The same impulse that drove the eventual expulsion of nearly 800,000 Jews from the Arab world is now coming back to haunt us in the very countries where Jews sought freedom.
By Ben Cohen, jns
(May 21, 2021 / JNS) The left-wing French parliamentarian Danièle Obono stormed out of a live debate on May 13 about the latest round of Israeli-Palestinian hostilities hosted by the French-language channel of the Israeli broadcaster, i24 News. Obono took exception to another panelist characterizing the political party she belongs to, La France Insoumise (“France Rising”), as not merely anti-Zionist, but blatantly anti-Semitic and pro-Islamist as well.
Upon hearing this, Obono declared that she was not being asked a question and was just being insulted instead. She removed her earpiece and left the set, refusing entreaties to sit back down and continue the discussion. As Obono made abundantly clear to both the presenter and the studio manager who asked her to remain, calling the party she supports “anti-Semitic” had crossed an unacceptable boundary.
Obono’s decision to walk rather than fight her case was entirely consistent with the approach of a large sector of the political left to the Israeli-Palestinian issue. They wear the label of anti-Zionism with pride; they advocate a single state of Palestine between the Mediterranean Sea and the River Jordan; they push for a comprehensive boycott of the Jewish state and no other country; they declare solidarity with Palestinian terrorist groups; they depict Jews not as an indigenous nation to the Middle East but as extraneous colonists; they vilify Israel by comparing its actions to the slaughters perpetrated by the historic enemies of the Jewish people; and yet, suggest to one of its representatives that any of this might be “anti-Semitic,” and they will react as though you spat in their face!
The events of the last fortnight suggest to me that a response like that of Obono’s to an accusation of anti-Semitism is becoming outmoded. The charge has historically been regarded on the left as an insult largely because of the postwar taboo on openly identifying as an anti-Semite. But that legacy of the Nazi era is fading, along with our memories of the Holocaust. For a new generation much younger than Obono and other leaders of her LFI Party, casually hating Jews because they are Jews is as legitimate an expression of solidarity with the Palestinians as waving a Palestinian flag on a march, posting “boycott” stickers on Israeli goods in grocery stores, disrupting campus meetings addressed by Israeli speakers and sharing “Israel Apartheid Week” memes on social media. They are not insulted by the term “anti-Semite.” They simply dismiss it as a word of no value because it is wielded by the “f*** Zionists” (a pejorative much heard on our streets lately) with whom they are locked in eternal conflict.
The mutation of anti-Semitism that the latest fighting between Israel and Hamas has given us a glimpse of hasn’t been seen in almost a century. It is one of the most disturbing forms that Jew-hatred takes; semi-organized mobs of mainly young men deliberately targeting individual Jews or Jewish-owned businesses with verbal abuse and physical violence. We associate such images with the Nazis most of all, but there are slightly more recent instances of such anti-Semitic violence. Throughout the Arab world in the late 1940s and ’50s, Jews were subjected to pogroms and other atrocities as a prelude to their mass expulsion and expropriation from these countries.
The mobilization of young Arabs and Muslims living in the West—many of whom were born after 9/11, and have grown up with their worldviews formed and filtered through social media—in the service of the Palestinian cause is a comparatively new element in this century-old conflict.
History is full of horrible ironies, and this is one of them. The mobs we have witnessed attacking Jews in cities on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean are overwhelmingly composed of members of the various Arab and wider Muslim communities; in European demonstrations, for example, Turkish and Algerian flags can be spotted alongside Palestinian ones. The same impulse that drove the eventual expulsion of nearly 800,000 Jews from the Arab world is now coming back to haunt us in the very countries where we sought our freedom.
The impulse that I am referring to is failure. In the Arab countries during the first decade of Israel’s existence, persecution of local Jews was one feat that could be accomplished, and indeed, relished, amid the humiliating battlefield defeats inflicted by the nascent Israel Defense Forces on the Arab armies. The legacy of that domestic campaign of anti-Semitism has traveled with us to different continents and vastly different political contexts. What remains the same is the conviction that Arabs are being disempowered, robbed and murdered by Jewish conspiracies, and that ordinary Arabs are therefore justified in taking their anger out on ordinary Jews in response.
This leads to a simple conclusion—and one that was also widespread after Israel’s stunning victory in the 1967 Six-Day War: The Jewish state might have a powerful military, the Jews might control the banks and the media, but both will eventually taste defeat. Until then, the task of Arabs and Muslims is to make life as unpleasant for Jews, whether in Israel or outside, as possible. Hence, the anti-Semitic spectacles around the globe that have accompanied the latest fighting in the Middle East: a motorized convoy through North London’s Jewish neighborhoods threatening to rape the community’s daughters; pro-Palestinians driving by diners at a Los Angeles restaurant before getting out and beating Jewish ones: hundreds of protestors joyfully chanting the insult “S*** Jew!” at a pro-Palestinian demonstration in the German city of Gelsenkirchen; seven keffiyeh-wearing assailants kicking a kipah-wearing Jewish man in the road in New York City’s Times Square in broad daylight.
