Bari Weiss wants to speak for the Jews, Peter Beinart challenges
Bari Weiss
Yakov Hirsch writes in Mondoweiss:
There is an ideological struggle occurring in the American Jewish world that will shape the Jewish future. Its leading adversaries are Peter Beinart and Bari Weiss. Beinart and Weiss embody two different Jewish identities, and the most important distinction between them is that they have different perspectives on anti-Semitism.
Take Beinart’s scheduled December 15 panel discussion on anti-Semitism, “Dismantling Antisemitism, Winning Justice,” with Rashida Tlaib, Marc Lamont Hill, and Barbara Ransby as participants.
While this will be a discussion about antisemitism, Beinart also has something else in mind.
Peter Beinart
Beinart knows that Tlaib and Hill have been unjustly vilified in American society, and that vilification originated in the American Jewish community. Beinart also knows that Tlaib and Hill are not haters—all the loathing goes in one direction. In engaging in this dialogue, Beinart is informing the panelists, their supporters, and the Zoom attendees that those Jews who demonize Talib and Hill do not represent all Jews. In fact, the silent majority of Jews realize that they and those who share their pro-Palestinian narrative have their own perspective that has nothing to do with Jew hatred.
Beinart wants to acknowledge to these individuals that many Jews understand that the charge of antisemitism is used as a cudgel against political and ideological opponents.
Bari Weiss disparaged the event in a tweet and also liked this tweet by former Israeli ambassador to the U.N. Dani Dayan:
“If you are non-Jews who like to tell Jews what is and what isn’t antisemitism, you are most probably antisemites. If you are a Jew collaborating with them, you are most probably their useful idiot.”
What does Bari Weiss find so threatening about this panel discussion?