‘Zionists’ teach Zionism

‘Imagine’

Imagine a classroom full of 8-year-olds.  They study a subject called ‘National and Social Upbringing’.  They’re told to open the textbook (printed in 2019) at page 29, which summarises, in just two bullet points, what they have just learned:

• Jerusalem is an Arab city built by our Arab forefathers thousands of years ago.
• Jerusalem is a holy city for Muslims and Christians.

In the next classroom, 10-year-old kids are taught Islamic Education.  At page 63, the textbook (also printed in 2019) tells them that

Al Buraq Wall is part of the western wall of Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Muslims alone have absolute right to it.

‘Al-Buraq Wall’ is what Israelis call the Western Wall.  It used to be called the ‘Wailing Wall’, because it’s there that – for almost two millennia – Jews used to express their sorrow at the loss of the Temple.  But the kids can be forgiven for not knowing that, because Jews are conspicuously absent from their textbooks – until they suddenly appear in the 20th century, first as ‘immigrants’ and then as conquerors, land thieves and blood-thirsty monsters.

A couple of pages further, the same Islamic Education textbook informs the kids that the liberation of Al-Aqsa Mosque is the duty of the entire Nation of Islam; that – as Muslims – they, the kids, must “sacrifice” for its liberation.  The Mosque, is of course forever under attack: the Social Studies textbook for Year 7 claims that, as early as 1969,

the Zionists set the Al-Aqsa Mosque on fire.

Imagine other textbooks, also used in this school: an Arabic Language textbook for 10-year-olds expressing profound admiration for Dalal al-Mughrabi – a terrorist responsible for the death of 38 Israeli civilians, 13 of them children; arithmetics are taught by adding up numbers of “martyrs”.  Physics – by studying the mechanics of slingshots used by heroic youths

to confront the soldiers of the Zionist Occupation and defend themselves from their treacherous bullets.

I wrote ‘imagine’ – but this is no imaginary school.  No, it’s typical of the ‘education system’ controlled by the Palestinian Authority.  The vast majority of Palestinian children in the West Bank attend such schools.  As for the kids of Gaza, they have the ‘benefit’ of a Hamas-designed curriculum.  The same Hamas that produced an animation propaganda movie showing Israeli Jews being forced to board ships under the rifles of victorious Muslim fighters.

Problem and solution

Anyone who dreams of peace between Jews and Arabs will be driven to despair by such ‘education’.  How can Palestinian children be expected to make peace one day with those who they’ve been brainwashed into seeing as murderous monsters, as aliens with no rights and no connection to the land they are constantly ‘trying to steal’?  You’d think that none should be more exercised by this ‘education’ than the self-appointed ‘peace and human rights activists’.

Yet, if we are to judge by a recent opinion piece published in the Jewish Chronicle, the real, pressing problem rests not with Palestinian schools in Gaza and the West Bank, but with Jewish schools in the UK.  The issue, opines Sabrina Miller, is that these latter schools don’t

acknowledge the Palestinian narrative in any meaningful way.

The problem – she claims – is that these Jewish schools don’t allow their students to engage with “Israel-sceptic organisations from an early age”.

That’s why, says Ms. Miller, Jewish youth is unprepared to resist the anti-Israel onslaught they will experience as students on UK university campuses.  That’s why

many university students, frustrated with the mainstream community’s approach to Israel, abandon Zionism entirely.

Let Yachad (one of these “Israel-sceptic organisations”) ‘school’ Jewish children about ‘the conflict’ “from an early age”, says Ms. Miller, and they’ll become better advocates for Israel and lifelong Zionists.

But why?

Ms. Miller is, of course, entitled to her opinion.  And she’s not entirely wrong.  It is true that many British Jewish students feel unprepared for the ‘anti-Zionist’ venom they face on campus.  It is true that, faced with the most outlandish accusations, some are shocked to the point where they feel helpless.

But why should they have to face that venom – and be prepared for it?  Do students of Pakistani descent face a backlash caused by the often unsavory acts of the Government of Pakistan?  Are British students of Indian descent required to either defend or condemn Narendra Modi?  Why is there, in British universities, such an obsessive focus on a conflict thousands of miles away?  One of the many conflicts in today’s world and – in objective terms – by no means the gravest or the bloodiest?  Why were there – at a conference of the British Labour Party – a thousand times more Palestinian flags than Russian, Chinese, Indian, American and British flags, taken together?

So why does Ms. Miller place the onus on Jews and on Jewish schools – i.e. on the victims and their education?  One does not combat domestic abuse by teaching women and girls krav maga; it is the abusers that need to learn a lesson.  If Ms. Miller saw black people being lambasted by racists, would her solution be that schools teach BAME people more biology, the better to confront their detractors, who accuse them of being racially inferior?

‘Palestinian narrative’

But even if Jewish schools wanted to teach “the Palestinian narrative” – what exactly is that narrative?  As the West Bank textbooks prove, Palestinians don’t live in a democratic, liberal society.  Neither the ‘moderate’ Palestinian Authority, nor Hamas (the local branch of Muslim Brotherhood) tolerate a free press, freedom of speech, freedom of public debate…  They brook no dissent; quite the opposite – both Hamas and the PA actively encourage and reinforce societal taboos that tightly constrain speech and severely punish ‘unorthodox’ expression.  What is “the Palestinian narrative”, then – other than whatever these two dictatorial regimes decide that ‘the masses’ should know, believe and say?  The PLO Negotiations Affair Department unabashedly declare on their website that Jews are “immigrants [who] colonize Palestine at the expense of our rights and aspirations”.  Is this “the Palestinian narrative” that we ‘must’ teach to our children “from an early age”?  Should we also school them in the ravings of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane – just for balance?  Even better: should we teach Mein Kampf in Jewish schools – lest our young people feel ill-equipped to fight fascism and antisemitism?

Is your house flooded?  You clearly need more water!

But Ms. Miller’s reference to “the Palestinian narrative” may really be just an intellectually dishonest euphemism.  What she truly seems to imply is that Jewish youth are not sufficiently exposed to “criticism of Israel”.  Are they not, really??  Anyone familiar with the British media knows that, whenever the word ‘Israel’ is uttered (and it is uttered a lot!), it is usually followed by criticism – varying in nature from unfairly harsh to downright outrageous.  These days, the BBC can’t even do an interview with a Holocaust survivor without mentioning the “occupied Palestinian territories”!

BBC’s Middle East Editor urges Jews and gentiles to explore the dark side of Judaism.

Even the Jewish media is replete with views of ‘Palestinian supporters’: within days of Ms. Miller’s opinion piece, the Jewish Chronicle published an article by British-Palestinian Layla Moran MP – in which she called for boycotting “the illegal settlements”.  For those still naïve about ‘liberal’ (or Liberal) vocabulary, “the” in “the illegal settlements” stands for ‘Israeli’.  After all, there’s nothing illegal about Han Chinese settlers in Tibet and Xinjiang, Moroccan settlers in Western Sahara, Turkish settlers in Cyprus, etc., etc., etc.  Is there??

