12 Nov Where antisemitism lives today
I will probably continue my analysis of the election later this week. In the meantime, I want to take a little time to revisit this past Sunday’s “archive” piece on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, specifically the prediction I made two years ago, when it was first published:
[T]he next couple of years are likely to be pretty tough and pretty ugly. If we don’t address growing anti-Semitism now, when it is still mostly (but not entirely) rhetorical, then, as times get tougher, it will grow uglier and more substantive. By the time we realize that it has moved beyond the mostly rhetorical stage, it will be too late, and Jews worldwide will again be imperiled….
If the phrase “never again” means anything, then we should be aware of these lessons and should be prepared to act accordingly.
Needless to say, on October 7, 2023, everything changed, and what had been mostly rhetorical became something else altogether. Jews worldwide are, indeed, imperiled today. Antisemitism is quickly being normalized, even as the Jewish state fights for its life against implacable enemies.
In response to that note, I had an email request to expand upon my fears and to explain how and where this resurgent antisemitism is most likely to be most consequential. I will do my best.
Osama bin Laden famously said that “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse.” Dan Diker, the president of the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, recently noted that, when he said that, Bin Laden was “alluding to the fourteenth-century Arab Muslim historian and political theorist Ibn Khaldoun, who assessed that history is a cycle of violence in which strong horses – in Arabic, ‘al-faras al-asil’ – replace weak horses.” Diker also noted that Israel has, over the last 13 months proven itself to be the “strong horse” in the Middle East:
After Hamas’s October 7 massacre, Israel, by necessity, has become the Middle East’s strong horse in its ongoing battle against the Iranian regime and its terror proxies – the current “weak horses” of its own apocalypse – Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and various militias in Iraq and Syria.
The Arab world knows this. They witnessed the IDF’s lightning destruction of both Hamas and Hezbollah’s command structure, the elimination of their leaderships, and the detonation of much of their weaponry and ammunition stockpiles. They then watched as Israel’s air force decimated Iran’s entire anti-aircraft defenses, and dominated Iranian air space for three hours, executing 20 separate attacks across the vast Islamic Republic.
In short, the Arab world has been duly alerted to the fact of Israel’s military superiority in the region and – under Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu – its willingness to employ that superiority to its advantage. As a result, the Arab world has made all the necessary noises about the horrors of the Israeli assaults on Gaza and Lebanon but has not done much of anything to indicate any actual change of policy toward Israel. Again, as Diker notes, “The evidence is overwhelming: Abraham Accords diplomats from Bahrain, Morocco and the UAE have remained in Tel Aviv, as have ambassadors from Jordan and Egypt.”
As for the non-Arabs in the region – namely the Iranians – they have been shaken and shaken badly. Israel has systematically destroyed the regime’s proxies, and it has warned the Mullahs that it can do far more damage than it has already done and is willing to do so, if necessary.
The only catch with Iran is that it is governed by a radical millenarian cult, which means that even as badly shaken and beaten as the regime may be, as long the cultists remain in charge, they remain a threat. If, at some point, the regime obtains functional nuclear weapons, it could slaughter half the world’s Jewish population in a matter of minutes. One hopes, therefore, that its capabilities have been severely degraded by Israeli air strikes.
All things considered, the Jews of the Middle East are probably safer today than they have been in quite some time. The Iranians remain unpredictable and, therefore, dangerous, but the Arabs seem, for the most part, perfectly happy to maintain peaceful relations with Israel. Even the Palestinians appear to have had enough of the war and enough of the suffering Hamas brought down upon them.
Unfortunately, the rest of the world’s Jews are not quite as lucky. As I have noted in these pages before, the second largest Jewish metropolitan area in the world is New York (after only Tel Aviv). Of the top ten largest Jewish populations in the world, six are in the United States (NYC, Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., and Chicago) and one more is in Europe (Paris). What this means is that even as the Middle East is, perhaps, less dangerous for Jews at the moment, half the world’s Jews live elsewhere, in places where antisemitism is rising and is profoundly unnerving.
The combination of historical prejudice, intellectual corruption, and mass immigration has made much of the West particularly inhospitable to Jews at the moment. In the United States, Jews are threatened and even physically assaulted on college campuses around the nation. In Europe and Canada, however, things are even worse:
Groups of Maccabi supporters were targeted in hit-and-run attacks over several hours. Videos shared widely on social media, mainly taken by the attackers, showed people fleeing, being beaten and in one case being rammed by a car. One video shared by Stand With Us Netherlands showed a man unsuccessfully trying to avert blows by yelling, “I’m not Jewish.”
Some fans told the BBC that they were ordered to show their passports before being beaten. Two Jewish British men said they intervened in an assault to help an Israeli man to his feet, telling the attackers they were British, but they were still punched for “helping the Jew.”
Israeli eyewitness accounts say the gangs were largely made up of Arabs, and media noted that a large number of Turkish fans were in Amsterdam, where a local team was also playing a team from Turkey.
What all of this shows, in glaring detail, is that there is a reason Israel exists and must continue to exist. When they constitute the political and popular majority, they can and (usually) do handle their enemies quite well. When they are isolated in smaller communities, however, they are compelled to rely on the majority population for support and protection. And in light of that combination of historical prejudice, intellectual corruption, and mass immigration, the majority is not always willing to offer that support and protection.
Jews today are imperiled – mostly in the West, where the arrogance and bigotry of the ruling classes have created conditions that are often exceptionally dangerous. In other words, The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves….
