Shane Burley and Ben Lorber, Safety Through Solidarity: A Radical Guide to Fighting Antisemitism
Brooklyn: Melville House, 2024
288 pages; paperback $19.99, ISBN 978-1-68589-091-9
Review by Matthew N. Lyons
In October 2024, the Heritage Foundation (the outfit that previously issued the odious Project 2025) released Project Esther: A National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism. This report identifies the only significant source of antisemitism in the U.S. as “America’s virulently anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and anti-American ‘pro-Palestinian movement’,” which in turn is “part of a highly organized, global Hamas Support Network (HSN) and therefore effectively a terrorist support network.” Groups supposedly part of this network include American Muslims for Palestine, Students for Justice in Palestine, and Jewish Voice for Peace.
Written in a tone reminiscent of Joe McCarthy, Project Esther claims that the Hamas Support Network “has been active for years, infiltrating and entrenching itself in key institutions across the United States,” has “mastered the use of America’s liberal media environment,” and has “made prolific and unchecked use of social media…to spout antisemitic propaganda.” Support for these efforts, the report warns, comes from “foreign money from wealthy supporters of the Palestinian cause” and specifically “leftist, progressive organizations such as the Open Society Foundations [and] Tides Foundation.” (Both Open Society and Tides are funded by George Soros, the Hungarian-born Jewish financier who figures in countless right-wing conspiracy theories.) Project Esther also criticizes “the American Jewish community’s complacency” in the face of this threat. The authors pledge that the Heritage Foundation will “mobilize a coalition of private organizations” and use federal, state, and local laws such as the RICO Act to “extirpat[e] the influence of the HSN from our society.”
This disturbing document has drawn criticism. As Zev Mishell points out, Project Esther “ignores the most violent manifestations of antisemitism, including white nationalism and the great replacement theory,” which have contributed to the overall rightist upsurge of the past decade. In smearing the Palestine solidarity movement as anti-Jewish, the report also ignores the virulent antisemitism that underpins Christian Zionist ideology, whose proponents form a major part of the Trump coalition. And as Branko Marcetic warns, Project Esther outlines a strategy for systematic repression by the incoming Trump administration not only against the Palestine solidarity movement, but against the left as a whole. Marcetic notes that “anti-socialist rhetoric has become steadily more central to [Trump’s] and his allies’ messaging over the past five years.”
In all this, Project Esther builds directly on the work of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the self-proclaimed “leading anti-hate organization in the world,” which has a long history of falsely equating criticism of Israel with antisemitism, falsely portraying leftists as major purveyors of Jew-hatred, and even spying on a broad range of radical and liberal organizations and sharing intel with the security services of both Israel and apartheid South Africa. Unfortunately, the ADL’s reports on antisemitic incidents in the United States are widely accepted as neutral and factual, despite the organization’s clear political bias, which skews its data-collecting methodology.
So there’s an urgent need, now more than ever, for thoughtful radical analysis of antisemitism in the United States—how it fuels supremacist politics and right-wing conspiracism, and how the charge of antisemitism is misused to attack Palestine solidarity and the left more broadly. Shane Burley and Ben Lorber’s book Safety Through Solidarity addresses this need as well as anything else out there. Really it’s the best book-length discussion of antisemitism and how to combat it that I know of.
Safety Through Solidarity highlights the distinctive character of antisemitic scapegoating. While most oppressive systems define their target groups as essentially inferior, antisemitism “claims that Jews are exceptionally clever and powerful, that a secret cabal of Jews lurks behind the heights of power, pulling the strings from behind the scenes” (22). While many oppressions “punch down,” antisemitism claims to “punch up” at an imaginary Jewish cabal. This provides the framework for endless conspiracy theories about power exercised in secret, a seductive and poisonous alternative to analyzing real systems of power.
Burley and Lorber’s book outlines antisemitism’s historical origins in Christian Europe, where elites pushed Jews disproportionately into “middleman” roles between themselves and the peasantry, such as tax or rent collector, then encouraged peasants to take out their rage against Jews rather than against those who really held most of the power. In the modern era, with the “traditional emphasis on literacy in Jewish communities,” newer versions of this dynamic saw Jews “become well represented in certain professions that required advanced education, ranging from banking to journalism and the arts, politics to commerce and law” (100), where Jews were then blamed for the rise of capitalism and the societal changes that accompanied it—not only by rightists but also by some folks on the left.
Safety Through Solidarity offers what I consider to be proportionate critiques of antisemitism across the political spectrum. The vast majority of anti-Jewish scapegoating and demonization comes from the right, where white nationalists regard Jews as the ultimate enemy—evil masterminds orchestrating Black Lives Matter, trans liberation, mass immigration, and white genocide as a whole—and Christian theocrats envision the mass slaughter of Jews as a key part of God’s plan. Christian rightists often get a pass in discussions of antisemitism because they’re mostly pro-Zionist and claim to love Jews, and it’s to Burley and Lorber’s credit that they highlight the arrogance, bigotry, and fear-mongering that undergirds this “love.”
