiding a discussion of the rampant antisemitism in their midst?
In principle, it is possible to be a supporter of Palestine without being an antisemite. One can certainly sympathize with the plight of a people who have been used as pawns by rival powers for decades, who were suffering from an unemployment rate around 70% even prior to Israel’s invasion, who’s own leadership in Hamas steals their aid money to fund military operations and uses them as human shields, among many another atrocity. One can also question whether Israel is taking significant precautions to preserve innocent life while believing their ultimate goal of destroying Hamas is just. One might even go so far as to suggest there might be a peaceful political settlement out there somewhere and that Israel’s current military goals are misguided. Personally, I might disagree with these positions or similar ones, but disagreement is not necessarily a bad thing, indeed it can be a good thing, helping to identify better options and solutions than otherwise – if people are making their arguments and supporting their opinions in good faith. Good faith is, of course, a difficult thing to define. We tend to know it when we see it, trusting those whose opinions align with ours and discounting those who do not. Generally speaking, the higher the stakes of the debate, the more difficult it becomes to extend good faith to the opposing side, and few stakes are higher than the life or death decisions made during a war. This shouldn’t imply that the cause is lost or there are not things that would be helpful in this regard. Good faith, after all, is built on trust, the belief that the person you disagree with is an honest broker. Sadly, trust is also in short supply, but at least, it’s pretty easy to understand why when you consider recent history of our political debates, when the Tea Party movement that formed under President Barack Obama was maligned as a racist haven for white supremacy by many of the same people who are now studiously avoiding a discussion of the rampant antisemitism in their midst.
The near infinite number of headlines and proclamations about racism in the Tea Party are still online to this day, wherein a couple of minor incidents, some of them completely fake, were used to denigrate an entire segment of peaceful Americans concerned about their economic future because the United States was mired in high taxes and debt. (Sound familiar?) At the time, the progressive explainer website Vox.com opined “How Southern racism found a home in the Tea Party. The likewise progressive Huffington Post declared that Republicans threw “gasoline on the racist kindling they’ve nurtured for decades.” The Guardian summarized a report that “links [the] Tea Party movement to white supremacists.” The Washington Post bemoaned, “Arkansas racism, tea-party style.” Even the federal government and the academic world got involved. The National Institutes of Health published “Anti-minority attitudes and Tea Party movement membership” and discussed how “The South Has Risen Again” while Stanford’s Graduate School of business covered “How Racial Threat Has Galvanized the Tea Party.” Perhaps no one summarized these disparate threads better than the NAACP. In a formal resolution, the organization claimed the Tea Party regularly displays “signs and posters intended to degrade people of color,” cited a completely false story that someone at an event hurled “racial epithets and verbally and physically abuse[d] African American congressman and others,” and that “Tea Party leaders and spokespersons have apologized for and encouraged such racist behavior rather than fully repudiating it” while “hard core white supremacists have participated and on occasion lead Tea Party protests, all while searching for recruits in the fertile racist milieu of the Tea Party movement.” Further, they described the movement as a “threat to the pursuit of human rights, justice, and equality for all,” resolving “that the NAACP will educate its membership and the community that this movement is not just about higher taxes and limited government, but something that could evolve and become more dangerous for that small percentage of people who really think our country has been taken away from them; and BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED, that the NAACP call upon tea party leaders and all people of good will to specifically but not limited to all political parties and human rights organizations to publicly and privately repudiate the racism within the Tea Party, and to stand in opposition to its drive to push our country back to the pre-civil rights era.”
Wouldn’t a statement like that in regards to antisemitism at pro-Palestinian protests be helpful today? Somehow, however, the majority of these same voices are completely silent despite more overt, vulgar, and dare one say proud antisemitism than I, for one, ever thought possible in the modern era. Pick a pro-Palestinian protest, any protest, and there will undoubtedly be a contingent hurling screaming epithets in public and openly calling for genocide in ways that shock the conscience, likely some bearing swastikas and other Nazi imagery. Last weekend in both New York City and Philadelphia, a mob chanted “there is only one solution, Intifada revolution” calling on Muslims to slaughter Jews en mass. Previously in New York City, a Jewish man walked by one of these protests and was openly called a “Nazi,” a “kike,” and a “Jew piece of shit.” Also in Philadelphia, a restaurant was mobbed and targeted simply because the owner was Jewish, the crowd chanting “Goldie, Goldie, you can’t hide.” In Europe, there have been protests complete with chants of “Death to Israel” and “Kill all Jews.” Meanwhile, an academic community that spent hours on end seeking every possible sign of racism in the Tea Party movement, including some that were so hard to find they had to call them “dog whistles,” now openly embraces Hamas and their desire to destroy the Jewish state of Israel. At the University of North Carolina, Dr. Rania Masri claimed “October 7th for many of us from the region was a beautiful day” at a “No peace without justice roundtable talk on social justice in Palestine” that offered “free pizza for attendees.” Russell Rickford, of Cornell, went from claiming he was exhilarated and energized by the wanton slaughter, rape, and mutilation of 1,200 to 1,400 mostly Jewish people to claiming Black Lives Matter needs to form “insurgent, international alliances” with Palestinian groups to incite a “popular revolt” against both white Americans and Israel – actually, he was saying that as early as 2021, but that only strengthens the point. For its part, the NAACP that was so busy attacking the Tea Party and calling on everyone to condemn it, doesn’t seem to have found the time or the energy to condemn rampant antisemitism or resolve to combat it. Instead, they have called for some vague definition of peace in the Middle East. “We know that hate anywhere is a threat to safety everywhere. Black America has, and will continue to stand in solidarity with the communities grieving innumerable loss, both in the Middle East and right here in the United States,” insisted President Derrick Johnson in a statement widely interpreted as calling for an end to Israel’s response to Hamas’ unprovoked attack. “The NAACP urges our global leaders to reach an agreement that respects all people’s right to peace and security,” he said while not calling out violent antisemitism that resulted in women’s breasts being cut off. “We will not stop fighting for a world where we are all able to live free from the evils of hatred and violence,” the statement added even more vaguely.
