"I have never seen this much anti-Semitism."

Journalist Jonathan Choe has been covering all the local rallies. Here's what he sees.

The shocking has become normal. Rallies and marches calling for “free Palestine,” “from the river to the sea,” “global intifada,” and “jihad” (literal holy war) have become weekly events in downtown Seattle and at the University of Washington. These events, while non-violent, are not peaceful. They are incitements to violence. They are calls for the dissolution of a Jewish state, in favor of one that would obviously devolve into a version of ISIS.

Jews who support Israel do not feel safe at these rallies, and most of them take place on Shabbat. But one person is at all of them. That person is Jonathan Choe, an independent journalist who for years has been covering left-wing political groups in Seattle. I asked him to share his observations and what he thinks it means that droves of young people seem to be supporting terrorism.

The Cholent: Why are you covering these demonstrations in the first place?

Jonathan Choe: I've been following far-left extremism in the Pacific Northwest now for the past three and a half years, going all the way back to the Black Lives Matter protests. I wanted to see what the dynamics were gonna be. So I just showed up. And lo and behold, when I showed up to that very first rally, it wasn’t just Arabs, it was a lot of white kids with green hair and purple hair in the crowd. And that’s the group of the sort of socialist, Marxist, communist, far-left activists who have now latched on and aligned to the Palestinian cause.

That Kirkland rally started off with pro-Palestinian supporters, but then it quickly devolved, because on the other side was a strong contingent of pro-Israel supporters as well. And the police in Kirkland and city officials were essentially caught with their pants down. They didn’t realize that this was gonna be that big. Both sides ended up clashing briefly, and it became violent. You had people hitting each other with flagpoles. You had people on the pro-Palestine side, women taking off their shoes and hitting some of the pro-Israel supporters. It got out of hand. And that’s why I stayed with it as well, just trying to see where it would go.

What was shocking to me at that first Kirkland rally was that the blood wasn’t even dry yet. This is not about Israel’s response, because Israel hasn't responded yet. Israel hasn’t even really woken up yet to what happened. We haven’t even recovered the bodies. Usually it’s like, look at Israel’s response, we want to save Palestinian lives against this horrible government. That, to me, was the most shocking thing. What did you make of that?

It wasn’t surprising to me, quite frankly, because when I was a reporter at KOMO News, it happened after every major cultural flashpoint. Whenever there’s an opportunity, especially when it comes to the far left, or even some of the pro-Palestine marches and protests I’ve seen in the past, they’ll take advantage of every opportunity, especially in the news cycle.

What do you see as the connective tissue between the far left and the pro-Palestine movement?

Well, it’s really hard to say if there’s one underlying theme, because what’s really interesting is under this umbrella of far-left activism in the Pacific Northwest, you have pretty much every single cause now there, right? You’ve got the trans, you’ve got the LGBTQ, you have Black Lives Matter. Now you have every single marginalized group that feels like they have a gripe with society. But I do really believe what’s fueling them is this anti-capitalist, socialist, communist, Marxist agenda that they're trying to push. And I believe that they’re trying to use these rallies to destabilize culture and society. They want to destabilize so they can push their worldview, their ideology. Right now, anyone who’s pro-Palestine, what they’re talking about, the language that I'm hearing is the occupation, the decolonization. And that’s perfectly in alignment with what a lot of these abolitionists and these far-left activists have been pushing here in Seattle.

I feel like local media has not been covering this honestly. They’re calling these demonstrations peaceful. But Jews are quite terrified of these demonstrations. Should we be afraid? Is there a real reason to be afraid here?

It really depends who you ask. That’s the tension right now. I think every journalist in the Pacific Northwest should be asking these questions and highlighting these realities. In my network, when a Jewish American hears language like “from the river to the sea,” and “Hamas isn't a terrorist group, they're freedom fighters,” those types of phrases in that language, they feel like a call to violence against Israelis and other Jews. So that's really scary for many in the Jewish community. On the flip side, there’s a strong Muslim, Arab, Palestinian community here as well. And they feel as though they’ve been marginalized, that they’re the victims here, and they’re the ones that are simply fighting back for their own rights. So it depends on perspective, and that’s what I’m seeing. That type of coverage and nuance I wish was being put out there in the mainstream.

I’m hearing the chant “Death to Israel,” “long live Hamas.” I’m seeing the signs covered in blood saying, “stop doing to me what Hitler did to you.” I’m like, oh my gosh, this is potential calls for violence, or at least incitement of violence. At the very least, you’ve gotta be covering this. But once you see the final product in corporate media, it’s almost sanitized. You hear coverage that these Palestinian protests are totally peaceful people calling for an end to the occupation, calling for more aid and end calling for a ceasefire. And I’m like, yeah, some of those things were shared, but this rally that is more than a thousand people, and the vast majority of speakers are laying out all the reasons why Israel needs to be removed from that area. So that’s problematic.

Why do you think the media is sanitizing this?

I want to be really careful not to call out all the organizations by name, because at the end of the day, I’m not in these newsrooms. I’m not the decision maker, and I’m not the reporter finally putting on this product. I think it has to do, unfortunately, with bias. But also, quite frankly, I don’t think a lot of these reporters are prepared. They don’t know geopolitics, they don’t know the history. And when you’re under a deadline to make your live shot and just talk about what happened, the basic kind of go-to is, “Oh, you have one side saying this, and another side saying that. And back to you, Bob.” I think a lot of times the actual story gets lost, because these stations just do not have the journalists and the reporters to even cover these fairly and accurately.

I noticed that you shared videos of these people ripping down posters of the hostages. Why are people doing that, from your perspective? Why are people sabotaging what are actually very benign, peaceful ways of protesting the situation?

At the end of the day, I don’t know what’s inside a man’s heart and and soul and what motivates them. But based on what I’ve seen, some of the interviews that I’ve done, some of the interviews that I’ve heard and watched, you have people who genuinely hate Jewish people, who hate Israelis, on one extreme. And on the other, you have people who feel like they’re being social justice warriors. They feel like Israel is getting too much coverage. They feel like these posters showing kidnapped victims of Hamas is unfairly portraying or unfairly spotlighting one side over the other. And I know that sounds really bizarre, but that’s what I'm seeing out there. I think in a normal world — and when I say normal, I feel like the last three to four years, our entire country, our world has just turned upside down in terms of what’s common decency — I just feel like we should be outraged. Imagine if this was your mother or father missing. Would you want someone tearing the missing posters down? Of course not. I mean, we have missing posters of people all over the country of people who aren’t Jewish, just missing or exploited children. Are we tearing those down? Of course not. So it just doesn't make any sense right now.

What’s the craziest thing you’ve seen in the past couple of weeks?

Well, in my 20-plus-year corporate journalism career, before I went independent, I would say I have never seen this much anti-Semitism real time, like right in my face, in America. I have never seen it this bad. I have never seen the Jewish tropes being amplified. For example, the Jews own all media, and that’s why you can’t trust mainstream media anymore, because they're only gonna push their narrative. I’m like, what? And now this is the craziest part: People being emboldened now to say it out loud without any repercussions or not even caring about repercussions. This is the type of stuff that people would say secretly or just between friends or in private, but now people are just saying this stuff out loud.

Regardless of whether or not it’s anti-Semitism or racism or any type of discrimination, it’s that it becomes normalized and people feel emboldened now to do these crazy things, like rip down these signs showing kidnapped victims of Hamas, like it’s no big deal. Or say all these anti-Semitic things or put up posters that are anti-Israel or anti-Jewish, all in the name of fighting for the rights of Palestinian people. The ends do not justify the means. I don’t know, I still share those basic human values.

Again, I got into it because I want to see what the far-left activists in this community ultimately will do. We now know that the founders of BLM were very openly Marxist, and they had a different agenda, but we also saw how the far-left activists essentially hijacked that. Initially, in 2020, you had parents out there, grandparents and kids, you had the black community telling me, oh my gosh, is this finally our generation’s Civil Rights movement? And nearly four years later we’re realizing, no, it was a global fraud. It was fraudulent, it was completely hijacked and taken over by Antifa and the far-left activist movement that essentially trashed and destroyed cities. I’m afraid that that could happen again with these pro-Palestine rallies, if they’re not put in check, if the mainstream media, which is supposed to be the watchdog, the fourth estate — if we don’t bring the proper analysis and call this out and put out the warnings. That’s ultimately what I want to say right now. There are warning signs here in the crowds. Did you see my video? Somebody was carrying around a former Soviet Union flag with the hammer and sickle. What does that have to do with being pro-Palestine?

My final analysis so far, based on what I'm seeing, is this is not just about being pro-Palestine, at least the rallies here in the greater Seattle area. I believe there's something sinister here, and part of that has to do with folks who want to ultimately destabilize society. I’m hoping that these rallies do not devolve and turn into riots, looting, trashing of the city. I feel like more police are now out there. I know many of these agencies don't have enough officers to respond, but I see strong police presence around these rallies, so law enforcement's taking this seriously as well. So I think that’s pretty telling.

Is there any optimism here?

I can speak from a media standpoint. I am not optimistic when it comes to the state of American journalism, when it comes to mainstream coverage. I think we’re gonna get only one side or we’re gonna miss huge chunks of coverage of what actually happened on the front lines, because these newsrooms just don't have the resources anymore, especially on the weekends. I’ve worked the weekend shift numerous times. You’re not gonna send your A-team, with all due respect to people who work weekends, to cover these protests. They don’t have the nuance or perspective and the expertise, and they have to do these quick turns, and you’re just gonna get a kind of, “oh, huge crowds in downtown Seattle, and this is what happened, and that’s what happened.”

I am optimistic, though, about independent journalism, in citizen journalism. We need more people, regular folks, people who are neighbors, to whip out their cell phones and report exactly what they're seeing. This isn't rocket science, right? A lot of those initial skirmishes and scuffles in Kirkland, the mainstream media wasn't there for that. It was the citizen journalists who captured all of this on their cell phones, and those images went viral. Those are the images that city officials did not want out there. In fact, I called this out. The City of Kirkland put out a press release with no mention of any of the violence on the grounds. They basically said, “well, police showed up before the situation escalated into something more serious.” And I’m like, that’s BS, because I was there, and the video don't lie.

Hopefully the next story I cover is the one about a bunch of pro-Israeli folks and pro-Palestine folks coming together and marching together. Can you believe we haven't even seen that march yet?

I think there’s really just too much rawness still. And I think honestly, we’re sort of at an impasse. I don’t think that rally’s going to happen. I’m disappointed that the Muslim community has not come out publicly said anything to my knowledge in Seattle. Like, we're so sorry that this happened. You are our brothers and sisters. We do not support this, and let’s just put down our swords and pick up our plowshares and just kind of come together right now and stand up against hate. There is none of that happening. And I gotta tell you, Jews will be the first ones to do that. Jews would be like, “Let's organize it. I’ll find the place. I’ll buy the chips.” I think that we’ve hit this weird point where it’s gotten too bitter.

I’m disappointed in the Christian communities here as well. I feel like churches would be in the best position to broker something between both sides. I just haven’t seen the churches publicly come out here. This is just my wish as kind of this outside observer, as a journalist, I would love to see the church broker both sides and start talking. I’ve been to all the major rallies and I can tell you the overarching themes coming from the bullhorns is “no justice, no peace.” If there’s no justice according to their terms, there won’t be any peace. Nobody’s brokering that.

---

Community Announcements

Check out the Seattle Jewish community calendar and the virtual calendar.

Candlelighting in Seattle is at 5:41 p.m. The parasha is Lech Lecha.

Shoutouts

Shoutout to Tom Friedman, who provides a clear eyed view of what is happening in Israel. My must read. —Peter Bacho

A big shout out to all who have contributed financially to the dire needs in Israel. If you're looking to make a gift, you can do so through the Federations Israel Emergency Fund here. One hundred percent of funds donated go overseas. —Nancy Greer