Borne out of the absolute horror of the Nazi Shoah , driven to the abyss by the Spanish Inquisition, Fleeing from the evil of the Pharaohs and so much wickedness enacted against Jews always! But we endure and thrive however many times our existence is threatened. Am Israel Chai!
The question, for me, is how do Jews define “normal.” One could argue that the treatment of Jews and the Western view of Israel post-WW2 was actually “abnormal” when compared to the prior 2000 years (more so in Europe than America). The tidal wave of antisemitism that building before and exploded after 10/7, the “othering” of Jews, the blood libels and conspiracy theories is actually a return to “normal” for much of the West. The mistake isn’t the hope that pre-10/7 normalcy would return, it’s the belief that the abnormal was the new normal.
I find much of what you describe deeply disturbing, and I do not doubt the reality of the antisemitism you are witnessing. But I am left with an uneasy feeling after reading this: are we perhaps spending too much time describing the manifestations of antisemitism and too little trying to understand the mechanisms that reproduce it?
The statistics, the political examples, the language used at demonstrations, universities and in the media are important. But they tell us mainly what is happening. They do not yet explain why it is happening, why it has become socially and politically effective, or why so many people are willing to adopt narratives that turn Jews, Israel or Zionism into convenient symbols of a much broader conflict.
This matters because a struggle between competing narratives can easily become self-perpetuating. One side says, “Look how antisemitic the world has become.” The other replies, “Look how Israel is being defended against criticism.” Each side accumulates evidence for its own narrative, while the underlying social mechanisms remain largely unexamined.
I wonder whether the more difficult and ultimately more productive questions are elsewhere. What social conditions make scapegoating effective? Why does moral polarization make particular groups so useful as symbols of collective guilt? How do political incentives, identity, social media, group conformity and the need for simple explanations transform criticism of Israel into something much broader? And why do certain ideas migrate so successfully from the margins into mainstream institutions?
Without addressing questions like these, the fight against antisemitism risks becoming largely a fight over narratives: one narrative against another, one moral vocabulary against another. That may mobilize people who already agree with us, but I am not sure it changes the mechanisms that generate the phenomenon in the first place.
Your final distinction between optimism and hope is powerful. But perhaps there is another distinction worth making: between condemning antisemitism and understanding it. The first is necessary. The second is indispensable if we want to become more effective than simply reacting to its next manifestation.
I would be very interested in seeing more of that second kind of analysis. Not because the danger is exaggerated, but precisely because it is serious enough that moral denunciation alone seems insufficient.
When I visited last October the Nova killings (364 dead) and the horrors at Nir Oz Kibbutz and Nahal Oz military base brought it all home. I relished the revenge Israel was delivering to Hamas and the Gazans. Their beautiful coastal enclave was destroyed, thousands died, yet they never surrendered. Instead, they became the victims of 'colonial oppression' and garnered the world's sympathy, a reversal of unimaginable proportions, quite unlike our own 9/11. Then the killing continued, the forever wars against Iran and its proxies, the condemnation of Israel as a pariah state, the rise of antisemitism, the loss of support among the Democrats here, and soon the Republicans. American Jews, huge supporters of Israel, Zionists really, began to waver: is this what being Jewish means today? Are our lives threatened in America by the actions of a bad government there? If so, what to do about it? It calls into question the very meaning of Judaism to those who practice it, from the most secular to the most orthodox. For me, enough is enough: both Israel and the US must move to more democracy and away from forever wars never won. Bad actors in the West Bank. Somewhere peace must be sought, even as Iran grows in power and its proxies succeed in Yemen and elsewhere, as whatever Israel is doing, and the US in support of it, isn't working. The Palestinians need new leadership as badly as Israel and the US; surely there is sanity to be found among those who tend away from the autocratic toward more freedom in the 21st century. But if such is not our reality, I find myself distancing myself from Israel, and hope that the policies it pursues will not rebound in some awful way on the Jews here in America. The elections this year are a start, and will tell us more about the feelings citizens of both nations are experiencing. But Jews here at home, here in NYC for example, are wondering if the success and safety of the American Diaspora is ending.
