The real cause of the descent into anti-Zionism and hatred of Jews is secular liberalism, and the cultural fissure that has opened up along fault lines stretching back to the 18th-century Enlightenment

By: Melanie Phillips

The annual parade in Aalst, Belgium, last Sunday turned into a carnival of monstrous Jew-hatred. Participants portrayed Jews as insects topped with fur shtreimel hats and peyot (sidelocks).

Others were dressed in Nazi uniforms, among other vicious Jewish caricatures, libels and insults.

The mayor of Aalst defended the carnival on the basis that it mocked Christians and Asians, too. He thus showed no understanding of the difference between vulgar mockery and the murderously dehumanizing, historical phenomenon of anti-Semitism.

This was followed by a carnival parade in the Spanish village of Campo de Criptana. Supposedly intended to commemorate the Holocaust, it featured dancing Nazis, concentration-camp prisoners in sequined tights and Israeli flags, and a “gas chamber” float with a giant Hebrew menorah between two chimneys.

On Monday, the European Jewish Association revealed the results of a survey of 16,000 Europeans from 16 countries. One-fifth of them believed that a secret network of Jews influences global political and economic affairs. The same number agreed that “Jews exploit Holocaust victimhood for their own needs,” and one-quarter agreed that Israel’s policies make them understand why some people hate Jews.

In the United States, more than 50 Jewish community centers in 23 states have received emailed bomb threats within the past week.

There have been repeated attacks on ultra-Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn. There have been synagogue murders in Pittsburgh and Poway, and widespread bullying of Jewish students on college campuses. Members of “the Squad” of freshman congresswomen have made venomously anti-Israel or anti-Jewish statements.

Bernie Sanders, who is currently the frontrunner to secure the Democratic presidential nomination, is purposely not attending the upcoming AIPAC conference because he claims it provides a platform for leaders expressing “bigotry” and opposition to “basic Palestinian rights.”

In Britain, anti-Semitic incidents rose last year to an unprecedented high, marking the fourth successive year of record-breaking figures. In France, 12 Jews have been murdered since 2003 just because they were Jews, while anti-Semitic attacks soared by more than 75 percent last year and the year before. In Germany, anti-Semitic incidents are similarly rising with a murderous attack last Yom Kippur on the synagogue in Halle.

While anti-Jewish attacks are coming from the far-right, the left and the Muslim community, the greatest threat comes from the progressive side of politics.

This is because its worldview overwhelmingly dominates Western cultural and political institutions; it harbors profound anti-Jewish views within its own ranks; and its cultural reach means that its own anti-Jewish incitement legitimizes and encourages far-right anti-Semitic attitudes that were once treated as beyond the pale.

And this is all inextricably tied up with hatred of Israel, and the entirely false but widespread belief that the Jews have displaced the indigenous people of the land and behave illegally and with wanton cruelty towards the Palestinian remnant.

From these lies and libels flows the surreal irrationality of the anti-Israel discourse that has so shockingly become the signature cause of the Western progressive.

The obvious reasons for this include the takeover of progressivism by Marxism, the collapse of education into anti-Western propaganda, and the rise of identity politics and intersectionality. This has created an ignorant and brainwashed cohort of young people who have provided the groundswell for Sanders or Britain’s (now defeated) Jeremy Corbyn.

This week, the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs published a book of essays called Israelophobia and the West: the Hijacking of Civil Discourse on Israel and How to Rescue It. The book provides a thoughtful analysis of the nexus between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, where legitimate criticism of Israel stops and demonization starts, and the fundamental challenge to Israel from the left.

All this, though, has already been exhaustively discussed. Moreover, much of it merely produces the same old agonized discussion about how more effectively to challenge the lies and delegitimization. It thus assumes that the lies can and should be countered by a better application of reason.

This, though, misses the critical point: that both anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism constitute an irrational belief, akin to a cult, and are therefore impervious to facts and argument.

This is understood by French sociology professor Shmuel Trigano. In the most astute essay in the JCPA’s book, he correctly says we are “entering a new age of Jew-hatred,” which cannot be argued with but must instead be fought.

