‘The Zone Of Interest‘ is an unusual Holocaust movie. It shows the daily life of the head of the Auschwitz concentration camp inside his home abutting the vast killing factory. Living a peaceful life with his wife and children, the viewer is struck by the carefree life of the Nazi officer and his family, treating the annihilation of European Jewry as simply a normal 9-to-5 job which supports the family in the way they always desired.
Part of the funding for the movie was from the government of Poland, and its influence can be seen in directing the audience to see that the true evil actors were the German Nazis and not Poles, who were portrayed as trying to help Jews in some way, dropping apples around the camp for Jews who managed to escape. Modern Poles are shown at the end of the film, keeping today’s Holocaust museum at the site tidy for tourists who can view the Jewish possessions which were not seized by the Nazis and their families. The actual rampant Polish Jew hatred is invisible in the film.
Vile Jew-hatred continues today, as do new movies, shows and museums focused on the global scourge. Many contrast past antisemitism to modern Jew-hatred such as the remarkable play ‘Prayer for the French Republic‘ as well as ‘Leopolstadt’. Others are devoted just to the Holocaust like the new museum in Amsterdam. Some try to tie antisemitism into the Arab-Israeli conflict like the opera ‘Death of Klinghoffer.‘
Tragically, many of the works of art about noxious Jew hatred have become awash in the Arab-Israeli conflict. It would appear that Jews being cast as victims – whether with posters of kidnapped Israeli Jewish civilians, or a Holocaust museum – is too much for Palestinian Arab supporters who want to see the Jewish State crushed.
At the March 2024 opening of the new Holocaust museum in Amsterdam, hundreds of protestors gathered outside to shout “Free, free Palestine” and “Viva, viva Intifada,” screaming for the destruction of the Jewish State and murder of Jews.
Anti-Israel demonstrators at the opening of the National Holocaust Museum in Amsterdam. Pic: AP
In the U.S., The New York Times published a grotesque opinion that compared Israel’s activities in trying to save its hostages and root out the perpetrators of the October 7 massacre to the Nazi family in ‘The Zone of Interest.’ Over-and-again it wrote of the “military siege of Gaza” and “Israel’s assault on Gaza” in a movie review about a Holocaust film.
NY Times lead opinion piece on March 9, 2024
The author, David Klein, could have stated his opinion about the War From Gaza without attaching his comments to a film about the systematic killing of 6 million Jews but he, and many like him, don’t want to. They want to strip Jews of any protection – offensive or defensive. The end of the article makes clear that he is against supplying Israel with weaponry to prosecute the Palestinian terrorist army of Hamas; appending his opinion to a Holocaust film is designed to also remove America’s shield for Israel at the United Nations and with resupplying the Iron Dome missile defense.
To make his refuse stink a bit less, Klein peppered the “AsAJew” line to protect himself from accusations of antisemitism.
Eli Lake penned an article in Commentary Magazine in March 2024 called “A Brief History of the ‘AsAJew’“. Lake sees this as a phenomenon of far-left diaspora Jews, as even progressives in Israel know that Hamas must be destroyed after the heinous barbarous attack which the terrorist group has threatened to repeat.
Lake described a long history of AsAJews during moments of Jewish suffering appealing to the antisemitic attackers to continue to persecute. He wrote that centuries ago, “the AsAJews of their day lobbied their hosts in the Diaspora to banish or convert the Jewish people to Christianity and to confiscate and burn the Talmud.” He details the story of a man in the 15th century named Johannes Pfefferkorn who converted from Judaism and helped fuel a mini crusade against his former co-religionists.
Times have changed some of the nouns in the anti-Semitic Mad Lib, but the story reads familiar.
Lake wrote, “In the Middle Ages, AsAJew converts were pawns the Church used to spread lies about the Talmud. In 2024, the AsAJews are not converts to Christianity. They are instead converts to the false prophecy of left-wing social-justice activism…. The anti-Semites of the Middle Ages needed AsAJews to provide credentials for the lies that justified their pogroms and expulsions. Today, Hamas and its allies in Iran need the AsAJews to persuade the Hague, European governments, and the White House to delegitimize Israel’s right to self-defense.”
I will add some observations on top of Lake’s. For centuries, antisemites including AsAJews, came for the Jews by attacking the religion itself. They concocted stories about Passover matzah in blood libels and the Talmud teaches black magic. Today’s cohort attack Jews and Jewish history, not the religion. They mock the Holocaust. They claim Jews have no history in the land of Israel and are “colonizers” who stole land from Arabs, and that Jews never had holy temples in Jerusalem so should be banned from prayer in a site that is solely holy to Muslims.
By ignoring religion, the modern day antisemites refuse to carry the antisemitic mantle because they are not attacking the religion, just bad actors who happen to be Jewish. The AsAJew allies provide a wide fig leaf for the charade, much as they’ve done for centuries.
Museums and films devoted to the heinous slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust, which would normally demonstrate the profound need for Jews to have self-determination, are being used by the alt-left and Islamic radicals to argue that Jews should be left to the wolves of Hamas. Some are not as shrill, and offer a tepid “both sides” support, blind to their echoing former President Donald Trump’s Charlottesville remarks.
