A call for new leadership from Charles Jacobs and Seth A. Klarman of the David Project:
A rush of shocking events is creating a "tipping point" in Jewish consciousness. Increasingly, Jews feel our situation has substantially changed, and for the worse.The events include Iran’s nuclear threats and Holocaust denial, Hamas’ electoral victory, the torture and murder of Ilan Halimi in Paris by a Muslim gang, the "discovery" by a Harvard dean that Jews actually do conspire to control Congress and American foreign policy in the service of Israel and to the detriment of U.S. interests, and the British academic boycott.
All of these demonstrate for many that there is a new assault on the world’s Jews. The hostility is based on a unique and intense hatred of Israel and deep resentment of its supporters, accompanied by a growing willingness to use violence.
As though in a "perfect storm," two global ideologies, rooted in different radical critiques of the West, have suddenly aligned against us:
1. Islamic anti-Semitism. Fueled by Saudi petro-dollars and Iranian revolutionary zeal, a global campaign in mosques and madrassas (Islamic schools) teaches hundreds of millions of Muslims that Jews are the sons of monkeys and pigs, and killing them is a holy deed. The internet and television embellish the message: docudramas in Iran, Egypt and Jordan depict Jews harvesting the organs of Muslim children, killing non-Jews to make matzo, and plotting to rule the world.
This poison reaches Muslims in the West. Europe’s Jews are besieged and violently assaulted -- on the streets and in the no-longer varnished rhetoric of polite society. In America, Freedom House told Congress it found Saudi-produced hate literature aimed at Americans, Christians – but mostly Jews – in mosques across the U.S.
2. In the West, "Palestinianism" -- the notion that an innocent, indigenous people suffers a senseless, cruel oppression by the Jews of Israel (who ought to know better) threatens to become the standard view. It is the basis for an attack by Western radicals on Zionism, Jewish national self-determination, and by extension on Jews everywhere. The "oppression" of an Arab people by Westerners is, for the far Left, morally and politically more consequential than the massacres, enslavements, beheadings, bombings, and ethnic cleansings committed by Arabs and Muslims from London to Sudan, from Spain to Indonesia. These are treated by radicals as distractions from (even caused by) the deeper Zionist evil.Rooted in separate critiques of the West, Islam and the radical left are now allied – in Europe and increasingly in segments of America’s professoriate, media, human rights community, and the leadership of certain Protestant churches.
In America, Jews fret as a vicious anti-Israel movement has taken root on American campuses, and Jewish organizations reeled last summer when five mainline Protestant denominations passed anti-Israel resolutions. Most Jews don’t yet know the extent to which public high school texts – and teachers – are delegitimizing Israel.
Anti-Semitism is a virus that morphs. In the West now, hostility to Jews has little to do with the familiar hatreds – of Judaism or the Jewish "race." Today’s antipathy makes Israel "the Jew" and its "crimes" the old "Jewish crimes" – killing of the innocent, theft (this time of land), arrogance, and the control of business, finance, government and the media by international cabals. As before, "Jewish crimes" stand out as uniquely, even cosmically evil. And as such, they call for correction.
We were unprepared; we remain confused. Arab and Muslim Jew-hatred was misread as mere "street talk" that would dissipate when Oslo brought peace. Instead, Jew-hate is an engine of the global jihad. We are flummoxed by the new breed of Western adversaries. After centuries of attack by brutes, illiterates, right wing lunatics, and Christian anti-Semites, antagonism to the Jewish collective is now generated by soft-spoken moralists with high ideals, by "anti-racists" – some of the most articulate of whom are Jews. Set to defend against thugs yelling "kike," we are attacked instead by college professors – today a far more insidious enemy – who berate us for supporting "immorality."
No one wants to think that sixty years after the Holocaust, a new storm threatens Jews everywhere. But reality cannot be avoided or minimized. Confused, with our defenses down, Jews need to consider the profound impact of losing the ideological battle that can destroy the Jewish state. This new time requires courageous and talented leaders to grasp these new realities and create strategies to defeat the latest defamations, grounded in a libelous portrayal of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
A leadership correctly prioritizing the threat would convince us to lay aside our furious left-right debates, and teach us instead to make Israel’s basic case – from the left as well as from the right. It would gather the support of non-Jews and distinguish clearly friends from enemies. Most important, a new leadership would bravely and tirelessly tell us the truth about our new situation and recruit our talent and resources to the task.
