The global banner of antisemitism is once again being unfurled in a rage of madness unleashed by the flailing Iranian theocracy. The Abraham Accords are steadily undermining the pathological consensus among Arab nations that there is something politically illegitimate about the existence of the one Jewish state— Israel. This threatens the smaller axis of anti-Semitism anchored by Iran. As more Western nations join the inevitable global dialogue, the fringe extremism of Iran and its surrogates of Hezb’allah and Hamas are being prominently exposed.
This is why they launched the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust on 7 October 2023, and are now appealing for the aid of traditional Western academic allies to rally global forces for deadly antisemitism. Jewish intellectuals understandably lift their voices against this pathology, but it is a moral duty now—especially regarding Western academic life—to stand up alongside our Jewish brethren against this deadly rhetoric.
At a 2009 political rally in Khartoum, former genocidal sovereign leader of Sudan, Omar Bashin declared:
“There is one battle—in Darfur, Iraq, in Gaza, in Somalia, in Afghanistan—against the Jews and we are fighting the enemy.”
Such rhetoric represents a global 21st century concert to promote injustice and genocide by pointing to the recurring global scapegoat—the Jews. Bashir was a huge proponent and craftsman of the new tool for rationalizing anti-Semitism: colonialism. In October, North American and European academics attacked the historical Columbus Day holiday, renamed “Indigenous Persons Day”, which is a UN brainchild conceived in Wokeness. Under this post-modern mythology, mankind is corralled into one of two binary categories: Indigenous and colonizer. It is hardly coincidental that intellectuals celebrated their holiday absent any homage to the idea that Jews are the indigenous people of Israel, or for that matter, that white Europeans are the indigenous peoples of Europe.
Though the Jewish community has better historical, anthropological, rhetorical, archaeological, theological, and sociological evidence for its origins in Israel than nearly any other demographic, it is excluded largely by academics from this community of preferred “indigenous”. This is a crucial aspect of the new rhetorical mask for antisemitism: the colonialism critique. The idea that any person is not indigenous is patently absurd. The effort to create a moral binary of indigenous/colonizer is an arbitrary rhetorical act mediated by the power of academics wielding this ideological sword.
Rhetorical scholar Kenneth Burke described at length the deadly dangers of this type of rhetoric in his formative essay The Rhetoric of Hitler’s Battle. According to Burke, we must fortify our minds against such propaganda. At the core of the present deception is a similar but disingenuous dichotomy: opposition to anti-Semitism is support for injustice against Palestinians. Antisemitism is what is killing Palestinians and a wide range of Arab Muslims and Persians around the world. The creation of a common enemy—eloquently described by Burke—allows the oppressor to direct the oppressed toward an artificial scapegoat. Sadly, one of the world’s most enduring stereotypes is humanity’s addiction to bigotry of Jews. This scapegoat allows Arab governments to rally the public toward the distraction of Jews mistreating Muslims in Gaza.
Omar Bashir, Ali Khomenini, Tayyip Erdogan, and many other leaders kill Muslim dissidents in their authoritarian and democidal habits while using the Jewish scapegoats as a distraction from their own fratricide. In the West Bank, Israel, Gaza, and Jordanian refugee camps, Israel treats Palestinians best and their life expectancy and general welfare is much better. Gaza is a hellscape made to order by Hamas.
Incredibly, more than half of 18–24-year-old North Americans think that the Hamas killing 1,400 civilians was justified. The Netanyahu government took Gaza from Israeli and Jewish inhabitants to gift the Strip to Palestinians—including vast infrastructures such as profitable greenhouses. In 2007, Palestinians voted Hamas into power over the former Fatah. Hamas celebrated by throwing family members of Fatah off the tallest buildings in Gaza City. It all made sense in a world where only Jews are the enemy. Such is the unvarnished truth about Hamas and its rampant killing of Palestinians.
Meanwhile, here in North America, the wave of so-called “pro-Palestinian” demonstrations whose slogans embrace the Iranian-backed Hamas terrorists are routinely denounced as “antisemitism.” Certainly, the brutality of the 7 October attacks directed at civilians, including infant beheadings, expressed genocidal hatred. Chants by so-called “anti-war” protesters on college campuses and in the streets to “gas the Jews” and strike Israel off the map “from the river to the sea” are also genocidal threats. But what has triggered such actions is more complex than antisemitism and broader in ambition.
One of the most common examples of antisemitism is accusing Western Jews of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their home nations. This leads to defining Jews as “them” rather than “us” and justifying abuses committed against them as aliens. Closely related is the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions. Hence, Jews are falsely categorized as hostile aliens.