‘The Zone of Interest’ Winning Best International Film on March 10, 2024, with callout to Israeli and Palestinian victims of terror
As antisemitism scales to terrifying levels around the world, the alt-left and Islamic radicals are turning works of art and remembrances of the deliberate mass butchering of Jews on October 7 and during the Holocaust into calls to attack Jews and the one Jewish State. Many progressive Jews are appalled and are abandoning their former partners-in-crime as now-revealed naked antisemites. But the AsAJews have remained steadfast and will share names and addresses of the Zionists, marking Jews as zealots who need to be punished for the good of mankind once again.
President Joe Biden addressed the nation on March 7, 2024 to discuss the state of the union. He discussed many points about situations abroad including Ukraine, Israel and China, and items on the domestic front such as immigration, abortion, education, the economy and crime.
President Joe Biden delivery State of the Union address on March 7, 2024
Biden put a very positive spin on the crime rate in the U.S. “All Americans deserve the freedom to be safe, and America is safer today than when I took office…. Last year, the murder rate saw the sharpest decrease in history, and violent crime fell to one of the lowest levels in more than 50 years.”
Sounds great.
But not for Jews.
Jews are being attacked and vilified on public streets and in schools. They watch university presidents smile when asked about calling for the genocide of Jews, and professors shout that they were exhilarated by the mass slaughter and rape of Jews in Israel.
In November 2023, Jewish Federations published a report that “70% of Jewish respondents said they feel less safe than they did a few months before [the Hamas war]…. Jews were twice as likely to say they worry very much about their personal safety compared to the general public.”
In February 2024, the American Jewish Committee released its own poll which found “63% of American Jews say the status of Jews in the U.S. is less secure compared to one year ago. In 2022, this number was 41%. In 2021, it was 31%.” The spike is found among the general public too in which “74% of U.S. adults say antisemitism is a problem in the United States today, compared to 68% who said so in 2022, and 60% in 2021.”
Biden knows about the tsunami of Jew hatred. In May 2023, five months before Palestinian jihadists butchered 1,200 people in Israel, Biden announced The U.S. Strategy To Counter Antisemitism. That document narrowly focused on the alt-right, with “Nazis” mentioned twelve times and “white supremacy” five. The more prevalent forms of Jew hatred from Islamic extremists, Blacks and the alt-left went completely unmentioned in the report.
The Biden administration was so blind to radical Islamic antisemitism that it put CAIR, the Council of American Islamic Relations, on the antisemitism committee at that time. The administration only removed CAIR after the head of the group said how pleased he was with the October 7 jihadi massacre.
The unwillingness of the Biden administration to clearly call out every manifestation of Jew hatred – not just from the alt-right – has upset many Jews. According to a February 2024 Siena College poll, the majority of Jews, who normally vote Democratic, are switching to Donald Trump for president in November 2024, buy a margin of 53% to 44%.
Joe Biden seems to be banking on math, that Jews are a minority-minority who are unlikely to tip the scales in any state. Or perhaps he just decided to “love the one your with” and cuddle up to the insidious jihad taking over America, protecting vile antisemites if the are Muslims or Blacks, who make up a much larger swatch of “minorities.”
Now in the 2024 election, Biden has informed Americans that the country is extremely safe, and is unwilling to acknowledge the tsunami of Jew hatred by his supporters in the Muslim, Black and progressive communities. Should Trump win the presidency, those left-wing and jihadi groups will surely come for the Jews in even greater numbers and ferocity than they are currently.
There used to be jokes about how to handle one’s racist uncle during the holidays. Now the question is how to deal with a person’s antisemitic niece.
While many older cisgender White men continue to be challenged by the changing nature of America, a large percentage of women aged 18-34 (and under 24 in particular) have a hatred for Jews that would make Nazis blush.
The results from the December Harvard/Harris poll about views of Israel and Hamas segmented by age were shocking. While well over 90% of people over 55 viewed the October 7, 2023 Hamas invasion and slaughter in Israel as an act of terrorism, only slightly more than 70% of the 18-34 cohort believed the killing of 1,200 people to be terrorism. An estimated 90% of people over 55 thought there was no justification for the Hamas attack, but 60% of people 18-24 thought the massacre was justified.
Young people are evenly split on supporting Hamas and Israel, while almost every older person supports Israel. After the October 7 attack, 76% of 18-24 year-olds thought Hamas is a rational actor with whom Israel can negotiate while 87% of those over 65 believe Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. Consequently, 84% of seniors oppose a ceasefire now that would leave Hamas in place while 67% of the youth think a ceasefire should happen immediately and leave Hamas intact.
In the aftermath of the worst murder of Jews since the Holocaust, a majority of 51% of 18-24 year-olds think Israel should be dissolved and handed to Hamas and the Palestinians. Only 4% of those over 65 hold such views, with 71% preferring two states and 25% supporting Palestinians moving into neighboring Arab countries.
Lastly, the poll touched on gender-related violence. Two-thirds of seniors believe that human rights groups did not adequately condemn the rape of Israeli women, while 80% of those 18-24 thought that women’s rights organizations condemned Hamas sufficiently.
These findings confirm a January 2023 ADL poll which found “Young adults have more anti-Israel sentiment than older generations.”
The age divide is much the same regarding antisemitism in the United States.
An estimated 90% of people over 65 years old think that Jews face harassment on college campuses which drops to about two-thirds for 18-34 year-olds. Much of that disparity seems to do with whether words constitute harassment, as 92% of people over 65 think that calling for the genocide of Jews should be against university rules, while 53% of people 18-24 think students should be free to call for the genocide of Jews.
