The dirty little secret of the 'diversity' agenda

(JNS)—If there’s one concept in Western progressive circles that is deemed essential for a decent society, it’s “social inclusion.” The promotion of diversity is assumed to be morally unchallengeable.

That’s also the prevalent attitude among Jews in both America and Britain.

Many if not most support liberal immigration policies and equate anti-Semitism with “Islamophobia.” The belief is that those who are against immigration and diversity will be against the Jews too.

In fact, the opposite is the case.

The default narrative on the left is venomous hostility to Israel. This is the “new anti-Semitism,” singling out Israel for demonization based on lies and distortions afforded to no other country, people or cause, and which has legitimized anti-Semitic tropes straight out of the Nazi or medieval Christian playbooks.

In Britain, this has all but consumed the Labour Party under its far-left leader, Jeremy Corbyn. In the United States, it is making steady and unchecked headway in the Democratic Party.

But what has not been acknowledged is that this is being fueled by the embrace of diversity.

In Western Europe, mass immigration and the increasing Islamization of countries such as France, Germany or Sweden are the principal cause of a horrifying increase in violent attacks on Jews. This is rarely acknowledged.

In Britain, anti-Semitic attacks have reached record levels. They are perpetrated by significantly disproportionate numbers of Muslims relative to their proportion of the population.

This is rarely acknowledged—although the Muslim activist Mehdi Hassan did blurt out in 2013 that the British Muslim community’s “dirty little secret” was its “routine and commonplace” anti-Semitism.

In America, the promotion of “diversity” is producing similar results. Three of the four co-founders of the Women’s March—Tamika Mallory, Carmen Perez and Linda Sarsour—are devoted admirers of the vicious anti-white racist and anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan, head of the Nation of Islam.

In November 2016, when Perez posted a picture of herself holding hands with Farrakhan, Sarsour commented: “God bless him.”

Sarsour has asserted that there is “nothing creepier than Zionism,” hailed the Palestinian tactic of getting children to throw rocks at Israel Defense Forces’ soldiers as the “definition of courage” and claimed that “some folks ... always choose their allegiance to Israel over their commitment to democracy and free speech.”

Mallory has called Farrakhan the “Greatest of All Time.” A year ago, she attended a Farrakhan speech in which he denounced Jews as “children of the devil” and mentioned her in complimentary terms.

Tablet magazine has reported the claim that Mallory turned on Vanessa Wruble, a Jewish co-founder of the Women’s March, with remarks such as “your people hold all the wealth.”

There’s worse in Congress. Palestinian-American Rashida Tlaib, elected last year as a representative for Michigan with the support of Muslim Brotherhood Islamist groups, danced at her victory party draped in the Palestinian flag.

In April 2017, she shared a platform with Palestinian terrorist Rasmeh Odeh, convicted for the murder of two Israelis in a 1969 terror attack, saying she was “honored” to be on the same stage.

On her first day in office, Tlaib posted a “correction” to the world map in her congressional office by marking Israel as “Palestine.” Her swearing-in ceremony and a subsequent private celebratory dinner were attended by Abbas Hamideh, executive director and co-founder of the Palestinian activist group al Awdah.

Hamideh has repeatedly stated that Israel does not have a right to exist, equated Zionism with Nazism and ISIS, and voiced support for the Iran-backed genocidal terror organization Hezbollah and its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, who he says is “the most honorable Arab-Muslim leader of our lifetime.”

Meanwhile, Ilhan Omar, the new representative for Minnesota who was also backed by Brotherhood groups, has opposed moves to stop BDS, called Israel an “apartheid regime” and expressed anti-Semitic views.

In 2012, during one of Israel’s wars with Hamas in Gaza, Omar tweeted: “Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.”

The claim that the Jews hypnotize the world is of course one of the signature tropes of paranoid anti-Semitism. Omar initially blamed the subsequent outrage on “Islamophobia.”

This week, however, after even The New York Times called her out for this, she issued a lame apology saying she had used the word not realizing it was “ugly” and “offensive” to Jews. This won’t do. The key point is that she thinks of Israel in this paranoid and potentially murderous way as uniquely and conspiratorially evil.

If any Republican was revealed ever to have appeared on a platform with, say, David Duke or parroted neo-Nazi rhetoric there would be an eruption of outrage and their career would instantly be terminated. Yet in response to this anti-Jewish bigotry, the Democrats and their supporters are not just turning a blind eye but actually embracing it.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand has called the Women’s March leaders “the suffragists of our time”; House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has praised them as “courageous”; the American Civil Liberties Union’s magazine has extolled Sarsour as a “leader in the truest form of the word.”

Jonathan Greenblatt, director of the Anti-Defamation League, once again displayed his dismayingly shallow grasp of anti-Semitism when, after referring to Omar evoking an “old anti-Semitic trope,” he tweeted: “And hats off to Rep Omar for her honest apology & commitment to a more just world.” This about someone who continues to call Israel “evil.”

Most astoundingly of all, Pelosi has now appointed Omar to the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Thus the Democratic Party has now actively embraced and implicitly legitimized vicious anti-Semitism and an agenda aimed at the destruction of Israel that any decent leader should exclude from civilized discourse.

The reason for this moral collapse is the shift in political gravity that has taken place on the left in which positions previously shunned as marginal and unacceptable have now become mainstream.

Support for “Palestine” has transformed what has never ceased to be a genocidal agenda into a presumed liberation movement and the signature progressive cause.

Black power, once seen rightly as a hateful, anti-white, violent revolutionary movement is now an accepted narrative in America’s black community. This would undoubtedly have horrified its great and visionary leader Martin Luther King Jr.

Contrary to the poisonous travesty published a few days ago by The New York Times that vilified Israel and wickedly suggested that King would today be its foe, he actually said: “When people criticize Zionists they mean Jews. You are talking anti-Semitism.”

Tragically, the mainstreaming of black power has now also mainstreamed black anti-Semitism, just as the championing of “Palestine” has mainstreamed hatred of Jews.

This shift that has taken place to an anti-white, anti-West, anti-Jew agenda is denied largely because it is so closely associated with “diversity”—that is, black people and Muslims.

The sheer terror of being tarred as racist or Islamophobic causes such circles not only to deny this is happening, but to hurl accusations of racism or Islamophobia at any who point it out.

Black power demagogues like Farrakhan whip up black-on-white race hate wherever they can. Preying on America’s guilt over its terrible history of slavery and anti-black bigotry, this anti-white racism threatens to unstitch America’s social fabric.

In 2014, the Investor’s Business Daily described how the “radical Muslim Brotherhood has built the framework for a political party in America that seeks to turn Muslims into an Islamist voting bloc.”

Social inclusion has meant embracing not just the unconscionable but a dagger at the throat of Jews, America and the West.

Melanie Phillips, a British journalist, broadcaster and author, writes a column for JNS every two weeks. Currently a columnist for “The Times of London,” her personal and political memoir, “Guardian Angel,” has been published by Bombardier, which has also published her first novel, “The Legacy,” released in April. Her work can be found at her website, www.melaniephillips.com.