By Steve Sheffey

Playing the “both sides do it” game is a cheap way to get credibility. Criticism from “both sides” allows you to claim you must be doing something right. But truth is not always found in the middle. Someone who says two plus two equals five will be attacked by those who think two plus two equals six and by those who think two plus two equals four.

In How to Fight Anti-Semitism (Random House 2019), Bari Weiss promotes a false equivalency between right-wing and left-wing anti-Semitism (I’ve included page numbers for reference throughout this review because the book lacks an index). She devotes one chapter to the right and one to the left. What could be more fair and balanced? Her goal seems to be to show that the left is a greater threat because it is insidious and non-violent, whereas everyone can see anti-Semitism from the right.

Everyone, that is, except the Republican Party. Weiss doesn’t see that anti-Semitism on the left is marginalized in the Democratic Party, while anti-Semitism on the right is a feature, not a bug, of the Republican Party. Weiss notes that Jews and pro-Israel advocates are made to feel unwelcome in some progressive spaces. But the Dyke March is not the Democratic Party. Weiss should have asked herself why 30 of the 32 Jewish members of Congress are Democrats.

Weiss tries to preempt what she cannot deny — that nearly all violent extremism is from the right — by saying that she is being told not to draw attention away from the right and how dare she use her platform on something far less urgent, leaving her wondering: “When can we speak about it?” (92).

The answer, Bari, is that we can and do speak about left-wing anti-Semitism whenever we want. But we should do so without promoting a false equivalency or pretending that the infestation of anti-Semitism that has infected the Republican Party is on par with anti-Semitism from the fringes of the Democratic Party.

Weiss’s attempt to paint left-wing anti-Semitism as a “subtle and sophisticated” enterprise that camouflages its true nature (92) is not unlike the claims anti-Semites make about insidious Jewish conspiracies. Yet Weiss manages to fill an entire chapter with not-very-subtle examples from the fringes of the progressive movement.

Weiss notes (80) that the British Labour Party voices anti-Semitism from the top. She notes some of Trump’s anti-Semitism (she sees both sides!), but she refrains from pointing out that anti-Semitism in the Republican Party comes not only from Donald Trump, but from the top Republicans in Congress as well as other Republicans.

In 2015, Trump basically said that Israel controls the U.S. Senate and certain senators (see for yourself starting at 3:38). Trump’s presidential campaign trafficked in anti-Semitic tropes, including Jewish money in politics and other anti-Jewish stereotypes. Last October, Trump promoted an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory on Twitter. Trump accused Jews of dual loyalty at the 2018 White House Hanukkah Party and last April in Las Vegas. Trump said in August that American Jews who vote Democratic — that’s about 80% of us — are either ignorant or “disloyal.” When asked to clarify, he said he meant “disloyal to Israel.”

When Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) posted an anti-Semitic tweet about Jewish money buying the election in October, Republicans didn’t condemn him. Instead, they elected him House Minority Leader. They elected Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), who described himself as “David Duke without the baggage,” as the #2 House Republican. All 23 votes against the House resolution condemning anti-Semitism were Republican votes, including the #3 Republican, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY).

Yet in Weiss’s eyes, Democrats have proved that “saying bigoted things about Jews has become entirely political survivable.” (162)

No Republicans have condemned Trump’s anti-Semitism. No Republicans have condemned McCarthy, Scalise, or Cheney either. But you won’t find anything about the top three House Republicans in Weiss’s book. You’ll read page after page about Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), who is tied for last in seniority, but Weiss never mentions that dozens of Democrats, including Democratic leadership, strongly condemned Omar for her remarks. If Weiss wants to talk about anti-Semitism from Minnesota, there are plenty of Republicans worthy of mention — but only Omar draws her ire.

Yet even though Democrats have confined anti-Semitism to the fringes of their party, even though Republicans are led by men who traffic in anti-Semitism and bigotry, Weiss worries that Democrats might fall prey to Corbynism (86). Democrats and Labour share a space on the left, but Republicans and Labour share an inability to confront anti-Semitism from within.

Weiss claims (80) that Trump’s moving the embassy to Jerusalem acted on the “will of the American people,” apparently unaware or not understanding that the legislation enabling the move included a waiver provision — by definition, Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama’s exercise of the waiver was consistent with the “will of the American people.” The Jerusalem legislation was written to bolster the presidential candidacy of Sen. Robert Dole (R-KA), not to make Israel safer.

Weiss says that Trump’s recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights (80) leaves “no possibility that it will ever return to the bloody hands of Assad,” conveniently forgetting that until Trump offered his preelection gift to Bibi, no one was seriously disputing Israel’s control of the Golan Heights. Trump’s embassy move and recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights did nothing to make Israel safer or more secure and probably made Israel less safe by making a two-state solution harder. All lost on Weiss.

The BDS Movement has achieved little, even on college campuses, but Weiss’s claim, with no evidence, that BDS has “succeeded in shaping the worldview of progressives” might come as news to progressives in the Democratic Party, whose platform unequivocally rejects BDS and who overwhelmingly voted in favor of a resolution condemning BDS this summer.

Weiss’s false equivalency reaches its nadir in her discussions of Omar and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and this is where she shows her cards. Can anyone seriously believe that two freshmen members of Congress, two out of 435 in the House, present anywhere near the threat posed by Donald Trump?

Weiss litters her book with misrepresentations about Democrats. She repeats smears of what Tlaib said about the Holocaust (129). She takes what Omar said about 9/11 out of context (161). Weiss talks about Omar’s “all about the Benjamins” tweet, but she omits Omar’s apology and the swift condemnations from Democrats. Weiss repeats misrepresentations regarding what President Obama said about the Charlie Hebdo killings (158). She notes that an anti-Semitic resolution was proposed by a delegate to the California state party convention (159), but fails to mention that anyone can propose any resolution and more important, that it was rejected.

Weiss mentions that Democrats defend Omar, but she doesn’t mention that Omar has been the subject of death threats or that the West Virginia Republican Party linked Omar to 9/11. I would expect all decent people, not only Democrats, to defend a sitting member of Congress against attacks like that.

Weiss rounds out her book with a healthy dose of Islamophobia. She cites in detail Muslim violence that occurred ten years ago (155) and, using more spin than a Maytag washing machine, cites ADL statistics showing that only a small percentage of anti-Semitic attacks were carried out by white supremacists (82) while omitting ADL statistics showing that “all 249 acts that [the ADL was] able to attribute to extremists were carried out by white supremacists.”

Her book concludes with a collection of anodyne solutions that she illustrates mainly with examples of the left-wing anti-Semitism that she is worried about. But synagogues and federations are not increasing their security spend to protect us from Women’s Marchers or BDS supporters.

The threat from the right, from Poway to Pittsburgh, is a threat to our existence, and right-wing anti-Semitism comes from the top of the Republican Party, with no political consequences for those who practice it. If we are serious about learning the lesson of Corbynism, it means rooting out tolerance for anti-Semitism at the top of the Republican Party, not focusing on two out of 435 members of Congress whose views Democrats themselves have firmly rejected.

We should call out left-wing anti-Semitism. But imagining that left-wing anti-Semitism is the same or a worse threat than the right-wing anti-Semitism that the Republican Party is emboldening is a mistake we could pay for with our lives. If your right-wing friends deny it, ask them why they don’t take the extra money they are spending on security and instead spend it on countering protests of Manny’s Cafe (89).

Steve Sheffey is Strategy and Policy Adviser to the Jewish Democratic Council of America (JDCA) and the publisher of the weekly Chicagoland Pro-Israel Political Update. Sign up for his newsletter here. The views expressed here are his own.