New York Times: Fighting Antisemitism is Bad for the Jews

At least when it’s leftist antisemitism.

In surprising news, the newspaper that published a list of Jewish members of Congress with yellow marks over their names during the Iran Deal vote (not in 1939 but in 2015) thinks fighting antisemitism is a bad idea.

Or at least leftist antisemitism and antisemitism from its Islamist allies.

The Times promotional headline for its op-ed by Wesleyan president Michael S. Roth is ‘Trump’s Crusade Against Antisemitism Is Extremely Bad for the Jews’. The op-ed on the site has the slightly less ironic title ‘Trump Is Selling Jews a Dangerous Lie’.

I said slightly less ironic because as “the first Jewish president of a formerly Methodist university”, Roth is the one selling Jews a dangerous lie.

Roth defends Hamas supporters who terrorized campuses and called for the murder of Jews as activists and graduates. His argument basically boils down to “First they came for the antisemites, then they came for the Jews.”

“Abductions by government agents; unexplained, indefinite detentions; the targeting of allegedly dangerous ideas; lists of those under government scrutiny; official proclamations full of bluster and bile — Jews have been here before, many times, and it does not end well for us,” Roth contends.

There’s a number of problems here, but the most obvious one is that they already came for the Jews.

Threatening the Jews that they’ll be next after the Hamas supporters is a lot like saying, “First they came for the Nazis, then they came for the Jews”. The Nazis are a bigger threat than whoever they undefined ‘they’ are.

Rather than address antisemitism on the Left and on campus, Roth throws in Candace Owens (described as a Trump supporter even though she turned on him a while back), Nick Fuentes (ditto) Andrew Tate, and even Elise Stefanik, misattributes and misquotes multiple conservative figures, and wrongly insists “Shalom Columbia” is derogatory toward Jews.

And much of the op-ed is spent insisting that the handful of Jewish people who oppose Israel are equivalent to those who support it thereby actually doing what he wrongly accuses Trump of doing in Charlottesville, insisting on bothsideism.

Roth virtually offers no examples of leftist antisemitism, especially on campuses, that might have occasioned Jews to feel that “there is a great temptation for Jews to embrace anyone who denounces antisemitism, regardless of the moral contradictions.” Is he too unwilling or too afraid to do so?

“In the second and first century B.C., the Jewish kingdom of Judea aligned itself with Rome to protect itself from the domination of Greek culture. Rome obliged, and conquered Judea for itself,” Roth concludes. That’s bad history, but worse still, Roth is missing the point. He means it as a critique of Jews supporting Trump, but he might consider what if it’s really a critique of Jews supporting the Left?

AUTHOR

Daniel Greenfield

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