In his seminal 1902 book, Imperialism: A Study, J.A. Hobson alleged that Jewish bankers like Rothschild were behind Western expansion across the world and the only ones who gained by war, since they financed what came to be called the “military-industrial complex.” As late as 1938, When the Nazis conducted the Pogrom that presaged the Holocaust, Hobson’s edition still accused “men of singular and peculiar race” of being the main element of “the central ganglion of international capitalism.” Hobson was using the defamation of Jews to an end, in his case the overthrow of capitalism. It is this very tactic which expands antisemitism into a menacing threat to us all. It assails the modern world created by the vigorous and innovative economic system of capitalism, bounded and guided by the values and energy of western civilization. If Jews were once attacked for being outside society, they are now being targeted for being the vanguard of society; and in the Middle East, Israel is called a “Crusader State” established as an outpost of the West.
Student activists and the faculty members who filled their minds with this rubbish have no direct interest in the Israeli-Hamas Iranian conflict. So why would they take sides against Israel, a democratic society with liberal values allied with Western nations?
Is it pure ignorance, like the Harvard group known as “Queers For Palestine”, which evidently has no clue that under Palestinian law, homosexuality is punishable by up to 10 years in prison and in Hamas ruled Gaza, by execution?
Or has Israel simply been assigned a role in a larger ideological drama: the domestic war against western values and success?
The unprecedented success of the West in fashioning the modern world, first in Europe and then by extension, pollination, and imitation worldwide, is undeniable. The original Marxist notion that it would become unbearable for most exploited workers has proven to be nonsensical, as living standards rose to heights undreamed of before wave after wave of Industrial Revolutions. The leftist vision of despair has manifested itself far more often in areas that tried to substitute intellectual theory for this real-world experience. The evolution of China is the most spectacular case of a land with a rich heritage being driven into the ground by the Marxist radicalism of Mao. Despite this brutality, Maoism was held in high esteem by leftists everywhere, including Western universities. Post-Mao reformers adopted a limited form of state capitalism which generated rapid growth in national capacity and personal wealth.
These are not, however, the ideas and practices popular among left-wing intellectuals who think that they should rule the world. Even so, they realize that their ideology cannot produce the triumphs of capitalism, in which they greedily indulge as privileged parasites. The intellectual attack is no longer based upon claiming that they could do better; it is now based upon the claim that our success is immoral. That it is the result of slavery at home and imperialism overseas with the newly added sin of climate change in the mix.
The charge that Israel is a settler colony is the tip of the iceberg in this campaign. The U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and other affluent remnants of empire also fit this description. We “stole” the land upon which we built centres of high civilization, and where residents—including the indigenous—set new records for affluence each succeeding decade. Enlightenment philosopher John Locke, once an official in the British Empire, justified property rights in terms of mixing labour with resources to produce something of mercantile value. Upon that basis, the proprietary claim of Western Civilization is unimpeachable.
They have moved from rejecting the wealth generating methods to rejecting affluence itself. This is the essence of the Green movement, which references “pre-industrial society” and “living with nature” in a simpler, impoverished, but morally superior time when starvation and hypothermia were commonplace. They argue that we should all retreat from the world and surrender to a movement or rival nation presenting any alternative to our history and values. The spoiled brats who clamor for such outcomes could not live under the results. They are instead consumed by the self-flagellation of higher education and know not what they do. The rest of us must stand on guard and in control, adhering to the lessons of history that led us to build a great civilization upon the shoulders of giants. The leftist attack from mass media and academia is no exception.
This may be a watershed moment for Jews in the West, a tectonic shift of major magnitude— namely the exodus of Jews from liberalism. As we have seen, the triggering event is the Hamas savagery displayed on 7 October in Israel. Of equal importance is the support of many in the West for such barbarism. These two events are a dual call to arms for many Western Jews: who could have imagined anyone celebrating decapitation of babies or thousands of Westerners, often at elite universities, denouncing Israel as an apartheid, genocidal colonial regime?
Anti-Semitism per se is not the issue. Such hostility is a fact of life in the West, but thankfully, it usually involves isolated incidents such as defacing synagogues or randomly assaulting Jews dressed in Hasidic garb. The very worst is shooting Jews at prayer, typically by mentally ill, psychopathic loners.
The recent events are fundamentally different in both scope and fury. Of utmost significance is that they stir long-forgotten, dark memories about Jewish life in the West. Millions of Western Jews familiar with their troubled history have long insisted that “it cannot happen here.” Almost overnight, this has for many become “it is unlikely to happen here.” Creeping doubt might seem only a slight linguistic shift, but the very idea of such a contingency, however remote, has deep, inescapable emotional consequences. Jewish students at Cornell received death threats solely based upon religion. These incidents set off reactions long buried in the mind’s deepest recesses, and nearly every Western Jew has tales to tell.
