The Left’s Jewish Problem, and Its Long History

The Jewish co-chair of the Oxford University Labor Club has resigned over that organization’s increasing anti-Semitism. Responding, Simon Schama reflects on the resurfacing of the European left’s historical hatred of Jews and, in time, the Jewish state:

In the 19th century, . . . the left made its contribution to [modern anti-Semitism]. Demonstrating that you do not have to be Gentile to be an anti-Semite, Karl Marx characterized Judaism as nothing more than the cult of Mammon, and declared that the world needed emancipating from the Jews. Others on the left—the social philosophers Bruno Bauer, Charles Fourier, and Pierre Proudhon and the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin—echoed the message: bloodsucking, whether the physical or the economic kind, was what Jews did. . . .

The Communist Moses Hess, who had been Marx’s editor and friend, became persuaded, all too presciently, that the socialist revolution would do nothing to normalize Jewish existence, not least because so many socialists declared that emancipating the Jews had been a terrible mistake. Hess concluded that only self-determination could protect the Jews from the phobias of right and left alike. He became the first socialist Zionist. . . .

[Now, with] the collapse of the Soviet Union and the retreat of Marxist socialism around the world, militant energies have needed somewhere to go. The battle against inequalities under liberal capitalism has mobilized some of that passion, but postcolonial guilt has fired up the war against its prize whipping boy, Zionism, like no other cause. Every such crusade needs a villain along with its banners—and I wonder who that could possibly be?

Read more at Financial Times

More about: Anti-Semitism, Karl Marx, Leftism, Moses Hess, Simon Schama, Socialism

 

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF