Podcast: politics of the NYC synagogue attack
Following the attack on Manhattan’s historic Central Synagogue, Jewish establishment voices are calling for stepped up surveillance and policing. But the threat, alas, is real. The assailant spewing the “fake Jews” epithet indicates either that he has been indoctrinated by the Neturei Karta cult, which holds all Jews outside their micro-schism to be apostate, or the “Khazar thesis“—just barely laundered anti-Semitism, inevitably linked to ugly stereotyped images of evil Jews and wacky conspiracy theories. Cynical attempts to blame Mayor Mamdani for the attack are predictable. Alas, some figures on the political left really have traded in denialismabout the reality that the attack was, in fact, an anti-Semitic attack. This is linked to a more general denialism on much of the “left” about the very existence of Jewish ethnicity. Efforts to weaponize anti-Semitism to silence pro-Palestinian voices are to be opposed, but do not mean anti-Semitism doesn’t exist—or change the reality that any legitimate anti-Zionism must be committed to fighting anti-Semitism in the diaspora. In Episode 342 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg again breaks it down. (Image: Wikipedia)
