Jews Are Being Silenced By Leftists
By: Mallory Mosner
Tags: Social Justice, Palestine, Censorship, Israel, Judaism

Jews Are Being Silenced By Leftists

What I learned from being canceled by a “social justice” publication on Medium Mallory Mosner Follow May 23 · 12 min read

Image from El Arabiya

This is not an article I expected to write in my lifetime, but here we are. The past week has been one of the most terrifying and revealing weeks of my life; as the latest manifestation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict raged on, social media began to reflect the world’s antisemitism on a level that seems fit for the 1930s. People on the Left and the Right, as well as Jew-haters across the world, have jumped into the ring to throw a punch at the “rich white Jewish brutalizers” (real words from an old “friend” of mine) and come together in a concerted effort to attempt to end Israel — and ideally, I presume, Jews — once and for all.

I have spent years of my life deeply immersed in social justice movements and some extremely masturbatory circles of Leftists. Despite the burgeoning antisemitism I have seen coming from the vast majority of these circles this week, I have no regrets, nor will I discontinue my concern for human rights across the board or begin supporting Donald Trump, etc. However, after a prominent “social justice” publication on Medium silenced me for nothing short of sheer, unadulterated antisemitism, I am rethinking my role in activism and Leftist circles, and the way that I think about a lot of issues. This experience has served to illuminate some of the deepest problems of Leftism for me (many of you will eye roll because they seem quite obvious), and I believe those are important to share.

Before we begin, I condemn the violence across the board; I believe the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank must end, Palestine should be granted full sovereignty and probably even reparations, Israel absolutely has a right to exist (Zionism is literally self-determination for Jewish people on our indigenous land — it’s not mutually exclusive to Palestinian self-determination and there are no asterisks around oppression. It’s actually very simple), and both groups should be able to live in peace. Unfortunately, when it comes to Leftists, this is not an “appropriate” stance.

I was silenced by An Injustice! — a “social justice” publication on Medium due to a “serious charge” of “Zionism and racism”

Last week, amidst a vortex of supreme ignorance coming from Leftists in my social media bubble, I published an article titled “Why ‘Genocide,’ ‘Ethnic Cleansing’ and ‘Apartheid’ Don’t Describe Israel.” The piece was intended to sternly condemn the violence Israel has been committing and call for an end to occupation, but also to address and debunk the misinformation that has been showing up across the very memes that most Leftists have glanced at in their rapid ascents to “experts” on Middle Eastern policy, history and relations. The idea was, feel free to criticize Israel, but be mindful of the words that you employ in doing so.

I made the choice to submit this piece to An Injustice! partly because they are a respected and widely circulated “social justice” publication on Medium, but also because I was growing fearful of the content that had already been published on their platform — for example, a prominently featured article from a non-Jewish “antiracist” environmental scientist titled “Israel: Making Jews Across the World Ashamed Since 1948.” Others featured, mainly also from non-Jews, highlighted how “there is no conflict” (meaning, it’s pure oppression and/or genocide), or “it’s not complicated” (again, signifying that no nuance ought to be considered because it’s as uncomplicated as pure, evil genocide).

The editor agreed to take my article on, and also recruited me for free labor (to be fair, she did offer to reimburse me, though I declined because I was happy simply to try to weed out flagrantly antisemitic content before it reached a very dogmatic and probably highly antisemitic audience of *very* enlightened social justice warriors) to edit other pieces related to the conflict in her approval queue in the event that anything else might pose a danger to Jewish people.

Over a few days, I reviewed content that I found profoundly appalling and disappointing, but approved all of it despite my staunch disagreement with what they were almost all saying (including scanning an article from someone who recounts the delight of their first protest, where everyone chanted “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” — a phrase that historically refers to the expulsion or cleansing of all Jews from the region). The editor would’ve otherwise approved an article that detailed how Jews in America were disproportionately controlling media and government, but after my flagging that section of the article, had me contact the author directly to explain myself as to why this could endanger Jews and perpetuate antisemitism (to be fair, the author was extremely kind about it). This information would otherwise be approved without so much as a glimmer of forethought.

Which is why I was so shocked and disgusted when I received this email the following day, informing me that MY article, the only one hosted on there that provided an even remotely different perspective to an absolutist “END ISRAEL!” was removed:

“serious charge” of implying Jews deserve autonomy on their ancestral lands — how dare I!

