Rise in Antisemitism

is why it's taken me a while to put this together. Firstly, I want to avoid getting into like oppression Olympics here, Right, talking about one bad thing does not negate many other bad things that are happening concurrently. Having a discussion about a very troubling rise in anti semitism and a state backed ethnic cleansing do not need to be mutually exclusive topics of discussion. Right. We can say both of these things are actually pretty bad. And today we're going to

be talking specifically about anti semitism. And I think you know, this show has had a history of reporting on anti fascist movements and attempts to stop fascist entryism and promoting of anti Semitism, So this topic is well within our regular wheelhouse and there is a decent bit to talk

about now. The second thing that makes this topic a little bit tricky is that some of the big extremism research groups that typically do the most accessible cataloging of anti Semitic incidents have proven themselves to be slightly unreliable on this topic for the past four months. And that's not just my opinion, that's also the opinion of current and former ADL employees who have been coming out against director Jonathan greenblatz leadership choices, particularly since the October seventh

Hamas attack. Now, due to the nature of their job versus my job, ADL analysts have a lot more dedicated time and resources to cataloging alleged anti Semitic incidents. But under Greenblatz direction, the whole of their data from the past four months is heavily skewed to include anything expressing anti Zionism as being included in their data about anti semitism, and even anything deemed too sympathetic to Palestinians as being a driver of anti Semitism. So that's the kind of

situation we have here with. You know, there's many issues the ADL has had in the past, which we may talked about in the future, but typically they've done an okay job the past few years, specifically cataloging anti semitism during the rise of the alt right. Their data is often relatively reliable on this topic. Some of their other data and other practices are very open to criticism. But this is kind of one other factor that's gonna make

this a little bit tricky. Now, as like an example, right, this is this is we can we can talk about these things in abstract. I'm gonna talk about something from Atlanta, because this is something I have some experience in. So on the ADL's big map of antisemitic incidents from October seventh to the present, if you zoom into Atlanta, there's two incidents that are right next to each other. One is a banner drop done by the Goiam Defense League, which is a group of neo Nazis.

really masked because you also have a Hitler banner. But like you know, if someone only sees one banner, be like, oh, it's a Palestine banner, but no, it's actually a Nazi banner. So we have this incident logged. We also have another incident blogged right beside it, from a protest a few days later, which was an Inner Faith rally in support of Palestine against the ongoing ethnic cleansing. That's happening in

Gaza with thousands and thousands of people being killed. So we have this banner drop and we have this rally, and both of these things are labeled as an anti Semitic incident. They're both like equal in the eyes of this data, which just isn't true. I was, I was at this rally. I did not hear anything anti Semitic coming from the speakers. Many of the speakers, if not

the majority of the speakers, were Jewish. There were a group of Jewish counter protesters who showed up who started many fights, fights which were very quickly de escalated by the people who were putting on the rally. There was this one woman who was carrying an Israeli flag on his flagpole who kept hitting people with it. So there was a lot of there's a lot of things going on at this rally, but this was not an anti Semitic rally. And in fact, the Jewish counter protesters were

extremely vitriolic. They were expressing explicit desire for genocide of Palestinians, like very very gross stuff. It was. It was really disgusting. So both of these incidents, though, are seen as equal, which just show that's just eas example to kind of show how this data isn't really reliable that the ADL

is putting together here. Now, I really don't feel like it's my place to go through the ADYLS database and decide what is and is not antisemitism, right, Like, that's I don't have the time, nor the money, normally the authority to be like the arbiter of what is and isn't anti Semitic.

I'm simply not equipped to make informed judgments. So for that reason this episode I will focus mostly on physical attacks, threats, and vandalism as opposed to the much more murky waters of rhetoric, online rhetoric. And you know, just these these there's been probably thousands of rallies across the United States. I've not been to everyone, I've not watched every single speech, I've not heard every single offhand comment, so I'm not

going to deal with those. Instead, I'm going to be focusing on physical like in like IRL and things that have a very a very clear result of the action. So this mostly attacks threats vandalism. Anyway, moving on though, I guess actually the one other thing about stats is that when talking about this rise anti Semitism, because there's been a lot of articles from mainstream news outlets being like,

here's the rise anti Semitism, and here's the stats. Another thing pointing towards why these stats are unreliable and the reason why I'm not going to be using them largely is because many of the stats included and these articles are crime stats, and these crime stats are also proving

to be heavily unreliable. For example, the Metropolitan Police claimed that there was a one thousand and three hundred and fifty percent increase in anti Semitic hate crimes in London during the first two and a half weeks of October, with two hundred and eighteen anti Semitic offenses in London during that time period compared to only fifteen in twenty twenty two. But included in these stats are incidents like the police in London arresting a man for tearing down

some of those hostage posters. That's one of the hate crimes that they include in this and also the met said that that's the Metropolitan Police said that chanting from the river to the sea near Jewish people or near

