Tired of getting hit by the Mission boomerang yet?
Electoral failings have led liberals as a whole, and most Jewish Americans, to recalibrate beliefs in the name of a cynical political cause. Recovering them will be painful, if not impossible.
Many like me that grew up in the 1990s remember that there were battles over obscenity laws relating to gangsta' rap, blasphemous films like Kevin Smith's Dogma, and banned book lists. Nowadays those cultural battles by social conservatives have largely been shifted to the back-burner, while admittedly social mores have degraded to the point where unabashed "Liberals" like Michael Strahan and Sarah Haines host child sex performers on their shows without batting an eye. It is cases like this that show there is a major divergence between social and cultural big L "Liberals" and intellectual liberalism. Traditionally liberalism stresses that stricter government suppression of social freedom only drives transgressors into the shadows and promotes deviant abuses of it, whereas social liberalism views the abuses of social freedoms as daring and virtuous rather than the signs of a decaying society.
The unfortunate reality is that the prevailing mood and leadership of the Jewish American community is completely infected by this mentality. My intention in singling out this sector of society is due to my personal familiarity from within, and I'm sure that members of Mainline Protestant and Catholic congregations could probably add their own similar observations. Nevertheless, I would not be surprised if I was called a "boot-licker" or a "kapo" by members of the social Liberal prevailing orthodoxy that pervades most Jewish institutions in the country from AIPAC to the Anti-Defamation League to J Street to new "activist" groups like IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace. In their minds debates over personal philosophy and political policy are already decided based on their progressive morality, and therefore there's no point in engaging with anyone that supports the Second Amendment, opposes censorship of the First Amendment, and is not a vocal supporter of Roe v. Wade.
These are people that find it meaningful to have a doll of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but probably could never mention a major court decision of hers. The clichéd insult towards cheap expressions of political views with no actual risk or contribution is called "virtue signalling", but in these cases it's wholly appropriate. Ginsburg's function as a justice has nothing to do with being a symbolic figure; many of the SCOTUS cases do not even have any social or cultural dimension. The fact is that in the latest term of the court that includes the newest Donald Trump-appointed justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh the proportion of Ginsburg's decisions that agreed with the the "conservative" court's decisions 75.3% of the time, more than either Gorsuch or conservative icon Clarence Thomas (both 74%). The reason that there is so much agreement is that so many of the court's opinions are unanimous, meaning that notwithstanding perceived or real philosophical differences between the justices they are often able to reach vague agreement on complex topics because they are able to construct evidence based arguments.
And that's truly the tragedy of an icon like Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Many of her "fans" in the Jewish community are not enamoured of her legal reasoning but rather in tribute to the political ramifications of her decisions and her Jewish heritage, a partisan identity based status that surpasses any other justice, even civil rights icon and first black justice Thurgood Marshall, the first female justice Sandra Day O'Connor and conservative stalwart Antonin Scalia, the first Italian-American justice. They seem to look at Justice Ginsburg as a plucky symbol of defiance against a world of hostility. Born in 1933, she experienced the World War II and learned of the Holocaust against the Jews of Europe while living in an American society where Jews were tolerated but excluded to some extent, including by the admission quotas at Ivy League schools that continued to some extend during her own education. And as most of her fans will remind anyone with two functioning ears, as a young jurist she had to contend with a male dominated profession often dominated by arrogant chauvinist blowhards.
That's great, but it's been almost forty years since Ginsburg was an ACLU lawyer. Once she was appointed to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals in 1980 and subsequently to the Supreme Court in 1993 she became part of "the system". And while like anyone else duly elected to the court she has been gifted with lifetime powers by the Constitution, that doesn't mean we cannot critique the abominable stances she has taken:
The pride of Jewish identity is entirely situational for the vast majority of Jewish Americans. Obviously there are so many successful actors, directors, and producers in Hollywood and heads of finance and industry that it feels like a small scrape to disown creeps like Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein or scammers like Bernie Madoff. However, those examples of infamy do far more damage to the reputation of Jewish Americans than the good names of people like Stephen Spielberg and Jon Stewart (who is Canadian anyway). There are plenty of articles by Jewish commentators proudly paying tribute to the inane Kabbalah hobby of celebrities like Madonna, or the political genius of paranoid has-been director Rob Reiner, or even the oddball journey of former Phoenix Suns Center Amar'e Stoudemire's in formally converting to Judaism.
