RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/anti-semitism/anti-semitism-in-the-antipodes/

The appearance of anti-Semitism in Australia, a country remarkable for its absence of anti-Semitism, raises several questions. Ignited by the Israel Gaza war and fuelled by a combination of ignorance, the current anti-Western zeitgeist of the Left, and some major failings by the Australian Jewish community and by Israel itself, the result has been an upsurge in anti-Semitism in social media, left-wing politics and the public domain. We have seen blatant breaches of the law by way of public demonstrations and damage to property both public and private. The encampments on Australian university campuses, aping those in the United States, and the damage caused to politicians’ electoral offices, have continued unabated since October 7, 2023.

Three fundamental propositions should be stated at the outset. First, we have a right of freedom of political expression which lies at the root of our democracy and, subject to well-established legal constraints, should never be interfered with.

Second, where the exercise of such legal expression contravenes the law, the perpetrators should be charged and prosecuted. The current public displays of support for Palestinian solidarity are notable for their blatant breach of state laws criminalising hate speech, unlawful assembly and causing damage to property, and also of section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act of the Commonwealth. It is beyond belief that no prosecutions have been instituted by state or federal police forces, which calls into question our faith in the rule of law.

Third, criticism of Israel, however ill-informed, is not anti-Semitic. We are currently hearing repetition of the words genocide and apartheid. Genocide has a specific meaning in law and its use to describe the horrific civilian deaths in Gaza is not accurate. Similarly, the use of the term apartheid to describe Israel, which has over two million Arab citizens enjoying full civil rights and an Arab justice on its supreme court is also not accurate. Both terms are pejorative and ignorant, but not anti-Semitic.

Perhaps more interesting is the relationship between Australian Jews and the State of Israel. The vitriolic debate between Sir Isaac Isaacs and his supporters and Professor Julius Stone over Zionism and a home for the Jewish people came to an end with the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. Jews have lived in Australia since the arrival of the First Fleet and numbered approximately 25,000 at the time of the Second World War. They were mainly born in Australia or Britain, and considered themselves Australians of the Jewish faith. Their Judaism centred on synagogue membership and religious worship in a country which was highly sectarian, with a division between Protestant and Catholic. Multiculturalism was a term as yet uninvented. Post-war immigration introduced large numbers of European immigrants including European Jews who were the survivors of the Holocaust. By the 2021 Census the Jewish population of Australia was estimated to be around 117,000 or roughly 0.5 per cent of the population. The existence of over 300,000 Australians who are not Jewish but have a Jewish ancestor indicates the extent of assimilation.

At the time of the 2021 Census 57 per cent of Australian Jews were Australian-born, which is smaller than for the general population, which was at 71 per cent. It follows that most Australian Jews are post-war immigrants or their descendants. This makes them conscious of a need for a Jewish refuge as a protection from anti-Semitism, an attitude embedded in their psyches. Some Jewish schools and Jewish youth groups foster a love of Israel as a central part of Jewish identity, which reinforces a cultural as opposed to a religious affiliation. It is not surprising, therefore, that a study carried out by Monash University in 2017 of 8621 Australian Jews found that 69 per cent identified as Zionist and that the security of Israel was the most immediate issue of concern unifying them. The fact that 81 per cent of respondents ranked Israel above a belief in God (46 per cent) demonstrates the move away from religion and towards cultural identity.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/10/08/129680the-woke-dehumanisation-of-jews/

That there is more to identity politics than just preferred pronouns or demanding more culturally sensitive university courses has been amply demonstrated since the atrocities committed by Hamas on 7 October 2023. Woke activist groups – including LGBT activists, Black Lives Matter, feminists and eco-zealots – responded to this barbaric event by becoming Hamas cheerleaders. They had no hesitation in communicating their hatred for Israel in a language riddled with anti-Semitic tropes.

The narrative promoted by the identitarians rarely recognises Jews as a historically oppressed people. On the contrary, Jews are frequently cast in the role of oppressors and even as white supremacists. This outlook echoes the age-old trope that asserts that Jews possess vast global power. It fuses this traditional claim about Jewish power with contemporary identitarian obsessions about white privilege and white supremacy.

Since the ascendancy of identity politics, Jewishness has become what sociologist Erving Goffman characterised as a ‘spoiled identity’. A spoiled identity is one that lacks any redeeming moral qualities. It is an identity that invites stigma and scorn.

Since the turn of the century, anti-racist activists have gone to great lengths to associate ‘whiteness’ with negative characteristics and unattractive features. Mention the term ‘white men’ on a university campus or TV show and it will be met with groans and sneers. This negative framing of white identity has also impacted how Jewish identity is perceived and represented. In an interesting account of this development, Pamela Paresky has coined the term the ‘hyper-white Jew’. Jews are often portrayed as a unique, hyper-white community who have far more privileges to check than others – including other white people.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/10/07/the-west-has-turned-its-back-on-jews/

In the wake of last year’s 7 October pogrom, and amid rapidly rising anti-Semitism, most Jews are even more convinced of the importance of the Jewish State and the need for greater solidarity. As researchers such as Tufts Eitan Hersh and others have demonstrated, the Hamas assaults have led many in America to emphatically embrace their Jewish identity.

