Opinion Columnists |

S.E. Cupp: The far left has a serious antisemitism problem

The headlines paint a troubling picture.

“ Liberals Need a Reckoning With Antisemitism.”

“ How the Democrats betrayed the Jews.”

“ The Left Faces a Reckoning as Israel Divides Democrats.”

The conflict between Israel and Hamas, a terrorist group that barbarically murdered 1,400 innocent civilians in a surprise and coordinated attack on Israel, has unleashed a shocking and appalling level of antisemitism from the left.

From a disturbing indifference to Jewish suffering, to an inability to make obvious declarative statements about Hamas’ atrocities, to a repeated moral equivalency between Israel and Hamas — the latter of which explicitly wants to wipe Jews off the planet — to outright hostility toward Jews, the ugly invective is coming from some unexpected places.

Inside the Democratic Party, elected state officials and members of Congress have refused to condemn Hamas and many have called for an immediate Israeli ceasefire, essentially demanding the IDF leave Hamas alone.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib and others are offering conspiracy theories about the attacks akin to 9/11 trutherism. Tlaib, for example, does not believe U.S., Israeli, and media reports that an Islamic Jihad rocket misfire — not Israel — caused an explosion at a Gaza hospital. Instead, she believes Hamas, the terrorists, and is demanding an independent investigation. “Both the White House and the Israeli government have long, documented histories of misleading the public about war and war crimes,” she said.

On college campuses, many of which are now infamous for trigger warnings, banning offensive speech, and creating “safe spaces,” professors and students are trafficking in viciously antisemitic comments in support of Palestinians, with one national student group celebrating the massacre as a “historic win for the Palestinian resistance.”

In left-wing and mainstream media, a slew of commentators, hosts and reporters have pushed Hamas propaganda and anti-Israel sentiment.

According to Gallup, Democratic voters are also now more sympathetic toward Palestinians than Israelis, for the first time since it began asking the question.

This has all led to some soul-searching and exasperation among American Jews who once counted Democrats as supporters. Rabbi Joel Simonds says, “In these last few days, the silence is deafening and it is hurtful and a betrayal on so many levels. It’s not going to change the way we look at justice. It’s going to change the way we look at our allies.”

Playwright David Mamet wrote of “the sick thrill of antisemitism” inside the Democratic Party, that they “repeat and refuse to retract the libel that Israel bombed a hospital, in spite of absolute proof to the contrary, and will not call out the unutterable atrocities of Hamas. The writing is on the wall. In blood.”

Jewish celebrities including Amy Schumer, Josh Gad and Debra Messing have all addressed antisemitism they’ve encountered.

I know how disorienting, disappointing, and distressing this is for my Jewish friends, as many have shared with me how scared and unsafe they suddenly feel in a country they thought would “Never Forget.”

Back in 2017 I was shocked when hundreds of white supremacists, neo-Nazis, racists and bigots marched at a Virginia rally — unmasked and unashamed — wielding tiki torches, and screaming racist slogans like, “Our blood, our soil,” “Jews will not replace us,” and “White Lives Matter!”

In the wake of the Charlottesville violence, where one neo-Nazi rammed his car into a crowd of anti-racist protesters, injuring dozens and killing one woman, the president told America that there were “some very fine people on both sides.”

I had to reconcile with a fact that made me physically sick to my stomach: this naked and appalling bigotry and hate is coming from inside my own political party.

Racism, of course, wasn’t new. It’s always been here. But to watch this level of proud intolerance take hold of a wing of the Republican Party, metastasize over the ensuing years, infect Congress and the right-wing media, and receive comfort from the party’s biggest standard-bearer — the president — has been one of the hardest things to watch in my career in politics.

If you’d told me 25 years ago that the Republican Party of Lincoln would one day elect white nationalists to Congress, that a president would dine openly with neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers, that a presidential candidate would insist that slavery had its upside, I wouldn’t have believed you.

Similarly, if you’d told me that the Democratic Party of Harry Truman would struggle one day to defend massacred Jews against Islamic terrorists whose stated purpose is the destruction of Israel and the annihilation of the Jews, I wouldn’t have believed this either.

I know it’s a painful reality to confront. But just as Donald Trump exposed a dark and ugly underbelly of the far right, Hamas has exposed a dark and ugly underbelly of the far left.

S.E. Cupp is the host of “S.E. Cupp Unfiltered” on CNN.