The left denies that Jews are a persecuted minority

The increasingly popular critical race theory in progressive circles recognises racism and discrimination against minority groups. Strangely, though, Muslims are treated as in need of protection, while Jews, despite their small numbers, are associated with power and domination, argues Eva Illouz writing in Fathom:

Even though Muslims (to continue with the same example) are demographically, territorially, and economically (in total accumulated wealth) far superior to the Jews, they are viewed as a vulnerable and persecuted minority, while Jews – especially when associated with Israel – are denied this status. If Muslims constitute two billion people in the world, or close to 30 per cent of world population, and the Jews barely 15 millions, or 0.2 per cent of the people who inhabit this planet, the latter clearly better qualify to the status of vulnerable minority in global terms. But in western democracies, Jews are treated as a dominant (and ‘white’) group, a perception buttressed by the fact they are mentally associated to Israel, a military state victorious in numerous wars. Survey after survey, in Europe and in the USA, it was found that a third or more of the population believed Jews have too much power. More interestingly, young people, more likely to be progressive than older people, are also more likely to think Jews control too much of the economy and the media.

This asymmetry between the leftist treatment of Muslims and Jews betrays a double form of discrimination: It views Islam as in need of protection, despite its territorial reach and religious power, revealing an Orientalist condescension (protecting Islam differs from protecting from real and present discrimination the Muslim minorities who live in Western countries). And it cancels the minority status of Jews, because they are implicitly associated with power and domination.

More than that: when forced to legitimise the existence of Israel, Jews usually invoke the argument of persistent antisemitism, and this argument, in the progressive moral grammar, ipso facto cancels itself. It is discounted and recoded as an ‘instrumentalisation’ or ‘weaponisation’ (to use the fashionable word) of a tragic history to Jew-wash Israel’s crimes. The fear or denunciation of antisemitism by Jews is tautologically transformed into a ‘proof’ or sign of cunning manipulativeness, thereby automatically disqualifying it. Note that the wily manoeuvres of Iran and other Muslim countries to discard and disqualify any critique of political Islam as Islamophobic has never met with a similar a priori suspicion by the progressive Left.

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