Yet, increasingly, these same Jews find themselves isolated and widely demonised. This reflects how much Jewish influence in the US, as I suggested almost a year ago, is itself ‘peaking’. Certainly it’s clear that Jewish media power has faded, as evidenced by the consistently biased coverage against Israel in places like the New York Times, the BBC and the Washington Post. Similar bias has become embedded in the internet, as seen by Wikipedia’s new negative description of Zionism.

As Israel faces an existential challenge, diaspora Jews confront a rising wave of anti-Semitism unseen since the 1930s. Politicians and the media alike emphasise the parallel rise of Islamophobia. Yet two-thirds of all religious hate crimes in America were directed at Jews, despite them accounting for just two per cent of the population. Last year in New York, there were over 100 anti-Semitic crimes in November and December, almost 10 times the number of equivalent crimes committed against Muslims.

Jews are frequently discovering that any sympathy for Israel now means cancellation. The progressive political and cultural establishment increasingly seeks to eliminate ‘Zionists’ and elevate those Jews, like journalist Joshua Liefer, who excoriate the Jewish state, and non-Jews like Ta-Nehisi Coates, who embrace a radical, anti-Israel perspective.

Even in traditional haunts, such as Brooklyn bookstores, elite campuses and big Jewish cities like Los Angeles, Jews no longer feel safe. Today, they are inextricably identified with Israel, whether they like it or not.

This merging of Jewish and Israeli interests seems inevitable. Already, a majority of all Jewish children live in Israel. By 2030, Israel could become, for the first time since early antiquity, the home to a majority of all Jews. This is somewhat hard to digest for left-of-centre or secular Jews, given the nature of the current Israeli government with its dependence on messianic nationalistic and ultra-religious allies. Yet, despite the relative unpopularity of Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration, the vast majority of diaspora Jews – 80 per cent in America – support the Jewish State, as do the vast majority of Jewish college students.

https://www.jordanbpeterson.com/blog/jordan-peterson-my-message-to-the-jews/

Beware your liberal values — those you see as allies are the vultures waiting for your demise, says author Jordan Peterson.

I have been watching the rising tide of antisemitism for about five years. It first appeared online, manifesting itself in the form of the ethno-nationalist trolling that allowed those who claimed to love their country to find a target for their resentment and rage in the name of patriotism. Then it crept into the so-called real world (although the virtual world is plenty real, folks) in the form of the hypocritical leftist virtue that poses a foundational threat to all that is good, true, meritorious and beautiful.

I have been in a unique position to observe all of this, for someone outside the Jewish community, because of my practical and entrepreneurial alliance with The Daily Wire, the conservative news and entertainment American communication network. The Daily Wire was co-founded by one Ben Shapiro, perhaps the world’s bestknown Orthodox Jew, and a good friend of mine.

Because of this, the antisemitic online trolls, particularly on the right, had plenty to say to me — about my subordination to the dictates of Israel, and about the hypothetical impossibility of me ever saying anything negative about the Jewish enterprise; in short, about my capture by the forces of international Jewry. This was of course accompanied with the meme-images of the positively hook-nosed shared by the scumrat cowards, always anonymous, often equipped with genuinely satanic noms de plume and monikers; always derisive, psychopathic to the core, hiding their alliance with evil behind the secrecy that enables the worst of them to spring forth and pollute the landscape of public discourse to the detriment of all. This attack has become much worse in the aftermath of October 7 — particularly when I call them out, as I have been doing on X, where the outright Nazis have been flourishing to an alarmingly increasing degree over the past few months.

I have spent much of my life studying the evils of antisemitism, obsessed as I have been by the events that unfolded in Germany in the decades prior to the Second World War, where the proclivity of the majority to turn against the eternally successful minority realised itself with the dreadful efficiency and industry that only the most advanced European state could manage. I learned plenty from such study, which was simultaneously exposure to the worst excesses of the worst part of the human psyche — mine included. What did I come to understand and realise, over those many years? First and foremost that there is plenty of the resentful and murderous spirit of Cain in each of us, friends — you included. And if you are one of those butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth moral paragons who happen not to think so, then it is even more likely to be true of you.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/give-that-woman-an-academy-award-flashback-to-susan-sarandon-at-columbia/

Susan Sarandon, the aging Hollywood Squadroon, was just one of the Hollywood luminaries who signed a letter calling for a “permanent ceasefire” in Gaza. Before that, Sarandon had made a habit of showing up at anti-Israel rallies around the country, to offer her own inimitable brand of antisemitism. As far back as November 17, 2023, for example, she told a crowd at Union Square that Jews are “getting a taste of what it is like to be Muslim in this country, so often subjected to violence,” and she apparently approved. Never mind that Muslims in this country are dispensers, not recipients, of violence. Or that in the past eleven months, the number of antisemitic hate crimes in this country has been eight times as large as those directed at Muslims.

It is worth recalling that back on April 19, 2o24, Sarandon was at Columbia, where she had come to lend her moral support to pro-Hamas demonstrators. Her call-and-response, or rather call-and-repeat, can be found in the video above.