If current Jewish leaders – in this country which has been so good to the Jewish people – can’t or won’t do these things, then this small but enormously talented people will have to get new leaders. For in this, the Jewish community cannot and must not fail.
http://community.livejournal.com/fpb_de_fide/1203.html
This is horrifying, but not surprising at all. I sometimes think that us khafir/goys should start wearing the Star of David as a sign of sympathy, and a signal that enough is enough. Game over, Mo. I really might do this. I would love doing what the Jewish American soldier in Saving Private Ryan does at the surrendered German troops: flash the star and repeatedly say "Ich bin Jude, Juuude." Is there somewhere where they sell T-shirts showing the Israeli flag, or the Star of David?
On Internet chat rooms, I have tried to make the case with liberal Jews that their non-Jewish Leftist "friends" have turned on them. They won't listen, because they are so besotted with domestic liberal causes like pro-choice and gay rights and electing Democrats that they can't allow that coalition of Jews and Leftists to break up.
The following independent video, "Peace, Love and Anti-Semitism," was produced by a young independent filmmaker. It depicts some of the rising anti-Semitism among the Left-wing "antiwar" movement in the U.S. Note how the "antiwar" protesters are not only calling for Israel to be phased out, but for all the Jews to be shipped from there to the island of Madagascar. For anyone familiar with the 1930's, that "proposal" should have a familiar ring:
http://tinyurl.com/qwfk4
or
http://brain-terminal.com/posts/2003/04/04/peace-love-anti-semitism
dear anti-uffe
you want to steam to come out of the ears of the new anti-semites? Wear an Israel defense Forces t-shirt! They are advertised at www.jpost.com and you can google idf t-shirt.
I'm glad that somebody in the US Jewish community seems to be waking up. Morton Klein of the Zionist Organization of America has been trying to enlighten people for some time, but there is nothing like a strong dose of reality to do the job on most people.
One of the jewels of the Jewish people is their millennially-honed humor.
They need their satirists working over Muslim militants and their anarchisto anti-semitic allies. To counteract this neo-Nazi lite lunacy and prevent it from spreading unchallenged.
Mock thy enemy, O' Israel!
(They tend to react badly to levity, -and then expose the rotten innerds of their Real Motive.)
What do you call a Muslim jihadist with the clap?
Abu-boo.
And quickly follow-up with:
Now, no applause for that! NO clapping!!
The anti-semitic must be seen for the irrational, retrograde fools and petty tyrants that they are.
Mock on, Jackie! Mock on, Sara!
I like that picture of John Pantsil.
The story reminded me of something in My Life, the autobiography of Golda Meir. What I was thinking of didn't happen in Ghana, but there was another story she told of a visit to Africa in 1958 did happen there. She was invited to meet the leaders who were assembling in Accra for the First All-African People's Conference. After dealing with a hostile first question from the representative of Algeria, regarding French arms sales the questions that followed were not uninterested in how Israel worked. One man from Muslim northern Nigeria told her "We have no Jews in Northern Nigeria, but we know that we are supposed to hate them"
However, there is hope. For those who wish to relearn history, "Gun Control" is an accurate indicator of approaching tyranny. Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (www.jpfo.org) are at the front lines in this fight to preserve the Second Amendment. If they take our guns, "we" are next and in Germany that next was the attempted extirmination of multiple groups including Jews.
It's about time Jews wake up and realize who their real enemies are. The Left has long since made common cause with Arabs and Muslims against them and Israel.
While I'm not Jewish, my wife is and through her I've met many Jews and virtually all of them are Leftists/Democrats. Being a Republican right winger, I've had more than my share of debates with them and lately a few are starting to see the light. I've actually been more pro-Israel than most of them, in my opinion too many Jews are quick to believe the Leftist/Islamic lies and propaganda against Israel.
Wether we like it or not, Left vs. Right is a big part of this debate. In my opinion, with the Left effectively aligned with Islam (especially in Europe and Asia), it's becoming increasingly difficult to seperate the Left vs. Right thing from any discussion on the threat Islam poses to Western civilization.
Proud Infidel:
The bulk of the Jewish lib-left once went on honouring the Soviet Union as an egalitarian workers' paradise and turned a blind eye, deaf ear and muted voice to the way Stalin actually treated Jews. Today, the children of those lib-left Jews are prepared to be useful idiots in the service of Islamofacism, insisting that it's only because of Israel and the injustices suffered by the "Palestinians" that we are being attacked around the globe and that we should just "end the occupation" and it would all be lovey-dovey again.