Blake Flayton: “They connect Jews with hot-button issues to whip up outrage”
Blake Flayton, a columnist for the Jewish Journal and a social media commentator on American-Jewish and Israeli political issues, appeared on the most recent episode of Podcast Against Antisemitism where he spoke about anti-Zionist antisemitism.
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“There’s a lot of misconceptions about Zionism, whether they come from within the Jewish community or outside the Jewish community,” he said. “The Jews have a right to live in the land in which they’ve always been associated with. We have been known as Jews, and in different languages, it’s just a variation on the word ‘Jew’. We have been named after this piece of land for the last 2,000 years, if not more so.”
Mr Flayton explained how, during the first 30 years of Israel’s existence, neighbouring Arab countries would denigrate the country, even going as far as to assert that they would “push the Jews into the sea” and that “Jews are cockroaches.”
The activist said how that in the shadow of the just-passed Nazi era, these statements were ones that “nobody in the West who could ever call themselves ‘liberal’ or ‘progressive’ could support”.
“Standing up for the Jews was a good, progressive cause overseas. And then, the Soviet Union enters stage-left somewhere in the mid-to-late ‘70s and basically flips the language of anti-Zionism in order to make it more palatable to people in the West, to journalists and academics and activists,” Mr Flayton said.
The Soviet Union would then “make the language of anti-Zionism sound as though it was a progressive fight for justice, a call for righteousness, and it’s been going ever since because it’s believable,” he said.
“They use the lingo, they use the words, that connect with people who style themselves as activists. In reality, it’s the same Nazi-like war against the Jewish right to self-determination that’s been going on since 1948. The goal is the same, and that’s from the river to the sea, there will not be a Jewish state.”
When asked why university campuses have seen an increase in anti-Zionist rhetoric, he said: “This is actually in-line with how antisemitism has worked forever, because the antisemites take advantage of the hot-button issues of the day, and they connect Jews with those hot-button issues in order to whip up outrage among their supporters and get closer to their goals on campus.”
Elaborating on the goals in question, Mr Flayton said that some examples might be the “passing of BDS resolutions or isolating Jewish organisations, or simply just making individual Jews feel uncomfortable.”
Podcast Against Antisemitism, produced by Campaign Against Antisemitism, talks to a different guest about antisemitism each week. It streams every Thursday and is available through all major podcast apps and YouTube. You can also subscribe to have new episodes sent straight to your inbox.
Previous guests have included comedian David Baddiel, television personality Robert Rinder, writer Eve Barlow, Grammy-Award-winning singer-songwriter Autumn Rowe, and actor Eddie Marsan.
