How to fight the American pogrom
American Jews are faced with a campaign of hate and violence spearheaded by Muslim-Americans and progressive activists. Here’s a six-point plan for defeating it.
I recently wrote about Rep. Rashida Tlaib and her “Nakba” resolution as the latest step in a years-long campaign by Muslim and leftist activists to institutionalize antisemitism in American politics, a campaign that has also involved violence against Jews across the United States. It is a pogrom. A pogrom pursued at all levels of society by infinite means—political, social, cultural, and physical.
Since then, I have received multiple queries from American Jews, all of them with one question: “What can we do?” They know there is a problem, and a serious one, but have no idea how to deal with it.
I can only offer some modest suggestions, which constitute something like a six-point plan:
1. The immediate formation of a national defense organization that will secure Jewish institutions, Jewish businesses, Jewish property, and, most importantly, the Jewish body itself against attack. It should do so in obvious ways, such as providing security for Jews and Jewish sites, but also through a proactive strategy—such as gathering intelligence on radical mosques and anti-Zionist hate groups—in order to preempt attacks and create deterrence.
2. The Jewish community should begin to assert its rights as a “protected group” under the 1964 Civil Rights Act. This status was won, at long last, in 2018, but has yet to be fully and effectively exploited. While there are some promising attempts to do so by various smaller groups, establishment organizations like the ADL must begin to do so as well. In particular, they must direct their efforts against the Muslim and progressive pogromists they have thus far been tragically reluctant to fight. For example, lawsuits should be brought against hate groups like CAIR and Students for Justice in Palestine, who have thus far been given carte blanche to incite antisemitic violence.
3. The process of replacing the American Jewish establishment should begin now. The current establishment’s leaders have failed miserably at their sole task of defending the Jewish community against antisemitism. The mere existence of the pogrom is proof of this. As the great Zionist poet Haim Nahman Bialik once said, “They stood not firm upon the day of wrath.” Accordingly, they must step aside in favor of a younger and more dynamic generation. Fortunately, there are excellent potential replacements in the form of new organizations like Zioness, Students Supporting Israel, and StandWithUs, as well as a plethora of new media activists. The sooner they take the reins of leadership the better. If the current establishment is unwilling to begin the process of ceding power, they should be forced to.
4. American Jews must take to the streets. Mass protests should be organized and become a regular occurrence whenever and wherever pogromist groups are active. This must include previously unused tactics like protesting radical mosques, anti-Zionist events, and the political, academic and cultural institutions that collaborate with the pogromists. Fortunately, there is an excellent model for such activism in the successful movement by British Jews to counter and finally defeat the forces of Corbynism in the Labour party. American Jews should foster ties with their British brothers and sisters in order to learn how to emulate their tactics.
5. Study the rhetoric of anti-Zionist progressives and use it against them. Progressive pogromists couch their hatred in the universalist language of anti-racism, and while this is effective as emotional blackmail, it also discredits them. To be genuinely anti-racist, for example, one must be outraged by the antisemitic violence committed by Muslim-American pogromists in May 2021. Yet progressives have been all but completely silent on the subject. To point out such things in the progressives’ own language underlines their hypocrisy, discredits their absurd moral pretensions, and destroys the legitimacy they have been undeservedly granted.
6. Perhaps above all, American Jews must unite. There are obviously deep political and ideological divisions with the American Jewish community over innumerable issues, including Israel, but the pogrom targets all of them except a fringe of quislings and collaborators. Despite everything, I do not think that the overwhelming majority of American Jews have internalized the lies, defamation, and violence of the pogromists. They must understand, however, that the pogrom does not discriminate. It is united in its hatred of American Jews, and thus American Jews must put their differences aside and unite in their resistance to it.
These are all, as I have said, merely suggestions. The Jews are a disputatious people, and the search for an answer to a question as weighted as “what can we do?” is likely to be disputatious as well. But the search has, thus far, barely begun, and this is no longer acceptable. An answer to the question must be found.
As the sage put it: “The day is short, the work multiplies, the workers are lazy, the reward is great, and the master of the house is impatient.” The day is indeed short, and it is a day of wrath. American Jews must stand firm upon it.
Photo by Ted Eytan.