In America, when the Jew is seen as a ‘settler’
The revolutionary forces currently playing out their subversive, violent strategy in America, as well as in some European countries, will repeat the experience Jews went through after the revolution took power in Russia a little more than a century ago. There are, however, two differences between the events.
Whereas in the first instance, the Bolsheviks were the sole “vanguard party,” a Leninist concept to describe a party that is built of an activist minority that strives to be seen as representing the interests of the whole while also suppressing other left-wing political organizations, today there exist multiple competing groups.
At this moment in time, will the anti-ICE agitators in cities around the United States exploit the environmentalists and climate changers, or will the pro-Palestinians maneuver those groups to serve the interests of anti-Zionism? In tsarist Russia, despite the splintering of the Marxists, they were quite well-focused. Overall, they were a programmatically homogeneous, revolutionary vanguard.
In the second instance, though, we Jews are, or should be, much smarter, having seen what that revolution, with its gulags and GUP and NKVD (the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946), and its Yevsektzia Jewish turncoats did to Jewish cultural, religious and national life.
I fear that while we should be, we aren’t, given the activities of IfNotNow, Jewish Voice for Peace, Na’amod and the other radical progressive groups, as well as their encouragers like journalist Peter Beinart and author Naomi Klein, both anti-Israel activities, and the additional fellow-travelers.
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There has been a newish antisemitism developing. As with the medieval apostates who fed the church authorities the untruths they needed, about the Talmud and Jewish ritual practices, to burn, pillage, and ultimately, murder Jews for centuries, the modern-day version is stoking the fires of Jew-hatred based on their anathema to Jewish nationalism — that is, Zionism.
Consider Manny’s, a business in San Francisco’s Mission district, that’s not new to being pilloried. Back in 2019, it suffered a boycott campaign.
The neighborhood in which Manny’s was located was undergoing “gentrification.” Longtime residents were being forced out, their family homes replaced by steel and cement condos, and expensive eateries with “artisan pastries.” They sought to “reclaim the land that the neighborhood has been forced to accede.”
To do that, they decided to boycott Manny’s. The owner, Manny Yekutiel, is a part-Afghani Jewish gay man, but he is also a self-proclaimed “Zionist.” And so, for a period, once a week, for an hour, activists of the Black and Brown for Justice, Peace and Equality, coupled with the Bay Area branch of the Palestinian Youth Movement, took their bullhorns and protested Yekutiel as a “Zionist” and a “gentrifier.”
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Six years later, with slogans of “genocide,” “starvation” and “ethnic-cleansing” putrefying the atmosphere, the taking over of universities and with keffiyeh-clad guerrillas throwing stones at the 101 freeway in Los Angeles, Manny’s was vandalized.
According to its website, Manny Yekutiel’s description of his eatery and events place reads:
“Manny’s is a town hall, a village square, the place where anyone can meet and engage with civic leaders, elected officials, artists, activists, change-makers and each other. Our hope is that what happens here will be the spark for you to get more involved.”
A spark? Or the flames to come?
According to security cameras, a section of a larger group of protesters smashed windows, broke into the cafe and drew graffiti all around its exterior. The graffiti read “Free Palestine” and “Kill Cops.” There were more, like “Death 2 Israel is a Promise” and “Intifada.” They also got very personal. “F**k Manny,” one of the tags read. Others said, “Die Zio.” And “The only good settler is a dead 1.”
“I wish I could sit down with these people and say, ‘You got the wrong guy’,” he said. “But just choosing to attack my business and my windows, and say that I should die only affirms the claim, which is true in many ways, that part of this is just a hatred of Jews.”
To another media outlet, he declared: “There is no justification for attacking me other than the fact that I am Jewish. … Now, it’s just antisemitism.”
He added, “My business is not a pro-Israel business. I am not Israeli. This is not a space that represents Israel in any way.”
As my friend Eve Harow remarked: “Of course, he being Jewish is in no way a justification, but it is very much the reason he was targeted.”
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Of one aspect of the coming revolutionary violence, we can be sure. In a 1972 article, criticizing the Soviet involvement in promoting Palestinian terror groups, specifically the massacre at Lod airport by the Japanese Red Army recruited by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
In recalling the tsarist period, Menachem Begin said that “Jewish blood is the oil of the wheels of the revolution” (based on a November 1905 speech given by the Bundist leader Vladimir Medem in which he claimed saying, “Blood constitutes that lubricant without which the carriage of history does not move ahead” but that Ze’ev Jabotinsky had altered to “Jewish blood is the lubricant of the Russian revolution”).
It is being resurrected right before our eyes.
The contemporary progressive revolutionary mantra is that Zionism is an enterprise of “settler-colonialism.” Moreover, Jews cannot be nationalists. Not only is the territory of Judea and Samaria “occupied” unlawfully, but all of Israel is as well. A “settler” is illegal, even though Jews reside in their own historic homeland.
In San Francisco, that paradigm isn’t enough. Jews have become seen as “settlers” in America. Therefore, they are “illegal.”
Diaspora Jewish leadership should know what the opprobrium “illegal” intends. They should know what is coming, for it always has come in a variety of guises. The very vocal pro-Israeli actor Michael Rapaport has been quoted as saying that “the cavalry ain’t coming.”
How will you adequately defend yourselves? You have been, once again, alerted. And you must answer that question.
Yisrael Medad is an American-born Israeli journalist and political commentator.
Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