The mobilization of young Arabs and Muslims living in the West—many of whom were born after the 9/11 terror attacks, and have grown up with their worldviews formed and filtered through social media—in the service of the Palestinian cause is a comparatively new element in this century-old conflict. It is also a highly unpredictable one. All that is certain is that the Middle East’s longest hatred is becoming an acute challenge for domestic policy, more it ever was at the international level.
Ben Cohen is a New York City-based journalist and author who writes a weekly column on Jewish and international affairs for JNS.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
This is disgusting. And our mindless brothers and sisters will, no doubt, still vote for the villians who have allowed this increase of Jew-hatred, even encouraging it, to be their choice of saviors to deal with it going forward. They tailor their lives and relations to suit their political ‘choice’ of affiliation with the sickness of the Democratic party. This dependency upon their Democratic membership is a toxic relationship that, I fear, they will never break.
From the Jewish Press, New York, republished from FrontPage magazine. The best expose of anti-Semitic violence in U.S., sponsored by both Palestinian “activists” and BLM.
From USA Today. I have edited out of this article extensive pro-Hamas propaganda, as well as some “woke” propaganda denouncing hatred of “people of color.”
From LA Times:
From the Times of Israel:
‘Thought I was going to die’: NY Jewish man details assault by pro-Palestine mob
Joseph Borgen was beaten while wearing a kippa on his way to a pro-Israel rally. ‘I would never think I’d ever have to worry about my religion or ethnicity being a problem in NYC’
By TOI staffToday, 4:49 am
Joseph Borgen shows his injuries after being beat by a pro-Palestinian mob in the streets of New York (video screenshot)
A Jewish man who was badly beaten by a pro-Palestinian mob in New York City on Thursday has spoken out about the experience, saying he thought he was “going to die” during the attack.
New York police are conducting a hate crimes investigation into the attack.
Joseph Borgen, 29, was beaten by a group of people shouting antisemitic statements in the middle of the street as he was walking to a pro-Israel rally.
Borgen was wearing a kippa at the time. He was hospitalized, and a picture that has circulated on social media shows him in the hospital with a neck brace.
“I was surrounded by a whole crowd of people who proceeded to physically attack me, beat me, kick me, punch me, hit me with crutches, hit me with flag poles,” he told the Daily Mail on Friday after being released from hospital.
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“I was literally just in a fetal position, trying to guard my head and face, literally just trying to make it out of their alive,” he said. “I thought I was going to die. I thought I was really going to die.”
Borgen said his attackers shouted things like “You filthy Jew. We’re going to fucking kill you. Go back to Israel. Hamas is going to kill you.”
After beating him, the group then pepper-sprayed him “for like a minute straight.”
“My whole face was on fire. I couldn’t see. In the hospital, they literally had to drain out my eyes. My skin’s still on fire in certain places,” he said.
The attackers fled as police arrived on the scene. So far one suspect has been arrested in the assault. The attack was one of several to target Jews in New York and in other places around the US in recent days amid the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
Borgen said he had been on his way to a rally “to show my support, show my pride in Israel, let them know we have their back even though we’re 6,000 miles away.” But he had expected things to be peaceful.
“I would never think I’d ever have to worry about my religion or my skin color or my ethnicity being a problem in New York City,” he said.
Thursday night saw dueling pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian demonstrations clash in Times Square, and several brawls unfolded.
The violence also spilled over into the surrounding blocks, where Jews were assaulted in the street. Videos circulating on social media appear to show pro-Palestinian protesters, wearing Palestinian colors or dressed in Palestinian scarves, attacking Jews and bystanders in a heavily Jewish area.
There were scuffles throughout the protest and elsewhere in the city.
Nationwide, Jewish organizations have also observed a spike in antisemitic incidents. The Anti-Defamation League received 193 reports of antisemitic incidents in the US during the first week of the Israel-Hamas conflict, compared to 131 the week before. It has not released data for this week, as it hasn’t ended yet. And the Secure Community Network, which coordinates security for Jewish institutions, has received dozens of reports of antisemitic incidents this week.
Earlier in the week, in Los Angeles, pro-Palestinian demonstrators attacked diners at a sushi restaurant, including Jewish men. In another incident in the city, caught on camera, Pro-Palestinian men in a caravan chased an Orthodox Jewish man who ran away on foot.
“These are obviously Jews being blamed for what’s going on in the Middle East. That’s antisemitism at its core,” said Scott Richman, the ADL’s New York-New Jersey regional director, regarding the week’s antisemitic incidents. “These are people who were visibly Jewish and they were attacked, and they were attacked only because of who they are.”
See https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/featured/1975811/frightening-videos-hamas-terrorists-terrorize-jews-in-manhattans-diamond-district.html for especially graphic videos of an incredibly vicious attack on Jews in the diamond district of New York by a well-organized gang of Arab terrorists. The terrorists are riding bicycles to enable them to make a quick getaway before the police arrive.
See https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/suspect-arrested-in-attack-on-jewish-man-in-new-yorks-times-square-668795 for video of Jew being brutally beaten in broad daylight in Times square by a well-organized Arab raiding party.