Jill Kargman (Almost) Got It Right

Jill Kargman’s recent piece in Tablet Magazine was almost music to the ears of the still sane among us. Any time anyone from the left calls out the insufferable hypocrisy of her own party where Jews are concerned, there is cause to rejoice. But Kargman’s own blind spot throws a bucket of cold water on the celebration.

In her letter Kargman wonders aloud, “I can’t be the only person who has a Black Lives Matter sign in my window but also believes Israel isn’t an apartheid state, who does Women’s Marches yet knows Hamas isn’t La Résistance…” No, surely she isn’t the only one, but this is precisely the problem she somehow can’t see. Many Jews like her feed the monster that has now come back to eat them and they don’t understand they are doing it.

Those who staked BLM signs into their lawns a year ago largely had good intentions. But they mistook the movement for an effort that would elevate Black communities and oppose racism. What it turned out to be is something quite different and yet the signs remain. It is not unlike the manner in which the Women’s March devolved into a missed opportunity contaminated by “Believe All Women” and a frenzied take-down of any man who complimented a woman’s dress. Yet people across the country continued to lie to themselves about what this cause had truly become.  Never mind the willful blindness it took to support anything Linda Sarsour and Tamika Mallory had headlined.

Those who staked BLM signs into their lawns a year ago largely had good intentions. But they mistook the movement for an effort that would elevate Black communities and oppose racism.

When it comes to BLM, Kargman should ask herself another question entirely. Instead of “Has Everyone Gone Nuts?” perhaps she should ask, “Have I Gone Nuts?” Isn’t it a form of madness to cling to the idea of what you wanted progressive social justice movements to be, even as you see clearly what they really are? Support for BLM and support for Israel cannot be reconciled because they aren’t reconcilable. It is time to pull the yard sign.

Hamas may be an actual designated terrorist organization and that truly is a distinction with a difference, but some BLM protestors did their fair share of terrorizing our cities last summer and BLM pronouncements on racism still send shivers down the spines of CEOs, sports teams and politicians. Like Hamas, they cynically use propaganda to deflect from their own greedy, power-grabbing agenda. Their leadership get rich while their followers get grievance and rage. And importantly, both hate the white, privileged Jill Kargman and her beloved colonialist, white oppressor state, Israel. If your barometer of honesty, decency and justice leads you to condemn Hamas, as you rightly should, it should also force you to abandon BLM.

If your barometer of honesty, decency and justice leads you to condemn Hamas, as you rightly should, it should also force you to abandon BLM.

The social justice/identity politics/anti-racist/socialist/Marxist/anti-capitalist/antisemitic monster poisoning America today wasn’t constructed only by the Ibram X. Kendis and the Bernie Sanders of the world. It was equally unleashed by the decent, kind-hearted Jill Kargmans of our country with yard signs, who don’t know when to say “oops, I got that one wrong.” If you participate in something with good intentions and the outcome is bad, the outcome isn’t less bad. Correcting the mistake isn’t an admission that your intentions were off, just that your antennae malfunctioned.

BLM traffics in the same worldview that feeds the anti-Israel, far-left agenda. If Kargman supports the former, she unwittingly is supporting the latter and should wonder less why all this is happening to her tribe. I hope for more Jill Kargman, not less. I just hope to hear her rightly defend against false claims of Israeli apartheid without the broken BLM credentials in the background.

Rebecca Sugar is a freelance writer and philanthropic consultant living in New York. Her work has been published in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Spectator, The Christian Post and JNS.org.

Rebeccasugaronline.com