By Melanie Phippips, Daily Mail
In the wake of the festival of Shavuot, when Jews have been celebrating the giving of the Ten Commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai from where he presented them to the Jewish people camped at its foot, I have been brooding over the fact that Zionism has become a dirty word in Britain and the west.
For many in these societies, Zionism has now become equated with racism. This group libel, once regarded with revulsion by decent people when the Soviet-Arab axis got the UN to endorse it in 1975, has now become the prism through which the BBC, academia, the artistic and theatrical world and much of the rest of the cultural establishment now frame all references to Israel.
This helps explain the attempted boycott of the Israeli theatre company Habima, playing Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice at London’s Globe theatre this evening in conditions of the tightest security (apparently the expected interruptions by bigots have so far been relatively minor). The profound malice and ignorance behind such reflexive demonisation of Israel are rendered all the more hallucinatory by the sanctimonious and unchallenged assumption of the moral high ground which these idiots believe they occupy.
This is as grotesque as it is terrifying. Zionism is no more nor less than the self-determination of the Jewish people — as a people, and not just as adherents of the Jewish religion. Jews are in fact the only people – as a people — for whom Israel (ancient Judea and Samaria) was ever their national homeland. Those who deny Zionism thus deny Jewish peoplehood and the fundamental right of Jews to live as a people in their own ancestral homeland, Israel.
Unique in the world, Jews are both a people and adherents of a religion. Intrinsic to and inseparable from the religion of Judaism is the land of Israel; more specifically, the centrality of and longing for Jerusalem and its Temple. Deny that centrality and you rip the heart and soul out of Judaism. Those who deny the right of the Jews to Israel and Jerusalem deny the right of the Jews to their own religion.
Judaism is like a stool supported on three legs – the nation, the religion and the land. Saw off any of these legs and the stool collapses. Does this mean that all Jews are Zionists? Of course not, no more than it means that all Jews are religious. But just as the hatred of Jews on theological grounds has always threatened the lives and safety of all Jews including those who are not religious, so the anti-Zionist hatred of Jewish self-determination is a form of bigotry which threatens the lives and safety of all Jews, whether or not they are Zionists. And the fact that there are some anti-Zionist Jews who themselves hate the expression of Jewish self-determination in the form of the State of Israel is a manifestation of that same self-same bigotry no less for being such a tragically twisted example.
The anti-Zionist madness of our time is thus far more pernicious even than hatred of Israel, pathologically obsessive and malevolent as that is in itself. Bad enough that for so many people in Britain and the west, Israel has been successfully demonised as a pariah state on the basis of a unique systematic campaign of falsehoods, distortions and libels about its history and behaviour, untruths which have nevertheless become the unchallenged basis for public discussion.
But far worse even than this is the assumption underlying this lazy defamation, that Zionism is a creed that is itself a particularly aggressive kind of racism or colonialism. This vicious prejudice has turned truth, reason and decency inside out. The right of the Jews to their own historic national homeland has been recast, entirely falsely, as a usurpation of the ‘right’ to that land of ‘Palestinians’ – who never actually existed as a discrete people in the first place. Those Jews who are Zionists now find themselves as a result cast as racists and social pariahs – merely for asserting the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in their own historic homeland.
Those who are driven by a vicious and bigoted hatred have thus been allowed to cast the victims of their hatred as themselves hateful people. Zionist Jews are thus defamed and victimised many times over – and by those who have the gall to claim the moral high ground in doing so, from luvvies Emma Thompson and Ken Loach to the boycotters and thugs who harass and bully Zionist Jews on campus.
This is a truly chilling situation, reminiscent of the mass brainwashing and hijacking of thought that took place in the Soviet Union – not surprising when you consider the Soviet-Arab axis that back in the seventies set out to destroy Israel by capturing and subverting the western mind. In practical terms, it means that by definition it is not possible to persuade people what has actually occurred and what the true facts are, since such propositions will be dismissed out of hand — on the basis that everyone knows that the lies about Israel are actually the unchallengeable truth.
But just as in the former Soviet Union, there are plenty of decent, rational people who do understand very well what is happening here, and its broader and lethal implications for the safety of the entire western world. For those people and others who have yet to be persuaded — not to mention the duty to record this infamy into the memory of the world — the truth behind this terrible departure from reason and decency over Israel and Zionism must continue to be publicly told.
@ Eric R.:
Melanie Phillips has a home in Jerusalem and lives here half the time.
@ yamit82:
Yamit, one should not presume to predict the future so casually. Jews have left and Gentiles have come. As you know we depend upon Onkelos to comment on the simple meaning of the Torah. Tevi, though not Jewish, was respected as a knowledgeable scholar. I am aware of the daughter of a black Baptist minister who raised her children in Jerusalem as frum Jews. I am certain that you are aware of similar people in your circles. By having porous boundaries those unfit to be restrained halachic Jews will leave, while those who see self-restraint as viable for themselves will take their place. Evolution is inexorable, but we must always await its results, perhaps for longer than our own lifetimes.
@ Jerry:
While I usually agree with Melanie (and I do here), I wonder when she is going to listen to herself and get her *ss out of Britain?
There is no departure from reason and decency. Europe has never had either regarding the Jews.
I would go further in saying that they support the removal of the Jewish state altogether.
Melanie Phillips wrote, “Judaism is like a stool supported on three legs – the nation, the religion and the land. Saw off any of these legs and the stool collapses.”
Today I have read that the United States Government is funneling funds to the UN who is, in turn, giving money to African economic and political refugees in Israel to start businesses and subsidize rent and living expenses.
For decades non-displaced Palestinians have been grandfathered into the United Nations Relief Works Agency that supports the Arabs in their continuing opposition to Israel.
Western Europe, Britain in particular, support the removal of Judea and Sumaria from the hands of the Jews.
Obama has become the force that is opposing most energetically the declawing of Iran in spite of the clear need to do so to protect Israel. If Iran does indeed acquire nuclear weapons, then the fight between Iran and Israel will be much “fairer” (sarc/) and Israel stands a fair chance of being annihilated.
Because being Jewish is rightly associated with Israel, it has become less pleasant and acceptable to remain publicly Jewish, so that those on the periphery disappear into the entropic masses. Worse, some destabilized Jews join as fervent members of BDS groups or NGO’s to help stamp out Jewish viability as a separate functioning society.
All those on the ascendant Left view Judaism as an unfortunate anachronism that must be eliminated for the sake of world peace (sarc/). Of course, they have no idea whether the elimination of the Jews as an autonomous community will be good for the world or lead to its destruction, but they struggle on to actualize their untested and hopefully untestable beliefs.
These observations of actions by world communities to eliminate Israel are not exhaustive. Other events, policies and actions can be easily cited by those who are inclined to do so. The conclusion, when these events, policies and actions are taken together, is that Jews and Judaism, no matter what their contributions to world culture and progress cannot not be tolerated. The “silent evidence,” never spoken about, is that the world’s elites have preferred the death of the Jews to progress toward a more pleasant world. Those Jewish brains that were incinerated in the European Holocaust could have moved the world along at a much accelerated rate compared to the present circumstances. We draw this conclusion easily by observing the “Start Up Nation” that Israel has become. How much more so had six million more Jews been around to contribute! My conclusion is that just as each person sows the seeds of his own destruction, so too do cultures and in the aggregate, world culture. They will rot in hell, not because I or anyone else wishes it, but because they reek of their individual brands of stupidity and cupidity.