The fallacies of Jewish singularity

It's true that Jews are overrepresented in many arenas -- liberal professions, entertainment, media, medicine, arts, activism, politics, etc. Why is this? Are Jews inherently different in some key way? Is it cultural? Genetic? The product of some secret deal with the devil?

And what about the fact that there are some very high profile evil Jews? The Sacklers, Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein. Are they confirmation that the stereotypes of Jews are true? Proof of the underlying corruption and evil of the Jewish people?

Before we dig into the fallacies, let's confirm what's true.

Based on our small numbers (Jews number about 7 million in the US, just over 2% of the total population; globally, Jews number about 16 million, or 0.2% of the world), Jews ARE overrepresented in many professions and activities. Since the industrial revolution, Jews have been overrepresented in various political and economic movements in the US and abroad: socialism, communism, labor, civil rights, free speech, back to the land, social justice, environmentalism, postmodernism, neoconservatism, free market capitalism, and, fittingly, also in both the pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian movements. We have been overrepresented in the film, TV, and music industries, in professions like law, medicine, academia, finance, education, psychiatry, and so on. This has increasingly become less true of some professions, as other ethnic groups increasingly assimilate and ascend the ladder.

By and large, we have done well in the US, and, contrary to conventional wisdom, that is not something to be ashamed of. It reflects hard work, a strong educational ethic, a powerful drive to succeed, and some key skills.

So let's dig into the fallacies:

1. Jews are more intelligent or cunning (for good or evil).

No, we are not smarter than anyone else. But we have a long history of literacy and focus on texts as part of our religious traditions, which orients us historically toward a learning and education mindset. Throughout much of our history, rabbis, scholars, and wisemen have been the role models and source for wisdom in both Jewish religion and culture. In the 19th and 20th centuries, many Jews in the Old World joined the rest of humanity in embracing modernity: leaving ethnic and religious enclaves in favor of cities, taking industrial jobs, embracing enlightenment values, and beginning to assimilate. As Jews left the insular world of tradition and scripture, they often brought their penchant for literacy, education, and ideas into the secular realm, and very often with great vigor. Many replaced religious zeal and community with Yiddish, Ladino, German, or Judeo-Arabic culture, letters, and arts; many others embraced political movements, like socialism and labor, as their new ideologies.

While the different forms of expression were as varied as any portion of humanity, there was among Jews a certain energy and ambition born of a) the need to replace religious zeal with something else, b) the need to find meaning and security when both had been lacking, c) the need to escape the poverty, persecution, and insularity of the old times for something newer, and d) a desire to fit into and survive in a world that is overwhelmingly not-Jewish and often hostile to Jews. All of these factors combined to become a major motivator for Jews leaving the community, the shetl, the village, the old country, or the old neighborhood as they sought to assimilate, find opportunity, find safety, and shed the past. Therefore, it is fair to say that many Jews have been especially driven to DO and to CHANGE, and they have a strong cultural value of EDUCATION.

2. Jews are rich.

Because of the factors named above, Jews have, gradually, over generations, succeeded in the modern world (especially the US) better than they have throughout most (if not all) of their history. They are doing relatively well economically, vis-a-vis the general population, but most Jews are not rich, and most rich people are not Jews. Moreover, some ethnic and religious groups have achieved even greater economic success in the US. Most Jews in the US are part of the broad middle class; many are working class; some are poor; some are wealthy; a small number are mega-wealthy. Nevertheless, for all of Jewish recorded history, it has only taken just one wealthy Jew in the spotlight (e.g., Baron Rothschild) for the general population to make negative assumptions about Jews and wealth. If that wealthy Jew happens to be unethical (e.g., Bernie Madoff), then the prejudiced have a field day.

3. Jews are uniquely privileged and powerful.

As many Jews in the US are doing relatively well economically, a commensurate number have ascended the social ladder through business, politics, or the professions and built the influence and power that comes with such positions. While outright racism, quotas, gentlemen's agreements and the like prevented Jews from rising in the American mainstream for generations, those walls began to break in the 1950s and '60s, and it's fair to say that Jews have joined other longstanding groups in positions of power. While bias persists, overt antisemitism has become more rare -- reserved for white supremacists and left wing radicals. But that makes Jews now part of the mainstream, not uniquely powerful or influential.

And what about their privilege?

To ascribe to Jews "white privilege" or privilege generally is to ignore 1,000 years of marginalized status, including for the first generations that came to the US. The assumption of privilege stems from a simplistic binary (via intersectionalism and critical race theory) pitting the white / European / wealthy against the non-white / poor / oppressed in a flimsy construct that posits all of the former as inherently guilty and all of the latter as inherently victimized. That takes into account none of the nuance that exists within groups and for individuals, and assumes no agency among minority groups. Jews are represented in every class and subculture, and have existed through most of their history without real political power. The emergence of a Jewish wealthy class in the US in the 20th century does not erase that.

4. Jews achieved success through shifty and nefarious means.

Jews rose through the ladder like any other immigrant group. Immigrants and their kids worked the trades they could: peddling, garment work, building, factories, boxing, crime, unskilled labor. Subsequent generations pushed hard for education and escape from hardship, and a new generation of professionals emerged intent on joining the American mainstream. A couple of generations later, and the slums are mostly a distant memory, education is a mainstay, and a visible minority of Jews have amassed significant wealth through industry, finance, real estate, business, and otherwise. The fact that the Epsteins, Madoffs, and Weinsteins exist does not mean that they are representative of the vast majority of Jews -- in wealth or ethics. They are extraordinary and shameful examples for Jews themselves.

5. Because of their relative wealth, power, and privilege, Jews are fair game for criticism and "punching up," and deserve their negative status in Western society.

We have already established that their wealth, power, and privilege are not unique, but Jews are uniquely singled out for criticism and as symbols of all that is hated in the West. Why? Existing bias (and, for some, hatred) is a big factor. Jews are also often identifiable and stick out (visible and stubborn "others"). Combine those factors with intersectionalism, as described above, and Jews are the perfect boogeymen. The perfect scapegoats for all that is wrong with American, European, or Western civilization. In this context, any Jew who proudly carries their own peoplehood is cast as the wrong kind of Jew (and often accused of any number of grievous libels: genocide, apartheid, white supremacy, settler colonialism, etc. regardless of the facts). 

If Jews are the exemplars of the ultimate privilege in the US and the West, then to hate Jews is seen as simply "punching up." This is both false and racist.

Is it good to be out of touch in 2026?

Maybe it's natural to feel less at home in the world as we get older. The world keeps changing, after all, and our ability to stay current with the various, persistent changes diminishes gradually and becomes less important. 

At 50, I don't relate to much of the youthful culture that I see. That's okay. It's not meant for me, and my alienation from it is natural and to be expected. I am fulfilling the time-honored tradition of each generation faced with the weirdness of the next generation.

What gives me pause, however, is my growing alienation from the world generally -- its politics, values, and basic assumptions. Is that a normal function of getting older? Does every generation eventually start to feel profoundly out of place in the mainstream? Maybe. And maybe others are more accepting of their fate. For me, it is hard to accept it so far, because my alienation feels somewhat sudden and violent. Less like a natural progression and more like a reaction to something ugly and all-consuming.

Has political and social change shifted more significantly in recent years than at other times throughout history? Probably not. I'm sure that the current extremes -- MAGA and Progressivism -- are natural responses to our current civilizational malaise, just as the industrial revolution, nationalism, global wars, technological advances, and social revolutions of the past 200 years yielded huge tears in the fabrics of our societies. But these shifts in 2026 are real. And they are profound.

Our new politics, of course, have evolved over many years, and the extremists on the Left (Progressives) and Right (MAGA) have grown and asserted themselves in symbiosis. Each is the necessary foil for the other, helping each camp define itself in opposition to those other extremists.

I still believe that most Americans don't belong to either camp -- maybe 10% of each side are real believers, maybe I'm undercounting -- but the majority of us who are in the middle (moderates, centrists, critical thinkers, upholders of liberalism, the nuanced, dispassionate, post-post-modernists) lack a brand, community, or political party. Therefore, our influence on the prevailing culture is greatly attenuated. On the other hand, MAGA has seized the federal government and is setting our current political course from the top; and Progressives have seized control of our institutions (academia, media, culture) and claim to have a monopoly on truth and morality as they bully the rest of us into submission.

Where do those of us who reject both sides belong? Where do we go when every piece of news is interpreted only through the lens of one's political tribe, when objective truths are dismissed by both sides? Take this week's crazy news: the US attacked Venezuela, arrested its leader, and pledged to run the country.

MAGA claims that this is about the drug trade (false) and is in response to Maduro's record of corruption, crime, and oppression of his own people (his record is real, our actions have little to do with that). The justifications are generally disingenuous: Trump campaigned on avoiding foreign entanglements and wars; Republicans criticized Obama for military actions not approved by Congress; the drug argument is weak and inconsistent (see Honduras and Mexico); and Maduro did not pose a direct threat to the US. Trump cares about oil, displays of power and regional influence, and continuing to distract Americans from reality in order to sell his brand.

Progressives pretend to care about human rights but certainly never organized against the vast human rights abuses by the socialist government of Venezuela, the Islamist regime of Iran, or any other country in recent memory, other than Democratic Israel. Social justice and human rights, it turns out, only apply when one can relegate "victim" and "oppressor" into familiar camps determined by critical theory and intersectionality: "oppressors" are always white (and especially Jews, the ultimate symbol of Western privilege and power among the haters); "victims" are almost always non-white; and non-whites are never responsible for their own sins, which are always a byproduct of oppression by the first group. 

No amount of injustice in Venezuela, Iran, Somalia, Sudan, DRC, or any where else will elicit the attention of Progressives, because there is no Western bogeyman to blame. Their worldview is built on simplistic ideology, false moral binaries, and tribal identity rather than objective facts.

Show me an American, of any age, who can talk about current events without falling into familiar Progressive or MAGA talking points, and I will bow to the possibility of a future that doesn't require hiding in cave and isolating myself from the insanity.

The Crusades, 2025 Edition

A liberal society

In 2025, the conventional wisdom of liberal America is that we as a society need to have empathy for others not like us, fight discrimination, achieve equality and justice for vulnerable minorities, level the playing field, and represent the rich diversity of our country in the workplace, media, and elsewhere. This is good news and represents the evolution of a compassionate and interconnected society. 

Even many conservatives agree with the principles above, with exceptions starting to appear as you get into the specific culture wars of the moment.

So mainstream American society has, at least publicly, become more tolerant, compassionate, and sensitive to discrimination and inequality. This is true progress from the days of overt racism and hate going unchecked, despite the perception by some that nothing has changed. I'm not a social scientist and don't have statistics in front of me, but I would venture that most most metrics on overt racism, homophobia, and discrimination are down. Yes there is much work to do, but the notion that it's no better today than 1965 or 1920 or 1885 is nonsense.

So what's the problem?

The mindset of those on the frontlines of liberal activism today -- progressives -- has grown increasingly brittle and supportive of a zero sum mode of politics. That is to say that the Left has become a bastion of culture warriors combating the culture warriors of the Right, each side channeling morality itself in order to save humanity. Infused with such purpose, culture warriors have calcified their views into cult-like ideologies that are immune to logic, dialogue, nuance, and compromise. For the progressive standard bearers, there is simply good and bad, black and white, woke and conservative, oppressor and victim. They respond to each new outrage enthusiastically, driving the two sides further and further apart (just as their MAGA counterparts do).

To be clear, I am a lifelong liberal Democrat. I share many of the values of the Left and am equally disgusted by the overreaches of Trump and the Right. But today's progressives have become a caricature: self-righteous, small-minded, and easily offended enforcers of language and thought that might differ from their worldview. While they do not currently hold political power, they hold sway over many of our cultural institutions (media, entertainment, academia, education, unions, etc.), which have gradually radicalized their staffs in order to virtue signal and remain relevant in industries dominated by guilt-ridden, privileged whites. The influence of today's Left, through these institutions, is just as dangerous to our society as Trump's nihilist dismantling of our democracy. 

Why is it dangerous?

Because, when a group believes -- absolutely -- that it is on the side of truth and justice, its facts become indisputable and its adherents have no interest in subtlety or alternate views. They are crusaders for justice; and those who stand in the way of progress are bullied publicly and risk losing their jobs, reputations, and social standing. 

What's the result?

• A conversation about immigration that is utterly unnuanced and alienates millions of non-racist Americans (including immigrants) who would like sensible immigration reform
• Smart people who assert that we aren't allowed to discuss transgender science or mental health because even having the conservation would be akin to violence against a vulnerable group
• A culture that shames people for not using correct pronouns
• Reducing all Americans to their intersectional categories -- from persecuted, always blameless victims on one side to privileged oppressors on the other, no matter the actual facts on the ground for each individual or group
• Alienating tens of millions of potential allies (and voters) who don't accept the categories or fit into the narrow identities provided (including large numbers of working class whites, Asian-Americans, Latinos, Blacks, Jews, LGBT+ and others)
• People who abhor discrimination of any kind who nevertheless justify rampant discrimination against Jews, who are cast -- as they've been for centuries -- as fair targets for society's hatreds because of their otherness or relative success (the current false flag argument is "we don't hate Jews, we hate Zionists," a category that represents the majority of the world's Jews, who believe in Israel's right to exist)
• The imposition of a binary, black and white worldview onto other countries, regardless of their realities or unique histories (with the current, hugely disproportionate obsession being Israel)

I will never become a reactionary conservative, but the progressives have ceded any moral high ground and will never capture the majority of the American body politic. The result will be the ongoing splintering of the Democratic party, allowing MAGA assholes to continue to be the electable alternative.

