The antisemitism of the Left in the US

Just across the border of Israel, Syria is a war zone. According to the United Nations, by 2022 more than 306,887 Syrian civilians were killed since the 2011 uprising against the Assad’s regime [1]. According to the UN, Syria constitutes today the world’s largest refugee crisis: about 5.5 million Syrian refugees fled to neighboring countries and Europe, and an additional 7.2 million Syrians remain internally displaced [2].

You would not know this from the pro-Hamas mobs that landed on the cities and university campuses in the US. Where is the clamor from the academic and student organizations in the US universities against this genocide, where are the mass demonstrations in the universities’ campuses against the slaughter in Syria committed by the Assad regime, Hezbollah and Iran, with air support from Russia? Zero, nada, zilch.

The K12 teacher unions have never issued a condemnation for the genocide in Syria either. Or against the repression of the Iranian people following their uprises against the Iranian regime in 2009, 2017 and 2021. The San Francisco Teachers Union did indeed show its preoccupation with international affairs, when in May 2021 rushed to issue a call to boycott … Israel. And the National Education Association, representing 3 million K12 teachers in the US, saw the introduction of no less than six resolutions against Israel in its latest annual convention in Philadelphia, on July 2024 [3].

Anti-Zionism is the buzzword nowadays, when open anti-Semitism lost its appeal after the Holocaust. “Anti-Zionism” sounds innocuous, and acceptable as a basis for a philosophical or scholarly debate. But it is not.

Anti-Zionism is used in the US to mark, intimidate, and cancel the Jews. Public libraries and bookstores feel entitled to ban Jewish writers and books, and lectures by Jewish professors at the universities are cancelled by mobs. Jewish students are harassed on university campuses, and even at K12 schools: intimidation and bullying are not protected free speech.

Anti-Zionism is used in the Middle East to fuel repeated wars against Israel.

President Joe Biden clearly said in May 2021: “Let us get something straight here. Until the region [the Middle East] says unequivocally that they acknowledge the right of Israel to exist as an independent Jewish state, there will be no peace”.

Since the rise to power of the Islamic theocracy in Iran in 1979, and the emergence of Hamas in 1988, both Iran and Hamas openly call for the destruction of the State of Israel, and they act accordingly. Hamas invaded Israel on October 7^th, 2023, slaughtered more than one thousand Jews, dragged two hundred hostages back to Gaza and paraded some of them on the Gaza streets to the joy of its inhabitants, who had elected and ushered Hamas to power in free elections in 2006.

Why aren’t Iran and Hamas called to make peace with Israel in the first place, instead of blaming Israel for the consequent devastation of Gaza?

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, on December 1941, where just “only” two thousand and four hundred Americans were killed, the US declared war on Japan and Nazi Germany, and the US did not stop until Nazi Germany and Japan surrendered in 1945. Should the US have stopped the war in 1941, and acquiesce to a truce, perhaps after killing in retribution just a “proportionate” number of Japanese? After all, the war was in Europe and the Pacific, far away from American soil.

Israel is being continuously confronted today by the Western world with this type of question: proportionality. The United States was not. Not then, in 1941, and not even today, when historians look at Franklin D. Roosevelt’s justification for entering World War II.

Furthermore, the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, happened 2,500 miles away from the continental US, and no immediate significant threat from the Japanese against continental America existed. Nevertheless, the US reacted swiftly and about 120,000 Japanese Americans were forced to abandon their homes in the West Coast and interned for years in squalid camps far away within the United States.

The attack by Hamas and the slaughter of Jews in southern Israel – accompanied by hundreds of missiles launched toward the Israeli cities of Ashkelon, Ashdod and Tel-Aviv – did not elicit a similar reaction. Approximately 2 million Palestinian Israelis live in Israel. Their civil and political rights were not restricted – as were the rights of the Japanese Americans after the Pearl Harbor attack – and the vociferous opposition of the Arab members of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, against the Israeli government continued unabated before and after Hamas’ attack on October 7^th 2023. When time came to shove, the young democracy of tiny Israel proved to be much more resilient and stronger than the oldest democracy in the world.

The exclusive obsession and singling out of Israel, the repeated condemnations of the State of Israel for real or imaginary transgressions, including calls to boycott and BDS Israel, even boycotting its educational institutions, is plain anti-Semitic hate.

Palestinians and the Arab world have a choice: recognize that the times where the Jews were a submissive minority in the Arab world, “dhimmis” as they were called, are over. Recognize that an effective exchange of refugee population took place: hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees against hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees from the Arab countries, Recognize the Jewish State and make peace with Israel. Israelis are not going anywhere: it is their land.

And for all, Jews and Arabs, the Muslim and the Western worlds: The 2-state solution did not lead to anywhere and failed because it was not based on reality: this is not a local conflict between Palestinians and Israelis, it is a regional conflict between the Arabs and the Jews. With others, like Iran, trying to capitalize on it for their own expansionist and imperialist designs. Recognize instead, that the 242 United Nations Security Council resolution is a good basis for the resolution of the conflict between the Arabs and the Jews [4].

The anti-Semitism from the Left is the biggest threat against the Jewish community in the US. It was incubated for years in the higher educational institutions, where it found common cause and merged with the traditional right-wing antisemitism, and it has percolated lately into the K12 schools through the Liberated Ethnic Studies curricula [5].  It has also taken root in the Left wing of the Democratic party.

The Jewish non-orthodox elites in the US, with their historical liberal traditions, are at a loss, unwilling to recognize this seismic change that shatters their dreams of a full integration into a multi-cultural gentile society.

And, unfortunately, for many Jews in the US, the necessity to feel safe, and for their children to be safe in their daily environment, be it the K12 school or college, has become an acute primal need. This primal need will be more important than what happens at the border with Mexico, or with Roe vs Wade, or to the economy.  They will vote on November 2024 accordingly.

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References

[1] United Nations, “Behind the data: Recording civilian casualties in Syria”, May 11, 2023:

https://www.ohchr.org/en/stories/2023/05/behind-data-recording-civilian-casualties-syria

[2] United Nations, “Syria refugee crisis explained”, March 13, 2024

https://www.unrefugees.org/news/syria-refugee-crisis-explained/

[3] Jaime Kardontchik, “Racist indoctrination in K12 schools in the US”, published in the “Times of Israel” newspaper, August 19, 2024:

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/racist-indoctrination-in-k12-schools-in-the-us/

[4] For details, see my book “The root of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the path to peace” (September 2024 edition). It can be downloaded for free at:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/364057784_The_root_of_the_Arab-Israeli_conflict_and_the_path_to_peace

[5] For the origins and modus operandi of the Liberated Ethnic Studies movement, see my book “Boycott of Israel is wrong: How to fight it”. It can be downloaded for free at:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/352573399_Boycott_of_Israel_is_Wrong_How_to_fight_it

For one of the latest sagas of the Liberated Ethnic Studies movement in California, see:

John Fensterwald, “ ‘Liberated’ ethnic studies courses challenged amid allegations of antisemitism”, published by EdSource, August 30, 2024:

https://edsource.org/2024/liberated-ethnic-studies-course-challenged-amid-allegations-of-antisemitism/718347