Color, Colonialism, and Class: The Left’s Blind Spot on Jews
Engulfed by the words oldest bigotry...
Three pillars—color, colonialism, and class—have long been used as the foundation for understanding oppression within progressive circles. These concepts appeared to offer a framework for intellectual inquiry, but in practice, they’ve often served a different purpose entirely. Rather than elevating discourse, these points have been wielded as blunt instruments of division, transforming what might have been an earnest discussion into ideological posturing.
While it’s worth debating whether these ideas were ever truly meant to foster unity or if their divisiveness was inherent from the start, that discussion can wait. One undeniable truth is that nowhere is this dynamic more evident than in how the left treats Jews, distorting history and identity to fit a narrative that casts them as privileged oppressors. This approach totally erases Jewish diversity, struggle, and legitimate claims to sovereignty, lumping it in with tired stereotypes and ideological shortcuts.
Color: The Flawed Framework of ‘Whiteness’
The left’s categorization of Jews as “white” is historically illiterate and deeply problematic. Sure, some Jews have European ancestry, but does that automatically place them under the umbrella of whiteness—a term designed to signify privilege and dominance? Ashkenazi Jews, for instance, spent centuries as second-class citizens in Europe, barred from professions, property ownership, and political participation. When they were finally allowed into “white” society, it came at the cost of assimilation, often under the specter of ongoing antisemitism. This was not an easy task, and burdens ran deep.
For deeper insight consider reading The House of Fragile Things, which examines how prominent Jewish art collectors created private worlds through connoisseurship, navigating societal alienation even while occupying positions of immense wealth.
And what of the millions of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews from North Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia? Or Ethiopian Jews, who are unquestionably Black? The left’s flattening of Jewish identity into a convenient label of “whiteness” doesn’t just deny these communities their history—it also absolves progressives from reckoning with their own antisemitic tropes. The irony, of course, is that even as the left labels Jews “white,” white nationalists have never been shy about rejecting Jews from their racial purity fantasies.
Colonialism: Rewriting Jewish History
The left’s critique of Israel often starts with a valid question: How do we address the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians? But too often, the conversation spirals into a reductive and ideologically convenient framing of Israel as a mid-century European colony. This portrayal ignores a few inconvenient truths—such as the fact that the modern Zionist movement began as a response to relentless persecution in Europe and the Middle East, and that the land of Israel has been central to Jewish identity for millennia.
Casting Israel as a colonial project denies the agency of Jewish refugees from Arab countries and frames their return to their ancestral homeland as an act of imperialism. The hypocrisy here is striking. Leftist critics who champion the self-determination of other indigenous groups refuse to extend the same principle to Jews. Instead, they invoke colonialism as a cudgel, not to critique Israeli policy, but to delegitimize Jewish sovereignty altogether.
For all the left’s obsession with framing Israel as a modern colonial project, history tells a different story. Jews had a homeland in the region of modern Israel long before Arabs arrived. The name “Palestine” itself, often wielded as evidence of Arab roots in the land, predates any organized Arab presence and has no connection to an indigenous Arab identity.
The term "Palestine" originated with the ancient Egyptians and Greeks, referring to the coastal region associated with the Philistines, unrelated to Arabs. It was later adopted by the Romans after the Bar Kokhba Revolt (132–135 CE), when they renamed Judea as Syria Palaestina to suppress Jewish identity and punish the Jewish rebellion. For centuries, “Palestine” remained a geographic designation under various empires, not a marker of Arab sovereignty or statehood.
By contrast, Jewish civilization flourished in the land for over a millennium, with ancient Israel and Judah serving as centers of culture and faith. Jerusalem, a city central to Jewish identity, existed centuries before Arab tribes began arriving in the Levant during the 7th century AD. The narrative that positions Israel as a colonial implant ignores these millennia of Jewish connection, reducing history to fit an ideological agenda.
Let us not forget one absurd reality: reducing Israel to a mere extension of European colonial power, while demanding that another people replace it, is itself an act of colonialism. By this logic, should Native Americans demand the replacement of all modern Americans to reclaim their ancestral lands—even though oral histories make it unclear which indigenous tribes occupied which lands before being displaced by other indigenous tribes? Far from being a tool of oppression, the written word has long been a tool of preservation—a way for civilizations to record their histories, safeguard their identities, and affirm their connection to the land. To dismiss it as inherently colonial erases the agency of cultures that relied on writing to survive displacement and persecution. Does this not show how absurd anti-colonial rhetoric can become? Such arguments may sound morally righteous but are utterly detached from historical complexity and the realities of coexistence. Applying this standard selectively—against Jews but not others—exposes the true ideological bias.
Class: The Persistent Stereotype of Jewish Wealth
Jews are often portrayed as the epitome of privilege, wielding disproportionate wealth and influence. This fixation isn’t new; it’s a modern repackaging of the same antisemitic tropes that fueled pogroms and expulsions for centuries. Yes, some Jewish communities have achieved economic success, particularly in the West, but this success came after centuries of marginalization and often in spite of systemic barriers.
Reducing Jews to their economic achievements not only ignores the diversity of Jewish experiences but also serves to scapegoat them in a way that’s eerily similar to far-right conspiracy theories. Jews in struggling communities—whether in Eastern Europe, North Africa, or the United States—are rendered invisible by this stereotype. The left’s obsession with Jewish wealth doesn’t just erase these realities; it also absolves other groups of their own complicity in perpetuating inequality.
Another Problem: The Nationalist Right
If the left is guilty of erasing Jewish complexity through oversimplification, parts of the nationalist right are equally culpable—but for different reasons. Nationalists tend to define their movements by a romanticized view of cultural homogeneity and tradition. To them, Jews, with their diasporic history and cosmopolitan connections, represent the ultimate “other.”
Antisemitism on the nationalist right often manifests as suspicion of Jewish influence, portraying Jews as rootless elites manipulating global politics or undermining national identities. This paranoia isn’t limited to fringe groups; it has crept into mainstream rhetoric through dog whistles about “globalists” or “bankers.” What makes this doubly pernicious is that it mirrors leftist critiques of Jews as capitalist overlords, albeit framed through a different ideological lens.
Both extremes share a dangerous habit of using Jews as scapegoats for broader societal anxieties. Whether the accusation is of being too white or not white enough, too wealthy or too subversive, Jews are subjected to an ideological double-bind that leaves no room for their reality as a people shaped by both suffering and resilience.
Toward a More Honest Discourse
If progressives and nationalists alike are to move beyond their flawed frameworks, they must first confront their own biases. The left needs to abandon its habit of flattening Jewish identity into simplistic narratives of privilege, and the right must stop using Jews as a convenient foil for its anti-modernist grievances. Both sides would do well to remember that Jews are not pawns in anyone’s ideological chess game. They are a people with a rich, complicated history, one that cannot be reduced to three convenient categories: color, colonialism, and class.
The question isn’t whether Jews fit neatly into existing paradigms of oppression—it’s whether those paradigms can evolve to include the nuanced realities of Jewish existence. At the very least, civilized society is alarmed at the onslaught of recent antisemitism.