Yachad applauded Layla Moran's article, which calls for boycott against Israeli settlements.

As for the social media – to which youngsters, Jews and Gentiles alike, tend to be addicted – there the ‘criticism’ is neither unfair nor outrageous, but most often berserk.

During the latest Gaza-Israel bout of violence, my girlfriend’s children (16 and 18-year-olds) were both bombarded with horrific anti-Israel comments on Instagram…

But apparently that’s not enough.  What our youngsters really need is… a bit of Yachad ‘education about the conflict’.

Ms. Miller refers to Yachad as “a Zionist anti-occupation movement”.  On Twitter, Yachad itself professes to be “pro-Israel”.  Well, let me tell you: both descriptions are… how should I put it in polite British terms… ‘a bit’ misleading.  Yachad has mostly ceased describing itself as Zionist – probably because the term is soooo ‘divisive’.  As for “pro-Israel”… I just ploughed through Yachad’s 100 most recent Twitter posts: there are exactly 0 (zero) posts praising the Jewish state, or defending her from her many detractors.  In fact, the most recent tweets endorsed Layla Moran’s call for ‘illegal settlement boycott’ and urged everybody to ‘move beyond’ being ‘pro’ or ‘anti’ Israel…

And more ‘water’ is what they’re getting!

Ms. Miller reports with chagrin that

Petitions have been circulated by parents trying to ban Yachad […] from Jewish secondary schools.  The claim made by those that started the petition is that “Yachad is hostile to Israel”.

Firstly, note that the initial “[p]etitions” surreptitiously became just one “petition” – in the space of just a few insincere words.  As far as I’m concerned, Ms. Miller is lying: I am only aware of one “petition” (actually, a complaint to JCoSS – the Jewish Community Secondary School); I was involved in writing it, so I know very well that it did not ask to “ban” Yachad, but to balance its views with those held by other organisations and by the (Zionist) majority of British Jewry.  I.e. to implement the school’s own declared policy of ‘pluralism’ and ‘diversity of opinion’.  And to uphold the law of the land, which prohibits (Art. 406 (1)(b))

the promotion of partisan political views in the teaching of any subject in the school.

and requires (Art. 407)

that where political issues are brought to the attention of pupils […] they are offered a balanced presentation of opposing views.

As for Yachad being “hostile to Israel” – let me just say that it routinely lobbies the British government to put pressure on the Jewish state, to force her to do things that the vast majority of Israelis believe to be detrimental to their safety and wellbeing.

And yet, Ms. Miller again deceives her readers by implying that Yachad is not ‘educating’ in Jewish schools.  In reality (and, in my view, in violation of the law), Yachad has unmatched involvement in the ‘education about the conflict’ in at least certain Jewish schools.  Here’s what their 2020 Annual Report says:

In January and February 2020, we completed six-part courses for both year 12 and year 13 at JCoSS, with over 30 students participating […] we also delivered sessions for years 7, 8 and 9 at JCoSS, meeting with over 75 students.

Yachad: political activists and ‘educators’

And it is not just JCoSS: as previous annual reports make it clear, Yachad (a political lobby, let’s remember!) is ‘educating’ several other Jewish schools, as well as some non-Jewish ones.

Perhaps Ms Miller’s objection is that Year 7 (11-12 year olds) isn’t sufficiently “early age” to

acknowledge the Palestinian narrative in any meaningful way.

Perhaps we should send Yachad to deliver some ‘National and Social Upbringing’ in kindergartens.  After all, the Palestinians are applying that early-age indoctri… err… ‘education’ method so very successfully!

Houston, we have a problem!

But Ms. Miller assures us that Yachad’s ‘education’ is precisely what’s needed to turn Jewish youngsters into staunch Zionists, able to hold their own on campus.

Except that evidence shows that the exact opposite is true.  Ms. Miller herself is a case in point: having now finally become aware of “the Palestinian narrative” and gained “sympathy for the Palestinian people”, one would expect Ms. Miller to be a passionate defender of Israel.  I therefore undertook an excursion to her Twitter timeline, in search for posts in which she defends the Jewish state against her detractors and combats the many lies that are said about her.  Well, I can only say that I returned from that hopeful excursion with empty hands and a sad heart…

Here’s a bit of intellectual honesty – coming from unusual quarters: Sara Hirschhorn identifies herself as a ‘liberal Zionist’; for years, she partnered with Yachad, for instance speaking together at community events.  But she is also an academic, trained to recognise and analyse reality as it is.  While speaking to a group of Jewish 14 to 18 years olds she was shocked to discover that they were (in her own words)

ashamed to be associated with Zionism.

Contrary to what Yachad and Ms. Miller would probably claim, Dr. Hirschhorn found that

It’s not the settlements, or the occupation. It’s the idea itself. […] the group did not cite the occupation or the settlements as responsible for their distancing — for them, it went far deeper, to the very premise of a self-defining State of the Jews, back to 1948.

No, it’s none of Israel’s purported ‘sins’, but

the post-modernist relativism they’ve grown up within.

The type of relativism – I’d say – that suggests that schools should teach ‘narratives’, rather than history; that opinion matters more than evidence and that there are no facts, just ‘views’.

And who is to blame for what many a Jew would describe as a catastrophe?  Here Dr. Hirschhorn’s honesty manages to shine through her ideological convictions.  Talking to her fellow ‘liberal Zionists’, she resorts to a Hebrew term from Jewish Day of Atonement liturgy (“Ashamnu” – we are guilty) to summarise her findings:

My conclusion? “Ashamnu.” We [liberal Zionists] must atone , for we have failed an entire generation.

She unequivocally assigns the youngster’s estrangement to practices that Yachad and similar ‘liberal’ outfits have been engaging in for years: that of always presenting Israel in harshly negative tones – 100% ‘criticism’, 0% praise.

Above all, we can’t only catalogue the (many) shortcomings — we must constantly and convincingly express what still makes us proud — in spite of it all — in the State of Israel today.  If we can’t do that in a selfie, a tweet, a Facebook post, an op-ed or a face-to-face discussion, we must take a hard look at how we have not only failed ourselves, but our future.

Dr. Hirschhorn is hardly the only one to ring the alarm bell.  So did Jonathan Goldstein, head of the Jewish Leadership Council:

Probably the single largest issue that we have to address now is the disengagement of our youth from […] core Jewish values and from its association with Israel. […] We’ve allowed our own youth to be detached from Israel. We’ve lost the narrative of the nation state. We’ve lost the Zionist narrative. […] We have to accept that we have a major problem globally and we have to take it on.

