Europe’s New Anti-Anti-Semitism: An Answer to Radical Islam?

Surveying the resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe, Dave Rich notes the strong stand taken against it by some leading European politicians and examines some of the implications:

The problem of European Muslims killing European Jews . . . is not explained by anger over Gaza, or by tensions between Muslims and Jews. It is part of the broader problem of extremism that has found purchase within European Muslim communities. . . . This is a problem that Jewish communities cannot solve for themselves, but is one for which European governments need to find the answer.

However, the new politics of anti-anti-Semitism run much deeper than the immediate need to confront the jihadist challenge. In essence, it represents a version of the postwar European settlement, in which nationalism and militarism have been renounced and Holocaust remembrance has become a vehicle for transmitting core European values of tolerance and pluralism to the next generation. . . .

This appropriation of Jewish interests by European elites and nationalist movements has its antithesis in the rejection of establishment Holocaust-commemoration programs by those who feel outside the mainstream of European society. In the UK, for example, a willingness to attend Holocaust Memorial Day ceremonies has become a litmus test of moderation among Muslim organizations. The Muslim Council of Britain’s [refused] to do so for much of the first decade of its existence; . . . its subsequent attendance at the ceremonies since 2010 has itself been criticized by some of its own members.

Some radical left-wing movements and activists are also critics of mainstream Holocaust commemoration, which they see as “Zionist,” in that it reinforces the moral case for the existence of the state of Israel. Increasingly, left-wing groups and their Islamist allies in the UK view the Holocaust as a tragedy whose ultimate victims are the Palestinians, not today’s Jews, and see Israel as the heir to Europe’s nationalist, militarist, and even Nazi past.

Read more at World Affairs Journal

More about: Anti-Semitism, European Islam, European Jewry, European Politics, Jewish World, Radical Islam

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society