Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Welcome to it could happen here, the show about the
Speaker 2: slow end of the world and all the small little
Speaker 2: things that are kind of pushing us that way. Isn't
Speaker 2: that exciting?
Speaker 1: New Year?
Speaker 3: Knew me?
Speaker 1: Not not really.
Speaker 2: I'm kind of doing the same stuff, mostly staring into
Speaker 2: the abyss and seeing what stares back. Staring at the
Speaker 2: abyss with me today is Mia Wong. Hello, Thank you
Speaker 2: for joining me. Oh boy, the abyss is is looking
Speaker 2: real choppy today, real abyssle.
Speaker 3: You could say, the waves coming out of it are
Speaker 3: staring back at you real hard. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So we're gonna talk today about anti semitism, So
Speaker 2: I guess content warning in case you don't want to
Speaker 2: hear it a whole bunch of anti Semitic stuff. I'm
Speaker 2: not just gonna be repeating anti semmetic things. It's just
Speaker 2: this is just the topic for the whole episode. So yeah,
Speaker 2: the past few months there has been a pretty dramatic
Speaker 2: rise in antisemitism, ranging from physical attacks, vandalism, and lots
Speaker 2: of rhetoric. Now, there's a few factors that I think
Speaker 2: make this a little bit tricky to talk about, which
Speaker 2: is why it's taken me a while to put this together. Firstly,
Speaker 2: I want to avoid getting into like oppression Olympics here, Right,
Speaker 2: talking about one bad thing does not negate many other
Speaker 2: bad things that are happening concurrently. Having a discussion about
Speaker 2: a very troubling rise in anti semitism and a state
Speaker 2: backed ethnic cleansing do not need to be mutually exclusive
Speaker 2: topics of discussion. Right. We can say both of these
Speaker 2: things are actually pretty bad. And today we're going to
Speaker 2: be talking specifically about anti semitism. And I think you know,
Speaker 2: this show has had a history of reporting on anti
Speaker 2: fascist movements and attempts to stop fascist entryism and promoting
Speaker 2: of anti Semitism, So this topic is well within our
Speaker 2: regular wheelhouse and there is a decent bit to talk
Speaker 2: about now. The second thing that makes this topic a
Speaker 2: little bit tricky is that some of the big extremism
Speaker 2: research groups that typically do the most accessible cataloging of
Speaker 2: anti Semitic incidents have proven themselves to be slightly unreliable
Speaker 2: on this topic for the past four months. And that's
Speaker 2: not just my opinion, that's also the opinion of current
Speaker 2: and former ADL employees who have been coming out against
Speaker 2: director Jonathan greenblatz leadership choices, particularly since the October seventh
Speaker 2: Hamas attack. Now, due to the nature of their job
Speaker 2: versus my job, ADL analysts have a lot more dedicated
Speaker 2: time and resources to cataloging alleged anti Semitic incidents. But
Speaker 2: under Greenblatz direction, the whole of their data from the
Speaker 2: past four months is heavily skewed to include anything expressing
Speaker 2: anti Zionism as being included in their data about anti semitism,
Speaker 2: and even anything deemed too sympathetic to Palestinians as being
Speaker 2: a driver of anti Semitism. So that's the kind of
Speaker 2: situation we have here with. You know, there's many issues
Speaker 2: the ADL has had in the past, which we may
Speaker 2: talked about in the future, but typically they've done an
Speaker 2: okay job the past few years, specifically cataloging anti semitism
Speaker 2: during the rise of the alt right. Their data is
Speaker 2: often relatively reliable on this topic. Some of their other
Speaker 2: data and other practices are very open to criticism. But
Speaker 2: this is kind of one other factor that's gonna make
Speaker 2: this a little bit tricky. Now, as like an example, right,
Speaker 2: this is this is we can we can talk about
Speaker 2: these things in abstract. I'm gonna talk about something from Atlanta,
Speaker 2: because this is something I have some experience in. So
Speaker 2: on the ADL's big map of antisemitic incidents from October
Speaker 2: seventh to the present, if you zoom into Atlanta, there's
Speaker 2: two incidents that are right next to each other. One
Speaker 2: is a banner drop done by the Goiam Defense League,
Speaker 2: which is a group of neo Nazis.
Speaker 3: Oh God.
Speaker 2: Basically they make ad some banners expressing pro Hitler statements
Speaker 2: alongside slogans like free Palestine, and they put them up
Speaker 2: above a really big road in Atlanta. Right, So this
Speaker 2: is pretty standard neo Nazi anti Semitism using kind of
Speaker 2: anti Zionism as this sort of mask but I mean
Speaker 2: hit very thid, yes exactly, that's not really it's not
Speaker 2: really masked because you also have a Hitler banner. But
Speaker 2: like you know, if someone only sees one banner, be like, oh,
Speaker 2: it's a Palestine banner, but no, it's actually a Nazi banner.
