Mr BrigoAt last we agree on something - the insidious evil of antisemitism.And that many, some on this Forum, use attacks on Israel or Zionism as cover for their true antisemitic beliefsSo I have no doubt you will agree with what Michael Gove the Editor of the Spectator wrote recently."To eradicate a virus, one needs precision. The origin of the threat needs to be identified, as do the circumstances of its incubation and spread, and the vulnerability of specific hosts. The wrong response risks making things worse.Anti-Semitism is a virus, and, as the late Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks explained, one that mutates over time. Originally, it was a religious prejudice; post-Enlightenment, it developed into a racial hatred, fuelled by a twisted version of social Darwinism. It was thought that after the unique evil of the Holocaust, the single greatest crime in history, when man became wolf unto man, the virus had at last been defeated.But in our own time a new variant has emerged. Anti-Semitism now finds its most vigorous form in hostility to the expression of collective Jewish identity, the Jewish home: Israel. It is customary in debates around contemporary anti-Semitism to maintain there is nothing inherently anti-Semitic about criticising Israel. That is true. But what is striking is just how much criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic. The very existence of Israel is called into question. That is what anti-Zionism means. No other state on Earth has its right to exist debated so vehemently. The partitions and border re-drawings that followed two world wars generated tensions and conflicts elsewhere, to be sure. But no one calls for an end to Pakistan or the erasure of Jordan. A double standard is applied – one of the oldest markers of anti-Semitism.More than that, Israel’s actions, especially in its own defence, are held to a different standard than other nations. Israel’s neighbours sought to strangle it at birth. They have, at different times, hosted and funded terror organisations pledged to the elimination of Jewish communal existence. On 7 October 2023, Hamas, funded by Iran, inflicted on Israel the gravest loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust. In response, Israel has sought to quell that threat to its people and their survival.That conflict has been ugly and many more innocents have died. But there has been a contrast between Israel and its enemies, and indeed its detractors. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have sought, albeit imperfectly, to minimise civilian casualties. Hamas has worked to maximise them. Detailed work by Lord Roberts of Belgravia for a House of Lords committee has shown how Israel, engaged in the difficult work of urban counter-insurgency, has managed to limit casualties below the level seen in other similar conflicts, including those in which British or American troops were engaged.But such restraint, which necessarily involves a greater risk to Israel’s own soldiers, has not brought Israel any greater understanding. Instead, the allegation that it is engaging in a genocide has grown in vehemence and volume.Two strands of anti-Semitism are at work here. The first is the demand that Jews live on terms set by others: they can win sympathy as victims but never understanding, let alone support, when they assert their right to self-defence.The second is the desire to go further and to erase any historic sympathy for the Jewish people’s plights by making them the equals of their past oppressors – the new Nazis, the génocidaires of our time.The conflict in Gaza has led to understandable concern across the world and a desire for peace. Every soul in suffering calls to us in our hearts. But what has been striking – on our streets, on social media, across the West – has been the way in which protests against conflict have become, so quickly and comprehensively, vehicles for prejudice. Cries to ‘globalise the intifada’ are heard at pro-Palestine marches, accompanied by imagery designed to inflame hatred of Jews – individually and collectively. The marches, and the memes, have become the means by which the virus has spread.A healthy society should have a political immune system robust enough to see off this danger. But our own has been weakened over time. Radical left thinking, and especially the enduring influence of writers such as Frantz Fanon and Edward Said, has induced in the West a set of beliefs peculiarly vulnerable to modern anti-Semitism. Colonialism is the greatest evil, privilege and success evidence of injustice, neo-liberalism a lie that cloaks exploitation.Israel’s success, against the odds, as a pluralistic, democratic, law-bound free–market state stands as a rebuke to those who want to shame the West and its values. That Israel is a land formed by asylum-seekers and refugees, with almost no natural resources, and that it outdoes in growth, freedom and opportunity every state from Tangier to Tehran, is a powerful refutation of the post-colonial left’s world view. And so its success is attributed to wickedness, exploitation and oppression. Thus another anti-Semitic trope is disinterred from the grave in which it should have been left to rest. The misery of others is down to the rapacity of the Jews.This sentiment – that your misfortune can be explained by the success of Jewry – has been weaponised by populists in the past. And it has been repurposed for the 21st century by Islamists searching for whom to blame for the misfortunes of the Muslim world, radical leftists looking for a villainous face to personify neo-liberal greed, a far right searching for a guiding intelligence behind their ‘Great Replacement’ theory, and conspiracists of all stripes in pursuit of a hidden hand to blame.Standing against this hatred, these ideologies and this wickedness is the democratic duty of all of us and the principled fight of our times".
John Hawkes ● 22d