Gaslighting is the action of repeatedly lying to someone to make them question their sanity and truth in order to control them. It is typically used in a relationship between two people where the liar continues to fabricate reality to make the other party docile to blindly follow the wishes of the deceiver.
The Palestinians and anti-Zionists use the disinformation technique in the media and schools to fictionalize Jewish history, in order to dismantle the Jewish State.
Holocaust Denial
Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority wrote his doctoral thesis on Holocaust denial. It remains a foundation of his worldview.
On September 6, 2023, Abbas claimed that Adolf Hitler wasn’t really an anti-Semite but hated Jews because of their “social role” and actions in society. The goal of the statement was clear: Jews brought their own destruction upon themselves through bad behavior. Palestinians are similarly not the antisemites portrayed in polls (93% according to the ADL), but hate Jews because of their actions in Israel/Palestinian territories.
Holocaust denial is part of the fabric of Palestinian society at this point. In August 2022, Abbas said that the Israelis had perpetuated “50 Holocausts” upon the Palestinians. Hamas, which controls 58% of the Palestinian parliament, wrote in its 1988 foundational charter that Jews are behind all of wars in the world and behave like Nazis themselves.
The world is picking up the vile Holocaust denial and inserting it into the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Roger Cohen wrote an editorial in The New York Times that equated the Holocaust and the Nakba. Nikolas Kristof wrote that today’s Anne Frank is a Syrian Girl trying to flee a civil war. Somehow the methodical targeting of defenseless Jews by their own government for torture and annihilation has become a metaphor for a migraine.
The steady toxic drip is intended to make Jews forget and distort the horrors of the Holocaust to advance pro-Palestinian goals. Perhaps some Israeli Jews will move to their grandparents’ countries in Europe. Maybe Israel will lay down its defensive weapons and let Iran build a nuclear weapon and not react to Palestinian terrorism with such force. Surely if the Europeans and United States who fought and defeated the evil Nazis echo Holocaust denial, Jews may join the chorus and revise their understanding of the slaughter of the last generation.
Israel is NOT the Homeland of Jews
Abbas’s September 6 speech led off with a history lesson that European Jews are not really Jews but converts from Khazar.
All of them.
Every European Jew that was forced to convert to Christianity or Islam, or was killed in pogroms, the Inquisition or the Holocaust over the past 1,100 years weren’t even real Jews.
Abbas is trying to miseducate the world that he cannot be an antisemite for hating Israeli Jews because their not even Semites. Further, they cannot claim any roots in the holy land laid out in the Bible because they are only newer converts in the case of Ashkenazi Jews, and Mizrachi Jews are actually from the Arabian peninsula (3:10 in speech).
The Palestinian leader called the United Kingdom and the United States “enemies” of the Palestinian people (4:30 in speech) for advancing the Balfour Declaration and the Palestine Mandate which recognized “the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine” when those Ashkenazi Jews had no historical connection to the land.
Abbas also absolved the Arab world for expunging its Jews after World War II. He accused Israeli Prime Minister Ben Gurion of making life unbearable for the Jews in the Muslim world so they would be forced to flee to Israel (5:50 in the speech).
Abbas gaslighted Jews that the Muslim world is not antisemitic and did not chase one million Jews out of their homes. Jews did it to themselves, much as Abbas’ doctoral thesis claimed that Zionists convinced Hitler to make life impossible for Jews in Europe to force them to immigrate to a land that was not even their homeland.
Repeated often enough, gaslighting works. People adopt the new narrative and blindly follow the parties with the power to mark history. Jews did it to themselves, as seen in millions of Jews who believe that the Kotel, the Western wall in Jerusalem, is Judaism’s holiest space and not the Temple Mount itself.
There is a new group called The Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism which is trying to decouple the study of Zionism from Jewish Studies program in universities, and place it in “settler colonial studies” and put it in the context of “repressive work and solidarities” since “Zionism’s project extends beyond the borders of Palestine.” These efforts are now being pushed in the University of California school systems and at New York University. While there is pushback, over time, the antisemitic radicals will likely prevail.
The insidious inanity that Zionism is racism AND colonialism will eventually be taught to your children.
The binding of Palestinian antisemitism with Critical Race Theory is part of the global intifada to divorce Jews from the holy land and paint them as evil interlopers. The disinformation campaign is being waged to isolate Jews and make them doubt their own history and moral standing, to ultimately cave to the jihadist demands of the Palestinian wolves next door.
New York City is home to the largest Jewish diaspora. It is also home to some of the worst antisemitism in the world.
According to the ADL, 2022 was the worst reported year of antisemitic attacks since it started tracking incidents in 1979, and New York State and New York City had record breaking numbers of incidents. The NYPD data showed that Jews were the most targeted ethnic group by a wide margin.
The city now has members on the city council (left-wing DSA member Shahana Hanif) who refuse to condemn Jew hatred in the city saying Jews don’t care for anyone but themselves. Two DSA-supported members of congress from the NYC area, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman are both openly hostile to the Jewish State, a phenomenon never seen in the metropolitan area’s history.
So it was curious to see how the news reacted to New York City mayor Eric Adams visiting Israel in August 2023.
The Jewish sites zeroed in on the current wave of Jew hatred. The Times of Israel led with the mayor coming to Jerusalem to combat antisemitism. The Algemeiner led with the same, and added a bit about learning about Israeli technology. The Forward also focused on the same issues. The Jerusalem Post captured Adam’s first day of touring discussing his meeting with various faith groups to fight against antisemitism.
The New York Times went in the opposite direction. It made the trip predominantly about Adams seeking reelection and wanting to win over Orthodox Jewish voters in New York. The NYT article didn’t delve into the trip’s focus on antisemitism until the third to last paragraph. Much of the article was about political crises and New Yorkers being unhappy about the direction of the Jewish State “who fear Israel is abandoning its democratic traditions.” When it wrote about the mayor’s visit to an interfaith group it was to “address global problems, such as migrant crises and wars,” not Jew hatred.