Speaker 2: So we have this incident logged. We also have another
Speaker 2: incident blogged right beside it, from a protest a few
Speaker 2: days later, which was an Inner Faith rally in support
Speaker 2: of Palestine against the ongoing ethnic cleansing. That's happening in
Speaker 2: Gaza with thousands and thousands of people being killed. So
Speaker 2: we have this banner drop and we have this rally,
Speaker 2: and both of these things are labeled as an anti
Speaker 2: Semitic incident. They're both like equal in the eyes of
Speaker 2: this data, which just isn't true. I was, I was
Speaker 2: at this rally. I did not hear anything anti Semitic
Speaker 2: coming from the speakers. Many of the speakers, if not
Speaker 2: the majority of the speakers, were Jewish. There were a
Speaker 2: group of Jewish counter protesters who showed up who started
Speaker 2: many fights, fights which were very quickly de escalated by
Speaker 2: the people who were putting on the rally. There was
Speaker 2: this one woman who was carrying an Israeli flag on
Speaker 2: his flagpole who kept hitting people with it. So there
Speaker 2: was a lot of there's a lot of things going
Speaker 2: on at this rally, but this was not an anti
Speaker 2: Semitic rally. And in fact, the Jewish counter protesters were
Speaker 2: extremely vitriolic. They were expressing explicit desire for genocide of Palestinians,
Speaker 2: like very very gross stuff. It was. It was really disgusting.
Speaker 2: So both of these incidents, though, are seen as equal,
Speaker 2: which just show that's just eas example to kind of
Speaker 2: show how this data isn't really reliable that the ADL
Speaker 2: is putting together here. Now, I really don't feel like
Speaker 2: it's my place to go through the ADYLS database and
Speaker 2: decide what is and is not antisemitism, right, Like, that's
Speaker 2: I don't have the time, nor the money, normally the
Speaker 2: authority to be like the arbiter of what is and
Speaker 2: isn't anti Semitic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Garrison, Garrison turning into the anti Semitism commissar.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's not that's not me, right. I have
Speaker 2: a background in anti fascist research. I have a background
Speaker 2: in neo Nazia driven anti semitism. Right, these are the
Speaker 2: things I usually specialize in. But still, this is a
Speaker 2: this is a massive this is a massive field. Antisemitism
Speaker 2: is a complicated topic. Rhetoric can be complicated, and having
Speaker 2: not attended or reviewed every single rally or incident in question,
Speaker 2: I'm simply not equipped to make informed judgments. So for
Speaker 2: that reason this episode I will focus mostly on physical attacks, threats,
Speaker 2: and vandalism as opposed to the much more murky waters
Speaker 2: of rhetoric, online rhetoric. And you know, just these these
Speaker 2: there's been probably thousands of rallies across the United States.
Speaker 2: I've not been to everyone, I've not watched every single speech,
Speaker 2: I've not heard every single offhand comment, so I'm not
Speaker 2: going to deal with those. Instead, I'm going to be
Speaker 2: focusing on physical like in like IRL and things that
Speaker 2: have a very a very clear result of the action.
Speaker 2: So this mostly attacks threats vandalism. Anyway, moving on though,
Speaker 2: I guess actually the one other thing about stats is
Speaker 2: that when talking about this rise anti Semitism, because there's
Speaker 2: been a lot of articles from mainstream news outlets being like,
Speaker 2: here's the rise anti Semitism, and here's the stats. Another
Speaker 2: thing pointing towards why these stats are unreliable and the
Speaker 2: reason why I'm not going to be using them largely
Speaker 2: is because many of the stats included and these articles
Speaker 2: are crime stats, and these crime stats are also proving
Speaker 2: to be heavily unreliable. For example, the Metropolitan Police claimed
Speaker 2: that there was a one thousand and three hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty percent increase in anti Semitic hate crimes in London
Speaker 2: during the first two and a half weeks of October,
Speaker 2: with two hundred and eighteen anti Semitic offenses in London
Speaker 2: during that time period compared to only fifteen in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two. But included in these stats are incidents like
Speaker 2: the police in London arresting a man for tearing down
Speaker 2: some of those hostage posters. That's one of the hate
Speaker 2: crimes that they include in this and also the met
Speaker 2: said that that's the Metropolitan Police said that chanting from
Speaker 2: the river to the sea near Jewish people or near
Speaker 2: Jewish buildings during a protest would be deemed unlawful. And
Speaker 2: I think there is a debate to be had whether
Speaker 2: if you're just protesting outside of a random Jewish building,
Speaker 2: that's probably not great and that could be an indicator
Speaker 2: of antisemitism, but having that chant be deemed unlawful for
Speaker 2: just being near other Jewish people, Like I said, at
Speaker 2: the rally in Atlanta, there was a whole bunch of
Speaker 2: Jewish counter protesters who came to star Fights, So like,
Speaker 2: you're going to be around Jewish people, if you're a
Speaker 2: march you're marching around, or if you're outside in Israeli embassy,
Speaker 2: that's a that's an it might opinion, a very valid
Speaker 2: target for protest that would be considered a Jewish building.
Speaker 2: So all of these stats are heavily, heavily skewed by
Speaker 2: these by by these sorts of reasons for how how
Speaker 2: how the met is, including things as being anti Semitic
Speaker 2: hate crimes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I mean like this, like if you just
Speaker 3: think about what the rationale is there for a second,
Speaker 3: Like is a group of anti Zionist Jews chanting from
Speaker 3: the river to the sea around themselves a hate crime?
