A New Zionist Congress Is Born

Defiant Jewish undergraduates are forming their own national organization dedicated to combating anti-Semitism and promoting Jewish pride. Join us.

by Blake Flayton, TABLET

“Don’t go there.” It’s a phrase I’ve gotten used to hearing. Not from those who disagree with me on the internet or from my parents who want to make sure I’m safe at school, but from Jewish professionals charged with protecting students like me.

Since The New York Times published my story about being a Jewish college student and experiencing anti-Semitism in left-wing circles on campus, I’ve had the opportunity to write for a number of publications and speak in synagogues, high school classrooms, and Jewish community centers. Many of those who host these talks call me ahead of time and use that ubiquitous phrase: “Don’t go there.” They are warning me to avoid certain topics. They don’t want me to emphasize that anti-Semitism is one of the key features of today’s new leftism. Too often when I talk about anti-Semitism with Jewish liberals like myself, both on and off campus, they are terrified by this new and all-too-popular trend, but they are unwilling to speak freely about it. They are asking me not to tell the truth.

“Don’t go there” means stop bringing up the new form of social justice that flattens all individuals into steps on a privilege pyramid, a strict hierarchy of who is oppressed and who is oppressive, who has access to truth and justice, and who must be told to shut up. In this ideology, Jews, Jewish peoplehood, Jewish culture, and the Jewish state are placed at the tippity-top of the privilege pyramid. It’s therefore completely acceptable to demonize all of these things, for you are speaking truth to power, comrade! You are dismantling unjust systems. It is acceptable, and in fact encouraged, to insist that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinian children, to insist that pro-Israel students are merely pawns of the “Zionist lobby,” a cabal that is flooding the corridors of academia with cash to silence professors. It’s fine to insist that Judaism is only a European religion, that Jews are not their own nation, not their own people, or are indigenous to Poland. These canards not only score you a place in any progressive circle, but maybe even a book deal too, not to mention a speaker’s slot on a Zoom panel for the Democratic Socialists of America. But take issue with any of them? You’re a white supremacist, babe. Go Sieg Heil somewhere else.

In this new world order, nobody is surprised when a majority of students at Tufts University vote to pass a referendum blaming racist police violence in the United States on the State of Israel. In this new world order, it’s not cause for alarm when an Israeli restaurant in Portland, Oregon, is forced to remove all mention of Israel from its menus and signs, but still gets vandalized with graffiti that reads “eat shit” and “falafel is from Palestine.”

In this new world order, no one blinks when the organizers of a rally against police brutality in New York City say it’s “open to all, minus cops and Zionists.”