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I don’t think anyone is normalizing anything, at least not any substantial number. I said myself I dont like invoking “never again” over this. I think for many Jews the issue isn’t that Trump is bad or that his anti-immigrant policies are bad, though they both certainly ...
2/ are. There’s something different going on. Many of us are tired of the GOP evangelical political alliance which frequently relegates us as Jews into dragooned mascots for bad faith right wing attacks and false grievance politics. Indeed our history, our collective ...
3/ tragedies and sorrow, our survival as a people becomes a cynical cudgel for political battles we often have nothing to do with and which are advanced by people who don’t share our values. Our story as a people, our history and survival gets prostituted and abused by ...
4/ bad people. So this isn’t just a matter of somehow putting our Jewishness to the side in favor of some other commitment. It’s very much a defense of our Jewishness, our being sickened by having our history used as a cheap cudgel, trying to turn us into mascots.
5/ What brings this all into higher relief is the fact that the people pushing these explosions of often faux outrage are the same people who at least coddle and enable political movements in the US which have led to big spikes of anti-Semitic attacks and a few genuine massacres.
6/ I wld even say that a growing issue creating a gulf between Israelis and American Jewry is the way many Israelis and not just the right fete and fawn over a President who most of us not only don’t support but who we believe is genuinely endangering us.
7/ Now I get your point about the phrase and the hurt it’s over use can stir for many Jews. It does me too to an extent. As I said, never again seemed more off. Sometimes the exigencies of the moment really do take you somewhere you may not have imagined or wanted to go.
8/ But I think your global take of this misses an American perspective and an American Jewish perspective, one in which comparing us to Trump coddling right wing Jews isn’t just wrong but borderline offensive. We don’t want our communal grief, history and safety cheapened and ...
9/ degraded and abused. This isn’t prioritizing some other commitment over our Judaism. For many of us a key part of it is rooted in our disgust at this cynical, craven and dangerous abuse of our history.
