Anti-Semitism wears many masks, the most prominent these days is anti-Zionism. The malicious malady has related hats, including denying Jewish history, distorting Judaism and opposing the rights of Jews to live in certain places.
The British Broadcasting Corporation, the BBC, has locked arms with alt-left Jews in some of these sinister proclamations, especially concerning Jews living over the 1949 Armistice Lines struck between Jordan and Israel. That “Green Line” was specifically defined as never to be regarded as a border, and the 1950 Jordanian annexation of the “West Bank” was deemed illegal by the international community, marking that invisible line as a footnote in history penned in disappearing ink. No matter, anti-Semites have a long history of dictating where Jews can and cannot live, whether the Pale of Settlement in Russia or ghettoes throughout Europe.
The BBC using a map produced by B’Tselem, a group which markets itself as an “information center for human rights in the occupied territories.”
The dotted lines (at least they are dotted!) represent the 1949 Armistice Lines between Israel and Jordan, which disappeared in 1967 when Jordan attacked Israel again and lost the entirety of eastern Jerusalem and the “West Bank.” Note that the map’s legend refers to the dotted line as “pre-1967 ceasefire line,” which implies that there was a ceasefire between Israel and Palestine, as Jordan is not mentioned (this is deliberately misleading). The map’s purple areas are marked as “Israeli settlements.” Are they?
In the lower portion of the map is the Old City of Jerusalem. Marked in purple is the Jewish Quarter, a place with over 750 years of continuous Jewish presence except for the window of Arab rule when the Jordanians ethnically-cleansed all of the Jews from 1949 to 1967. According to this map, any JEW – not Israeli – living east of the Green Line (EGL) is a “settler.”
There are thousands of Israeli Arabs living in EGL including the eastern part of Jerusalem. Israel gave all the Arabs in the city permanent resident status in 1967 and has afforded them the right to apply for Israeli citizenship. Thousands have already taken such citizenship and thousands more have applied. Yet the B’Tselem/ BBC map doesn’t mark the homes of Israeli Arabs in purple but only the locations where Israeli Jews live.
Jewish men, women and children living in the Jewish Quarter of their holiest city are marked with the term “settler”
Adolf Hitler accused the Jews of being sly manipulators who steal, as he roused Germany to rout the Jews. He painted their stores with the word “Jude” and made them wear yellow Jewish stars with the word in the center, so they could be easily identifiable for insult and attack by passers-by, and interrogated and ultimately expelled for annihilation by government officials.
So it is today with the term “settler,” even in the Jewish people’s holiest city.
The Hebrew month of Elul is the last month of the year and traditionally marks the beginning period of repentance in the Jewish calendar. It is on the first day of the month that the prophet Moses ascended Mount Sinai 3,300 years ago, and forty days later, on Yom Kippur, when he descended and broke the tablets when he saw the Children of Israel worshipping beside a statue of a golden calf.
To mark the period of repentance, rabbis instituted a tradition of reciting Psalm 27 at the end of morning and evening prayers. It is a call for God to protect Jews from their enemies.
As we approach the twentieth anniversary of UN Durban Conference and the attacks of 9/11 which both occurred during Elul, and how governments and people choose to commemorate those events, two sentences in the psalm deserve deeper exploration. Sentences 11 & 12:
ה֤וֹרֵ֥נִי יְהֹוָ֗ה דַּ֫רְכֶּ֥ךָ וּ֭נְחֵנִי בְּאֹ֣רַח מִישׁ֑וֹר לְ֝מַ֗עַן שֽׁוֹרְרָֽי׃ Show me Your way, O LORD, and lead me on a level path because of my watchful foes.
אַֽל־תִּ֭תְּנֵנִי בְּנֶ֣פֶשׁ צָרָ֑י כִּ֥י קָמוּ־בִ֥י עֵדֵי־שֶׁ֝֗קֶר וִיפֵ֥חַ חָמָֽס׃ Do not subject me to the will of my foes, for false witnesses and unjust accusers have appeared against me.
While the Psalm is set up to seek God’s protection from armies (verse 3), the lines above highlight that enemies include those who wish to undermine Jews with slander. The “watchful foes” scrutinize every action and then bear “false witness” with accusations that seek to seriously harm Jews as they enter the high holidays.
The United Nations, a body conceived of to promote peace and reduce bloodshed, has become a platform for “false witnesses and unjust accusers” which lambast Israel. UN Watch noted that in 2020, the UN General Assembly passed 17 resolutions condemning Israel, while passing a total of six against the rest of the world.
Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, said that the “farce at the General Assembly underscores a simple fact: the UN’s automatic majority has no interest in truly helping Palestinians, nor in protecting anyone’s human rights; the goal of these ritual, one-sided condemnations is to scapegoat Israel.“
United States Secretary of State Colin Powell said much the same as he withdrew from the World Conference Against Racism held in Durban, South Africa on September 3, 2001:
“Today I have instructed our representatives at the World Conference Against Racism to return home. I have taken this decision with regret, because of the importance of the international fight against racism and the contribution that the Conference could have made to it. But, following discussions today by our team in Durban and others who are working for a successful conference, I am convinced that will not be possible. I know that you do not combat racism by conferences that produce declarations containing hateful language, some of which is a throwback to the days of “Zionism equals racism;” or supports the idea that we have made too much of the Holocaust; or suggests that apartheid exists in Israel; or that singles out only one country in the world–Israel–for censure and abuse.“
Flyer at 2001 World Conference Against Racism with a picture of Adolf Hitler with caption “What if I had won?” and continued that there would be no Israel nor bloodshed of Palestinians (source UN Watch)
The United Nations has promoted and given legitimacy to the “watchful foes” of Jews – both around the world and in the United States, at governmental levels, among lay leaders and ordinary citizens – to promote vicious slander against Israel and the Jewish people. As those lies are becoming mainstreamed, it is time to stop reciting Psalm 27 quietly but “with shouts of joy, singing and chanting,” (verse 6), for God to cause these evil people and organizations to “stumble and fall” (verse 2).
I had always been told that my paternal grandmother’s family came from Sighet, a decent sized town in Romania along the Ukrainian border. It was considered a small source of familial pride as it was the same home town for Eli Wiesel, the Nobel laureate who wrote about the Holocaust.
Some years ago, upon speaking to my grandmother’s brother about the place where the family grew up as my grandmother died before I was born, I learned that history takes a bit of time, both to happen and to explain.
My great uncle informed me that his family grew up in a small shtetl, a small Jewish village, some miles away from Sighet. One evening, when he was about eight years old, a fire broke out in a corner of the shtetl. All of the people in the town, including himself, rapidly lined up to pass buckets of water one to the other to help put out the flames. He recalled that while he was passing buckets he heard someone shouting that another fire had broken out on the other side of the village. The villagers started to shout how to break the line into two to deal with the second blaze, when they looked up to see a third blaze in another corner of the town. And then a fourth.
The local anti-Semites had come to incinerate their town.
He recalled how the following morning the family grabbed what belongings they could manage, and walked to Sighet as the smoke from his village filled the air. He told me the name of that former village, and as I quickly forgot the foreign sounding name, I internalized how history had forgotten it too.
So, yes, the family did live in Sighet, but it wasn’t really the town of his birth. Our family had already been routed by local anti-Semites a couple of decades before the Nazis came for the Jews of Sighet.
The alt-right relentlessly pursued the Jews of Europe and Russia for hundreds of years, sometimes as part of the ruling class and other times by the hands of a band of locals. In each circumstance, they knew how to rout the small collection of Jews.
The Four Corners of Anti-Semitism Today
In many parts of the world, the ruling class is being taken over by extremists. The alt-left made inroads in America’s Democratic Party with the Democratic Socialists of America getting seats in Congress with members including Bernie Sanders, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman. The DSA was following the playbook of the Labour Party of the United Kingdom, where Jeremy Corbyn pushed anti-Zionism, anti-Semitism and extremist ideas to take over the party.
The DSA invited disgraced anti-Semite and former leader of the British Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn to address their annual convention.
The alt-right still exists around the world and in America but shunned and sidelined by civilized society. Not so the alt-left, which has bonded with Islamic extremists to gain power, and with the alt-right in the cause of setting fire to Jewish homes.
American Jews are surrounded on all sides by anti-Semitic extremists, and there are neither sufficient volunteers to pass buckets to extinguish the flames of hatred nor to expel the sinister arsonists.
Successful race baiters become famous and powerful. They first attract attention which brings in followers, and then money and ultimately true power.
Adolf Hitler produced his manifesto called ‘Mein Kampf” meaning ‘My Struggle” which sought to air his grievances about the state of German society and the struggles of the common man. He used the Jew as his scapegoat, at times attacking the Hebrew Pinata for being poor, dirty and smelly, and at other times for being a rich banker who profited off the work of others. He portrayed the Jews as leeches which sucked the blood and labor of poor workers and profited in a sneaky plan for world domination.
Some selections on his second “powerful parasite theme”:
Jewish parasites: “In the business world things were even worse. Here the Jewish people had really become ‘indispensable.’ The spider began slowly to suck the people’s blood out of its pores. By way of the war societies one had found the instrument with which to put an end, bit by bit, to a national and free economy.“
Jews stealing in secret: “they try to cheat the whole world with their tricks; they are lazy, but with their pretended ‘silent’ work they create the appearance of an enormous and equally laborious activity; in short, they are cheats, characters of political profiteering, who hate the honest work of others. Just as such a folkish moth always appeals to the darkness of the silence, one can bet a thousand to one that under its cover he does not produce, but only steals from the fruits of the labor of others.“
Jewish profiteers and desire for world domination: “Jews are the regents of the stock exchange power of the American Union. Every year they manage to become increasingly the controlling masters of the labor power of a people of 120,000,000 souls; one great man, Ford, to their exasperation still holds out independently there even now. With rapacious cleverness they knead public opinion and form from it the instrument of a struggle for their own future. Already the greatest heads of Jewry envisage the approach of the fulfillment of the hereditary slogan of the great devouring of the nations.“
Hitler was appalled that people would come to the defense of the Jews, knowing that they profit off of the toil and suffering of others:
Don’t defend Jews who profit off your misery:“If the Hungarian government hangs ten Jewish stock exchange profiteers, whose money is sticky with the blood and the sweat of hundreds of thousands of honest people, we protest, we cry about pogroms and we demand the boycott of an entire State.”