You're welcome

In ancient times, they hated us because we would not assimilate and go away

In Christian times, they feared us because we were stubbornly different

In the Middle Ages, they blamed us for any calamity they could not explain 

In enlightened times, they resented us for excelling in the few jobs we were allowed to hold

In modernity, they despised the success of our elites and blamed us for society's ills

In Israel, they smeared us as settler colonists who interrupted the dominion of Islam over the region

In 2025, they branded us as the all-powerful, privileged, white, racist, genocidal, child-killing agents of the West

We have always been the convenient other, 

the foil, 

the scapegoat, 

onto which the cynical and ignorant can project their frustrations, 

absolving the majority of blame

The Mamdani Mess

Why Zohran Mamdani's Primary Wins Sucks

Putting aside all the political details for now (obviously Andrew Cuomo is a deeply flawed candidate; the Democratic establishment is a mess; voters went for flash and identity over the experience of a truly capable progressive like Brad Lander; Trump is a fascist POS who is making everything bananas), Zohran Mamdani represents the normalization of extremism and hate within the Democratic party and our political discourse. But he's not a hater or extremist, you might respond. Well, that's just not what the record shows.

Mamdani has made Palestinian rights central to his political identity (which is fine — I support Palestinian rights, self-determination, and security; I want two secure and peaceful states side by side; I want Israel to leave the West Bank; Netanyahu is an asshole), but he goes far beyond criticizing Israeli policy or actions. 

He is part of a growing and increasingly normalized trend of delegitimizing Israel and refusing to acknowledge its right to exist (imagine criticizing another state in that manner — "Turkey has mistreated its Kurdish minority; the state must cede all land to the Kurds and cease to exist!"); disproportionately focusing on Israeli actions, exponentially more than any other nation, even those that commit horrible atrocities; supporting the BDS movement (boycott, divest and sanction), which nominally seeks to pressure Israel through economic and cultural boycotts but actually amounts to the aggressive censorship and harassment of Israelis (and Jews) of any persuasion, and has as part of its platform the dismantling of the state of Israel; accusing Israel of genocide regardless of facts on the ground and without similar accusations about Hamas or others; and refusing to back away from the slogan "globalize the intifada," a non-theoretical call for "resistance" and violence against Jews everywhere. 

For him to say, explicitly, Jews YES and Israel NO, is to say "I like Jews so long as they're the right kind of Jew." And the majority of Jews in NYC, the US, and the world who support Israel's right to exist are therefore the wrong kind of Jew. That is simply racism, antisemitism, hate, bigotry — whatever you want to call it.

All of this rhetoric has cumulatively led to a very real climate of hate and violence against Jews — not just the recent cases in the news — but ongoing harassment, vandalism, and attacks all over the place. Jews are, not coincidentally, per capita victims of hate crimes far more than any other group in the US.

So, in the most Jewish city in the world, it feels alarming that we'll have a mayor who is proudly crossing the line between legitimate criticism of Israel and demonization of Jewish people. 

Zionism, despite all of the hype in the media, is simply the liberation movement of the Jewish people, who have never known real security for long (despite the relative comfort of the US in 2025). There is no part of mainstream Zionism that seeks to disenfranchise or harm Palestinians. It is precisely the extremism of the Mamdanis of the world — coupled with the actions of Hamas, Iran, Hezbollah, and other bad faith actors in the region — that has driven the Israelis to extremes not previously possible. I would like a world where haters on both sides would shut up, support peace, and help us return to actual compromise that benefits both Palestinians and Jews.

Armchair pundits

The Age of Information?

I imagine a time before modern technology, when news took days to reach our communities, letters through the post brought important updates from weeks earlier, and our ability to understand events far away was slow and limited.

Technology, which is neither inherently good nor bad, has shrunk the world in a million ways, connecting us to locations near and far, delivering news and information (whether reliable or not) instantly, and allowing us to respond, interact, and influence others outside of our bubbles. We may read about the results of Taiwan's election before we hear about the fatal car accident two blocks from our home in Texas, a phenomenon that profoundly changes our perspectives and priorities.