Speaker 3: Exactly rightight? Like this is nonsense? Like so, and also
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. And also like this is
Speaker 3: the British police, Like those are the most anti Semitic
Speaker 3: motherfuckers this side of like the Ukrainian neo Nazis or something.
Speaker 2: And like I do not doubt there was an actual
Speaker 2: increase of anti Semitic attacks bendless hate speech. That that
Speaker 2: is what we're talking about in this EP. So we
Speaker 2: will be getting into many incidents, but it is difficult
Speaker 2: to pin down some of what these really big stats
Speaker 2: actually represent. Because if tearing down one of those silly
Speaker 2: hamas wanted posters is being labeled a hate crime on
Speaker 2: the same level as drawing a swastika on a synagogue,
Speaker 2: that data is basically useless. And now I think it's
Speaker 2: also worth mentioning just very very briefly, The Metropolitan Police
Speaker 2: also recorded a one hundred and forty percent increase in
Speaker 2: Islamophobic incidents during those first two and a half weeks
Speaker 2: of October's that's forty two incidents in twenty twenty two
Speaker 2: compared to one hundred and three incidents in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2: And while that percentage is lower than the anti Semitic
Speaker 2: stat it also indicates how much more common Islamophobia in
Speaker 2: London is because the regular amount of reported incidents from
Speaker 2: last year is so much higher than the regular reported
Speaker 2: amount of anti Semitic incidents. Like having forty two incidents
Speaker 2: per like two and a half weeks, be the normal
Speaker 2: stat is not great and maybe someone should look into
Speaker 2: why British people are so islamophobic. I mean that there's
Speaker 2: that that's a whole episode in and of itself. Is
Speaker 2: Amophobia in the UK is a massive, massive problem. But
Speaker 2: just as a comparison, I thought I might as well
Speaker 2: say that we will we will get to Honkah next.
Speaker 2: But it has already been thirteen minutes of me talking
Speaker 2: about stats and giving disclaivers, so that means it's time
Speaker 2: for an ad break. I'm not going to do a
Speaker 2: silly ad transition. Just listen to the ads. All right,
Speaker 2: we are we are back. Since we just finally escaped
Speaker 2: the holiday season, let's begin by talking about Honkkah. Public manoras,
Speaker 2: often without any extra like iconography tying them to the
Speaker 2: state of Israel, were a frequent target of vandalism and
Speaker 2: anti Semitic messaging. During the months of December, a far
Speaker 2: right member of parliament in Poland used a fire extinguisher
Speaker 2: to blow at the candles on a manora in the
Speaker 2: lobby of Parliament. A public manora in London had its
Speaker 2: light bulbs smashed with a free Palestine sticker placed onto
Speaker 2: the front, and then days later it was found toppled
Speaker 2: over and left in pieces. There's many of these incidents.
Speaker 2: I'm just gonna name a few more, just because at
Speaker 2: a certain point it kind of becomes redundant. But I
Speaker 2: think these things are worth talking about. An eleven foot
Speaker 2: three hundred and fifty pound manora next to Lake Mari
Speaker 2: in Oakland was cut up and destroyed in mid December,
Speaker 2: with pieces being thrown into the nearby lake. A message
Speaker 2: was graffitied that led We're gonna find you. You're on alert.
Speaker 2: It was also reported that there was graffiti left nearby
Speaker 2: that read free Palestine in Arabic, but I can't confirm that.
Speaker 2: The picture they have online does not match what free
Speaker 2: Palestine in airbath looks like. But I'm not an expert
Speaker 2: on Arabic, so I just can't confirm that. But that
Speaker 2: is being reported in local Jewish newspapers. Manora sand sculpture
Speaker 2: commissioned in Palm Beach was destroyed and left defaced with
Speaker 2: a swastika outside of synagogue in a suburb of Washington,
Speaker 2: d C. A manora was toppled over on the eve
Speaker 2: of Honka, and two manoras were vandalized and damaged in
Speaker 2: Brooklyn in early December by masked individuals. So one other
Speaker 2: similar incident I will talk about, which is kind of interesting,
Speaker 2: is that there was this pro Palestine protest at Yale
Speaker 2: where a one of the protesters climbed up onto this
Speaker 2: massive I don't know how tall it was, but it
Speaker 2: was huge. They had to climb up pretty high on
Speaker 2: this big public manora and placed a Palestinian flag kind
Speaker 2: of around one of the little arms on the manora.
Speaker 2: But very quickly, like within seconds of this happening, other
Speaker 2: pro Palestine protesters, noticing this is kind of disrespectful, asked
Speaker 2: this person to take it down, like almost almost immediately.
Speaker 2: This is a very a very quick exchange, and this
Speaker 2: kind of sparked some peace people talking about you know,
Speaker 2: is it okay to put Palestinian flags on manoras? Is
Speaker 2: it okay to vandalize menoras? Which the answer is no,
Speaker 2: The answer you shouldn't vandalize a menora. That's generally not great.
