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NPR's Code Switch's recent episode entitled What James Baldwin can teach us about Israel, and ourselves is the most antisemitic piece I have ever heard on American radio. Code Switch receives grant money from the CPB. I come from a traditionally Jewish liberal background. I have been taught to identify and challenge racism, bigotry and hatred, and to work to heal the world. Your screed about Jews and Israel does not build bridges or work to heal the world, but rather serves to divide, stigmatize, and justify antisemitism. The driving narrative of the Code Switch piece is that Israel is an illegitimate, murderous settler colonialist, racist state artificially constructed purely for Western interests and to allay Western guilt for the Holocaust, and that Jews are worldwide oppressors of people of color, whether that oppression occurred in the Harlem of James Baldwin, the Middle East or Africa. Depicting Jews as a worldwide scourge for people of color, Neda Ulaby states that “what Baldwin would do in later writing was to explicitly talk about how the power structure in Israel was involved in the oppression of Arabs and other people of color around the world.” Code Switch foments hatred of Jews by exhorting listeners to equate the oppression of African-Americans with the alleged oppression of Arabs by Israeli Jews and by Jews worldwide who support Israel. Code Switch quotes James Baldwin as stating that “I have been, in America, an Arab at the hands of the Jews.” By using this quote, Code Switch seeks to divide African-Americans and Jews, and characterize Jews as inherent oppressors. In interpreting James Baldwin, Professor Feldman maintains that “the figure of the Jew is actually a political figure - a figure that stands in for the Israeli state, rightly or wrongly, but that’s what he is getting at.” Sadly, Code Switch adopts the notoriously antisemitic trope of “the Jew,” as if all Jews are alike and are universally demonic, whether “the Jew” is American, Israeli or of some other nationality. Code Switch’s title, What James Baldwin can teach us about Israel, and ourselves, encourages listeners to view and judge all Jews, and especially Israeli Jews, through the single lens of James Baldwin as he saw things over 50 or 60 years ago. Code Switch looks to James Baldwin as the historian and moral arbiter even though he visited Israel only once in 1961 and died nearly 37 years ago. Advancing an antisemitic narrative to demonize and delegitimize Isreal and Jews, Code Switch quotes James Baldwin characterizing the creation of Israel as “one of the most cynical achievements - really murderous, merciless, ugliest and cynical achievement - on the part of the Western nations.” Code Switch does not invite listeners to take a nuanced view of Jews or the Israeli-Arab-Palestinian-Persian conflict, but rather presents Jews, and especially Israeli Jews, as universal oppressors responsible not just for the suffering of the Palestinian people but also for the ills of all people of color worldwide. For over 2,000 years of antisemitism, Jews have served as a kind of scapegoat which can change shape according to the real or perceived ills for which Jews are blamed. Jews have been portrayed as the killers of Christ, although the Romans were in charge. As scapegoats, Jews have taken the shape of bloodthirsty murders who killed Christian children for their blood for ritualistic purposes. During the Black Death plague of the Middle Ages the Jew as scapegoat took the shape of the poisoner of wells spreading the epidemic. In the antisemitic imagination, Jews have also taken the shape of international capitalists whose avaricious tentacles strangle peoples worldwide. At the same time, Jews were also Marxists, Communists and Socialists who sought to tear down capitalism and destroy communities, societies and nations. In more modern times, many persons in both the Muslim and non-Muslim world hold the Jews responsible for the September 11th attacks and the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack in Paris. And now we have NPR’s Code Switch utilizing James Baldwin to scapegoat Jews for oppressing African-Americans, Palestinians, and persons of color worldwide. Your piece teaches listeners to draw a straight line connecting Jewish tradesmen, rent collectors, real estate agents and pawnbrokers in James Baldwins’ Harlem to Israelis’ alleged oppression of Palestinians. James Baldwin is quoted as characterizing the Harlem Jews as “operat[ing] in accordance with the American business tradition of exploiting negroes, and they are therefore identified with oppression and are hated for it.” Your piece also quotes James Baldwin as writing: The Jew has been taught and too often accepts the legend of Negro inferiority. And the Negro, on the other hand, has found nothing in his experience with Jews to counteract the legend of Semitic greed. Following the reading of this passage, Gene Denby suggests that although Jews may have been marginalized or oppressed, they have not shown empathy, and that they should “know better.” So now we learn that Jews, despite being deeply involved in the civil rights