Seth Frantzman: Growing anti-Jewsh retoric in the U.S.
The general trend is not a good one. There is no other minority group in America today being systematically told that they are white and have allegiance to a foreign country, and that racism against them is not systemic. No one uses this rhetoric against Hindu Americans and no one so frequently attacks Chinese Americans with this rhetoric. And that’s how we know it’s an anti-Jewish agenda. Only Jewish candidates for office today are attacked for being “white”; not even white candidates are constantly berated for “whiteness.”
It is almost like the rhetoric is designed to turn Jews into a caricature as the highest example of “white supremacy” – as if saying “white Jews, white supremacy” enough will eventually get Americans to think “Jews are white supremacists.”
In case you were wondering if that’s exaggeration, The Boston Globe this week ran an op-ed titled “A shocking number of Jews have become willing collaborators in white supremacy.” Are Irish complicit? Catholics? Protestants? Nope. Just Jews. The narrative is: Jews and the slave trade. Jews and white supremacy. Antisemitism isn’t systemic. Jews have foreign allegiance.
The campaign is designed to attack other Jewish Americans and make them responsible for all of America’s problems.
If you don’t think this resonates across the political spectrum in the US, you need only look at the 2017 scandal in which former CIA agent Valerie Plame tweeted an article titled “America’s Jews are driving America’s wars.” She then claimed that it wasn’t an endorsement, but “Yes, very provocative, but thoughtful. Many neocon hawks ARE Jewish.” So she called an article “thoughtful” that was titled “America’s Jews are driving America’s wars.” That’s what they are calling “thoughtful” today in America. It’s only one step from there to “foreign allegiance.”
What’s important to point out is that no other group in America is blamed for “driving America’s wars.” Not white Protestants. Not Catholics. No one else. Only Jews. And that’s antisemitism – and it is systemic. To systematically always blame Jews and always find “the Jew” behind every problem in America, from foreign wars to white supremacy and slavery, is antisemitism. And it is systemic. And it is growing.
The U.N.’s eroded legitimacy
At first glance, the recent G-77 gathering seemed like a Saturday Night Live parody of the UN’ s largest bloc. The G-77 is a coalition of 134 developing nations, created to promote the economic interests of its members and create a significant negotiating and voting bloc within the United Nations. The new chairman, with rehearsed political correctness to smiles and applause, called on “all states” (except his) to end the “epidemic” of terrorism and “work with us to put an end to this scourge.”
The speaker was Palestinian Authority President and PLO chairman Mahmoud Abbas – infamous inciter and propagator of violence and terrorism against the sovereign State of Israel, and bank-roller of Palestinian terrorism to the tune of more than $138 million to terrorist prisoners and ex-convicts in 2018 alone. This PA program is commonly known as “pay for slay.” Through this program, Palestinians who commit acts of terrorism against Israelis and Americans are rewarded with lifetime financial benefits. Should the perpetrator die in the commission of his or her act of terror, their family then receives financial compensation.
Abbas’s chairmanship, which violates G-77 principles and the UN Charter, is the latest blight on the UN’s eroded legitimacy and credibility. Created to safeguard world peace, security, human rights, and the sovereign equality of states by peaceful dispute resolution, the UN has been hijacked by an antisemitic, terror-tainted political agenda – discrediting itself by violating its own charter. Mahmoud Abbas is himself a terrorist who openly calls for the destruction of Israel and the United States. While Abbas is serving as the chairman of the G-77, the Palestinians will be able to cosponsor proposals and amendments, make statements and raise procedural motions, and use every opportunity to punish Israel for some manufactured grievance. With Abbas at the helm there will be no peace with Israel. “Peace-building,” he says, “is treason.”
How did this sorry state of affairs develop? And what can be done by those states which are committed to the UN’s ethical, democratic founding principles?
Antisemitism at the UN did not begin randomly, but as a deliberate strategy. Some historians believe it started after Israel won the Six Day War in June 1967, damaging Russian prestige at home and abroad. The Soviets, enraged by Israel’s defeat of its proxies Egypt and Syria, retaliated, aiming its Cold War weapons of propaganda and disinformation against the Jewish state by a state-sponsored vilification campaign against Israel and Jews. It then did the same at the UN, where it forged a political alliance with Arab and Third World states. Starting in 1969, the General Assembly produced multiple resolutions affirming the “inalienable rights of the Palestinian people.”
RUSSIA USES language for totalitarian social control, said historian Joel Fishman. Following the Six Day War, the selected vocabulary was published in the Communist Party newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda in October 1967: “Zionism is dedicated to genocide, racism, treachery, aggression and annexation... attributes of fascists.” In 1975, the Soviet-Arab bloc passed GA Resolution 3379, “Zionism is Racism.”
And here is the segment we did about rising anti-Semitism.— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) March 4, 2019
Sad that the great @WhoopiGoldberg was out sick, but very grateful to @MeghanMcCain @HuntsmanAbby @joyvbehar @sunny for making me feel so at home. https://t.co/1SZtzAfGKT
The young German Jews who left everything behind — and moved to Israel
People who were born and raised in Israel are not used to hearing that their upbringing is something to be envious of. The country is engaged in a bloody conflict with the Palestinians, military service is compulsory and it has one of the highest inequality rates in the West. Israelis also work some of the longest hours among states within the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
These statistics do not make Israel an obvious immigration destination, particularly when coming from Germany — another OECD member that tops Israel in a number of key areas, including average wages and PISA performance. But for some German Jews, the dry figures are irrelevant. They decided to move to Israel anyway — and they have no regrets.
Read more: German politicians alarmed by rising anti-Semitism in France
"Can you really leave your house as a Jew in Germany without being treated like a museum exhibit? Not really," says Alon Kogan, a 22-year-old who was born in Offenbach and moved to Israel in 2015. "I always felt like I was a tourist attraction almost," he recalls. "Here, I no longer feel like an outsider."
Growing up near Frankfurt, Kogan was one of more than 6,500 Jews living in the area. Still, that didn't make him feel more comfortable about his religion. "People would always whisper 'look! Here are Jews! Look at what they're wearing!' if a group of Orthodox men would cross the street. It's like they were still amazed that there are Jews out there," he says.