Note that Mr. Goldstein does not just diagnose estrangement from Israel – but also from Jewishness in general.  The two, as many a study has shown, go hand-in-hand.

In fact, Ms. Miller herself admits that

many university students […] abandon Zionism entirely.

Yet she chooses to blame “the mainstream [Jewish] community” and her ‘solution’ is… more Yachad!

Well, Ms. Miller was clearly right to choose journalism as a career.  That’s a profession in which, admittedly, one can do a lot of harm; but one at least does not get sued for malpractice.  Had she chosen medicine, I imagine her passionately prescribing a bout of chesty cough as a salutary remedy for Covid!

Gewalt, Yid’n!  What do we do?

The solution should be obvious even to ‘liberal Zionists’ like Dr. Hirschhorn, as long as – like her – they’re honest:

We need to reinterpret Zionism as national liberation, while teaching what our tradition offers about moral and political responsibility.

Of course, that wouldn’t be “reinterpretation” – it would be a return to the term’s true meaning.  Zionism has always been a national emancipation movement – which is why, in its modern embodiment, it appeared in a place and time replete with other such movements.

A few of the world’s national liberation movements and the approximate year of their beginning.

Our young people do not need to be taught “the Palestinian narrative” – or any ‘narrative’.  They need to be taught their people’s history.  Including Zionism, Israel and their history.

Do we do this?  Let’s listen to Ms. Miller:

[F]rankly, the ‘Israel education’ I received (if I can even call it an education) was appalling.  In Year 12 we watched Entebbe the movie, had one lecture on the War of Independence and another on Theodore Herzl.

Most Jewish parents send their children to Jewish schools simply because they want them to continue to be Jews.  Zionism should be an essential part of teaching them Jewishness – if nothing else, because without proud, unequivocal Zionism, they (or their own children) will not remain Jews.  If concepts like ‘nation’ and ‘nation state’ are ‘old school’, religion is something that belongs in the Middle Ages and ‘multiculturalism’ is the only alternative to Nazism – what, then, is the meaning of being a Jew?  For Yachad activists, Jewishness is a variety of socialism ‘decorated’ with the occasional Hebrew term and the odd ritual twisted out of context and meaning.  But most Jews don’t want to be socialists and most socialists don’t really like Jews.

It follows that it is not Yachad who should be ‘in charge’ of ‘educating about the conflict’ – it should be people or organisations that are proudly, unequivocally Zionist.  Yachad activists are entitled to their opinions and – as long as they find enough rich donors to fund their socialism – can ply their ideological merchandise like everybody else, in the free market of ideas.

That does not mean that we must teach myths or ‘beautify’ Zionism in any way.  It does not need beautifying.  National emancipation movements are necessary and – overall – good, progressive, desirable phenomena.  They fulfil essentially-human aspirations such as freedom and meaning to life.  But they are not – and never have been – perfect, faultless, ‘sans peur et sans reproche’.  They all caused great elation and also much pain.  They all reached for the skies with hands that were sometimes tainted with blood.  It is only when Jews are involved that some people tend to focus unduly on the imperfections that plague every human endeavour; when they attempt to turn vicissitudes of history into all-encompassing moral indictments.  It is only with Jews that some people want to visit the sins of the fathers on the sons; and to turn back the clock of history in the name of a ‘justice’ never before heard of, let alone practiced.

Indians proudly celebrate their independence – and so they should.  That that independence also involved bloodshed, displacement and suffering is well-known.  That fact shouldn’t be denied or concealed; nor should it be thrown in Indians’ faces at every opportunity; nor should it be used to contest the legitimacy of their country, or their right to enjoy it in peace and develop it as they see fit.

No, we should not (nor do we need to) teach a Zionist ‘narrative’; the truth, with its spots of bright light and oppressive darkness, with its beautiful aspirations and its harsh realities – the naked truth should be good enough.

What our young people need to hear is that truth, neither beautified nor maliciously twisted, but placed in its true context.  Every nation on the face of the earth has done things it should not be proud of; Jews, too – though perhaps less than most.  Yet every nation is proud of its heritage, its history, its culture, its homeland; Jews certainly should be – perhaps more than most.

Yachad, Airbnb and a new untogetherness

Like the vast majority of Israelis, I am pro-peace.  I supported the withdrawal from South Lebanon, the disengagement from Gaza, the Oslo Accords.  I would have voted in favour of a deal along the lines of Olmert’s 2008 offer, had it been accepted by the Palestinian leadership.  Which means that I would have supported Israel’s withdrawal from some 95% of the West Bank, including the evacuation of many settlements.

Don’t get me wrong: I never thought that ‘the settlements’ are a serious obstacle to peace.  After all, there was no peace when there were no settlements; and the sure-proof way to ‘stop the settlements’ and ‘dismantle the occupation’ – if indeed that is what they want – is for the Palestinian leadership to make peace.

But I know there are people – including Jews in Israel and the Diaspora – who think otherwise, who have come to resent ‘the settlements’.  I disagree with them, for the reasons mentioned above – and more; but they are entitled to their opinion.

‘The’ settlements?

But this is not about being pro or against ‘the settlements’.  It’s about discrimination against Jews.  A few days ago, Airbnb has decided to de-list B & Bs owned by Jews in the West Bank.  Their press release is dishonestly entitled ‘Listings in Disputed Regions’.  ‘Dishonestly,’ because the decision targets just one ‘Disputed Region’ – the West Bank; which happens to be ‘disputed’ by Jews.  This is not about settlements in disputed territories; it’s about ‘the settlements’ – the only ones inhabited by Jews.

Writing for The Spectator, Brendan O’Neill puts it better than I ever could:

So alongside being the only country that pop stars refuse to play in, and the only country whose academics are boycotted on Western campuses, and the only country whose dancers and violinists cannot perform in cities like London without gangs of people screaming them down, and the only country whose produce is routinely avoided by luvvies and liberals, now Israel is the only country that has been politically punished by holiday app cum conscience of the Twitterati, Airbnb.

The world is, of course, full of ‘Disputed Regions’; lots of them are subject to ‘settlement’ by one of the parties to that dispute; and Airbnb happily operates in quite a few of them.

One of the more than 150 Tiobetans who self-immolated in protest against the
Chinese occupation and policies.