But the identity definition is increasingly becoming more and more murky in the multicultural environment of 21st century America, especially for Jews. In 2017 I sparred with another blogger, Dani Ishai Behan, who promotes the notion that Jews (yes, all of them) are "people of colour". The definition of "people of colour" has been expanded from people with some African descendants in the 18th century to anyone that is not white or European today. Since most Ashkenaz Jews are European to at least some degree, and typically are not African at all, the identity mob continually seeks ways to conjecture that by virtue of their history of discrimination and persecution as well as some genetic ties to the Levant, Jews cannot be white.
But this definition is entirely situational and hinges not on scientific evidence, cultural commonalities, or religious doctrine but on the disparaging attitudes of anti-Jewish Europeans towards their Jewish neighbours. The reality is that if one is looking at genealogy and genetics, European Jews do indeed have a strong ancestral connection to Europe. In 2017 Frontiers in Genetics even published a genetic study showing the non-Levantine origins of most Ashkenaz Jews. And as for the term "people of colour" it is rarely if ever used in common parlance, and many black people (those that were the original holders of the term) find it ridiculous when it is used.
Genetics are admittedly shaky territory for topics of racial identity, and understandably so as in American history many different European, African, and indigenous peoples intermarried in various regions of the country. Therefore some would say that self-identification is just as important as actual pedigree. However in this department a staggering 90% of American Jews identify as white according to Pew Research in 2014. This is only 5% less than the total in 2007. And in the legal world a 2018 court ruling that found a Jewish applicant for a football coaching position that had converted to Christianity at the small Baptist Louisiana College had faced racial discrimination. The Anti-Defamation League (of which I am no fan) looked at the ruling as a "double edged sword" as the definition of Jews as a different race has been used as the basis for persecuting them in the past.
In articles in The Forward, Jewish Journal, Commentary and the like the term "Jewish community" is used often and there is a wealth of well-funded organizations like the ADL, American Jewish Committee, Conference of Presidents, the JCRC's, and others that claim to represent "leadership" in thereof. But this is an illusion. Like other organizational advocacy groups like NAACP, SPLC, GLAAD, NCLR they are part of an alphabet soup of compliance with establishment norms and center-left orthodoxy. The stodgy bald-headed cardigan-wearing eunuchs that lead the AJC and ADL even agreed in 2011 in a open letter to call for Israel advocacy to not be a topic in the 2012 election. Even someone like me, who believes that this topic is over-emphasized, can recognize that every voter should be able to prioritize whatever issue is important to them, whether I agree with them or not. The leaders of these groups are self-appointed and do not see their "constituents" as individuals unless they carry with them financial or social gifts.
But the latest generation of #woke clergy and religious progressives violates that principle by portraying the principles of their religion and their politics as being one and the same, when in reality they are the opposite. As stated at the beginning, there are plenty of comparable examples among other religions from the Rev. William Barber II (Protestant), Peter Buttigieg (Episcopalian), and Keith Ellison (Islam) that profess to represent their religious faith while espousing secular progressive values that violate its edicts. But the Jewish community is home to a peculiar strain that is so contradictory as to be bordering on schizophrenia. During the Vietnam War era the long involvement and troop buildup led to a term known as "mission creep": when the original goals and aspirations of a project or movement get obscured by the quagmire of daily attrition. What we are seeing among progressive Jews is way beyond mission creep. It is a type of cancer or auto-immune disorder that has no solution in sight, one that I'll call "mission boomerang".
