By Tom Wilson, INN
While Israel may have proven more than capable of meeting the military challenges it faces, the global campaign to extinguish the Jewish presence in the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people continues apace.
Commentary Magazine’s newly released eBook “
The New War on Israel” explores the contours of this determined effort to delegitimize Israel’s most basic right; that it should simply be allowed to exist. The anthology of essays and opinion pieces provides an up-to-date overview of the latest trends in the movement to wage war on Israel by other means, offering an in depth analysis of the forces at work behind this campaign. As such this new eBook offers both a way to understand this latest manifestation of the war on the Jews, but also some essential pointers for how this phenomenon can be ultimately combated.
Perhaps one of the most disturbing aspects of this trend, as highlighted in the book, is the way in which Jewish liberals, in both Israel and the Diaspora, have aided and abetted efforts to delegitimize the Jewish state first into submission, and then they no doubt hope, out of existence altogether.
Featured in the book is Joshua Muravchik’s excellent essay “Trashing Israel Daily”, which uncompromisingly exposes how Haaretz and the Israeli Left more generally have provided so much of the fuel for the fire being stoked against Israel internationally. Muravchik details how such writers as Amira Hass and Gideon Levy, among others, have used the pages ofHaaretz to run a concerted campaign of disinformation and distortion so as to shamelessly demonize their fellow Jews, and even legitimate terrorism against Israeli civilians. Most chillingly of all has been the attitude of the newspaper’s editors, who behind closed doors have even called on America to “rape” Israel. Apparently, all for its own good.
These pernicious sentiments, manufactured by the Israeli Left, are then exported out to naïve and liberally minded Jews throughout the world. As Ben Cohen details in the book, this has manifested itself particularly strongly among Jewish students in America. There the Open Hillel campaign seeks to transform what have until now been safely pro-Israel Jewish student centers into just another venue for the most hatefully bigoted opponents of Israel to advance their efforts to bring down the Jewish state. Yet, astoundingly, many of those behind the campaign to bring anti-Israel boycotters into Hillel, insist that they are nevertheless still friends of Israel.
As John Podohoretz points out in his piece, however, the J Street “Liberal Zionists” who claim to care about Israel harbor some fairly unusual notions about what being pro-Israel might mean. Inevitably, these “critical friends” of Israel, the But-However crowd as Podhoretz refers to them, always condition their support for Israel on Israel pursuing the set of polices that they favor. It seems that they consider Israel to have no innate right to expect the support of Diaspora Jewry. Rather they insist that Israel is only deserving of their backing if it will submit to embodying the liberal values they advocate.
Many of these Liberal Jews who join in the chorus of condemnation against Israel openly confess to believe that this anti-Israel campaign against the Jewish state is actually good for it. This, they claim, will provide the impetus for compelling Israel to make peace with the Arab-Islamic world through the surrender of yet more territory. Yet, as Jonathan Tobin argues in this book, it is the Palestinians who have consistently refused all efforts towards reconciliation, no matter how generous the offers from Israel have been. As such, argues Tobin, we can pretty much bank on it that PA head Mahmoud Abbas will also reject any framework that were to emerge from the current round of negotiations.
The problem, however, as also outlined in the eBook, is that the international community, and particularly the Europeans, will hold Israel accountable if and when negotiations fail. Indeed, the European Union is already drawing up a list of punishments that they intend to inflict on Israel, regardless of who it is that walks away from a peace deal.
One of the most encouraging aspects of this new book, however, is the account it provides of the successful effort to counter the boycott movement. Given the long history of how boycotts have been used to target Jews by those who have hated them down the ages, it is both telling and unsurprising that this tactic has arisen once again. However, as Adam Kredo points out, by making the case forcefully that academic boycotts, in particular, fundamentally run against all of the values free societies claim to uphold, in America at least, there has been a willingness to disavow the boycott campaign.
