10 | JUNE 2 • 2022
opinion
The Emergence of Congress’
Progressive Pogrom Caucus
A
prominent editor of
a Jewish publication
once pointed out to
me that the United States had
never seen the emergence
of mainstream and
institutionalized
antisemitic
politics. My
response was
simple: Not
yet. A few
months ago,
he wrote me
and said that
— unhappily — I had been
proven right.
I take no pleasure in being
right, but there is also no
sense in denying it. It is clear
that antisemitism in the
United States has become
a social movement that is
swiftly metastasizing into
mainstream institutional
politics. It has captured
large sections of the
Democratic Party, especially
its progressive wing, and
essentially taken over
America’s institutions
of higher learning. It is
ubiquitous in the activism
that drives left-wing politics
in the U.S. And it has now
entered Congress, the citadel
of American democracy
itself.
The entrance of
systemic antisemitism into
mainstream national politics
marked a milestone when,
on May 16, Rep. Rashida
Tlaib (D-Mich.) introduced a
House resolution demanding
official recognition of the
nakba — a term used to
lament the Arabs’ failure to
commit genocide against the
Jewish population of then-
Palestine in 1947-48.
The resolution is too long
for a full accounting here,
but suffice it to say that it
is an entirely predictable
but nonetheless remarkable
document. It is predictable
in that it parrots almost
word-for-word the rhetoric
of hardline Palestinian
nationalism — it is closer to
Hamas than the Palestinian
Authority — but also
remarkable in its honesty.
In particular, it openly
advocates the destruction
of Israel as a Jewish state
via the Palestinian “right
of return.” It asserts
that international law
“recognizes that descendants
of refugees retain their
rights as refugees;” that “a
just and lasting resolution
requires respect for and the
implementation of Palestine
refugee rights;” and demands
that the United States
“support the implementation
of Palestinian refugees’
rights.”
What this means, beyond
the polite euphemisms
and sophistic use of the
vocabulary of progressivism,
is quite simple: Millions of
refugees must be returned
to the territory of the
State of Israel, rendering
its Jewish population a
demographic minority and
swiftly turning it into a
Palestinian supremacist state.
It means, in other words, the
realization of the Palestinian
national movement’s most
treasured ambition: to rid
the fatherland of the Jews, or
at least reduce them to the
second-class status to which
Islam has always relegated
them.
The resolution, in other
words, reeks of racism and
hate of a type that, if targeted
at any other people, would
be grounds for censure and
expulsion from the House.
Indeed, as the PLO’s
Charter once said of
Zionism, Tlaib’s resolution is
“antagonistic to all action for
liberation and to progressive
movements in the world.
It is racist and fanatic
in its nature, aggressive,
expansionist and colonial
in its aims, and fascist in its
methods.”
SYSTEMIC ANTISEMITISM
This is morally horrendous in
and of itself. But perhaps more
important is what it means
for American Jews. It means,
one regrets to say, nothing less
than the first step toward the
institutionalization of systemic
antisemitism in the American
political establishment.
This is proven by the fact
that Tlaib was by no means
alone in introducing her
resolution. It has a host of
co-sponsors: Alexandria
Ocasio Cortez (D-N.Y.),
Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Betty
McCollum (D-Minn.), Marie
Newman (D-Ill.), Jamaal
Bowman (D-N.Y.) and Cori
Bush (D-Mo.). They are
all progressives in good
standing, with substantial
influence in the Democratic
Party, and at their core lies
“the Squad”—the group of
hard-left congresspeople
consisting of Ocasio-
Cortez, Omar, Pressley,
Tlaib, Bowman and Bush.
Tlaib’s resolution, in other
words, is not the ranting of
a lone racist, but the mutual
expression of an entire
caucus.
This caucus is the result
of a years-long campaign
by antisemitic activists and
organizations to burrow
deep into the American
establishment. Groups like
CAIR, IfNotNow, Students
for Justice in Palestine,
Jewish Voice for Peace,
American Muslims for
Palestine and numerous
others have been on a long
march of slander, defamation
and demonization directed
at Israel, its American
supporters and indeed all
American Jews. It seeks to
break their spirits, intimidate
them into silence and exile
them to the apartheid
margins of American life.
But it also seeks to break
their very bodies. This
was conclusively proven
last May, when Muslim-
Americans across the U.S.
committed horrific acts of
violence and intimidation
against Jews from New
York to Los Angeles, largely
without condemnation. My
own father’s business in a
Jewish suburb of Boston
was vandalized multiple
times because he sells Israeli
products. In a display of epic
hypocrisy, the long marchers
PURELY COMMENTARY
Benjamin
Kerstein
JNS.ORG
continued on page 11