Clarifying Antisemitism
Exploiting fear and oppression is intolerable
This past week during remarks in observance of Holocaust Remembrance Day, the President repeated that he and his administration would not tolerate the rising wave of antisemitism observed in America.
I, too support this observation and the President’s view not the least because several of my relatives suffered Nazism and the concentration camps. Not because they were not Jews. Because they were political adversaries of the Nazi Party.
I have written in several places about antisemitism and what I perceive to be the increasing “emptying” of meaning in abusing the term. I have chronicled this claim by what I feel is American media complicity in using the term to condone Israel’s conduct with the Gazan civilian population. In effect one could claim a form of “antisemitism” has gripped the media in this regard, specifically in its abusing the term to foster division and political advantage. (1)
How difficult it seems for the American intelligentsia, myself included, to differentiate between antisemitism and its abuse. Genocide is genocide. Fear and oppression are fear and oppression. Smirking out loud that the Desert Rave concertgoers were “Peaceniks” is debasing victims and their families and correlates with antisemitism. (2)