There are many positives to our age of connectivity: transparency; the democratization of information; human connection and community; support and resources for those on the margins; shared knowledge in furtherance of science, health, diplomacy, commerce, human rights; and so on. 

There are many negatives, too: heaps of false or misleading information, often impossible to distinguish from truth; the illusion of proximity or understanding; virtual connection replacing real life connection; the belief in technology itself as a means to an end -- and the answer to all of our problems -- rather than understanding it as an imperfect tool; idleness and adverse health effects; and so on.

In 2025, the reality is that social media (with its influencers, trolls, news delivered through headlines and memes, propaganda and misinformation, opinion conflated with reporting) is replacing traditional, objective journalism and fact-based expertise as the primary source of knowledge for so many people, especially among younger generations. 

This is a big problem.

Humans are not wired to resist such a compelling and ubiquitous drug as social media. With ongoing consumption, our critical faculties decrease and, with them, our ability to discern fact from fiction. We conflate online community for real world community. We make assumptions that go unchallenged. We confirm our biases and worldviews again and again, aided by algorithms that feed us what we are looking for in order to grow their audiences and sell ads.

In this siloed and broken system, each person may not recognize the extent of their bubble and may feel that they are objectively informed about any given issue. As such, they feel less need for traditional experts who used to inform us about complicated topics (journalists, scientists, academics, legislators, writers, etc) and, gradually, experts become superfluous or worse. Without any rigor in establishing authenticity, building knowledge, or sourcing information, facts become subjective and change depending on your bias. 

Enter the armchair pundit

Armed with strong opinions and powerful emotions fueled by social media, the armchair pundit is an expert on every issue and not afraid to share their findings. They may even feel it's their duty to weigh in on random topics -- to virtue signal -- and that their audience is awaiting their opinion on the latest news. 

In this broken system, the armchair pundit readily conflates engagement with expertise -- the illusion of knowledge. These are regular people, activists, influencers, politicos, and anyone else who is a creature of the internet. They are now leading the culture wars (on both the right and left) and reshaping our societies. Make no mistake: there are difficult challenges in our society that need to be addressed: poverty, racism, sexism, greed, homophobia, and so on. But the current armchair activism is unproductive and tone deaf and, instead of yielding progress, is simply driving each side farther apart, into greater extremes, and empowering dumb, extremist ideologies -- like MAGA, corporate impunity, climate denialism, censorship and policing of language, anti-Israel hysteria, and performative DEI. Among the many flavors of armchair activism today, I am most familiar with the progressive version of this phenomenon -- the social justice warrior -- so I will break down the most common types that I have observed.

Five common types of social justice warrior

Rutterless whites: Many white people (and others as well) feel unsettled and guilty about their privilege, and many are not connected to their ethnic, spiritual, or cultural roots. They often feel confused or unsatisfied by their sense of identity in our society and, as a result, seek out authenticity, meaning, connection, and approval from those seen as the standard bearers of authenticity, justice, cool, wisdom, etc. (it start innocently for many in school, as they copy the speech and cool of Black kids and align themselves with their worldviews). Over time, these rutterless (mostly) white folks create a new identity to align themselves with their values. This identity can become exaggerated and brittle and, over time, transforms into an ideology -- a belief system -- that paves over their past identity or roots. These are white saviors, allies, and activists compensating for their lack of bona fides. 

Intersectionalists: In efforts to understand and address real injustice against marginalized groups, many activists have turned to pseudo-scientific theories of race, power, and oppression, with no small debt to Marxist critical theory. Especially in the US, this movement, growing since the 1960s but gaining prominence in the last 10 years, asserts that all people fall into the spectrum of victim or perpetrator, with each group's place depending on its degree of marginalization or privilege. In this absolutist and binary construct, all whites are privileged and guilty and all people of color and LGBT folks are victims. World events, near and far, are interpreted through this lens, often resulting in a profound distortion of context and reality.

Pathological empaths: Other people of any ethnicity or background find their way to activism after personally experiencing trauma, anger, sadness, or other forms of loss and redirecting those struggles toward social justice. The intense energy that comes from trauma is then channeled through the lens of activism. It becomes calcified and unyielding, and seeks outlets everywhere. They look for -- and find -- outrage, which confirms their positions again and again. In such a worldview, facts and identities are binary -- good and bad, black and white, perpetrators and victims -- and it is up to these warriors to fight for what is right. Their need to fight become tangled up with real feelings of compassion toward those marginalized, producing a sort of pathological empathy that trumps critical analysis or situational awareness. 