Hitler wrote Mein Kampf in July 1925 as a poor man in prison. Within eight years he was the chancellor of Germany.
The Alt-Left’s Modern ‘Mein Kampf’
The National Socialist German Worker’s Party of the 1930’s and 1940’s was commonly called the Nazi Party. It is associated with the far right’s desire for racial purity, demonization of inferior races and elevation of proper Aryan Germans. It drew its inspiration from Hitler’s manifesto.
Today’s Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is a far-left group which shuns much of the ideology of the Nazi Party while embracing other key tenets.
It does not follow Hitler’s screed against the dirty, smelly Jew or other poor people as the party argues that it is fighting for the poor working class. Instead the alt-left goes all-in against the rich “ownership class” which robs from poor people of their work and dignity. Jews just happen to be the mascot of the evil profiteers, whether in Gaza or Detroit.
Randi Weingarten, longtime president of the American Federation of Teachers, a lobbying group with 1.7 million members which pumps millions of dollars into Democratic politicians’ pockets, declared that American Jews are “part of the ownership class…. now want to take that ladder of opportunity [education] away from those who do not have it.” (Weingarten is married to Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, who sits on the Rabbinical Committee of the left-wing group J Street, and was just appointed by President Biden to join the US religious freedom commission. An interesting spectacle of Jews eating their own).
Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), a proud member of the DSA made her own declaration about Jews:
“As I think about my family in Palestine, that continue to live under military occupation and how that really interacts with this beautiful Black city I grew up in … you know I always tell people that cutting people off from water is violence, and they do it from Gaza to Detroit, and it’s a way to control people, to oppress people. And it’s those structures that we continue to fight against. I know you all understand the structure we’ve been living under right now is designed by those who exploit the rest of us, for their own profit. I always say to people ‘I don’t care if it’s around the issue of global human rights, and our fight to free Palestine, or to pushing back against those who don’t believe in a minimum wage or those who believe we don’t have a right to healthcare and so much more.’ And I tell those same people, that if you open the curtain andlook behind the curtain, it’s the same people who make money and—yes they do—off of racism, off of these broken policies. There is someone there making money and you saw it, it was so exposed during the pandemic…. They made record profit.”
It’s a wonderful summation of Hitler’s thesis, that Jews operate in the shadows to profit off the suffering of others.
Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) speaking at a DSA event under tagline “From the Ashes of the Old: Socialism for a new tomorrow”
The DSA is remarketing key talking points of the Nazi Party under the banner “From the ashes of the old: socialism for a new tomorrow.” Who would imagine that the heirs to Hitler’s ideology that Jews are puppet masters exploiting the labor and suffering of the masses, would be Jewish and Muslim women?
When Donald Trump pushed an executive order (EO) to limit the entry into the United States of people from a few countries who were deemed to have poor border controls and many terrorists, the Democratic Party called it a “Muslim ban,” even though the order still allowed people from over forty Muslim-majority countries to enter the US. The Democratic cheerleaders in the mainstream media picked up the phrase and each used it to advance the narrative of Trump as a racist and “Islamophobe.” It wasn’t hard to do, as Trump frequently attacked various minority groups and Islam in other situations.
But the phrase “Muslim ban” made no sense in regards to the actual EO which continued to allow in people from Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia and many other Muslim war-torn countries beset by terrorism.
In sharp contrast, the media refuses to call the global effort for a boycott, sanctions and divestment from Israel (BDS) campaign, a “Jewish ban,” even though it is explicitly that on many levels.
The BDS movement is economic warfare against the only Jewish state and does not target any other country involved in a dispute over land, of which there are many. The effort is to refuse selling products or services to Israel and also to refuse buying such from the country. It attempts to block any speakers, professors, exchange students, sporting teams and athletes, as well as to push investment funds to not invest in any Israeli companies. A variant of the BDS movement only seeks to impose those restrictions against the Israeli territory of Area C in the area east of the Green Line (EGL)/ the West Bank.
The rationale behind this effort is not to protect citizens like Trump’s EO, but to punish Israel for not annexing the West Bank, which Israel has held off doing in the hopes of trading some of the land for an enduring peace with Palestinian Arabs. Israel already gave the Palestinians the entirety of the Gaza Strip and land in the West Bank which is home to 86% of the Palestinian population. The Jewish State has offered more land in various initiatives but each proposal was rejected as insufficient by the Palestinian Authority.