Speaker 2: But you know, people were saying and specifically pointing towards
Speaker 2: like pictures of IDF soldiers who've been taking territory in Gaza,
Speaker 2: who've been putting up menoras in Gaza, or like the
Speaker 2: Israeli military doing these photo ops with big menoras in
Speaker 2: different parts of gazas being like, hey, when there's this
Speaker 2: active ethnic cleansing going on and soldiers are using this
Speaker 2: religious iconography and it's being associated directly with this, with
Speaker 2: this ongoing ethnic genocide, how can you blame people who
Speaker 2: are going to be treating this symbol with hostility? And
Speaker 2: I think there's a few problems with this idea. I'm
Speaker 2: going to quote from this Jewish artist who goes by
Speaker 2: underscore a nunnery who I think phrased this really well. Quote.
Speaker 2: Jewish symbols shouldn't be associated with Zionism or ceded to
Speaker 2: them just because Zionists abuse them. If the monora were
Speaker 2: put up by Zionists, as some explicitly Zionist display, then
Speaker 2: putting up a Palestadian flag would be an active resistance.
Speaker 2: If it's not, then it's just cementing the Zionist conflation
Speaker 2: and exploitation of Jewish identity. There are more non Jewish
Speaker 2: Zionists than there are Jews, unquote, and this gets at
Speaker 2: a point which I think is really important when you're
Speaker 2: talking about anti Zionist activism. Attacking symbols of Jewish culture
Speaker 2: in the name of anti Zionism only strengthens the cause
Speaker 2: of Zionism by affirming the conflation of Judaism and Zionism,
Speaker 2: or Judaism and the state of Israel. This conflation helps
Speaker 2: Zionists shield their actions by abusing the Jewish identity and
Speaker 2: making these two things be more like intersectional. So I
Speaker 2: think that is one a strategic reason for why this
Speaker 2: is a bad idea, and two it's maybe slightly anti Semitic.
Speaker 2: So that is my little holiday section. Just because I
Speaker 2: saw a whole bunch of stuff around these manoras, and
Speaker 2: I didn't feel good about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like this sucks, Like please don't do this.
Speaker 2: And I've seen some people like also using the comparison
Speaker 2: of like would you also criticize indigenous people in America
Speaker 2: for graffitiing or taking down images of like Christian iconography
Speaker 2: and like, No, because the oppression faced by Christians and
Speaker 2: the oppression faced by Jewish people are two different things.
Speaker 2: Like these are actually historically these are very different things.
Speaker 2: So no, these things actually cannot be compared in my opinion.
Speaker 2: But now I'm going to talk about some international incidents
Speaker 2: because I think we have a tendency to overfocus on
Speaker 2: America when there's a whole bunch of other stuff happening
Speaker 2: and you know, the rest of the world. Back in October,
Speaker 2: a historic synagogue in Tunisia was burned down by a
Speaker 2: mob of hundreds of people in response to reports that
Speaker 2: in Israeli airstrike hit a hospital in Gaza. This sucked.
Speaker 2: I shouldn't have to explain why burning down a historical
Speaker 2: synagogue is anti Semitic because you don't like something the
Speaker 2: State of Israel did. That's just that. Just isn't that
Speaker 2: just isn't like that's just not se shit, Like come on, yeah.
Speaker 2: So a month later in November, someone posted the video
Speaker 2: online of themselves pouring fuel and setting fire to the
Speaker 2: only synagogue in Armenia. The entrance was damaged in the
Speaker 2: arsen attack, but no one was hurt. The only synagogue
Speaker 2: in Vortswaft, Poland. Sorry I pride butchered that, but it
Speaker 2: is a hard word, but the only synagogue in this
Speaker 2: town of Poland to survive the Holocaust was defaced with
Speaker 2: graffiti that read quote Israel criminals and murderers unquote and
Speaker 2: then like a week, I guess. Earlier that week a
Speaker 2: group of teenagers also destroyed a anura in this same town.
Speaker 2: In mid October, Maltov cocktails were thrown at a synagogue
Speaker 2: in Berlin after Hanukkah. In Belgium, a Jewish cemetery was
Speaker 2: vandalized with swastikas on gravestones. In late In late November,
Speaker 2: a Maltav cocktail was thrown at a Jewish community center
Speaker 2: in Montreal. Earlier that month, shots were fired at two
Speaker 2: different Jewish schools in Montreal in three different incidents, and
Speaker 2: four Holocaust memorials in Germany were vandalized with a mix
Speaker 2: of anti Semitic and anti Zionist messages. So again, like
Speaker 2: when I was looking at these ones once in Germany,
Speaker 2: the actual content of about half of these messages were
Speaker 2: not anti Semitic. But the act of doing this at
Speaker 2: a at a at a Holocaust memorial just is like
Speaker 2: it it gives me the ick. And there's arguments could
Speaker 2: be made that this does actually play into antisemitic troops,
Speaker 2: like you're what, You're blaming dead Jewish people for the
Speaker 2: actions of the current state of Israel, like that's it's
Speaker 2: it just And also half half of these messages left
Speaker 2: at these at these Holocaust memorial sites were also just
Speaker 2: blatantly at anti Semitic, like very very clearly like Nazi
Speaker 2: style stuff. I don't have time to go over all
Speaker 2: of the incidents across the Europe. There is a great
Speaker 2: deal many. There's many, many, many that I've not mentioned.
