Thread by @jonathanmprince

i don’t know if this is useful, i’m sure it will piss people off, but i’m gonna share it on the theory that we all benefit from perspectives that are not ours. this is mine.

i am a jew. 1/

i am also a white male who grew up in a middle class family and worked for two presidents of the united states and two secretaries of state and, among other things, two super cool companies trying to do really good things. 2/

in other words, i am privileged as fuck. i am a Privileged As Fuck Jew, and i don’t need anyone else to tell me that.

and i have never, ever, ever lost the nagging fear that it could all be taken away because of the jew part. 3/

like many, many jews my age, i have holocaust survivors in my family. people i have known, whose numeric identity tattoos i have witnessed. but this isn’t about them. this is about my own experiences. 4/

bullying in grade school that was probably mostly about other things (not mister sports here) but often included your random kike or jewboy. 5/

the parent of a college girlfriend who referred to me as dexter - what’s up, dex? - because all jews are dexters. (pre-serial killer dexter; dexters had calculators and pens with pocket protectors cause they were accountants, get it?) 6/

the countless times i’ve been told in school and sometimes work that people like me are difficult because we talk too fast, talk too much, all the silly cultural stiff. 7/

even from those you love and respect and you know love and respect you, there is so often a sense of ... difference. little signals all the time that say i’m different. 8/

and then this president, whose deliberate reliance on and manipulation of the hatred of the “different” is the defining feature of his permanent campaign.

so yeah, i think it could all be taken away. from all of us. 9/

that is why i am hurt by what congresswoman omar has said, on multiple occasions. not just because it is hurtful, not just because it is another little clue everything can be taken away, but because i want and expect and demand that my party be better than this president. 10/

this has nothing to do with policy differences over israel. or aipac. i consulted at aipac (for a couple months in 1992, before i joined the clinton campaign) and i worked on middle east peace for president obama. 11/

aipac is intransigent and difficult and massively counterproductive for the longterm health of israel, in my view.

bibi netanyahu is despicable. like donald trump, bibi perpetuates and profits from the politics of hate. 12/

i want israel to remain jewish and democratic both - but on its current course, it will soon lose its ability to be both. the demographics are clear - without a two state solution, the day will soon come when arabs within the borders israel controls outnumber jews. 13/

what then? no votes for the majority? and i have said that to bibi himself.

(as have, and to better effect, jewish and non-jewish colleagues of mine from both parties - and, for that matter, ehud barak.) 14/

unlike many, i do not assume congreswoman omar is an anti-semite, but it is certainly clear she has learned dangerous anti-semitic things. so if she does not intend to perpetuate those ideas, then she needs to denounce them. and learn again. and look at us. 15/

because right here, is one Privileged As Fuck Jew who disagrees massively with the policies of the current government of israel, but also knows that - for the first time in some five thousand years of persecution - jews have a place to go if nowhere else is safe. 16/

i am an american. my greatest loyalty is to my family and this land. but i have seen the tattoos and received the slurs and felt the isolation and glimpsed the hate - and the old slurs, the long repeated ones, they still cut, and we can still bleed. 17/17, thanks for reading.