Jewish buildings during a protest would be deemed unlawful. And I think there is a debate to be had whether if you're just protesting outside of a random Jewish building, that's probably not great and that could be an indicator of antisemitism, but having that chant be deemed unlawful for just being near other Jewish people, Like I said, at the rally in Atlanta, there was a whole bunch of Jewish counter protesters who came to star Fights, So like,

you're going to be around Jewish people, if you're a march you're marching around, or if you're outside in Israeli embassy, that's a that's an it might opinion, a very valid target for protest that would be considered a Jewish building. So all of these stats are heavily, heavily skewed by these by by these sorts of reasons for how how how the met is, including things as being anti Semitic hate crimes.

that data is basically useless. And now I think it's also worth mentioning just very very briefly, The Metropolitan Police also recorded a one hundred and forty percent increase in Islamophobic incidents during those first two and a half weeks of October's that's forty two incidents in twenty twenty two compared to one hundred and three incidents in twenty twenty three.

And while that percentage is lower than the anti Semitic stat it also indicates how much more common Islamophobia in London is because the regular amount of reported incidents from last year is so much higher than the regular reported amount of anti Semitic incidents. Like having forty two incidents per like two and a half weeks, be the normal stat is not great and maybe someone should look into why British people are so islamophobic. I mean that there's

that that's a whole episode in and of itself. Is Amophobia in the UK is a massive, massive problem. But just as a comparison, I thought I might as well say that we will we will get to Honkah next. But it has already been thirteen minutes of me talking about stats and giving disclaivers, so that means it's time for an ad break. I'm not going to do a silly ad transition. Just listen to the ads. All right, we are we are back. Since we just finally escaped

the holiday season, let's begin by talking about Honkkah. Public manoras, often without any extra like iconography tying them to the state of Israel, were a frequent target of vandalism and anti Semitic messaging. During the months of December, a far right member of parliament in Poland used a fire extinguisher to blow at the candles on a manora in the

lobby of Parliament. A public manora in London had its light bulbs smashed with a free Palestine sticker placed onto the front, and then days later it was found toppled over and left in pieces. There's many of these incidents. I'm just gonna name a few more, just because at a certain point it kind of becomes redundant. But I think these things are worth talking about. An eleven foot three hundred and fifty pound manora next to Lake Mari in Oakland was cut up and destroyed in mid December,

with pieces being thrown into the nearby lake. A message was graffitied that led We're gonna find you. You're on alert. It was also reported that there was graffiti left nearby that read free Palestine in Arabic, but I can't confirm that. The picture they have online does not match what free Palestine in airbath looks like. But I'm not an expert on Arabic, so I just can't confirm that. But that

is being reported in local Jewish newspapers. Manora sand sculpture commissioned in Palm Beach was destroyed and left defaced with a swastika outside of synagogue in a suburb of Washington, d C. A manora was toppled over on the eve of Honka, and two manoras were vandalized and damaged in

Brooklyn in early December by masked individuals. So one other similar incident I will talk about, which is kind of interesting, is that there was this pro Palestine protest at Yale where a one of the protesters climbed up onto this massive I don't know how tall it was, but it was huge. They had to climb up pretty high on this big public manora and placed a Palestinian flag kind of around one of the little arms on the manora.

But very quickly, like within seconds of this happening, other pro Palestine protesters, noticing this is kind of disrespectful, asked this person to take it down, like almost almost immediately. This is a very a very quick exchange, and this kind of sparked some peace people talking about you know, is it okay to put Palestinian flags on manoras? Is it okay to vandalize menoras? Which the answer is no, The answer you shouldn't vandalize a menora. That's generally not great.

But you know, people were saying and specifically pointing towards like pictures of IDF soldiers who've been taking territory in Gaza, who've been putting up menoras in Gaza, or like the Israeli military doing these photo ops with big menoras in different parts of gazas being like, hey, when there's this active ethnic cleansing going on and soldiers are using this religious iconography and it's being associated directly with this, with this ongoing ethnic genocide, how can you blame people who

are going to be treating this symbol with hostility? And I think there's a few problems with this idea. I'm going to quote from this Jewish artist who goes by underscore a nunnery who I think phrased this really well. Quote. Jewish symbols shouldn't be associated with Zionism or ceded to them just because Zionists abuse them. If the monora were put up by Zionists, as some explicitly Zionist display, then putting up a Palestadian flag would be an active resistance.