One highly publicized response to these events has been threats of billionaire Jews like Ronald Lauder and Leslie Werner to cease funding their alma maters over campus anti- Semitism. Thousands of other Jews have also undoubtedly closed their cheque books in disgust. Despite this, the anti-Israel vitriol is unabated. Billions in donations will be raised elsewhere, and no school can end Jew hatred. Nevertheless, these rich Jews are sending a key message whose deeper unease is far more consequential than a closed cheque book—eyes are opening.
Less visible in this tectonic shift is a huge shocker—Jews are buying guns, and lots of them. Jews in cities with large Jewish populations are suddenly inundating gun stores and shooting ranges. The gun-enthusiast website Reload told of a Jewish gun training organization that recently received nearly 700 calls on its hotline about joining over a 5 day period. Over the past five years, the expressions of interest totaled less than one thousand.
Those unfamiliar with the political views of Jews may not fully grasp this shift. Guns were not previously on the agenda to fight antisemitism. The first line of defense always prioritized educating Westerners about the Holocaust, improving society to eliminate what bred hate, and being good, generous members of the community. Jewish organizations famously gave dinners to honour Christians who worked for improved inter-faith relationships. Jews in the U.S. donated millions to blacks and helped found the NAACP. If anything, Jews see guns as a threat to civil society. Now, buying a gun is not just adding one more layer of defense against antisemitism; it is an admission that the old way of thinking no longer applies. Many Jews will even do the unthinkable: admit this new reality in public.
How will this play out? Conceivably, not much will change if Hamas is crushed and campus crowds return to normal. But the tectonic plates may still be shifting. This is particularly true as the number of Orthodox Jews, who are overwhelmingly conservative, replace the liberal secular Jews who tend to have small families or are childless. Just look at Israel, where the ultra-religious are now major political players thanks to their high natality rate.
Uncertainties aside, the likely outcome will be the Jews moving to the political right. Almost certainly Jews will lose their enthusiasm for open borders given that millions of new arrivals will be Muslims. Jews can see what has happened in Europe as large numbers of Muslims enter European countries—anti-Jewish violence spikes. They can also see this here at home as Muslim immigrants gain electoral foothold in the U.S. and Canada.
Many Jews will look askance at the feel-good multiculturalism that dominates Western education from kindergarten to the universities they once favoured. If it worked as advertised to quell hate at its source, then why do all the young students call for abolition of Israel? A new, more accurate view is preaching that the “we are all brothers” gospel is camouflaged cultural Marxism celebrating the “oppressed” while Jews—being White and affluent—are the oppressor and must be eliminated via “decolonization”. Jews thrive in western civilization; their enemies hate it, and much of the contemporary education, top to bottom, hates western civilization
Recent events may mark the demise of knee-jerk liberalism among Jews. The shift away from the left that began in Israel decades ago may have finally arrived in the West. This exodus advances as liberals increasingly embrace defunding the police, ending cash bail, hostility to meritocracy, celebrating sexual deviancy, a contempt for traditional morality and all else anathema to most Jews. When today’s Western Jews look at Israel, they see that, in the final analysis, endless talk and good intentions are insufficient; better to have a gun and know how to use it?
Jewish conservatives, while considered a bit of an oddity despite growing numbers, are commonly asked: why are so many Jews liberals?
Even conservative luminaries like Dennis Prager, Norman Podhoretz and Ben Shapiro have struggled to provide a persuasive answer. Like any other group, they do not march in lock step, certainly not when it comes to their religion or politically. Still, most Jewish conservatives readily acknowledge that most of them tend to be liberal, progressive, or even Marxist.
In Konstantin Kistin’s recent article, The Day The Delusions Died, he notes that some Westerners woke up as liberals on 7 October but went to bed as conservatives. In A Political Reawakening, Bari Weiss and Oliver Wiseman explain that this change can be due to the sheer depravity of Hamas terrorism, as well as the sense of how thin the line is between civilization and barbarism. The West, which most of us take for granted, is more vulnerable than we ever imagined. According to Weiss:
“The contradictions and moral bankruptcy of a worldview that spends years worrying about micro aggressions and tone policing but cannot decide what side it is on after the beheading of babies, are not exactly difficult to spot.”
Liberals who went to bed conservatives sincerely believed they were making some grand gesture by supporting Israel’s fight to exist while recognizing the plight of Palestinians— until the reality of 7 October exploded their worldview. They are scared senseless and rethinking the politicians, party, and policies they have long supported.
