Last week, a Biden campaign staffer launched an attack on Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour. Linda’s crime, apparently, was to do everything she could to defeat Donald Trump. The attack against her was triggered when she said, “The Democratic Party is not perfect, but it is absolutely our party in this moment.”
Sarsour has faced repeated, and false, charges of antisemitism for years, and those scurrilous attacks have been models of bipartisanship in a highly polarized political era. The Biden campaign’s latest stab, at a time when conservatives are hypocritically telling progressives to stay quiet so we can defeat Trump, is also shows how effective the right-wing but bipartisan campaign to erase any distinction between anti-Zionism and antisemitism has been.
I examine the attack on Linda Sarsour, in its context, and also the dramatic defense of her that was mounted by many allies, including many Jews, and how the Democratic voting public is, nonetheless, becoming much more supportive of Palestinian rights. My latest piece for The New Arab.