[Baltimore Sun] Let’s shine a light on racism wherever we find it | GUEST COMMENTARY
Read Time:4 Minute, 55 Second
One constant in the story of the Jewish people is the devastating impacts of antisemitism that throughout the ages and even today threatens our lives and sense of security. It is for this reason that liberal Jewish mythology includes admonitions to call out racism wherever we find it not only as a matter of human decency but out of enlightened self-interest. We recognize instinctively that racism is a precursor to ethnic hatred and violence. Elie Wiesel instructs that neutrality and silence favor the tormentor; Pastor Martin Niemoller warns of the slippery slope of intolerance; Edmund Burke tells us that evil triumphs when good people do nothing.
Yet so many who shine the light on racism when they are the objects of it from others are blind to the racism that emanates from within their own community, where it is dismissed, rationalized or ignored. Today in America, various forms of racism are ascendant in all communities.
The ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has resulted in an uptick in anti-Palestinian racism as well. This includes troubling instances of anti-Palestinian messaging and rhetoric from the Jewish-American community. This conflict has hardened the hearts of too many Jewish Americans.
I have witnessed such racism in innumerable face-to-face discussions with friends and family, where ignorance and fear of the “other” transform loving and tolerant people into purveyors of misinformation and hate.
The real marketplace of ideas in our time is social media. The sound-biting of complex and emotionally charged issues, mixed with fear and ignorance, creates a dangerous petri dish for intolerance and racism to grow. It is here that too many Jewish Americans have spread messaging laced with noxious and abject racism. While such narratives have been too common for too long within the Jewish-American community, these patterns are particularly troubling given the outsized impact that social media has on public discourse and, ultimately, on public policy.
Of course, other communities are likewise grappling with this phenomenon; I call out anti-Palestinian racism within the Jewish-American ecosystem not because it is more pervasive or severe than in other communities or because Jewish Americans should be held to a different or higher standard than anyone else, but because by virtue of social media algorithms and personal networks, I disproportionately see posts from within Jewish-American circles. I remain committed, and call on others likewise, to call out intolerance and racism where we see it.
It must be said that social media posts by Jewish Americans are as diverse as our community. Many posts seek to unify rather than polarize and convey hopes for peace for the Jewish community and humanity and thereby celebrate the best of Jewish values and culture. These often take the form of uplifting spiritual messages or music and dance that have been sources of great strength for the Jewish people over the centuries. These messages seek to preserve the light of our faith and community in uncertain and scary times.
But unfortunately, odious anti-Palestinian messaging proliferates too, laced with claims of ethnic superiority of Israelis and Jews over Palestinians and Muslims. These posts depart from a place of ethnic pride and venture into ethnocentric and racist hate.
Examples of such posts include: “Israelis have won more Nobel Prizes and Olympic gold medals than Palestinians” (read: Jews are smarter than and superior to Palestinians). A comic showing a man wearing a keffiyeh and waving a Palestinian flag with his head hinged open and his brains removed (read: Palestinians’ national identity and pride are dumb and invalid). “None of the Arab countries wanted Palestinians” (read: the Palestinian people are the “trash” of the Arab world and undeserving of sympathy and basic human rights). “Following Oct. 7, all Israeli action in response is justified” (read: Palestinian civilian lives are worth less than those of others).
Sadly, there are countless more examples like these larding my social media feed and surely those of tens of thousands of others.
These posts echo the messaging long championed by white racists to indict African Americans and other communities of color — they earn lower incomes, have lower representation in higher education, are more prone to violence and have higher incarceration rates. This decontextualized rhetoric seeks to prove the supposed superiority of white people, just as the posts described above seek to prove the superiority of Israelis and Jews over Palestinians and Muslims. Of course, these narratives, often masquerading as facts, are blatantly incorrect and ignore the shameful root causes of systemic racism and historic and ongoing mistreatment that provides the means for disparities to exist.
Again, other communities are undoubtedly polluted by similar messaging directed at Jews or other marginalized groups. Members of their communities should stand firm against such messaging and seek to rout it out. Likewise, the Jewish-American community should work to excise such messaging from within its midst, just as we raise alarms when similar messaging, directed at us, emanates from other communities. If you have generated, liked or otherwise shared such messaging, I implore you to do and be better. Go back and delete these hateful messages. Do your part in repairing the world.
Jews — one of the most vilified people throughout history — have long been at the receiving end of racism and violence. Bigoted ideas have rationalized real-world persecution resulting in profound suffering. It is because of this shared history that we, as Jews, must remain ever vigilant to the corrosive impact of racist ideas and the harm that can result, and work to eradicate it from our midst.
DJ Rosenthal (@DJRosenthal1) is a fellow with the National Security Institute at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School. He served as director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council in the Obama White House and as senior counsel to the assistant attorney general for national security at the Department of Justice.
Happy
0 %
Sad
0 %
Excited
0 %
Sleepy
0 %
Angry
0 %
Surprise
0 %
0
0