Formerly an independent (albeit relatively underdeveloped) state, Tibet was conquered by the Chinese Army in 1950.  China has been ruling the region with an iron fist ever since, in the face of visible Tibetan opposition – manifested for instance through periodic revolts and numerous acts of protest, including more than 150 instances of self-immolation.  The Free Tibet organisation (headquartered in London) accuses the Chinese occupation of causing more than 1 million fatalities among Tibetans; many more have been tortured; others live in abject poverty; the Chinese authorities are trying to forcibly assimilate the Tibetan population, actively discouraging them from enjoying their own culture, from practising their religion and from speaking their own language.  Moreover, China is actively encouraging settlers from among its own dominant Han ethnicity to move to Tibet.  No equivalent of B’tselem was ever allowed to operate in Tibet of course, so the exact number of Han settlers is unknown, but it is claimed that they threaten to become the majority in the region.  The Han settlers and ‘collaborating’ Tibetans are rewarded with economic benefits that are denied to the rest of the population.  In the words of the Dalai Lama:

The new Chinese settlers have created an alternate society: a Chinese apartheid which, denying Tibetans equal social and economic status in our own land, threatens to finally overwhelm and absorb us.

I found 300+ properties listed by on Airbnb.co.uk in Tibet’s capital Lhasa alone.  As far as I could see, they are all listed in Mandarin (the language of the Han settlers), rather than in the Tibetan language.  I randomly checked out 20 of those properties –all 20 hosts had Chinese (rather than Tibetan) names.  Quite a few actually disclose their origin in the ‘Hosted by…’ section.  “I’m from Inner Mongolia [a region in Northern China]”, writes the owner of Airbnb listing #25988191.  “In 2013, I resigned from a foreign company in Shanghai and then moved to Lhasa” – location #28316356.  “From Chengdu [capital of Sichuan Province in the South-West of China], came to Lhasa alone in 2013” – location #24162447.  “I graduated from Jinan University in 2012 with a master’s degree in journalism. At the end of October 2013, I moved to Tibet by myself.” – location #14696223.

Tibet is just one example.  In 1974, the Turkish army invaded Cyprus, conquering the northern 40% of the country.  The ethnic Greek inhabitants fled or were expelled almost to the last person.  No Greek Cypriot remained, for instance, in the seashore resort of Famagusta, which had been predominantly Greek.  Most of Varosha – Famagusta’s main tourist neighbourhood – was fenced off by the Turkish army and declared a ‘closed military area’.  Here’s the testimony of a journalist from The Telegraph:

Today, one part of Famagusta still remains entirely sealed off by rusting barbed wire, fiercely guarded by Turkish troops. Known as Varosha, it represents about 20 per cent of Famagusta and was the prime tourist area, comprising the stretch of golden sand, behind which stand skeletons of bombed and abandoned hotels and apartments, and streets of looted shops, restaurants, mansions.

The ghost town is heavily guarded by soldiers, and aggressive signs make it clear that this is a no-go area.[…]

For the past two years, I have been visiting the north and south of Cyprus regularly to research a novel. In that time, I have seen extensive building work taking place in the area surrounding Varosha, making it unrecognisable to former inhabitants. A large population of settlers from the Turkish mainland live there, their lifestyle and culture very different even from that of the Turkish Cypriots.

Ethnic distribution in Cyprus, before and after the Turkish invasion.

 Circa 40,000 Turkish troops still ‘protect’ Northern Cyprus and its ethnic Turkish inhabitants – including some 250,000 Turkish settlers, who are thought to represent by now the majority of Northern Cyprus’s population.  And who often live on land (and even houses) formerly owned by Greek Cypriots.

In 2012, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Turkey must pay circa EUR 20 million in compensation to Greek Cypriot owners of hotels and other businesses.  In its Resolution 550/1984, the UN Security Council stated that it:

Considers attempts to settle any part of Varosha by people other than its inhabitants as inadmissible and calls for the transfer of that area to the administration of the United Nations.

Needless to say, that request was rejected by Turkey, as were various condemnations of its ‘settlement’ policy.

Airbnb.co.uk lists 39 properties in Varosha alone (there are hundreds in Famagusta and the rest of the ‘Disputed Region’ of Northern Cyprus).  Unsurprisingly, the owners generally have Turkish names.  At location #24539082, host Ergin (a Turkish male first name meaning ‘mature man’) advertises his ‘Chic and Design Boutique Hotel at City Center’, which offers 36 en-suite bedrooms.  The hotel’s location is given as Kıbrıs (the Turkish equivalent of Cyprus), but the page also describes the location as ‘Turkey’.

Airbnb serenely lists locations in Western Sahara, Kashmir, Myanmar, Rwanda, Sudan, even a solitary one in Crimea. Let’s not forget the Falkland Islands, and a location listed as ‘Gibraltar, United Kingdom’ – a description that will surely rile quite a few Spaniards.  And dozens of other ‘Disputed Regions’ around the globe, many of which have seen horrendous atrocities.  And more: how many of the thousands of B & Bs in Poland are really Jewish houses taken over by neighbours – some as ‘reward’ for collaboration and betrayal?  How many belonged to the millions of ethnic Germans, Ukrainians and Lemkos that, between 1945 and 1950, were violently thrown out of their ancestral homes and lands?  Who knows?  Who cares?  Certainly not Airbnb!

‘Together’ with whom?

It doesn’t matter how you feel about ‘the settlements’ or about ‘Israeli settlers’.  Even if they were thieves and criminals, what justification is there for targeting them, while ignoring others who act in the same way – and much worse?  When one targets a specific category of ‘offenders’ (rather than a specific type of offence), this has nothing to do with ethics and justice; it has everything to do with discrimination and persecution.

And when Jews are (again!) subjected to such obvious double standards; when the words ‘Jews’ and ‘boycott’ are once more unashamedly spoken in the same sentence – you’d hope that any Jew worthy of the name would feel outraged.

Well, apparently not.  As soon as the news came out, a London-based outfit called ‘Yachad’ took to the social and traditional media to… express support for Airbnb’s discriminatory decision.

Of course, we are all by now accustomed to various As-a-Jew’s – people for whom bashing the Jewish state is their main link to Jewishness.  But Yachad claims to be “the pro-Israel, pro-peace movement for British Jews”.  “THE”—no less!  It’s their Twitter profile.

So why would “the” pro-Israel, pro-peace movement for British Jews (or even ‘a’ or ‘any’ “movement for British Jews”) support blatant anti-Jewish discrimination?

According to Yachad’s Director Hannah Weisfeld,

Recognition of the green line [sic!] is recognition of Israel’s legitimacy within those borders.  Glad to see @Airbnb recognises Israel’s legitimacy

Deputy Director Maya Ilany claims that

Contrary to Airbnb’s critics, the company has effectively reaffirmed Israel’s legitimacy as a sovereign state within the Green Line.

“Effectively”??  There is a Hebrew word for this kind of outrageous spin – and it’s not ‘yachad’: it’s ‘chutzpah’!

No, Airbnb has neither ‘recognised’ nor ‘reaffirmed’ Israel’s legitimacy – its press release contains no such declaration.  In fact, that official statement never mentions the term “legitimacy” or any of its synonyms; nor does it include the word “Israel”, though it does refer repeatedly to “Israeli settlements” and “Israelis and Palestinians”.

