Tony Greenstein’s latest piece and reposting of an article by mixed-race Black British author discussing institutional anti-Black racism in Israel also raises a few awkward questions about one of the Israeli’s states staunchest defenders, the actor and broadcaster Tracy Anne Oberman. Oberman appears as a passionate opponent of anti-Semitism, but like the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and her friend, Rachel Riley, it appears that the anti-Semitism she is most determined to root out is simply criticism of Israel and its abominable maltreatment and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. Hence her determined attacks on Twitter and elsewhere with supporters of Jeremy Corbyn and the socialist left in the Labour party as a whole.
Back in 2019 she got into a Twitter spat with the awesome Ash Sarkar of Novara Media, whom she also accused of anti-Semitism. Sarkar is Asian, and so responded by pointing out that she was Black woman being abused by a White woman who was a favourite of the blue tick brigade. Oberman responded by stating that she was as White as Sarkar. This is quite a claim, as Oberman at least in her photos very definitely has White skin and light brown or blonde hair. Sarkar, on the other hand, has the rich brown colouring of many people of South Asian descent. Of course, Oberman wasn’t saying she wasn’t physically White, but that she wasn’t considered as such by White supremacists like the Klan, the Nazis and the various other Fascist parties. Sarkar ably rebutted this by stating that she was very away of the racist persecution of the Jews.
But Jews weren’t always considered to be non-Whites. Ludwig Blumenbach, the 19th century German scientist responsible for modern racial classification, placed Jews among the Caucasian race. He believed they had some ‘negro’ features, and so considered them the ‘negroes’ of the White race. He was almost certainly speaking about European Jews, rather than the non-White Jewish communities of Africa, India and even China. I think most, severely normal Americans and European would consider Jews of traditional European origin to be White. The only people who don’t are Nazis and Fascists, who are wrong as well as monstrously vile. Nevertheless because of their similar histories of persecution, many Jewish Americans joined forced with Black to attack segregation and racial injustice in America.
Oberman clearly believed she had a right to claim to be non-White based on this common persecution by White supremacists. But Greenstein’s and Lewis’ articles, as well as Abbie Martin’s coverage of the issue for The Empire Files, shows that Israeli society is also marred by deep anti-Black racism.
This casts real doubt on Oberman’s ability to draw on her people’s persecution by White supremacists to claim that she is somehow not White, when the country she passionately supports and whose critics she tries to silence permits and legitimises systematic, institutional racism against Black Jews.
For further information, see: Zelo Street: Tracy Ann Oberman Crosses The Line (zelo-street.blogspot.com)
Tags: Abbie Martin, anti-semitism, Anti-Semitism Smears, Ash Sarkar, Asians, Blacks, Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, Ethnic Cleansing, Ethnic Minorities, Jeremy Corbyn, Klu Klux Klan, Labour Party, Ludwig Blumenbach, Novara Media, Palestinians, Rachel Riley, racism, Segregation, The Empire Files, Tony Greenstein, Tracy-Ann Oberman, Twitter, White Supremacists
Beastrabban\'s Weblog 
March 2, 2021 at 5:30 am |
[…] Does Tracy Anne Oberman Really Believe She Isn’t White? — Beastrabban’s Weblog […]
March 29, 2021 at 10:30 pm |
It is hard to avoid he conclusion that Tracy Anne Oberman and Rachel Riley are merely fronts for a foreign manipulative public relations campaign.
I don’t know if the rapper Willey really tweeted racist sentiments about his Jewish management and/or about the Jewish presence in Caribbean slave economies – because all his tweets were censored by the MSM, leaving us with just assertions.
What was interesting was Oberman – amplifying the current moral panic – turned up on BBC news claiming NOT to be a pro-Israel activist but someone who merely stumbled upon the tweets.
Oberman is white & in her mid to late 50s. Is she really claiming to be a follower of the Black UK Grime youth cult? Or is it more likely she was asked to front this effort at keeping the moral panic in the headlines? This is a woman that previously couldn’t tell the difference between Ice-Cube & Ice-T.
In any case, not being able to tell one Black man from another would hopefully disqualify the culprit from prominence in public debate on issues of race.
Sadly not in the 21st C UK corporate media.
April 2, 2021 at 11:03 pm |
Excerpt ‘A Racist Endeveavor…’ Monthly Review
“One of the marketed excuses for Israel’s colonial conquest of Palestine is that the Jewish white Western invaders supposedly shared an identity with Indigenous Jews of the region. Yet, in terms of colonial racism, Jewish white settlers conquering Palestine clearly regarded themselves as an elevated, superior, separate Western ethnic group, because among their first victims were actually Indigenous Middle Eastern Jews. In 2017, it came to light that a large number of children who had been brought up by settler parents were actually Yemeni-Jewish. Blood tests demonstrated that they had been stolen from Yemeni parents who had been regarded as too culturally primitive to successfully rear their own children…as Mondoweiss further pointed out, the complete extent of settler crimes against the Indigenous Yemeni Jews also included eugenics-like human experimentation.”
https://mronline.org/2020/12/04/a-racist-endeavour-zionist-israels-black-jewish-victims-of-color/
April 3, 2021 at 8:05 am |
Thanks for this and your other great comments and links, Gavin. Tony Greenstein has mentioned the Israeli state’s theft of Yemeni Jewish babies on his blog, linking to some of the newspaper articles about them. But its good to have someone else also talk about it, and point out that it shows the White supremacism underlying the Israeli racial state.
April 7, 2021 at 8:45 pm |
Thanks beastrabban
I think the fact that some white western Jews have the option of being racist even against other Jews who are people of colour makes a deserved mockery of Tracy Anne Obermans claim to be Black. She hardly gets cast as Africans, African-Caribbeans or African-Americans does she? Hard to imagine she’s having a problem with police stop and search either!
The fact that racism/exploitation is an option only makes the choice of Jewish anti-racists that more virtuous. In his journal Martin Luther King described fighting a rent strike in 1966 against exploitative Jewish landlords, he also made a point of acknowledging Jewish partners in the civil rights struggle.
It’s worth recalling during this period that Jewish voter registration activists Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman paid with their lives in Mississippi for supporting the oppressed.
All the best