Burley and Lorber’s book also examines the much more limited but still significant ways that antisemitism is an issue within the left. Sometimes leftists exaggerate the power of a “Jewish lobby” or echo medieval blood libel tropes, but more often they just fail to take antisemitism seriously. “Activists will often disbelieve Jews when they say they experienced something antisemitic, downplay the antisemitic components of conspiracy theories,” or assume that claims of antisemitism are just a way to deflect criticism of Israel (46). The danger here isn’t physical violence; it’s failure to understand a critical piece of what motivates our enemies, failure to support and defend Jewish comrades, and failure to address a societal concern that rightists are all too eager to claim as their own.
More than most discussions of antisemitism, Safety Through Solidarity emphasizes the diversity of Jewish experiences with regard to ethnicity, racial status, religious/non-religious outlook, gender, class, and vulnerability to antisemitic attacks. Burley and Lorber note the complex and shifting dynamics by which the majority of American Jews have been brought into the white racial caste yet have remained targets of antisemitism (“a story of persecution on one side, and complicity in persecution on the other” [268]), and they call out the racism within the Jewish community that derogates Jews of color and Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews or renders their experiences invisible. They recount various ways that Haredi Jews (traditional Orthodox), whose clothing and practices mark them as more obviously Jewish than most, are “frontline targets of antisemitism” (277), including verbal harassment and physical attacks. They note that both non-Orthodox and Orthodox Jews sometimes excuse or are complicit in antisemitic scapegoating against other sections of the Jewish community.
What I especially appreciate, Safety Through Solidarity is one of precious few books on antisemitism that offers a thoroughgoing critique of Zionism. Burley and Lorber identify the “unfolding process of settler colonialism” (181) at the heart of Israeli society, note the violent mass expulsion of Palestinians on which the State of Israel is founded, identify Israel as an apartheid state, and argue that the “systemic, multilayered oppression of Palestinians is the core obstacle to a just peace” (182). They also point out that Israeli Jewish society is itself divided by “deep structural racism” in which Ashkenazi Jews of European origin systematically oppress Mizrahi Jews of Middle Eastern origin.
At the same time, Safety Through Solidarity also argues, rightly, that Zionism is a failed strategy for protecting Jews, a defeatist movement that has always regarded antisemitism as inevitable. Burley and Lorber point out that the Zionist dream of a “new Jew” in the Land of Israel was based on embracing antisemitic stereotypes of the (male) diaspora Jew as a degenerate, cowardly, effeminate parasite. They note the long history of Zionist and Israeli leaders allying themselves with antisemites, and that today Israeli rightists, including Netanyahu, promote anti-Jewish conspiracy theories (216-220).
“Burley and Lorber are sharply critical of the ADL approach, which treats leftists and supporters of Palestinian liberation as the main threats, relies on state repression to protect Jews, and portrays antisemitism as both an ‘eternal hatred’ and ‘a pathological deviation found at the fringes of society.’”
Anti-Zionism is integrally linked to Burley and Lorber’s argument for how we can best combat antisemitism in the United States and beyond. They are sharply critical of the ADL approach, which treats leftists and supporters of Palestinian liberation as the main threats, relies on state repression to protect Jews, and portrays antisemitism as both an “eternal hatred” outside of history and “a pathological deviation found at the fringes of society, rather than as a system of oppression baked into the same white Christian supremacist status quo the state seeks to uphold” (303).
Against this, Burley and Lorber invoke a counter-tradition of the Jewish left and argue for a strategy for combating antisemitism based on mass mobilization, dialog, and an intersectional critique of oppressions. “We must build strong coalition partnerships across identities and communities, showing up, again and again, to defend and strengthen one another” (327). As an example, they cite NYC Against Hate, formed during the first Trump presidency:
“a coalition of Asian American, Black, Arab American, immigrant, Indo-Caribbean, LGBTQ, and Jewish groups united to advance grassroots organizing and community-based models of safety…. Often, after an attack has occurred, JREJ [Jews for Racial and Economic Justice] and other groups will partner with local organizations and hold a public training in the neighborhood, then pamphlet the surrounding streets in Yiddish, Arabic, and other languages, engaging passersby in conversations about preventing violence through solidarity. The ‘sense of victimization and isolation’ felt in communities after an attack is often flipped on its head by this direct, face-to-face connection” (317).
At the same time, the authors recognize that this kind of political work is not easy. “How do we hold difficult conversations across our movement spaces, recognizing our differences while remaining in relationship?” (324).
