Woke Antisemitism: How a Progressive Ideology Harms Jews

by David L. Bernstein

I have studied media coverage of that ongoing conflict since it first broke out in June 2008, and of each subsequent conflict: December 2008, November 2012, June 2014, and May 2018. Up until recently, media coverage—both news and opinion—unfolded in a predictable pattern: the stories and editorials acknowledged that Israel must have leeway to defend itself against Hamas rocket fire aimed at Israeli civilians. Then, as casualties mounted, the coverage turned against Israel, and within a few days, the same outlets lambasted the Jewish state for using “disproportionate force.” In May 2021—when this latest round occurred—even in the earliest stages of the conflict, Israel was not given the usual benefit of the doubt and was demonized as the oppressor in some quarters. The social media was even worse. “If you’ve been paying attention to social media over the past week, you will have seen this same attempt to redefine the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a racial power dynamic, casting Israel as infinitely powerful and Palestinians as completely without agency,” Batya Ungar-Sargon pointed out in a Newsweek editorial, “When Wokeness Comes for Israel,” in May 2021. “It certainly makes for worse Instagram posts. ‘Israelis are the OPPRESSORS and Palestinians are the OPPRESSED,’ one viral Instagram post reads. ‘There is no “fighting,” there is only Israeli colonisation, ethnic cleansing, military occupation, and apartheid.’”