Speaker 2: These are just a few. Like I said, I'm focusing
Speaker 2: on like vandalism, very very clear cut stuff. People doing
Speaker 2: arson attacks, right, it's just very very basic stuff. This
Speaker 2: stuff in Montreal not great. Montreal, Canada, get your shit together.
Speaker 2: Although unfortunately not surprising but still upsetting is Jews being
Speaker 2: barred from shops across Turkey. And oh, there's a whole,
Speaker 2: a whole bunch of very gross government government sponsored anti
Speaker 2: semitism across Turkey campaigns to prohibit the sale of land
Speaker 2: to Jewish people. A lot of a lot of bad
Speaker 2: stuff in Turkey. But that's not incredibly surprising.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's aired one like, yeah, he fucking
Speaker 3: sucks ass and he' oh yeah. Er Erdwan is a
Speaker 3: man who has personally ordered children to be burned alive
Speaker 3: with firebombs, so you know this is not out of
Speaker 3: character for him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I guess finally, this one other thing about
Speaker 2: Honkah is that so last month, right after the end
Speaker 2: of Honkah, bomb threats were sent out en mass to
Speaker 2: more than four hundred Jewish Jewish centers and synagogues across
Speaker 2: the United States. This was most likely orchestrated by the
Speaker 2: same kind of small number of individuals. All of the
Speaker 2: messages were very similar. None of these were incredibly credible,
Speaker 2: but it still sparked a whole bunch of bomb sweeps
Speaker 2: and concerned because when Jewish synagogues get bomb threats, that's
Speaker 2: not an empty threat. Either like this is like there
Speaker 2: is historical precedent.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, and I also like think I think the everything
Speaker 3: that's important about this too is like this, this is
Speaker 3: you know, this is like one of the things is
Speaker 3: the culmination of everything that Wright's been doing for the
Speaker 3: last like eight years has been the development of like
Speaker 3: this cadre of people who do bomb threats, calling in.
Speaker 2: Bomb threats as a tactics. Yes. No, there's the concerted
Speaker 2: effort for bomb threats at hospitals that provide transgender care,
Speaker 2: abortion clinics. There was a string of weirdly organized bomb
Speaker 2: threats against schools about a year or two ago. But
Speaker 2: I think I think Robert did an episode on.
Speaker 3: Yeah now, and now we're here at you know, we're
Speaker 3: at bomb threats you can synagogues, which is terrifying.
Speaker 2: According to the Secure Community Network, a nonprofit security organization that
Speaker 2: tracks threats made against Jewish communities, bomb threats and swatting
Speaker 2: incidents basically freight trying to get a swat team to
Speaker 2: show up somewhere because you lied about there being like
Speaker 2: an ongoing crime or something. But bomb threats and swatting
Speaker 2: incidents targeted against Jewish centers saw over a five hundred
Speaker 2: percent increase in twenty twenty three compared to the previous year,
Speaker 2: which I have no reason to believe is incorrect. So
Speaker 2: on that note, I no, I don't really think we
Speaker 2: could have a bomb threat. Segue to two ads. I
Speaker 2: really don't really don't know.
Speaker 3: Don't do bombs.
Speaker 2: Don't do bomb threats typically, is what I got. Yeah, typically? Anyway,
Speaker 2: h do you know what else is to bomb these ads? Okay, fine,
Speaker 2: all right, we are back.
Speaker 3: Maybe the worst air transition we've ever done.
Speaker 2: That's not true, That is definitely not true.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, okay, you're right.
Speaker 2: Okay, So during this last section, I'm gonna talk a
Speaker 2: little bit more about data aggregation. So, like I said
Speaker 2: previously in this episode, due to the nature of what
Speaker 2: my job is and the nature of what an ADL
Speaker 2: analyst's job is, they just have a lot more time
Speaker 2: to dedicate towards specifically logging anti Semitic incidents. So I
Speaker 2: did look through their data set, and I've made some
Speaker 2: extrapolations based on some of the findings and some of
Speaker 2: the open source data that they have regarding specific incidents.
