Hey, beloved tribe.
A belated shavua tov.
I hope everyone had a restorative Shabbat.
As we enter the workweek, there are two topics dominating my news feed.
The first is the interception of Greta Twatberg — sorry, I meant Thunberg — and her crew by Israel. All weekend, I was terrified that the IDF would play into her hands and create an even more nightmarish PR debacle than they already endure. But to my abject gratitude, they seem to have handled it deftly and effectively. They sent the aid to Ashdod, which is the designated site for its acceptance, and they detained the crew without injuring anyone before sending them back to their home countries (which is reportedly the next step).
And they dubbed her flotilla “The Selfie Yacht” which is just so perfect. That’s exactly, exactly what it is. And it’s a perfect metaphor for the movement in general.
The second topic dominating my feed is the anti-ICE protests in LA, and because they’re playing out simultaneously, I can’t help of thinking of them in relation to each other.
It’s inexpressibly heartening to me every time masses of people rise up against the Trump administration. The last time such an uprising made international headlines, it was happening in my own hometown and I don’t even have words for how exhilarating I found it. I was in the midwest for two weeks when the protests were at their height and I can remember how I ached to be there in every fiber and cell of my body.
This video below — which is less than a minute long — perfectly captures the extraordinary resistance my city mounted against Trump’s goons, who were pepper-spraying the crowds every night, shooting rubber bullets, and throwing people into unmarked vans.
Night after night, people gathered in ever-vaster crowds, undaunted by anything the regime brought down upon them. There was a “Wall of Moms” — ordinary women, mothers, who linked arms and refused to budge. When they were pepper-sprayed, they came back with goggles, gas masks, bandanas, helmets, umbrellas and makeshift shields.
Not to be outdone, their husbands and other men showed up next as a “Wall of Dads” to protect them. They brought leaf blowers to send the tear gas back at the feds. Then a Wall of Nurses showed up in scrubs. A Wall of Vets assembled, and in the video just below, there’s an iconic clip of one of them standing like a statue while he’s beaten down with billy clubs, not turning away until he’s pepper-sprayed in the face.
I have probably watched this video a hundred times. To me, it represents all the best aspects of that movement and I can never look at it without feeling a silent howl of exultation rising inside me:
And the protestors won! The feds were pulled out of the city. It was an incredible testimony to what an organized, united front can accomplish.
That’s the shining side of the story.
Here’s the darker side:
There was so much rage within that movement, and every moment that it wasn’t directed in the most appropriate, best possible place — at the Trump regime — it was directed at each other. The protests were in response to George Floyd’s murder and the national conversation about race was the super-charged lightning rod center of that summer.
So many liberal white people — many of whom, truth be told, were just fucking insufferable! — were tripping all over themselves trying to be “good allies” and being bitch-slapped all over social media every time they showed up or spoke up for any reason.
They were told they needed to do the heavy lifting of anti-racism, that they needed to use their white privilege to rein in other white people so Black people got a break from their tireless, thankless emotional labor. You can imagine how many self-appointed white policewomen this created, every one of them schooling and scolding every other one of them for anything they said or did.
At the same time, when white people did speak out against racism, they were told to shut the fuck up, to take several seats, to stop centering themselves and let Black people lead.
Every single comment section beneath every single post became a pile-on, a bully pulpit. And the white women were honestly the worst bullies. ALL of them were sure that THEY were good anti-racists, the good white people, and it was their job to go after all their fellow white people.
The Wall of Moms imploded immediately. The leader was cancelled and dragged for one reason or another. After the feds left, the protests continued until they fizzled out but Portland kind of became a permanent symbol of urban blight.
My image of the progressive left became the ouroboros: the snake that’s eating its own tail.
Just imagine a video of this snake, instead of a still. Imagine how swiftly the circle would shrink inward. Imagine how small it would become, how paralyzed and debilitated it would be.
I’ll give Hamas this much: it knows exactly how to capitalize on self-important grandiose narcissistic white saviorism. In fact, that’s the whole game. Get their own kids killed for the cameras and keep those progressive dollars flowing, keep those American campuses in an uproar, stoke the performative virtue into the stratosphere.
There are no rules for cosplaying whites in this movement. Greta can relentlessly center herself all damn day and night. White people can vogue in keffiyehs all over social media and no one will accuse them of cultural appropriation. Kids paying $90K a year to attend an Ivy League school can take over a building and then pretend they’ll die by dinnertime without “humanitarian aid” in the form of unfettered Door Dash access. No one minds.
I fought like a wildcat to get Trump out of office during his first term. I’ve marched since the inauguration this time around too, and spoken at rallies, but in the same way I was alienated from the Women’s March when the likes of Linda Sarsour and Tameka Mallory made a point of excluding Jews like me from their movement, I’m wary of getting too close to Indivisible and other groups like it because I’m in their chats and I see how much anti-Zionist propaganda accumulates there.
One concrete aim of the disinformation campaigns (driven in large part by Russia) is to drive a wedge between the left and its Jews. Wild horses couldn’t drag me into Trump’s corner but I feel how effectively this is working, even on me, because when the far left shoehorns Palestine into every progressive issue under the sun, when Palestine becomes a “queer issue” and an “environmental issue” and treated as the crown jewel of a hundred other unrelated issues, and elevated to intersectional priority #1 — when so much more progressive energy seems directed against Israel than against Trump even in the midst of a fascist takeover of the U.S. — then even I am alienated from the places I formerly brought tireless energy.
Maybe we should start posting about this instead of trying to get anyone to care about Jewish pain and alienation. Because only self-interest will speak to the vast majority of these types.
Okay, fam. I’ll be back with you soon. In the meantime, I’m sending heartfelt love to you all.
Stay strong and don’t allow yourself to be gaslit.
Am Yisrael Chai.
Thank you—my shattered, stomped on, ruined heart appreciates your solidarity today.
A lot of what you said resonates with me. One example: I've been an ally to the LGBTQ community for a long time, and this news article (https://brookline.news/after-debate-libraries-will-restore-pride-and-blm-flags-in-june/) is about one recent thing I did. About a dozen people came to ask us to put the Pride flag back up, and I argued in favor of doing so. But all the time, I was wondering how many of the people I was fighting for would stand by my side if I asked for support for the Jewish community. (Not even Israel, "just" Jews.) The rejection we get from the allies we have advocated for over years, over decades - that's what hurts.