Of course, even had it been issued, such “recognition” would be absolutely worthless.  As a commercial enterprise, Airbnb was constituted in order to turn profits and make money for its shareholders; it is not in the business of conferring “legitimacy” and sovereignty on anyone and anything – nor does it have any moral standing to do so.

In fact, Airbnb’s press release reveals the trigger for their decision:

[M]any in the global community have stated that companies should not do business here because they believe companies should not profit on lands where people have been displaced.

We know who those “many in the global community” are: BDS activists and supporters.  Who, as we also know, consider the entire Israel “lands where people have been displaced.”

In fact, Airbnb’s decision is one of “2 big BDS victories” described in a gleeful Palestine Solidarity Campaign statement.  Far from differentiating between ‘Israel proper’ and ‘the settlements’, the PSC statement calls Airbnb’s decision “a significant positive step in the right direction” and wraps it together with

a host of other victories for the BDS movement in recent months, including decisions by artists Lana Del Ray and Lorde to pull out of planned concerts in Israel in accordance with the call for a cultural boycott.

Neither Lana Del Rey, nor Lorde had planned any concerts in ‘settlements’; both were scheduled to perform in ‘Israel-proper’, before succumbing to torrents of abuse from what the PSC calls a “coalition of human rights activists”.

No doubt in order to generate more such “victories”, the same PSC statement also calls for

Support the campaign to boycott this year’s [sic!] Eurovision in Israel.

I.e., the Eurovision Song Context scheduled to take place next year in Tel Aviv.

PSC is right to call Airbnb’s step a ‘big BDS victory’.  Of course, BDS is not about boycotting ‘settlements’, but boycotting Israel and her supporters.  But the BDS’ers will take it one step at a time, like a drug pusher who will sell you pot, before one day switching you to ‘the real stuff’.  Once the initial barrier is breached (i.e. once a person is persuaded that boycotting ‘some Jews’ is a noble, moral endeavour), it is easy to push further.  For instance, Israeli telecoms cover also the West Bank – or at least Area C.  If Bezeq (the Israeli equivalent of BT) stopped providing services to the West Bank, then not just ‘Israeli settlers’, but also Palestinians would be deprived of telephone and internet services.  But that, as we know, does not necessarily bother the BDS activists, who present Bezeq as ‘a company profiting from the Occupation’.  Or take a ‘report’ produced by a coalition of Christian charities obsessed with the Jewish state.  Entitled ‘Trading Away Peace’, it states:

Settlements in the West Bank produce a range of industrial goods, mostly manufactured in purpose-built industrial zones.  Like the settlements themselves, the industrial zones are a violation of international law, which prohibits the occupying power from constructing permanent infrastructure in occupied territory, unless it is for military use or serves the interests of the occupied population.

Yachad would no doubt claim that the report ‘reaffirmed’ Israel’s legitimacy.  But that was neither its intended, nor its actual outcome.  Among the ‘examples’ of companies “in violation of international law” the report cites one I am familiar with, in a professional capacity.  With a turnover in excess of US$ 1 billion, Keter Plastic is arguably the world’s largest and most innovative manufacturer of garden furniture, as well as household and related products.  Headquartered in Herzlia (just north of Tel Aviv), Keter sells in more than 100 countries – including a few Arab countries – and operates more than two dozen factories in Israel, Europe, United States and Canada.  One of these production facilities is located in the Barkan Industrial Park, about 5 miles on the ‘wrong side’ of the Green Line.  The workforce consists mostly of Palestinians from the area, with a smattering of Jews.  The Barkan factory produces less than 5% of Keter’s turnover, but that was enough to include it in the report as one of the ‘international law violators’; which further caused the United Church of Canada, the US Presbyterian Church and the Quaker Council For European Affairs (QCEA) to call their faithful to boycott it.

The QCEA is an interesting example of how ‘settlement boycott’ becomes ‘Israel boycott’ and further snowballs into boycott of Jews who support Israel.  In 2012, the QCEA published a ‘Discussion Paper’ meant to ‘inform’ their movement.  In reality, it’s a blatant anti-Israel propaganda document.  But arguably one of the most interesting passages is the one describing an example of successful boycott.  It reads:

Take the example of a boycott campaign against McDonald’s that has been carried out throughout the Middle East: “McDonald’s is a ‘major corporate partner’ of the Jewish United Fund. In its own words, the Jewish United Fund ‘works to maintain American military, economic and diplomatic support for Israel; monitors and, when necessary, responds to media coverage of Israel.’ Also, McDonald’s chairman and CEO, Jack M. Greenberg, is an honorary director of the American-Israel Chamber of Commerce and Industry. McDonald’s […] announced it is closing down its operation in the Middle East due to loss of revenue as a direct result of the boycott (Oct 2002), and is replacing Greenberg as its chairman and CEO (Dec 2002). Since the launch of the boycott campaign, two of Jordan’s six McDonald’s franchises have closed due to lack of business. In Egypt, McDonald’s decided to change its brand name to Manfoods this past March, in an attempt to dodge the boycott. It had no effect and Egyptian police forces were ordered to guard the entrances to McDonald’s restaurants, after stone throwing incidents took place. A total of 175 restaurants will be closed at a loss of $350 million.

Note that the document published by the QCEA cites among the boycott’s ‘successes’ the purported dismissal of “Greenberg” (not Mr. Greenberg – as people would normally be referred to in Europe!) for the ‘crime’ of serving as the honorary director of the American-Israel Chamber of Commerce and Industry.  Note also that McDonald’s – Middle East is brought as purported example of successful boycott in a document discussing BDS, but is actually – according to its description – ‘classic’ Arab boycott of Israel.  This is more evidence that BDS is not ‘a new movement’ that started in 2005, but just a rebranding of the Arab League boycott, an old declaration of economic warfare.

In conclusion, it is only in Yachad’s imagination – either self-delusional or deceitful, but certainly weird – that settlement boycotts ‘confer legitimacy’ on Israel.  Such boycotts are not meant to highlight the difference between Israel and ‘Israeli settlements’, but between Israel and all other countries.  For people who are less informed (i.e., for most people) the message is that Israel is the epitome of evil; a case on its own, the world’s number one human rights violator.  Why else would companies like Airbnb select Israel – and only Israel – for this ‘cruel and unusual’ punishment not meted out on any other state since Apartheid South Africa?

