Source: Int’l Palestine Teach-In: Gaza & Genocidal Executions w/ Gerald Horne, Mahah Nassar & Huwaida Arraf, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If6uGQeURGY. Comments by Gerald Horne beginning 1:03:00.
A component of London settler colonialism, unlike the Iberian project, was the welcoming of the diasporic Jewish Community. This occurred despite the fact that London itself had expelled its own Jewish population in 1291… It was a reflection of the fact that there were quite frankly fewer Protestants than Catholics and if they were going to ignite and project settler colonialism, they would need more settlers irrespective of their confessional beliefs.
This was part and parcel of the construction of a militarized identity politics- speaking of whiteness then white supremacy- which was a move away from the Iberian’s deployment of religion as a major marker of society towards race, which excluded the indigenous and Africans, though it came to include for example Lebanese Christians such as Ralph Nader and even Syrian Christians such as Najeeb Halaby, prominent US corporate executive and father of today’s Queen Noor of Jordan. For various reasons this flexibility of the London Elite proved to be the winning ticket, providing an ultimate advantage over the Iberians and even fellow Protestants, speaking of the Dutch, who were ousted from what is now New York City by London in the mid-17th century.
This openness towards the Jewish diaspora was continued by the successor regime [of the English] in North America, speaking of the United States. Focus here on George Washington’s openness towards the Jewish diaspora expressed more than once. Contrary to some of our friends on the Left who see this as a symbol and emblem of Enlightenment, I see it as basically pragmatism. That is to say, the settlers needed all the warm bodies they could muster in order to confront the indigenous and corral the Africans and they were willing to overlook one’s religious background, of course leading to the famous First Amendment of the United States Constitution, supposedly guaranteeing religious liberty.
Of course going forward a number of leading members of the slaveholding Republic in the United States were of Jewish ancestry including David Yulee a former US senator from Florida whose pre-1861 years were enmeshed in brutal Wars against the indigenous, the indigenous often times supported by Africans. This would include Judah Benjamin, a leader of the so-called Confederate States of America which sought to secede from the United States in order to perpetuate enslavement forever more, as Nikki Haley now can confirm.
Ironically, and to repeat, as Theodore Herzel- considered to be a founder of the Zionist project-was enunciating his ideology in the late 19th century on the basis that anti-Jewish fervor could not be eradicated, necessitating the construction of a Jewish State, the US already was showing that a settler colonial project in North America, grounded in whiteness and white supremacy ,which embraced those of Jewish ancestry and (even, as noted, some of Arab ancestry) suggested that Herzl’s dire prognostication was misguided at best.
To be sure there were bumps in the road: recall the Leo Frank case a century ago in Georgia, whereby a man of Jewish ancestry was lynched on the spurious and specious charge of committing blood libel, that is to say this ancient mythology that Jews somehow were killing Christians to drink their blood.
What’s interesting about the Leo Frank case- and we really need an updated history of this case- was that Frank’s defense sought to pin this crime of the killing of the Christian girl Mary Fagan on the Black janitor at the plant that he was supervising but interestingly and suggestive of the persistence of anti-Jewish fervor even in the United States where Jewish people were being invited into the hallowed halls of whiteness, the authorities chose to ignore this attempt to blame the Black man and instead lynched Leo Frank.
The long-term trend of erosion of anti-Jewish fervor continued enhanced by the forced retreat of United States from State sanctioned Apartheid or what was called Jim Crow in this country beginning in 1954. Interestingly certain Scholars have argued that a major beneficiary of the post 1954 struggle for equality have been Jewish women. Indeed, the erosion of anti-Jewish fervor in the United States has proceeded to the point where certain members of the Jewish American Elite such as Bill Ackman, of Pershing Capital, feel sufficiently comfortable to ally with others defined as white to denounce so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion measures and so-called “wokeness” designed to curb bigotry. I would like to warn Mr. Ackman and those like him that just the other day, blocks from where I’m sitting in Southeast Texas, there was a Nazi demonstration under the banner of “make America white again” and also “down with Jewish Supremacy.”
Camille Kaplan 