An Open Letter to My “As a Jew” Friend
From a Jew who long ago worked out that it does you no favours to start a sentence with “As a Jew”
I'm so sorry for adding this late to the piece…I was meant to get to it…but…life! This is a guest post from the brilliant Sally Prag.
Dear “As a Jew” friend,
I was intrigued to see you post the eloquent penning of your letter to the UK Labour Party, requesting the immediate termination of your membership with them. It was kind of you to share your great writing talent with us. I’m guessing there was more point to you sharing it than merely a “woohoo look at me” gesture, so I gave it a good read to see if I could work out what that point was.
Since I read through it, I wanted to let you know there were some things I was very much in agreement with. However, I wanted to call up a number of points.
First of all, you claim that Labour is conflating antisemitism with criticism of the Jewish state, and that it’s making the world more dangerous for Jews worldwide. To put things mildly, that’s utter crap. The kind of criticism we see worldwide is antisemitic in no uncertain terms. When a 20-year-old singer bravely faces bullying, threats to her life, and booing from the audience, all under the guise of standing against the killing of children, that’s pure gaslighting, because she clearly isn’t murdering any children. When a country announces it’s not allowing anyone travelling on an Israeli passport to enter, that’s unequivocally discriminatory. When BDS threatens a music artist with boycott because they play a concert in Tel Aviv in front of an Israeli audience, calling for the return of the hostages, how can anyone claim that is anything other than antisemitic? When creatives are no longer allowed to express their shared humanity and musicians can no longer express love. This is not freedom for all, it’s a dictatorship over Jews and allies of the people of Israel.
I agree that a ceasefire will be the only hope of a safe return for all of the hostages. However, as we know, the chance of them having been safe in captivity from aggression from their captors is zero. There is also the issue of safety for the Palestinian civilians aside from the threat from the IDF. Both the hostages and the Palestinian people are living under the complete control of an abusive terror group. We can’t address the issue of safety until we acknowledge the elephants in the room — Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, and the bigger threat that stands behind them, the Islamic Republic.
I appreciate that you, like many others, are an activist standing against notions such as apartheid and genocide. Do you know where else is seeing an apartheid and a genocide? Iran. Women live under gender apartheid. Year after year Iranians are executed for speaking up for their own human rights. Until October 7th, there has been far more cruelty and murder in Iran, year upon year, than there has been anywhere in Palestine. Yet I’ve never seen you once post on social media in support of the victims there, nor pressure the government or the Labour Party to act against the oppressive regime that is responsible. Or did you not feel inclined to share those letters with us — just this one?
Do you know how many civilian deaths there have been in Syria since the start of the civil war there? Well over half a million. With 6.8 million people displaced, and 7 million children severely malnourished and in need of elusive humanitarian aid. Who is speaking up for them? Why are you not mentioning these horrors to the Labour party when you demand that they act for humanity? Are those not “woohoo look at me” social media-worthy enough messages or is it merely that you can’t wave your Jew card in those instances?
In addition, when Jews who have lived entirely secular existences suddenly pipe up with “as a Jew”, it does nothing for the Jewish community at all. We Jews in the diaspora do count but not in the way the “as a Jews” are conceitedly claiming. When calling out genocide, your Jewishness is neither here nor there. Just because a Jew has chosen to march shoulder-to-shoulder with people burning Israeli flags, declaring the end of the State of Israel, and calling for many more massacres like October 7th, it doesn’t bring you any special position of note. If anything, it’s deluded to even assume that your Jewishness makes you any more noble. In fact, it’s the anti-Zionist Jews that are being mocked the most, especially when they hold an “anti-Zionist Passover Seder” — sorry, next year in where? Or did they erase the word “Jerusalem” from the Haggadah and replaced it with “Poland” or “Brooklyn”?
You don’t get some kind of Wokeness pass just because you wave your Jew card while hanging out in the corner of the “burn Tel Aviv” posse. Or maybe you do…just until the IR stops praising all those standing in solidarity with their oppressive regime and starts executing you all for breaking Sharia law, starting with the gays and women.
So yeah, good for you, quitting Labour and for writing a well-structured letter. Did you want us to grade it for you too? Because honestly, while you may be looking for some applause for your courage to say such things “as a Jew”, all it has served to do is have me shaking my head in even greater disbelief than I have each day since October 7th.
Cheers! Baruch Hashem.
Sally
I've never understood people who need to publicly announce their personal decisions. I neither need nor care to hear their reasons.
My ears (or eyes) might open a bit more though if they opened with, "As a Jew, I've decided to abandon the community I was raised in, so I can prove to those who want to annihilate us that I should be spared." Because that is what their words mean to me.
These "Jews" ignore and trash Jewish history, culture, and traditions in their desire to protect themselves. They should excise themselves completely, and stop identifying as Jews altogether.
I have many friends (mostly in NYC and LA) who are Jewish writers and artists and they are under constant intense pressure now to denounce and disown Israel, and thus they hide behind things like hating Netanyahu and/or opposing "genocide/apartheid" and/or being "anti-Zionist not anti-Jewish".
I always ask them: why are every people of every other faith and ethnicity allowed to have their own homeland but not Jews? why is the Jewish state painted as the world's most evil when there are many worse malefactors? how is keeping people out of your country "apartheid" when the last time this was allowed they blew themselves up on buses and inside restaurants? how is it "genocide" to fight a war against an enemy that hides behind their own people and builds bases inside or under schools, hospitals, apartment buildings? A war they started!?!
Of course I'm met with either mumbling or vague platitudes about how "no one wants to see an innocent person/child wounded"—they can't argue/think clearly here because this isn't an intellectual or moral response but a fear response.
What young urban educated Jews are waking up to in the West is that the shared faith of their cohort—Social Justice, which is supposedly a movement meant for Oppressed victims and their allies to fight all forms of Oppression, usually based on race and sex—has decided that Jews need to be humiliated if not eliminated, as they are too wealthy and successful and their existence has harmed too many members of the "marginalized", especially Muslims and Palestinians, who are poor brown people who just want liberal democracy like the rest of us, but are being held back by the Jewish boot on their necks.
I feel sorry for these young liberal Jews and what they're going through—it's like waking up one day to find out that your family hates you and wants you dead. Right now they seem to be in the denial or bargaining phases but hopefully soon they will wake up and accept that the people they considered friends and allies commited to "Justice" are just garden-variety Jew haters, no different than any previous believers in "If we just kill the Jews, all will be well", and should be treated as such.