While The New York Post also led with a focus on politics, it had a very different narrative than the NYT. It spent time discussing antisemitism towards the top of the article: “Adams spent Monday speaking with Jewish, Muslim, Christian and Druze representatives in Israel, saying now is the time to act on one’s faith, according to the Times of Israel. “What we learn in our churches, synagogues and mosques cannot remain in the sterilized environment of our places of faith,” the mayor said. Hizzoner’s visit also comes as antisemitic violence continues throughout the five boroughs, although hate crimes citywide declined by approximately 8% compared to last year, based on a recent NYPD report.” It tied the meeting with interfaith group to fighting antisemitism, not migrant crises as the Times opted to write.
The exact same story told from three different perspectives: Jewish publications focused on rampant antisemitism in NYC; New York’s right-leaning paper implied a city broadly supporting Israel and worried about antisemitism; and the left-wing Times which conveyed that New Yorkers generally disliking the current Israeli government and not very worried about global or local antisemitism.
The media writes for its audience, and The New York Times’ readers do not like Israel and aren’t very concerned about antisemitism.
By tracking current manifestations of heinous antisemitism around the world, one can find trendlines and commonalities. Consider some of today’s worst offenses.
Robert Bowers killed eleven Jewish worshipers in a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018, in the deadliest anti-Semitic attack on U.S. soil. He had come to believe a conspiracy theory that Jews are bringing in foreigners to replace White people in the country.
According to the ADL (anti-defamation league), 2022 had the most antisemitic incidents over the past decades, totaling 3,697, a 32% rise from the prior year. According to Statistica, that represents a CAGR (compounded annual growth rate) of over 19% since 2013 when there were 751 incidents.
In Europe, 2009 was the worst year for antisemitic incidents with 1,118, which dropped to 371 in 2020.
In regards to violent antisemitic attacks, the United Kingdom had a far greater total than any other country, with 173 in 2021. That compares to 28 in the United States according to Statistica. When normalizing for the Jewish population in each country, Austria was actually the worst country with 7.8 violent attacks per 100,000 Jews. While Austria killed or purged almost all of its Jews in World War II, many Eastern European Jews have settled in and around Vienna over the recent decades.
The single most deadly attack against Jews was the bombing of the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, Argentina which killed 85 people and wounded over 300 in July 1994. The Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah together with Iranian support conducted the attack.
The ADL did a global survey of antisemitism in 2014 which it has periodically updated for certain regions. Muslim countries were by far the most anti-Jewish, with almost every Arab in the West Bank and Gaza harboring antisemitic attitudes. Consider that Muslim antisemitic countries have NO JEWS living in their borders and haven’t had any for decades.
Antisemitism is not just about statistics. There are many laws, policies and people which are clearly antisemitic.
The most blatant antisemitic policy is barring Jews from praying at their holiest site on the Jewish Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The United Nations and almost every country supports the disgraceful policy, calling it the “status quo”, as if that defends the blatantly anti-Jewish action.
The most antisemitic international law was passed in December 2016, UN Security Council Resolution 2334 which declared it illegal for Jews to live east of the 1949 Armistice Lines, including in the eastern part of Jerusalem and the Old City. While the resolution mentions ‘Israel’, the term ‘settlers’ and ‘settlements’ has been used exclusively for Jews (whether or not Israeli) and excludes Israeli Arabs. Banning Jews from living somewhere – let alone in their holiest city and in the center of the Jewish holy land – is disgustingly antisemitic.
College campuses routinely engage in antisemitism, calling Israel a ‘colonial entity,’ which negates the thousands of years of Jewish history in the land. Negating a people’s heritage so routinely is outrageously antisemitic.
One college professor did more than deny Jewish history. Joseph Massad of Columbia University audaciously declared that the Jews in the Bible are actually ‘Palestinian Hebrews!’ Cultural and historical appropriation at its most egregious. Massad is Jordanian and claims Palestinian as his nationality.
If it sounds too crazy that a New York City Ivy League school should have an insane antisemitic teacher espousing such views, consider that the AMCHA Initiative found that Harvard University had the most antisemitic incidents of all US campuses in the 2021-2022 academic year, a total of 25, nearly double the number of the second place school.
The most antisemitic member of congress today is also a Palestinian-American like Columbia’s Massad, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI). She told an audience of alt-left socialists in 2021 that Jews hide in the shadows controlling people for profit, from ‘Gaza to Detroit.’
By far the most antisemitic governmental charter is the Hamas Charter of 1988, belonging to the popular terrorist group which has 58% of the seats in the Palestinian Authority’s parliament. In addition to saying that Jews extort people (article 20), that they were behind the global wars (articles 22 and 32) and destroy societies and values (article 28), it states “Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious” (preamble) and calls for Moslems to kill Jews and destroy the Jewish State (opening, articles 7, 31, 32, 33 and 34).
The Simon Wiesenthal Center ranked the top ten worst antisemitic incidents of 2022 and gave top scores to the major influencers who fan the flames of hatred. It highlighted Kanye West’s bilestorm against Jews in which he said that Jews control Black people, aren’t even real Jews, and that he wants to kill them. After spewing so much hate, former President Donald Trump hosted him at his house together with Nick Fuentes, another raging antisemite.
To counterbalance this negativity, a March 2023 Pew Research poll found that most US adults had a favorable opinion of Jews, whether or not they knew someone personally.
There are a few take-aways from this collection of anti-Semitic incidents and people.
You don’t need to live near Jews or know any to be filled with antisemitism. Ayaan Hirsi Ali pointed this out in a Wall Street Journal editorial in July 2019, that she grew up in Somalia and was essentially breast-fed Jew-hatred even though she never met a Jew. Almost all of the leading antisemitic countries have no Jews but an ingrained culture of Jew hatred.
Violence against Jews necessitates their presence, so while Muslim Jew-free countries are the most antisemitic, the highest frequency of violent attacks happens where Jews have a long history of persecution and have recently started to move to again (Austria #1, Germany #3).
Universities – not just including, but especially prestigious schools – are normalizing antisemitism and ushering in violence against Jews. It is being accomplished through a combination of billions of dollars of Middle East money funneled into the schools and a twisted view of Jews and the Jewish State being elite racists who must be fought aggressively in the name of intersectionality.
