The South American nation of Suriname was once home to a thriving community of Sephardi Jews, who had come there and to other Caribbean lands seeking religious freedom and economic opportunity. They added to their ranks converts to Judaism of African origin. The remains of one town reveal much about their lives and traditions. Laura Arnold Leibman writes:

Deep in the Surinamese jungle lies the ruins of what was once the prospering plantation town of Jodensavanne—Jew’s Savanne. Just past the bricks that made up Brakhah ve-Shalom (“Blessings and Peace”) synagogue, are two early cemeteries—one Jewish, one African. Deeper into the forest lies a third cemetery, the Cassipora Jewish cemetery. All three cemeteries hark back to the sepulchral traditions of ancestral homelands even as they have adapted to changes in what it meant to be Jewish. As such, they are a good example of both continuity and change within American religion.

Whereas the Creole cemetery employs what some have argued are African symbols, the Jewish cemetery of nearby Cassipora Creek features pyramid-shaped tombstones that echo those found in the Sephardic cemeteries of London, Amsterdam, Hamburg, as well as medieval Spain. Indeed, though they are separated by a jungle and ocean from their European analogues, Jodensavanne and Cassipora’s Jewish cemeteries share many of their key features with Europe’s Western Sephardic cemeteries. Both Cassipora and Jodensavanne’s Jewish cemeteries, for example, feature the striking symbol of the Hand of God cutting down the tree of life. This symbol can also be found not only in the Western Sephardic cemeteries of London, Amsterdam, and Hamburg, but also in those in Paramaribo, Jamaica, Barbados, and Curaçao.

Stephen Daisley writes about the slaying of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim:

Yaron and Sarah were murdered in a climate of lies and vilification and hatred. . . . The more institutions participate in this collective madness, the more madness there will be. The more elected officials and NGOs misrepresent the predictable consequences of asymmetric warfare in densely populated territories, where much of the infrastructure of everyday life has a dual civilian/terrorist purpose, the more the citizenries of North America and Europe will come to regard Israelis and Jews as a people who lust unquenchably after blood.

The most intolerant anti-Zionism is becoming a mainstream view, indulged by liberal societies, more concerned with not conflating irrational hatred of Israel with irrational hatred of Jews—as though the distinction between the two is all that well defined anymore.

For years now, and especially after the October 7 massacre, the call has gone up from the pro-Palestinian movement to put Palestine at the heart of Western politics. To pursue the struggle against Zionism in every country, on every platform, and in every setting. To wage worldwide resistance to Israel, not only in Wadi al-Far’a but in Washington, DC. “Globalize the intifada,” they chanted. This is what it looks like.