Melanie Phillips: The invisible victims of jihadi violence
The death of Ruth Pearl at the age of 85 reminds us once again of the unspeakable horror that was visited upon Ruth and her family, and which served as a particularly dreadful wake-up call for the Western world.
In January 2002 her son, the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, was kidnapped by Al-Qaeda and beheaded nine days later.
Ruth, an electrical engineer, and her husband Judea, a professor of computer science and statistics, formed the Daniel Pearl Foundation, which brings together people from different cultures through musical events, lectures, journalism fellowships and other activities.
Ruth’s immediate family members, who survived the 1941 “Farhud” pogrom in Baghdad in which 180 Jews were killed and hundreds more injured, were part of the subsequent mass exodus of Jews to Israel in 1951.
Shortly afterwards, Ruth’s brother died fighting in the Israel Defense Forces.
Such a family background in the Jewish experience of persecution and self-defense meant that when Daniel Pearl said into Al-Qaeda’s video camera just before he was slaughtered, “My father is Jewish. My mother is Jewish. I am Jewish,” this had a resonance which would have escaped his murderer.
That vile individual, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, told the FBI he believed that killing a Jew would make for powerful propaganda and incite his fellow jihadis.
For Al-Qaeda wasn’t just a terror organization springing from the arcane geopolitics of the Middle East. Its agenda was driven by hatred of Jews.
Jew-hatred is indeed central to the jihadis’ aim of conquering the west for Islam.
If someone says they are going to kill you, believe them
It’s time for Jews to reconnect to our illustrious history of defending our selves. From the haggiborim, heroes of King David, to the glorious Maccabees, to the teachings of Jabotinsky to the IDF.
Do our young people even know about Jabotinsky? During his youth, Ze’ev Jabotinsky took a leadership role in organizing self-defense units and fought for Jewish minority rights in Russia. He then traveled the length and breadth of Russia urging self-defense on the Jewish communities. He was behind the Betar Movement. In 1937, the Irgun Tzvai Leumi (I.Z.L) became the military arm of the Jabotinsky movement and he became its commander.
The three bodies were headed by Jabotinsky, The New Zionist Organization (N.Z.O), the Betar youth movement and the Irgun Tzvai Leumi (I.Z.L) were three extensions of the same movement. The New Zionist Organization was the political arm that maintained contacts with governments and other political factors, Betar educated the youth of the Diaspora for the liberation and building of Eretz Israel and the Irgun Tzvai Leumi (I.Z.L) was the military arm that fought against the enemies of the Zionist enterprise.
Let us not forget Meir Kahane, the ideological father of Jewish Power, the man behind the JDL; the Jewish Defence League. Yes, some say he was an extremist but his legacy should be that Jews can and must be able to defend themselves. And, today, we have the JDL in the diaspora. And we need them.
Antifa and BLM wreak havoc – well, that’s OK. We scream that Black Lives Matter and turn a blind eye to the destruction they cause. A member of the JDL stands up to defend Jews and he is accused of being part of a terrorist organization. Well, people, Jewish Lives Matter.
Too many Jews are not prepared to defend our rights to wear our kippot, our stars of David, display our mezzuzot on our door posts and stand proudly with Israel. Because of fear. When we are no longer afraid of being physically hurt we can stand up to anything. Seems we have not learned that weakness attract bullies. Ducking and hiding is never the answer.
It is time for every Jew to learn self defense. Teach it in day schools, in Hebrew schools, at Jewish camps. After school programmes. We can learn Krav Maga from the IDF or we can learn jiu jitsu like our Israeli brothers and sisters. After their smashing success, perhaps we should rename it Jew jitsu.
When the world comes to see that Jews in the Diaspora are as fearless as the IDF in Israel, they will leave us alone. When they see Jews fighting back in the streets when a Jew hater comes up and attacks, they will leave us alone.
When we honour our past, our great fighters, we will be respected and left alone to live as Jews, in Israel and the Diaspora.
Chaim Weizmann, writing in the late 1940s. Before statehood, before 1967, before anything that can be called Occupation. pic.twitter.com/udpiwMwnjf
— David Hazony (@davidhazony) July 29, 2021
American Jews Can No Longer Afford to Be Apathetic About Our History
By now, most people have read about the poll suggesting that far too many American Jews have bought into objectively false claims of “apartheid” and “genocide” in Israel. Whether the poll is accurate or not, it hints at a deep problem facing the American Jewish community that many have suspected for some time now.JNS: Ep. 12: Seth Mandel: 'The ADL has 'one job.' It isn't doing it.'
There have been many brilliant recent analyses of the particular brand of rot afflicting the US Jewish community. Seth Mandel rightly pointed to the complicity of the ADL in the mainstreaming of antisemitism and anti-Israel libels. Natan Sharansky and Gil Troy eloquently traced the phenomenon of the “Un-Jews” from Tiberius to today’s “anti-Zionists.” Caroline Glick observantly pointed to the difference with the British Jewish community, which has responded to its own challenges far more successfully than their American counterparts. Another extremely eloquent Jewish advocate, Bari Weiss, has with great passion and clarity raised the alarm of the dangers bigger than those facing just the Jewish community — but which have particularly acute effects among us.
Beyond the concerning state of public education in many parts of the United States, discourse at all levels has embraced — to some degree — the trends of post-modernism and post-truth.
A society which dispenses with the need for facts, historical context, and nuance is one not likely to be favorable to the Jewish State. It’s not hard to understand why even young Jews, indoctrinated in such worldviews, would be so quick to turn their backs on their fellow Jews like a 21st century Yevsektsiya.
I do not pretend to have any keener insight than those amazing Jewish voices I previously mentioned. I also will not pretend to have a magic bullet solution. Though many antisemites seem to think otherwise, we can’t control the country, let alone the world. Nor do I think we’re in any position to do so, anyway. Like a passenger plane losing cabin pressure, we need to secure our own oxygen mask first or we risk suffocating and proving useless for those around us.
Washington Examiner magazine editor Seth Mandel joins JNS editor in chief Jonathan Tobin to talk about why the ADL is failing to confront anti-Semitism, polarization and home schooling.
The two discuss how the ADL is abandoning its role as an anti-Semitism watchdog in favor of partisan advocacy, the need to emphasize that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism, whether the Democratic Party is being ‘Corbynized,’ the dangerous impact of polarization in American politics and why more people are turning to home schooling their children.