Influencers are increasingly vocal about their antisemitism and comfortable with their antisemitic friends. Politicians like Donald Trump, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and Marjorie Taylor Greene, as well as supermodel Bella Hadid and basketball star Kyrie Irving talk directly to millions of social media “followers” about Jewish conspiracies. Their followers listen to the nonsense, which ignites more Jew hatred and violence.
Palestinians’ perception of themselves as victims of Jews weaponized their antisemitism. Time has embedded the notion and has continued to transform their Jew-hatred in various toxic ways. People and governments sympathetic to their situation have given their noxious antisemitism absolution, spreading the vile propaganda far-and-wide.
The common theme is that Jew hatred is taught – in communities and schools and from influencers – and the number of dangerous teachers and the size of the global student body are rapidly growing. Whether via the passive vile drip or in the active embrace of the jaundiced narratives for those with whom people feel charged emotional connection, antisemitism is becoming pervasive once again. And as the cancerous worldview spreads, antisemitic policies and laws get mainstreamed and enacted.
In this world so distrustful of information, lesson plans are built on emotions, and nothing rings the register and feels so familiar as the touchstone of Jew bashing.
In the aftermath of The Great War, Germans fought amongst themselves in local riots trying to attain power amidst the highest inflation in years. Disgruntled masses used their new democratic rights to air radical views, as the rulers in their defeated lands were cast as failed and incompetent.
The phobia of the middle class was fertile soil for agitators. Activists took to printing fliers and giving speeches in beer halls to instigate the mob.
Adolf Hitler was among them, part of the German Worker’s Party, later to become the most infamous.
Hitler’s provocative nature got him into arguments with small groups at the time but by the following year, he was addressing thousands.
On February 24, 1920, Hitler took the stage at the Hofbrauhaus beer hall in Munich and addressed nearly 2,000 people. He laid out his 25-point plan designed to empower the labor movement. It called for a right to work, seizing profits and income that did not come from work, a redistribution of profits, an end to the dominance of capitalism, a large welfare state, and a remaking of the educational system.
The plan also zeroed in on Jews and immigrants. It declared that no Jew is or can be a German and therefore all are ineligible for citizenship. It labeled Jews as inherently materialistic and opposed to everything which Germany stood for. It sought to stop immigration of non-Germans.
As part of the platform, Hitler called for a control of the press which he said spread lies. He demanded that only those he deemed as “German” could be writers and own financial interests in the press.
While Hitler’s speech was initially heckled, by the end of the talk, the crowd cheered. They embraced his call for a revolution to end capitalism, redistribute wealth, remake the educational system, seize control of the press and expunge the Jews.
The movement gained momentum and followers, so changed its name to a national organization, the National Socialist German Worker’s Party, commonly known as the Nazi Party. By the 1930s, the party grew to 400,000 people and would soon gain seats in government. It removed Jews from positions in government, lines of business and seized their property. Within a decade, it launched a war which killed millions, including one-third of Europe’s Jews.
Democratic Socialists of America, Working Families Party, Justice Democrats 2017-Present
In the United States, the Working Families Party has been around since 1998, fielding far left-wing candidates, while sometimes backing more “mainstream” Democratic candidates aligned with many of its views, such as Massachusetts’s Senator Elizabeth Warren. It has many overlaps with the Democratic Socialists of America, seeing the core of their beliefs in socialism. Their common goal to “achieve equitable distribution of resources” is deeply anti-capitalist. Their champion is Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders who frequently derides capitalism.
The extreme left-wing did not have sway in politics until the arrival of Donald Trump to the presidency. His election launched a countering force in a new powerful group called Justice Democrats in January 2017. In the 2018 election cycle it fielded 12 candidates including Alexandria Ocasio Cortez who won in New York. Six other endorsed candidates also won.
The platform of the Justice Democrats includes several items which ring familiar from Hitler’s platform a century earlier. It includes: a redistribution of wealth in “reclaim[ing] lost capital and put money back in the pockets of hard-working Americans” because “growing disparities in income and wealth among our nation’s people have long-term impacts on our population“; “Enact[ing] a Federal Jobs Guarantee“; vilifying the government in a call to “Abolish ICE” because “it has turned into a state-funded terror group“, among other demands.
The progressive fringe were open about their plans for wealth redistribution in 2019. While running for president, Democrat Bill De Blasio said “There’s plenty of money in this city. It’s just in the wrong hands.” The goal was to seize wealth from those deemed undeserving and transfer it to working families, a clear effort to buy votes with illegal theft.
While the radical groups began to coalesce into a force during the Trump administration, the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020-1 instilled a greater sense of government incompetence and fear of one’s neighbors actually being able to kill them and their parents with their physical presence. As in the high inflationary post-World War I Germany, the riots about police brutality and COVID ushered in a ripe market for political agitators. The backdrop enabled the alt-left extremists to gather more power in the 2020 and 2022 election cycles. New members of congress like Rashia Tlaib (D-MI) and Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) came to power with the backing of the radical rhetoric to “defund the police”, change schools by teaching critical race theory, and push a massive effort to redistribute wealth.
Where today’s American Socialists and the Nazis differ is regarding immigrants. The American left-wing fringe views them as the core of “working families”, whereas they label Whites as inherently racist. However, the Jews are viewed with identical disdain, the elite and capitalist among the White racist class.
The Center of Intersectionality- Antisemitic Muslim Women of Color
The far left-wing backing the “average working person” as a person of color has led to its candidates being almost exclusively non-White. While they may sometimes support slightly more mainstream politicians like Senators Warren (D-MA) and Sanders (D-VT), the movement is driven by minorities.
The most vocal anti-Semites in this alt-left fringe are Muslim Women. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) are the most prominent and powerful, having national platforms in congress. New York City Council member Shahana Hanif is a local politician in the largest and most Jewish city in America, while other agitators include Linda Sarsour, Zahra Billoo and recent CUNY law graduate Fatima Mohammed. More than only advancing the “burn it down” mentality, they advocate a revolution which targets Jews as the enemy.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI)
Rashida Tlaib is a Palestinian-American Muslim woman representing Michigan’s 12th district since 2019. Her shrill voice in congress started immediately as she declared that “we’re going to impeach the motherf*cker,” referring to President Trump. Her zealous attacks have also come for Israel, with lies that it commits “apartheid.” She proposed several anti-Israel pieces of legislation and advocates for the destruction of the Jewish State with tweets “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” She has even demanded an Israel litmus test for anyone to be included in the progressive camp.
