“The time has come for more of us to take advantage of this privilege, so we can all join in shaping our extraordinary Jewish nation.”
By Joshua Hoffman, FUTURE OF JEWISH 4 April 2024
A father and son share a moment at the Western Wall (the Kotel) in Jerusalem.
About a week ago, a reader wrote me, saying:
“Is your view of the future entirely bleak, or do you see any rays of hope?”
My response to her was sober: Right now we are in troubling times and we should not pretend otherwise. If we (the Jewish People) want to emerge from this reality with a truly positive, beneficial outcome, I believe we must confront the present situation for what it is, not what we wish it to be.
In my view, hope (the real kind, not the fairy tale version) is a product of doing, of being proactive. Those who do and are proactive therefore have great reason to be hopeful. And the first step in this admittedly distressing process is to acknowledge that there is a mounting problem with real snowball effect potential.
For instance, in mosques all over the United Kingdom (and elsewhere), imams are calling for the murder of Jews. (Meanwhile, no Jewish religious leader on the planet is calling for the murder of Muslims. Remind me again who is accused of “genocide.”)
In Radlett, northwest of London’s city center, three masked men recently went into Jewish shops to “quiz” people about their support of the IDF. One shop assistant told them, “We just sell bagels.”
Immigrants in Europe regularly brag about native Europeans funding their livelihoods. One African migrant published a video saying, and I quote: “French natives work for me, they are my slaves! I receive 600 euros from RSA, 300 euros from local mission, 300 euros from APL, and social workers pay me for electricity and gas.”
In response, professor and author Gad Saad wrote, “Noble immigrants have told me the exact same thing in Arabic. In their words, they view the West as a woman to be mounted. My taxed book royalties pay for those who wish to exterminate us.”1
A masked man in a Jewish shop in Radlett, questioning the clerk (Heidi Bachram/X
Over in Ottawa, Canada, pro-Hamas supporters (wearing masks to hide their identities) chanted for Israel to be destroyed outside of the Israeli embassy. Unsurprisingly, Israeli embassies are on high alert worldwide.
In Canada’s neighboring country, a large mob of Arabs and their “friends” showed up to a New Jersey synagogue this week, chanting: “We don’t want Israelis here!” Don’t call it a turning point, but an entrenched, authentic American minority group is being chased out by new arrivals, all with implicit (or should I say complicit) widespread approval across many American institutions, including governments, universities, the media, and NGOs.
As Rabbi Mike Harvey reminded us, Israel does not determine its policies or conduct its war from synagogues, Jewish community centers and university offices, Holocaust museums, kosher grocery stores, or Jewish-owned restaurants and cafes — yet mobs are habitually targeting these places.2 This is not protest. This is bigotry, hate, and antisemitism.
“Advocating for a world war against Israel is becoming normalized on the tankie Left, as I predicted it would last year,” (as in, before October 7th) wrote British-Palestinian activist John Aziz (who is very pro-Israel).3
I remember a time not long ago when Syrians, Yazidis, and Kurds were actually experiencing a genocide, and Yemeni children were seriously starving. However, I do not remember mob-led demonstrations, obnoxious dissent in the U.S. and European governments, child-like commotion in the United Nations, and fears of effects on elections.
In other words, certain (growing) portions of the Left are trying to gaslight us into thinking this Israel-Hamas war is a “human rights” and “liberation” and “decolonization” issue for them. It is not. The issue is fundamentally — according to first principles and basic logic — about Israel, and therefore a Jewish issue by virtue of math’s transitive property.
“Here are all of Israel’s requirements under International Law and in my left hand are those for Palestinians”
In three key U.S. “swing” states — Arizona, Texas, and Pennsylvania — the number of voters registering without a photo ID is skyrocketing, ahead of this November’s presidential election. Since the start of 2024, the numbers are 1,250,710 in Texas; 580,513 in Pennsylvania; and 220,731 in Arizona according to publicly available data from the U.S. Social Security Administration.4
Mind you, illegal aliens are unable to legally obtain a driver’s license in America, but they can get a Social Security Card (a government-issued ID number) for work authorization permits, and the organization Help America Vote Verification allows voters to register with a Social Security Card.
If we look at what has been happening in Europe, and to European Jews, we can rather easily understand the disastrous effects that enabling migrants, without requiring any real imperatives of them, will have on America and American Jews in just a few years’ time.
Whereas Right-wing antisemitism is essentially confined to internet losers these days, antisemitism on the Left (disguised as “anti-Israel” or “anti-Zionism”) is prominently festering and growing among major Western institutions, exponentially propelled by social media and thus reaching broader masses. The “oppressor-oppressed” framework naturally leads to unfounded, double-standard-ish hostility toward Israel and, by extension, Jews.