The onslaught against Israel and Zionism, he points out, is part of the left’s broader reconfiguration of the West. Anti-Zionism, he says, is the creature of post-modernism and its satellite orthodoxies: post-colonialism, multiculturalism and gender doctrine, all of which are involved in “deconstructing” Western society.

As he writes, criminalizing the identity of the Jews as a people in the State of Israel is part of the European postmodernists’ war against their own cultures and nation-states.

But even that still doesn’t explain this eruption of obsessive, primitive Jew-hatred.

For it’s not just that anti-Zionism is the contemporary mutation of anti-Semitism. The old, un-mutated anti-Semitism is still there: the open hatred of Jews as Jews. The question is why this has been allowed to roar once again into a cultural conflagration.

Contrary to what Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz said in a discussion about the JCPA book on Wednesday evening, the cause is not the polarization into political extremism on both sides.

This eruption hasn’t been created by Bernie Sanders or Jeremy Corbyn; nor, as some believe, by the populism of Donald Trump or Hungary’s nationalist prime minister, Victor Orbán.

Populism is not in itself an extremist movement (although some bits undoubtedly are). It is rather a response to the extremism that has overtaken the entire progressive movement, and which represents the idea of the West as intrinsically evil and sinful.

Sanders and Corbyn, who are both undoubtedly extreme, are not the cause of the phenomenon, but the product of a broad cultural shift. When Bernie Sanders called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “a reactionary racist” in Tuesday’s Democratic presidential candidates’ debate, the audience broke into applause.

The real cause of the descent into anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist hatred is secular liberalism, and the cultural fissure that has opened up along fault lines stretching back to the 18th-century Enlightenment.

This proclaimed the death of God and the enthronement instead of the autonomous individual freed from biblical moral codes. This led to the destruction of hierarchies of values without which there can be no morality, the replacement of duty by man-made and highly contingent human rights, and the collapse of truth and reason.

The result is the moral and philosophical carnage we see all around us. There’s the psycho-pathological unmooring of individuals caused by the undermining of the family. There’s the abolition of objectivity in the universities by moral and cultural relativism.

And there’s the apocalyptic environmental movement, which mirrors the belief by medieval, Jew-massacring Christians that fallen humanity must be punished for its sins to bring about the perfection of the world—and which has sanctified as its prophet a psychologically damaged child.

Better advocacy for Israel, necessary as that is, will not address this anti-Jewish derangement. That’s because what’s driving it is the repudiation of the Jewish precepts at the heart of the Christian West. And the problem—and tragedy—for the Jewish people is that so many of those subscribing to this liberal onslaught are themselves Jews.

            (JNS.org)

Melanie Phillips, a British journalist, broadcaster and author, writes a weekly column for JNS. Currently a columnist for “The Times of London,” her personal and political memoir, “Guardian Angel,” has been published by Bombardier, which also published her first novel, “The Legacy,” in 2018. Her work can be found at: www.melaniephillips.com.

By: Cliff Rieders

The results are almost in. Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party has overwhelmingly defeated its foes and will have no problem forming a right of center government. “BiBi” reprised his incredible victory during the waning days of the Obama Administration. How did he do it? In reality, the American left was his biggest unintentional ally.

When Israelis discovered, and President Obama admitted to the fact, that the State Department was funding Netanyahu’s detractors, the Israeli public was outraged. It did not make much news in the United States and no impeachment charges were brought against the President for “meddling” in foreign elections. However, Israelis vote in outstanding numbers. It is not uncommon for almost 70% of Israelis eligible to vote to show up at the poles. That is almost twice what happens in typical American elections. They all knew that President Obama hated Netanyahu, and regardless of their own political affiliations, no small country will tolerate the big bully trying to push them around.

Two years ago, when President Trump was elected President of the United States, many Israelis were worried about the rightward turn of events. This softened support for Prime Minister Netanyahu and in the last year he has barely cobbled together a caretaker government.

Enter Bernie Sanders. Sanders, one of the dumbest guys in politics, depends heavily on young voters who feel rebellious. Many of those voters say that if Sanders does not get the Democratic nomination, they would vote for Trump. They are simply looking for an outlaw.

