How Antisemites Hijack Progressive Causes on Campus
By Benjamin Harari, 2020–2021 CAMERA Fellow at the University of Nottingham
This year the world is changing, and great calls for social and political reform have been heard everywhere. After the murder of George Floyd, the strongest calls were for equality for the Black community, inspiring many other groups to join the fight. Unfortunately, some have tried to hijack this momentum for their agenda. Anti-Zionist groups have attempted to tie these popular causes to their own, blaming many of the world’s problems on the only Jewish state. These groups shoehorn anti-Zionism into progressive causes to exclude Zionists, which most Jews identify as — it being the Jewish national liberation movement for self-determination in the Jewish ancestral homeland. This tactic is a blatant attempt by anti-Zionists to label Israel as an inherently racist, illegitimate and temporary state.
In June for example, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign attempted to blame racist police brutality in the USA and by extension the death of George Floyd on Israel. According to the PSC website, a ‘deadly exchange’ exists between Israel and America to ‘reinforce practices of surveillance of public space, racial profiling and the excessive use of force’. In reality, Israeli emergency services train their counterparts all over the world in how to deal with mass casualty incidents and terrorist threats. It’s no surprise considering how familiar Israel is with these kinds of threats. There is no technique used by Israeli police to kneel on the necks of those being arrested, and police brutality obviously did not originate in Israel. The mere suggestion that Israel is behind racial profiling in America ignores all government-sanctioned racism in the USA before 1948 and reinforces antisemitic tropes concerning international control. PSC’s statement goes on to address this and clarify that this isn’t the case, but still erroneously condemns Israel as a guilty party.
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