Woke Anti­semitism: How a
Pro­gres­sive Ide­ol­o­gy Harms Jews

In May 2021, amid anoth­er con­flict with Iran-backed Hamas, Israel took a beat­ing in both the main­stream press and social media. Notwith­stand­ing the rock­et fire aimed at its cit­i­zens, the Jew­ish state was por­trayed as the oppres­sor and the Hamas gov­ern­ment as the oppressed. While Israel has always been sub­ject to exces­sive scruti­ny, this time was dif­fer­ent. What had changed in the ide­o­log­i­cal envi­ron­ment? A vet­er­an Jew­ish advo­ca­cy leader and self-described lib­er­al who has bro­ken with the far left over the adop­tion of woke ide­ol­o­gy, David L. Bern­stein traces the growth of woke ide­ol­o­gy in his life and career from a remote aca­d­e­m­ic study to an inter­na­tion­al post-colo­nial­ist move­ment, then a fad­dish cam­pus ide­ol­o­gy, mor­ph­ing into cor­po­rate diver­si­ty pro­grams to a dom­i­nant ide­ol­o­gy in main­stream insti­tu­tions, includ­ing many Jew­ish orga­ni­za­tions. Bern­stein shows how core ide­o­log­i­cal tenets — such as priv­i­lege, equi­ty, white­ness, and the oppressor/oppressed bina­ry — can be and are weaponized against Jews.