In addition to penalizing particular speech, one of the drivers seems to be driven by ideology. Roughly 81% of people over 65 oppose the notion that people should be viewed through the lens of White oppressors and non-White oppressed classes of people, while 79% of 18-24 year-olds support the ideology. Among those over 65, 91% believe that Jews should not fall into the White oppressor class while 67% of 18-24 year-olds believe Jews should be in the oppressor class.
What has driven the enormous disparity of opinions in which young people side with terrorists who slaughter Jews? What drives so many 18 to 24 year-olds to be so anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist?
A few ideas to review including a post-9/11 world, indoctrination in schools, race, social media and human rights groups.
Post-9/11 World
Americans who were adults in 2000 and 2001 can easily remember the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the continued heinous killing of Israeli Jews by Palestinian Arabs from 2000 to 2004. The clarity about the jihadi extremists perpetrating the disgusting murders was apparent to all, so the support for the United States and Israel responding to the attacks was wide and deep.
For young people who do not remember the attacks but only the consequences – America’s 20-year long war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the Israeli Security Barrier which was put up to stop the flow of Palestinian Arab terrorists – the cause-and-effect is now inverted. Rather than see the Security Barrier as the effective reaction to jihadi terrorism, it is viewed as an obstacle to coexistence. Rather than appreciate the lack of mass casualty attacks in the U.S. over the past two decades, young people question why America fought wars abroad for so long.
Young people have come to believe that western powers are “imperialist” and wage wars to subjugate others. They have internalize the Iranian narrative of the US and Israel being “big Satan” and “Little Satan”, respectively, aggressively fighting Muslims and people of color for no reason.
When the 2014 Gaza War concluded around the same time as the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, the SJP chapters started to align themselves with the Black community in an effort of allyship. It created narratives of “Gaza to Detroit” and “Ferguson to Palestine” as if the two have anything remotely in common.
Muslims claimed it did – and latched onto the oppressor/oppressed narrative which has now become university doctrine over the past decade. Teacher union bosses pushed the notion into lower schools as well, that Jews should be seen as part of the elite “ownership class” who try to keep others down.
Coupled with this incorrect portrayal of American Jews as powerful is the mischaracterization of Israel as a European colonial project. In university departments focused on decolonization, Israel is being cast as a racist state which must be dismantled. There is no subtle debate about Israel/Palestine for young people; they have been taught that Jews are not indigenous to Israel and “stole” Palestinian land.
As toxic ideologies like this inevitably metastasize, the calls to actively be “anti-racist” compelled students to become vocal anti-Zionists. Elective courses on “anti-racism” in California universities soon became mandatory in high schools, infecting the minds of tens of thousands.
While older Americans were spared this indoctrination, many Americans under 30 have been schooled in antisemitism and anti-Zionism.
UN and Human Rights Groups Slander
Universities celebrated when Amnesty International published a report in February 2022 calling Israel an “apartheid” state. It gave credibility to anti-Zionists who had long defamed Israel at will – like The New York Times – using a third party’s definition rather than state personal bias.
The Obama Administration’s last middle finger to Israel as it departed was allowing United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 to pass which made it illegal for Jews to live east of the 1949 Armistice Lines with Jordan, including in Judaism’s holiest location of the Old City of Jerusalem. While older people may recall that Jews have been a majority of Jerusalem since the 1860s, younger people have grown up where Jews living in Jerusalem is an act of evil colonization.
Racial Overview of Youth
Today’s youth is much more multi-ethnic than older generations.
America’s youth has many more non-White people while older Americans are mostly White. According to Pew Research, the most common age for Whites was 58 in 2019, and a much younger 29 for Asians, 27 for Blacks and 11 for Hispanics.
Among 70 year-olds, there are about 2.5 million White people but not even 1 million non-White people. However, among 20 year-olds, there are roughly 2.3 million White people and only slightly fewer, 2.1 million non-Whites, roughly an even split.
The multi-ethnic youth have come to see their White Jewish peers as part of the “White oppressor” class. They incorrectly assume that Israeli Jews are mostly White, like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In fact, White Ashkenazi Jews make up only one-third of the Israeli population.
Race In Colleges
The race of college students varies by the type of school. Overall, 42.3% of students are White, 17.4% Hispanic, 10.6% Black, 5.8% Asian according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. The figures change dramatically when considering the type of school and degree.
At private, nonprofit four-year universities, 47% of students were white and 33% of students were Black, Indigenous, or People of Color (BIPOC). A similar mix was found at public four-year schools where 46% of students were white, 38% were BIPOC. Shorter associate degrees attracted more minorities, with private two-year schools, 38% of students were white, 44% were BIPOC and public two-year schools, 29% of students were white, 42% were BIPOC.
More people are opting to not attend colleges, viewing them as expensive and not worth the time or investment. White enrollment declined the most from 2018 to 2022, dropping by 17.4%, while Black and Hispanic enrollment declined by 13.6% and 3.6%, respectively. Men are skipping universities in greater numbers than women, with women now accounting for 8.3 million students compared to 6.1 million men.
Despite women and minorities making up a greater share of college students, the professors are still mostly white, with White men making up 39% of all faculty and White women, 35%.
While White people make up a plurality of four-year degree programs, the schools have made very direct actions to change their faculty and curricula. They have implemented DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) programs, which are getting a lot of attention after the resignation of Harvard’s Black female president who failed to clearly condemn antisemitism at a congressional hearing.
