Paul M
Another day, another city, more murdered Jews. We have progressed steadily and predictably from hate speech directed, nominally, at Israel—but even from the first containing calls to “Fuck the Jews” (or “Gas the Jews,” depending on your source)—to broken Jewish windows, torched Jewish properties, excluded Jewish voices, beaten Jewish bodies and, twice in the past three months, extinguished Jewish lives.
Each time, the supposed leaders of western society—presidents, kings, prime ministers, bishops and on downward through the ranks—have stood in front of the cameras, shown us what they hope is their most solemn face and recited to us the cant of “Antisemitism has no place in our country” or “We stand with our Jewish fellow Britons/Australians/French/Dut
Always the same words. Always, their unshakeable solidarity. Always the promise to uproot the hate. Always their guaranteed protection. (I don’t want their protection; I want them to fix their communities so that we don’t need protecting.) And it’s always, always hollow, because not one of them has done or will even now do the one thing that strikes at the root of what they swear they’ll eradicate. If any of our leaders genuinely wants to force antisemitism back into the shadows and edges of decent society, only one thing will make a difference. They will have to stand up, all together or one after the other, and say what they dare not say, or maybe just sticks in their throats: That the root of today’s antisemitism is an obsessive, deranged, disproportionate and hate-fueled anti-Zionism.
Democracies can contain antisemitism—it should be obvious by now that neither they nor any other society can end it forever—but only if their leaders in government, education, religion and the press find the integrity, courage and motivation to say what they have allowed to become all but unsayable: Israel is a full, equal member of the community of nations and its right to exist is not open to question. Attempts to end it will not be countenanced or given oxygen and will be publicly, vocally opposed with all the authority the speaker represents. Zionism is not colonialism or white supremacism or apartheid or ethnic cleansing, it is what the Jews overwhelmingly say, and have always said, it is: the Jewish movement of liberation and self determination in the one place on Earth that they can legitimately claim as their own. The world’s long-ago decision to accept Israel’s existence is done, sealed and final.
Not a word of this commits the speaker to supporting any Israeli government or any particular policy. All it does is lay down a marker: Go beyond this line and you are denying Jews the rights you grant to yourselves and all others. Whatever you think you are doing, you are functionally an antisemite, and it is you that is putting wind in the sails and bullets in the guns of Jew-killers.
Until the leaders who claim the right to speak on our behalf find the balls to say this and the grit to stand by it, the rest is just words.
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