If this disconcerting global movement to demonize and delegitimize the Jewish state is to be definitively defeated, then it is first vital that we fully understand what is driving it and how it is functioning. For the most current and informative analysis of this phenomenon, “The New War on Israel” offers one of the most comprehensive guides out there.
bernard ross Said:
Christ at the Checkpoint 2014 Conference Mission
Is the State Dep’t at the (Christ at the) Checkpoint?
yamit82 Said:
Jstreet is a creation of george soros and like all his other funded global orgs will do his bidding. Jstreet’s function is to be a cheering gallery for obama, or the admin policy. They are to be the new voice of the american jews who will always neutralize Jewish or Israeli voices that are in disagreement with Obama or the admin. They began as the Jewish voice for his election and will continue as the jewish voice for whatever they do. There will be no dissenting Jewish voice as there will always be its opposite Jewish voice. i will wager that all the BDS jewish voices are tied to Soros and funded by soros. I understand his purpose regarding all else and how he makes money: he spends hundreds of millions funding leftist orgs and politicians in many nations. Whenever they arrive to power, and even before, their currency drops. through his plants he is privy to and even the formulator of their policies. He spends hundred of millions in tax free investment in order to make billions in profits. As for his Jewish vendetta, it appears he hates the Jews. His earliest endeavor was to help the nazis steal the properties of his “fellow” Jews.
yamit82 Said:
I beleive I posted this same article or one very similar here a few weeks ago.
The key usually resides in the words in bold above. where did the infusion come from, pray tell?
@ yamit82:
w
I once watched a elderly gentleman being interviewed by a TV reporter on his 100th birthday. She asked how he had come to live so long, he answered “DON’T DIE”.
I don’t believe you “don’t presume to know G-d’s plan”, I believe The Almighty consults on a regular basis. Hope you feeling and off your meds.
einkerem Said:
I don’t presume to know what God’s plan is, especially in the present short term. If you do let me know.
I suppose you can say we can handle God’s tests, we are alive. Millions of other Jews aren’t; they didn’t make it. Was it because they failed God’s test? Was the elimination of a 1/3 of the Jewish people part of God’s plan?
I have my own personal thoughts re: the above questions but would be interested in knowing yours.
@ bernard ross:
For Obama, Iran Talks Are Also About Testing the Limits of American Jewish Power Lee Smith
https://www.israpundit.org/archives/63594325/comment-page-1#comment-63356000122317
@ bernard ross:
The End of Evangelical Support for Israel?
The Jewish State’s International Standing
by David Brog
Middle East Quarterly
Spring 2014
http://www.meforum.org/3769/israel-evangelical-support
“How quickly things change. The days of taking evangelical support for Israel for granted are over. As they are increasingly confronted with an evangelical-friendly, anti-Israel narrative, more and more of these Christians are turning against the Jewish state.”
@ Bert: The slave mentality of the Jews that left Eygypt after 210 years caused God to insist that all those aged 20 or more die in the desert and never make it to the land of Israel. Those under the age of 20 had to pay the price of wandering those 40 years.
2000 years of exile from our home has left the Jewish people with a galut mentality that will take more than 65 years to overcome. We are part of a process. Some of us already understand what it means to live, think and act like a Jew. Many others are still captives of the galut. It’s painful to watch and experience. It has cost us innocent lives. Lives that have been foolishly declared the “price of peace”.
We are here by the grace of God and He will be watching over us until those generations grow old and die.
Each day Jewish babies are born in Israel and they will be one step closer to being real Jews. Whatever time it takes, we must remember that it is all part of God’s plan. God will not test us more than we can handle.
Israel has won all its wars and paid a price in blood. Israel has survived the economic war against it. But the most vulnerable area where Israel’s enemies are winning is the area of Jewish self-respect. No other religious or ethnic group is so willing to tell lies against its own vital interests. All the books and all the ‘experts’ have failed to understand that this battle is not just political but spiritual. Israel’s leaders are mostly secular politicians. They fear to say in public that the land belongs to the Jews and to NO ONE else. The Arabs do not fear to lie on their own behalf. Three thousand three hundred years after the Exodus and we still act like slaves back in Egypt.