The true loyalties of the Jews of Privilege – Israel & Jewish News

(Oct. 12, 2026 / JNS)

In my new book Jews of Privilege, I explore the nature and ideology of the American Jewish anti-Zionist elite, their self-destructive politics and the reasons behind their participation in the antisemitic mass movement that is currently metastasizing across the United States.

One of the most important aspects of the ideology of the Jews of Privilege is, of course, disloyalty. That is to say, disloyalty to the Jews; a complete lack of ahavat Yisrael—a love of the Jewish people, and today, of the State of Israel. This is, moreover, a decidedly hostile disloyalty, as the Jews of Privilege’s ire is almost entirely directed toward Israel and the American Jewish community as a whole.

This raises the question of who precisely the Jews of Privilege are loyal to. Obviously, they are loyal to the American antisemitic mass movement led by the “Red-Green Alliance” of radical progressives and radical Muslims. But this, I think, is only part of the story.

The clue that points to the essence of the problem is likely that the Red-Green Alliance movement is almost entirely an upper-middle-class movement: the most educated, affluent, and politically powerful people in the United States.

Of course, there is a populist mob element to the movement as well, but this is not unusual. As the 20th-century Jewish intellectual Hannah Arendt pointed out, one of the defining aspects of a totalitarian mass movement—and the Red-Green Alliance is unquestionably totalitarian—is an alliance between the elite and the mob.

Nonetheless, the leadership and most of the foot soldiers of the movement are almost entirely of the upper-middle class, and especially, the downwardly mobile upper-middle class. The working- and lower-middle classes, by and large, are at best indifferent to it.

This touches on the loyalties of the Jews of Privilege, because they too, almost to a man, are members of the upper-middle class and often the very secure and wealthy segment of that class. Privilege requires no other definition.

This is where their loyalties lie: to their class rather than their people. And that class, of course, is overwhelmingly non-Jewish and increasingly antisemitic. As a result, to remain part of that class, the Jews of Privilege must both adopt and defend their antisemitism.

As historian Hannah Arendt pointed out, one of the defining aspects of a totalitarian mass movement is an alliance between the elite and the mob.

The public spectacle of their loyalty is therefore essential to the Jews of Privilege, because declarations of their class solidarity, even in its ugliest forms, are the only way they can retain their privilege or even be privileged at all. Today, this has terrible consequences, because it means the Jews of Privilege must live their lives according to a non-Jewish class system that increasingly loathes them.

Even worse, it means they must join in the Red-Green Alliance’s campaign to destroy the American Jewish community.

This campaign is born of the movement’s violent and indeed genocidal loathing of Israel. The Red-Green Alliance knows that it can only break Israel if it also breaks the American Jewish community, which they regard as the bulwark of Israel’s support in the United States and, thus, fundamentally evil. It is not a coincidence that avowedly upper-middle-class New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has referred to AIPAC—the most effective organization of American Jewish pro-Israel activists—as “monsters.”

That the reference to AIPAC was a dog whistle invoking a larger target was obvious, given that the Jewish community, despite the opprobrium of Mamdani and his minions, continues to operate under a pro-Israel consensus.

For the Jews of Privilege, this campaign has terrible implications of which they are likely unaware, because to non-Jews, the Jews have no class. Like it or not, non-Jews do not differentiate between Jews of any kind. The diversity of the Jewish community is irrelevant to them. To the antisemite, the Jew is always a Jew. As a result, throughout history, for good or ill and despite the delusions of some, the Jews have always lived and died together.

This means that, in the end, true privilege is impossible for the Jews. They can never be part of an elite, because the elite can always decide, at any moment, that they are Jews. They can never be privileged because that privilege is always granted by non-Jews and can be withdrawn instantly. This is the truth and the inevitability that the Jews of Privilege so desperately wish to deny: That they are as privileged as they are allowed to be at any given moment.

On some level, the Jews of Privilege must know this, because it is the only explanation for their rhetorical violence, loathing of their own brethren and desperate displays of loyalty devoid of dignity and self-respect.

The Jews of Privilege are, in the end, unwilling to acknowledge that their struggle to remain loyal to their class depends, above all, on the kindness of gentiles. Sadly, gentiles have often been unkind to the Jews, and the movement to which the Jews of Privilege are so dedicated is not just unkind, but at best cruel and at worst murderous.

It is only when the Jews of Privilege finally jettison their class loyalties in favor of ahavat Yisrael that they will escape the fate of all Jews who live in delusion. This will occur if they finally realize that the Jews will never be a class, but only the people Israel.