Omar’s comments continued to inflame people when she dismissed the radical jihadists who killed nearly 3,000 people on 9/11/2011 with a passing “some people did something,” and later compared the terrorist groups Hamas and the Taliban to Israel and the United States. She has also yelled at people who do not label Israel as an “apartheid” state, saying “they need to get on the right side of history.” She attacks her attackers by claiming that they are racist, misogynistic and Islamophobes, to deflect from her own ingrained racism and antisemitism.
Linda Sarsour is not an elected official but hobnobs with many. She’s led the Women’s March and is a loud voice alternately yelling disgusting and stupid lies that Israel is an apartheid state and that Jesus was a Palestinian. She’s vilified Zionism, tweeting “nothing is creepier than Zionism. Challenge racism.” She has sided with the terrorist group Hamas, and argued that people shouldn’t “humanize” Israelis.
Zahra Billoo (CAIR)
Zahra Billoo serves as the Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, San Francisco Bay Area (CAIR). She has said that “Israel is an apartheid, racist, terrorist state and it commits war crimes as a hobby.” She gave a speech that the Jewish State is backed by all sorts of Jews, even progressives who claim to be friends by are really the enemy: “Know your enemies, and I’m not going to sugar-coat that. They are your enemies. There are organizations and infrastructure out there who are working to harm you. Make no mistake of it. They would sell you down the line if they could, and they very often do behind your back. I mean the Zionist organizations, I mean the foreign policy organizations that say they’re not Zionists but want a two-state solution. I’m not a Palestinian myself but it’s my understanding that that is laughable. So know your enemies.… We need to pay attention to the Anti-Defamation League. We need to pay attention to the Jewish Federation. We need to pay attention to the Zionist synagogues. We need to pay attention to the Hillel chapters on our campuses. Because just because they’re your friend today, doesn’t mean that they have your back when it comes to human rights. So oppose the vehement fascists but oppose the polite Zionists too. They are not your friends.“
Fatima Mohammed (CUNY Law)
Fatima Mohammed is just a recent graduate from law school but is emblematic of the problem. She gave graduation remarks at CUNY Law School where she said they all needed to “fight against capitalism, racism, imperialism, and Zionism around the world,” and students needed to “speak out against Israeli settler colonialism.” She received sustained applause throughout her remarks.
The obvious should be stated that not all Muslim women are antisemitic or anti-Israel. Similarly, many of the shrill antisemitic and anti-Zionist voices of the progressive wing are not coming from Muslims or women, such as Jamaal Bowman (D-NY16) and Ayanna Pressley (D-MA7).
1930s Nazi Party and 2020s Progressive Wing
The core of the intersectional left SOUNDS a lot like the Nazi party of 100 years ago, even while LOOKING completely different.
Both are deeply anticapitalism, for a redistribution of wealth to the average working person, and reworking the education system and media to adhere to a new orthodoxy. The Nazis saw the average working person as a White Aryan, while today’s Democratic Socialists see that person as a Black or Brown minority. Both the 1930s German Socialists and 2020s American Socialists think of the Jews in their midst as part of the problem, a slice of the global elite taking from the common man for their own selfish wants, despite any protestation otherwise.
The world witnessed the horrors of German socialists gaining power with their extremist vitriol and policies aimed to divide people. It watched as people went from heckling horrible views to applauding the audible bile, to voting the extremists into power to enact terrible policies masquerading as simple measures to empower the common man.
We are seeing history repeat and are dismissive of the tide, blind to the undertow which will sweep us from view and drown us before long.
Many people waited for the United States Supreme Court to rule on a case of trademark infringement before leaping into the market with their own parody products. The case involved a dog toy named ‘Bad Spaniels’ that mimicked Jack Daniel’s Whiskey. The justices came back with a unanimous 9-0 ruling in favor of BS arguing that no one could possibly confuse a ‘poop-themed’ dog toy for the alcoholic beverage.
One of the first new products to hit store shelves was “U.N.Circumcized”, which sported the United Nations global body logo, with a tagline which offered “protection for the world’s bodies, except for Jews.”
Another person opted to open a store across the street from the United Nations called Hunter College Store for Jihad. It had highly flammable Israeli flags, a map of all Jewish institutions in America following the format of the Massachusetts Mapping Project, and several life-sized effigies in nooses with masks of various Jewish and Israeli personalities.
Two Jewish cousins, Aviel and Biyamin Hadad, as well as three guards were gunned down near the Djerba Synagogue in Tunisia. The cousins were part of a large Jewish contingent which came to the synagogue as part of Lag B’Omer festivities.
Binyamin Haddad, left, and his cousin, Aviel Haddad, who were killed in a shooting in Djerba, Tunisia on May 9, 2023. (Courtesy of the family)
The Jewish community in Tunisia is a shadow of its former self, as the Islamification of the country at its independence in 1956 made the Jews unwelcome, as they were relegated to second class “dhimmi” status. For example, from that time, all Jewish businesses were forced to take on a Muslim partner.
In 1957, the old Tunis Jewish cemetery was expropriated, and in 1960, the great Tunis synagogue was destroyed. Jews began to flee the country in 1961 as they were throughout the Muslim Arab countries. Tunisia only allowed Jews to take one dinar with them, as the country confiscated the rest of their possessions, in a massive theft as part of its ethnic cleansing.
These are plain facts. All rewritten in The New York Times telling of the horrific shootings.
According to the Times, the killer “shot indiscriminately near the synagogue”, “killing two visitors and two guards.” It then added color that there was “no motive for the shooting, in which a 42-year old French national, whom the authorities described as a French-Tunisian, and a 30-year Tunisian were killed.”
No mention that the two visitors were Jews and no mention of anti-Semitism.
Instead, the synagogue is referred to as a tourist site, which came under attack much like other tourist sites had been attacked in Tunisia. The synagogue was simply a “tourist attraction” which had also been attacked in April 2002, “killing 21 Western tourists.” The Times worried that “Tuesday’s shooting could harm the country’s crucial tourism industry,” a real problem, as the country is “in a political and economic crisis.”
