Europeans Must Stop Telling Lies about Anti-Semitism

European politicians and intellectuals are happy to hold forth on the evil of hating Jews, but tend to address the problem with clichés, ignorance, and sometimes a stubborn unwillingness to face facts, as Monika Schwarz-Friesel writes:

[Often, Europeans] hear passionate affirmations, long since rejected by empirical research, that “rightist populism is responsible for contemporary anti-Semitism,” or that “the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is the main cause,” or that “classical Jew-hatred is in retreat.” Completely misleading, too, is the assertion that “anti-Semitism and Muslim-hatred are closely related,” or that present-day Muslims suffer the same discrimination Jews once did. . . .

As in the past, present-day anti-Semitism reproduces and multiplies Jew-hating tendencies deeply rooted in Western consciousness. It follows the age-old pattern that attributes to the Jews all the miseries of the world. Anti-Semitic rancor is always directed against Jewish existence per se—and today, this means the most vital symbol of Jewish existence, the state of Israel. The opposition to Israel is now the meeting point for all sorts of haters of Jews, the common ground of present-day anti-Semitism. . . . Tirades of hate against the Jewish state, [moreover], are found not on the margins but in the center of Western society. Rancor against Israel feeds the dissemination of present-day anti-Semitism more than any other factor. . . .

When political spokespeople (rightly) criticize the new German right-wing party Alternative für Deutschland because of its refusal to confront the frequent anti-Semitic utterances of its supporters, but at the same time overlook (or even applaud) when [the Palestinian Authority president] Mahmoud Abbas spouts well-known Judeophobic stereotypes in the EU parliament, or when [the Turkish president] Recep Tayyip Erdogan rages against Israel with surreal accusations, or when [the British Labor party’s leader] Jeremy Corbyn defames the Jewish state as an unjust colonial creation—these officials have a serious credibility problem.

It is not enough to criticize low-level neo-Nazis, Islamists, or boycott-divestment-and-sanctions (BDS) activists. Anyone who seriously wants to address the problem should look to the stage of international politics and step in forcefully.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Anti-Semitism, European Jewry, Jeremy Corbyn, Mahmoud Abbas, neo-Nazis, Politics & Current Affairs

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