An Ultra-Orthodox Perspective on the UK’s Anti-Semitism Crisis

Pick
Nov. 5 2020
About Eli

Eli Spitzer is a Mosaic columnist and the headmaster of a hasidic boys’ school in London. He blogs and hosts a podcast at elispitzer.com.

With the Britain Labor party’s suspension of its former leader—the Israel-hating, anti-Semite-loving Jeremy Corbyn—Eli Spitzer considers how British Ḥaredim have responded to Corbyn’s rise and fall in ways very different from the remainder of Anglo-Jewry:

UK Jews have often framed [Labor-party anti-Semitism] in terms of their terror at seeing an old enemy rising from the dead, or, alternatively, emerging from the margins and infecting mainstream society. For Ḥaredim, however, anti-Semitism is nothing new and its level of marginality or otherwise makes no difference. Any Stamford Hill Ḥasid can rattle off at least a couple of dozen incidents of being shouted and sworn at with no provocation in a supermarket or from a passing car. The vast majority of these incidents go unreported, rightly or wrongly, because they are perceived as a normal niggle of life.

But, Spitzer continues, the real difference in perspective has deeper, theological roots:

For the ḥaredi mind, the basic framework for understanding hatred of Jews doesn’t come from [the 1950 sociological classic] The Authoritarian Personality or any other work of sociology, psychiatry, or history; it’s right there in [Deuteronomy 28]. Jews, as punishment for their sins, must reside in the lands of other nations where they will suffer until national repentance brings about the end of exile once and for all. Of course, any conscious Ḥaredi is aware that our current situation [of living in a benevolent regime] is, by the standards of exile, remarkably good. However, our basic perception of reality is one where Gentile ambivalence is normal, hostility is frequent, and benevolence is an occasional welcome novelty.

The kind of shock and disgust felt by Anglo-Jewry at the exposure of Jew-hatred spouted by Labor councilors and activists, just has no analogue for Ḥaredim.

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More about: Anti-Semitism, British Jewry, Exile, Haredim, Jeremy Corbyn

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