MESSAGE
| DATE | 2023-11-03 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] global war on the Jews .... again.
|
Opinion | The Global War on the Jews
The Editorial Board
5–6 minutes
The disturbing fact of the past month is that Jews are under attack not
only in Israel and not only by Hamas. The weeks since the barbaric Oct.
7 Hamas invasion of Israel have witnessed physical assaults on Jews the
world over, including in the U.S. and Europe. This most modern of
pogroms—global, televised, politicized—demonstrates exactly what is at
stake as Israel ramps up its defensive war against Hamas in Gaza.
The Islamist group and its Western enablers are pursuing or justifying a
genocidal war against Jews, not merely a territorial dispute with
Israel. And since Western governments too often seem unable to protect
the Jewish minorities in their midst, Israel must defend itself as the
only safe home for the Jewish people.
This weekend hundreds of rioters in Dagestan, Russia, stormed an airport
in search of Jewish travelers. Mobs raided hotels in other parts of the
North Caucasus looking for Jews, and a Jewish community center under
construction in the city of Nalchik was the target of an apparent
attack.
Germany has witnessed a spate of anti-Semitic incidents, including an
attack with Molotov cocktails against a synagogue in Berlin on Oct. 18.
Some Jews found Stars of David painted on their homes, an echo of the
Nazi persecution. German politicians have been forceful in their
denunciations, but apparently not forceful enough in their policing.
Two Jewish schools in London closed for a period over safety concerns,
and some British Jews no longer feel safe wearing visible symbols of
their faith. They’re probably right to worry the state can’t protect
them. Tens of thousands of protesters in London over three successive
weekends called for “jihad” and chanted “from the river to the sea,” a
demand for the erasure of Israel and by extension its citizens. A crowd
in Sydney, Australia, chanted “gas the Jews” after the Hamas attack.
Americans like to believe such things couldn’t happen in the U.S. They
have. The Anti-Defamation League last week reported a 388% increase in
anti-Semitic incidents from Oct. 7-23 compared with the same period a
year ago. The 312 incidents the ADL recorded include a car carrying
individuals with Palestinian flags allegedly swerving toward a Jewish
family and several alleged assaults by pro-Palestinian protesters. The
ADL tally counts 109 anti-Israel rallies that featured support for Hamas
or violence against Jews in Israel.
These and too many other incidents to count put paid to the notion that
one can distinguish anti-Zionism from anti-Semitism since Oct. 7. If
protesters wanted to burn Israeli flags in a fit of wrong-headed pique
about a two-state solution, that is one thing. Only anti-Jewish hate can
explain how synagogues, children and airports are targets of this
outrage.
Yet many Western intellectuals—and a growing number of
politicians—insist on maintaining this false distinction. They’ve seen
what Hamas has done to innocent Israeli civilians, and what pro-Hamas
protesters have said and done in Western streets. They’d nonetheless
forgive any violence by Hamas or Hezbollah against Jews as anticolonial
defiance.
This is why Israel is fighting, and must fight, as hard as it is for its
survival as a state. And why it’s inexcusable for any Western politician
now to demand a cease-fire in Gaza. No leader who is demonstrably
incapable of protecting Jews in his or her own country should try to
prevent Israel from defending itself. This is how the West slips from
“never again” into “nowhere is safe.”
***
This global war on Jews also clarifies what is at stake for Western
societies in this fight. The West spent the decades after the
civilizational catastrophe of the Holocaust vowing never again to allow
itself to slide into such barbarism. What we see now in the attacks on
Jews is how that slide began.
Before there was a Chancellor Hitler in 1933, there were roving bands of
Brownshirts inflicting political and anti-Semitic violence on the
streets of Germany. They too often went unchecked by police, prosecutors
and politicians who didn’t understand the menace, sympathized with the
offenders, or merely felt overwhelmed by the scale of the danger. Hitler
gained power in part because the German state no longer could maintain
its monopoly on violence in defense of democratic values.
Today’s threats to democracy are different, but one lesson is the same
and is crystal-clear: A Western society that can’t or won’t muster the
will to defend its Jewish neighbors and fellow citizens won’t be able to
defend itself.
--
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town
that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological
proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
http://www.mrbrklyn.com
DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
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http://www.brooklyn-living.com
Being so tracked is for FARM ANIMALS and extermination camps,
but incompatible with living as a free human being. -RI Safir 2013
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