A perfect case in point is the Zioness Movement, a feminist progressive Zionist group that was formed in order to defend the participation of Jews and Zionist in progressive circles. The leadership of the group is made up of a number of diverse women of all ages, Jewish and non-Jewish. Most prominent among them is former Clinton White House Communications Director Ann Lewis, herself a senior figure in the Hillary Clinton 2016 presidential campaign, and the sister of former Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), the first openly gay member of Congress. The impetus for forming the group was the ousting of some Jewish lesbians from the Chicago Dyke March in 2017 due to their carrying of gay pride flags emblazoned with the Star of David. The organizers of the Dyke March saw this not as a symbol of Jewish heritage but rather of settler colonial Zionism. Right off the bat it was clear that their culture war oriented message was incredibly off key as they attempted to make their debut at the Chicago SlutWalk. If it seems completely unnecessary to assert one's religion or affinity for Zionism at an event affirming a woman's right to be a slatternly wench, don't feel alone because the event's organizers promptly disavowed Zioness and participants jeered them with taunts of "Free Palestine" while blocking their signs.
The Zionesses as they call themselves never admitted that the obstinate refusal to include them in these progressive events was evidence that progressive circles have been gripped by a general aversion to civil discourse and pluralism. Rather than take the hint that they are not welcome, they proceeded to attempt to join the Women's March in 2018. Organized by noted Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour, this event and its movement has made it clear from the outset that Zionists would not be welcome and are part of the pattern of oppression that they are fighting against. Zioness President Amanda Berman claimed that their strategy would be this: "I don’t think it’s productive for us to focus any of our energy on this one individual (Sarsour). The productive response is to show directly what she says about our community is wrong and hurtful and, frankly, discriminatory." This is the equivalent of the scorned ex-girlfriend showing up to prom and staring through the ice sculpture as the captain of the football team dances with the cheerleader that stole her purse. While morally they may have been in the right, it still looked comically pathetic.
The Women's March, rather than accept progressive Zionists thanks to Berman's passive shaming strategy, instead was deflated at the end of 2018 by the opposite tactic. A whistleblower came out and acknowledged that the movement had been completely dominated by anti-Jewish motivations since Sarsour and other colleagues joined in December 2016. One of the revelations was that Sarsour and fellow national co-chair Carmen Perez had berated a senior Jewish activist and group co-founder over past involvement of Jews in the Transatlantic slave trade. The lesson learned should have been that opponents acting in bad faith cannot be reasoned with or even shamed. They have to be exposed for the impostors that they are. But even as the support for the actual Women's March cratered the Zioness Movement was still trying to participate in its January 2019 events for the dwindling and now deeply divided movement. In June they also tried to get into another "Dyke March", this one in DC, that had rejected the use of any national symbols apart from the Palestinian flag.
The ineffectual wining is only one deficiency of this movement. Like other Zionist groups, Zioness is against the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign led by the Palestinian Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) and other movements in the west. This happens to be the only real distinction between them and the rest of the intersectional left. In its Zioness Definitions fact sheet they spend more effort defining "ableism", "bisexual erasure", "AMAB/AFAB" (transsexuals assigned male/female at birth), and most shockingly "goysplain" than they are at focusing on issues pertaining to Israel, Zionism, or Judaism. This is clearly where the mission creep has set in, as the organization is focusing on topics that have no connection whatsoever to its initial purpose. This is not the only example of how the beliefs and goals of "Zionists" are so diverse and incoherent in the 21st century that many like myself choose not to buy into that label.
This does not mean that literally any statement of theirs has to be responded to, but hard progressives like Zioness have painted themselves into the corner where they feel obligated. They feel the need to straddle the divide between the intersectional left that they agree with on everything but Israel despite its own deep racism towards whites and demagoguery against men, and the people it considers its true enemy: Trump supporters, conservatives, and casual opponents of #woke culture. The best example was this July when Donald Trump responded to criticism from The Squad by telling them to "go back where they came from". In his remarks, the President evoked their hatred of Israel and allusions towards Jews as evidence of a deeper anti-Jewish sentiment in their ranks. It was one of many criticisms against them, but for Berman it was enough to claim that Trump was "weaponizing Israel to defend his racist tweets".
