Does the Presence of Anti-Semitic Activists Help or Harm Critics of the Louisville Police Department? https://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/politics-current-affairs/2020/07/does-the-presence-of-anti-semitic-activists-help-or-harm-critics-of-the-louisville-police-department/

July 20, 2020 | Christine Rosen
About the author: Christine Rosen is a senior writer at Commentary, and the author of Preaching Eugenics (Oxford) and My Fundamentalist Education (Public Affairs).

Last week, the left-wing activists Linda Sarsour and Tamika Mallory arrived in Louisville, Kentucky, to organize and lead a protest march over the killing by police of Breonna Taylor this spring. The demonstration, which Christine Rosen describes as “cult-like,” was also intended to raise funds, and garner publicity, for their new organization. Rosen wonders what good the presence of these two notorious anti-Semites does for the people of Louisville, who have been organizing continuous protests for months without outside help:

Sarsour, an unapologetic bigot, shares the Black Lives Matter (BLM) cause only insofar as she can use it to promote her own anti-Israel and anti-Semitic agenda. Sarsour’s and Mallory’s anti-Semitism (and continued support of other anti-Semites such as Louis Farrakhan) prompted many local chapters of the Women’s March they are credited with helping found to break away from the national organization. Mallory and Sarsour have both been removed from the Women’s March board.

In another recent speech, Sarsour claimed, falsely, that an Anti-Defamation League-sponsored program in Israel for law enforcement led to American police officers harming black Americans. . . . The message seems to be spreading to other BLM supporters. During a recent BLM protest in Washington, D.C., marchers chanted “Israel, we know you, you murder children too.”

Sarsour’s eagerness to attach her noxious views about Israel and Jews to the BLM moment has brought her increased visibility. Her and Mallory’s arrests this week no doubt brought in a lot of earned media and donations for their organization. But BLM leaders and the many corporations and individuals who have been donating money to the cause might want to consider whether anti-Semites like Sarsour are really the allies they want to embrace.

Read more on Commentary: http://commentarymagazine.com/christine-rosen/the-company-you-keep/