On Linda Sarsours Politics of Hate and the Pathos of Her Jewish Enablers

Linda Sarsour is a progressive-media darling. One of Essence magazine’s “Woke 100 Women,” Sarsour was named a leader of the Women’s March that followed President Donald Trump’s inauguration, despite declaring that “nothing is creepier than Zionism”—though her wish to “take away” the “vagina” of clitoridectomy victim and human-rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, praise for Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, upholding Saudi Arabia as a bastion of women’s lib, embrace of the terrorist murderer Rasmea Odeh, and claim that “Shariah law is reasonable” are all—at least in my humble estimation—definitely creepier.

Yet Sarsour’s ride on the media wonder-wheel continues—thanks in part to Jewish individuals and organizations who embrace the idea that haters like Sarsour can’t actually hate them. Recently, the “homegirl in a hijab,” as a fawning New York Times profile described her, delivered the commencement address at the City University of New York’s School of Public Health. It was a strange choice on the part of CUNY, not least because Sarsour has zero professional experience in the field. Prior to the event, critics, many of them Jewish, called upon CUNY to rescind its invitation in light of Sarsour’s rhetoric and associations. A group of progressive Jews released an open letter in defense of Sarsour. “In this time, when so many marginalized communities in our country are targeted on the streets and from the highest offices of government” the letter solemnly declared, “we are committed to bridging communal boundaries and standing in solidarity with one another.”

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/237149/linda-sarsour-jewish-enablers

About the author:

James Kirchick is a journalist and foreign correspondent currently based in Washington. He is a fellow with the Foreign Policy Initiative in Washington, D.C., a correspondent for The Daily Beast and is a columnist for Tablet. His first book, The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues and the Coming Dark Age is published by Yale University Press. He is at work on his second book, a history of gay Washington, D.C., for Henry Holt.

Kirchick’s writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Ha’aretz, Newsweek, Time, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, Slate, The Weekly Standard, The American Interest, The Virginia Quarterly Review, World Affairs Journal, National Review and Commentary, among other publications. Around the world, his writing appears regularly in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Germany’s leading newspaper, and has also been published in Britain’s Prospect, New Statesman and Spectator, Italy’s Internazionale, Canada’s Globe & Mail, National Post, and The Walrus, the Czech Republic’s Lidove Noviny and The Australian.

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Kirchick has previously worked for The New York Sun, the New York Daily News, and The Hill. A leading voice on American gay politics and international gay rights, he is a recipient of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association Journalist of the Year Award. He has been a Robert Bosch Foundation Fellow in Berlin, a Hoover Institution Media Fellow and a Phillips Foundation Journalism Fellow, and is a professional member of the PEN American Center and a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.