. Israel's policies do not rebound on diaspora Jews, that is a pretext for the antisemites. Before there was a modern state of Israel, they attacked Jews for daring to live in Hebron. When the state was smaller than it is now, its neighbours would have destroyed it if not for the policy of fighting back. On 8th October 2023, the enablers of Hamas were praising the murderers before the first act of retaliation. The liberal Jews who exempt themselves as "non" or antiZionist or pro-peace in academic circles are excluded none the less.
Israel did not enact revenge. The defensive war against Gaza has the lowest civilian to combatant rates of modern warfare. (Now even being confirmed by Hamas who are identifying what their dead did). MK's who were members of cabinet were side-lined with the creation of a war-cabinet excluding them. But yes people are being sucked in by repeated misinformation and a refusal for retractions corrections as the truth comes out or point blank refusing to acknowledge anything that might show Israel as the victim or in a good light.
There was Jew hate before Israel was re-established. And Israel exists because of Jew hate; Jew hate doesn't exist because of Israel. And no matter what government is is power or what Israel does, it will not change. What Israel does has nothing to do with this ancient hatred and volumes and volumes have been written trying to answer the question of "why the Jews?" Essentially it comes down to this: They wouldn't convert (to either Christianity or Islam) and to those other religions, that meant you are rejecting God, on Satan's side, and thus justifiable demonized. And over the centuries it has become a zombie mind-virus like nothing ever seen in any other case in human history. But thinking that Israel could do anything at all short of suicide that would make the world hate Jews less is simply wrong. They have a million other excuses to hate us: We killed Jesus, we killed Charlie Kirk and JFK, we were behind 9/11, we are bloodthirsty, we are behind all the wars in the world, we control Hollywood and banking, we are all pedophiles, and on and on and on. Israel is realizing it will never please the world, no matter what concessions they make or who is elected and so they might as well accept that and fight for their security and end the delusion that the Jihadi Gazans would be happy with land when even recently they rejected the land idea (because they would also have to accept the existence of Israel and stop terrorism). They refuse to co-exist. This has always been the case.
Thank you for the article. "I thought this might pass. Not antisemitism in general; I have never been quite naive enough to believe that. But this modern antisemitism;..." No. Modern antisemitism is a symptom of two basic philosophic and moral diseases, left wing ideology and Islam. Both groups hate, fear, and try to destroy freedom and individual rights (FAIR) and since Israel is the one country in the Middle East in which FAIR are respected, both groups will try to destroy Israel by any means whatsoever including lies, propaganda, and outright physical attacks. Do not expect 'things to get better'. Driven by the belief systems left wing ideology and Islam, they will very likely get worse for Jews, for Israel, and for America and the rest of the world with tacit agreement and at times, active help from Russia, China, North Korea, and assorted nasty hangers on.
Brilliant and profound line: "Jewish hope has ever depended upon the world behaving well . . . Jewish hope says that whatever happens, we will still be here."
“ the demonisation of Israel bleed relentlessly into the demonisation of Zionists and from Zionists into Jews.”
It is understandable that non-Jews have a very narrow understanding of what constitutes Zionism. Unfortunately, Jews themselves share this limited understanding. When people use the term, in point of fact they are actually referring to political Zionism.
Given that the word Zion has multiple meanings: a mountain, a temple, a city, a country, Zionism is the same ethnic attachment and connection of a people to its indigenous lands as the southern Irish are to the Republic of Ireland, the French to France, the Japanese to Japan, and the same with all land based ethnicities. In other words, Zionism is the ethno-national identity of a people, respected when other peoples express their identities but condemned as the epitome of evil when Jews express theirs. So indeed “Our connection to the Land of Israel runs through our prayers, our festivals, our texts, our language, our history, and our collective memory.” It is a defining attribute of our very Peoplehood.
“the expanding cast of those whose Jewishness appears to be most publicly useful when providing cover for attacks on Israel are perfectly entitled to their views”
We need to distinguish between critique, criticism, condemnation as ways of evaluating policy, ideology, or theology, on the one hand and free or protected speech opposed to licentious or criminal speech on the other.
When condemnation attacks individuals or groups, demonizing them, it demonstrably constitutes hate speech because it dog whistles the call to verbally or physically abuse the object of its condemnation. And hate speech is not free speech. It is criminal speech.
