ICE – Is It Good For The Jews?
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
The New Colossus Emma Lazarus 1849-1887
In his speech to the World Economic Forum this week, Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada, declared that “the old order is not coming back”. This is the message that all Jews around the world learned on October 8, 2023.
The Second Intifada, also known as the Al-Aqsa Intifada, “spontaneously” erupted September 28, 2000, immediately following Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount.
A significant catalyst was the collapse of the Camp David Summit in July 2000, where Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat failed to reach a peace agreement, with Arafat walking out of the meeting and Madeline Albright running after him begging him to sign the peace agreement with Israel after most of his demands were met. Arafat understood that if he signed the agreement, his days on earth would be numbered.
The world media, the Arab media and the Palestinian propaganda machine painted the Intifada as a popular spontaneous uprising due to Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount. But it is well documented that from the collapse of the Camp David Summit to Sharon’s visit, the Palestinian Authority had two months to prepare for this spontaneous conflagration, and had waited for the right spark, set off by Ariel Sharon, to call for Intifada.
We can examine past Arab uprisings since the Balfour Declaration to find similar patterns, but it is more important to fast-forward to October 8th, the day after The Al-Aqsa Flood, to recall how spontaneous and how well organized demonstrations around the world were as crowds were incited to “globalize the intifada”.
Most shocking to the Jewish communities, especially in the US, Canada and the UK, was how virulent and antisemitic the demonstrations were on university campuses, the very places which had been most welcoming to Jews. I recall watching the Congressional proceedings questioning the presidents of Penn, Harvard and MIT. Their reactions to the questions as to what was transpiring on their campuses was akin to watching deer facing headlights. They had no answers because what was happening was so inconceivable in its organizational and logistical success, and in its breadth.
Lately I have been posing the question in various informal settings as to why this year we hear very little about Gaza demonstrations on college and university campuses and in cities, especially across the US.
The first answer that everyone gives is that Trump threatened to cut off funding, so the universities have shut down the demonstrations. I believe this to be only partially true. Alternative funding would gladly and easily have come from Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the real backers of the demonstrations and the instigators of “globalize the intifada”.
Picture the demonstrations being ignited with a remote control switch.
Picture the demonstrations halting with that same remote control switch.
The Trump Administration found an even more effective tool to shut down the demonstrations.
ICE
It is a safe bet that most of the demonstrators would be arrested by ICE and would face deportation.
Mark Carney stated, “Today, I’ll talk about the rupture in the world order, the end of a nice story and the beginning of a brutal reality”.
This “nice story” has not always been good for the Jews as it faced a “brutal reality” on October 7, 2023.