Yachad’s support for boycotts is a new development in the history of this organisation.  Yachad was founded in 2011 as a ‘dissent organisation’ which claimed that the mainstream, elected leadership of the British Jewish community (the Board of Deputies, the Jewish Leadership Council) are blindly supportive of Israel.  Although its criticism of Israeli policies and actions was often acerbic, initially Yachad was opposed to boycotts of any kind.  In a website post dating from 2013, the group explained:

As a pro-Israel organisation, Yachad believes Israel should be allowed to thrive. Whilst we are opposed to the ongoing occupation, and do not support new investment inside the Israeli controlled West Bank, including in East Jerusalem, we are also opposed to a policy of isolation. […]

Using boycott as a policy tool also implies that the solution to the conflict can be imposed externally without a genuine negotiations process and that the responsibility for achieving peace in the region lies solely with Israel.

Assuming that the 2013 statement above truly reflected its beliefs, Yachad has clearly changed its policy.

Despite its protestations, Yachad understands that steps targeting only Israeli settlements are discriminatory.  Indeed, referring to the uber-controversial EU decision to label produce from ‘Israeli settlements’, Yachad refers to the claim that such labelling:

is inconsistent with the way other territorial disputes are treated.

The Yachad document further comments:

This is largely true. In a commonly cited example, tomatoes grown in Western Sahara but exported by Morocco are labelled as product of Morocco.

But the fact that Israeli Jews are treated in a manner “inconsistent” with how others are treated (read: they are discriminated against) does not prevent Yachad from supporting that discriminatory policy.  And their support for ‘labelling’ (which at the time was presented as fundamentally different from boycott) has now morphed into a full throated support for Airbnb’s boycott.

In fairness, this type of gradual radicalisation of positions shouldn’t surprise anyone.  It is typical of fringe organisations, that struggle to persuade and attract larger numbers of supporters.  They start by presenting what they see as a ‘moderate’ view, in the hope of branding themselves as a ‘broad church’.  But, since in truth they are anything but moderates, their leadership cannot fail to – sooner or later – show their true colours.

In Hebrew, Yachad means ‘together’.  Nice name; but the reality is, these days, that Yachad is ‘together’ with those who target Jews – and only Jews – for boycott.

Yachad’s “founding statement of core principles” (found on their website) opens up with a touching declaration of love:

We are Jews who love Israel, who stand with Israel, whose lives are bound up with Israel. We believe in its right not just to exist, but to flourish. We stand against those who defame it.

Nice words; but there is little evidence of “love” anywhere else on that website.  This reminds me of the proverbial wife beater who, when dragged before a judge, cried:

But I love her to bits, Your Honour!  I only beat her so she knows she’s done wrong and needs to mend her ways…

Love shouldn’t hurt.  If it hurts, it’s not love – it’s abuse.  Like all abusive relationships, Yachad’s “love” batters, not betters.  On behalf of the vast majority of Israelis – who resent boycotts and those who support them – let me urge Yachad: will you PLEASE love us a little less!

Is Corbyn an antisemite?

I’m only stating the obvious: freedom of speech is arguably the very basis of democracy. The right to speak one’s mind freely is a fundamental human right.

Sounds like a cliché, doesn’t it?  That’s because these concepts are so often used, misused and abused in modern political discourse.  We are so often bashed on the head with the term ‘human rights’ (often by dictators for whom the term has no real meaning) that we’ve come to accept it without question.  In fact, not everything we feel entitled to do is a ‘human right’; and even when it is, that does not mean that such right is unconstrained.

Our unquestioned human right ends where it impinges on another human right.  At that point, the two clashing rights need to be balanced; which is just another way of saying they need to be curtailed.

Freedom of speech is no different.  A fundamental right it may be, but it is far from absolute.  In fact, it is strictly curtailed, even in a democracy.  Because words have consequences.  In fact, words can kill.  The Talmud sages put that observation in a statement that loosely translates as

"Life and death by the power of the tongue."

In modern political thought, the textbook example is shouting ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theatre.  That ‘freedom’ is prohibited, because the ensuing stampede impinges on the right to live – and to live free of bodily harm.  For the same reason, incitement to violence (and not just the violence itself) is proscribed.

But the line is not drawn at bodily harm.  UK statutes outlaw speech that stirs up racial hatred (the so-called ‘hate speech’), even when the words did not actually result in violence.  That’s in recognition of the fact that not just people’s body needs to be protected, but also their spirit and dignity.  This is also why the UK has laws against defamation.

In both cases (hate speech and defamation), the law does not require proof of intent.  It is not concerned with the motivations behind the act, but with its (potential) consequences.

***

Having established that, let us now go to the (by now famous) fact that the UK Labour Party, while ostensibly agreeing with the Definition of Antisemitism published by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), has deliberately not adopted the part which describes as antisemitic

"Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis."

Instead, Labour’s ruling body (the National Executive Committee – NEC) has introduced in its Code of Conduct the following statement:

"Discourse about international politics often employs metaphors drawn from examples of historic misconduct.  It is not antisemitism to criticise the conduct or policies of the Israeli state by reference to such examples unless there is evidence of antisemitic intent.  Chakrabarti [inquiry into antisemitism] recommended that Labour members should resist the use of Hitler, Nazi and Holocaust metaphors, distortions and comparisons in debates about Israel-Palestine in particular.  In this sensitive area, such language carries a strong risk of being regarded as prejudicial or grossly detrimental to the Party within Clause 2.I.8."

Contrary to what some Party spokespersons claim, the Labour Code of Conduct’s statement does not ‘expand’ the Definition – at least not in this respect; in fact, it clearly contradicts the Definition: where the IHRA Definition declares the Israeli-Nazi analogy a “[c]ontemporary example of antisemitism in public life”, the Code of Conduct says that “[i]t is not antisemitism […] unless there is evidence of antisemitic intent”.  That’s not saying much: surely anything is antisemitism if there is evidence of antisemitic intent.  But I struggle to understand what such evidence would be and how it could be obtained.  And why would the Labour Code suddenly become concerned with intent, rather than the consequences of the act?

So, is the Israel-Nazi analogy (or “metaphor”, as the Code of Conduct so poetically calls it) antisemitism, or is it not?

To avoid being accused of circular logic, I will deliberately not rely on the IHRA Definition.  Instead, I will use a definition of antisemitism proclaimed not by a supporter, but by a critic of the IHRA Definition. Former Court of Appeal judge Stephen Sedley defined antisemitism as follows:

"Shorn of philosophical and political refinements, anti-Semitism is hostility towards Jews as Jews. Where it manifests itself in discriminatory acts or inflammatory speech it is generally illegal, lying beyond the bounds of freedom of speech and of action."

Sedley, who is currently a Visiting Professor at Oxford University, is right to distinguish between immoral prejudice (“hostility”) and illegal acts, such as discrimination and hate speech.  But the fact that the former is allowed by law (i.e. it is within “the bounds of freedom of speech”) does not mean that it is acceptable.  Antisemitism is racism; profoundly immoral and therefore abhorrent.  If I were to use the ‘n-word’, I would not be imprisoned; but I would rightly be called a racist by every person of good character.