BDS supporters are not interested in a negotiation between the parties but full Israeli capitulation to Palestinian demands.
In the interim, BDS supporters want to enforce a number of additional Jewish bans beyond those listed above. They want to ban Jews from living, working or visiting the West Bank and the eastern part of Jerusalem. They want to bar Jews from praying at their holiest site of the Jewish Temple Mount. They want Jews to abandon their second holiest location in Hebron and the Tomb of the Jewish Patriarchs and Matriarchs to sole Muslim control.
Members of the Israeli security forces stand guard to protect Jews from Palestinian Arabs as they visit the Jewish Temple Mount on Tisha B’Av (Ninth of Av), commemorating the destruction of the Jewish temples some 2000 and 2600 years ago. (Photo by AHMAD GHARABLI / AFP)
As part of the effort, they will deny Jewish history in the holy land and engage in Holocaust denial. They will attempt to alter Arab history by declaring that Jesus was a Palestinian rather than a Jew and instead of acknowledging that Arabs invaded the holy land in the 7th century, claim that Palestinians are descendants of Canaanites and Jebusites in a comic attempt to pre-date Jews. They will further attempt to smear Jews as “colonialists” engaging in “apartheid” and “ethnic cleansing” as a core message of their campaign, in sharp contrast to reality.
The so called-“Muslim ban” was solely placed on people coming from a few countries and did not persecute citizens from those lands nor Muslims generally in the US. Not so for the BDS movement, which attacks the Jewish State and Jews globally.
When the United States placed sanctions on the Islamic Republic of Iran, it did so because the leading state sponsor of terrorism was attempting to build nuclear weapons, a matter of global security concern. When the US put limits on the ability of China to own and operate communications infrastructure, it did so because of national security concerns.
But the BDS movement is not about protecting local or global interests. It is not even about being pro-Arabs-thousands-of-miles-away who have a better situation in Israel and Area C than Arabs in all of the surrounding countries. Those Arabs in Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Libya, Iraq and elsewhere get no support from the BDS’ers, because BDS’ers aren’t pro-Arab but anti-Jew. They believe that a Jew controlling Arab land or people offends Muslim sensibilities and denies their dignity.
BDS is a movement against the Jewish State, Jews living in the holy land and Jews around the world. It is a “multipronged Jewish ban and jihad,” and should be clearly labeled as such.
There is a loud chorus of people who don’t simply disagree with some Israeli policies, they are against the entire principle of Zionism. Keith Ellison, the current Attorney General of Minnesota and former Deputy Chair of the Democratic National Council summed up this attitude when he said “Zionism, the ideological undergirding of Israel, is a debatable political philosophy.“
The objection to Zionism stems from a belief that global powers had no right to facilitate the movement of Jews to Palestine as they outlined in the 1920 San Remo Agreement and the 1922 Mandate of Palestine. The fact that Jews always moved to Israel at rates far surpassing non-Jews even during the Ottoman Empire period is actively ignored as besides the point.
Jews moved to Palestine during the Ottoman Empire at a rate that dwarved other religious groups.
The root of the Arab objection was that it was no longer a fellow Muslim entity (the Ottoman Empire) which ruled them in Palestine but Western powers. Christian nations decided they would enable the “establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people,” another non-Muslim group. Even though Jews historically lived in the land, considered the land holy and moved to the land during Ottoman rule, the local Arabs considered the non-Muslim efforts an assault on their way of life.
Consider the statement by President of Egypt Gamal Abdel Nasser in May 1967 as he readied to destroy Israel: “What is Israel? Israel today is the United States. The United States is the chief defender of Israel.” Muslim nations view the Jewish State as a foreign implant of western powers which continues to be supported by such foreigners (jihadists read ‘infidels’). It is an attitude that drives Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to demand an apology from Britain for the Balfour Declaration today.
That position manifests itself in two principal ways: hating the presence of Jews in Palestine, and protesting the sovereignty of the Jewish State of Israel.
The Presence of Jews
While Jews rapidly moved to Palestine under the Ottomans, they did so in even greater numbers under the British and then under the modern State of Israel. The influx of these people offended the Arabs who fought to curtail the immigration of Jews, even during the Holocaust as they were being wiped out in Europe, getting the British to institute the infamous 1939 White Paper. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem met with Adolf Hitler and many other Nazi leaders to make sure European Jews never made it to Palestine. Palestinian Arab efforts caused the deaths of over 100,000 Jews, many more than the total number of Arabs who died fighting Israel since the country’s founding.
Telegram from Nazi Heinrich Himmler to the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem about their shared “battle against world Jewry.”