If it's not, then it's just cementing the Zionist conflation and exploitation of Jewish identity. There are more non Jewish Zionists than there are Jews, unquote, and this gets at a point which I think is really important when you're talking about anti Zionist activism. Attacking symbols of Jewish culture in the name of anti Zionism only strengthens the cause of Zionism by affirming the conflation of Judaism and Zionism,

or Judaism and the state of Israel. This conflation helps Zionists shield their actions by abusing the Jewish identity and making these two things be more like intersectional. So I think that is one a strategic reason for why this is a bad idea, and two it's maybe slightly anti Semitic. So that is my little holiday section. Just because I saw a whole bunch of stuff around these manoras, and I didn't feel good about it.

But now I'm going to talk about some international incidents because I think we have a tendency to overfocus on America when there's a whole bunch of other stuff happening and you know, the rest of the world. Back in October, a historic synagogue in Tunisia was burned down by a mob of hundreds of people in response to reports that in Israeli airstrike hit a hospital in Gaza. This sucked.

I shouldn't have to explain why burning down a historical synagogue is anti Semitic because you don't like something the State of Israel did. That's just that. Just isn't that just isn't like that's just not se shit, Like come on, yeah. So a month later in November, someone posted the video online of themselves pouring fuel and setting fire to the only synagogue in Armenia. The entrance was damaged in the arsen attack, but no one was hurt. The only synagogue

in Vortswaft, Poland. Sorry I pride butchered that, but it is a hard word, but the only synagogue in this town of Poland to survive the Holocaust was defaced with graffiti that read quote Israel criminals and murderers unquote and then like a week, I guess. Earlier that week a group of teenagers also destroyed a anura in this same town. In mid October, Maltov cocktails were thrown at a synagogue in Berlin after Hanukkah. In Belgium, a Jewish cemetery was

vandalized with swastikas on gravestones. In late In late November, a Maltav cocktail was thrown at a Jewish community center in Montreal. Earlier that month, shots were fired at two different Jewish schools in Montreal in three different incidents, and four Holocaust memorials in Germany were vandalized with a mix of anti Semitic and anti Zionist messages. So again, like when I was looking at these ones once in Germany, the actual content of about half of these messages were

not anti Semitic. But the act of doing this at a at a at a Holocaust memorial just is like it it gives me the ick. And there's arguments could be made that this does actually play into antisemitic troops, like you're what, You're blaming dead Jewish people for the actions of the current state of Israel, like that's it's it just And also half half of these messages left at these at these Holocaust memorial sites were also just blatantly at anti Semitic, like very very clearly like Nazi

style stuff. I don't have time to go over all of the incidents across the Europe. There is a great deal many. There's many, many, many that I've not mentioned. These are just a few. Like I said, I'm focusing on like vandalism, very very clear cut stuff. People doing arson attacks, right, it's just very very basic stuff. This stuff in Montreal not great. Montreal, Canada, get your shit together. Although unfortunately not surprising but still upsetting is Jews being

barred from shops across Turkey. And oh, there's a whole, a whole bunch of very gross government government sponsored anti semitism across Turkey campaigns to prohibit the sale of land to Jewish people. A lot of a lot of bad stuff in Turkey. But that's not incredibly surprising.

messages were very similar. None of these were incredibly credible, but it still sparked a whole bunch of bomb sweeps and concerned because when Jewish synagogues get bomb threats, that's not an empty threat. Either like this is like there is historical precedent.

which I have no reason to believe is incorrect. So on that note, I no, I don't really think we could have a bomb threat. Segue to two ads. I really don't really don't know.

So on that note, the ADL has logged around one thousand and one hundred anti Semitic incidents since October seventh, not related to protest rallies. So this is specifically all the incidents that are not related to these big pro Palestinian Interfaith many Jewish led rallies. Now I'm not saying that nothing anti Semitic has not happened at any of those rallies, but these rallies were logged simply as quote anti Israel rallies which featured over anti Semitism, anti Zionism,

and or expressions of support for terror. So crammed in the middle of that explanation is just anti Zionism. So that is one thing they are just counting as being enough to be logged as an anti Semitic incident. So again I'm not going through the over like one thousand rallies that they have logged here just because I don't have the time and I don't feel like it. But yes, just for full transparency, that is the information I'm not

going to be looking at. Instead, I'm looking at these one thousand and one hundred other incidents not related to