Protestors might feverishly burn Israeli flags in Istanbul, but threatening Jewish students barricaded in a university library in New York or Toronto, and announcing exhilaration from your academic ivory tower does not win hearts and minds among liberals suffering from an identity crisis due to what many are calling a “civilizational crisis”.
The “feel goodism” political alignment between Jews and liberalism is deeply rooted in Biblical teachings and tradition. Jews were chosen to spread the concept of one God and to follow His commandments and laws. They were supposed to heal and bring peace to the world, be charitable, do-good deeds, etc. It is thus understandable that many Jews found the liberal path consistent with their cultural roots and upbringing.
There is also a modified Stockholm Syndrome at play here for many Jews. After centuries of being portrayed as Shylocks, many have either come to believe that about themselves or cannot cope with the reality that others wrongly perceive them that way. They have chosen to do everything possible to change this perception. They seek absolution by doing good, which is quintessentially Jewish: on their Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), they say that repentance, prayer, and charity temper the severity of God’s decree for their sins. Hence the motivation to be upright, magnanimous, altruistic, and philanthropic.
Related are the scars Jews collectively bear from centuries of antisemitism and the underlying fear that, no matter what they do, they will always be seen negatively. Despite their contributions and assimilation throughout Europe, Jews were reviled as an infestation so pernicious and alien that they faced genocide. Whether as slaves of Egypt, auto-da-fe victims in Spain for failing to renounce their faith, imprisoned residents of shtetls throughout the Pale of Settlement, shunned and marginalized citizens of the USSR, or outcasts from schools and jobs throughout the Anglo-West, the consistent messaging has been that Jews are subhuman, lesser than—the Other.
For many Jews, the solution was to embrace political parties, policies and ideologies that reflected positively upon them by demonstrating their social virtue—especially with people who were also disaffected ethnicities and races—including the Palestinians.
Then, suddenly, on 7 October 2023, Western Jews were hit like a thunderbolt by Palestinian brutality and antipathy towards Israel and their joy in annihilating the Chosen People. Western liberals were forced to acknowledge that the very politicians, policies, and institutions they supported have undermined not only Israeli safety but now their own. They witness Jews threatened on university campuses and in major cities throughout the world; are barricaded by protestors in university libraries; and are being targeted with hate crimes in their own neighbourhoods—up 400% in the U.S. alone.
They cannot help but wonder what fate awaits Jews everywhere as the Hamas Reign of Terror is brazenly feted by a crazed, irrational mob. As Kisin comments:
“Events of the last two weeks have shattered the illusion that Wokeness is about protecting victims and standing up for persecuted minorities.”
Liberals who went to bed on 7 October as conservatives see psychopathic Hamas murderers as otherworldly. Consider the words of the man who used the phone of one of his victims to call his proud parents and boast:
“I killed her and I killed her husband. I killed ten with my own hands! Dad, ten with my own hands!...I swear, ten with my own hands, I killed ten with my own hands. Mom, your son is a hero! Kill, kill, kill!”
His father replied, “God Bless You!”
This makes no sense to Judaeo-Christians, who derive no pleasure from killing. It is not part of our ethos. We kill only as a last resort and are guided by principles of necessity, proportionality, self-defense and justice. We mourn the death tolls we cause to such degree that our soldiers routinely suffer from PTSD.
Israelis have long understood that to survive, they must think like Arabs and Muslims, but in recent years have forgotten this lesson. No one need forget now, with pro-Palestinian supporters like this man in London, speaking before 100,000 migrants:
“The difference between us and them is that for them, they think life begins. For us, we believe that death begins! We believe that life begins at death. We do not care about death. We love death. Takbir! Allahu Akbar!”
Such is the poetry of Islam—a death cult that rejoices in killing Jews who embrace life. Equally absurd, but less well known to the public, is the nonexistent logic of gays carrying signs that read “Free Palestine”, or “Stop the Occupation”. They would be well schooled to learn that Israel does not seek to cross over into Gaza territory; but how can Israelis ignore a neighbour striving for its destruction and aiming thousands of missiles into the heart of its country each year?
The images of children murdered in front of their families in the most barbaric fashion and the random slaughter of Israeli citizens wherever they made a prime target, has been photographed for the entire world to see.
Israel would certainly be complicit in its own destruction should it ignore the most recent round of Hamas brutality and thereby invite the prospect of the terrorists making good on their genocidal threat to launch their own version of the “Final Solution”.
What Jews and all the rest of us in the West must now consider is the unthinkable: that the enemy is not only at the gates, but is in our midst, and that we may all be targeted for global destruction.