Speaker 2: So on that note, the ADL has logged around one
Speaker 2: thousand and one hundred anti Semitic incidents since October seventh,
Speaker 2: not related to protest rallies. So this is specifically all
Speaker 2: the incidents that are not related to these big pro
Speaker 2: Palestinian Interfaith many Jewish led rallies. Now I'm not saying
Speaker 2: that nothing anti Semitic has not happened at any of
Speaker 2: those rallies, but these rallies were logged simply as quote
Speaker 2: anti Israel rallies which featured over anti Semitism, anti Zionism,
Speaker 2: and or expressions of support for terror. So crammed in
Speaker 2: the middle of that explanation is just anti Zionism. So
Speaker 2: that is one thing they are just counting as being
Speaker 2: enough to be logged as an anti Semitic incident. So
Speaker 2: again I'm not going through the over like one thousand
Speaker 2: rallies that they have logged here just because I don't
Speaker 2: have the time and I don't feel like it. But yes,
Speaker 2: just for full transparency, that is the information I'm not
Speaker 2: going to be looking at. Instead, I'm looking at these
Speaker 2: one thousand and one hundred other incidents not related to
Speaker 2: these protests. So these one thousand, one hundred harassment and
Speaker 2: vandals of incidents include things from anti Zionist slash, anti
Speaker 2: Israel stickers and graffiti being left at universities and synagogues,
Speaker 2: the latter which I believe is in poor taste, but
Speaker 2: also you know swastikas being painted on synagogues, extremely anti
Speaker 2: Semitic messages being left at Jewish centers, and street harassment
Speaker 2: targeting visibly Jewish people, as well as just overt to
Speaker 2: neo Nazi activity under the banner of free Palestine. Now,
Speaker 2: of these over one thousand and one hundred incidents, I'd
Speaker 2: say that a very small minority of them are principled
Speaker 2: anti Zionist activism, which has been mislabeled. Most of the
Speaker 2: data in these one thousand incidents is just blatant anti semitism.
Speaker 2: I are specifically directed towards just regular Jewish people. People
Speaker 2: writing kill Jews and bathroom stalls, threats being sent to
Speaker 2: Jewish people mentioning Hitler or Hermas, a lot of just
Speaker 2: extremely gross stuff. There's too many. There's too many, just
Speaker 2: like threats that mentioned the word Jews, that I just
Speaker 2: can't even read them all, nor do I want to,
Speaker 2: because it's just gross. Like there is a truly upsetting number,
Speaker 2: which is why I wanted to make this episode in
Speaker 2: the first place is because I've been seeing this pretty
Speaker 2: big rise of anti semitism. Other people have as well,
Speaker 2: and I felt like this wasn't probably being as talked
Speaker 2: about as much as it should be among the anti
Speaker 2: fascist left, because you know, everyone's focusing on this ethnic
Speaker 2: cleansing that's happening, because that is very bad. But meanwhile,
Speaker 2: there's this other massive problem that if you care about
Speaker 2: fascist entryism, if you care about anti Semitic behavior and
Speaker 2: actions being either a lie to happen in leftist spaces
Speaker 2: or just happening in general, Like a lot of the
Speaker 2: stuff is being done by fascists who are not who
Speaker 2: are not you know, going to a pro Palestine rally
Speaker 2: because they believe in anti imperialism. But there's just a
Speaker 2: lot of this stuff happening, which is why I think
Speaker 2: it is needing to be talked about.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: There are a number of instances that are logged in
Speaker 2: these one thousand, one hundred incidents here, such as you know,
Speaker 2: for I'm just gonna I'm gonna pull from actual examples.
Speaker 2: But also this is kind of generalizing because this was
Speaker 2: also reflecting a small trend things like pro Palestine phrases
Speaker 2: being yelled at random Jewish people on the street, having
Speaker 2: like Antizionist stickers being poorly placed in different locations, like
Speaker 2: at a Jewish cemetery, vandalizing non political Jewish owned businesses
Speaker 2: with anti Zionist phrases, even like breaking the windows of
Speaker 2: random Jewish owned businesses with no ties to Israel or
Speaker 2: the IDF and leaving anti Zionist phrases or pro Palestine
Speaker 2: phrases next to these broken windows. Now, while the content
Speaker 2: of what's being actually said in these incidents may not
Speaker 2: be like anti Semitic in nature by itself, right, like
Speaker 2: just having very basic anti Sionist phrases being graffeited that
Speaker 2: may not be anti Semitic itself, like that combination of words.
Speaker 2: This sort of activity, though, plays into a classic anti
Speaker 2: Semitic kind of trope, as if every like random Jewish
Speaker 2: person is somehow in part responsible for the actions of Israel.
