The progressive left's attempts to erase Jewish identity and history
"Jesus was a Palestinian"
In recent years, the identitarian progressive movement has shown a rising bias against Jews and Judaism, sometimes escalating into outright bigotry. This trend has led many politically left Jews to question their alignment with movements that increasingly demean and erase their Jewish identity and Jewish history.
The central factor in this shift is progressivism’s adoption of a binary “oppressor vs. oppressed” framework, which reduces complex and diverse peoples to simplistic stereotypes. This model has created strife and division within even traditionally left-leaning organizations, including the Democratic Party, schools and the Unitarian Universalist church. I attend a UU congregation and have seen how the rhetoric and characterizations described in this post has entered some UU spaces, including at my congregation.
Examples of Erasure of Jewish Identity and History
Characterizing Jews as “privileged white oppressors”
Critical race theory categorizes people by their race and ethnicity as either privileged oppressors (“white”) or oppressed victims (“BIPOC”). This simplistic framework ignores the unique, multifaceted nature of Jewish identity, which includes racial and ethnic complexity, and both significant historical achievements and enduring discrimination. It perpetuates age old antisemitic stereotypes.
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The slogan “Jesus was a Palestinian”
The progressive slogan “Jesus was a Palestinian” is both a historical anachronism and antisemitic. Jesus was a Jew born in Judea. Over a century after Jesus’ death and soon after the expulsion of the Jews that created the Jewish diaspora, the Romans renamed Judea Syrian Palestine to symbolically sever the ties between Jews and the land. The slogan “Jesus is a Palestinian” is an attempt to undermine Jesus’ Jewish identity, diminish Jewish historical ties to Isreal, and politically frame Israel as illegitimate.
Erasing Jewish History Will Not Help Palestinians - The Atlantic
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Attempting to delegitimize Israel and Zionism
Jews are Middle Eastern and Jews and Palestinians are indigenous to Israel. Israel, both as a nation and an idea, has been a central part of Jewish thought and culture for thousands of years. There were two previous Israeli nations, the first destroyed by the Babylonians and the second by the Romans. Following World War II and the Holocaust, it was re-established as a haven for Jews from across the world, including those expelled from Arab countries.
Legitimate criticism of and debate about the Israeli government and its policies, including concerning the Palestinians and the war, are natural. However, certain progressives attempt to outright deny Israel's right to exist and call Israeli Jews foreigners and colonizers.
Many identitarian progressives criticize Israel uniquely, without extending similar arguments to other nations. You don’t hear them questioning the legitimacy of countries such as Russia, China, or Iran. Those who call Hamas and Hezbollah "liberators” dismiss that these Iran-backed organizations’ charters explicitly call for the destruction of Israel and the killing of all Jews. They dismiss that Hamas uses Palestinian civilians as human shields, hides weapons in hospitals, schools and homes, and that Hamas encourages Palestinian civilian deaths as a way to promote a wider regional war.
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The exclusion of Zionist Jews from progressive spaces
Within progressive movements, there’s a growing trend to exclude Jews who support Isreal, especially on college campuses and within certain social justice circles. As the majority of Jews are Zionists, such exclusion is seen as an antisemitic discrimination.
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The impact on Jewish alignment with the left
This rhetoric and exclusion have alienated many Jews, including those who have long championed progressive causes and supported the Democratic Party.
Before the November 5, 2024, U.S. Presidential election— which saw Jewish, Latino, Black, Asian, women, and other minority voter groups increasingly shift toward the Republican Party—Nikki Fried, the Jewish Florida State Democratic Party chair and former Democratic gubernatorial candidate, told Jewish canvassers: “What has happened since then (October 7, 2023) in American politics has made a lot of our Jewish brothers and sisters start to question the Democratic Party.”
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To say nothing about the racist slaughter of innocent Palestinians haplessly living in an open air prison dominated by Israel.
I got booted off of X, probably for claining Netanyahu is generating the antisemitism Jews will inherit for generations. I wondered, if an evil Hamas fighter was hiding in the basement of a building occupied by Jewish families, would he similarly bring that building down to get him?
The semetic people, Jews and Palestinians, are hotheads stubbornly refusing to respect each other. Such endemic hostility between neighboring peoples are not unique to them alone, but championing one side while ignoring the other shows a lack of understanding and sympathy for their mutalized plight.
Pink Floyd sang it well, "Us and them, and after all, we're only ordinary men."