In reality, the obverse is more true. Whatever the criticism of Trump, he's not the only person to weaponize Israel and anti-Semitism. This is exactly the tactic of organizations like the ADL that seek to have terms like "globalist" labeled as anti-Semitic. In that instance they are seeking to use Jews and Judaism in order to police the conversation on free trade, immigration, and multiculturalism. This is not to say that none of the public discourse contains anti-Semitism or is motivated by it, but that infringing on freedom of speech will not create a healthier conversation. The fact is that Zioness is attempting (and failing at it) to control the language within the progressive and Jewish public spheres. To the progressives they are pleading the case that progressivism must include a recognition of the State of Israel, and to the Zionists they insist that Zionism must include abortion, gun control, LGBT activism, non-gendered language, and critical race theory. Unsurprisingly they are appealing to a very thin and inconsequential overlapping sliver of either group.
Sorry Ms. Berman, but the overwhelming majority of modern progressives and liberals are deeply hostile to Israel, and they don't find your finger wagging convincing. Also, a sizable but vocal minority of American Jews are pro-life, pro-gun, oppose third-wave feminism and the new #woke racism, and do not abide by the speech rules of the would be enlightened leadership that she claims to represent. This is why she and other members of her small clique feel the need to block almost any critic (including myself and this liberal blogger) for daring to come out in opposition to their "new normal" of progressive orthodoxy. Even Brooke Goldstein of the Lawfare Project, a decidedly nonpartisan centrist Zionist legal aid project saw fit to condemn their statement appeasing Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) for his mealy mouthed fence sitting on a non-binding resolution against BDS.
It would be delusional for anyone to deny that there is a deep and growing rift in American society, and a comparable one within the Jewish sector of it. However the solution to this is not enlisting in the efforts of top-heavy groups like the ADL and Zioness that are not accountable to anyone but themselves and are self-appointed paragons of morality. The choice presented before each American, and each Jewish American, is whether to let their own mind lead them or be led astray by the boomerang.
And that's truly the tragedy of an icon like Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Many of her "fans" in the Jewish community are not enamoured of her legal reasoning but rather in tribute to the political ramifications of her decisions and her Jewish heritage, a partisan identity based status that surpasses any other justice, even civil rights icon and first black justice Thurgood Marshall, the first female justice Sandra Day O'Connor and conservative stalwart Antonin Scalia, the first Italian-American justice. They seem to look at Justice Ginsburg as a plucky symbol of defiance against a world of hostility. Born in 1933, she experienced the World War II and learned of the Holocaust against the Jews of Europe while living in an American society where Jews were tolerated but excluded to some extent, including by the admission quotas at Ivy League schools that continued to some extend during her own education. And as most of her fans will remind anyone with two functioning ears, as a young jurist she had to contend with a male dominated profession often dominated by arrogant chauvinist blowhards.
That's great, but it's been almost forty years since Ginsburg was an ACLU lawyer. Once she was appointed to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals in 1980 and subsequently to the Supreme Court in 1993 she became part of "the system". And while like anyone else duly elected to the court she has been gifted with lifetime powers by the Constitution, that doesn't mean we cannot critique the abominable stances she has taken:
- Ricci v. DeStefano (2009) - In which she dissented from the majority 5-4 decision in order to support the New Haven Fire Department's decision to void the results of a promotion test for 20 firefighters, 19 white and one Hispanic. She justified her decision by citing the majority-minority demographics of the city.
- NFIB v. Sebelius (2013) - In which she affirmed the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, effectively allowing the government to tax Americans that choose not to buy health insurance.
- Burwell v. Hobby Lobby (2014) - In which she held (in dissent) that corporations run under religious principles do not have the right to refuse to provide contraception to employees. This was part of the fall-out from the ACA and its intrusive legal provisions.