Speaker 2: And it also conflates Jewish identity with Zionism, which is
Speaker 2: the problem that we were talking about before when we
Speaker 2: started this episode, right when I was talking about the
Speaker 2: stuff with Hanuka just a few hours ago. As of
Speaker 2: time of recording, the corvalis anti fascist branch. I guess, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I think they're a member of Torch put out this
Speaker 2: thread about how the GDL, the Going Defense League. We
Speaker 2: talked about them previously in this episode. They're a big
Speaker 2: group of organized neo Nazis that spread a lot of
Speaker 2: anti Semitic stuff, how they hijacked a city council meeting
Speaker 2: to spread anti Semitic stuff during a discussion of a
Speaker 2: during a discussion about a ceasefire resolution. And I think
Speaker 2: they kind of ended their thread by talking about how
Speaker 2: it is extremely important to call out the conflation of
Speaker 2: the Jewish people with the genocidal actions of the State
Speaker 2: of Israel and assertions that the media is controlled by
Speaker 2: Jews or that regular Jews have some kind of say
Speaker 2: in everything that's happening, right, It gets in this kind
Speaker 2: of like cabalish notion. Now back to kind of the
Speaker 2: data that I was talking about, These sorts of incidents
Speaker 2: are vastly, vastly outweighed by the number of just overt
Speaker 2: jew hatred, invoking of anti Semitic conspiracy theories, calling for
Speaker 2: the death of use and swastikas. But I still think
Speaker 2: it's extremely important to mention because the targeting of random
Speaker 2: Jewish people and businesses itself. That is a form of
Speaker 2: anti Semitism, and this activity helps to reinforce the abuse
Speaker 2: of the Jewish identity by inextricately linking it to Zionism,
Speaker 2: which only strengthens the Zionist ideology. So that's that's that's
Speaker 2: my little mini rant about the way we've been seeing
Speaker 2: some of these things play out.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: Many of these over a thousand incidents logged use anti
Speaker 2: Zionism as a sort of cover for just spreading anti Semitism,
Speaker 2: particularly from known white supremacist and neo Nazi groups. The
Speaker 2: GDL is a good example. There's also groups like White
Speaker 2: Lives Matter and a number of others that I could
Speaker 2: name that When you're looking through the ADL's data on
Speaker 2: these one thousand or so incidents, a large large amount
Speaker 2: of them are done by the Goum Defense League, the GDL,
Speaker 2: And this is this is this is a strategic thing
Speaker 2: for them, right They're seeing the kind of moment that
Speaker 2: people are in culturally, the way people are talking about Israel,
Speaker 2: and if they can find a way to squeeze in
Speaker 2: their neo Nazi talking points kind of under this under
Speaker 2: this very very thin Palestine kind of Veneer. That's great
Speaker 2: for them. If they can get people to start almost
Speaker 2: mindlessly repeating their style of talking points, that's great for them. Right,
Speaker 2: it makes sense why they're putting so much time and
Speaker 2: dedication to this, because they're trying to use this moment
Speaker 2: and abuse the thousands of people who might be more
Speaker 2: susceptible to this right now to spread their ideology and
Speaker 2: to do and to do entryism like this is a
Speaker 2: part of what their tactic is. So while it's true
Speaker 2: that many of these incidents do come from explicitly Nazi groups,
Speaker 2: there's also just a really upsettingly and shockingly large number
Speaker 2: of them that come from students, students from middle school
Speaker 2: to college, who are ostensibly anti Israel but are going
Speaker 2: about it via targeting random Jewish people and spreading anti Semitism,
Speaker 2: whether that's intended or not. But a lot of the
Speaker 2: talking points are just anti Semitic talking points. Now, I
Speaker 2: can't I'm not in the heads of anybody. I'm not
Speaker 2: talking to the twelve year old in some middle school
Speaker 2: in Colorado who's leaving anti Semitic messages in a bathroom stall.
Speaker 2: But the effect is kind of the same, and just
Speaker 2: the sheer number of specifically like like like middle school,
Speaker 2: junior high, high school, instance, that are logged among this
Speaker 2: thousand was just incredibly incredibly distressing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I I mean I think, I think a
Speaker 3: lot of what's going on here is that, like the
Speaker 3: US is a culturally Christian society, right like it has
Speaker 3: like of the developed countries, the US is like one
Speaker 3: of the most Christian and American Christianity. And this is
Speaker 3: true of like in different ways, of like just basically
Speaker 3: all of the major Christian nominations are enormously anti Semitic,
Speaker 3: like and there're any Seminican theory in different in different,
Speaker 3: in weird ways. Like I mean, I spent some time
Speaker 3: recently for something else, like reading about like this argument
Speaker 3: between like the evangelicals who are like, we need to
Speaker 3: we need to have all the Jews go back to
Speaker 3: Israel so that we can bring about the Second Coming,
Speaker 3: and they were going to fight with the the hard
Speaker 3: line like right wing Lutherans, and the hard hardline right
Speaker 3: wing Lutherans are like, what the fuck do you mean? Like, no,
Speaker 3: like the Holy Land belongs to us, not the Jews.
Speaker 3: What the fuck are you guys doing? Right, It's like
Speaker 3: this is the baseline of American society, right, it's unbelievably
Speaker 3: anti Semitic in ways that you know, are are just
Speaker 3: sort of passed down through like like culture, are culturally
Speaker 3: received and absorbed in ways that people don't like see
Speaker 3: or understand or think about, because it's just it's it's
Speaker 3: the wall, it's the water that America that you know,
Speaker 3: you swim in in American culture in this sort of
Speaker 3: like like this hedemonic Christian society. And that means that
Speaker 3: like even people with like at least in their heads,
Speaker 3: good intentions get caught up in this ship. And it's
Speaker 3: fun yeah, and bad.
Speaker 2: And there's also at the same time a very concerted
Speaker 2: effort to slide in the anti Jewish extremism, anti Semitic rhetoric,
Speaker 2: to slide that in sometimes covertly sometimes not into into
Speaker 2: lots of mainstream discourse and exchanges, and social media specifically
Speaker 2: TikTok has been really has been really bad at this,
Speaker 2: which is where a lot of young people spend probably
Speaker 2: the majority of their day if they're going to be
Speaker 2: looking at their phone, and it's it's I said, I
Speaker 2: didn't want to get into like social media rhetoric. But
Speaker 2: also just like as someone who spent a lot of
Speaker 2: time on four chan and eight chan looking specifically at Nazis.
