Human Rights Include Jewish Rights
This week for the second time this summer, the Holocaust Memorial in Boston was smashed to pieces. Anti-Semitism is alive and well in America and all over the world. In Charlottesville, some of the popular chants and banners included “the Jews will not replace us,” “the Jews are gassing us,” “Jews are Satan’s children,” and various Hitler quotes.
And yet, in the majority of the articles and facebook posts I’ve seen condemning the Nazi march in Charlottesville, writers discussed POC as the only targets of the march and did not mention Jews once. Just one of many examples can be found in an article written by popular writer and anthropology professor Rosemary Joyce; she paraphrased the Nazi chant “the Jews will not replace us” to “we will not be replaced” and did not mention Jews once in this lengthly piece about the events in Charlottesville.
And Jews aren’t only being left out of discussions about the events in Charlottesville. Jews are being left out of discussions about terrorist attacks against Jews as well. Yesterday in Barcelona, 13 people were killed in a van attack and more than 80 were injured. While this event has been heavily reported, what most news sources haven’t stated is that not only did the van attack occur in front of a kosher deli, but suspected perpetrator Driss Oukabir had a long history of anti-Semitism rants and facebook posts. Additionally, ISIS, the terrorist organization the perpetrator is most likely associated with, is known to promote anti-Semitic narratives and target Jews. Given this damning information, why is it that only Jewish news sources are reporting the connection between the Barcelona attack and anti-Semitism? Similarly, why is it that only Jewish news sources are reporting the connection between the march in Charlottesville and anti-Semitism? Simple. Because it seems that these days, the only group of people who care about the Jews are the Jews themselves.
Nazis must be stopped. For Jews, for POC, for LGBT+ people, for every single person in every single group they target. But when we’re discussing Nazis (a movement we must not forget was LITERALLY CREATED to commit genocide against the Jewish people), Jews must not be left out the equation.
A few days ago, I saw a post from a Jewish woman who posted a picture of herself in front of a sign that said “Punch all Nazis” on a meme page. The admin of this group called her, a JEWISH WOMAN, out for “performative allyship” to POC as if Nazis only target people of color. When the Jewish woman reiterated that she was Jewish and explained her family history of violence at the hands of Nazis, the admin responded by saying “I get that but with everything happening in Virginia it is not the appropriate time nor thing to post at this moment. This is not up for discussion.” (screenshots below)
I’m angry. I’m not only angry at Nazis for targeting a whole bunch of decent people, but I’m angry that anti-Semitism is still rampant on both the left and the right. As someone who considers herself to be on the left, I’m so tired of the casual anti-Semitism in the social justice movement, but what’s even worse is that I know that it’s still better than the anti-Semitism on the right.
The time has come to fight for human rights wherever they are concerned, but human rights include Jewish rights.