Bernie Sanders’ recent scathing and unfounded criticism of the Israeli government was repeated in Israel ad nauseam. Bernie Sanders has come to typify the self-hating Jew who rejects everything about his background and religion, only to help the enemies of the Jewish people. This may do well for Sanders in the eyes of Soviet-era totalitarian minds, but it does not help him in a robust democracy such as that in Israel. The convincing victory of Benjamin Netanyahu is not only a tribute to Netanyahu’s success domestically and in foreign affairs, but is also a reaction to American left-wing Democratic “meddling” in Israeli politics.

Clearly there are many factors in Prime Minister Netanyahu’s victory. The economy has never been better in the history of the country. Israel has a blend of socialism and capitalism which works well. Unlike other socialist countries in Scandinavia which own the means of production, private ownership is celebrated in Israel. However, there is a robust safety net for the poor and business is sufficiently regulated, without being strangled, so that it serves the interests of the working person. Israel has gained friends in the Arab world. The third largest party in this country is the “Joint Less” which is made up of Arab Muslims living within Israel. No other country treats its enemies so well.

In terms of international safety, the bad days of President Obama are gone. While the Obama Administration, without question, encouraged very strong military ties between the U.S. military and the Israeli military, the President of the United States unleashed the mad dog of Iran. Iran finally, thanks to American led sanctions, is being humbled and is less able to spread its own form of revolutionary disease around the world. Israel still has to worry every day about those regimes which want the nation annihilated. That is not likely to change so long as Islamic extremism exists anywhere in the world.

The relationship between Israeli Arabs and Israelis is a horse of a different color. Arab and Jew celebrate their cooperation. When the Trump Administration offered Arabs in Israel the ability to part of a Palestinian State without moving one inch, they resoundingly rejected the idea. “We want to be Israelis” declared the Palestinian Muslim Arabs living within this country! Who could blame them? Israel has one of the highest living standards in the world and is one of the most successful democracies in integrating its minorities. Druze, Christian Arabs, Messianic Christians and all sorts of other minorities benefit from the largesse of this country’s governance system.

Israel has certainly not without its challenges, both domestic and foreign. There are still those leftists in Europe and the United States that would like to demonize and boycott Israel, just as Jews faced economic isolation for millennia. Ulysses S. Grant attempted to keep Jewish merchants out of territory which he conquered in the South. Before Pennsylvania and Delaware were states, there were attempts to keep Jewish traders out of the so-called Delaware Territory. Fortunately, the Dutch reversed that bigoted policy.

Unfortunately, most of the Democratic Party today has very little understanding of Israel, its democracy or the values of its people. They see political life in terms of black and white, right and left, and without appreciating the nuance of a sophisticated progressive society. The leftists of Europe and the United States have developed the totalitarian mindset that came to define Soviet-era politics such as those found in even modern-day Russia, China, and a variety of other non-republics.

Israelis, as is typical, will continue to forge their own independent path. They will not knuckle under to Americans or anyone else who attempt to define the Jewish mind and mystique.

I am sure that as Benjamin Netanyahu, and his supporters, savor their remarkable victory, they are also chuckling about the bizarre manner in which the Bernie Sanders of the world have unwittingly helped them achieve victory.

Cliff Rieders is a Board-Certified Trial Advocate in Williamsport, is Past President of the Pennsylvania Trial Lawyers Association and a past member of the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority. None of the opinions expressed necessarily represent the views of these organizations.

By: Caroline Glick

The hundred rockets and missiles that Gazan terrorists launched into Israel this week served as yet another reminder that we have an account to manage with Gaza.

“Manage,” not “settle,” because we lack the opportunity to settle our score with Gaza. There is not today, and for the foreseeable future, there will not be any regime in Gaza that will agree to set aside its war with Israel and leave us alone.

Gaza, like Judea and Samaria, is a long-term problem that requires management, not resolution.

To understand what needs to be done, we have to focus on the two sides of the problem.

First, Gaza is a military problem. To successfully and permanently quell the security threat Gaza poses to Israel, the IDF requires the capacity to operate freely in Gaza – as it does in Judea and Samaria. Israel built its capacity to operate throughout Judea and Samaria during Operation Defensive Shield in 2002.