Speaker 2: The way Twitter currently works is like it is just
Speaker 2: for chan eight chan level stuff pretty commonly. Like if
Speaker 2: I look at the quote tweets of any almost any
Speaker 2: tweet made by a Jewish person, there is there is
Speaker 2: just some of the most atrocious, unmoderated anti semitism that
Speaker 2: I've seen on a platform like like Twitter, Like this
Speaker 2: is this is really like eight chan level stuff, I think,
Speaker 2: And this isn't intentional to slide this stuff in to
Speaker 2: make it look normalized. The ADL reported a nearly one
Speaker 2: thousand percent increase in the daily average of violent messages
Speaker 2: mentioning Jews and Israel in white supremacist and right wing
Speaker 2: extremist channels on Telegram in the days following the October
Speaker 2: seventh massacre. So this, this is something that is specifically
Speaker 2: being done in far right spaces. I'm gonna quote again
Speaker 2: from this corbalis against fascism. The struggle for the liberation
Speaker 2: of Palestine is one of the most pressing of our time.
Speaker 2: It's imperative that we shut down anti Semitic attempts to
Speaker 2: co p that strug immediately, which if you care about
Speaker 2: the liberation of Palestine and Palestadtian people, this is something
Speaker 2: you also need to be concerned about because these two
Speaker 2: things are linked. There's twenty seven assaults have been reported.
Speaker 2: Around eight of these assaults are stemming from fights which
Speaker 2: broke out at protest rallies. I'm not going to get
Speaker 2: into those ones as much because that can be tricky
Speaker 2: because I've seen Zionists start fights like right next to
Speaker 2: me before and then claim a victimhood like no, you're
Speaker 2: the one that started that. You swung a flagpole at
Speaker 2: these people, and then they de escalated very quickly, and
Speaker 2: I'm sure there's incidents of the reverse happening. But a
Speaker 2: majority of these assaults that have been reported are very
Speaker 2: clear cut anti Semitic attacks targeted against Jewish people, some
Speaker 2: of which are quite frightening to read about. There's been
Speaker 2: a large number of a vehicle attacks. There was one
Speaker 2: incident of someone breaking in to a Jewish family's home
Speaker 2: and assaulting people inside their own home, and then also
Speaker 2: there's been a number of incidents of just assaulting people
Speaker 2: as they leave synagogues. I've seen very very off start
Speaker 2: fights with people right next to That is kind of
Speaker 2: what I had to say about this rise in anti Semitism,
Speaker 2: because I saw this being a major problem that was
Speaker 2: being not talked about as much as it should be.
Speaker 2: Because this is it is higher than what we've seen
Speaker 2: in years, not to even mention the rise in Islamophobia,
Speaker 2: which is also a massive rise is in Islamophobia has
Speaker 2: been happening the past four months, including resulting in murders.
Speaker 2: Right Just in the four weeks after October seventh, the
Speaker 2: Council on American Islamic Relations logged an unprecedented number of
Speaker 2: Islamophobic incidents. The research and advocacy director Corey Saylor said
Speaker 2: in a statement, quote, both Islamophobia and anti Arab racism
Speaker 2: are out of control in the ways we have not
Speaker 2: seen in almost ten years. The one thousand, two hundred
Speaker 2: and eighty three complaints we have received over the past
Speaker 2: month represent a two hundred and sixteen percent increase in
Speaker 2: requests for help and reports of bias. The Islamophobic and
Speaker 2: anti Palestinian rhetoric that have been used to justify both
Speaker 2: violence against Palestinians and Gaza and silence supporters of Palestinian
Speaker 2: human rights here in America have contributed to this unprecedented
Speaker 2: surge in bigotry. It's just been bad the past four months. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's just things have been bad. There's been murders, there's
Speaker 2: been assaults. It's it's horrible, and I think both of
Speaker 2: these things are things that need to be interrogated more,
Speaker 2: the Islamophobic incidents as well as anti Semitic incidents. So
Speaker 2: that's what I wanted to talk about as I have
Speaker 2: been slowly slowly logging more synagogue attacks, more death threats,
Speaker 2: all of these sorts of stuff. So yeah, that's kind
Speaker 2: of all I have to say today.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's real bad. I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's that out there.
Speaker 2: I mean, if you care about the struggle of the
Speaker 2: liberation of Palestine and the people in Palestine, you need
Speaker 2: to if you see, if you see anything that plays
Speaker 2: into these sorts of antisemitic tropes that we've talked about,
Speaker 2: blaming just random Jewish people for what's going on, attacking
Speaker 2: random Jewish owned businesses without any ties to the IDF,
Speaker 2: without any ties to the State of Israel, just all
Speaker 2: of this stuff. It needs to be called out because
Speaker 2: this actually, this sort of thing only strengthens the ideology
Speaker 2: of Zionism. So if you call yourself an anti Zionist,
Speaker 2: it is your imperative duty to be on the watch
Speaker 2: for this sort of thing and stop it if you
Speaker 2: see it. That's kind of the thesis at the end
Speaker 2: of this All right, well, without further ado, I think
Speaker 2: we will We'll end this episode. Stay safe out there, everybody.
Speaker 2: Hopefully this new year will be complete chaos for all
Speaker 2: of us.
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