Friday, June 02, 2023
From Ian:
The National Antisemitism Strategy Has No Clothes
The National Antisemitism Strategy Has No Clothes
There is a Hebrew maxim that reads “ve’haikar chaser min hasefer,” which roughly translates to: “The essential point is missing from the argument.” Or, to use more popular vernacular, “the emperor has no clothes.” This, in essence, is our central critique of the recently released U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism. For all its pomp and flair, the strategy misses some of the key forces driving antisemitism today and how to fight it effectively.Melanie Phillips: The Biden administration’s anti-antisemitism travesty
The lengthy, 60-page document offers a multiplicity of ways to counter the world’s oldest hatred. Many of these are quite positive, including its focus on beefing up security for Jewish institutions and the emphasis it places on education—a vital building block for any tolerant society.
But the positives it presents make the strategy all the more dangerous, as the good it espouses lends credibility to its fundamental weaknesses.
The most serious flaw is that the strategy lacks any real consideration of how anti-Zionism, the denial of the Jewish right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland, almost invariably manifests as a politically correct version of antisemitism, a version that is spiraling out of control in America today.
Unfortunately, the strategy gives cover to this contemporary iteration of antisemitism. It does so by including the fringe Nexus definition as a guide for identifying Jew hatred, alongside the globally accepted IHRA working definition. While IHRA equates anti-Zionism with antisemitism, Nexus provides several caveats allowing for opposition to the Jewish right to self-determination, as well as applying double standards to Israel, by declaring that “paying disproportionate attention to Israel and treating Israel differently than other countries is not prima facie proof of antisemitism.” Here the Nexus definition opens the antisemitism loopholes that IHRA was intended to close, thereby rendering the endorsement of IHRA entirely meaningless.
The denial of the Jewish right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland almost invariably manifests as a politically correct version of antisemitism.
Throughout the centuries, antisemitism has manifested in three distinct ways. Some—like Amalek in biblical times or the Nazis in the modern era—have focused their venom on the Jewish people, based on an almost instinctive, gut-level hatred. Their goal was to annihilate us, just because we existed.
Others have directed their hatred against our religion. A prime example is the Christian persecution of Jews during the Middle Ages. The Crusaders at the time denied any intention to murder Jews based on their peoplehood per se, but rather because they rejected the Christian faith. In the end, however, it became clear that their goal to destroy our fundamental beliefs was the equivalent of destroying the Jewish people.
Nowadays, a third type of Jew-hatred has emerged in the form of anti-Zionism. In this post-Holocaust world, targeting Jews because of a perceived ethnic identity is generally unacceptable. In order to circumvent this new barrier, attacks have shifted focus and now largely target the State of Israel. What many do not understand, is that denying Jews their homeland uproots a fundamental pillar of our peoplehood.
Last month, it emerged that Google’s head of diversity, Kamau Bob, had said in a 2007 blog post about the Israel-Palestinian Arab conflict that Jewish people had “an insatiable appetite for war and killing” and an “insensitivity” to suffering. Although Google has now removed Bob from his post (but hasn’t fired him), the remark was a graphic illustration of the symbiosis between Jew-hatred and the DEI agenda.J’accuse: US Jewish leadership is failing to defend the community - opinion
Kenneth L. Marcus, the founder and chairman of the Brandeis Centre for the Protection of Human Rights Under Law, has said that in the DEI programs, “we’re seeing anti-Jewish stereotypes, biases, defamations, separation of Jews from other groups and so-called ‘erasive antisemitism,’ which is to say denial of what it means to have a Jewish identity.”
Last December, a Heritage Foundation report showed that the private social-media accounts of DEI officers at university campuses displayed virulent feelings against Israel, compared to generally positive feelings towards the People’s Republic of China. The authors noted that 96% of the tweets about Israel were critical, while 62% of the tweets about China were favorable.
The word genocide was associated with Israel nine times, “ethnic cleansing” seven times, and the accusation that Israel specifically targeted children was made 27 times. The report observed that “DEI staff have an obsessive and irrational animus toward the Jewish state.”
DEI doctrine has redefined “hatred” to include mere offense, upset or insult. Yet it itself promotes hatred of Jews and Israel while also vilifying white people and Western civilization.
Shockingly, this agenda is promoted, supported and endorsed by liberal American Jews.
These Jews refuse to acknowledge the disproportionate part played in today’s antisemitism by Muslims and African-Americans. They refuse to condemn “the Squad.” They refuse to denounce Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam who embodies the nexus between black and Muslim antisemitism.
Instead, they smear anyone who does point out this nexus as Islamophobic or racist, while swooning over the Biden administration’s anti-antisemitism travesty.
Jewish community leaders in Britain similarly deny the reality of Muslim Jew-hatred and demonize those who point it out.
The doctrine of intersectionality has fueled Muslim antisemitism and helped advance the Islamist onslaught on the West, courtesy of liberal Jews.
The IHRA definition has merely given a new sheet of music to the orchestra on the Titanic to play as the ship goes down.
WHAT HAPPENED to the West’s Jews? As the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks explained, antisemitism is a virus that morphs predictably: Whatever is any society’s worst sin, that is what the Jews are charged with. In the religious epoch, Jews were the killers of the Christian God. When race “science” – eugenics – was all the rage, Jews were racial vermin. In capitalist societies, the Jews were hated as communists; in communist societies, we were despised as capitalist exploiters. When having a nation-state was the way normal people expressed their values, Jews were cursed as rootless cosmopolites. And so today, when globalism and internationalism are the reigning virtues, Jews are cursed for their state.
Once we were tainted, stripped of having the moral high ground – which, for a while, the guilt and shame from the Holocaust provided – all hell could be loosed against us. Well, the virus mutated into anti-Israelism, or Palestinianism, and Jews worldwide are tainted as oppressors. The “new antisemitism” pierced our post-Holocaust shield.
The Jewish establishment left us practically defenseless in the face of this new mutant strain, and that is why – I know it’s a serious charge – we are in this awful situation.
To make matters worse, a new “woke-progressive” ideology that is undeniably and inevitably anti-Jewish has defeated classical liberalism in many key institutions and has become an accelerant to the mounting antisemitism.
Classic liberalism believes in equal opportunity for all, regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, religion and/or sexual orientation. It welcomed and supported Jewish life in America. The new ideology – which goes by many names: woke, progressivism, political correctness, intersectionality, etc. – insists instead on equal results. If there are fewer Black or Latino lawyers proportional to their numbers in society than there are white or Jewish lawyers, that proves that society is unjust and racist. Those who achieved success did so by exploiting the underachieving minorities. Success in life is proof that you have oppressed or have benefited by the oppression of Blacks, Latinos, women, homosexuals, etc. As Jews are among the most successful, we are by implication the biggest oppressors.
And all of this ideology is being taught in American public schools. Its principles are required in law schools, medical schools, corporate boards. Fewer and fewer Jews are getting into Ivy League schools, fewer are being hired by corporations, and fewer are sitting on boards of philanthropies.
The Jewish establishment is now fully trapped. It put all our eggs into the imploding liberal basket. It made alliances with all the minority groups, and now these very groups have turned on us and have become Palestinianists and antisemitic. Our leaders are flummoxed and confused. They need to be pressured, convinced, humiliated and shamed to do a massive rethink.
To help organize grassroots activists to challenge and change our leadership, we created The Jewish Leadership Project (www.jewishleadershipproject.org). Our book prescribes steps that our leaders must take to stem the tide of animus.
We are in danger at a watershed moment. But we are an accomplished community, with very talented individuals. We can and must find proud, brave and competent leadership to secure a better Jewish future.