Still, the West continues to import immigrants who hail from societies wherein the cultural and religious belief systems could not be any more antithetical to the Western freedoms and liberties we so cherish.
“It does not require a fancy professor to understand that when you change the cultural fabric of a society, the host nation will irrevocably change (at times for the better, and other times for the worse),” wrote Gad Saad. “The West is committing suicide at the altar of a set of parasitic idea pathogens (e.g. suicidal empathy, cultural relativism, self-loathing as a virtuous existential stance). Mark my words. The West will go the way of the dodo bird lest some cataclysmic changes are implemented soon.”
Historically, many Jews in the West have seated themselves at leftist tables, yet are now seeing these sociopolitical movements turning their backs against Jewish family, friends, and colleagues. Many Jewish Westerners already feel they must choose between the Left and their substantiated belief in a clear and obvious need for Israel as the one and only Jewish state.
With an increasing number of leftist causes requiring those who join to explicitly denounce Israel and levy ridiculous claims against it, Jews who consider themselves any version of Zionists are no longer welcome in these causes. This trend is already taking shape under the guise of “intersectionality.”
“Jewish authors who mention Israel in their books are systematically given poor reviews,” according to American Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso. “Exhibitions of Jewish artists are boycotted and a Jewish museum is criticized for having paintings of Israeli hostages on its walls.”5
credit: Gallup
Let me be clear about something: No one is saying that people cannot or should not have compassion for both Palestinians and Israelis, or that there ought not to be two states for two peoples. Criticisms of Israel’s political leadership, as Israelis oftentimes offer, is always fair game, so long as it is not attached to absurd double standards or expectations of pure, unadulterated perfectionism.
But trying to do mental gymnastics to somehow empathize with Hamas or explain away its virulent, antisemitic terrorism and atrocities, and ignoring or overlooking the terror group’s responsibility for the current humanitarian situation in Gaza, is not liberal. Neither is making comments about “the children in Gaza” as if the children in Israel are less worthy of our thoughts, prayers, and overall consideration.
And frankly, if you did not really think about “the children in Gaza” before this Israel-Hamas war, but have since become so enthralled with them, that says more about your odd-ball thinking (i.e. selective outrage) than it does about the current situation of “the children in Gaza.”
As such, all of these responses to the Israel-Hamas war — and many others — are ultimately antisemitic, whether in intention or outcome.
But many leftists do not care if we think they are antisemitic or just being unfair, because the Jews have already lost much of their sociopolitical influence in leftist circles. The Arabs and Muslims have swooped in with way more money than the Jews, and they are using it in places that many people thought money was not a factor, like in universities and think tanks, not to mention the Wild Wild West of special interest and lobbying groups.
And this Israel-Hamas war is not some isolated incident that will blow over when the proverbial dust settles. With more Arabs and Muslims immigrating to the West and having more children than the Jews, their populations are growing while ours is not. This indicates that politicians will see Arab and Muslim voters as more attractive than Jewish ones. That’s how the ugly side of democracy works.
Some have speculated that more Jews in the West will now vote for centrist and conservative parties, but the political center is endangered in many countries, and the Right has never been genuinely friendly toward Jews. To think they will be today and moving forward is wishful thinking at best.
Thus, we seem to be at an inflection point in the Jewish Diaspora, an emotional and psychological reckoning that must be had by two primary groups of Jews in the West: those who acknowledge this mounting problem, and those who still deny it.
Regardless of which group each one of us falls into, the question for all Diaspora Jews becomes: Where do we go from here?
Luckily, the answer is simple, because there is only one Jewish state: Israel.
More and more Jews will apply for Israeli citizenship and establish a primary or secondary residence in the Jewish state throughout the coming years, especially Jews from Australia, South Africa, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the U.S. For they already are, and the numbers will continue to increase.
This does not mean that Jews have to “close up shop” in the Diaspora. Many of us have relationships, businesses, careers, real estate, and other priorities in the Diaspora. I get it.
But it does change the lens through which we ought to see our place in the outside world. We were always “guests.” Many of us just never realized it. Heck, some still do not.
Thankfully we have Israel, a privilege that millions of Jews before us were never afforded. While Israel is engulfed in war and uncertainty these days, the bedrock of the Jewish homeland is hope. Quite literally. Israel’s national anthem is called “The Hope” — and it perfectly describes the Jewish Diaspora’s collective situation as we speak:
As long as within our hearts
The Jewish soul sings,
As long as forward to the East
To Zion, looks the eye —
Our hope is not yet lost,
It is two thousand years old,
To be a free people in our land
The land of Zion and Jerusalem
The time has come for more of us to take advantage of this privilege, so we can all join in shaping our extraordinary Jewish nation and restoring much-needed, authentic, and lasting hope to the Jewish world.
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