Jonah Platt Calls Out 3 Behaviors Fueling Antisemitism!

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Gather around you.

Friends.

Gather around for three tales.

Tales that at first might seem totally unrelated to one another,

but hopefully upon conclusion will be seen as united in theme Ya.

Okay, regular voice tale number one.

In the 2024 elections, 37-year-old Democrat, Rebecca Cook, took on incumbent

Derek Van Orden, a 56-year-old Republican and a hotly contested race to represent

Wisconsin's third congressional district.

She lost this year.

Cook is opposing Van Orden again, and at a recent campaign event

said the following about Israel.

I don't think that taxpayer dollars should be going to fund

the killing of children, period.

I think this is a moral issue.

The other thing that I'll say is that I don't think that we should

send more military aid to the Netanyahu government invasion.

When asked about these comments by Jewish Insider who reported the

story, cook said, I strongly support Israel's right to defend itself.

Tale number two.

In 2019, new England Patriots owner, Robert Kraft, founded the

foundation to combat Antisemitism.

And in the six years since its inception, they've done a ton of work in a number

of different directions, research on Gen Z attitudes, unity dinners between

black and Jewish college students.

And most famously, they ran a number of really effective ads about anti-Jewish

hate on TV during major events like the Super Bowl and the Academy Awards.

They also ran a not so effective ad with Tom Brady and Snoop Dogg

acting like parents role playing what it looks like when mommy

and daddy get mad at each other.

I hate you 'cause I don't understand you.

I hate you 'cause people I know hate you, but I digress.

Mr. Kraft is certainly putting his money where his mouth is and is one

of the very few public facing Jews.

With means actually putting those means to use in a thoughtful, targeted,

and productive way to try something, anything to push back against the swell

of anti J bigotry poisoning our world.

So hats off to him and everyone at the foundation.

And just a few days ago, the Blue Square Alliance Against Hate as the foundation

is now known, released this new ad. What do you say when a Jewish boy is

kicked on a New York City sidewalk?

What do you say when a Holocaust survivor is firebombed on the streets of Colorado?

What do you say when one in three Jewish Americans were victims of hate last year?

When there are no words, there's still a symbol to show you care.

Share the blue square and stand up to Jewish hate.

Let's put a pin in that pun intended, and move to tale number three.

Some of you may know, building bridges between the Jewish community

and other communities is a huge priority of my advocacy work.

At the moment.

I'm involved in a number of different projects to that end, including a

Shabbat dinner I'm hosting with a really diverse group of Jews and non-Jews,

with really curated programming geared towards meaningful impact.

And as I was filling out the guest list, I reached out to a well connected

Asian American acquaintance of mine asking for help and finding some high

level folks from his community who may be interested in attending the dinner.

He was happy to help and immediately started reaching

out to some likely candidates.

A few days later, he checked back in to tell me that regrettably, he was striking

out everywhere everyone had passed because, quote, they're skittish about

the timing given everything going on.

The fear of backlash is significant right now for a lot of them.

So to recap, we have a Democratic congressional candidate saying she

stands by Israel's right to self-defense, while also describing its military

campaign in Gaza as a US funded invasion focused on the killing of

children, we have an ad about violence against Jews that suggests the proper

response to such acts is to post a blue square icon on your social media.

And we have a group of non-Jewish public facing professionals balking at even

associating with Jews publicly because timing promised you a theme, right?

Well, here it is, and pardon my language, these are bullshit behaviors that

are widespread, totally normalized, and direly need to be called out

and disallowed in polite society.

Jew hate is a nasty habit, and the only way to get the public to give

up a nasty habit is to create real consequences for engaging in it.

Look at smoking cigarettes.

Everybody used to do it in other parts of the world.

Everybody still does it, but not in America.

Why?

We were flooded with data about how harmful it is flooded with advertisements

that showed us how harmful it is.

The government legislated against it, movies stopped showing it,

and it went from being viewed culturally as cool and glamorous

to dirty, unhealthy and antisocial.

That's the formula people.

What's not the formula is letting folks get away with bullshit behavior unchecked.

In the instance of Rebecca Cook and every other person like her to quote

Bill Maher, people keep saying, Israel has a right to defend itself, and then

whenever Israel does, they object to it.

We cannot continue to let people skate by with this disingenuous

crap, especially public figures.

You should not get to say, I support Israel's right to self-defense and

then call their military campaign an invasion or a moral issue.

Does the way Israel conduct itself in war matter?

Of course it does, but the way every army ever conducts itself matters, and yet

only Israel gets put under the microscope.

And this, while fighting literal terrorists whose behavior nobody

seems all that concerned with.

It's the classic anti Jew double standard.

Furthermore, almost nobody weighing in on this stuff is doing.

So from a place of earned knowledge or expertise.

Can you criticize the IDFs military decision making?

Sure are 99% of the people who discuss it qualified to do so with any level

of real fluency and familiarity.