In regards to the routing of the country’s Jews, the paper said that the “community shrank as Djerban Jews migrated to Israel or France,” and “in general, the Jews and Muslims of Djerba have coexisted peacefully.”
A complete disregard of the Islamic nationalism which routed the Jewish community.
As for that attack in 2002 which the Times said “militants detonated a truck bomb at the synagogue,” it is worth telling some uncomfortable truths about that event, as detailed by Aaron Zelin in his work “Fifteen Years after the Djerba Synagogue bombing.” To summarize:
The mastermind of the April 2002 attack was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), one of the masterminds of the attacks of 9/11 and responsible for the beheading of Jewish journalist Daniel Pearl.
The attack was conducted by a Tunisian, Nizar Nawar in conjunction with al Qaeda. While trained in Afghanistan, he received logistical support in Spain and France.
A statement of responsibility was released after the attacks by Jaysh al-Islami Li-Tahrir al-Muqadisat (JITM, or the Islamic Army for the Liberation of the Holy Sites, a front name for al-Qa`ida) via fax to the Arabic newspapers Al-Hayat and Al-Quds al-Arabi, “that Nawar carried the attack out in the name of Palestine against the Jews”
Zelin noted a connection between the training and choice of targets of jihadi attacks. “Global jihadis have retained a focus on Jewish-related entities. Nawar chose to attack a Jewish synagogue in Tunisia, while more recently, Mehdi Nemmouche attacked the Jewish Museum of Belgium in Brussels. Part of this trend is due to the continuing resonance of the Palestinian plight within the broader Muslim world, which jihadi groups co-opt to gain legitimacy, support, and new recruits.”
“In the aftermath of the Djerba synagogue bombing, the Tunisian government was initially dismissive of any ties to terrorism, suggesting the attack was only an accident. A sense of denial about the threat contributed to a fundamental lack of understanding within Tunisia’s political establishment of jihadism.”
“Tunisians have long been involved in international terrorism plots, attacks, and foreign fighting. This trend is likely to continue, especially as so many Tunisians have gone to train in Libya, Iraq, and Syria over the past six years. The Nizar Nawars of today are finding a melting pot of contacts and networks they can tap into, just as Nawar himself did more than 15 years ago.”
The 2002 attack was clearly an antisemitic attack by pro-Palestinian global jihadists, not a generic al Qaeda attack against tourists the way the Times portrayed. As in 2002, the Tunisian government denies the charge of antisemitism, saying “Tunisia will always remain a land of tolerance and coexistence,” and that the purpose of the attack was to “sow the seeds of discord, damage the tourist season and damage the state.”
The Global Intifada has begun, and the media will not even say that Jews died or antisemitism exists, and the Arab world is narrowly focused on the impact to their pocketbooks.
In a highly partisan world, there should be moments when people of opposing sides bond and find common purpose. “Fight Cancer” or “Don’t Drown Cats” are examples of easy themes for all to embrace, especially if there are no specific requirements that accompany the chant, such as spending billions of dollars to effectuate the cause.
New York City attempted to pass such banal resolution, declaring April 29 as “End Jew Hatred Day.” The text of the resolution summarized the terrifying statistics of Jews being singled out for attacks. There was no mention of Israel or the Palestinian conflict. Nothing highlighted that most of the anti-Semitic attacks in NYC were coming from Blacks and Muslims. There was no request for money or any action.
The resolution was toothless, a simple vote to support the Jewish community.
Yet it failed to pass unanimously.
Of the 51 members on the New York City Council, two opposed the measure and four abstained. All six who rejected supporting Jews, are members of the Progressive Caucus and the Black, Latino and Asian Caucus. Five of the six are women and belong to the Women’s Caucus.
The two members who voted against the measure are:
Shahana Hanif explained her vote against Jews saying that “They [Jews] have not stood up for Muslims, they have not stood up for trans New Yorkers or anybody.”
Councilmember Shahana Hanif (D-Brooklyn) on April 28, 2022. (Photo John McCarten/NYC Council Media Unit)
Charles Barron said that there is “inconsistency of members of the Jewish community, particularly its leadership, in speaking out against hatred, like hatred of the Palestinian people, like the State of Israel murdering Palestinian women and children and stealing the land.”
Hanif and Barron – politicians elected to protect their constituents – essentially said that Jews do not deserve protection and have collectively earned the hatred and wrath of society.
Sponsors of the resolution to combat Jew Hatred in New York City
While all six of the councilmembers who rejected the resolution denouncing anti-Semitism were members of the Progressive Caucus, only one of the resolution’s fourteen sponsors (Kristin Richardson Jordan) was a progressive.
Progressive minority groups are not only excluding Jews – the most persecuted group in the country – from DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), they are turning a blind eye and enabling antisemitism to fester.
The poorly named “Second Intifada” from September 2000 until 2004, was a period of Palestinian jihadi pogroms against Jews in Israel. Hundreds of Arab attackers bombed buses and ice cream stores, stabbed and ran over women and children in the street, and stoned cars carrying families. Well over 1,000 Jews were killed in their war on innocents.
The Palestinian community was very supportive of the murders. A December 2001 PCPSR poll of Palestinians found that 22.7% and 57.4% of West Bank Arabs “strongly supported” and “supported” armed attacks against Israelis, respectively, with 61.4% believing violence against Israeli civilians inside of Israel could achieve “Palestinian rights” more than negotiations. As such, the Palestinian slaughter of Jewish civilians continued.
The “Second Intifada” / Two Percent War came to a close when Israel built a security barrier which limited the entry of Palestinian Arabs into Israel. When Israel handed Gaza to the Palestinians in 2005 after assurances from the United States that it would support Israel’s annexation of parts of the West Bank, the center of Palestinian attacks mostly came from Gaza, not the West Bank.
That has now changed.
While the majority of Gazans have consistently favored killing Israeli civilians, the period before March 2021 had only about 25% of West Bank Arabs supporting murdering Jews inside of Israel. (To say “only” to one-out-of-four Palestinians in favor of killing innocent Jews is a relatively good figure is appalling, and goes to the jihadi mindset prevalent in the region). The figure jumped to about one-out-of-three after May 2021, when Israel made attempts to evict Palestinian squatters in Shiekh Jarrah in Jerusalem, and Hamas launched rockets into Israel in protest. According to the PCPSR poll in June 2021, Palestinians concluded that Hamas won the battle as Israel halted the eviction, meaning, violence pays off.