I attempted to explain to the Editor in Chief why this email was so harmful (including what the actual definition of Zionism is and why what she had written is so offensive) and to seek further explanation as to what could possibly be “racist” about what I wrote; I took that accusation very seriously coming from a Black woman since I try to be an ally as best I can in the fight for racial justice, but when pressed about what was “racist” about the article, she simply said she was “still researching.” She didn’t remove any of the other pieces that were blatantly antisemitic or peddling misinformation — only mine. Only the one Jewish voice that didn’t validate their Leftist dogma.

Why do People of Color get to be the centered voices and authorities on racism that affects them, but Jews don’t get to have this role in matters of antisemitism and Israel?

First of all, Palestinian people have every right to use their voices and be the authority on communicating and advocating for their own struggle. Second of all, I want to clarify that most Jews qualify as People of Color (most Jews in Israel look a lot like Palestinian people, we even share remarkably similar DNA). That being said, for Black or Latinx or Asian or Native American people to decide — often without full context or history, perhaps in some cases solely based on one book by Angela Davis (who is wonderful, but is a fallible human being just like everyone else), that the existence of Jewish people in Israel is mere “white settler colonialism” that maps precisely to the struggle they fight in their own American lives and thus strip them of any voice, and dismiss any further challenging context or conversations from Jewish people is an unconscionably abusive double-standard.

It is Leftist hypocrisy at its best, belied by sheer hatred of Jews and an unwillingness to accept them into any movement that could possibly concede any meaningful distant or extant threat against Jews, or any non-insidious motives that the Jewish people could have in laying claims to their homelands from which they were violently expelled (a concept that would ironically map much clearer to the struggles many of these groups have experienced, if some were ever willing to acknowledge and relinquish their deep-seated antisemitism). Once again, that does not excuse violence against Palestinian people.

For people who otherwise hate binaries, Leftists sure are binary

Talk about pinkwashing! The same people who will fight you for days about the oppression of the gender binary and perhaps even incite the “both/and” construct they’ve heard from activists like adrienne maree brown, these people sure do stomp into moral binaries with vigor and aplomb when it pertains to matters of Judaism.

I’ve had countless people dismiss me this past week as a “genocide apologist” for the aforementioned article I wrote (in addition to one I wrote about how to talk about Israel without being antisemitic). I’ve had people Jewish and non-Jewish lambast me for demonstrating my “complicity” in Israel’s behavior since I deigned to speak about the context of Jewish existence there and refute some of the mythology WHILE ALSO condemning the violence. I was accused of being “selfish” and “centering myself” when I “should’ve been exclusively lifting up Palestinian voices” in a time where both Israelis and Palestinians were dying in a complex and devastating conflict — reactions to which have incidentally served to lift up antisemitic hate crimes around the world by an increase of almost 500% within one week. Dozens of people unfollowed me. I was called a litany of disgusting names.

But if you look through everything I’ve written, you’ll never see me defending Bibi Netanyahu (incidentally, for a group of people who are really clinging to the “it’s not antisemitic to criticize a government” angle — which it fundamentally is absolutely not — Leftists sure say very little about Netanyahu and seem to understand disconcertingly little about Israel or any of its politics or government). Every single day that I posted or wrote about this matter, I condemned Israel’s actions. But unless my stance was rigidly and unapologetically “Israel is a colonial genocidal state that must die,” without any critical thought as to what would happen to the Jews and where they would go or why shouldn’t they be entitled to self-determination on their ancestral lands, I was canceled.

Anything I say to these people is “whataboutism” and a testament to my oppressive colonizer attitudes that justify my cancelation. It’s as though I’m a terrorist who they are refusing to negotiate with (again, quite ironically. But hey, this comes from the “Hamas is NOT a terrorist organization — they’re an anti-colonial freedom fighting organization” crowd).

Leftists are actually the ones who silence people.

At the risk of delving too much into “cancel culture,” which is a profoundly loaded term, I will say that Leftists, despite their unwavering commitment to all things “just,” are just as likely to cruelly ostracize people for neglecting to meet their morally superior standards as Right-wing people are — except people on the Right at least don’t have the obnoxious gall to refer to their beliefs under the implicitly morally superior umbrella of “social justice.” I think Liberalism seems patently like a lesser of evils here in the context of protecting LGBTQ+ rights and pretending to give a shit about racial justice or the environment, but lesser evils are still happy to stab a knife in your back and gleefully declare it justice. Part of me would prefer people to be overt antisemites like extreme Right-wing people so I at least know where they stand (and so they aren’t condescendingly trying to justify their bigotry on some imaginary moral or “compassionate” high ground).