Neither the IHRA Definition, nor the Labour Code of Conduct deal with criminal offences; they are concerned with ethics, not law.

On the other hand, it is clear that in Professor Sedley’s view, discrimination and hate speech (whether they reach the legal threshold or not) are manifestations of antisemitism.  And therefore, they are in themselves evidence of antisemitism.

Those who insist that drawing the analogy is not antisemitic do so based on the assertion that Israel does similar things to those perpetrated by the Nazis.  For instance, Israel ‘occupies’ – and so did the Nazis; Israel ‘kills’ – and so did the Nazis; Israel ‘discriminates’, Israel ‘ethnically cleanses’, etc.

UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn compared the Israeli blockade of Gaza Strip with the Nazi sieges of Stalingrad and Leningrad, which killed millions of people.

Let us move away from the debate of whether Israel actually does those things and whether some or all of them are justified in the circumstances.  Such debate would not only be endless, but also irrelevant.  Personally, I do believe that many of the accusations against Israel are at best distortions and at worst amount to hate speech.  However, that’s not my point here; my point is that, even if everything that Corbyn claims Israel does were true, the Nazi analogy would still constitute antisemitism – because it is employed in an incendiary and discriminatory fashion.

Because what is clear is that Israel is hardly the only country that perpetrates those things.  There are many territories that are ‘occupied’; more Palestinians have been killed by other Arabs than by Israel; extensive ethnical cleansing occurred in ex-Yugoslavia, Cyprus and in many other conflicts, etc.  Not one thing that Israel did and does is really unique; similar (and much worse) acts have been committed by other nations.

Yet the Nazi analogy is almost never employed in relation to other nations.  EU member state Croatia has an incontestable history of collaboration with the Nazi regime that far exceeds even Ken Livingston’s most outrageous accusations against ‘the Zionists’.  The establishment of modern Croatia involved war and the forced expulsion or flight of most of the Serbian population of that territory.  Yet Croatia is not accused of ‘behaving like the Nazis’ – not by Corbyn and not with his support, anyway.

In practice, Israel is the only entity against which that particular analogy is so often and so vigorously deployed.  It is hardly ever used with regard to Assad (who has butchered hundreds of thousands of people, including using chemical and incendiary weapons); or even with regard to Islamic State – a supremacist ‘Caliphate’ with global ambitions, guilty of exterminating entire populations.

Whatever one chooses to accuse Israel of ‘committing’ – the fact of discrimination remains: Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters are more exercised about Israel than about any other topic in international politics – bar none; and the Nazi analogy is the obvious expression of that unparalleled hostility.

Why Nazis, though?  Of course, Nazis are themselves a “metaphor” of ultimate evil.  But it’s more than that.  It is not by chance that the event that Jeremy Corbyn facilitated in 2010 in the Houses of Parliament took place on Holocaust Memorial Day; it is not by chance that Jeremy Corbyn and his best mate John McDonnell also wanted to take out the term ‘Holocaust’ from the ‘Holocaust Memorial Day’.  This is not ‘just’ about the Nazis in 1930s – it’s of course about the Holocaust.  The Israel-Nazi analogy is employed not despite, but because Jews were the Nazis’ quintessential victims.  Israelis are compared to Nazis because they are Jews.

This has two subliminal motivations:

Firstly, for antisemites, the Holocaust has always been the ultimate reproach, the pointing finger exclaiming ‘this is what you did!’ and causing some nagging feelings of guilt.  The Israel-Nazi analogy is an attempt to push back against that guilt.  If Jews (or at least ‘some Jews’) can be shown to be ‘just like the Nazis’, then there is less of a reason to feel bad for harbouring feelings of hostility against them.

Secondly, the accusation of ‘behaving just like Nazis’ is likely to be more painful for Jews than for anyone else.  Being called a Nazi is a grave insult for any normal person; but for Jews, who lost a third of their number to Nazi crimes, it is devastating.  Arguably no other accusation can be equally shocking for a Jew.  Those who use that particular analogy do so knowing that it causes the ultimate, most unbearable type of pain and distress.

***

Jeremy Corbyn is an antisemite; the Labour Party – with its current membership – is riddled with antisemites, including at its highest levels; the Code of Conduct condones antisemitic prejudice, even while paying lip service to anti-racism.

But it’s more than that: the Israel-Nazi analogy is not ‘just’ antisemitism; it is in fact Holocaust inversion – the ultimate, most pernicious form of Holocaust denial.  It does not deny that the Holocaust actually happened; but, by pretending that the victims can just as well be the perpetrators, it robs it of any moral significance; it kicks the Holocaust into the swamp of moral relativism, there to sink among other ordinary (and debatable) historical episodes.  Changing the name of the Memorial Day is part of the same pattern: the Holocaust thus becomes just a (non-particular) genocide in an ocean of genocides.

Jackie Walker (a devoted Corbyn friend and supporter)
claims that the Jews were responsible for the
Atlantic slave trade and for the ‘African holocaust’.

All this is not ‘just’ an attack on Israel, or an assault on Jews’ connection to the Jewish state; it is not even an ‘intellectual’ pogrom à la Bruno Bauer or Karl Marx.  No, it’s more than that: it is an attack on what it means to be Jewish in the 21 century; an onslaught upon the very soul of the Jewish people.

Save the Children

I keep coming back to the moment I heard a British Jewish acquaintance saying – with a wistful expression and a throaty voice:

“A lot of people here don’t like Jews”

What better definition for ‘modern’ antisemitism?  It is this ‘dislike’ for Jews as Jews that is the root of the problem.  It’s subliminal but visceral; rarely manifest but often present.

* * *

My father was a teenager in pre-World War II Romania.  One of his school teachers was a known member of the local fascist organisation – and a known antisemite.  Not unusual in that time and place, yet my father must have been terrified.  One day, in front of the entire class, the teacher asked my dad to stand up.  “Joseph,” he thundered, “you are a Jew, aren’t you?”  My dad nodded in meek admission of the crime.  “I don’t like Jews,” said the teacher.  “But that does not mean I don’t like you.  You’re a good kid”.

I keep remembering this story, because it is characteristic of the mindset of many antisemites.  It is why the statement “Some of my best friends are Jews” has become not just a cliché, but almost a litmus test for antisemites.  Most antisemites do not hate (or even ‘dislike’) every individual Jew.  What they hate, dislike and fear is ‘the Jews’ – that vague but (in the antisemitic mind) omnipresent collective.  It is that collective – and not the individual Jew – that is the ultimate, the quintessential ‘Other’.  That’s why the ‘modern’ antisemites dislike, hate and fear the State of Israel: with its Jewish majority and character, Israel is the tangible, physical embodiment of that ‘Jewish collective’.  That’s why antisemites argue that ‘anti-Zionism is not antisemitism’: because they feel they can tolerate individual Jews – though not ‘the Jewish collective’.

