“Anti-Asian violence is always wrong, and it long preceded the onset of the Chinese Communist Party, but the surge in UK anti-Asian incidents during the recent coronavirus pandemic gives lie to those who pretend that the Chinese government’s conduct doesn’t affect anti-Asian violence.”
Translation: Anti-Asian violence against random Asian people living outside of Asia is the fault of governments in Asia —not of the perpetrators. That is, anti-Asian violence is, to some extent, not only justified but the fault of Asians themselves.
If this isn’t victim shaming, we don’t know what is.
Note: the quote above is fiction — sort of. It wasn’t written about British Asians. But it was written about British Jews, or Diaspora Jews in general. It is not fiction. We quote:
“Antisemitism is always wrong, and it long preceded the creation of Israel, but the surge in UK antisemitic incidents during the recent Gaza conflict gives the lie to those who pretend that the Israeli government’s conduct doesn’t affect antisemitism.”
The culprit of this anti-Semitic blame game is — no surprise here — the head of Human Rights Watch, Ken Roth. To adapt what Abba Eban said about the Palestinians, Roth never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity to disparage the Jewish state. UN Watch, a Geneva-based NGO, monitored Roth and counted: Within a two-month period, November-December, 2019, Roth called out Israel for “illegal” actions in 88% of his tweets. In the same period, countries like Syria, Iran and Myanmar were criticized by Roth . . . how many times? Zero.
Following Roth’s anti-Semitic tweet, posted on Tisha b’Av no less, Roth doubled down, deepening his anti-Semitic bent even while stating that anti-Semitim is always wrong. Roth claimed he was pointing out a “correlation,” of course leaving any thinking person to wonder whether he would point out such a “correlation” when it came to, say, anti-black racism and the dispro- portionate number of black people in prison.
Mr. Roth: If individuals use the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to violently harass and attack Jews across the world, here’s what it means: those individuals are anti-Semitic, period. It’s the same as those who would attack Asian-Americans because of China’s crackdown on Hong Kong citizens’ liberties would be anti-Asian.
Roth’s anti-Semitism, though ostensibly a manifestation of the “new” anti-Semitism — the outsized, disproportionate criticism of Israel — is really nothing other than classic anti-Semitism. Just like Jew haters of the past, Roth seeks to hold Jews accountable for being the target of irrational hatred and violence. Like so many before him, from Pharaoh to Titus to Hitler, Roth seeks to “rationalize” anti-Semitism — and that is the most anti-Semitic cut of all.
Copyright © 2021 by the Intermountain Jewish News