movement, are incapable of empathy, at least when it comes to people of color. In an ironic twist to the well-worn phrase of racists who state, “some of my best friends are black,” Code Switch sugarcoats its antisemitic tropes by stating that Baldwin’s “best friends in high school were Jewish.” Code Switch's piece is nakedly antisemitic because it exhorts listeners to cancel Israel as an illegitimate racist state. Gene Denby, Neda Ulaby, Nadia Alamed, Keith Feldman, and Ben Ratskoff, who all clearly have an agenda, present a wholly one-sided maximalist understanding of the conflict between Israelis and Arabs in which Israelis are the racist oppressors and Palestinians are virtuous victims. They use James Baldwin to exhort listeners to cancel Israel for being deeply harmful to humanity. The episode characterizes Israel as “a settler colonial project,” and directly links the oppression of African-Americans to the oppression of Palestinians. Professor Alamed asserts that “Black power is where Baldwin really kind of got his language and his discourse on Israel as a settler colonial project.” This characterization of Israel is deeply offensive to Jews. It feeds into the false and demeaning narrative characterizing Israelis (and Jews who support Israel) as oppressive white European settler colonialists. Unlike people from traditional colonial powers such as France, the United Kingdom and Belgium, Jews are indigenous to the land called Palestine or Israel. Since ancient times, Jews have had a continuous presence in Palestine, and their religion, history and culture are intimately tied to Israel. In contrast to the classical Western European colonial powers, Israelis never sought to impose their culture or religion on other peoples, and the “settlers” did not come from a single mother country as agents seeking to economically exploit another group of people for the benefit of the mother country. Also, unlike actual colonialists from Western European countries, Jews were refugees fleeing to their ancestral homeland where Jews have been residing for 2,000 to 3,000 years. They sought refuge from unrelenting campaigns of antisemitism and persecution over the centuries, culminating in the Holocaust. That Jews who fled or emerged from the Holocaust were white make them no less deserving of humanity and an ancestral homeland than any other people. Contrary to the false and offensive Western “white supremacist colonialist” narrative portrayed by Code Switch, most Israelis are not Caucasian or European (only about 1/3 of Israelis are white), but rather they or their ancestors came from Muslim North African, East African, central Asian and Middle Eastern countries from which they were expelled or forced to leave in the face of extensive persecution, especially after the formation of Israel in 1948. Nearly one million of these Jews, known as Misrahi Jews, were forced out of countries such as Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Algeria, Morrocco, and Ethiopia. The Misrahi Jews were stripped of their businesses and property, and violently uprooted despite having developed a rich culture and history in these lands over many generations. Mizrahi Jews constitute approximately 40% to 45% of Israel’s total population. Not surprisingly, Code Switch makes no mention that Israel rescued Ethiopian Jews en masse in the early 1980’s. Code Switch does not call for Mizrahi Jews’ right of return or for the return of their homes and property. Despite the mass expulsion and ethnic cleansing of Mizrahi Jews, Code Switch demonizes Israelis and Jews by characterizing only Palestinians as being dispossessed. Code Switch’s episode is profoundly antisemitic not only because it demonizes and dehumanizes Israelis and Jews through the use of caricature and false narratives, but also because it uses James Baldwin to portray Israel as a purely modern construct of Western interests. Code Switch works to erase Jewish identity by ignoring the centrality of Israel to centuries of Jewish history, culture, and religion. Just as Palestinians feel an intensely close tie to the land based on their history, religion and culture, so do Jews. Through such institutions as boarding schools, Canada and the United States brutally worked to erase Native American culture, history, religions and traditions. It is no less wrong for Code Switch to work to erase or delegitimize the culture, history, religion and traditions of Jews and Israelis. James Baldwin rightly perceived that social hierarchy existed in Israel during his visit 63 years ago. Yet, Code Switch exhorts the listener to connect so-called Jewish exploitation of people of color in the United States in the 1960’s and early 1970’s to the Israel of today. Code Switch imposes a familiar double standard. Israeli society has been far from perfect. Hierarchies still exist in Israel. Yet, most all countries, including Arab countries and Turkey, where Baldwin lived for nearly ten years, have hierarchies based on race, religion or ethnicity. Unlike most other countries, Israel has faced war after war and terror campaign after terror campaign waged by the neighboring Arab and Persian nations and by the