Jews use #JewishPrivilege hashtag to focus on tragedy, triumph

Jews worldwide have reclaimed the #JewishPrivilege hashtag from white supremacists, using it to tell their family's stories.

By HANNAH BROWN
Sarah Silverman (photo credit: DANNY MOLOSHOK/ REUTERS)
Sarah Silverman
(photo credit: DANNY MOLOSHOK/ REUTERS)
In the ever-transforming world of social media, yesterday’s insult can become today’s boast, and Jews are reclaiming the hashtag, #JewishPrivilege – initially tossed out by antisemitic factions a few days ago to discredit Jews supporting protests over police brutality against African-Americans – to spotlight persecution against Jews throughout history.
Well-known Jews from around the world jumped into the fray over the past few days, as white supremacists such as David Duke and many Holocaust deniers continued to throw out the hashtag.
“Noticers worldwide trigger a Twitterstorm of Jewish fragility by noticing #JewishPrivilege” Duke tweeted early Tuesday.
Apparently he and other antisemites were hoping to provoke and offend Jews by casting a shadow on their support for the Black Lives Matter movement by branding them with the #JewishPrivilege hashtag, a subset of the #whiteprivilege hashtag used to dismiss those whose identification with the BLM cause is deemed insufficiently sincere by those on the Left. Although things can change in the blink of an eye in the Twitterverse, by Monday night, the tide seemed to have turned and the #JewishPrivilege hashtag had become a badge of pride for Jews sharing their stories of tragedy and triumph.
Among those leading the charge to turn around this hashtag were American comedian Sarah Silverman and Israeli writer (and Jerusalem Post contributor) Hen Mazzig. On July 13, Mazzig tweeted, “Waking up and seeing that overnight the antisemitic hashtag ‘#JewishPrivilege’ that I flipped by encouraging other Jews to join me in telling our survival stories, is trending again – but for the right reason this time. I’m so inspired by you all and what we can achieve together.”
On Sunday, Mazzig had tweeted, “#JewishPrivilege is when my grandparents were violently forced out of Iraq and Tunisia for being Jewish with only the clothes to their back. Along with 850,000 other MENA [Middle Eastern and North African] Jews they arrived to Israel with nothing, only spoke Arabic, and lived in a tent/tin shack for years.” He then called on his more than 30,000 followers to share their experiences of antisemitic persecution.
Silverman tweeted on Monday, “My dad getting the s*** kicked out of him everyday at school 4 being a k*** to kids in NH [New Hampshire] throwing pennies at me on the bus to pastors in Florida calling for my death and telling their congregation that knocking my teeth out and killing me would be God’s work. #JewishPrivilege”
David Simon, the creator of HBO’s The Wire, tweeted, “My #JewishPrivilege? Garden-variety stuff. Eleven dead relatives at Auschwitz and in the Russian woods and a father who was a hostage and suffered PTSD years after the Jewish non-profit where he worked was stormed by angry dudes with guns & scimitars who threatened to behead him.”
David Harris, CEO of the American Jewish Committee, tweeted on Monday, “My #JewishPrivilege: -Mom fled Soviet antisemitism; began anew in [France]; escaped Nazis; came to [United States] w/ nothing...except gratitude; went straight to work.
“-Dad, as a Jew, was kicked out of Austrian univ; fought Nazis; came to [United States] w/ nothing...except gratitude; went straight to work.”
Novelist Stuart Rojstaczer, author of The Mathematician’s Shiva, posted this tweet, “#JewishPrivilege is having rocks thrown at you for being a ‘dirty k***,’ being told ‘you’re not American enough’ to join Boy Scouts, having your neighbors call you a ‘dirty Jew,’ frequently overhearing anti-Semitic drivel in Berkeley, and knowing your family was murdered here,” along with a picture of a Holocaust memorial statue in Poland.
Dozens of Jews from around the world are keeping this trend going as they continue to set the record straight about what it means to be a Jew.


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