In varying degrees, Jew hatred has been at the center of many ideological, religious and political systems over the past couple of millennia. No one has exclusive claim to its origins, development or practice, and responsibility for its many and varied ongoing manifestations must be widely apportioned.
Yet it seems as though today’s Jew and Israel hatred thrives in a different kind of world. Living amid the intense hostility against Jews created and spread by most media, academia, entertainment, the internet, and other powerful forces (a long, unflattering list) can be dispiriting and intimidating. On more intimate levels, it must be puzzling and unnerving to many people, especially Jews who gave so much of themselves to other people’s causes, to see those disparate ‘woke’ groups drawn together by their common hating worldview. These causes that seemed to have had nothing to do with Jew hatred are revealed to be obsessed with it.
What motivates the ‘progressive’ agenda – driven by ‘DEI’ (diversity, equity and inclusion) and ‘intersectionality,’ and which subsumes within its powerful field forces a wide array of causes such as ‘Black Lives Matter’, ‘transgenderism’, ‘climate change,’ ‘feminism,’ ‘critical race theory,’ etc. – to so zealously and aggressively adopt the mission and practice of Jew-hatred as its own? What impels these causes to join forces with Islamism, with which it would seem to otherwise share no common cause? Why do they so often find their common enemy in the Jew, and hold in common their final solution to the ‘Jewish problem’ – namely, an unquenchable lust to bring harm and destruction to Jews everywhere and every way?
Over time, and especially more recently, some unpleasant truths have been revealed about this ‘progressive’ agenda and its subsidiaries, much to the dismay of more than a few of its supporters. These leftist agenda-driven groups, intricately bound together through the bond of intersectionality and DEI, share pride in identifying as victims at the hands of oppressors, and have now selected ‘the Jews’ as most prominent among the oppressors.
As zealous adherents of the oppressor-oppressed template, they also share in the socialist-communist-Marxist aim of undermining the best of our Western civilizational values – most of which, not incidentally, are rooted in the Hebrew Bible and Judaism. They do this by fomenting uncertainty, balkanization, intolerance, fear and moral ambiguity, thus fostering a societal structure lacking foundation, clarity, consistency and moral confidence. Perhaps most alarming of all today, they seem most unified not by the causes they espouse, but rather by their declared common enemy – the age-old low-hanging piñata: ‘the Jews’ (and now Israel) – whom they smear as among the worst of offenders in their woke-progressive paradigm.
Islamism, religiously opposed to the causes of these agenda-driven groups, nonetheless joins them in claiming the pretense of victimhood, and then co-opts them in its foundational quest to undermine and eliminate Jewish/Judeo-Christian/Western civilizations and values, to dominate the world under the banner of Islamism. The jihadist cult and its Jew-hating agenda, along with their supporters and enablers, must be loudly and unequivocally repudiated and neutralized by any person, group, ideology, authority or entity claiming to be decent, religious, moral, just, humanitarian, caring or responsible.
The demonic October 7 genocidal attack by Hamas and ‘Palestinian civilians’ against purely innocent Jews and Israelis (with some non-Jews and guests caught in the onslaught) was cataclysmic to the minds and hearts of most decent people, engendering immediate widespread support for Israel – although on the part of too many it was support that was to be qualified, conditional and short-lived. It is mind-boggling that some responded to October 7 by supporting the evil acts and the evildoers.
This shocked many (including many Jews) who had held a common cause with progressive groups that were now expressing their Jew-hatred through their brazen and unadulterated support for Hamas and its October 7 pogrom. A significant segment of the Jewish community suddenly discovered that for all that imaginarily or divides them from fellow Jews in ideology, belief and practice, it turned out that those in the ‘woke’ agenda-driven groups with whom they thought they had much in common actually hate them for being Jewish – or ‘too’ Jewish. The veneer has been scratched, the breadth and depth of Jew-hatred have been (re)-exposed, and the latest tidal wave unleashed.
Without debating here the merits or legitimacy of any of these woke ‘causes’ or groups, it is surely so that many who supported them believed that they were simply seeking to make the world a better place. But ultimately, this naiveté is no excuse; being gullible doesn’t let one off the hook of responsibility for the forces with which one identifies and unites.
And make no mistake, Jew-hatred and Israel-hatred are the same, inseparable and indistinguishable, dangerous pathological maladies which always inevitably lead to genocides against the Jews – in a word: ‘Jewocide.’
In addition, life-or-death concern for the Jewish people is whether Jews are truly looking out for their own good in the U.S., in Israel, and around the world. With various elections imminent and on the horizon; with violent protests, incendiary words and destructive actions all too prevalent; with globalist, universalist, agenda-ridden, or enemy concerns often prioritized over our own; with the phenomenon of some Jews vigorously supporting and joining in the annihilationist war against their people; with all these bewildering, vile and heart-rending goings-on, it is vital to engage and challenge those whose positions undermine the well-being of Jews and Israel.
For those of my Jewish brothers and sisters in America, in Israel, and the world over who find yourselves at a crossroads of shock, disappointment and confusion from your sojourn among the agenda-driven groups only to discover there that it is the Jewocide agenda that binds and eclipses all, I entreat you to urgently bear in mind and take to heart the following:
First, know who your real family and friends are; treasure and cultivate their support; ‘distance yourselves from bad friends’ (as our liturgy instructs), from bad groups, and bad ideologies; keep reminding yourself of the great historic gift and accomplishment that is the U.S., and appreciate its blessed place and role in Jewish history; embrace and prioritize the magnificence of Judaism and Israel; foster and rediscover Jewish pride and love of Israel, and the indispensable familial and communal ties, which are so nurturing and vital to all of this.
And, second, vote wisely. Ignore the noise, forget blind party loyalties, and shun the distractions and distortions. Focus instead on the circumstances, the candidates’ records, the urgency of the moment, and the literal fate of all that you truly hold dear. Make your decisions using common sense and sage discernment. Thinking like this can lead to only one proper conclusion: that only one of the two American political parties today, and its leading candidates, merit your vote – the choice should be obvious. It is in your vital self-interest – for the existential sake of your family and community, and for the survival of Israel and the U.S. – to vote accordingly. Please do so.
Get the Ynetnews app on your smartphone: