By Melanie Nathan, Oct 15, 2025.
I feel compelled to give voice to the broad sentiment I’m hearing daily: that Jews are being squeezed by the twin pressures of far-right and far-left extremism, each exploiting us for its own narrative. This piece channels our community’s alarm, resolve, and insistence on moral clarity—not to inflame polarization, but to name what we’re experiencing and call others back to decency and truth:
Across the political spectrum, a dangerous rhythm is continuing to build. Picture an accordion, its right-hand keys pressed by the far-right, its left-hand side pulled by the far-left. Both expand outward, blaring their dissonant tunes. Yet, as they collapse toward one another, similarly making their music to crush what lies between them: the Jew.
On the right, the familiar hatreds resurface with new digital polish. Young Republicans’ antisemitic chat rooms humming beside the chants of Charleston, the KKK’s spectral nostalgia, and the MAGA glamorization of Hitlerian tropes. This side beats a rhythm of nationalism laced with hate, where revisionist myth and white grievance play the notes of persecution once again.
In this movement’s echo chambers, Hitler becomes meme and martyr, history’s warning repurposed as aesthetic. The tune is one of grievance and racial purity, played with the old instruments of exclusion and blame. This side wants what it is getting in real time – authoritarian rule – demise of democracy- the implementation of Project 2025.
On the left-hand side, rhetoric mirrors its supposed opposite. Yet that other hand pulls in equal fervor: activists and influencers chanting “Globalize the Intifada” and “From the River to the Sea,” echoing calls that have become rallying cries for the erasure of Jewish self-determination. Among them, Zohran-inspired followers and those who romanticize violent “resistance” celebrate arson, attack, and intimidation, from the Jewish Museum murders in D.C. to the Molotov firebomb in Boulder, to the torching of a governor’s mansion, each act a dissonant note in a symphony of moral collapse. In this inversion of justice, Hamas’s October 7 massacre is recast not as barbarism but as revolution. It reveals a moral inversion: antisemitism disguised as activism. This side is getting what it wants, the global demonization of Israel and the fruition of a globalized Intifada.
The melody is different, but the refrain is the same, erase the Jew to make America (the world) pure again.
Now, as the accordion closes, the two hands meet. And between these hands, the accordion compresses. The melody that emerges, a haunting, bittersweet harmony, is played upon the body of the Jew, squeezed from both extremes.
Jews have become the pliant reed through which the music of polarization plays. Right and left, nationalist and hashtag / performative revolutionary, find an insidious euphony in their shared contempt. Both extremes use Jews as fodder to scapegoat and spin, while antisemitism becomes the only song uniting the far right and the far left. Jews become the rhythm of both sides’ propaganda, used to stoke outrage, affirm purity, and validate ideology. What emerges is a haunting, hypocritical music: the sound of polarization feeding on the oldest hatred. And in that noise, truth, nuance, and humanity are drowned out.
We must refuse to be the bellows that power this music. The moral center cannot remain silent while the extremes play their duet of destruction. The task before decent people, Jews and non-Jews alike, is to reclaim the middle, not as neutrality but as moral clarity: a place where empathy, truth, and historical memory are not contorted for ideology. To stop the crushing, we must expose the hands that pull the accordion apart, revealing the illusion of harmony between hate-filled opposites. Only then can we begin to compose a different song, one that honors complexity, protects the vulnerable, and refuses to make a people the instrument of anyone’s rage.
Our refusal to be pulled in either direction can reflect through our vote and support for candidates. For example, a Mamdani or a Cuomo? (I know both poor choices, yet one that must be made in full consciousness). Then there is the Susan Collins Senate seat for Maine, with Democratic contenders, Graham Platner, who uses pro-Hamas rhetoric in his social media videos ads or Janet Hills, a Schumer choice, who has recently announced her run.
None of this rejects and only serves to enhance – our progressive democratic and liberal and Jewish values.
And with that said…
NOW WE PLAY OUR TRUTHFUL TUNE:
Right hand opens
The bellows drink a poisoned wind
Out spills the clatter of tiki torches and coded winks
all clamoring to a presidential applause
Chat rooms humming with old hatreds
In new slang
Banners stitched with N-words nostalgia
Rich in Reich insignia
For strongmen and spotless myths
A wrist flicks, and the keys answer
A march beat of purity, a drum-line of grievance
The tune pretends to be patriotic
The harmonics are violently cruel.
Left hand answers
The leather pulls wide to a different roar
Slogans vault the air like thrown bricks
“Globalize” and “river-to-sea” chanted into hymns of erasure
Violence gets lacquered as virtue
Massacre renamed “resistance”
The spark that finds a museum, a governor’s mansion, a child, an entire family
Is excused as history’s fire
The other wrist flicks
Another melody claims justice while swallowing the human face.
And in the hinge between those hands,
The instrument’s heart – The Jew
The strangling squeeze
The bellows breathe in tandem
Right and left collapsing toward a single terror of harmony
The notes sound beautiful from afar
A grand, righteous music
Until you hear its true power
A ribcage pressed thin
Rib and cage
And
Never Forget
A people made reed and fuel for other people’s songs
All said and done –
When extremes perform their duet,
Jews become the instrument, the prop, the proof
The accordion closes
The room applauds
Somewhere in the middle
Someone is crushed
So a melody can be made ….
Melanie Nathan
Co-Founder and Co-Admin
Jewish Women ORI
Previously Jewish Women for kamala Harris
30,000 + strong!
commissionermnathan@gmail.com
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