The pride of Jewish identity is entirely situational for the vast majority of Jewish Americans. Obviously there are so many successful actors, directors, and producers in Hollywood and heads of finance and industry that it feels like a small scrape to disown creeps like Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein or scammers like Bernie Madoff. However, those examples of infamy do far more damage to the reputation of Jewish Americans than the good names of people like Stephen Spielberg and Jon Stewart (who is Canadian anyway). There are plenty of articles by Jewish commentators proudly paying tribute to the inane Kabbalah hobby of celebrities like Madonna, or the political genius of paranoid has-been director Rob Reiner, or even the oddball journey of former Phoenix Suns Center Amar'e Stoudemire's in formally converting to Judaism.
But the identity definition is increasingly becoming more and more murky in the multicultural environment of 21st century America, especially for Jews. In 2017 I sparred with another blogger, Dani Ishai Behan, who promotes the notion that Jews (yes, all of them) are "people of colour". The definition of "people of colour" has been expanded from people with some African descendants in the 18th century to anyone that is not white or European today. Since most Ashkenaz Jews are European to at least some degree, and typically are not African at all, the identity mob continually seeks ways to conjecture that by virtue of their history of discrimination and persecution as well as some genetic ties to the Levant, Jews cannot be white.
But this definition is entirely situational and hinges not on scientific evidence, cultural commonalities, or religious doctrine but on the disparaging attitudes of anti-Jewish Europeans towards their Jewish neighbours. The reality is that if one is looking at genealogy and genetics, European Jews do indeed have a strong ancestral connection to Europe. In 2017 Frontiers in Genetics even published a genetic study showing the non-Levantine origins of most Ashkenaz Jews. And as for the term "people of colour" it is rarely if ever used in common parlance, and many black people (those that were the original holders of the term) find it ridiculous when it is used.
Genetics are admittedly shaky territory for topics of racial identity, and understandably so as in American history many different European, African, and indigenous peoples intermarried in various regions of the country. Therefore some would say that self-identification is just as important as actual pedigree. However in this department a staggering 90% of American Jews identify as white according to Pew Research in 2014. This is only 5% less than the total in 2007. And in the legal world a 2018 court ruling that found a Jewish applicant for a football coaching position that had converted to Christianity at the small Baptist Louisiana College had faced racial discrimination. The Anti-Defamation League (of which I am no fan) looked at the ruling as a "double edged sword" as the definition of Jews as a different race has been used as the basis for persecuting them in the past.
In articles in The Forward, Jewish Journal, Commentary and the like the term "Jewish community" is used often and there is a wealth of well-funded organizations like the ADL, American Jewish Committee, Conference of Presidents, the JCRC's, and others that claim to represent "leadership" in thereof. But this is an illusion. Like other organizational advocacy groups like NAACP, SPLC, GLAAD, NCLR they are part of an alphabet soup of compliance with establishment norms and center-left orthodoxy. The stodgy bald-headed cardigan-wearing eunuchs that lead the AJC and ADL even agreed in 2011 in a open letter to call for Israel advocacy to not be a topic in the 2012 election. Even someone like me, who believes that this topic is over-emphasized, can recognize that every voter should be able to prioritize whatever issue is important to them, whether I agree with them or not. The leaders of these groups are self-appointed and do not see their "constituents" as individuals unless they carry with them financial or social gifts.
