The Lynching of Israel

Once, Jews were persecuted because they had no ancestral home — and no army, navy, or air force. Now, Jews, both in Israel and around the world, are persecuted precisely because they have an ancestral home which dares to defend its citizens from deadly harm. This Jew-hatred refuses to die. And, Jewish-American, Jewish-European, and Israeli leaders have refused to recognize that the contemporary war against the Jews is bigger, and the consequences graver, than ever before in history, and that this war is primarily being fought—and won or lost — through propaganda and the manipulation of ideas. Leftist progressives and journalists in the West have joined forces with Islamists, and with the United Nations and human rights groups in propagating Big Lies against the small Jewish state.

I first wrote about this in 2001-2002 and published a book on the subject in 2003: The New Anti-Semitism. It made no difference. Jewish-American leaders pooh-pooed the book, or paid no attention to it. Many insisted that "right wing Christians" were the most dangerous Jew-haters. I disagreed then and I disagree now. Since then, many Jewish-American intellectuals have insisted that such "alarmism" should not be encouraged, that things have been "worse in the past" and that matters are not "that bad" now.

Oh, speak for yourself — but dare not speak for Israel. And, do not think that Israel's fate is not your fate too, as well as the fate of Western civilization. And, it gives me no pleasure that, seven years later, more and more American Jewish organization leaders are beginning to sound as I once did. The unfunded and poorly funded grassroots groups are way ahead of the Fat Cats.

Here's what we are up against. Palestinian terrorists call themselves "freedom fighters;" Turkish terrorists call themselves "humanitarians." When propagandists appropriate and misuse language, reality is blurred, confusion reigns. When the "good people" label (Israeli) "self defense" as "aggression" — and this includes feminists who should know more about the importance of self-defense — one despairs, or at least hopes that serious people, including leaders, will see through the deception and set matters right. Failing that, one experiences vertigo.

Some Jewish-Americans believe that Israel only has itself to blame. And so they blame Israel before anyone else can do so—as if the Islamist mobs would spare such Righteous Jewish Exceptions from the kind of collective lynch mob-like fury that is currently taking place world-wide against Israel and that specifically took place on the Turkish boat Mavi Marmara.

No matter what the intellectuals say, the Jews are on the move again. They are leaving Europe, where they were born and emigrating to Israel or to the United States and Canada.

For example: Recently, at a small and lovely Shabbat dinner, a Frenchman in his sixties, calmly, pleasantly, explained that nine years ago, "when the anti-Semitism suddenly became wildly aggressive, when it invaded dinner parties and people nearly came to blows, I knew it was time to leave." This is a man whose Jewish ancestors had lived in France for nine centuries. His parents survived the Holocaust there. He considers himself lucky. He found work here almost immediately and eventually became an American citizen. A scientist and intellectual, he is completely unfazed by having to live in an outer borough, where Jewish immigrants once clustered a century ago. He has persuaded a reluctant wife and grown children to join him.

A few years ago, the sweetest young family from Lille, France, joined my synagogue. They left France five years ago and for the same reason; they, too, rather happily, now live in an outer borough. Like their Parisian counterpart, above, they have professions that "travel" well. Still, they had to micromanage the move of their extended family, beginning with their parents and elderly grandparents.

Not an easy thing to do.

Less than two years ago, my good friend, the filmmaker Pierre Rehov, about whom I've written many times, also decided to leave Paris. His reasons were more complicated and involved legal retribution for his pro-Israel stands, but he is in America now, in a house near the sea, where he can sail his boat. He, too, has persuaded one grown child to relocate, but not the other grown child, and not his ex-wife. This is Rehov's third exile: From Algeria, from Israel, now from France.

By definition, such necessary moves are not easy ones. They are somewhat like the Biblical Abraham's heroic move away from his "land," his "father's home" and his "country." In this instance, God is not necessarily commanding these brave Jews to hit the road; but really, who knows?

So, how's America doing for Jews? Is this the safest, best, country for Jews in the world? Many Jews insist that it is. I hope they are right. Many Muslim and ex-Muslim dissidents also hope that America will remain the only country, standing alone if necessary, with the resources to defeat jihad and Islamism

Well, it's not safe for Jews anywhere or for anti-Islamist Muslims and ex-Muslims given President Obama's current foreign policies vis-a-vis Israel and the Islamists in the Muslim world; it's not safe at all. The pre-existing pro-Arab and anti-Israel State Department is worrisome as well.

I was personally purged from a feminist listserv group for my pro-America and pro-Israel stands and wrote about it in The Death of Feminism. I have also grown quiet, deathly silent, on other feminist and psychologically oriented listserv groups where too-painful skirmishes have broken out in the past about Israel, "Palestine," and America. These otherwise nice-enough and relatively sober groups — with access only to doctored information — behave accordingly, reflexively, like an intellectual lynch mob on these subjects. Their view: America-the-waterboarder is to blame, Israel commits "atrocities," good Americans must denounce both and throw all their sympathy towards the suffering, innocent Palestinians.

Jews are not safe (nor are Christians, Buddhists, anti-Islamist Muslims, etc.) as more and more Saudi-funded mosques arise in our streets. I have no problem with mosques, per se — but if their funding is from terrorist states abroad, if their message is one of jihad, and if their leaders practice Islamic gender and religious apartheid — well, that is another matter entirely. And such mosques are springing up everywhere, both in Boston, and potentially at Ground Zero in New York City.

Now this, just in from a reader on the West Coast. She writes:

"I live in Washington state, which is a veritable sea of the new anti-Semitism. This is where the Cult of Rachel Corrie is located, plus many other cults.

I was driving back from supper with my husband and saw hundreds of people gathered with anti-Israel posters at the largest intersection in the city. I was honestly staggered. The news announced just a few hours before then that the IDF [had disrupted] the Turkish jihadis' "freedom flotilla" …and all I could think was, I have no idea what happened, let's wait for news. These people were just itching to go out and "march," before they even had the facts.

We were out at supper because we are currently battling a neighbor who is a violent drug addict who believes that all Jews need to be sent to hell, that Jewish men raped her anally, that each time she kills a mosquito, she kills a Jew. Satan puts the needle tracks on her arms. Satan is in her dog (so she brutalized it to death.) Any interaction with her is initiated by her and grounded in dire and violent threats. The suggestion made to us by our liberal friends? Appeasement.

Everywhere we turn in this community it's the same. "I'm in it for me, to hell with everyone else. Lie low, hunker down, appease." The women are the worst — backstabbing, faut feminists, faut peacemakers. I can't believe I'm saying that. But it's my experience, and has been, most of my life. I've worked for some men who were assholes, but the bosses and colleagues who did me the worst moral, spiritual, and economic damage were women.

I feel like I stepped off the liberalism train to take a whizz, and it made a hard left and is heading for an abyss.

This build up of anti-Semitic sentiment that I see EVERYWHERE here is…terrifying. Sickening and terrifying. We search job boards frantically in our professions, hoping to some day find a way out of here….I saw the roots of this Jew-hating/Israel-hating in Madison, Wisconsin, in the 1990s. It keeps repeating, it does not stop.

Thank you for having one of the few Web sites where an old (I'm in my fifties) ultra-liberal feminist freethinker can go, and not feel left out of the left-versus-right bipolar disorder that today passes for social and political thinking."

Amen, my sister, Amen. And thanks for your kind comments.