A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand

A Plea

I have a friend who bends over backwards to excuse the antisemitism on the right as just a fringe element while insisting that Conservative movement is entirely on the side of Israel.

I have a friend who bends over backwards to excuse the antisemitism on the left as just a fringe element while insisting that the Progressive movement is the only political home for Jews of good conscience.

My friend on the right gets exasperated by me when I express my horror at many of the policies of the current administration and suggests that any criticism I level makes me a bad Jew, because we must support Trump if we want him to support Israel in this critical moment.

My friend on the left gets exasperated by me when I express my anger and dismay at the way the Progressive movement has allowed itself to become a shill for the mullahs and their lackeys, insisting that I’m a bad Jew if I can’t make coalition with my enemies in the service of furthering human rights for all.

Often, one of the other stops speaking to me for a while, and more rarely, something I say will make them both stop speaking to me at the same time.

Substack is full of newsletters that are just Jews on the right yelling at Jews on the left and vice versa.

Two notable publications out in the last few days make it clear that we ignore antisemitism on either end of the political spectrum at our peril.

The first, from the New York Times (gift link), provides this startling revelation:

The United States is experiencing its worst surge of anti-Jewish hate in many decades. Antisemitic hate crimes more than doubled between 2021 and 2023, according to the F.B.I., and appear to have risen further in 2024. On a per capita basis, Jews face far greater risks of being victims of hate crimes than members of any other demographic groups.

The second, for those of you rushing to assume these numbers come exclusively from the rise in pro-Hamas sentiments among progressives, comes from the National Review:

It may be easy to disregard such online-right opinions as fringe, but their millions of followers and the billions of views (emphasis mine) they receive suggest otherwise. Nick Fuentes said “this is the final battle in Israel’s 50 year reign of terror to destabilize & destroy every country that resists their rule.” Candace Owens called Israel’s “bloodlust” demonic. Matt Stoller doesn’t think Israel’s “bloodthirsty insanity” should be “our problem.” Crisis magazine’s Eric Sammons doesn’t think Catholics can support Israel’s attack on Iran. UFC fighter and podcaster Jake Shields is “sick and tired of paying for and fighting Jewish wars” and demanded the destruction of Israel. Dan Bilzerian said, “These jews (sic) just can’t help themselves, they attack Iran unprovoked, and they’ll be crying about how they don’t feel safe by morning,” adding, “If I was the president, I would round up every politician supporting Israel and have them all tried for treason.” These are just a few.

If you’ve run to the certainty of an American political identity on the far right or the far left because you thought it provided a safe and even welcoming space for us as Jews… well, you’ve been misled. Both movements foment rabid, dangerous antisemitism.

As someone does in every conversation about this I’ve had, I’d like to bastardize the old Stealer’s Wheel song:

Hamasniks to the left of me,
White Nationalists to the right…
Here I am, stuck in the middle with Jews.

I’m inviting you, friends, if you’ve found yourself on one of these fringes, to pay attention to what their own communities are saying about them in the above reportage. (NYT clearly leans Progressive, and the National Review was long the voice most respected of the pre-Trump Conservative movement.) Ask yourself how you can make common cause with people who peddle in blood libel. Then, come back to where we used to be politically: people who considered each issue on its merits, not as members of this or that tribe defending anything that “our side” said or did. We are already members of a tribe, after all, and it isn’t one with a singular political view.