Opinion A 'city that works for everyone' cannot boycott its Jewish community

When candidates for public office make pledges, voters should pay attention — they reveal not only priorities but values.

In exchange for the Twin Cities Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) endorsement, state Sen. and Minneapolis mayoral candidate Omar Fateh pledged to “refrain from any and all affiliation” with Israel and a list of “Zionist lobby groups.”. The DSA list — from the hawkish American Israel Public Affairs Committee to dovish J Street — also includes my organization, Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas (JCRC), the consensus public affairs voice for our region’s Jewish community.

Demonizing local Jewish voices echoes the hostility Jews faced in 1939 — the year of JCRC’s founding — when white Christian nationalists circulated leaflets to 50,000 Minneapolis churchgoers declaring: “When Christians Vote, They Vote Right,” as Columbia journalism professor Samuel Freedman unearthed from JCRC’s archives. The message was unmistakable: Because most Jews voted left, their votes and voices were illegitimate and dangerous.
Today, amid historic antisemitism, Fateh’s pledge to boycott Jewish organizations revives that same exclusionary strategy — singling out the vast majority of Jews as unworthy of equal participation in civic life.

Fateh hired aides who call for Israel’s destruction, deny Hamas’s sexual atrocities, and even praise the Oct. 7 massacre — in which more than 1,200 people were murdered and over 250 kidnapped — as “heroic.”

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That prejudicial pattern underpins today’s antizionist mutation of antisemitism.
Along with the far-right’s “great replacement” ideology, antizionism fuels today’s most dangerous antisemitic lie: The Jewish peoples’ post-Holocaust renewal in our homeland is recast as a racist, colonialist project and the vast majority of Jews are framed as obstacles to justice and peace. Anti-Jewish lies spread by persuading people that being on the “right side of history” means demonizing Jews and erasing Jewish identity and legitimacy.

Fateh’s campaign promises “a city that works for everyone.” But a city that works for everyone does not boycott Jewish organizations, hire staff who cheer terrorism and sexual violence, or normalize propaganda that erodes truth and divides neighbors. Antisemitism is not progress. It is an ancient lie that thrives in movements that claim moral superiority while demanding conformity and denying the humanity of others.

https://www.startribune.com/dsa-dfl-minneapolis-mayoral-race-antisemitism/601458709