How Progressives Belittle Violence Against Jews

The conversation about Jews and “privilege” is finally upon us. Anti-Semitism in word and deed has been increasing in frequency and intensity for over a decade. That’s been true especially in Europe, and recently the problem there has become acute. The war last summer in Gaza stirred more than the usual amount of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish unrest and led some to draw comparisons to the European 1930s. In turn, the coverage of this terrible phenomenon has stirred voices of skepticism, many belonging to self-identified “progressives”—for whom “Jewish privilege” is more likely to be identified as a harm than anti-Jewish prejudice.

To take an example, the campus radical and writer Freddie deBoer pilloried Conor Friedersdorf for a piece in The Atlantic that considered Jewish flight from increasingly hostile conditions in Europe. DeBoer, in turn: mocked the notion of rising anti-Semitism in Europe; implied that it wasn’t real; called for a higher evidentiary standard to prove it; downplayed it as a mere epiphenomenon of American foreign policy; and defocused Jews while centering Muslims as authentic victims of racism. His series of reactions—a sort of five stages of anti-Semitism denial—is worth examining and understanding, particularly as it relates to racism and the concept of “privilege.”

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From Tablet Magazine