Portside

Yair Netanyahu, the son of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, removed an anti-Semitic meme from his Facebook page on Sunday after an outcry from Israeli politicians and Jewish community leaders in the United States. The image, posted by Yair Netanyahu on Friday, appeared to be a local take on a classic anti-Semitic cartoon suggesting that Jews control the United States. It has appeared widely on extreme alt-right websites.

Why was this Chicago-based group defunded by the Countering Violent Extremism task force?

What Gary Cohn, Steven Mnuchin and Jared Kushner did - or, rather, what they didn't do - is a shanda. They'll know what that means, but, for the uninitiated, shanda is Yiddish for shame, disgrace. All three let it be known through anonymous friends and colleagues that they are disturbed and distressed by what Trump said after the white terrorist demonstration and attack in Charlottesville. But not in public.

Campaigns to silence criticism of Israel don’t protect Jews — they endanger them. A national conversation on what antisemitism is — and what it isn’t — is long overdue. Recent reshuffling among the Trump administration may have Steve Bannon on the outs, but we are only weeks removed from a white supremacist as “the shadow president.”

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Can Trump's administration include rabid Zionists and rabid anti-Semites at the same time? Of course it can.

Outrage? AIPAC and the Conference of Presidents can summon it on behalf of Israel's government, on BDS, on the Iran Deal - but not for the American minorities targeted by Trump. Not even its Jews. Add your name to the Joint Petition from American Jews and Muslims on Stephen Bannon (see below).

It certainly is not anti-Semitic to argue that whatever emancipatory elements that Zionism may have provided some Jews has been more than offset by the expulsion, occupation, repression and killings of the indigenous Palestinian inhabitants. While Zionism can be seen as a national liberation movement for Jews, it undeniably also has characteristics of a colonial settler state.

Once-fraught ideas and symbols are now a routine matter of partisan combat. This is scary.

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