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

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