How Israel became the Left’s organizing target for grievance coalitions - opinion

For several years, Brian Blum writes, he has struggled to understand why the October 7 Hamas-led attacks turned so many liberal and progressive groups against Israel. He finds an answer in Ruth Wisse’s argument that antisemitism can become an “organizing target” for grievance coalitions.

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organizing target

Wisse developed the idea nearly 35 years ago in If I Am Not for Myself… The Liberal Betrayal of the Jews. In the account presented by Blum, societies filled with unrelated frustrations can redirect them toward a visible minority. Wisse describes this as “the politics of the pointing finger,” in which a group is small enough not to pose a threat but large enough to be identified and blamed.

She applies that framework to contemporary campus politics. Wisse claims that Harvard contains 33 grievance groups, including anti-war and anti-capitalist movements, Occupy Wall Street, and radical feminist activists. She argues that these groups were initially separate until Palestinian activism supplied a common symbol and a leading grievance.

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Every country has problems and Germany at the time had lots of them. You’re unemployed? The Rothschilds have your job. You feel that other people are running the shops? Of course it’s because of the Jews. Wagner even said, ‘Jews are ruining music.’

Wisse makes a similar argument about the Middle East, saying that opposition to Jews can unite otherwise divided Arab countries. She also says years of United Nations polemics against Israel were less about Israel itself than about organizing political forces. In this view, antisemitism does not need to declare hatred of Jews openly. It can instead present Jews or Israel as the explanation for an injustice that different groups already oppose.

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Nothing else can build a coalition as easily as the coalition of forces against the Jews.

Blum emphasizes Wisse’s claim that this form of political alignment is “cost-free.” Anti-capitalist or climate coalitions may threaten business interests or require economic sacrifices, she argues, while hostility toward Israel can simply generate headlines. The excerpt ends as Blum turns to author Dara Horn’s argument that antisemitism is a lie used to acquire or maintain power.

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just gets you headlines