Veteran activists: There are others, generally older, who came of age during the civil rights movement, anti-war movement, or during the era of beatniks and hippies -- all meaningful protests and reactions to problematic systems around them. These veteran activists developed a mindset that was necessarily anti-establishment and populist. But, as situations changed over the decades and politics became far more complex, many of these activists failed to update their playbook, and developed a simplistic, knee-jerk response to all perceived power dynamics and injustices.

The Che crowd: Others are influenced by socialism, liberation theory, or revolutionary movements where the need to right an actual wrong (i.e., Cuban robber barons, the Russian czar, the Contras in Nicaragua) led to wholesale coups or revolutions that eventually created new systems of repression to replace the previous ones. These people inherited the zeal and desire for change born of these movements without updating their manuals to account for the profound flaws inherent to most revolutions.

And any combination of the above is possible. I do believe that much of this simplistic, binary thinking stems from a very old, Western, Christian mythology pitting reformers against traditionalists, crusaders against infidels, Protestants against Catholics, revolutionaries against monarchs, and so on. We are reproducing the self-righteous passion and anger from these struggles in each subsequent struggle, without considering whether there are other paradigms.

The danger is that these are all extreme or radical approaches that -- coupled with their counterparts on the right -- are driving our country further into intractable divides and culture wars.

Who is a Jew and can you dislike Israel and still be a proud Jew?

Who's a Jew?

First off, one of the benefits of Judaism is that there is no central authority governing rules, membership, or definitions. While each denomination, jurisdiction, or governing body has rules, those rules are not universal. Even the traditional definition of "you're Jewish if your mother is Jewish" is not universal; it's a practical custom, accepted by some, that applies less and less in the current era.

I have evolved a lot over the years on this topic. When there is no definitive rulebook, anyone who truly identifies as Jewish can theoretically be Jewish. That's to say, you can be Jewish by faith, by ethnicity, by culture, or by choice. You can be of mixed heritage and still be Jewish. If you're half Jewish but feel Jewish, you're Jewish. And the converse is that, if you are ethnically Jewish but don't identify, you're still technically Jewish, but the next generations will be less and less so (and your right to speak for the community is dicey at best). 

Frankly, if you say, "I am Jewish," no one can tell you that you're wrong. We have no pope or president to say otherwise.

And what do Jews look like? Many Jews are truly observant but most today are not. Many Jews are ethnically and culturally Jewish (whether Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Mizrahi, Ethiopian, mixed, or otherwise). Many Jews are connected to the Jewish community in some form, but many are not. For some, the Holocaust and persecution are the main connections. For others, it is Israel. For me, it's a combination of culture (especially Yiddish culture and history) and Israel in all of its profound diversity (Middle Eastern, Ashkenazi, Jewish, Arabic, Druze, African, history, food, music, synagogues, mosques, and on and on).

So, if Jewish peoplehood is so diverse and inclusive, can't a Jew be a proud Jew and still not recognize Israel as the Jewish home? 

I think the answer is yes, though I passionately disagree. Our historical, cultural, ethnic, and religious connections to Israel are profound; our need for security is equally so. But some people simply aren't connected to Israel and don't have the firsthand experience that convinces them that it is important. I'll accept that those people can act in good faith, and that their political views on Israel/Palestine are simply political views and not about their Jewish identity.

However, many take it further. Many non-Zionists actively crusade against Israel's right to exist (beyond criticizing its policies or actions) and become anti-Zionists. These people are activists who have generally adopted an extreme progressive narrative about Israel and the "nakba," and who place Palestinian liberation above any Jewish needs. It is difficult for me to accept that those who support self-determination for another tribe but not for their own are truly proud of their identity.

There is yet another group that is even more common among those I know in my life: those progressive Jews who identify (often proudly) as Jewish, are not connected to Israel, and who turn a blind eye to racism against their own people because of their misgivings about Israel or their own identity. They may not be activists like the group above, but they will readily support Palestinian rights before their own and rarely comment on hatred leveled against Jews. At best, they are ignorant; at worst, they are ashamed of their own identity.

My conclusion about each of these groups is that, whatever the source of their identity-crisis, they are on the margins of the Jewish community and do not get to speak for the whole. And those who begin a sentence with "As a Jew..." in order to distance themselves from the mainstream Jewish community are simply part of the problem.