The American right has a long history of stereotyping Jews in pernicious ways.
Vice President Dan Quayle, running for re-election in 1992, denounced the Hollywood “cultural elite” for contravening traditional American values. In response, actor Billy Crystal said, “Every time they say the phrase ‘Hollywood elite’ you can hear the unspoken word ‘Jew.’”, a sentiment which, according to essayist Frank Rich, was echoed at the time by many entertainment executives.
Those who resisted the Civil Rights Movement saw Jews as the evil geniuses behind this disciplined, effective movement. The American Right at times has blamed Jews for feminism, communism, socialism, the labor movement, and more.
Now we have a new right-wing antisemitic stereotype–the Crybaby Jew. The Crybaby Jew is perpetually aggrieved, equating criticism of Israel with antisemitism and acting as if disagreeing with a Jew is the same as threatening a Jew.
The influential conservative Free Press, founded in 2021 by Bari Weiss, editor-in-chief of CBS News, is the leading purveyor of this new antisemitic stereotype. Its purpose is to encourage American Jews to fear the left and view the Republican Party as the only safe place for Jews.
To whip up sentiment against the left, the Free Press exaggerates and distorts otherwise anodyne events to make them look like anti-Jewish hate. In doing so, they speciously depict American Jews as crybabies.
The Free Press’ most recent effort–Olivia Reingold’s How Vermont Became Ground Zero for the Anti-Israel Movement–is typical. The Press tells us Jews in Vermont are “buying weapons and guard dogs” because Vermont has become “hostile territory” where Jews are “fearful”.
One Jewish resident says, “People in Germany one day didn’t wake up and ship people to gas chambers”, that he feels like he’s “wearing a bright yellow star attached to my jacket”, and that for him and other local Jews, Vermonters are “leaving us with exactly one option: Move to Israel.”
Another says Vermonters “want to kill me”, while a third compares recent events in Vermont to the Second Intifada. What caused such fears?
Four small towns in Vermont passed resolutions stating:
“WE AFFIRM our commitment to freedom, justice, and equality for the Palestinian people and all people; WE OPPOSE all forms of racism, bigotry, discrimination, and oppression; and WE DECLARE ourselves an apartheid-free community and to that end, WE PLEDGE to join others in working to end all support to Israel’s apartheid regime, settler colonialism, and military occupation.”
While one can debate these characterizations of Israel and its policies, they are not antisemitic, much less threatening. In fact, they are common internationally and not uncommon even within Israel itself.
The Israeli human rights groups B’tselem and Yesh Din, as well as HRW, Amnesty International, and others, have all accused Israel of apartheid. For decades Zionists themselves used the word “colonization” to refer to their attempts to create a Jewish state in Palestine. And under United Nations Security Council Resolution 446, passed in 1979 and reaffirmed in 2016, the UN “determines that the policy and practices of Israel in establishing settlements in the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967 have no legal validity.”
Israeli Defense Force figures acknowledge that by January of this year, 70,000 Palestinians had died in the Israeli siege of Gaza, and that nearly 2/3rds were civilians. Other estimates are higher, often far higher. Since late 2023 the US has provided or agreed to provide at least $16.3 billion in direct military aid to Israel. These are facts, regardless of how one feels about them. How could pro-Israeli Jews, or anyone else, be surprised when these events lead to protests?
Even Donald Trump, who calls Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “an amazing prime minister” with whom “we’ve had an amazing partnership”, has lost patience with Israel’s actions, recently scolding Netanyahu “You don’t need to knock down a building”–i.e., kill dozens or hundreds of civlians–”every time someone walks into it who happens to be from Hezbollah”
American taxpayers aren’t allowed to debate what their money is funding. Question it and you’re an antisemite and a threat to your Jewish neighbors. When smalltown Vermont supporters of Bernie Sanders push back on decades of carte blanche for Israel, they’re akin to Nazi stormtroopers poised to attack their Jewish neighbors.
The Free Press’ documentary U.S. Colleges Teaching Hate: American Miseducation, narrated by Reingold, also promotes the Crybaby Jew stereotype. One of the documentary’s primary sources, political scientist Yascha Mounk, accuses University of Michigan pro-Palestinian activists of “want[ing] to intimidate…anybody who happens to be Jewish.”
To illustrate, as he makes this allegation, we’re shown a film clip of angry pro-Palestinian demonstrators flooding into a campus building. Apparently the viewer is not supposed to notice that two of the first pro-Palestinian “antisemitic” protesters into the building are holding up signs which say “University of Michigan Jews say Boycott, Divest, Sanction.”
American Miseducation claims there was a wave of attacks on Jewish students at Tulane University in Louisiana. The incident featured is a scuffle that broke out between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian demonstrators when pro-Palestinian demonstrators started to set an Israeli flag on fire, and pro-Israel protesters tried to tear away the flag.
Whatever one thinks of this method of protest, the US Supreme Court ruled in Texas v. Johnson (1989) that flag burning counts as symbolic speech and political speech, and is protected speech under the First Amendment.
While the Free Press highlights the incident as an antisemitic outrage, what it actually is an attempt by pro-Israel demonstrators to deprive pro-Palestinian demonstrators of a legitimate, constitutionally-protected form of protest.
The only example of violence shown is when a lone pro-Palestinian protester walks up and slaps a man standing with the pro-Israel protesters. American Miseducation is absolutely correct to condemn this, but a ~5’ 6” woman slapping a ~6’ 3” young man is not exactly a modern pogrom.
Re: pro-Palestinian protests, Reingold advises us “attend enough of these demonstrations and you’ll start to see the swastikas”, leaving the impression that pro-Palestinian protesters are sympathetic to the Nazis and are wielding Nazi symbols and Nazi-like rhetoric against Jewish students. Yet while some of the pro-Palestinian protesters’ swastika use is ill-advised, in each of the cases the documentary points to, the swastikas are used to draw analogies to Israeli government actions that the demonstrators oppose.
In propaganda, the problem often is not what they tell you, but what they don’t tell you. In the Free Press, there’s the October 7 attack then a horrific wave of antisemitism–what Israel did to the Palestinians before October 7 that led to the attack, and Israel’s internationally-condemned manhandling of Gaza Palestinians after the attack, are ignored.
None of this is to say that American Jews don’t face real dangers. In the cruel idiocy of Muslim fundamentalism, there is little distinction between military and civilian targets. The Pentagon and the White House targeted on September 11 and the Israeli Defense Force bases attacked on October 7 were at least legitimate military targets, but both attacks also criminally and indefensibly targeted civilians.
Jewish leaders and press often portray non-Israeli Jews as devoted supporters of Israel who see the Jewish state as an essential, integral part of their being. Sometimes those who imagine themselves to be defenders of the Palestinians believe them, and in turn target non-Israeli Jews. Jews worldwide are now tarred with Israel’s crimes, putting all in harm’s way.
The Free Press isn’t trying to offend, and negative ethnic stereotypes aren’t always created by people who seek to wound that ethnicity. Regardless, though Jews do face genuine challenges, to portray Jews as so sensitive and fragile that any criticism of Israel sends them into a state of fear and desperation is a tremendous disservice. This is the pernicious new antisemitic stereotype the Free Press promotes–the Crybaby Jew.
The post Conservative Media Giant Creates a New Antisemitic Stereotype appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Glenn Sacks.