In 1995, Israel signed the Interim Agreement with the PLO. The deal set out the basis for the transfer of authorities and powers to the Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria.

The PLO agreed to combat terrorism in all the areas transferred to its authority. Area A, which encompasses the Palestinian cities in Judea and Samaria was an area under full Palestinian security and civilian authority. In Area B, which includes the Palestinian villages, the PLO received full civil authority and police authorities, while Israel retained what was referred to as “overriding security authority,” or, in plain English, the authority to conduct counterterrorism operations at will.

Area C encompasses the rest of Judea and Samaria, including all Israeli military installations, Israeli cities, towns and villages and Jordan Valley. There the PLO received limited civil authority and no military authority.

From 1996, when the PLO set up shop in Judea and Samaria until Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, the PLO transformed Area A into one large terrorist infrastructure. The suicide bombers that massacred Israeli civilians on a near-daily basis from 2000 through 2002 were trained and equipped in the bomb factories and terror bases in Area A.

Following a month in which 130 Israelis were slaughtered in suicide bombings and shootings, including 30 in the Seder massacre at the Park Hotel in Netanya, in April 2002, the government ordered the IDF to destroy the terrorist infrastructure in Judea and Samaria.

In the event, after one of the most complex urban warfare operations in history, and while sustaining significant battlefield losses, the IDF achieved the sought-after result. Since 2002, the IDF has been able to operate throughout Judea and Samaria. As a consequence, the PLO and its fellow terrorist groups have been unable to rebuild their suicide belt assembly lines or import or develop a rocket and missile industry.

The military reality in Gaza is similar to the situation that held in Judea and Samaria on the eve of Defensive Shield – just with missiles and rockets and more arms concentrated in far denser population centers. There are many reasons Israel has not undertaken an operation like Defensive Shield in Gaza to date. But they can be watered down to a simple cost-benefit analysis. The price of such a Defensive Shield-Gaza would be extremely high while the benefits Israel would obtain remain fiercely debated.

Rather than conduct a Defensive Shield, the government and IDF have adopted a strategy of minimizing risks and violence. The strategy is implemented at times by appeasing the Hamas regime through cash transfers from Qatar and the provision of work permits for Gazans in Israel.

The strategy is implemented at times through military operations – generally conducted from the air to minimize risk to troops. Every few years, Israel is required as it was in 2014, 2011, 2010, and 2008-09 to carry out a limited ground operation in Gaza to scale back Hamas’s military capabilities.

In the absence of a clear casus belli along the lines of a missile-launched Park Hotel massacre, it is hard to see Israel initiating an operation with a scope similar to that of Defensive Shield in Gaza. And so, in the coming years, Israel will be required to continue to act with varying degrees of force in Gaza to secure an acceptable quality of life for residents of southern Israel and to prevent Hamas from developing the capacity to pose a strategic threat to the country.

This brings us to the second aspect of the complex, long-term problem of Gaza – the diplomatic challenge. And this, in turn, forces us to consider the strategic implications of socialist Senator Bernie Sanders’ presidential run.

Following Sanders’ landslide victory last Saturday in the Nevada caucuses, during Tuesday’s night Democratic debate, the radical senator from Vermont was center stage. Sanders is now the undisputed frontrunner in the race for the Democratic nomination.

Towards the end of the debate, Sanders, who began referring to himself recently as “proud to be Jewish,” was asked about his view of Israel. He was also asked whether he plans to move the US Embassy in Israel to Tel Aviv.

The question came following Sanders’ wild attack on AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby in Washington earlier in the week. On Sunday, Sanders announced that he wouldn’t be participating in AIPAC’s annual policy conference. AIPAC, he alleged, serves as a “platform” for “leaders who express bigotry and oppose basic Palestinian rights.”

In response to the Israel questions Tuesday night, Sanders said, “I am very proud of being Jewish. I actually lived in Israel for some months. [He was a volunteer at a Communist kibbutz in the early 1960s, CBG] But what I happen to believe, right now, sadly, tragically, in Israel through Bibi Netanyahu you have a reactionary racist who is now running that country.”