The scariest thing is the absolute denial in my Canadian community by the unelected leadership who still strongly believe that life will return to what it was before October 7. Right now 70% of religious hate crimes are against Jews, while only 11% are against Muslims who are nearly six times in population as us. Canada, a country of over 40 million, has nearly two million Muslims, most brought over in the past decade from the most radical countries in the world, with little or no vetting by the Liberal government, and only 350 000 Jews.
Canada is a country where Jews first arrived with the British in the late 1700s, and has contributed widely in all areas of society. We are being deliberately sacrificed by the Liberals and PM in particular to pander to the near two million Muslim voters to keep then loyal rather than them going to the Far Left NDP party or Greens. Carney has aided and abetted the incredible violence on us by the Muslims and Progressive Jew haters. He demonizes Israel weekly, and often daily. The Liberal government which has revealed itself as a Hamas atrocity loving party, with the worst Jew hating PM, Carney, since the 1940s when the infamous statement that "None is too many" was what the PM at the time said about Holocaust
survivors, while allowing in tens of thousands of Nazis and Waffen SS Ukrainians with no issue starting in 1945.
So what does a Jewish parent do when their darling daughter returns from uni wearing her keffiyah. That is a new normalcy for many. And what do we do w the omnipresent jewish celebrities like Einbinder and so many others who have e huge platforms to spew hatred and lies
Israel is not wild actually. The strategy has been voiced in all the necessary and right places. Military Islam is to be defeated, where Islam threatens The West. And Jews are to be defended too.
We are not actually alone in this regard. I spend my time listening to the Terror of the non-Jewish Services I monitor in Britain that living standards in this country are about to collapse taking everything with it. So we are not alone. Fear it would seem is actually universal. This need not be I should add.
Borne out of the absolute horror of the Nazi Shoah , driven to the abyss by the Spanish Inquisition, Fleeing from the evil of the Pharaohs and so much wickedness enacted against Jews always! But we endure and thrive however many times our existence is threatened. Am Israel Chai!
The question, for me, is how do Jews define “normal.” One could argue that the treatment of Jews and the Western view of Israel post-WW2 was actually “abnormal” when compared to the prior 2000 years (more so in Europe than America). The tidal wave of antisemitism that building before and exploded after 10/7, the “othering” of Jews, the blood libels and conspiracy theories is actually a return to “normal” for much of the West. The mistake isn’t the hope that pre-10/7 normalcy would return, it’s the belief that the abnormal was the new normal.
You're an optimist if you expect normalcy to return in our lifetime.
I find much of what you describe deeply disturbing, and I do not doubt the reality of the antisemitism you are witnessing. But I am left with an uneasy feeling after reading this: are we perhaps spending too much time describing the manifestations of antisemitism and too little trying to understand the mechanisms that reproduce it?
The statistics, the political examples, the language used at demonstrations, universities and in the media are important. But they tell us mainly what is happening. They do not yet explain why it is happening, why it has become socially and politically effective, or why so many people are willing to adopt narratives that turn Jews, Israel or Zionism into convenient symbols of a much broader conflict.
This matters because a struggle between competing narratives can easily become self-perpetuating. One side says, “Look how antisemitic the world has become.” The other replies, “Look how Israel is being defended against criticism.” Each side accumulates evidence for its own narrative, while the underlying social mechanisms remain largely unexamined.
I wonder whether the more difficult and ultimately more productive questions are elsewhere. What social conditions make scapegoating effective? Why does moral polarization make particular groups so useful as symbols of collective guilt? How do political incentives, identity, social media, group conformity and the need for simple explanations transform criticism of Israel into something much broader? And why do certain ideas migrate so successfully from the margins into mainstream institutions?
Without addressing questions like these, the fight against antisemitism risks becoming largely a fight over narratives: one narrative against another, one moral vocabulary against another. That may mobilize people who already agree with us, but I am not sure it changes the mechanisms that generate the phenomenon in the first place.
Your final distinction between optimism and hope is powerful. But perhaps there is another distinction worth making: between condemning antisemitism and understanding it. The first is necessary. The second is indispensable if we want to become more effective than simply reacting to its next manifestation.
I would be very interested in seeing more of that second kind of analysis. Not because the danger is exaggerated, but precisely because it is serious enough that moral denunciation alone seems insufficient.
