The Great Gaslight

There is a new question in America. It is not a question of who will be the next president or control of Congress. No, the question in America is the Jewish Question.

Antisemitism, or Jew Hatred has taken many forms over the millennia. Most Antisemitism can be categorized as theological, racial, political and ideological. Theological antisemitism was strife throughout Medieval Europe. Jews: killed Jesus, were the spawn of demons and so on. This resulted in the crusades and later 1492 Alhambra Decree which saw every Jew in (what became) Spain allowed to convert to Catholicism or face expulsion. The second type would be that of racial antisemitism which would end in the Holocaust. The Nazis declared that to even have one Jewish grandparent was enough to be impure. Whether they are secular or religious or just a descendant of a Jew it would not matter. Six Million Jews would be slaughtered under such a dogma. Hitler sought to exterminate the Jewish people and nearly succeeded in doing so. Less remembered was that of political antisemitism found during the times of the Roman-Jewish wars. The Jewish people sought freedom and independence from the tyranny of the Roman Empire. In turn, the future Roman Emperor Titus destroyed our temple and destroyed Jerusalem, razing it to the ground. Seventy years later, the Roman emperor Hadrian attempted to take this one step forward. After brutally suppressing the Bar Kokhba Revolt, he banned what few Jews had survived in the land from Jerusalem. He banned Jewish practices and perhaps most importantly he tried to sever the Jewish connection to the land. He renamed Jerusalem to Aelia Capitolina and merged and renamed Judea into the province of Syria Palaestina. Named for the long extinct enemy of the Jews the Hellenic Philistines. His hope was without land, nation and religion the Jewish people could be forgotten left to the past.

Today we face a new form of antisemitism: ideological. Often found on the left, these antisemites are ideologically opposed to the Jewish identity. This ideology forms solidarity on the basis of the oppressed and the oppressor. Accordingly, they believe: the Oppressor is whomever may be well of, often at the expense of those who are not. For example, they believe Jews are oppressors who oppress their victims the Palestinians. In turn the Palestinians are the oppressed victims and their allies in resistance are by proxy as well. Although Iran and Hamas brutally suppress the rights of women and non-Muslims, they resist “oppression” making the cause just. Ironically, calling their axis the “axis of resistance.” The “cause” is a meaningless term that reflects the issues and suffering of the oppressed class. It does not matter that Jews face a record spike in hate crimes, are segregated and discriminated against on campuses or even killed. It doesn’t even matter that historically Jews are an oppressed people locked in European Ghettos and the Muslim Dhimmi laws. Even the living memory of The Holocaust does not sway how they view Jews. Anything can be and should be justified to resist. October 7th to them was a consequence of Israel’s existence. The audacity of the Jewish people to live and breath in 2023 was too much for them. After all there is nothing redeemable about the oppressor class, their history should be diminished and only their acts of oppression should be remembered. Their culture should be belittled as a culture of oppression. After all culture is a positive and any culture of the oppressor is either that of oppression or culturally appropriated from their victims. If you spend time on social media you have heard that: Israelis have no cuisine, they merely stole it from the Palestinians and other Muslims to “trick” everyone into thinking they are Middle Eastern. It doesn’t matter that the Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews are the majority in Israel, they are just culturally confused Arabs who happen to be Jews.

In addition to this, they also seek to impose their own version of Russification. In the 18th century, Imperial Russia began a program to mass assimilate their minority populations into Russia. Minority populations were taught a lie that their identities were artificial and they had forgotten who they were. That they weren’t Ukrainian or Belarusian but confused and lost Russians. Jews would bear the worst of this, children would be enslaved and used as child soldiers. Many would be forcibly converted to Christianity under extreme torture. At its core it is cultural and ethnic gaslighting. Jews today are facing this in the United States especially in progressive circles and college campuses. Tell me if you have heard this before: “Hebrew is a colonial/fake language”, “why should European settlers get to live in the middle east”, “Jews aren’t Semites”, “a religious group isn’t entitled to a state”, “why should some settler from Brooklyn get to move in,” “Israelis have no culture they just steal.” Pay close attention to these statements. They imply some important things about Jews. For one they claim the Jewish people are a purely religious group, and a European one at that. Jews are a Levantine national and ethnic group as much as we are not European and genetics have proven this. Second, they often assert that Zionism is different from Judaism. That we are all just a little confused. That we have no originality or identity. According to them:

“You aren’t a national people with a deep history and culture. You are mistaken, you got caught up in all the excitement of 19th century nationalism. You are followers of a religion not a people. The record hate crimes, violence and even Hamas’s slaughter were all just acts of love. They are just “correcting” you and putting you back on track. When they are done you will be back to normal and be a ‘good Jew’ just like before.”

To be clear, the Jewish people are and always have been a national people. G-d promises Abraham and his descendants a nation. He gives Moses a constitution in the Torah and the subsequent laws for the Kingdom of Judah to follow. He creates a judicial system, separates the political powers of church (or should I say synagogue) and state and so much more. It is the goal of these anti-Semites to make us into something we are not and never again will be. They can tolerate that Jews believe in Judaism and pray in Hebrew and not Latin or Arabic. They don’t care how we dress or talk. What they cannot tolerate is that fundamental to who we are is that we are Jews. We are not and never will be what they wish to make us. Never in the history of the Jewish people have we bowed to those who sought to define and defile us. We didn’t give into the Greeks, the Romans, the Caliphates, Medieval Europe and Russia or the Nazis. They could not destroy us and I for one refuse to allow them to redefine us.