Palestinians. Although hierarchies based on race, religion or nationality exist in virtually all countries, Code Switch targets only Israel for severe opprobrium and erasure. Asserting that Israel is built around “ethnonationalism”, Code Switch singles out Israel as inherently flawed and evil. Yet, how is Israel much different from the many other countries which evolved and were formed around an ethnic, religious and/or national identity? Are Iran, Ireland, Spain, Turkey and Indonesia any less legitimate because they formed around an ethnic and religious identity, even though persons from other ethnicities, religions and national origins occupy the same space, often at a disadvantage? Through Professor Feldman, an adherent to the antisemitic construct of Israeli racist settler colonialism, Code Switch suggests that James Baldwin was troubled by Israel’s “very adversarial relationship to its neighbors.” Code Switch suggests that Israel is solely responsible for the “adversarial relationship” with its Arab neighbors. But Code Switch ignores that the neighboring Arab states waged war on Israel from the moment it was created and have repeatedly waged war against Israel in order to destroy it and all the Jews who lived within Israel. Code Switch states that during the Six-Day War Israel “took over the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and parts of Syria and Egypt.” Yet, Code Switch chose to ignore that Israel never wished for the Six Day War as it was thought that Israel could not survive such a war. Code Switch ignores that all the armies of the neighboring Arab states mobilized for war and were ready to pounce, but that Israel saved itself by first striking with its air force. In reference to the “fences and walls” in Israel, Mr. Denby refers to “the violence implied by their maintenance.” Mr. Denby ignores that the walls were constructed in response to repeated campaigns of Palestinian terror in the first and second Intifadas. Not surprisingly, Code Switch makes no mention of the barbaric massacre of October 7th, a pogrom which fences and walls unfortunately did not prevent. Neda Ulaby suggests that all the violence in the region can “be traced back to Western colonialism.” Here again, through the false construct of Israel as a racist settler colonialist state, Neda Ulaby suggests that Jews and Israelis are solely responsible for the conflict between Israelis and Arabs. Using the devices of false narratives and demonization, Ms. Ulaby suggests that the listeners interpret the events of today in the Middle East through the lens of the 1960’s Black radicals and intellectuals who utilized antisemitic tropes to characterize Jews and Israelis as exploitive racist imperialists. The Code Switch episode ends by asserting that Baldwin showed us ways of “sitting with history” and “finding connections across cultures and geographies.” But Code Switch clearly means that listeners should create such bridges only to Palestinians and not to Israelis or Jews. Code Switch exhorts its listeners to “sit with history” by interpreting history through a narrow lens in which the viewer can see only the oppressor (the universal “Jew”) and the oppressed (Palestinians and all people of color). Code Switch appears to have failed to take to heart the cautionary words of Uri Berliner, who, before resigning from NPR, wrote: "More recently, we have approached the Israel-Hamas war and its spillover onto streets and campuses through the “intersectional” lens that has jumped from the faculty lounge to newsrooms. Oppressor versus oppressed. That’s meant highlighting the suffering of Palestinians at almost every turn while downplaying the atrocities of October 7, overlooking how Hamas intentionally puts Palestinian civilians in peril, and giving little weight to the explosion of antisemitic hate around the world." Code Switch is serving as a bullhorn of the New Antisemitism. Through the subtle and not-so-subtle antisemitic messaging in the episode concerning Baldwin and Israel, Code Switch is adding fuel to the “explosion of antisemitic hate” that Uri Berliner identified in his parting essay. While not all criticism of Israel is antisemitic, there is no basis to conclude that all criticism of Israel is necessarily not antisemitic. Expressions of empathy for other peoples, including the Palestinian people, is laudable. It is important to affirm our common humanity. But I believe that voicing support and establishing connections for one group of people should not be done by demonizing, dehumanizing and erasing another group of people. Certainly, not all Palestinians are terrorists and not all Israelis are racist oppressors. Both groups have compelling histories of suffering. Although neither Israelis nor Palestinians come with purely clean hands, they are all human and deserve fairness and compassion. I respectfully hope that the CPB in their grant decisions, NPR and Code Switch take a nuanced, compassionate and balanced view of the complexities of the real world without demonizing Jews, Israelis and all other peoples who value their own ethnic, religious or national identity. Sincerely, J******n S****y s*******w@e*******k.net (206) ***-****