Universities are not simply deploying indoctrinating students in a new socialist ideology compared to past generations; they are preaching to a more muti-ethnic population who are embracing the theology.
Social Media
The socialist antisemitic educational system deserves part of the blame but social media has fostered the toxicity as well.
While smartphones came to the world in 2008, the social media phenomenon on phones really took off from 2010 to 2015. Young people began to rely on news from influencers they followed (think sports stars, models, entertainers) rather than on professional news outlets. Young people fled to these idiots who offered opinions rather than facts, on platforms that pushed engagement via extremism rather than nuanced debate.
People like Kanye West, Kyrie Irving and Bella Hadid have many more people reading their drivel than CNN or the Wall Street Journal, especially young people. The youth get to enjoy the thrill of interacting with their stars rather than sit passively taking in boring news. Instagram became the simplest (fewest words) and most popular social media platform for young people while older Americans barely touched it.
And here also, race plays a part.
According to a May 2020 PRRI report, “young adults (ages 18-29) are notably more likely to use social media frequently than other age groups. Nearly half of young Americans (47%) report using social media sources frequently, compared to one in four (25%) Americans ages 30-49, about one in ten (11%) Americans ages 50-64, and only 3% of senior Americans (ages 65 and older).” It added that “Hispanic Americans (30%) are substantially more likely than white Americans (19%) and black Americans (19%) to be frequent social media user.”
According to Statista, Blacks are as likely as Hispanics to be active on social media, both much more than Whites. Daily use of social media is 46% for Blacks, 44% for Hispanics and only 34% for Whites. The gap in never-users shows the same contrast with only 18% of both Blacks and Hispanics never using social media and 30% of Whites never using it. So while 2.5 times as many Blacks and Hispanics use social media daily compared to never users, the numbers are almost the same for Whites.
So while over 70% of older Americans are White and not active on social media (and more inclined to use Facebook), the younger generation is almost 50/50 White/non-White and active on Instagram.
The Chinese company Tik Tok has a similar pattern. Roughly half of viewers are under 29 years old and 57% of all viewers are female. Almost no one over 55 uses the platform. Further, 80% of the content is made by people under 24 years old.
While the United States has the most viewers, it is followed immediately by Indonesia, Brazil and Russia. Almost all of the countries where the platform has the highest penetration are Muslim countries, including Saudi Arabia, UAE and Kuwait, followed by Thailand, Qatar and Malaysia.
Antisemitism in Young People / Non-Whites
Aggregating this information leads to a real divide among older and younger Americans. Those 65 and over tend to be White, remember 9/11 and the Second Intifada, get their news from newspapers made in western countries and went to work believing in meritocracy. That’s in sharp contrast to Americans 18-24 who are are as likely to be non-White as White; have no recollection of 9/11, just the War on Terror; get their news from social media stars and very young people alongside the Muslim world and Russia; and receive an education that meritocracy is a myth and that they live under the thumb of a White patriarchy which imposes its imperialist whims on the Global South from where many of the youths’ ancestors originated.
Young people don’t comprehend that Jews were active in the 1960s Civil Rights movement and view Jews as part of the White elite. They don’t believe the FBI Hate Crime reports that Jews are the most targeted group of hate crimes, and they hold antisemitic views that Jews and Zionists are deeply racist who only care about money, power and themselves.
Older Americans are relatively homogenous and see a disappointing new generation which hates America and its ally Israel. They watch young people loudly cheering the mass slaughter of Jews in Israel, and call the young socialists and jihadists out as antisemites. For their part, the young see the older generation as impossibly out-of-touch White racists, unwilling to let the multi-ethnic future take the reigns of power.
Jews know math and their impossibly small numbers, and turn to the government and cling to law enforcement to protect them from the percolating tidal wave of hate.
In the worthwhile debates over the Israel-Palestinian Arab conflict, there are is much inanity, ignorance and disinformation. It is good and proper to discuss the best ways of dealing with the conflict but such discussion should be based on basic truths.
As it relates to Jews, a key item to remember is that Judaism was designed – and remains – a particular local tribal religion, as opposed to Christianity and Islam.
Christianity and Islam are global universalistic religions. They spread their gospel by word and sword, converting people everywhere. Each sought to save people’s souls, so thought nothing of killing disbelievers and apostates. The world we know today is an outgrowth of Christian and Muslim crusades, invasions and colonization efforts.
Judaism has no such aims. The Jewish faith is tied to The Promised Land, the land of Israel. In the era before planes, trains and automobiles, Jews were commanded in the Bible to visit Jerusalem three times every year, requiring every Jew to live in the land (in sharp contrast to Muslims who are supposed to visit Mecca once in a lifetime because they are supposed to live everywhere).
Jews have a diaspora, which is everywhere outside of the land of Israel. Christians and Muslims have no such concept.
Jews believe that peaceful non-Jews can ascend to Heaven, and therefore do not engage in forceful conversions. It is unique in this way, not pre-judging people of other faiths about the state of their souls.
Christians burning “heretics” at the stake in the main square of Lisbon, Portugal during the Inquisition
It is a major reason that there are so few Jews in the world despite Judaism being around much longer (3,500 years) than Islam (1,400 years) or Christianity (2,000 years). The particular nature of the faith has kept the numbers small, in addition to being victims of massacres perpetrated by universalistic religions.
