Jews for Palestine: Our ‘Wicked Sons’
On the heels of another Passover holiday, one amidst the pall of a post-October 7th world, the Jewish community is struggling to understand what is happening in the streets of an America we love so much. Each week we are living one outrage to the next. From the pro-Palestinian, antisemitic mobs openly threatening global intifada outside of synagogues to their mindless zombie hordes on college campuses sloganeering for a global Jihad movement, we have found ourselves in unchartered waters. One outrage that personifies the madness is the involvement of so-called Jews in this anti-Israel movement that wields intimidation as its primary tool. But as described in the Passover Haggadah, and as the Jewish community should recall, we have always had the ‘wicked son’ who willingly stands against us and with those who seek our destruction. This type of individual was aptly personified by Moses’s chief antagonist, Dathan, and his legacy of self-hatred and self-sabotage permeates the anti-Israel forces deployed on the streets of American cities and university campuses and in the halls of American power.
Many of us remember this character in the Passover epic ‘The Ten Commandments’ portrayed by acting legend Edward G. Robinson as a back-stabbing informant of Pharaoh Rameses II, allowed to live in luxury while his fellow Hebrews were kept in bondage. Dathan looked upon his fellow Hebrews with disdain and did what he could to secure his place as Pharaoh’s lackey. A good job of it he did, until his luck finally ran out when Pharaoh forced him to leave with his fellow Hebrews during the exodus where he would die in the Sinai desert, a fitting end to a devilish character.
But his ideological heirs have multiplied and carry this insidious mantle of self-hatred to keep close company with those who would rather see the demise of the Jewish community here in America, one that prides itself on community, tradition, and maintaining close ties to the state of Israel. Instead, these self-hating Jews have flooded the cameras and social media to ensure their place within the current anti-Israel mafia class is secure, knowing full well that their presence and actions provide it top-cover to intimidate, harass, and disrupt not just the American Jewish community but society in general. So, who are these modern-day Dathan personifications?
It is within the Jewish Voices for Peace and IfNotNow movements that Dathan’s spiritual progeny resides and thrives, donning keffiyehs and ensuring their masked-faces are front and center while being prodded and cheered by the street urchin revolutionaries who organize these brown-shirt rallies. They use terms like “not in our name”, “Jews for Ceasefire”, and “Jews for Palestine” as if Hamas would have spared their lives while they massacred one person after another on October 7th. Their Orwellian Seders dedicated to ensuring Israel’s destruction, and in front of the most senior Jewish public official’s home would make Dathan proud. These fringe self-hating members of the Jewish community do not speak for the vast majority of us, but as Dathan did not speak for his fellow Hebrews he still could convince the unwitting observer of Moses’s malevolence, and convince the Pharaoh of his own usefulness.
It does not end here though. The New York Times, perhaps the exemplar of what it means to whitewash Jew hatred, has its own set of Jewish scribes to ensure the nuance behind the “so-called” anti-Semitic wave is captured, no surprise from a Sulzberger family that continues its quest to erase its own Jewish identity. While the arbiters of truth at the Times and elsewhere blow hot air into their own activist balloons, the hottest of that air is being blown at the top of America’s power structure and it is here that Dathan’s spirit poses the greatest danger.
Senator Bernie Sanders, a long-time stalwart of modern-day progressivism, is the personification of the modern-day Dathan, encapsulated by his continued intransigence towards Israel post-October 7th. It is the legitimacy that comes with his seniority in the US Senate as a committee chair, 2016 and 2020 presidential candidate, and long-time face of the progressive movement that magnifies his voice and his advocacy for whichever cause he lends his name to. It also endears him more towards that cause than the disruptive street activists and chattering class columnists. He has for many years gripped and grinned with the anti-Zionist activist class. He denounces Israel in the company of ignorant so-called House squad members and anti-Israel activists. Even as the antisemitic protests take over college campus after campus, and city block by city block, he stands with them. He encourages them. He defends them. So while the lesser Jewish court jesters fill the ranks of the anti-Israel left that run cover for the antisemites occupying our streets and campuses, it is the Dathan in Bernie Sanders that provides them that legitimacy. Shame on him, the ‘wicked son.’
