“It’s not ‘hate,’ it’s Jew-hatred: Oppose scapegoating of Jews.”

....Anti-Semitism predates capitalism. But under capitalism it has taken on added virulence. Even under relatively stable conditions, there is a layer of the middle class and some workers who believe the falsehood that “the Jews” run the banks, they are the landlords, they form conspiracies and enrich themselves at the expense of non-Jews. As if the ruling class was divided into “good” capitalists and “bad, evil” Jewish capitalists.

....This is a life or death question for the working class and the labor movement.

Anti-Semitism permeates the capitalist ruling class and is espoused both by white supremacists and the petty-bourgeois “left.” In Brooklyn, a number of attacks — especially on Hasidic Jews — have been perpetrated by some Black youth.

Conservative filmmaker Ami Horowitz recently interviewed people on the street in a predominantly Black neighborhood there. A video with some of the interviews was posted to Yeshiva World News Jan. 5. He asked people why they thought Jews were being attacked.

“The Jewish people own all the buildings out here and they own everything and they’re not sharing nothing,” one middle-aged man said, adding that it’s a question of the “‘haves’ and ‘have-nots.’”

A young woman told Horowitz, “We’re not saying that it’s right, but they’re trying to take over our buildings. They’re trying to make everything all expensive for us.”

Another young man expressed a different view, telling the filmmaker the attacks were “not right.”

But these interviews show that Jew-hatred endures and the challenges involved in combating it. The criminal shortage of affordable housing, high prices, racist discrimination, unemployment, low wages and other social problems are real questions. But these don’t exist “because of the Jews.” These problems are endemic to the profit system, where the wealth produced by the labor of working people is taken from us by the ruling propertied owners.

Anti-Semitic myths and falsehoods are an obstacle to organizing the kind of united fight that can take on the carnage working people face....

Full article:
Why fight against Jew-hatred is a key question for working class – The Militant