There are biblical commandments that can only be done in the land of Israel to this day. Jewish farming has particular laws to keep within the borders of Israel which do not apply to farming in the diaspora, such as shmita, letting the land lie fallow every seventh year.
Sign on an agricultural plot of land in central Israel where the farmers observed shmita in 2015 (photo: First One Through)
The tribal nature of Jews has made them a source of suspicion for centuries. NOT wanting to convert people was viewed as elitist (even though Judaism believes people of other faiths aren’t damned). Whether religious or secular, living in Israel or the diaspora, people saw the remnant of Jews who survived the pogroms, genocides, expulsions and crusades as a stubborn lot.
Jews don’t simply move to the land of Israel because of history and heritage; that’s why Palestinian Arabs who had grandparents who once lived in the land want to move there.
Jews are intrinsically connected to the small strip of land in a way that has no parallels in other faiths.
It has led to interesting population statistics in the land:
More Jews moved to Palestine/ land of Israel under the Ottomans between 1800 and 1914 than Muslims. And more Muslims moved to the land under the British from 1922 to 1948 than Jews.
Jews have been the largest faith group in Jerusalem since 1867
Further, Israel’s national anthem is the oldest in the Middle East, and is the only national anthem in the world focused on its capital city of Jerusalem.
The Jewish homeland is the land of Israel and its diaspora is the world outside of that land. No other faith has such concept of homeland and diaspora.
Fisherman have long engaged in the act of chumming to attract large game fish. According to ioutdoor.com, “chumming means dumping bait or something into the waters to attract fish.” If one wants to attract sharks, “use a bloody fish. Sharks have a very keen sense of smell so that they could smell blood no matter how diluted it might be…. By tossing the sharks chum, you can keep them in the area for hours.”
Chumming the water with bloody bait to attract sharks and other large fish
Jew haters use a similar tactic to attract other antisemites.
Historically, many European and Middle Eastern communities fabricated blood libels in which they blamed Jews for certain crimes, such as the preposterous idea that Jews abduct non-Jewish children to use their blood to bake Passover matzah. The charges led Jew haters into the streets to slaughter and observe the murder of Jews for centuries.
There is another kind of chum which extends beyond the blood of non-Jews to draw out the Jew-haters, and that’s the blood of Jews themselves.
On October 7, 2023, Palestinian Arabs invaded Israel and brutally slaughtered 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and also abducted 240 people who were brought back into Gaza as captives, again, mostly civilians. The reactions of Jew haters around the world was immediate and grotesque.
The scent of Jewish blood was sharp in the neighboring Palestinian territories where 93% are antisemites, and they cheered and supported the murders. They were elated when Hamas promised to commit the atrocities again and again. Palestinian Arabs would elect Hamas to the presidency with a whopping 78% of the vote according to a December 2023 PCPSR poll, a huge jump from the previous poll three months earlier.
Israeli Jewish woman bound, raped and paraded through Gaza on October 7, 2023
The appalling celebration of the sadistic murder of Jews spanned the globe. Jew haters, like sharks, have a keen sense of smell and come out wherever Jewish blood is spilled, even thousands of miles away.
Professors from Cornell and Columbia in the United States stated how thrilled they were with the sadistic murder of Jews. In Sydney, Australia, hundreds of antisemites came out with chants to “gas the Jews.” In New York City’s Times Square, the Democratic Socialists of America organized a protest to support Hamas, which was attended by hundreds of people, some flashing swastikas. Iranian leaders welcomed the start of “the collapse of the Zionist regime and promises its imminent annihilation.” Iranians and other Muslims from around the world met in London to celebrate the attack.
This was before Israel launched any counter-offensive on Gaza.
The actual smell of Jewish blood is seemingly more intoxicating than the myth of Jews spilling non-Jewish blood. The fervor has pushed some people to demand an immediate ceasefire to keep Hamas intact so they can inflict such carnage again, to ultimately destroy the Jewish State and 45% of global Jewry.
The Jew-hatred frenzy will likely come to a community near you, spilling more Jewish blood. Such action will activate the run-of-the-mill non-shark Jew-haters who lack the acute sensitivity to join the carnage around the world.
The orgy of hatred has produced a vile intoxicated mob.
The vicious “cycle of violence” is no longer about bloody exchanges between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Muslims. It is the odious demand for more Jewish blood as the antisemites become sated on the initial October carnage.
Hamas’s grotesque butchery of people in Israel on October 7, 2023 was seemingly from another time and place. Burning babies in ovens. Chopping off fingers of young boys and amputating feet of young girls. Cutting off breasts of women and raping them. The sickening depravity of the Palestinian jihadists seemed born in hell.
These Islamic extremists were not simply invading Israel to take land; they came to embarrass, to dehumanize, to torment the infidels.
Like the Spanish Inquisition of hundreds of years ago, religious fanatics tortured and burned Jews whom they deemed to be “heretics”.
Heretics to Christians. Infidels to Jihadists.
Jews.
Burning Jews alive during the Inquisition before large local crowds in Lisbon, Portugal
So they brought back some corpses to parade through the streets of Gaza. Some 240 live people too.
Modern technology enabled their barbarity to be captured and shared with the world very quickly. From Australia to the United States, antisemites shouted their joy at watching the massacre of Jews.
