There is an epidemic of non-Jews telling Jews (and everyone else) what is anti-Semitic. Liz Cheney now has joined Meghan McCain in this new faux outrage industry by going after AOC for using “concentration camps” to describe the concentration camps for refugees at the border. Cheney dares to say that AOC’s words “demean” the memory of the 6 million killed.
You know what demeans their memory?
- The border concentration camps Cheney is defending
- Trump saying he will “begin the process of removing the millions of illegal aliens who have illicitly found their way into the United States”
- Republicans welcoming the “Proud Boys” white supremacist group to Trump rallies.
- ”Good people on both sides” at Charlottesville
- Family separations at the border
- Massive bombing of civilians in a war based on lies
- Threatening criminal prosecution of political foes
And that’s just a short list.
My father, who died 12 years ago, referred to “subcutaneous anti-Semitism” persisting in America, and he would point it out to us whenever it broke skin to reveal its ugliness. But now, the skin has been shed and the anti-Semites don’t care if they are revealed — in Charlottesville, at a New York Republican Club, in Pittsburgh, and at today’s and every Trump rally.
We Jews don’t need weeping Meghan McCain to define for us what is and isn’t anti-Semitic. We can tell the difference between a person’s actual words and attempts to twist them into a false narrative. We know who the “deplorables” are and we know they support Trump. We know mass murder doesn’t start suddenly, but evolves in steps beginning with actions like what’s happening at the border. We know that “removing millions” sounds like “round-ups” of Jews in raids in Warsaw, Paris and all over Europe in the ‘30s and ‘40s. We know that fascism starts with blatant defiance of the rule of law.
And we know Liz Cheney has no problem with any of this -- the border, “removing millions,” family separations, “good people at Charlottesville,” and massive bombings. And we know these actions and so many of Trump’s policies are antithetical to our understanding of Judaism.
So spare us your crocodile tears and false outrage about what demeans the Holocaust or is anti-Semitic. The actions you support demean the foundations of our religion and culture and the values we and our brothers and sisters of all religions believe in.