For a group of people who purport to want change, Leftists sure are prone to shut down any discourse or dialogues that could produce that. Most circles that I’ve been involved in are usually more focused on collective peacocking about how good and just we are rather than inviting others in with humility and understanding (as long as they are not deliberately trying to cause harm and actively shut you down). There’s a violent culture upheld by this form of holier-than-thou Liberalism wherein everyone must be an expert, a perfect upstanding person with no shadows or past, have been born adhering to the principles of wokeness, and never criticize or question the principles of profoundly capitalistic “influencers” who uphold and direct the flow of the movement.

This is so contrary to human nature and any prospect of change. Many Leftists identify with Marxism (Marxism’s roots are also intractably antisemitic), so it should come as no surprise that Leftists fondly remember violent events like the Russian Revolution, even though Russia is what it is today, and all the bloodshed now seems almost fruitless (to say nothing of the antisemitism, which is profligate and very much still part of Russian and Leftist culture).

For a group of people who claim to wish for “progress” above all else, most dogmatically cling to the conservation of their status as morally superior “woke” beings with elitist, exclusionary social justice vocabulary rather than engage in real work of compassion and understanding and humility. It’s a lot of performative nonsense.

Jews who aren’t pure anti-Zionists are being silenced, though the Left claims only Palestinians are being silenced

I am astonished at how many prominent publications and people across social media have claimed that pro-Palestinian voices are being silenced. It’s interesting how much Leftists think they are the only ones being silenced when the vast majority of public news outlets work directly in their favor (even if they aren’t quite as “radical” as they would like), and their platform has a very smug and ill-won monopoly on what gets collectively labeled “progress.”

The fact of the matter is, all Leftists think everyone else is consuming propaganda BUT them; it’s not possible that everyone, including them, could be prey to this. Meanwhile, despite the harrowing claims that pro-Palestinian voices are being silenced, the vast majority of Liberal people and media outlets have been very vocally, very prominently using their platforms to reinforce an extremely singular, reductive and binary narrative about this issue. The greatest irony is that Israeli and pro-Israel commentators actually are being silenced (including people like me, who definitely can’t fit into the FOX News paradigm, but no longer have a viable home in Leftist spheres).

Hen Mazzig’s posts have been taken down, censored and blocked throughout the week for no apparent reason:

So have Chaya Lev’s posts:

Meanwhile, the LA Times would tell you a very different story:

And any given day, the cover of the New York Times or any other prominent newspaper will feature 100% pro-Palestinian content, without ever discussing any lens of nuance within the conflict:

Sometimes they’ll even add in some paternalistic flavor about what the Jews “should” be thinking or doing too! But it’s not antisemitic because the author is a Jew, right?!

Can we all agree yet that the Jews clearly don’t own the media?

The point is, there is no room for nuance in this conflict or any other when political identities become rigid dogma and replace critical thought or genuine curiosity or compassion. I don’t feel any allegiance for any group that condones the ethnic cleansing of my people, shuts down my voice in the context of matters they don’t understand, and then pretend that it’s all done in the name of “justice” or something equally smug and moronic.

Jews have never been included in activism, and I don’t feel safe in any circle. If any of these people actually give a single shit about justice or compassion (outside of the contexts where it’s already been prescribed for them), they need to humble themselves and listen and learn from Jewish and Palestinian people — and not just the ones who reinforce whatever narrative they’re predisposed to.

If you believe in self-determination for Indigenous people on American soil but not for Jews, you’re an antisemite. If you believe Jews “had it easy” throughout the diaspora they were forced into and thus no longer have any entitlement to returning home to Israel, you’re an antisemite. If you are condemning Israel because you don’t believe in ethnostates, know that every state is an ethnostate so unless you believe in the end of all states, you’re an antisemite. If you can concede that situations in places like China are “complicated” but refuse to acknowledge any nuance or complexity to what’s happening in Israel, you’re an antisemite. If you align to one or all of these concepts, you are probably an antisemite, and you should start unpacking what you hate about yourself so much that makes you want to deflect that hatred onto Jews.

And that includes Jewish people — Jewish people have some of the greatest internalized hatred of any group. We try to assimilate and hide and shed this identity that many of us have come to be embarrassed by at any cost because it’s safer to be “one of the good ones.” But it turns out the “good ones” can be incredibly shitty and narrow-minded, so let’s all do the best we can to try to expand our fields of understanding and compassion and healing within ourselves and our communities, rather than continue vicious cycles of committing violence — emotional, physical or spiritual — onto other people under the guise of justice.