Rachel Timoner, Senator Schumer’s ‘Rabbi’, had spent the years since Oct 7 denouncing Israel.
The trendy leftist clergywoman had been active with anti-Israel groups such as J Street and T’ruah, and had co-founded the New York Jewish Agenda leftist organization alongside Sharon Kleinbaum who had faced an exodus from her ‘temple’ after saying prayers for Hamas terrorists.
When Prime Minister Netanyahu came to speak at the UN, Timoner addressed a rally “to demand that Netanyahu be held accountable for his war crimes” and blamed antisemitic attacks on Jews by Muslims, including a Muslim terror attack meant to kill Jewish preschoolers, on the Israeli leader. It is “utterly unacceptable to take out one’s anger at Netanyahu on American Jews in any way – but Bibi Netanyahu’s victims include Jewish parents across America who are afraid of what might happen to our children because of antisemitic violence in response to his actions.”
But no matter what Timoner did, her political allies came for her anyway when a local elementary school dropped its 50-year relationship with her temple over Israel.
“This decision was made without anyone at the school reaching out to us as neighbors to talk about their concerns or to see whether their assumptions about us were right, or even tell us that they were severing this tie,” Timoner complained to her congregants over Yom Kippur. “That made many of us feel lonely and misunderstood.”
Timoner had gotten herself arrested protesting ICE and Trump, she had hosted Zohran Mamdani and written an article defending BDS. You could find her screeching outside the UN and the Israeli embassy about how much she opposed Israel’s war against Hamas.
“We need to quietly and gently approach and say, ‘Let me tell you why this hurts. Please don’t make assumptions about us,’” Timoner pleaded following a meeting where she no doubt laid out her leftist bona fides and her unyielding support for the entire leftist platform even against Israel.
And yet, as they used to say, “by me you’re Park Avenue, by them you’re Fourth Avenue.”
Her political ally, Brad Lander (above), who had slimed his way to Congress by embracing Mamdani and winning his backing to oust a pro-Israel candidate, turning against Israel and Jews, and delivering prayers at a mosque where the imam prayed for the death of non-Muslims, showed up at to support a Muslim assault on a Hindu event, only to be thrown out and accused of being a “Zionist”. Lander, who had falsely accused Israel of “genocide”, whined, “They are making it very difficult for me to leave. They have no right to tell me where to stand.”
By me, you’re a progressive resistance member, by them, you’re a genocidal Zionist.
Much the same thing has now taken place in the UK’s Green Party, led by Zack Polanski, who is gay and of Jewish descent, and who had copied Bernie Sanders by basing his identity on bashing Israel. Members of Polanski’s family, who no longer speak to him, have said that, “he’s currently the leader of the future Islamic party of Britain” and ”the mad thing is that he’s gay, he’s Jewish but he’s cosying up to people whose ideology is the complete antithesis of everything that he’s supposed to stand for. It’s like he’s a chicken, telling us to vote for KFC.”
When a Somali Muslim man stabbed two Jewish people in an attack that Iran claimed responsibility for, Polanski condemned the police officers for using force to stop the terrorist.
Green Party candidates had already promoted Hamas and argued that “ramming a synagogue isn’t antisemitism. It’s revenge”. But that wasn’t enough so a Green Party resolution was introduced by a “close friend” of an Al Qaeda terrorist, who had called for ‘Zionists’ to be “hunted” worldwide demanding the destruction of Israel and threatening to ban Jews attending synagogues considered to be ‘Zionist’ which, considering that the Bible describes the Jewish journey to and life in Israel, and Jews pray facing Jerusalem, would be nearly every synagogue.
The resolution passed, while an amendment protecting members from being expelled if they go to synagogues labeled as ‘Zionist’ was easily defeated. Zach Polansky endorsed the call for the destruction of the Jewish State and, by definition, the Muslim genocide of 6 million Jews, but some Jewish Green Party members announced that they would be leaving the party.
The Green Party resolution also endorsed “the right of the Palestinian people to resistance”, an implicit endorsement of terrorism, and doubled down on that by calling for the release of Islamic terrorists, including Marwan Barghouti, responsible for numerous killings of innocent people.
“The motion basically says Jewish members will have to decide between membership of a synagogue or of the party,” Elise Benjamin, the founder of the Jewish Greens, objected. “I don’t understand how this helps Palestinians? All this is an attack on Jews.”
While the Green Party claimed that it wasn’t engaged in antisemitism, its resolution included materials claiming that Zionism was “Jewish supremacy” and arguing that the very concept of antisemitism is a Jewish conspiracy against Muslims that “erases the Semitic identity of Arabs and Palestinians” and is “weaponising language to privilege one group’s suffering while denying recognition to others who share the same Semitic heritage.”
Yachad UK, an anti-Israel group which had pressed the Labour government for a harsher crackdown on Israel, defended BDS and defended the harassment of synagogues. Yachad’s leader Hannah Weisfeld has run a virtually non-stop feed of anti-Israel propaganda.
After the Green Party’s resolution however, Yachad complained that, “telling Jews they are acceptable only if they give up that understanding of collective Jewish identity, is not, as some have sought to explain it away, an attack on a political ideology. It is an attack on Jewish identity.”
The chair of Amnesty International, which had falsely accused Israel of ‘genocide’ and tried to suppress a report about Hamas atrocities, announced that he was leaving the Green Party, complaining, “in seeking to court the hard-left vote, we have failed to confront prejudice when it appears on our own side.”
Charley Baginsky, the pink-haired lesbian co-leader of ‘Progressive Judaism UK’ and the other co-leader, Josh Levy, had been booed off the stage at a pro-Israel rally after they called for a deal with Hamas and a terror state. Baginsky had attended a rally protesting against the war. But after the Green Party vote, they issued a statement, claiming that “the Green Party has made antisemitism party policy and become a racist party.”
But that was how it was always going to end.
The campaign against Israel was never about self-determination: if that were the goal, the Oslo Accords wouldn’t have been followed by terrorism. Nor is it simply about Israel. If it were about Israel, anti-Israel activists and synagogues who happen to be Jewish wouldn’t be under attack.
The issue was never a ‘Palestinian State’. Or even Israel. It was about creating a permission structure for antisemitism with the aim of normalizing Islamic and radical leftist violence.
What’s been happening to anti-Israel Jews isn’t a mistake or a misunderstanding: it’s the point.
Jews trying to be part of an anti-Israel movement either eventually reach the point where its antisemitism becomes too much even for them or where no matter how they try to be more antisemitic than the antisemites, their role is finally explained to them with a bullet to the head.
In the USSR, Jewish Communists helped the regime persecute Jews, shut down synagogues and kill ‘Zionists’. Then they in turn were arrested, tried and murdered by the Soviet regime.
There is no safety or security to be found in collaboration. Collaborators are just the last to die.
Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center’s Front Page Magazine.
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Thank you for reading.
Read my book ‘Domestic Enemies: The Founding Fathers’ Fight Against the Left’ to discover the true origins of the American Left.
Actually, usually the first to be killed are the collaborators.
Yeah. Progressives are race-totalitarian. Eventually, even if you tow the ideological line, my guess is that most Jews will be vibed out of the 'movement.'