* * *

What most antisemites ‘don’t like’ is – paradoxically – not Jews as such, but Jewishness.  It is the Jewish identity – religious, cultural and (in ‘modern’ antisemitism) especially national, that is the red cloth to the antisemitic bull.  And that identity is especially obvious when Jews ‘get together’ (or indeed ‘stick together’); when they become not Jews but Jewry.

And that’s why antisemitism is tolerated – some would say embraced – by the (declaredly ‘anti-racist’) far-left.  Universalism, which has become a defining value on the far-left (I prefer to call far-leftists ‘extreme universalists’ or ‘uniformists’) provides an ideological justification for disliking the nation while proclaiming tolerance for the individuals.  Extreme universalism provides base racism with a noble mantle.  Is it a surprise, then, that Jeremy Corbyn can’t even order an inquiry into antisemitism without adding “Islamophobia and other forms of racism”?  To do otherwise would, to an ideologically-intoxicated mind, be in itself a deviation from the ‘value’ of universalism taken to extremes.

Extreme universalists ‘don’t like Jews’; because in their eyes Jews – with their obstinate wish to retain their specific culture and character – are the very embodiment of particularism.  As I mentioned in another recent article, extreme left ideologues want to change ‘the Jew’, to ‘better’ him; in other words, to make ‘him’ disappear in the amorphous ‘masses’ of a humanity robbed of identity.

* * *

Here’s a stereotype: one is more likely to meet other Jews around a table laden with food, then anywhere else.  It was around a table laden with food that, a couple of months ago, I was having a discussion with some Jewish friends and acquaintances; among them a charming couple in their early 30s – let’s call them Miriam and John.

My partner and I had just registered for ‘March of the Living’ – the annual gesture of Holocaust remembrance and defiance which consists of travelling to Poland to visit ghettos and concentration camps; and which culminates with a march from Auschwitz to Birkenau.  I guess both my partner and I were struggling in our hearts with a mixture of excitement and anxiety – and mentioned the trip in our dinner-table conversation.  “Oh, that is very interesting,” said Miriam.  And my partner went into sales mode: “Why don’t you come, too?” she asked.  But Miriam seemed to recoil a bit: “Oh, I don’t know… I’d like to do it at some point… but I don’t feel like doing it with a group of hundreds of other Jews”.  She must have seen the shock in my eyes, because she felt like explaining it: “No, seriously, I don’t like being in large groups of Jews… I think it brings the worst in us.”  Her husband agreed: “Yes, it would be good to visit those sites.  Maybe we will do it once on our own.  Certainly doing it with hundreds of other Jews would be a real nightmare…”.  “But we’re only saying this among ourselves, of course,” he added with a forced laugh.

Seldom in my life have I been so distraught.  Here’s a couple of ‘nice Jewish kids’ who… don’t like Jews.  At least, not Jews as a ‘large group’ – they obviously don’t mind breaking bread and chatting with certain individual Jews.

* * *

How did we get there?  It’s certainly not something they would have heard at home – they both grew up in warm Jewish families that treasured ‘Yiddishkeit’.  But then they went to study at British universities…

I once heard a talk given by a former Chair of UJS, the Union of Jewish Students.  Among other things, she told the audience:

“If you want to understand the political landscape anywhere on campus, imagine a world in which there are no Tories.  There are Anarchists, Marxists, Trotskyites…  The Labour Party Blairites are – like – the extreme-extreme right”.

My son – who also attended university in the UK – agrees, albeit with a proviso:

“There may have been some Tories – but they’d never dare admit it.  They’d be like… they’d be like hated and boycotted…”

* * *

And it’s not just universities, either.  It starts with schools in which teaching ‘British values’ (or indeed Jewish values) is frowned upon with distaste; in which extreme universalism is promoted as an article of faith – indeed as the only tolerated faith – and manifesting any trace of ‘particularist’ identity is discouraged as heresy.  And if you think that that’s not happening in Jewish schools – think again!  Increasingly, extreme universalism is taught there, too – even while security people stand guard outside, to prevent harm being visited upon a very particular group of children…

Some of you may be sending your children to Jewish youth movements and organisations –hoping they’d pick up a bit of Yiddishkeit.  But beware: some of those organisations have been infiltrated.  The ‘Yiddishkeit’ they teach is speckled with Jewish terms and concepts, yes – but those terms and concepts are robbed of their most important, overriding meaning: that of preserving the Jewish people as a particular, distinct ethnic, religious and cultural entity.  They’ll speak, for instance, about ‘Tikkun Olam’ – that beautiful aspiration of ‘repairing the world’.  But they’ll stand that concept on its head: rather than using it to cure the world of antisemitism, they’ll employ it to bash other Jews – for being too Jewish.

Even the position of rabbi has been corrupted: these days, the title may refer to far-left political activists endowed with a smattering of learning and a kwikfit diploma.  They have little interest in shepherding Jewish communities – unsurprisingly, since they don’t really like those communities.  But they love working with naïve youngsters and turning them into more far-left activists.  These ‘rabbis’ harbour an intolerance to Jewry – but they don’t mind specific, ‘liberal’ Jews.

* * *

Recently, the British Jewish community was shocked to discover that, in the midst of a tsunami of unfair, deceitful and discriminatory ‘criticism’ directed at the Jewish state, a group of Jewish youngsters assembled (or, rather, ‘were assembled’) in London’s Parliament Square to… recite Kaddish for Palestinian ‘protesters’ killed by Israel’s Defence Forces.

I know, I know: Kaddish is such an emotional prayer; it comes laden with the painful memory of dead relatives; of people we loved and lost.  And no, those Palestinian ‘protesters’ were neither dead relatives, not genuine protesters; in fact, as the ‘mourners’ knew very well, they were members of terrorist organisations that want to kill our relatives.

Jewish youngsters in London's Parliament Square, reciting the mourners' prayer
(Kaddish) for members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad

I know all that; I understand the shock.  But should we really be surprised?  Just look at who the leaders of that gathering were: a student ‘rabbi’ and a few activists with Jewish youth organisations (i.e., people to whom we entrust our children, our youngsters; who are supposed to ‘school’ them in what ‘being Jewish’ means; who guide them on birthright tours to Israel…)

* * *

Make no mistake: our children are under attack.  It’s an insidious assault – and just paying for school security won't help.  The aggressors don’t aim to injure tender bodies, but to mutilate raw, naïve souls.  If we allow this to continue, our children, our youngsters will not be Jews; but they also won’t be ‘just good people’, no.  Because the fanatics don’t just want to take away their Jewish identity and feeling; they want to replace it with a twisted, grotesque, revolting caricature of Jewishness.  Our kids are being brainwashed into political activists masquerading as Jews; into ‘Jews’ that don’t like Jews.