If we’re ever going to obtain peace in the Middle East, we’re going to have to confront the reality of rabid antisemitism, not only in the Muslim world, but also in the the Democratic Party and in the news and cultural media whose political arm the Democrats comprise.
It’s easier to pretend it’s not there, but that won’t change anything. At some point soon, the party leadership will have to make a choice: either stand up to the strident hatred of Jews simmering under the surface of its progressive left wing or continue to let it simmer until it boils over.
I’m not Jewish, so I’ve never experienced antisemitism directly. I have witnessed it. In May 2000, I was a college senior living in Dearborn, Mich., a Democratic stronghold with a large Arab population. The day Israel withdrew from the six-mile-wide security zone it had occupied in southern Lebanon since that country’s civil war, I suddenly started to hear horns honking, cheering and other noises I hadn’t heard since the Red Wings had won the Stanley Cup a couple of years earlier. I headed outside and saw people standing on cars, waving Lebanese flags and cheering like they’d just won the World Cup.
But I remember this gathering chiefly for the fear and dread it put into me — for the nasty signs and ugly, threatening chants of “Burn the Jews” and “Death to Israel,” among other things. It’s one thing to dislike or oppose Israeli policy — what I saw was naked, visceral hatred of Jews. Indeed, it was difficult to process the reality around me of people so cheerfully wishing death upon another group of people.
Most of those in the streets that day were young and likely had never lived in Lebanon. Their hatred of Jews probably had been passed down to them through their families. How do you combat that?
No one in the streets that night cared about why Israel had been there in the first place — to protect northern Israeli towns from repeated terrorist attacks against civilians. The lives of Jews didn’t matter amid their frenzy of blood-and-soil nationalism. It is ironic that most of the people out and about that day will never see the tiny patch of land over which they were celebrating, because it’s too dangerous to go there today — and not because of anything Jews have done.
I have seen this frenzied mentality again a few times since, as when some people in the streets of the Muslim world were filmed celebrating the carnage of 9/11. But we saw it much more vividly this week, as some Western leftists cheered on a massive terrorist attack against Israeli civilians.
The crowd outside Sydney’s iconic opera house, chanting “Gas the Jews!” could just as well have been participating in a government-backed demonstration in Tehran. Its extremely ugly sentiment was certainly not an isolated one.
How does this kind of hatred survive? One reason is that the political left has long harbored rabid antisemitism in its ranks because it finds the perpetrators useful. Strongly-worded statements aside, there was no unequivocal condemnation from Democratic leaders of the parade of progressives in Times Square openly celebrating the rape and slaughter of innocent people because they happen to be Jewish.
The Democratic Socialists of America and its various state and local chapters cheered exuberantly and proclaimed the terrorists to be the victims. How many Democratic members of the House are in good standing with the DSA? Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), and Ihan Omar (D-Minn.) come to mind. Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) certainly is. You might have a hard time finding any “progressive” Democrat who isn’t.
At least Bowman and AOC, days later, belatedly criticized the celebration of violence in Times Square. But even from them, don’t expect a condemnation of or break from the ideological allies whose support they crave and have at times gone to humiliating lengths to pursue.
Many media outlets, meanwhile, seem determined to ignore the graphic scenes coming out of Israel through social media. They are covering a brutal terrorist massacre as if the only concern were the potential for backlash. ABC News tweeted out, “Israel’s military escalation and siege are expected to worsen conditions in Gaza, a 141-square-mile stretch of territory that human rights advocates have called ‘an open-air prison.’” NBC News chimed in with, “Relatives mourn people killed in an Israeli air strike in Gaza City on Monday.”
It is bad enough to cover a terrorist massacre as a “both-sides” issue, but they are also treating the actual victims as an afterthought.
“Silence is complicity,” or so they told us when it came to the Black Lives Matter riots of 2020. But when it comes to the televised murder, rape and kidnapping of more than 1,000 Jewish civilians — a dozen of them fellow Americans — silence is apparently acceptable to many of the same people who were lecturing us back then.
Will the Democratic Party confront the dangerous antisemitic extremists who are in good standing in their own ranks? Don’t hold your breath, especially when the media are so unwilling to hold them accountable.
Derek Hunter is host of the Derek Hunter Podcast and a former staffer for the late Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.).