At the height of McCarthyism in the early 1950s, Jewish community councils across the country threw out a group: the Jewish People’s Fraternal Order, a subsidiary of the International Workers Order. A workers’ group with Communist leanings, it was too far left and too political to exist within the fold anymore.
The Jewish establishment did not only send this organization into exile. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, as senators investigated Hollywood’s role in promoting Soviet propaganda and the House Un-American Activities Committee worked to investigate Soviet influence more broadly, some argued that “Soviet” or “Communist” was code for “Jew.” The Red Scare was at least in part an antisemitic project, and mainstream American Jewish groups made a choice. The Anti-Defamation League and American Jewish Committee purged Communists and Communist sympathizers and went so far as to turn files over to HUAC.
This is often presented and understood as an action taken out of fear. As Geoffrey Levin, assistant professor of Middle Eastern studies and Jewish studies at Emory, writes in his new book, Our Palestine Question, “In a period marked by McCarthyism, the Rosenberg trials, and the House Un-American Activities Committee investigations, the question of whether accusations of divided Jewish loyalties threatened to roll back the gains made in the fight against anti-Jewish feelings was hardly theoretical.” It is not difficult to understand why, in the wake of the Red Scare of the early-1900s and in the shadow of World War II, American Jews would be afraid and act defensively.
There was another dimension, too, argued Hasia Diner, professor emerita of New York University’s history and Judaic studies departments. The Jewish establishment, she said, was “articulating a position that reflected both the fear and the desire to not have those views represented.” If their stability was threatened by Jewish Communists, so, too, she argued, were their sensibilities.
“Fear and abhorrence are almost two sides of the same coin,” she said.
Seven decades later, Jewish communities find themselves in a similar position in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack. As millions—including many progressive Jews—called for a cease-fire as Israel retaliated against Hamas by relentlessly bombing densely packed parts of Gaza, the ADL Washington, D.C., called anti-Zionist groups antisemitic. The ADL also deemed Jewish-led rallies for cease-fires as antisemitic attacks, in addition to including pro-Palestine rallies in its report on antisemitic incidents.
In November, Jewish Voice for Peace, an anti-Zionist Jewish group, and IfNotNow, a self-described “movement of American Jews organizing our community to end U.S. support for Israel’s apartheid system and demand equality, justice, and a thriving future for all Palestinians and Israelis,” gathered outside the Democratic Party headquarters in Washington, D.C. Protesters said they were peaceful, and that police attacked them. David Weigel, a Semafor reporter who was at the scene, confirmed that protesters tried to block entrances, but did not break in, and described the event as “illegal civil disobedience.” T’ruah, a rabbinic human rights group, criticized the police. Others took a different approach.
“This Wed, some congressional offices were put on lockdown & 6 officers were injured during a JVP & If Not Now protest outside DNC headquarters,” tweeted ADL Washington, adding, “We continue to be concerned by these radical anti-Israel groups & the way their actions impact our communities.”
One could........