No, most people, including most of us, base their arguments entirely

off what they hear other people say.

That is not informed reasoning.

Folks, that is not research.

What it is is a very weak reason to stake a claim to an opinion.

And yes.

Let's talk about the elephant in the room because I'm sure some

of you were thinking about it.

What about the aid and the starvation?

Did Israel botch the whole aid thing?

Abso freak lly.

They let things escalate way too far, we're way too disorganized in

their implementation and they put a lot of people needlessly in danger.

It was a horribly executed strategy, and you don't need to

be a military expert to see that.

Did they do it as part of a child killing invasion?

No.

They did it to try to exert some leverage on the terrorists holding

Israeli hostages and to mitigate some of the terrorist leverage who had been

profiting off the stealing of the aid.

The flattening of that complicated situation into Israel bad is

another bullshit behavior.

So when someone like Rebecca Cook claims to support Israel's right to defend

itself and then demonizes its response in a low information, zero nuance.

Everyone else I know says this, so I will too kind of way.

We have got to call that shit out.

See something.

Say something.

Which brings me back to the new Blue Square Alliance ad. I am certain this

campaign is data-driven and being done with only the best intentions.

I know their focus is to appeal to unengaged Americans who may not

know any Jews or even be aware that violence against Jews is a thing.

And so getting those people to show solidarity by posting a blue square could

be a meaningful action, and I absolutely reject the premise of the campaign, which

is entitled When There Are No Words.

If you see a Jewish boy being kicked on a New York City Street, you're gonna

tell me the expected or appropriate response is to have no words.

I don't know.

I got a few words.

How about stop kicking that Jewish kid?

You fucking racist?

Or somebody hope he's kicking that Jewish kid right here on a New York City Street?

Or how about this is horrible and needs to stop.

Can you imagine an ad against, say, anti-black racism, saying if you see

violent attacks happening to us, get to your phone as fast as you can.

Not to call for help or check in on your black colleagues, but to post

an icon on social media that'll help the kid bleeding in the street.

You betcha.

Racism is racism.

Hate crime is hate crime.

If you see something, say something.

If you have no words, find them.

Someone's getting beat up over there.

Jews need to have a little more self-respect than to think.

The best we can hope for in response to the massive wave of hate crimes against

us is for people to have no words.

If people have no words, let's give them some, let's give them a vocabulary.

Don't tell them it's okay to be a bystander or worse, that that's

the most we expect from them.

Don't tell them.

Performative solidarity on social media is going to change things for the way

actual Jew haters hate on actual Jews.

It would be one thing if there was a single blue square moment that captured

the world's attention, but random people randomly throwing up a square at

random times, that's the best we can do.

I don't think so.

And last, the most egregious bullshit behavior of all.

Friends, I know we're talking about your bosses and your

colleagues and your professors and your old high school friends.

I, I know there are certain boats you are afraid of rocking, but allowing

otherwise well-meaning people to openly conflate the situation in Israel in any

way with the mere existence of Jewish people outside of it is racist af.

If they don't wanna go to say, a pro-Israel rally, okay, fine.

They don't wanna step into the arena at all.

I can live with that, but you can't even be seen in the home of a Jewish person.

You can't be known to have been associating with Jews

at a Friday night dinner.

You can't attend an event hosted by a Jew, even though that event is by

design full of non-Jews and racially diverse Jews looking to build more

understanding across identities.

If the event was an Iranian no RUS event or a Chinese New Year or a

Russian Orthodox holiday, would those all make you skittish too?

I am certain that in that scenario, the bigotry of conflating a random

Iranian American with the actions of the Islamist regime in Iran would be obvious.

But as we know too well, Jews don't count.

The only way to break a normalized social behavior is to create a

social cost for engaging in it.

Choosing a fear of quote unquote backlash over associating with

Jews is literal Nazi Germany.

Shit, I can't be seen with Jews because of Israel is not an okay

way for anyone to think or feel.

I can't be seen with Jews because other people who wrongly conflate Jews with

Israel might be mad at me, is also not an okay way for anyone to think or feel.

If you're more concerned with what bigots think than what the victims

of bigotry think, you're not exactly on the right side of the equation.

Look, I understand that most of the folks that engage in these

bullshit behaviors are just ignorant.

They don't realize how harmful and prejudice this behavior

is, and as I've said, it's been normalized by everyone around them.

How does this come to pass?

Because we let it.

They don't realize these behaviors are bullshit because nobody's told them it's

bullshit because we're afraid to, because we don't wanna make a big deal because

we delude ourselves into thinking that in moments like these, there are no words.

Well, guess what?

That's also a bullshit behavior.

That's just your fear of confrontation.

Talking very few times in the modern age are decisions based on fear.

The right ones.

Even if you are scared, if you see something anti-Jewish,

you have to say something.

'cause I promise you the future where we continue not to say something is a

lot scarier than the one where we do.

This is the 43rd episode of being Jewish with me, Jonah Platt.