As World Leaders Gather to Remember the Holocaust, They Should Ask How Anti-Semitism Differs from Ordinary Hatreds

Today, an international conference titled “Remembering the Holocaust, Fighting Anti-Semitism” opens in Jerusalem, attended by representatives from some 40 governments, including the presidents of France, Russia, and Italy and the vice-president of the United States. While ample attention will no doubt be paid to the anti-Semitism of the extreme right, Fiamma Nirenstein fears that less will be paid to that of the left, and still less to the Islamic variety. She also fears that those in attendance will give in to a related, and dangerous, temptation to subsume anti-Semitism into an amorphous “hatred”:

Strangely, some in the Jewish world, and their friends, renounce the obvious uniqueness of anti-Semitism, and the upcoming leaders’ conference . . . in Jerusalem must avoid this attempt to dilute anti-Semitism as just another hatred or bias. Some groups on the left dissolve anti-Semitism into an intersectional cauldron to fight “all the politics of hate,” demanding that whoever seeks to fight anti-Semitism must be part of the great “intersectional” alliance against white oppression and colonialism, while supporting open borders, feminism, transgender activism, etc. In the end, this political platform slips into an uncertain terrain where violence, terrorism, and the culture of political correctness blur the contours of evil and immorality and deny the uniqueness of the persecution of Jews—and perhaps even that of the Shoah.

Throughout my career as a journalist and a member of [Italy’s] parliament, I have always been a liberal proponent of many feminist, equal-rights, and gay-rights aims. But anti-Semitism has its own unique dimensions: the Jewish people have been persecuted for thousands of years, [and] accused of everything.

The British author Douglas Murray reports in his book, The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race, and Identity, on a leaflet distributed at the University of Illinois: it says that on top of the 99 percent of the oppressed people in the world there is one percent that is white. The leaflet argues that ending white, male privilege starts with ending Jewish privilege.

Is this anti-Semitism? Certainly, it is. Should the world leaders in Jerusalem target this way of viewing the Jews? Certainly, they should. But I am afraid this will not happen.

Read more at Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs

More about: Anti-Semitism, Holocaust, Intersectionality, Radical Islam

 

Why South Africa Has Led the Legal War against Israel

South Africa filed suit with the International Court of Justice in December accusing Israel of genocide. More recently, it requested that the court order the Jewish state to allow humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip—something which, of course, Israel has been doing since the war began. Indeed, the country’s ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC) has had a long history of support for the Palestinian cause, but Orde Kittrie suggests that the current government, which is plagued by massive corruption, has more sinister motives for its fixation on accusing Israel of imagined crimes:

ANC-led South Africa has . . . repeatedly supported Hamas. In 2015 and 2018, the ANC and Hamas signed memoranda of understanding pledging cooperation against Israel. The Daily Maverick, a South African newspaper that previously won an international award for exposing ANC corruption, has reported claims that Iran “essentially paid the ANC to litigate against Israel in the ICJ.”

The ANC-led government says it is motivated by humanitarian principle. That’s contradicted by its support for Russia, and by [President Cyril] Ramaphosa’s warmly welcoming a visit in January by Mohamed Dagalo, the leader of the Sudanese-Arab Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia. Ramaphosa’s smiling, hand-holding welcome of Dagalo occurred two months after the RSF’s systematic massacre of hundreds of non-Arab Sudanese refugees in Darfur.

While the ANC has looted its own country and aided America’s enemies, the U.S. is insulating the party from the consequences of its corruption and mismanagement.

In Kittrie’s view, it is “time for Congress and the Biden administration to start helping South Africa’s people hold Ramaphosa accountable.”

Read more at The Hill

More about: International Law, Iran, South Africa