When I visited last October the Nova killings (364 dead) and the horrors at Nir Oz Kibbutz and Nahal Oz military base brought it all home. I relished the revenge Israel was delivering to Hamas and the Gazans. Their beautiful coastal enclave was destroyed, thousands died, yet they never surrendered. Instead, they became the victims of 'colonial oppression' and garnered the world's sympathy, a reversal of unimaginable proportions, quite unlike our own 9/11. Then the killing continued, the forever wars against Iran and its proxies, the condemnation of Israel as a pariah state, the rise of antisemitism, the loss of support among the Democrats here, and soon the Republicans. American Jews, huge supporters of Israel, Zionists really, began to waver: is this what being Jewish means today? Are our lives threatened in America by the actions of a bad government there? If so, what to do about it? It calls into question the very meaning of Judaism to those who practice it, from the most secular to the most orthodox. For me, enough is enough: both Israel and the US must move to more democracy and away from forever wars never won. Bad actors in the West Bank. Somewhere peace must be sought, even as Iran grows in power and its proxies succeed in Yemen and elsewhere, as whatever Israel is doing, and the US in support of it, isn't working. The Palestinians need new leadership as badly as Israel and the US; surely there is sanity to be found among those who tend away from the autocratic toward more freedom in the 21st century. But if such is not our reality, I find myself distancing myself from Israel, and hope that the policies it pursues will not rebound in some awful way on the Jews here in America. The elections this year are a start, and will tell us more about the feelings citizens of both nations are experiencing. But Jews here at home, here in NYC for example, are wondering if the success and safety of the American Diaspora is ending.
. Israel's policies do not rebound on diaspora Jews, that is a pretext for the antisemites. Before there was a modern state of Israel, they attacked Jews for daring to live in Hebron. When the state was smaller than it is now, its neighbours would have destroyed it if not for the policy of fighting back. On 8th October 2023, the enablers of Hamas were praising the murderers before the first act of retaliation. The liberal Jews who exempt themselves as "non" or antiZionist or pro-peace in academic circles are excluded none the less.
Israel did not enact revenge. The defensive war against Gaza has the lowest civilian to combatant rates of modern warfare. (Now even being confirmed by Hamas who are identifying what their dead did). MK's who were members of cabinet were side-lined with the creation of a war-cabinet excluding them. But yes people are being sucked in by repeated misinformation and a refusal for retractions corrections as the truth comes out or point blank refusing to acknowledge anything that might show Israel as the victim or in a good light.
There was Jew hate before Israel was re-established. And Israel exists because of Jew hate; Jew hate doesn't exist because of Israel. And no matter what government is is power or what Israel does, it will not change. What Israel does has nothing to do with this ancient hatred and volumes and volumes have been written trying to answer the question of "why the Jews?" Essentially it comes down to this: They wouldn't convert (to either Christianity or Islam) and to those other religions, that meant you are rejecting God, on Satan's side, and thus justifiable demonized. And over the centuries it has become a zombie mind-virus like nothing ever seen in any other case in human history. But thinking that Israel could do anything at all short of suicide that would make the world hate Jews less is simply wrong. They have a million other excuses to hate us: We killed Jesus, we killed Charlie Kirk and JFK, we were behind 9/11, we are bloodthirsty, we are behind all the wars in the world, we control Hollywood and banking, we are all pedophiles, and on and on and on. Israel is realizing it will never please the world, no matter what concessions they make or who is elected and so they might as well accept that and fight for their security and end the delusion that the Jihadi Gazans would be happy with land when even recently they rejected the land idea (because they would also have to accept the existence of Israel and stop terrorism). They refuse to co-exist. This has always been the case.
“Here at home”(the US)in a response to an article written about the uK? Again: the US is not the diaspora.
Thank you for the article. "I thought this might pass. Not antisemitism in general; I have never been quite naive enough to believe that. But this modern antisemitism;..." No. Modern antisemitism is a symptom of two basic philosophic and moral diseases, left wing ideology and Islam. Both groups hate, fear, and try to destroy freedom and individual rights (FAIR) and since Israel is the one country in the Middle East in which FAIR are respected, both groups will try to destroy Israel by any means whatsoever including lies, propaganda, and outright physical attacks. Do not expect 'things to get better'. Driven by the belief systems left wing ideology and Islam, they will very likely get worse for Jews, for Israel, and for America and the rest of the world with tacit agreement and at times, active help from Russia, China, North Korea, and assorted nasty hangers on.