Identity without faith is delusion
Understandably the challenges of religious practice are different in traditional, totalitarian, liberal Western, and increasingly technological societies. There is an old parable that Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, the first Admor (spiritual master) of Chabad-Lubavitch, was faced in his lifetime with the challenge of which side to support during Napoleon's invasion of Russia. He decided to encourage his followers to support Tsar Alexander I. Many at the time were confounded that he would side with the retrograde regime of the Tsar, notoriously oppressive to all of its subject peoples but especially the Jews. But the rationale was simple, as the Rabbi was quoted by scholar Hillel Levine:
Though it is difficult to agree in this day and age with the idea of sacrificing our comfort and wealth for a life of destitution, his warning rings clear today. There is an obvious lack of any unifying message in the diverse denominations, streams, and subgroups of Judaism. There are numerous Jewish congregations that define themselves as "secular humanist", and apparently believe that the ties drawing Jews together are entirely "historic,cultural, and ethical", not relgious. That's a startlingly ahistorical, culturally dim, and intellectually unethical take. The word Jew comes from Judah son of Jacob from the Book of Genesis, part of a religious text known as the Torah. This is elementary school stuff. Nevertheless the trend winning the day is secularism, but through inertia rather than conscious effort. In the Pew survey 17% of Jews claimed they "do not believe in G-d" in 2014, up from 10% in 2007. Agnosticism had also risen by 4%. This is despite the fact that there had been a 5% growth of respondents claiming to meditate at least once a week. One could argue that this is a result of the higher education among Jews, which leads to more skepticism towards tradition and "blind superstition".
But I'd like to propose a different proposition: The lack of faith of the Jewish public is a consequence of a simplistic and idyllic vision of what religion was among its leaders as opposed to what scripture actually says. Most of the "denominations" of Judaism are hardly classified by varying theology and more so salons of modern day social commentary from the progressive side of the aisle. But the lack of any religious element to it is an indication of how they are deceiving their flock:
Abramsky may be radical in his views, but at least he is consistent in his priorities by putting his socialist ideology ahead of Judaism. The same cannot be said of the majority of Jewish Americans on the spectrum. There are many that can either separate their religion from their political and social beliefs (as most pro-choice Catholics like Joe Biden do). This may confuse some people, but ultimately it is consistent with the premise of separation of church and state within the US Constitution. "Should Napoleon be victorious, wealth among the Jews will be abundant. . .but the hearts of Israel will be separated and distant from their father in heaven. But if our master Alexander will triumph, though poverty will be abundant. . . the heart of Israel will be bound and joined with their father in heaven. . . And for God's sake: Burn this letter."
Though it is difficult to agree in this day and age with the idea of sacrificing our comfort and wealth for a life of destitution, his warning rings clear today. There is an obvious lack of any unifying message in the diverse denominations, streams, and subgroups of Judaism. There are numerous Jewish congregations that define themselves as "secular humanist", and apparently believe that the ties drawing Jews together are entirely "historic,cultural, and ethical", not relgious. That's a startlingly ahistorical, culturally dim, and intellectually unethical take. The word Jew comes from Judah son of Jacob from the Book of Genesis, part of a religious text known as the Torah. This is elementary school stuff. Nevertheless the trend winning the day is secularism, but through inertia rather than conscious effort. In the Pew survey 17% of Jews claimed they "do not believe in G-d" in 2014, up from 10% in 2007. Agnosticism had also risen by 4%. This is despite the fact that there had been a 5% growth of respondents claiming to meditate at least once a week. One could argue that this is a result of the higher education among Jews, which leads to more skepticism towards tradition and "blind superstition".
But I'd like to propose a different proposition: The lack of faith of the Jewish public is a consequence of a simplistic and idyllic vision of what religion was among its leaders as opposed to what scripture actually says. Most of the "denominations" of Judaism are hardly classified by varying theology and more so salons of modern day social commentary from the progressive side of the aisle. But the lack of any religious element to it is an indication of how they are deceiving their flock:
- In January 2018 Rabbi Jon Rosove published an article in ReformJudaism.org asking "Do you have to believe in G-d to be a Jew?" Now, the correct answer is that not believing in G-d does not negate one's status as a Jew, but it certainly doesn't validate one's authority on Judaism. Speaking of which, Rosove admits in the article that he himself is an atheist.
