Ruthie Blum: A portrait of viral antisemitism
If history has taught us anything, it is that antisemitism is not simply a mild psychiatric disorder – since Jews are a tiny minority in every country in the world other than Israel, which itself is minuscule in relative terms; it is, rather, a symptom of Stage Four societal cancer. No amount of alcogel can sanitize that dirty little secret.
Which brings us back to the other plague – the one that has most of humanity living in limbo, keeping what is deemed a safe, six-foot distance from strangers, friends and family alike. Oh, and scrubbing our hands like Lady Macbeth, while draped in accessories befitting a brain surgeon.
Whether panic over the coronavirus was or still is warranted remains to be seen. This is something that will not be determined fully until the wave has blown over and/or a vaccine is available. It is difficult, if not impossible, to analyze the data properly in the midst of the commotion.
The same cannot be said about antisemitism. No, hatred of Jews and Israel has a proven record of death and destruction on a mass scale. All additional statistics on that score are the fault of new perpetrators and the passive response to them on the part of the willfully ignorant, apathetic or criminally negligent ostriches among us.
It is hard to fathom how Hitlerian rhetoric and Holocaust imagery elicit less of a reaction than a virus that appears to be running its course.
A common mantra these days is that “We’re all in this together.” Well, if enabling antisemites to disperse their poison beyond borders forbidden to travelers with the sniffles constitutes solidarity, the world really is in the throes of a fatal illness. And that’s not a cartoon characterization of the situation.
Nor is the fact that Jewish scientists in Israel and abroad are working tirelessly around the clock to come up with an antidote to the coronavirus. The rest of us would do well, in the meantime, to focus on finding a remedy for a far greater killer – one that mutates and metastasizes exponentially with each passing minute.
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What If Israel Vanished?
There are three main factions within the anti-Zionist, pro-Palestine camp: The Muslim Brotherhood and neo-Ottoman Islamist camp, the Iranian revolutionaries and their “resistance camp” and the Arab nationalists and leftist camp. All have close links with various Palestinian groups.
All three factions, of course, share the anti-Israel rhetoric and dream of regaining Al-Aqsa mosque. Nevertheless, each faction within this eclectic camp has a different outlook for the future of Palestine. Some advocate a future Islamist Palestine that would be part of a grand Ottoman caliphate. Others dream of a revolutionary Palestine loyal to the Iranian Islamic regime. The third group dreams of a leftist nationalist Palestinian utopia.
None of them, however, will ever address the tough questions about their future beloved Palestine. How will they reconcile their conflicting views on the future Palestinian state? How will post-Israel Palestine avoid the fate of post-Saddam Iraq or post Arab Spring Syria? Will the allies of the various Palestinian factions leave the Palestinian people to decide their fate, or will they try to impose their vision in exchange for financial and political support?
Will Hamas, Fatah and the other Palestinian factions that failed to unite under occupation reconcile their differences after “liberation”? Will the Islamists in post-Israel Palestine accept the secularists and liberals, or turn against them as the Mullahs did in Iran, and as Erdogan did in Turkey? How will Islamists treat minorities, such as the Bahai community in Israel? What will the future of their beautiful Temple in Haifa? be? Will the prominent Palestinian diaspora, including Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib and activist Linda Sarsour, leave their prestigious careers in the US and “return” to campaign relentlessly for the “right to return to Palestine” and serve their beloved new state?
These are tough questions, so let’s ask an easier one: Who will control the Al-Aqsa Mosque after the imaginary end of Israel? Hamas? Fatah? Jordan? Turkey? Iran? Will the mostly Sunni Palestinians allow Shia Muslims to practice and celebrate the death of Hussein inside Al-Aqsa Mosque? Or will Shia be labelled “apostates”?
I once asked a hardcore pro-Palestine Islamist those questions. He was angrily dismissive. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “What matters is that we destroy the Zionist State first, then think of the day after.”