Brilliant and profound line: "Jewish hope has ever depended upon the world behaving well . . . Jewish hope says that whatever happens, we will still be here."
Am yisrael chai!
Leo Pearlman, The Jewish New Year begins with an uncomfortable truth. https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgzQhWTmbRSdFjvfWDRKnhTcTCpsw
“ the demonisation of Israel bleed relentlessly into the demonisation of Zionists and from Zionists into Jews.”
It is understandable that non-Jews have a very narrow understanding of what constitutes Zionism. Unfortunately, Jews themselves share this limited understanding. When people use the term, in point of fact they are actually referring to political Zionism.
Given that the word Zion has multiple meanings: a mountain, a temple, a city, a country, Zionism is the same ethnic attachment and connection of a people to its indigenous lands as the southern Irish are to the Republic of Ireland, the French to France, the Japanese to Japan, and the same with all land based ethnicities. In other words, Zionism is the ethno-national identity of a people, respected when other peoples express their identities but condemned as the epitome of evil when Jews express theirs. So indeed “Our connection to the Land of Israel runs through our prayers, our festivals, our texts, our language, our history, and our collective memory.” It is a defining attribute of our very Peoplehood.
“the expanding cast of those whose Jewishness appears to be most publicly useful when providing cover for attacks on Israel are perfectly entitled to their views”
We need to distinguish between critique, criticism, condemnation as ways of evaluating policy, ideology, or theology, on the one hand and free or protected speech opposed to licentious or criminal speech on the other.
When condemnation attacks individuals or groups, demonizing them, it demonstrably constitutes hate speech because it dog whistles the call to verbally or physically abuse the object of its condemnation. And hate speech is not free speech. It is criminal speech.
Shana tova… gemar hatima tova
The scariest thing is the absolute denial in my Canadian community by the unelected leadership who still strongly believe that life will return to what it was before October 7. Right now 70% of religious hate crimes are against Jews, while only 11% are against Muslims who are nearly six times in population as us. Canada, a country of over 40 million, has nearly two million Muslims, most brought over in the past decade from the most radical countries in the world, with little or no vetting by the Liberal government, and only 350 000 Jews.
Canada is a country where Jews first arrived with the British in the late 1700s, and has contributed widely in all areas of society. We are being deliberately sacrificed by the Liberals and PM in particular to pander to the near two million Muslim voters to keep then loyal rather than them going to the Far Left NDP party or Greens. Carney has aided and abetted the incredible violence on us by the Muslims and Progressive Jew haters. He demonizes Israel weekly, and often daily. The Liberal government which has revealed itself as a Hamas atrocity loving party, with the worst Jew hating PM, Carney, since the 1940s when the infamous statement that "None is too many" was what the PM at the time said about Holocaust
survivors, while allowing in tens of thousands of Nazis and Waffen SS Ukrainians with no issue starting in 1945.
it is not like we were not warned.
Kahane was a prophet.
So what does a Jewish parent do when their darling daughter returns from uni wearing her keffiyah. That is a new normalcy for many. And what do we do w the omnipresent jewish celebrities like Einbinder and so many others who have e huge platforms to spew hatred and lies
Stop paying for her "education". Today.
Love to see that one video taped.
We’re back in Poland in other words.
No. We are in Israel. With an Army of 3 million.
True. Israel is the wild card this time around
Israel is not wild actually. The strategy has been voiced in all the necessary and right places. Military Islam is to be defeated, where Islam threatens The West. And Jews are to be defended too.
I mean wild card as in the big change from the past.
We are not actually alone in this regard. I spend my time listening to the Terror of the non-Jewish Services I monitor in Britain that living standards in this country are about to collapse taking everything with it. So we are not alone. Fear it would seem is actually universal. This need not be I should add.
Leo, you simply speak the truth! Well said, Gary
I'm afraid that this "new normal," is not the new normal yet. It's getting worse and worse and God knows where the "new normal" will actually land.