When Israel declared itself an independent state in 1948, several Arab countries invaded with the stated goal of destroying it. After the Transjordanian army took over Judea and Samaria, it ethnically cleansed every Jew from the area and gave citizenship to everyone as long as they weren’t Jewish. During the nineteen years that the re-branded Jordan held the Old City of Jerusalem, it destroyed 56 of the 58 synagogues and wouldn’t allow any Jews to enter the city walls to pray at the Western Wall.
That Judenfrei sentiment remains. Those Jordanian Arabs are now called Palestinian Arabs in the renamed “West Bank.” The current head, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said he “would not see the presence of a single Israeli – civilian or soldier – on our lands,” calling to ethnically-cleanse Jews from the region once again. Palestinian law makes it a crime – either with a death sentence or life in prison – for selling land to Jews.
Today, many pro-Palestinians continue to argue that the mere presence of Jews is an affront to Palestinian pride. White House correspondent Helen Thomas said Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine” and “go home” to Poland, Germany, America and “everywhere else.” In October 2014, President Barack Obama’s spokesperson said the Obama administration condemns Jews who move into “residential buildings in the neighborhood of Silwan” because their “agenda provokes tensions.” This inversion blamed new Jewish neighbors for the anti-Semitism of the local Arabs.
The Sovereignty of a Jewish State
Some anti-Zionists are less triggered by the physical presence of Jews and more by the notion of a Jewish State. They object to a land which had a Muslim majority for a thousand years suddenly having a flag with a Jewish star and an anthem reflecting the yearning of Jews. Many Muslims regard this as a direct insult to Islam.
Shortly after the founding of Israel, the Muslim world routed almost all of its local Jews. Almost all Muslim countries still refuse to recognize the Jewish State over 70 years later. Other Islamic regimes are more aggressive such as Iran, which said that Israel is “cancerous tumor” (a dangerous foreign entity) that “will undoubtedly be uprooted and destroyed.”
The Palestinians are divided between those who want to see the Jewish State destroyed (HAMAS/Gaza) and those who won’t recognize it (Fatah/West Bank), like PA President Abbas who said “We will never recognize the Jewishness of the state of Israel.” The Palestinian objection to Jewish sovereignty is so ingrained that leadership would forgo establishing a new Palestinian Arab State if it also required recognizing Israel as a Jewish State. It begs the question of whether Palestinians truly are “desperate” for independence and sovereignty or to be rid of the Jewish State.
Many non-Muslim anti-Zionists hold common cause decrying Israel. While there may be dozens of Islamic states as well as religious Christian democracies like Denmark and Greece, Palestinian supporters shout absurd smears of “Jewish supremacy” and “apartheid” against the liberal country which has more rights for all of its citizens than any country within 1,000 miles.
Anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism
People debate whether anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism in a more politically-acceptable form. As reviewed here, one needs to look at the nuances of anti-Zionism to reach the conclusion.
In the first instance – the people who do not want Jewish neighbors and would go so far as to support the genocide of the Jews in Europe – the answer is clear that they despise Jews. Palestinian Arabs are overwhelming anti-Semitic as further shown in recent ADL polls which show 93% of West Bank and Gaza Arabs hold anti-Jewish views.
Regarding the notion of Jewish sovereignty, it is true that the idea of creating a Jewish State 100 years ago may have been “debatable” to quote Ellison but Israel is a well established reality. The country is more stable, more democratic, more open and thriving compared to all of the countries which surround it. To call for the country’s destruction (as Iran does) or to call for boycotts and divestment only against this country for perceived short-comings is a poor double-standard which reeks of anti-Semitism.
The majority of Palestinians are complete anti-Zionists, objecting to both the presence of Jews and the sovereignty of Jews in the holy land. Most Muslim countries are less extreme and do not object to Jews living in Israel as long as they become a minority living under an Islamic flag. Other Muslim countries have normalized relations with the Jewish State, noting that the country is a wonderful trading partner and not going anywhere.
Outside of the Muslim world, liberal anti-Zionists believe that they are siding with the stateless Arab underdogs as part of their religion of empathy. However, they all-too-often adopt the anti-Semitic language and philosophy of anti-Zionism: seeking to minimize the presence of Jews in their ancestral and holy land, as well as to obliterate the only Jewish State.
Vocal anti-Zionists Keith Ellison, Helen Thomas and Linda Sarsour who said “Nothing is creepier than Zionism.”
Some anti-Zionists might object to these two categories and suggest they do not object to Jews as neighbors, just as invaders. That argument simply means they deny Jewish history which is also anti-Semitic. Others could protest that “Zionism is Racism” is a commonly held belief, as demonstrated at the 2001 Durban Conference to combat Racism. The reality is that there is a lot of systemic hatred, such as the reality that most of the world also considers homosexuality a crime which does not absolve the anti-LGBT sentiment, much as anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist laws do not wash the hateful stain. Anti-Semitism remains a large global problem in its many forms.
Thousands of years ago, it made sense to focus on the narrow strip of land that acted as a bridge between Africa and Europe / Asia, but no longer, in this larger, connected world.