- Even in the more progressive streams of Judaism many members have a hard time behaving as if they're not living inside of a surrealist painting. Take this whimsical article in Kveller by Debra Lynn Shelton in which she complains about going from being a future rabbi to an avowed atheist. The entire piece goes from her wanting to be a "Jewish leader" in 6th grade through a lot of bellyaching over unfulfilled personal ambitions and finally to a stereotypical bitter conversation with her mom in which she admits to not believing in G-d. But after reading her complaints about how all of her expectations of the world at age 14 were wrong, I find it more obvious that she also doesn't believe in things like logic, reason, and coping.
Mission boomerang
But the latest generation of #woke clergy and religious progressives violates that principle by portraying the principles of their religion and their politics as being one and the same, when in reality they are the opposite. As stated at the beginning, there are plenty of comparable examples among other religions from the Rev. William Barber II (Protestant), Peter Buttigieg (Episcopalian), and Keith Ellison (Islam) that profess to represent their religious faith while espousing secular progressive values that violate its edicts. But the Jewish community is home to a peculiar strain that is so contradictory as to be bordering on schizophrenia. During the Vietnam War era the long involvement and troop buildup led to a term known as "mission creep": when the original goals and aspirations of a project or movement get obscured by the quagmire of daily attrition. What we are seeing among progressive Jews is way beyond mission creep. It is a type of cancer or auto-immune disorder that has no solution in sight, one that I'll call "mission boomerang".
A perfect case in point is the Zioness Movement, a feminist progressive Zionist group that was formed in order to defend the participation of Jews and Zionist in progressive circles. The leadership of the group is made up of a number of diverse women of all ages, Jewish and non-Jewish. Most prominent among them is former Clinton White House Communications Director Ann Lewis, herself a senior figure in the Hillary Clinton 2016 presidential campaign, and the sister of former Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), the first openly gay member of Congress. The impetus for forming the group was the ousting of some Jewish lesbians from the Chicago Dyke March in 2017 due to their carrying of gay pride flags emblazoned with the Star of David. The organizers of the Dyke March saw this not as a symbol of Jewish heritage but rather of settler colonial Zionism. Right off the bat it was clear that their culture war oriented message was incredibly off key as they attempted to make their debut at the Chicago SlutWalk. If it seems completely unnecessary to assert one's religion or affinity for Zionism at an event affirming a woman's right to be a slatternly wench, don't feel alone because the event's organizers promptly disavowed Zioness and participants jeered them with taunts of "Free Palestine" while blocking their signs.
The Zionesses as they call themselves never admitted that the obstinate refusal to include them in these progressive events was evidence that progressive circles have been gripped by a general aversion to civil discourse and pluralism. Rather than take the hint that they are not welcome, they proceeded to attempt to join the Women's March in 2018. Organized by noted Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour, this event and its movement has made it clear from the outset that Zionists would not be welcome and are part of the pattern of oppression that they are fighting against. Zioness President Amanda Berman claimed that their strategy would be this: "I don’t think it’s productive for us to focus any of our energy on this one individual (Sarsour). The productive response is to show directly what she says about our community is wrong and hurtful and, frankly, discriminatory." This is the equivalent of the scorned ex-girlfriend showing up to prom and staring through the ice sculpture as the captain of the football team dances with the cheerleader that stole her purse. While morally they may have been in the right, it still looked comically pathetic.
The Women's March, rather than accept progressive Zionists thanks to Berman's passive shaming strategy, instead was deflated at the end of 2018 by the opposite tactic. A whistleblower came out and acknowledged that the movement had been completely dominated by anti-Jewish motivations since Sarsour and other colleagues joined in December 2016. One of the revelations was that Sarsour and fellow national co-chair Carmen Perez had berated a senior Jewish activist and group co-founder over past involvement of Jews in the Transatlantic slave trade. The lesson learned should have been that opponents acting in bad faith cannot be reasoned with or even shamed. They have to be exposed for the impostors that they are. But even as the support for the actual Women's March cratered the Zioness Movement was still trying to participate in its January 2019 events for the dwindling and now deeply divided movement. In June they also tried to get into another "Dyke March", this one in DC, that had rejected the use of any national symbols apart from the Palestinian flag.