In Sydney, Australia the crowds yelled “Gas the Jews,” “F–k the Jews.” Cornell professor Russell Rickford said the spectacle was “exhilarating” and “energizing.” A junior at the University of Pennsylvania asked the crowd whether they remembered “the several other joyful and powerful images which came from the glorious October seventh?… I remember feeling so empowered and happy, so confident that victory was near and so tangible. I want all of you to hold that feeling in your hearts. Never let go of it. Channel it through every action you take. Bring it to the streets!”
The butchering of Jews eventually brought out the crowds, albeit asynchronous to the slaughter. They cheered the guilty verdict and incineration of Jews.
The antisemites gathered in the streets with fellow Jew-haters to reminisce and pray for more days like October 7. They tore down “kidnapped” posters, staged walk-outs, blockaded streets and lobbied members of congress to protect their heroes in Gaza. They wanted to see the second, third and fourth wave of torturing Jews, as Hamas promised.
Maybe live next time.
The Catholic Church once tortured and paraded Jews before burning them at the stake for the local crowds amusement. Today’s religious devils are radical jihadists appealing to a global audience to hunt and torment diaspora Jews for sport and to gather support for their war effort against the Jewish State.
The biblical Samson did not die alone but was staged in a large theater to mock and kill for the crowd’s pleasure.
Recognize that today’s pro-Hamas “protests” are not silent, holding vigil for Palestinian civilians. They are a mob looking for the next Jewish Samson to eliminate.
The last book of the Jewish Bible, Deuteronomy, is both a recap of the origin story of Jews and a lesson plan for the Jewish nation as they readied to return to their promised land.
Chapters 27 and 28 of Deuteronomy lay out the positive blessings that God will ensure to the Jews if they listen to His commandments, and the curses should they abandon Him. Deuteronomy 28:25 speaks of a particular curse:
יהוה will put you to rout before your enemies; you shall march out against them by a single road, but flee from them by many roads; and you shall become a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth.
This is the foundation of a cursed diaspora. While Jews had been slaves in Egypt and wandered the desert for hundreds of years, that situation was circumstantial. The Jewish forefathers of Jacob and his sons came to Egypt to avoid a famine and became trapped – together – in the land. As they were ending their time away from their promised land, God warned that they could be banished from the land of Israel, scattered and hated around the world, if they abandoned His charge.
This happened over thousands of years. While Jews had initially established their sovereignty and self-determination in the holy land, over time, invaders came and took the Jews to far away lands. As described in the Bible, they were often hated and persecuted in those lands, with many antisemites validating their persecution with verses from the Old Testament.
The middle of the 20th century brought change.
The Holocaust forced the Catholic Church to revisit their dogma. The horrors inflicted on European Jews with tacit or active support of many, caused the church to rewrite its rulings on the hated wandering Jews in the Second Vatican Council. Twenty years after the Holocaust, on October 28, 1965, the Church issued Nostra Aetate in which it reexamined its relationships with non-Christian faiths.
As it related to Jews, the declaration stated its “rejection of every persecution against any man, the Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel’s spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone…. The Church reproves, as foreign to the mind of Christ, any discrimination against men or harassment of them because of their race, color, condition of life, or religion.”
The Church abandoned the inflamed zeal which served as a driving force against non-Christians in the Crusades and Inquisition – and front row spectator in the Holocaust – and replaced it with a foundation of love for people of other faiths. The Holocaust – the “horror to all the kingdoms of the earth” as described in Deuteronomy – compelled the largest faith group in the world to reverse course and begin anew with an attitude of love towards all people.
The Church was able to do this by focusing on the texts of the Old and New Testaments and facts of history. It did not rewrite history that Jesus and the apostles weren’t Jews. It did not pretend that the Holocaust did not happen. It did not deny that the land of Israel is that exact piece of land that God promised to the Jewish people.
The Catholic Church considered facts and extracted new meaning, especially in light of Jews returning to their homeland after nearly 2,000 years, inspired and directed by love and peace.
Alas, as the years 1936 to 1967 which brought the horrors of the Holocaust, the rebirth of the Jewish State, the Second Vatican Council and the reunification of Jerusalem under Jewish control, directed the Islamic world to turn to noxious antisemitism.
While Nazi Germany gained power from 1936 to 1939, the Muslim Arabs in Palestine waged a war against Jews. They killed hundreds and successfully petitioned the British who were administering Palestine to block the entry of Jews back to their homeland, just as hundreds of thousands were fleeing the Holocaust.
During World War II, Palestinian leaders conspired with the Nazis as they had a “shared recognition of the enemy,” as Heinrich Himmler wrote to the Palestinian Grand Mufti in Jerusalem about the Jews. In the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust, Arab Muslims from Palestine and the surrounding countries invaded the new Jewish State in the hopes of a second Holocaust, to destroy the country and wipe out the Jews.
Palestinian Arabs are the most antisemitic people in the world according to polls. They are the center of Muslim antisemitism as noted in the same ADL poll that “while Muslims are more likely to hold antisemitic views than members of any other religion (49% Index Score), geography makes a big difference in their views. Muslims in the Middle East and North Africa (75% Index Score) are much more likely to harbor antisemitic attitudes than Muslims in Asia (37% Index Score), Western Europe (29% Index Score), Eastern Europe (20% Index Score), and Sub-Saharan Africa (18% Index Score).”