The ongoing critical obsession on a country with 0.1% of the global population which is home to the most persecuted people in history which suffered both a genocide in the European continent and a mass expulsion from the Muslim Middle East / North Africa within the last century should raise immediate alarms. That the goal of much of the criticism of the Jewish State is to weaken it militarily and economically or even to destroy Jewish autonomy in their ancestral home and religious capital is terrifying, and must be combatted aggressively.
A person can be in favor of yet another Arab state to join the dozens of others without being an anti-Zionist. However, one cannot be an anti-Zionist without being an anti-Semite.
Judaism is the only religion which is tied to a specific land, the land of Israel.
Judaism created the very notion of “promised land,” not as an aspirational dream as commonly used today, but as an actual piece of land passed as an inheritance for generations.
Only Jews consider the Jewish Temple Mount in Jerusalem as their holiest location.
Jews are the only people who pray facing Jerusalem, regardless of where they are.
Only Jews are commanded to visit Jerusalem three times per year.
The Old City of Jerusalem including the Jewish Temple Mount during Passover
Jerusalem is the most mentioned city in the Hebrew bible.
Jerusalem has been the focal point of Judaism for over 3,000 years.
Israel is the only country whose national anthem is all about its capital city.
Jews have been the largest group of residents in Jerusalem continuously since the 1860’s. There is no other capital where Jews are the majority.
Israel is the only Jewish State.
Israel is also the only country:
which is not recognized by dozens of countries at the United Nations
whose capital city is not recognized by the majority of the members of the UN
which is singled out as a routine part of the UN’s Human Rights Council
where Jewish and non-Jewish residents in the eastern part of the capital are attributed different names of “settler” and “resident” in the non-Jewish world
Jerusalem and Israel are unique and special to Jews. The passion of its lovers and haters regarding the exceptional Jewish connection to both says more about their overall attitudes towards Jews than the locations themselves.
How an organization markets itself says a lot about who they are targeting for customers. A business or organization which has a product for seniors will feature older people in their advertisements to attract them as buyers. One that wants to portray its products as flexible might cast athletic actors in various positions to showcase their wares.
The media industry is no different. A conservative media company might show an ad with a leading conservative politician, say Sen, Ted Cruz (R-TX) and a liberal one would showcase a liberal one, say Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). The product for them are the opinions which the viewer likes to hear.
So what does it tell you about a program that opts to feature a controversial politician who has repeatedly used anti-Semitic tropes?
MSNBC’s Morning Joe plugs its own show during commercials. While it did feature leading liberal politicians like Rep. Nancy Peolsi (D-CA) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), it led the ad with Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN).
Omar is not simply a far-left extremist in the Democratic Party. She has repeatedly been rebuked by both Republicans and Democrats for attacking Jews and the Jewish State. Her appearances on the program were not forceful interviews of her positions but a series of softball questions for her to spout her extreme views to millions of people while putting her into the mainstream.
Liberal media has become an open mic for left-wing Jew-haters, and it is currently proud to advertise as much.
There was a time when people understood what genocide meant.
They saw the brutality of Nazi Germany’s largely successful effort to exterminate the Jews in Europe. They read about China, the USSR and Turkey killing millions of their own citizens during the 20th century, and recall Rwanda’s civil war with 800,000 people wiped out in just 100 days. Genocide was the brutal slaughter of an entire unwanted ethnic group.
There was a time when people recognized the evil of unjustly accusing people of “genocide.”
In December 2013, United Nations’ Special Rapporteur Richard Falk called Israel “genocidal,” whereupon Canada immediately called for Falk to be fired. In 2017, when Falk tried to push through a report at the UN calling Israel an “apartheid” regime, US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley got the report withdrawn. Horrific lies and smears were met with outrage and action.
No longer. The steady drip of anti-Israel propaganda has taken root and decent people are now running for cover from the hate-filled tsunami.
Shrill voices on college campuses are claiming that Israel is committing a “genocide” against Palestinian Arabs, coming from the mouths of both professors and students at institutions like Rutgers and Yale. The charge is “ethnic cleansing” of Muslim Arabs at UCLA and CUNY.
Students of Yale accusing Israel of “genocide and ethnic cleansing”
The accusations are outrageous.
Lies. At the most basic level, the statements are outright lies, as the Arab population in Israel and Jerusalem have not only grown faster than Jews in the country and capital city, but have grown at a faster rate than Arabs in the neighboring countries as well.
Inversions of Perpetrator and Victim. Worse than the fabrication is the attempted inversion of the fanatic Muslim anti-Semitic attackers into victims. Palestinian leadership conspired with Nazi Germany to kill Jews and worked with the British to keep Jews fleeing for the lives from entering Palestine. After the brutal slaughter of 6 million Jews, the Muslim Arabs went to war to wipe out the paltry number of Jews who made it to safety in Palestine. Losing that 1948-9 Arab-Israeli war, the Muslim world expunged nearly a million local Jews in a massive ethnic cleansing. They attempted to annihilate the Jews gain in 1967, only to lose the war – and land – once again. Since 2000, localized terrorism has been the preferred vehicle to express their disgust with Jewish neighbors. When Jews defend themselves from attacks, anti-Semites attempt to portray them as offensive, such as labeling the security barrier Israel built in response to Palestinian Arab terrorism as an “apartheid wall.”