The ineffectual wining is only one deficiency of this movement. Like other Zionist groups, Zioness is against the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign led by the Palestinian Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) and other movements in the west. This happens to be the only real distinction between them and the rest of the intersectional left. In its Zioness Definitions fact sheet they spend more effort defining "ableism", "bisexual erasure", "AMAB/AFAB" (transsexuals assigned male/female at birth), and most shockingly "goysplain" than they are at focusing on issues pertaining to Israel, Zionism, or Judaism. This is clearly where the mission creep has set in, as the organization is focusing on topics that have no connection whatsoever to its initial purpose. This is not the only example of how the beliefs and goals of "Zionists" are so diverse and incoherent in the 21st century that many like myself choose not to buy into that label.
Squad Fever
In 2018 as the nominations for the Democratic Party's congressional candidates came into focus, a distinctive faction began to take shape that was eventually called the "Hamas Caucus" (I called it the Nakba Caucus before that caught on). Four of them, Reps. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) are known collectively as "The Squad". Since being sworn in with the rest of Congress in January they have issued forth numerous ridiculous statements on all manner of issues including Israel. Admittedly, most of their ideas whether pertaining to immigration, economics, healthcare, or foreign policy are generic chum fed by their handlers to the progressive base.This does not mean that literally any statement of theirs has to be responded to, but hard progressives like Zioness have painted themselves into the corner where they feel obligated. They feel the need to straddle the divide between the intersectional left that they agree with on everything but Israel despite its own deep racism towards whites and demagoguery against men, and the people it considers its true enemy: Trump supporters, conservatives, and casual opponents of #woke culture. The best example was this July when Donald Trump responded to criticism from The Squad by telling them to "go back where they came from". In his remarks, the President evoked their hatred of Israel and allusions towards Jews as evidence of a deeper anti-Jewish sentiment in their ranks. It was one of many criticisms against them, but for Berman it was enough to claim that Trump was "weaponizing Israel to defend his racist tweets".
In reality, the obverse is more true. Whatever the criticism of Trump, he's not the only person to weaponize Israel and anti-Semitism. This is exactly the tactic of organizations like the ADL that seek to have terms like "globalist" labeled as anti-Semitic. In that instance they are seeking to use Jews and Judaism in order to police the conversation on free trade, immigration, and multiculturalism. This is not to say that none of the public discourse contains anti-Semitism or is motivated by it, but that infringing on freedom of speech will not create a healthier conversation. The fact is that Zioness is attempting (and failing at it) to control the language within the progressive and Jewish public spheres. To the progressives they are pleading the case that progressivism must include a recognition of the State of Israel, and to the Zionists they insist that Zionism must include abortion, gun control, LGBT activism, non-gendered language, and critical race theory. Unsurprisingly they are appealing to a very thin and inconsequential overlapping sliver of either group.
Sorry Ms. Berman, but the overwhelming majority of modern progressives and liberals are deeply hostile to Israel, and they don't find your finger wagging convincing. Also, a sizable but vocal minority of American Jews are pro-life, pro-gun, oppose third-wave feminism and the new #woke racism, and do not abide by the speech rules of the would be enlightened leadership that she claims to represent. This is why she and other members of her small clique feel the need to block almost any critic (including myself and this liberal blogger) for daring to come out in opposition to their "new normal" of progressive orthodoxy. Even Brooke Goldstein of the Lawfare Project, a decidedly nonpartisan centrist Zionist legal aid project saw fit to condemn their statement appeasing Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) for his mealy mouthed fence sitting on a non-binding resolution against BDS.
It would be delusional for anyone to deny that there is a deep and growing rift in American society, and a comparable one within the Jewish sector of it. However the solution to this is not enlisting in the efforts of top-heavy groups like the ADL and Zioness that are not accountable to anyone but themselves and are self-appointed paragons of morality. The choice presented before each American, and each Jewish American, is whether to let their own mind lead them or be led astray by the boomerang.
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