Overall, the contrast between the treatment of the pro-Palestinian movement and the Tea Party could not be more striking or disturbing, nor could the cause of the difference be more blindingly obvious. The Tea Party was largely composed of Republicans and seen as a threat to the progressive program in general and the Obama Presidency in particular. Therefore, it needed to be smeared as racist in the hopes that anything it claimed would be tainted in the eyes of the public, merely the rantings of deranged Nazi-fringe members. On the other hand, the recent rise of pro-Palestinian protests has been driven entirely by progressives, who Democrats, the mainstream media, and aligned organizations like the NAACP believe are their allies, necessary to advance their political goals. Therefore, the rankest racism and dialectal hatred of Jews must be downplayed at best or denied entirely at worst. There will be no academic studies on the percentage of attendees at these protests who might be hardcore antisemites hoping to see Israel completely destroyed, if not the Jewish people wiped out. There will be no resolutions from the NAACP seeking to educate the populace about the potential for rampant racism at these protests, much less asking everyone, everywhere to condemn it as they did in recent history. There will be nothing of the sort from anyone (or mostly anyone given the surprising turns by Senator Jon Fetterman and not-so-surprising from Majority Leader Chuck Schumer) allied with these groups because that might well hurt them politically. Even if you think it’s the truth and know it’s the right thing, it’s not easy to condemn people who advance your policy goals and electoral prospects as racists, much less demand they change their ways or no longer be welcome in the movement. In other words, progressives who profess to support Palestine while abhorring racism and antisemitism aren’t acting in good faith. They were quick to point out – or at times even make up – what they perceived as racism to denigrate an entire movement that was self-evidently composed of mostly concerned citizens for purely political purposes. Now, they are silent when a much more virulent and overt form of the same phenomenon is present in their own ranks, also for purely political purposes.
Is it any wonder conservatives like myself who generally support Israel’s war against Hamas don’t trust them? Of course, this question could be resolved quickly if the pro-Palestine yet anti-Hamas contingent rectified this double standard and forcibly condemned antisemitism in their own ranks, even if it might cost them politically at some point in the future. Doing so might actually save lives in Palestine by engaging in a more far reaching debate and recommending solutions that limit civilian casualties. The cynic in me, however, doesn’t believe that will happen anytime soon, at least if a recent vote in Congress and the behavior of the progressive “Squad” are any indication. Yesterday, three Democrat House members voted ‘no” and another 92 voted “present” on a resolution “[s]trongly condemning and denouncing the drastic rise of antisemitism in the United States and around the world” likely because it also contained the phrase “clearly and firmly states that anti-Zionism is antisemitism.” This past Sunday, Representative Pramila Jayapal couldn’t devote an entire answer to condemning Hamas sexual violence during an interview with CNN. To her credit, the host, Dana Bash, pressed her on why condemnations of sexual violence on behalf of Hamas have been slow to come from her side of the aisle, if they have come at all. No matter what Ms. Bash said, however, Representative Jayapal couldn’t stop herself from immediately turning back to Israel’s actions. “I think we always talk about the impact of war on women in particular…I’ve condemned what Hamas has done. I’ve condemned the actions absolutely — the rape, of course,” she said before changing focus. “Morally, I think we cannot say that one war crime deserves another. That is not what international humanitarian law says.” “With respect, I was just asking you about the women and you turned it back to Israel. I’m asking you about Hamas,” Ms. Bash countered. “I already answered your question, Dana,” Representative Jayapal replied in what The New York Post described as a heated exchange. “I said it’s horrific and I think that rape is horrific. Sexual assault is horrific. I think that it happens in war situations, terrorist organizations like Hamas are using these as tools.” Setting aside that Israel has been in a “war situation” for weeks without a single report of an Israeli soldier performing necrophilia on a dead Palestinian, Representative Jayapal returned to the outrages of Israel itself. “However, I think we have to be balanced about bringing in the outrages against Palestinians,” she added while citing the colossal death toll in Gaza, a death toll sourced by Hamas that even her own President Joe Biden said cannot be trusted. Ms. Bash interjected yet again, acknowledging her point, calling mass casualties “horrible,” but trying to recenter the conversation. “Well, Dana…I don’t want this to be the hierarchy of oppression.” Representative Jayapal likely didn’t intend it this way, but that just about says it all. Intersectionality implicitly leads to hate.
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 