Between June 2021 and September 2022, the six PCPSR polls had West Bank Arab support for killing innocent Israeli Jews between 26% and 35%. Then the December 2022 poll showed a step up to 46% support and March 2023 jumped further to 57% support for murdering Jews inside of Israel. There were a few reasons for the jumps.
In the three months before the December 2022 poll, several events happened:
all Palestinian factions met in Algiers and voted to reconcile and hold new elections
Israel elected Benjamin Netanyahu to be Prime Minister again with a coalition of ultra-Orthodox Jews and those backing Jewish rights east of the 1949 Armistice Lines (E49AL)
The newest terrorist groups in the West Bank, the “Lions’ Den” and Jenin Battalion became known in widespread media coverage
The pollsters also believed that the World Cup in Qatar was a factor, noting that it helped “restore Palestinian public trust in the Arab World after years of disappointment.” Further, it added that “in light of the escalating armed clashes in the West Bank and the near formation of a right wing and extreme government in Israel, the Palestinian public becomes more hardline while indicating a greater confidence in the efficacy of armed struggle.” (Note that Arabs use the phrase “armed struggle” to defend the reality of the open slaughter of innocents.)
The three months before the March 2023 poll were not as eventful, but did see the point blank shooting of two Israeli brothers who drove into the Arab town of Huwara, and the subsequent revenge attack by Israelis on the town. The pollsters concluded that “In light of the recent events in Huwara and the northern West Bank, Palestinian public attitudes become more militant as support for armed struggle rises,… and for the first time since the creation of the PA, a majority says that its dissolution or collapse serves the interest of the Palestinian people.“
The more moderate West Bank Arabs have now joined the jihadists in the terrorist enclave of Gaza to conclude that the Oslo Accords and the creation of the Palestinian Authority does not serve their interests. They have decided that the best way to secure their “rights” is via “armed struggle”, now with more arms, and the belief that more people will support their cause than during the scorched earth pogroms of 2000-2004.
They have reasons to believe in their latest jihad.
Not only has Israel still not evicted the Palestinian Arab squatters in homes in Sheikh Jarrah, for the first time ever, Democrats in the United States have more sympathy for Palestinian Arabs than Israelis, according to a March 2023 Gallup poll. Left-wing politicians are leaning into the poll, such as Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Representative Jamaal Bowman (D-NY16), now pushing to condition military aid to Israel.
That will likely encourage Palestinian Arabs to continue their violent attacks against Jews in Israel and the West Bank, and anti-Semites/ anti-Zionists to attack Jews around the world.
It’s a terrifying trifecta: for the first time since the Second Intifada, the majority of Palestinians favor killing Jews; for the first time ever, a majority of Palestinians favor dissolving the Palestinian Authority; and also for the first time ever, more Democrats favor Palestinians over Israelis.
The movement to “Globalize the Intifada” began to gather steam right after the May 2021 skirmish as Palestinians concluded that violence pays off. It is now reaching the boiling point as people conclude that governmental-led society is broken and should be abandoned.
It is called anarchy, and is coming for the Jews first.
On March 23, 2023, United Nations Secretary General Antonio Gutteres published a message for the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, to be observed on March 25th. Gutteres focused on the “evil enterprise of enslavement [that] lasted for over 400 years… of suffering and barbarity that shows humanity at its worst.” He focused on the European slavery of Africans, stating that one can “draw a straight line from the centuries of colonial exploitation to the social and economic inequalities of today. And we can recognize the racist tropes popularized to rationalize the inhumanity of the slave trade in the white supremacist hate that is resurgent today.”
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres speaks during the High Level Segment of the 37th Session of the Human Rights Council. 26 February 2018.
While modern slavery exists to this day – much of it the enslavement of Black youths in Africa as soldiers and laborers for Black adults in Angola, Togo, Benin and Nigeria – the U.N. leader focused narrowly on “white supremacist hate” for Africans that was rooted in 400 years of the slave trade. The particularism of Remembrance is for Black victims of White racism, nothing else.
It is interesting to contrast this approach with Gutteres’ statement honoring the victims of the Holocaust, in which Nazi Germany and its allies nearly completed the ethnic cleansing of Jews in Europe.
The title of the United Nations story about Holocaust Remembrance Day was “Honouring Holocaust victims, U.N. chief Guterres pledges to battle anti-Semitism, all forms of hatred.” The lead-in sentence continued that theme, that “the world has a duty to remember that the Holocaust was a systematic attempt to eliminate the Jewish people and so many others.“
A recap of Gutteres’ video remarks noted that “the Holocaust was the culmination of millennia of hatred, scapegoating and discrimination targeting the Jews, what we now call anti-Semitism, he emphasized, adding that tragically and contrary to the international community’s resolve, anti-Semitism continues to thrive. Moreover, the world is also witnessing a deeply troubling rise in extremism, xenophobia, racism and anti-Muslim hatred. Irrationality and intolerance are back, said the U.N. chief.” He further said “that as Secretary-General of the United Nations, I will be in the frontline of the battle against anti-Semitism and all other forms of hatred.“
The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein also offered thoughts about the Holocaust that the “sadistic brutality of the atrocities inflicted by the Nazi regime on Jews, Roma, Slavs, persons with disabilities, political dissidents, homosexuals and others was nourished by layer upon layer of propaganda, falsifications and incitement to hatred.” He added that “is crucial to maintain respect for human rights, especially in respect of the right to life and wellbeing of all people regardless of their origin or ethnicity,… [and that] education must be at the core of all efforts to combat anti-Semitism, racism, and all forms of discrimination.”
The speakers were very holistic and all-encompassing as it related to the genocide of Jews.
While the United Nations solely focused on White slavery of Blacks and drew a line across centuries straight to racism against Blacks by Whites today, it opted for a completely different storyline for the slaughter of Jews. For the Holocaust of just some decades ago – as Survivors still scream in their sleep – the UN chose to include many non-Jewish people in the Remembrance, and attributed the barbarism to broad-based xenophobia which manifests itself in broad-based extremism like anti-Muslim hatred today.