these protests. So these one thousand, one hundred harassment and vandals of incidents include things from anti Zionist slash, anti Israel stickers and graffiti being left at universities and synagogues, the latter which I believe is in poor taste, but also you know swastikas being painted on synagogues, extremely anti Semitic messages being left at Jewish centers, and street harassment targeting visibly Jewish people, as well as just overt to

neo Nazi activity under the banner of free Palestine. Now, of these over one thousand and one hundred incidents, I'd say that a very small minority of them are principled anti Zionist activism, which has been mislabeled. Most of the data in these one thousand incidents is just blatant anti semitism. I are specifically directed towards just regular Jewish people. People writing kill Jews and bathroom stalls, threats being sent to Jewish people mentioning Hitler or Hermas, a lot of just

extremely gross stuff. There's too many. There's too many, just like threats that mentioned the word Jews, that I just can't even read them all, nor do I want to, because it's just gross. Like there is a truly upsetting number, which is why I wanted to make this episode in the first place is because I've been seeing this pretty

big rise of anti semitism. Other people have as well, and I felt like this wasn't probably being as talked about as much as it should be among the anti fascist left, because you know, everyone's focusing on this ethnic

cleansing that's happening, because that is very bad. But meanwhile, there's this other massive problem that if you care about fascist entryism, if you care about anti Semitic behavior and actions being either a lie to happen in leftist spaces or just happening in general, Like a lot of the stuff is being done by fascists who are not who are not you know, going to a pro Palestine rally

because they believe in anti imperialism. But there's just a lot of this stuff happening, which is why I think it is needing to be talked about.

But also this is kind of generalizing because this was also reflecting a small trend things like pro Palestine phrases being yelled at random Jewish people on the street, having like Antizionist stickers being poorly placed in different locations, like at a Jewish cemetery, vandalizing non political Jewish owned businesses with anti Zionist phrases, even like breaking the windows of random Jewish owned businesses with no ties to Israel or the IDF and leaving anti Zionist phrases or pro Palestine

phrases next to these broken windows. Now, while the content of what's being actually said in these incidents may not be like anti Semitic in nature by itself, right, like just having very basic anti Sionist phrases being graffeited that may not be anti Semitic itself, like that combination of words. This sort of activity, though, plays into a classic anti Semitic kind of trope, as if every like random Jewish person is somehow in part responsible for the actions of Israel.

And it also conflates Jewish identity with Zionism, which is the problem that we were talking about before when we started this episode, right when I was talking about the stuff with Hanuka just a few hours ago. As of time of recording, the corvalis anti fascist branch. I guess, yeah, yeah, I think they're a member of Torch put out this thread about how the GDL, the Going Defense League. We

talked about them previously in this episode. They're a big group of organized neo Nazis that spread a lot of anti Semitic stuff, how they hijacked a city council meeting to spread anti Semitic stuff during a discussion of a

during a discussion about a ceasefire resolution. And I think they kind of ended their thread by talking about how it is extremely important to call out the conflation of the Jewish people with the genocidal actions of the State of Israel and assertions that the media is controlled by Jews or that regular Jews have some kind of say in everything that's happening, right, It gets in this kind

of like cabalish notion. Now back to kind of the data that I was talking about, These sorts of incidents are vastly, vastly outweighed by the number of just overt jew hatred, invoking of anti Semitic conspiracy theories, calling for the death of use and swastikas. But I still think it's extremely important to mention because the targeting of random

Jewish people and businesses itself. That is a form of anti Semitism, and this activity helps to reinforce the abuse of the Jewish identity by inextricately linking it to Zionism, which only strengthens the Zionist ideology. So that's that's that's my little mini rant about the way we've been seeing some of these things play out.

GDL is a good example. There's also groups like White Lives Matter and a number of others that I could name that When you're looking through the ADL's data on these one thousand or so incidents, a large large amount of them are done by the Goum Defense League, the GDL, And this is this is this is a strategic thing for them, right They're seeing the kind of moment that people are in culturally, the way people are talking about Israel, and if they can find a way to squeeze in

their neo Nazi talking points kind of under this under this very very thin Palestine kind of Veneer. That's great for them. If they can get people to start almost

mindlessly repeating their style of talking points, that's great for them. Right, it makes sense why they're putting so much time and dedication to this, because they're trying to use this moment and abuse the thousands of people who might be more susceptible to this right now to spread their ideology and to do and to do entryism like this is a

part of what their tactic is. So while it's true that many of these incidents do come from explicitly Nazi groups, there's also just a really upsettingly and shockingly large number of them that come from students, students from middle school to college, who are ostensibly anti Israel but are going about it via targeting random Jewish people and spreading anti Semitism, whether that's intended or not. But a lot of the talking points are just anti Semitic talking points. Now, I

can't I'm not in the heads of anybody. I'm not talking to the twelve year old in some middle school in Colorado who's leaving anti Semitic messages in a bathroom stall. But the effect is kind of the same, and just the sheer number of specifically like like like middle school, junior high, high school, instance, that are logged among this thousand was just incredibly incredibly distressing.