As to whether or not he would remove the embassy from Jerusalem, Sanders replied, that it was “something that we would take into consideration.”

The primary threat Sanders poses to Israel, of course, is that he becomes the next President of the United States. But he poses an additional danger. If, as now seems likely, Sanders wins the Democratic nomination, he will transform the Democratic Party into an Americanized version of Jeremy Corbyn’s British Labour Party. Like Labour under Corbyn, the Democrats under Sanders will become an anti-Semitic party that supports the boycott of Israel and gives a warm and supportive shoulder to Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and their allies and partners. Sanders and his Democratic Party will reject the morality of Zionism, the Jewish national liberation movement, just as Corbyn and his people have done.

Sanders himself has said on numerous occasions that he sees Corbyn as his overseas twin and that his vision for the Democratic Party is to turn it into Corbyn’s Labour party in America.

Which brings us back to Gaza.

In a world where the best-case scenario has a Democratic Party that is openly hostile to Israel and its American Jewish supporters, and the worst-case scenario has the White House openly hostile to the Jewish state and its American Jewish supporters, how is Israel supposed to deal with Hamas/Gaza – the sweethearts of the radical left?

Since then-president Dwight D. Eisenhower compelled then-Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion to withdraw IDF forces from the Sinai in 1956, a central plank of Israel’s national security doctrine has been to avoid going to war without US support. A Corbynized Democratic party – not to mention a Corbynized White House – will not back any Israeli military operations in Gaza.

Israel faced a similar quandary six years ago. In Operation Protective Edge, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, then-IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz and then-Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon were blindsided when then-Secretary of State John Kerry adopted as the US position, Hamas’ ceasefire demands as presented by its representatives Turkey and Qatar.

They were stunned again when then-President Barack Obama decided to prohibit US civilian flights to Ben-Gurion International Airport in the middle of the war. They were shocked when the administration embargoed the supply of Hellfire missiles to the IDF and they were flummoxed by the steady stream of condemnations of IDF operations by senior administration spokesmen and officials.

At the time senior IDF officials directly involved in the General Staff deliberations revealed that Gantz did not comprehend the strategic implications of the administration’s behavior. A testament to the veracity of their claims came a year later when in defiance of Netanyahu, Gantz supported the 2015 nuclear deal the administration negotiated with Iran despite the fact that the agreement guaranteed Iran a nuclear arsenal within a decade and despite the fact that its inspection clauses were unenforceable.

During Operation Protective Edge, Netanyahu realized immediately what was happening and took unprecedented steps to scuttle the administration’s efforts to coerce Israel into accepting Hamas’ ceasefire demands.

Netanyahu created a coalition to bypass the Turkey-Qatar axis. Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE were members of the bloc. When Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi demanded to mediate between Israel and Hamas, as had been Egypt’s general practice for decades, the Obama administration couldn’t figure out an excuse to deny him the role. When Sisi rejected Hamas’ ceasefire demands and embraced Israel’s conditions, it was Obama and Kerry’s turn to be flummoxed.

Parallel to those efforts, with support from key senators, Netanyahu worked with friendly governments – particularly Stephen Harper’s government in Canada and Silvio Berlusconi’s government in Italy to force the Obama administration to end its prohibition on civilian fights to Ben Gurion.

These actions by Netanyahu secured the IDF the time and the diplomatic over to do what needed to be done on the ground in Gaza.

The actions Netanyahu took were high risk. He couldn’t speak openly about the depth of the Obama administration’s animosity because doing so would have risked demoralizing the public and even instilling panic. He had to publicly support Obama and Kerry as they worked directly on Hamas’s behalf against Israel in order to keep channels of communication open and to preserve relations with more supportive Democrats.

Today when it is clear that another campaign in Gaza is just around the corner, and that that campaign won’t be the last one, we need to consider both the military and diplomatic conditions under which those campaigns are likely to be undertaken. This is doubly true in light of the Corbynization of the Democratic Party.

The Israeli public cannot influence the outcome of the US elections. But on Monday, it will determine how Israel will respond to aggression against it – whether that aggression emanates from Gaza or from Washington.

            (Originally published in Israel HaYom)