It’s repulsive and shocking. And not shocking.
For the U.N., White racism against Blacks is systemic and persistent, while anti-Semitism is neither special nor unique; a subset of other forms of hatred which much also be addressed. The mantra is that over 1 billion Black people suffer persecution as a targeted minority, while the same cannot be said of 15 million Jews.
Ilhan Omar and Nancy Pelosi (photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
There is no more persecuted group in the world than the Jews. The hatred is so embedded in society, that world leaders do not call it out clearly, uniquely and unapologetically, because they have internalized the venom. The audience doesn’t want to hear it, and leaders don’t really want to talk much about it, as the straight line from the Holocaust to today runs through the radical jihadist Palestinian Arabs and anti-Zionists seeking to destroy the Jewish State.
In woke narrative, perpetrators can only by White Christian Males and victims are anyone else. So when society opts to define Jews as White (they are actually multi-racial), the Holocaust gets subtly reconfigured as a story of broad-based xenophobia which caught Jews alongside confirmed capital-V Victims by White Nazis. When Jews today are clearly targeted by non-Whites, the story is either ignored (like New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio and The New York Times) or the hatred is whitewashed because Jews deserved it as “interlopers” (as defined by Blacks in Jersey City) or “colonialists” (as concocted by anti-Zionists).
We are being reeducated by progressive powers that believe Jews are over-represented in power structures cloaked in their Whiteness. The woke become incensed when Jews claim victimhood, and spin the Holocaust into a crime against righteous Victims – homosexuals, the disabled and Muslims – which also caught Jews in the broad net.
The particular stand against racism is as correct as the universalistic stance against Jew-hatred-plus is wrong. Pathetic Holocaust Remembrances and watered down denouncements of anti-Semitism are facilitating the noxious evil, as the neo Nazis and jihadists know an opening when they see it.
Very few countries in the world have a position in the government for descendants of the country’s original inhabitants who live abroad. Only one also has non-governmental organizations to combat the hatred of those persecuted members in the diaspora.
Israel.
The Jewish State of Israel was founded on three central beliefs of Modern Zionism: that Jews are a people who originate in the land of Israel; they have a right to self-determination and sovereignty in their homeland; and that their country will not only be a safe haven against Jew-hatred, but will combat noxious anti-Semitism around the world.
Today, Israel’s Minister of Diaspora Affairs is Amichai Chikli. Born in Jerusalem, he is the son of a Tunisian Conservative rabbi. His governmental position is to strengthen the bonds between Israel and Jews of the diaspora.
Israeli MK Amichai Chikli (Photo by Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
Outside of the government, the World Zionist Organization promotes Zionism, and is a vehicle for world Jewry to interface with Israel. Nerya Meir assumed the head of the Diaspora Department and Raheli Baratz-Rix heads the WZO’s Department for Combatting Antisemitism. Last year, Prime Minister Yair Lapid appointed the actress Noa Tishby to a new position of Special Envoy for Combating Antisemitism and Delegitimization.
This letter is for each of them.
To Israel’s leaders to Diaspora Jewry,
We know that Israel is very busy with countless issues, and the roles each of you play to ensure a strong bond between the Jewish State and Diaspora Jewry is always appreciated.
We are keenly aware of how the nature of our relationship has changed since the re-establishment of the Jewish State in 1948: from a nascent struggling country fighting for survival seeking bodies and funds from diaspora, to a thriving democracy in the heart of an illiberal Middle East with the greatest concentration of Jews anywhere for the first time in almost two thousand years. The modern state welcomes Jewish immigrants, visitors and investment, while it no longer feels they are critical to its survival.
There are a few things to keep in mind as we enter this stage of our relationship.
The United States
Since 1948, the Diaspora has changed remarkably. In 1948, at the country’s founding, there were 34 countries with over 25,000 Jews. Today there are only 17, half that number. To put that in context, the 15 non-U.S. diaspora countries with over 25,000 Jews stands in contrast to 27 U.S. cities with more than 25,000 Jews.
Two countries – Israel and the United States – account for roughly 85% of world Jewry, with the U.S. accounting for 73% of the Jewish diaspora. While the U.S. does not define the diaspora, it is the most significant country by a very wide margin.
There are eight other diaspora countries which have over one percent of diaspora Jews living there, but only two of them – France and the United Kingdom – are also significant trading partners with Israel and members of the United Nations Security Council. Some of the other countries – like Argentina and Russia – have declining Jewish populations and should be viewed as countries for Israel to target for aliyah, rather than as significant long-term outposts of global Jewry.
Diaspora Anti-Semitism and Terrorism
Historically (the 1970s through 2010s), anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist attacks occurred in world capitals such as Athens, Rome, Istanbul, Paris, Brussels, Buenos Aires, Mumbai and London. Fanatics burst into synagogues, Jewish community centers and kosher restaurants and killed as many people as possible.
While the scourge has not left major international cities, the current trend in violence is more prevalent in American cities such as Pittsburgh, PA, Colleyville, TX, Jersey City, NJ and Poway, CA. It shouldn’t be a surprise: there are three times as many Jews in Pittsburgh (42,000) than in all of Turkey (14,300).
The same is true for Jews living in the Israeli territories east of the 1949 Armistice Lines (E49AL). While there are 25 countries in the world with over 10,000 Jews (including the U.S. and Israel), there are nine cities (and growing) in E49AL with such totals. Almost all have experienced attacks.
The facts above have been true for many years but have not penetrated the minds of most people. Part of the reason is attacks on Jews in European cities and E49AL is almost always tied to anti-Zionism, easily triggered in societies with centuries of ingrained anti-Semitism. This is in contrast to attacks in the United States which arise from anti-Semitism in a country established on the basis of religious freedom.
This is changing.
While the Israel-Gaza war in 2014 saw a sharp rise in anti-Semitic attacks in Europe, there were virtually none in the United States. Not so for the eleven day skirmish in May 2021, when gangs assaulted Jews all over the country. Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL said during that time that “the brazenness, the audacity of these assaults in broad daylight. We have seen people basically say, if you are wearing a Jewish star, you must be a Zionist and you should be killed…. we have unhinged, fictionalized conspiracies about Israel, that somehow the Jewish State is systematically slaughtering children or committing genocide. And then that leads to real-world attacks on Jewish people in the streets of America, on our campuses, in our communities.”