in weird ways. Like I mean, I spent some time recently for something else, like reading about like this argument between like the evangelicals who are like, we need to we need to have all the Jews go back to Israel so that we can bring about the Second Coming, and they were going to fight with the the hard line like right wing Lutherans, and the hard hardline right wing Lutherans are like, what the fuck do you mean? Like, no, like the Holy Land belongs to us, not the Jews.

What the fuck are you guys doing? Right, It's like this is the baseline of American society, right, it's unbelievably anti Semitic in ways that you know, are are just sort of passed down through like like culture, are culturally received and absorbed in ways that people don't like see or understand or think about, because it's just it's it's the wall, it's the water that America that you know, you swim in in American culture in this sort of

like like this hedemonic Christian society. And that means that like even people with like at least in their heads, good intentions get caught up in this ship. And it's fun yeah, and bad.

didn't want to get into like social media rhetoric. But also just like as someone who spent a lot of time on four chan and eight chan looking specifically at Nazis. The way Twitter currently works is like it is just

for chan eight chan level stuff pretty commonly. Like if I look at the quote tweets of any almost any tweet made by a Jewish person, there is there is just some of the most atrocious, unmoderated anti semitism that I've seen on a platform like like Twitter, Like this is this is really like eight chan level stuff, I think, And this isn't intentional to slide this stuff in to

make it look normalized. The ADL reported a nearly one thousand percent increase in the daily average of violent messages mentioning Jews and Israel in white supremacist and right wing extremist channels on Telegram in the days following the October seventh massacre. So this, this is something that is specifically being done in far right spaces. I'm gonna quote again from this corbalis against fascism. The struggle for the liberation of Palestine is one of the most pressing of our time.

It's imperative that we shut down anti Semitic attempts to co p that strug immediately, which if you care about the liberation of Palestine and Palestadtian people, this is something you also need to be concerned about because these two things are linked. There's twenty seven assaults have been reported. Around eight of these assaults are stemming from fights which

broke out at protest rallies. I'm not going to get into those ones as much because that can be tricky because I've seen Zionists start fights like right next to me before and then claim a victimhood like no, you're the one that started that. You swung a flagpole at these people, and then they de escalated very quickly, and

I'm sure there's incidents of the reverse happening. But a majority of these assaults that have been reported are very clear cut anti Semitic attacks targeted against Jewish people, some of which are quite frightening to read about. There's been a large number of a vehicle attacks. There was one incident of someone breaking in to a Jewish family's home and assaulting people inside their own home, and then also there's been a number of incidents of just assaulting people

as they leave synagogues. I've seen very very off start fights with people right next to That is kind of what I had to say about this rise in anti Semitism, because I saw this being a major problem that was being not talked about as much as it should be. Because this is it is higher than what we've seen in years, not to even mention the rise in Islamophobia, which is also a massive rise is in Islamophobia has been happening the past four months, including resulting in murders.

Right Just in the four weeks after October seventh, the Council on American Islamic Relations logged an unprecedented number of Islamophobic incidents. The research and advocacy director Corey Saylor said in a statement, quote, both Islamophobia and anti Arab racism are out of control in the ways we have not seen in almost ten years. The one thousand, two hundred and eighty three complaints we have received over the past month represent a two hundred and sixteen percent increase in

requests for help and reports of bias. The Islamophobic and anti Palestinian rhetoric that have been used to justify both violence against Palestinians and Gaza and silence supporters of Palestinian human rights here in America have contributed to this unprecedented surge in bigotry. It's just been bad the past four months. Yeah, it's just things have been bad. There's been murders, there's

been assaults. It's it's horrible, and I think both of these things are things that need to be interrogated more, the Islamophobic incidents as well as anti Semitic incidents. So that's what I wanted to talk about as I have been slowly slowly logging more synagogue attacks, more death threats, all of these sorts of stuff. So yeah, that's kind of all I have to say today.

of this stuff. It needs to be called out because this actually, this sort of thing only strengthens the ideology of Zionism. So if you call yourself an anti Zionist, it is your imperative duty to be on the watch for this sort of thing and stop it if you see it. That's kind of the thesis at the end of this All right, well, without further ado, I think we will We'll end this episode. Stay safe out there, everybody. Hopefully this new year will be complete chaos for all of us.