Anti-Semitic Propaganda. Even more dangerous than the lies and offensive inversion of victim and attacker is the motivation for the smears. Like the Nazis who put forth a propaganda machine to label the Jews as degenerates and conspirators to enlist the masses in the purge of the Jews, today’s calls against the Jewish State are designed to weaken and isolate it, while enemies in Muslim countries like Iran and Syria along with their terrorist clients including Hamas and Hezbillah prepare to attack again. The chants of “Free Palestine” and “From the River to the Sea” are the stated goals of destroying Israel accompanying the foundational slurs of Jewish “colonialists” committing “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide.” They are attempting to educate the world that Jews never had rights to land or sovereignty in the holy land, and are evil invaders unworthy of a state and support.
In 2001, just before nineteen Muslim hijackers took civilian airplanes to kill thousands of people on American soil, anti-Semites cloaked as “anti-racists” hijacked the 2001 Durban Conference. The United States withdrew from the horrific spectacle at that time, and now, twenty years later, continues to distances itself from the anniversary commemoration. Alas, the insidious “Zionism is Racism” Redux propaganda has already infected the West.
The noxious “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” smears against Israel which used to only emanate from the mouths of jihadists are now being echoed on college campuses, the liberal mainstream media and the halls of Congress. This vilification of Israel is designed to set the stage for the eradication of the reestablished Jewish State, much as Nazi propaganda facilitated the genocide of European Jewry. While the slanderers self-identify as “pro-Palestinian protestors,” history will refer to them as Hamas’ Willing Executioners.
The spike in anti-Semitism right after the latest skirmish between the Palestinian political-terrorist group Hamas and Israel seemingly caught many people off guard even though the same thing happened in 2014. The surprise is rooted in the delusion that the conflict is between two ethnic groups (Arabs and Jews), when in fact it is a religious war between Muslims and Jews, much like the crusader wars between Christians and Muslims centuries ago. The religious battles in the holy land quickly ignite anti-Semitism globally, especially when holy sites are involved.
Sovereignty: Islamic Ottomans versus Zionist Jews
Various peoples have ventured through the holy land over thousands of years, as the small strip of land is the only corridor connecting Africa on one hand, and Europe and Asia on the other. Different races, religions and ethnicities came and went with sovereignty falling under different regimes.
From 1517 to 1917, the Ottoman Turks ruled the region as part of its vast empire. The Ottomans were Islamic and gave preference to members of its faith. Early in its rule, Ottomans kicked Jews off of the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest location, and relegated them to a small part of the western supporting wall of the Temple Mount. That area, the Kotel, has since become the stand-in for Jews for their sacred spot. Similarly, the Islamists forbade Jews from entering the Cave of the Jewish Patriarchs and Matriarchs in Hebron.
When the British and French defeated the Ottomans in World War I, they divided the empire into distinct mandates which would ultimately become various countries including Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Israel. Upon announcing that the Jews would get to reestablish their homeland in the Balfour Declaration which became codified in international law in the 1920 San Remo Agreement and 1922 Mandate of Palestine, the Muslim Arab world went berserk. It was one thing for the far-away, non-Arab Ottoman regime to rule Palestine, but at least they were Muslims. It was an insult to Islamic pride to have the land ruled by Jews.
GoodbyeJewish Neighbors
Once the notion of Jewish sovereignty was introduced, the basic presence of Jews became a problem.
Muslim Arabs slaughtered Hebron’s Jews in 1929, making the British feel that the removal of Jews from the city was the right course of action rather than punishing the murderers. The British would fold to Muslim Arab anti-Semitism again after their multi-year riots from 1936 to 1939, and instituted the White Paper which forbade the Jews fleeing Nazi Europe to enter Palestine, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Jews.
During World War II, the Mufti of Jerusalem met frequently with Hitler and other Nazi leaders to conspire against the Jews, making sure they were killed and could not flee to Palestine.
Telegram from Nazi Heinrich Himmler to Islamic Mufti of Jerusalem on the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration talking about “the battle against world Jewry.”
After the war, in the shadow of the Holocaust, Muslim nations routed Jews from their lands, with roughly one million Jews fleeing Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria, Libya, Yemen and elsewhere. These were not Zionists but Jewish neighbors who had lived for hundreds of years in Muslim lands. They were attacked simply for sharing the faith with Jews in Israel.
Whether in Europe, the Middle East or North Africa, Christians and Muslims trounced the local Jewish communities.
