Mick Hartley

Jews have been framed in the latest American academic race theories as white, and therefore as oppressors, thereby assimilating the most persecuted minority in European history to the dominant majority, while downgrading the significance of antisemitism. This has had a profound impact on the way Jews and Israel are now seen in left academic circles.

Alan Johnson interviews Balázs Berkovits at Fathom:

Whatever the merits or demerits of ‘whiteness studies’ for the understanding of anti-black racism, it has tended to frame Jews and Israel as essentially ‘white’ and so essentially ‘oppressive’ with the result that contemporary antisemitism is denied by ideological fiat, granted no place in the related meta-theory of ‘intersectionality’. ‘Whiteness Studies’ often works in tandem with the related notion of ‘Zionist settler colonialism’ to underpin apologetics or even active support for antisemitic jihadists who are redefined as ‘the progressive resistance of the oppressed’.

Complicated (ie, needs to be read in full), but:

The thought that Israel is inherently genocidal is anchored in the interpretative framework that construes it as colonial or settler-colonial in the Western style, constantly practicing oppression and apartheid. That Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians is always assumed, therefore there remains nothing to verify when there is an actual conflict. This has become clear after 7 October. The accusation was automatically triggered, even when facts on the ground were not known. And there has been no genuine intention of finding out the facts by the accusers (let them be politicians, journalists, or representatives of certain NGOs). And conversely: the genocide committed against Israelis cannot be perceived, let alone recognised, since they are known to be the fundamental oppressors….

Interpreting Jews in the whiteness frame accomplishes the impossible by a number of conceptual reversals: Jews are white, therefore don’t have the status of a minority; Jews have been powerful colonisers in the Middle East and not the most persecuted human group in history; Jews have been profiting from the Holocaust than anything else, by making it seem as if it was unique, etc. Jews are seen as accumulating all the dominant positions in Western societies, unjustly vindicating the status of utmost victims, and illegitimately complaining about antisemitism, which they even instrumentalise to defend Israel and to denigrate real minorities, like Muslims (what detractors call the ‘antisemitism card’).

With respect to Jews, everything is interpreted in the framework of ‘privilege”: Jews’ social and economic status, their educational capital, alleged ‘skin privilege,’ their ‘Holocaust credit.’ Every objective position they occupy in the social hierarchy is to be criticised as unearned, unmerited, and even harmful, whereas every grievance (Holocaust memory, antisemitism) is tagged as factitious and fake, in need of deconstruction.