It's Wrong to Call Out Antisemitism if You're Christian and Support Trump

More perverse reporting from the Jew York Times

I think it’s fair to say that the reporting on the Israel-Hamas War from mainstream news outlets like the NYT has left much to be desired. Whether they reported false claims about hospital bombings or blindly accepted Hamas-reported casualty numbers that fail to separate combatants from civilians, the NYT has not lived up to its vaunted reputation as our country’s “newspaper of record.” One of my favorite lines about the NYT was from some douchebag influencer from Texas who stated during an interview on Saudi-owned television that Israel is trying to manipulate the U.S. military into doing its bidding in Iran. He accepts that as fact because journalist Ronen Bergman, who according to him “has major ties to Israeli intelligence,” wrote it in the NYT. Source for that claim: Ronen is Israeli.

While some of the poor reporting from international media is due to uncritical acceptance of secondhand information, it’s also due to factors out of their control, such as the fact that no foreign journalists are currently allowed in Gaza. This means that all of the “reporting” from the territory comes from self-appointed “journalists” there who either 1) are working for Hamas; or 2) cannot report anything critical of Hamas for fear of their lives. They do, however, have working smartphones and sophisticated camera recording equipment whose functionality is somehow unaffected in an area supposedly suffering from no electricity and no food.

But then again, how accurate was the reporting on this conflict when foreign journalists from free countries were allowed in? For these journalistic crusaders, the routine would go as follows: go to Gaza for a few hours, stand in front of rubble, talk to a camera, and then return to a nice hotel in Tel Aviv for drinks. To me, the quality of reporting wasn’t much better then—so perhaps it best to keep them out of the danger of an active warzone now.

Then there’s the problem of elite Jews working for the NYT who feel themselves superior due to what they perceive as their unique—by which I mean ordinary and repetitive—ability to criticize Israel. Ronen is definitely one, but there are several others. Here we have Michelle Goldberg, an opinion columnist who recently published an op/ed titled, “The Trump-Supporting Christians Accusing Jews of Antisemitism.”

Let’s just start with the title itself. To the NYT demo, it refers to what they perceive as our country’s worst offenders due the fact that they’re 1) Trump-supporting; and 2) Christians. But they’re not the good Christians like your neighborhood Unitarian pastor who publishes vacuous solidarity statements “for Palestine” after demanding that their Jewish friends help edit them so they’re not perceived as antisemitic. They’re something else:

“Here we see the perversity that can come from conflating antisemitism with opposition to an increasingly brutal and authoritarian Israeli state. ‘Those supporters of Palestine and Hamas who have claimed for decades that criticizing Israel’s policies does not equate to antisemitism are at best insincere,’ said a strategic plan for Project Esther published online. In the twisted logic of Project Esther — which is also the logic of Donald Trump’s war on academia — ultra-Zionist gentiles get to lecture Jews about antisemitism even as they lay waste to the liberal culture that has allowed American Jews to thrive.”

What exactly is Project Esther? Since I’m not its target demo, it didn’t come to me via the algorithm. Here’s a link to it. I’m not going to dwell on it to much because it doesn’t really speak to me, but feel free to review it and draw your own conclusions.

What exactly is the “liberal culture” that Michelle refers to here that has “allowed American Jews to thrive”? I’m dogmatic about liberalism, and I can’t find one genuine example in this article of that value in a way that relates to Jews or Zionism—and no, the Jewish Voice for Peace hate group does not count as “liberal culture.” I can think of a few examples that Michelle omitted, but I won’t do her job for her.

“Ultra-Zionist gentiles get to lecture Jews on antisemitism”? From my view, the most perverse group of people lecturing us on antisemitism these days appear to be the pro-Hamas types. Many are Muslim, but they run the gamut in religions and backgrounds. Case in point: this asshole lawyer from CAIR stating that the anti-Israel encampment at Columbia was not discriminatory because “they had Passover events every Friday night"—and to suggest otherwise is antisemitic. For all of the nastiness I have gotten from other Jews for my views, no Jewish person has ever threatened me or my life—which is more than I can say of our Muslim counterparts who dare to criticize other Muslims.

It is not courageous or unique to criticize Israel or its government’s “increasingly authoritarian” ways. I do it all the time, and I’m not paid a fraction of what Michelle and Ronen are for it. Israel is a free country despite its current terrible leadership, and we can say what we want about it without any threat to our safety. Most of us engage in that criticism without being called self-hating or antisemitic, because—wait for it—we aren’t actually being self-hating or antisemitic when we do it.

It’s not criticism of Israel or even of other Jews that I find offensive. What I resent is the exploitation of the anti-Zionism loophole that dingbats trot out in an attempt to avoid being called out on their obvious antisemitism. Before October 7th, many of us just tolerated that behavior because we figured that it didn’t affect our lives to the extent that calling them out was necessary. Now we find ourselves in a new reality: if one chooses to engage in this behavior, they will get called out and they will face the consequences, as they should. The era of soft antisemitism that their Jewish friends once tolerated is over, and they have Hamas and their western sympathizers to thank for that.

Michelle champions herself as a defender of liberal culture that has enabled Jews like her to lead prosperous lives. But the intent of articles like this one by authors like her is to separate American Jews from the values of Zionism, and there is simply nothing liberal about that goal. It’s an incredibly disingenuous rhetorical trick given that the vast majority of us are Zionists, though not in the same way that the right-wing goyim are. I personally do not trust non-Jews who spend an inordinate amount of energy focusing on Jews or Israel, whether it’s out of purported solidarity or out of hate. It’s the hyper-focus on us that’s the problem, not whether or not those doing it support Trump.

As a Jew, I will state the following: “Trump-supporting Christians” as a singular group are not our most pressing problem right now. I am saying this as someone who despises Trump as an individual. The primary threat to our safety at the moment is the rise of Jew-hate worldwide—and it’s happening from all ends of the aisle, from people of all colors and religions (including Judaism). That is the danger we must unite to combat, and op/eds like Michelle’s under the NYT brand just exacerbate the very problem they seek to address.

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