It is in the streets of dozens of American cities that the danger of anti-Semitism is now the most pressing, and the scourge is increasingly tied to anti-Zionism.
America’s Jewish Cities and Universities
The 27 cities in the United States with over 25,000 Jews are not only in the biggest states which are solidly Democratic as popularly believed. While many are found in New York, New Jersey, California, Massachusetts and Illinois, a growing number are in Florida, Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
As shown in the table above, fifteen of the top 27 U.S. cities are located in solidly Democratic states per the 2020 presidential election. Seven cities were found in Republican states and five were in swing states.
Beyond these major Jewish population centers, are cities with universities with significant Jewish populations, many of which are suffering from anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist violence and rhetoric.
Anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism have also spread to universities with significant Jewish populations in cities with relatively few Jews. Those include Brown University in Providence, RI (14,200 Jews) and Duke University in Durham, NC (12,000).
As an example, in February 2022, Duke passed a resolution which condemned anti-Semitism which included using the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism which covered anti-Zionism. This was likely in response to vile anti-Semitic and anti-Israel speakers at the campus in 2019 as covered by a Ami Horowitz video. However, by March 2022, the Duke Student Government was sponsoring Student for Justice in Palestine events featuring noted anti-Zionist and anti-Semite Mohammed El-Kurd. The AMCHA Initiative has long tracked how universities with an SJP chapter are much more likely to have anti-Semitic incidents on campus.
College campuses have become fertile ground for extreme fundamentalist governments including Qatar and Saudi Arabia to pour over $1 billion to influence the next generation of students. Leading schools which have taken their money include Columbia University, Tufts University, the University of Southern California, George Washington University, NYU, MIT, Harvard, Georgetown and Carnegie Mellon. The Arab states have used their oil wealth to export the demonization of the Jewish State and Jews around the world.
And the impetus for exporting their hatred onto American shores is their hatred for Israel. Killing the Jewish State’s strongest supporter is a key aim of anti-Zionists.
Israel’s Fight Against Anti-Semitism in America
It is noble and appreciated that Israel is taking up the fight against global anti-Semitism.
Minister Chikli, you talked about the diaspora community and suggested that small communities might be best served by making aliyah to Israel, and plan on investing a good portion of your 500 million NIS budget in the education of the larger communities. This is wise. While it will be difficult for Israel to match the dollars of the Muslim Gulf states going into America’s leading universities, it can invest in the middle and high schools of the United States’ largest Jewish cities.
America’s Jews and communities are mostly well-off and well-organized. We have numerous Jewish schools, synagogues, community centers and Israel advocacy groups, especially compared to the other countries in the diaspora. But there are things that must come from Israel to the various cities listed above to help fight the rising anti-Semitism. Here is the start of a list:
Israelis and Israeli products in the schools and markets
Collaboration between American universities and companies and those in Israel
Eloquent and well versed Israelis on news channels
Establish pro-Jewish narratives
Bi-partisanship, connecting with all streams of Judaism
Open and clear communication between Israel and U.S. Jewish leaders
Israelis and Israeli products in the schools and markets
Getting young Israelis into cities across the United States with programs like shinshinim should be expanded. The Israelis get a better appreciation for America, and Americans get a first-hand account of what is happening in Israel, not from the news or textbooks, but from young Israelis living in the Jewish State.
The BDS (boycott, divest and sanction) movement against Israel should not only be fought legally but on the ground. Getting lots of Israeli products and brands into stores should be a priority of the Israeli government, not just the Israeli companies.
Collaboration between American universities and companies and those in Israel
Israeli universities and companies are in a good position to continue to leverage their leading research and technological prowess to collaborate with American institutions. An active bi-lateral flow of human and financial capital can cement positive long-term relationships.
Eloquent and well versed Israelis on American media
Israel must develop a comprehensive team of fluent English speakers who are adept at public relations on a range of topics. The most glaring problems are when Israeli spokespersons cannot handle basic questions on television when Israel is in a conflict. The government must have a team of people in constant dialogue with the full range of American media on political, economic, cultural, religious, historical and scientific matters.
Establish pro-Jewish narratives
It is very important to establish and correct information that is being propagated in the media and on campuses, but the Israeli government must do more to craft the narratives. For example, not only should the statistics about the Arab population in Jerusalem and Israel be laid out to dismiss the ridiculous charges of genocide and ethnic cleansing, but stories of real people should be featured. The world loves a good story, and Israel is more than capable of humanizing the liberal country it has built in the heart of the illiberal Middle East.
Bi-partisanship, connecting with all streams of Judaism
As described above, there are Democratic and Republican Jews and they live in a range of cities. It is imperative for Israel to maintain good relations with both parties, ESPECIALLY as the divide in the country grows.
Similarly, it is important for Israel to connect with all the streams of Judaism which are much more common in the United States than in Israel and the rest of the diaspora. The Reform, Reconstructionist and Conservative branches of Judaism are much larger than the Modern and Ultra Orthodox streams. Those liberals tend to be much more critical of religious and nationalistic actions by Israel, while the more Orthodox tend to be more likely to make aliyah. Israel needs to keep a good relationship with each community.
Open and clear communication between Israel and U.S. Jewish leaders
The last item on this short list is for good lines of direct communication. If the government of Israel is directly communicating with American Jewish leaders, hopefully it will prevent Jewish leaders from lobbying the U.S. government to take actions against Israel, as J Street did aggressively, in pushing the Obama Administration to allow UN Security Council Resolution 2334 to pass.
Israel is at a very sensitive moment in history with Iran on the verge of obtaining nuclear weapons capability, and the largest percentage of West Bank Arabs itching for violence against Jewish civilians in twenty years. At the same time, American Jewry is more divided as it faces growing anti-Semitism, a break from historic norms when Jews normally come together when faced with Jew hatred.
The global fight against anti-Semitism can be won with Israeli and American forces acting together with common purpose. We look forward to working together with you at this important time in history.
First One Through 