Antisemitism Wave Is Only a Drip

Santa Monica Lookout Opinion

Antisemitism 'Wave' Is Only a Drip

May 17, 2024

Dear Editor

I'm concerned about one particular sentence in the story on the peace initiative that the Council approved Tuesday night ("Peace Resolution Exposes Deep Divisions," May 15, 2024).

Councilmembers "were particularly disturbed that Santa Monica is prone to the wave of antisemitism that has swept the nation over the past seven months."

That wave in Santa Monica is actually more like a drip. We're not inundated with that ilk here. It's about the same as always.

Nor is there a wave across the nation. If you look into it, the Anti-Defamation League, the establishment source of determining the levels of antisemitism in the U.S., tallies falsely phrases used for support of Palestinian independence as antisemitic.

Palestinians are a Semitic people. It's just an outright distortion. These phrases include: "Free Palestine", "Intifada" (which translates to "shuffling") and "From the River to the Sea", which is not aimed at Jews.

They are aimed at the Zionists settler colonizers, and Zionism in no way represents all Jews. It's just a belief system that happens to be predominant in Israel at this time.

There are many, many Jews involved with the free Palestine movement. Many Jews have been arrested on campuses and across the country for this cause and any antisemitism is incidental in the movement, even at UCLA, where it's been written about recently in the LA Times.

In my opinion, sweeping unproven generalizations like the one I mentioned above unnecessarily help deceive the reader. It might not have been your intent, but that's how I see it as playing out.

Sincerely,

Andrew Liberman

Disclosures