For The Left, ‘Antisemitism’ Is Little More Than A Partisan Talking Point

“Jews are thriving in America, and even with the violent resurgence of antisemitism in the Trump era, I’ve rarely felt personally threatened, perhaps a function of my privilege,” writes New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg in a piece headlined “Antisemitism’s March Into the Mainstream.”

It must be privilege, then, that explains how a New Yorker could write an entire column in a New York paper about the resurgence of antisemitism during the “Trump era” without once noting what was going on in her hometown. As Amir Rosen detailed only a few months ago, there have been hundreds of violent attacks targeting Jews in New York since 2018, “many of them documented on camera, [and] only a single perpetrator has served even one day in prison.” Of course, mentioning that the culprits of anti-Jewish violence are predominantly black or Hispanic, and live in one of the nation’s most left-wing cities, would necessitate acknowledging that antisemitism can’t be neatly laid at the feet of Republicans. That is inconvenient, no doubt.

“For most of my adult life, antisemites — with exceptions like Pat Buchanan and Mel Gibson — have lacked status in America,” Goldberg writes. Really? Al Sharpton, kingmaker and presidential “go-to man,” must have slipped Goldberg’s mind, even though she is a regular guest on his MSNBC program. Time does not erase the fact that this man spearheaded riots and fueled insidious antisemitism and racism that resulted in Jews and others being killed. Has Goldberg ever asked Sharpton to explain his views on “diamond merchants” of Crown Heights – where, as it happens, a Jewish man was brutally beaten just this summer? Perhaps her privilege has shielded her from that history, as well.

Now, of course, simply because the liberal establishment embraces Sharpton — or Barack Obama’s mentor was a notorious Jew-hater, or a smiling Nancy Pelosi posed on magazine covers with a woman who says Jews can hypnotize the world for “evil,” or the Nation of Islam’s bigotry is rationalized in the august pages of The Atlantic, or anti-“Zionists” attack Hillel buildings on college campuses — does not excuse Trump’s meeting with Ye X and Opie Himmler. Either the former president doesn’t care who he has dinner with, or he does care, or he doesn’t know – none of which are good options. Why anyone would want to go another four years dealing with that circus is beyond me.

For every Paul Gosar, though, there is an Ilhan Omar. For every Marjorie Taylor Greene there is a Rashida Tlaib … and a Maxine Waters, who has no problem hanging out with the leader of the Nation of Islam, and a Danny Davis, who is a member of the powerful Ways and Means Committee and who maintains that the religious leader who called Hitler a “very great man” and compared Jews to “termites,” was an “outstanding human being.” It is not happenstance that the leadership of the once-celebrated Women’s March — organizers of the largest one-day protest in American history —

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