Toxic Islamic Anti-Semitism
While the Christian world rethought systemic anti-Semitism in the Second Vatican Council of 1965, the anti-Semitic toxicity level continued to spread among Muslims, especially after their defeat in 1967 when they went from smug warriors about to finish off the Jews a mere generation after the Holocaust, to embarrassed losers in just a week.
The 1988 Hamas Charter remains the most anti-Semitic foundational document of any political party ever written. It combines the vileness of Hitler’s Mein Kampf with the Russian forgery Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It blames Jews for starting all wars for profit, controlling the media and global resources as well as “uncleanliness, vileness and evils.” The document calls upon Muslims around the world to fight the Jews and kill them in a messianic jihad. “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it…. Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious…. the Palestinian problem is a religious problem, and should be dealt with on this basis…. Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Moslem people.” The conflict is anchored through the lens of a religious war against Jews and Judaism.
The charter makes clear that the issue is not 1967 borders or even 1948 borders, but that “struggle against the Zionist invaders… goes back to 1939,” the beginning of the Holocaust. For Hamas, the core of the issue is that Jews survived the Holocaust and came to Palestine. The root of the current hastags #Hitlerwasright has nothing to do with a property dispute in Sheikh Jarrah in eastern Jerusalem, but that the Jews continue to exist.
Regular Islamic Anti-Semitism
Not all Muslims believe that all Jews are sinister and must be punished for re-assuming sovereignty of the holy land as they had thousands of years ago. Many are garden-variety anti-Semites.
In 2005, the Palestinians voted a man who wrote his doctoral thesis on Holocaust denial, Mahmoud Abbas, as their new president. The following year they voted the political-terrorist group Hamas to 58% of the parliament. In 2014, the ADL conducted a poll which found that 93% of Palestinian Arabs – almost every single person polled – held anti-Semitic views.
Beyond the holy land, a 2015 ADL poll found that Muslims around the world were two to five times more likely to be anti-Semites than Christians in the same country.
When Palestinians poll themselves they continue to favor Hamas. A June 2021 poll found that 59% would vote for Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas for president. They are overwhelmingly in favor of attacking Jewish Israeli civilians inside Israel.
As further proof that the dispute is between religions and not ethnic groups, Hamas’s biggest sponsors are not Arab countries but non-Arab Islamic countries of Turkey and Iran (which has threatened to wipe Israel off the map). Religion, not ethnicity, drives the conflict.
The Sensitivity of Religious Sites
While Muslim Arabs object to Jews living anywhere in what they perceive as an Islamic waqf, the sensitivity is heightened around religious sites. The Muslim world calls for “days of rage” when anything happens around Jerusalem and especially the al Aqsa Mosque. Even during peaceful times, Muslim Mourabitoun harass Jewish visitors to the Jewish Temple Mount, while they simultaneously leave Christian visitors alone.
The Indignity of the “Jewish State”
Underscoring the religious dimension of the conflict is the refusal of Palestinian Authority President to accept Israel as the “Jewish State,” even though doing so costs nothing in terms of the main desires of Palestinian Arabs which seek sovereignty and to move into neighborhoods where ancestors once lived. Abbas would be willing to forgo an independent Muslim Arab state if he has to simultaneously acknowledge Jewish sovereignty in Israel.
The Broader World’s Embrace of Muslim Anti-Semitism
The non-Muslim world has accepted many of the Muslim charges, seemingly re-connecting with its own historic toxic anti-Semitism.
Only Jewish Israelis moving east of the 1949 Armistice Lines are labeled with the unique term “settlers,” while Muslim Israeli Arabs moving to eastern Jerusalem or other parts of the West Bank are simply called “Palestinians.” Airbnb has one policy for Jews renting homes in the West Bank and another for non-Jewish neighbors renting out their homes. Europe seeks to have distinct labels for products coming from Jewish businesses in the West Bank and a different one for Muslim businesses. The dividing line is not whether the owner is Israeli or Palestinian but whether the Israeli is Jewish or Muslim.
The examples go on.
The two-state solution has been long been marketed as creating sovereign entities for two ethnic groups – Jews and Arabs – but that has always been a myth. The Arabs already have dozens of countries and Palestinian Arabs were content being part of Muslim Arab Jordan from 1949 to 1967 and the Muslim non-Arab Ottoman Empire from 1517 to 1917. The conflict stems from the massive Muslim world’s distaste for the single small Jewish state. The Islamists proposed solution is ideally to wipe the Jewish State off the map. Failing that, making the country exceptionally small, without control of any religious sites, and converted into a bi-national (non-Jewish) state is the most they could accept.
The “Palestinian-Israeli” or “Arab-Israeli” Conflict is actually the “Muslim-Jewish Conflict over the Holy Land.” It is therefore no surprise that flare-ups in Israel rooted in noxious Palestinian Muslim anti-Semitism should ignite the same vile reactions against local Jews around the world, led by regional Muslim fanatics and abetted by other willing anti-Semites.
First One Through 