Safety Through Solidarity doesn’t do everything I would want. Given the breadth of what it covers in less than 300 pages, it’s to be expected that the book passes a bit too quickly over various topics. I would have liked more detail, for example, about the shifting history of American Jews’ relationship with whiteness, or the interplay between antisemitism and the politics of gender, or the class dynamics of anti-Jewish scapegoating in the United States. Burley and Lorber are right to challenge Zionist claims that antisemitism in the Middle East “reflects some foundational flaw within Islamic theology, or Muslim and/or Arab civilization” (210), and to point out that Jew-hatred in the region was largely brought there by Europeans in the modern era, but in doing so they gloss over a centuries-long history of bigotry and second-class status that Jews faced under Muslim rule. And while Burley and Lorber are right that a lot of conspiracist ideology traces back to Jew-hatred, not all of it does. For example, the claim that blaming China for COVID is “just following the script of antisemitic conspiracy theories” (64) ignores the 150-year-old U.S. tradition of conspiracism targeting Chinese people.
* * *
Burley and Lorber finished their manuscript in late 2023, soon after the Hamas-led October 7 attacks inside Israel and before the Israeli state’s response had reached genocidal proportions. In their words, “a surprise attack, and brutal massacre and kidnapping of Israeli civilians, by the militant Palestinian group Hamas was met with a massive Israeli bombardment, and displacement of nearly two million Palestinians across the Gaza Strip, dizzying and unprecedented in its violence and scope” (5). The authors criticize some leftists who “uncritically celebrated Hamas’s overall attack as ‘resistance’, minimizing Israeli civilian victims into a homogenous category of ‘settlers’ unworthy of solidarity and support. This callous and unprincipled stance horrified and alienated many Jews, leftists, and members of the general public…” (205-206). More broadly, Burley and Lorber “insist upon the basic humanity of Israeli Jews, even in the face of a brutal occupation that dehumanizes everything it touches.” Their “vision for a just future in Israel/Palestine is one where Israeli Jews will enjoy safety and collective flourishing while Palestinians finally reclaim the same as well” (205).
In the context of what followed October 7, two leftist reviewers (both of whom largely praise Safety Through Solidarity) have criticized Burley and Lorber’s expressions of sympathy for Israeli Jews. Jay Arachnid in the British anarchist publication Freedom News comments that “their attempt to acknowledge the shock in the Jewish diaspora (as well as inside Israel) falls a bit flat” given the genocide that followed. Against this backdrop, Arachnid suggests, “it feels uncomfortably self-centred to read a book about mostly non-deadly Jew-hatred.” But this suggestion seems to miss the point of the book, given the strategic implications of understanding antisemitism both for combating the far right and for combating the ways the charge of antisemitism is misused to justify Israeli oppression and mass murder of Palestinians.
British Marxist Dave Renton, writing in New Politics, goes further, questioning whether Israeli Jews deserve sympathy at all. In the face of Burley and Lorber’s statement that “The majority of the world’s Jewish people currently support Zionism because they relate to Israel, quite understandably, as a life raft in a cruel, stormy ocean” (203), Renton takes issue with the phrase “quite understandably,” and asks “Shouldn’t one of the goals of a radical book be to show that the fear Jewish people suffer is sometimes exaggerated—that there exists a whole media industry out there trying to make Jewish people feel wrongly powerless?”
Renton’s question rankles, given that a critique of Zionism’s “politics of perpetual fear” (8) is central to Safety Through Solidarity’s argument. In suggesting that many Jews’ view of Israel as a life raft is understandable, Burley and Lorber aren’t endorsing Zionism. Rather, they’re saying that along with critiquing Zionism as “a nationalist movement that has wrought settler colonialism, occupation, and apartheid” (203), we also need to recognize that “Virtually every Jewish community carries trauma from persecution, displacement, and exile in recent memory” (234), and that the dominant Jewish institutions actively mobilize this trauma to fuel Jews’ commitment to Israel. To break that commitment, Burley and Lorber suggest, we need to acknowledge the trauma in ways that promote resolution and healing. For example, “when non-Jews take a vocal stand against antisemitism, it can powerfully challenge the internalized narrative that Jews are isolated, bereft of allies,” and must rely on Israel to protect them (236).
Whatever you think about the politics of trauma, there’s a larger point here about how Zionism takes people’s sense of being wronged and channels it into oppression and systemic violence—a dynamic shared with every other right-wing ideology that mobilizes people who are simultaneously privileged and oppressed. Safety Through Solidarity incisively critiques this dynamic and outlines a strategy for combating it. In doing so the book offers important tools both for the immediate issue of antisemitism and for the larger project of using liberatory politics to combat supremacist mass movements.