An ‘Acceptable’ Bigotry: The Rise of Anti-Semitism
It’s no secret that to the left, anti-Semitism has become an acceptable form of racism. David Baddiel is totally correct (“Blaming the Jews,” PostScript, Sept. 19).
In front of my synagogue, there are police cars and five armed security personnel checking everyone’s packages.
In front of Jewish preschools and day schools in the United States, there is heavily armed security as well.
According to the US Commission on Civil Rights, from May of 2020 to May 2021, attacks on Jews increased 115 percent. In fact, social media allows more than 80 percent of anti-Semitic posts to remain online, according to BBC news.
Where is the outrage? Where are the decent, moral-minded elected officials? Are they cowering in fear that they will be canceled by the left and media? Jacob Levine
Long Beach, NJ
The ancient anti-Jewish tropes that Baddiel objects to are reflected just as much in the double standards that progressive and other anti-Semites blithely apply to Israel, and it’s far past time he (and supposedly wellintentioned leftists) recognize that.
And they should stop, when objecting to antiSemitism, making their obligatory nods toward the “plight of Palestinians,” as Baddiel does.
Baddiel, do you do the same when you object to any other expression of racism?
Daniel R. Benson
Manhattan
Though well-meaning, Baddiel’s article misses the point. The obsessive criticism of the Jewish state is the current prevalent form of anti-Semitism.
Anti-Semitism is a malignancy that always finds a new medium to flourish in, tailored to the orthodoxies of the time.
Today’s most virulent incarnation of Jew-hatred is accomplished by slapping contemporary social-justice concepts (“colonialism,” “occupation,” “oppression,” etc.) on a democratic nation trying to defend itself in its ancestral homeland from extremist governments and groups that seek to destroy it.
When opponents of anti-Semitism try to disassociate criticism of Israel from Jew-hatred, they play right into the hands of today’s most dangerous anti-Semites.
Elliot Press Bergenfield,NJ
The progressives claim that “intersectionality” means all people who have suffered from discrimination should stand together and support each other.
Yet, in practice, intersectionality has come to mean the requirement that all “good people” must adopt a certain set of beliefs, one of which is that Israel is oppressing the Palestinians.
The bottom line is that many people who claim they are protesting Israeli policies are, in fact, protesting what Israel is — the nation-state of the Jews.
Anyone who really wants to see the lot of Palestinians improved should be urging the Palestinian leaders to stop attempting to destroy Israel and to start working to build a state in which their people could become productive citizens living peacefully beside the Jewish state.
Toby Block
Atlanta, Ga.
Baddiel’s “Blaming the Jews” forcefully denounces the almost irresistible and well-established inclinations to blame the Jews themselves for anti-Semitism (which is victim-shaming), especially during the most recent Hamas-Israel war. This is all emanating from the progressive left.
Unsaid, however, is the vast number of progressive Jews who willingly joined in the criticism of their brethren in Israel.
Baddiel could have devoted some words to correctly blaming Hamas and the Palestinians for their own self-destructive patterns.
Samuel Frazer Fort Myers, Fla.
Don’t let the rhetoric of the left fool you — mainly that the right is racist and the left is saintly.
The left vilifies any race, color or creed if it doesn’t follow the left’s narrative. We saw it with Larry Elder and Dr. Ben Carson, to name two.
And Twitter is full of “blue check mark” progressives venting against Jews. The left is not your friend. Charlie Honadel
Venice, Fla.