Ultra Orthodox Jews in the Me’a She’arim section of Jerusalem (photo: First One Through)
While Christians looked at the text of the Old Testament and saw the rebirth of the Jewish State as an affirmation of Jews being good and blessed by God’s love, Muslims were compelled to cast the Jews as evil and unworthy of the land and God’s love.
The conclusion of the Jewish Bible has stories of blessings and curses for Jews as it relates to their behavior and presence in the land of Israel. Over the last few decades, Christian Zionists have come to view the Jews as good and worthy of the promised land, while Muslims attempt to portray Jews as irredeemably evil and unworthy of of the holy land. Muslim Arabs then also fabricate stories that Jews don’t even have history in the land to further undermine any potential Jewish claim.
Muslim vilification of Jews is not simply antisemitism; it is a tool for ethnic cleansing.
By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.
Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
The Democratic Socialists of America is the largest and most powerful organization of the alt-left today. It has over 92,000 members and a chapter in every state, and has been effective in winning elections in liberal regions to enact extremist policies.
Beyond its call for legalizing a populist kleptocracy in a broad redistribution of wealth to “working people”, the group has opted to single out and vilify Israel and its supporters. It is progressively taking steps to call for the outright targeting of Jews for all measures of attack, including violence.
Banning the Jewish State
The official platform of the DSA is anti-Israel. The site notes that the “platform proudly states continued support for and involvement with the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, and efforts to eliminate U.S. military aid to Israel, while resisting the “normalization” of relationships between the Israeli government and other governments.” That any organization can be against coexistence between Israel and its Arab neighbors is despicable and says much about its attitudes more broadly. That it only boycotts Israel and not Iran, North Korea or Saudi Arabia points to a decidedly antisemitic core.
The DSA chapter in New York City asked candidates to pledge to not even visit Israel and see firsthand what is happening, and blindly follow Palestinian propaganda. The questionnaire asked “Do you pledge not to travel to Israel if elected to City Council in solidarity with Palestinians living under occupation? Even though foreign policy falls outside the purview of municipal government, gestures like travel to a country by elected officials from a city the size and prominence of New York still send a powerful message, as would the refusal to participate in them,” acknowledging that the politician’s job as a local elected official had nothing to do with Israel but the group still wanted to broadcast its loathsome opinions. Even left-wing politicians like State Senator Brad Hoylman said the question about Israel was “repugnant.“
Withholding Protection of Jews and Open Season on Jews
In June 2023, DSA tweeted that “in a settler colonial context there are no such things as “civilians”, but disregarding that even, it’s total folly to honestly compare settlers perpetuating pogroms to resistance groups deploying violence to liberate themselves.” Note that the Palestinian narrative considers all of Israel to be a settlement, and thereby calls the presence of any Jew to be a member of the military and fair target for violence. Rep. Ritchie Torres was apoplectic and rebuked the DSA for “declaring them [Jews] fair game for violence and terror.“
Three of the extremist members of the radical anti-Zionist left, Reps. Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and Jamaal Bowman
In August 2023, the DSA held its convention in Chicago when it considered how far to lean into condemning Jews and the Jewish State and calling for violence on both. It opted to stay more mainstream and remain part of the Democratic Party and criticize Israel, rather than break off into a completely new political party and go full jihadi.
A writer on the World Socialist Web Site wrote that the action was deeply disappointing to many in attendance, in failing to even bring the resolution to the floor. “In rejecting the proposed amendment, the DSA has resolved to support Democratic Party politicians no matter how right-wing they are and has explicitly stated its hostility to socialism. The rejected amendment would have required the DSA hold its members “accountable” if they “vote for measures which expand or strengthen the police,” “vote for any restrictions on the independent action of the working class, such as the right to strike,” or “vote for military budgets, the imperial war machine, or military aid to US client states such as the apartheid state of Israel.””
It is likely that had the group voted on the resolution it would have passed. While an independent DSA party would likely have weakened its position politically around the country, it would have freed it to openly air its antisemitic preferences.
The leaders of the DSA tactically decided to stay within the Democratic Party and advance its anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist narrative inside party ranks. While slower to advance extremist ideas, it positions the group to gain power politically much faster.
The dike that has held back the cesspool of antisemitism is being gnawed at by radical extremists infiltrating politics, and their potential success would drown the largest Jewish community in the diaspora.
These pages have reviewed that Christians love visiting Israel (a majority 56% of tourists in 2018!) and that Muslims barely come despite the supposed significance of the al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. Here we will dive a bit deeper into the countries that make up tourists to Israel.
In 2019, before the pandemic impacted travel, 4.55 million tourists visited Israel. The United States numbered almost 1 million, and every continent was represented in the top 20 originating places, with the exception of Africa. Despite the proximity and Israel being lumped into the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region by many, the Jewish State has few personal ties with Africa.
It is perhaps not surprising that France was the second highest source of tourists destined for Israel, as it is home to the second largest Jewish population (estimated around 450,000) after the USA. Many people from France have moved to Israel, with an estimated total of 3,500 in 2021, behind the USA at 4,400, and the Former Soviet Union at 10,500.
Italy, which does not have a large Jewish population (under 30,000) had 190,000 tourists visiting Israel, as they came to visit the Christian holy sites.
When normalizing for the population size of each country, the large countries like India and China fall out of the top ranking. In fact, only European countries made the list of top 20 countries when reviewed on a normalized basis.
