Wanted for being Jewish

“Complicity In Genocide.” I would love to tell you I was shocked by the charge on the wanted poster with my face on it, but I wasn’t. It’s not the first time a radicalized, anti-Zionist, anti-Israel or antisemitic group has targeted me online.

In fact, the same group — or maybe it’s just one individual — targeted me, as well as the Chronicle, in September, wishing us death by choking “on a massively fat hog,” while encouraging me to go “f— yourself right the way off.”

I was surprised, though, to see my wanted poster among those of 14 other Pittsburgh community members, most of them with a higher profile than mine. My poster was somewhere in the middle of a three-row group that includes members of Pittsburgh’s City Council, the city’s mayor, the Chronicle’s editor and the University of Pittsburgh’s chancellor. Below our grouping is an image of Elon Musk with a gun pointed at his head and the words, “The only good Nazi is a dead one.”

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Above our row are posters of President Donald Trump, former President Joe Biden and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Each has a gun’s bullseye on their face and the phrase “War Criminal.”

The website is filled with antisemitic images, including a woman with a Jewish star for a head, asking a suited male on his knees if it’s OK to still bomb children. Another image features a picture of Israel and the caption, “One state solution: Palestine. The two-state solution upholds ‘Israel’s’ apartheid. Two states affirms ‘Israel’s’ genocide while rewarding a 70+year reign of terror.”

Calls for violence tied to antisemitic tropes fill the site.

What did I do to earn the recognition of this cowardly individual who hides behind a group with a made-up name? I certainly didn’t perform “acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group,” which is how the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum defines genocide. I have never been part of an army, navy or militia. Heck, I’ve never even gone hunting.

No matter, the coward who created the wanted posters — and encouraged visitors to their website to download, distribute, edit and reproduce the images as stickers or flyers — decided I am complicit with genocide because I report the news.

Also, it’s because I’m Jewish, work for a Jewish paper and write about the anti-Israel and antisemitic actions of the “artist’s” friends and compatriots, as well as Israel’s defensive war against the terrorist organization Hamas — a group that openly calls for the genocide of Jews.

To a person, every face included on a wanted poster has supported the Jewish community. Some have advanced legislation that would prevent BDS groups from forcing the city to stop doing business with Israel or companies that do business with Israel; others have supported the arrests of anti-Israel protesters who committed acts of vandalism and violence on Pitt’s campus. One simply leads a Jewish congregation.

The person who created the wanted posters wrote that “Black lives matter,” “Palestinian lives matter” and “trans people and lgbtq+ folks deserve dignity.” They also posit that “America is past the point of saving,” “fascists should face fists and bullets,” “all cops are targets” and “those who facilitate genocide should never live in peace.”

Their call for violence is ironic, in light of their purported condemnation of that very same brand of violence.

They view the world through the lens of the oppressor and the oppressed. Don’t let the pogroms, the Holocaust or Oct. 7 confuse you; Zionists, i.e., Jews and their allies, are the oppressors. As a result, we deserve to be hunted. After all, what good is a wanted poster if there isn’t an implied fugitive from the law or a posse to hunt them down?

This far-left coward wants you to believe they are the champions of the oppressed, but they traffic in the same violent rhetoric as far-right white supremacist groups.

Sadly, this coward who has called for violence isn’t alone. The far left, it appears, has been radicalized and, in some cases, militarized in ways that would seem unthinkable to members of the Students for a Democratic Society. I no longer recognize a political ideology of which I once was a part.

In junior high, I joined Amnesty International and wrote letters to governments detaining prisoners of conscience and railed against the death penalty. I protested the first Iraq War. In college, a picture of the Chicago 5 hung next to one of a lone dissenter standing in front of a phalanx of tanks in Tiananmen Square I clipped from Time magazine. I stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the Black community protesting the death of several community members who were killed in altercations with the police.

As an artist and writer, most of my friends were “lefties” who believed many of the same things I did. We supported each other and I believed they would stand by me and the Jewish community if we were ever attacked. It was a naive belief.

On the night of Oct. 6 I went to bed viewed as a left-leaning writer. I awoke Oct. 7 seen as a right-wing conservative no longer welcomed by many of the people I knew. My crime? I wrote for a Jewish paper telling the stories of our community. I also detailed the antisemitism, anti-Zionism, anti-Israel and anti-American protests and rallies happening on college campuses, in meeting halls and on street corners. I refused to cower as groups of radicalized youth, hiding beneath masks, called for the destruction of Israel and the forced removal of Jews from Israel —after all, what else is “From the river to the sea” but a call for ethnic cleansing?

I was no longer an ally. I was no longer part of a marginalized community, perhaps the oldest marginalized community in the world. I was now an oppressor. Worse, I traded in the ideas of the oppressor, and I didn’t shrink into the shadows from these masked crusaders, who, despite their bravado, want their universities to provide therapists and clemency for classes not completed while they protested.

When they attempted to intimidate me online, much the same way members of right-wing hate groups have, I refused to back down. I recorded the actions of these anti-Zionists and antisemites and used their own words to draw a picture of exactly who they are.

They now brand me a fascist who “should face fists and bullets” because I believe Israel has a right to exist and innocent Jews shouldn’t be raped and murdered.

Despite their calls for violence, I continue to report the news. My strength lies in the power of my words. I believe that sunlight is the best disinfectant.

Before Oct. 7, I believed the most dangerous threat Jews faced came from far-right white supremacist groups, and as Pittsburghers, we tragically know the very real threats they pose. Since Oct. 7, though, I have come to realize that the Jewish community is targeted equally by far-left antifa organizations who claim Jews are the oppressors. They label us white and privileged. Consequently, we don’t merit a homeland and, until we accept their point of view, we deserve to be kidnapped, raped and murdered.

Anti-Zionism can and has crossed the line into antisemitism. While it is not inherently antisemitic to criticize the Israeli government, it is antisemitic to deny Jews the right to self-determination and to invalidate Jews’ historical connection to Israel. And, as the American Jewish Committee explains, “When Jews are verbally or physically harassed or Jewish institutions and houses of worship are vandalized in response to actions of the State of Israel, it is antisemitism.”

Since Oct. 7 I have learned what unites the far-left progressive community. It’s called antisemitism. PJC

David Rullo, senior staff writer for the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle, can be reached at drullo@pittsburghjewishcommunity.org.