Interestingly, the top six countries with a high percentage of people visiting Israel do NOT have many Jews. Among the top 20, only seven countries (listed in yellow above) have more than 25,000 Jews.
It is perhaps not a surprise to see non-Islamic Cyprus as the dominant tourist country, as it is very close to Israel and Israelis visit the country all of the time – including to get married. Lithuania, Switzerland, Latvia, Romania and Austria round out the tourists who come to Israel frequently, countries which USED to have a significant number of Jews before World War II.
Lithuania’s Jewish population was estimated at 263,000 people in 1939. Today’s estimates is 2,250. Latvia had about 95,000 Jews at the eve of World War II. Today’s population is about 8,000. Romania’s Jewish population is down to about 3,000 people. Austria had about 190,000 Jews in 1938 with Vienna alone having 22 synagogues. Today there are about 10,000 Jews.
The popularity of people visiting Israel has not translated into those governments’ supporting Israel at the United Nations. As seen below, Hungary was the only country to support Israel more than EIGHT PERCENT of the time from 2015 to present according to UN Watch.
Voting records of countries on Israeli resolutions at United Nations (2015-present), source: UN Watch
Many Muslim majority countries do not recognize Israel and several are technically in a state of war with the Jewish State. Only eight Muslim countries list their tourists to Israel. Of them, only Jordan, which abuts Israel and claimed half of its land as its own until 1988, had over 100 visitors per 100,000 people – 172.2, on par with Hong Kong – and half the rate of Germany.
Muslim Country
Total visitors
Visitors per 100,000
Indonesia
38,700
14.1
Turkey
32,000
37.7
Jordan
19,200
172.2
Malaysia
14,700
43.8
Egypt
8,000
7.3
Morocco
3,500
9.4
Uzbekistan
3,400
9.7
Azerbaijan
3,200
31.6
Muslim countries visiting Israel, 2019
Every Muslim country voted against Israel at the UN 100% of the time.
The populations which come to visit the Jewish State today include its only non-Muslim neighbor and those who live among Jewish ghosts who had lived throughout eastern Europe in the ghettoes of the Pale of Settlement. Today’s ghetto has its own flag with a Jewish Star, and it remains to be seen if it can withstand the pandemic of antisemitism which still permeates the world.
Many countries and municipalities have adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism, and U.S. President Joe Biden is considering doing so as well. However, he is getting pushback from some anti-Zionist corners, as people feel that the several examples cited in the IHRA definition stymies legitimate criticism against Israel.
In fact, the opposite is true. There are clear examples of antisemitism which are presently excluded in the IHRA definition which would encompass the land of Israel.
Denial of Jewish History
It is outrageous to deny any people their history, and the IHRA definition narrowly covers this topic as it relates to the genocide of European Jews in the Holocaust. However, it omits doing this in a more general manner, such as denying the 4,000 years of history of Jews in the holy land, that the Jewish Temples stood in Jerusalem and that Jews have been a majority in Jerusalem since the 1860s.
Would anyone ever consider denying the history of Black slavery? To do so would clearly mark such person as a racist.
So it is with denying Jewish history, especially in the land of Israel.
Denying the Right of Jews To Live Somewhere
Redlining where people can live has an ugly history and is known as being part of structural racism. For centuries, many countries barred where Jews could live and confined them to ghettoes.
The world promotes this today, passing laws that Jews are forbidden to live in certain parts of the land of Israel which they consider purely “Arab land.” In 2016, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 2334 which labeled Israeli “settlements” east of the 1949 Armistice Lines as “illegal.” While an Israeli Arab is free to move to eastern Jerusalem, an Israeli Jew is considered a “settler” who should be barred from owning land in the center of the Jewish holy land.
It’s a repulsive antisemitic statement. No one would ever consider legitimizing a law that Kurds should be banned from owning land in Istanbul, or Algerian Muslims in Marseilles. Yet somehow, the long antisemitic history of banning Jews from living in certain locations thrives today, in the land of Israel of all places.
Denying the Right of Jews To Pray At Their Holiest Site
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Articles 2 and 18 clearly allows all people the “freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.” Such right covers Jews at their holiest site on the Jewish Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
Yet the United Nations and several nations bow to the antisemitic demands of Muslim nations that Jews should be banned from this basic human right. It is a flagrant offense, and doing so specifically and only for Jews reeks of Jew hatred.
The Jewish Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem from the roof of the Hurva Synagogue (photo: First One Through)
People are concerned that the IHRA definition of antisemitism has too many references to the Jewish STATE of Israel when in fact it has too few mentions of the Jewish LAND of Israel. Specifically, denying Jewish history in the land, denying Jews the right to live in the land and denying Jews the right to pray at their holiest sites are blatant and obvious examples of antisemitism which should be covered.
Structural Jew-hatred exists at the highest levels of governments and should be addressed directly as antisemitism gains momentum on the extremes of left and right.
ACTION ITEM
The IHRA antisemitism definition is missing denying Jewish history in Israel, denying Jews the right to live in Israel, and denying Jews the right to pray on the Temple Mount
EMAIL REP. JAMAAL BOWMAN “Stop allowing antisemitism to grow. Push President Biden to support the IHRA definition of antisemitism which further includes: denying Jewish history in the land of Israel, denying Jews the right to live throughout the land, and denying Jews the right to pray at their holiest site of the Temple Mount, each a blatant and obvious example of antisemitism.”
FirstOneThrough 