THE WAR IN GAZA REVEALS MODERN JEW-HATRED - Albert Einstein had the likes of Jonathan Glazer in mind when he said, “…the cowards leave us.”
By: Joseph Puder
Friday, March 15, 2024
Many among the forefathers of Zionism envisioned that the creation of an independent Jewish state would finally rid the world of the antisemitic hate so pervasive in 19th century Europe and the Middle East. In one sense, Israel, the Jewish state, changed the nature of things. After the Holocaust, “Never Again” became the mantra of the State of Israel and Jews worldwide. No longer would Jewish blood be spilled with impunity. Two millenniums of persecution, which culminated in the murder of Six Million Jewish men, women, and children, in the most horrific of ways, for the crime of being Jewish, had to stop.
On October 7, 2023, the jihadist terrorist groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) perpetrated murders reminiscent of the Holocaust, sending the people of Israel into a collective trauma. But “Never Again” has unified Israelis in unimaginable ways. Just prior to October 7, Israel was split dangerously as a result of Judicial Reforms initiated by the Likud coalition government. The War in Gaza is as much motivated by “Never Again” as anything else.
Jew-Hatred has, unfortunately, spurred a new form of antisemitism euphemistically called anti-Zionism, and the State of Israel has become the “collective Jew.” One can experience that form of antisemitism in the halls of the United Nations (UN), on campuses throughout the world, and in the streets of many cities in the US and elsewhere. In the modern, secular, western world, antisemitism directed at individual Jews is proscribed, hence antisemites in America and Europe find a subterfuge in directing their hate at the collective Jew: The State of Israel.
Albert Einstein once noted, “The reason we Jews survive is that the cowards leave us.” One can, however, find plenty of cowards among Jews themselves. One such coward, imbued with self-hatred, is the writer and director of the film “The Zone of Interest,” Jonathan Glazer. During his acceptance speech of an Oscar award for the best foreign full feature film he said, “Right now, we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people -whether the victims of October 7th in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza, all the victims of this dehumanization.”
The moral equivalency Glazer made between the murdered Jews of the Nova Love Fest and the people of the kibbutzim and Sderot next to Gaza, who were killed because they were Jews, and Palestinians in Gaza who are now victims of a war initiated by Hamas wherein they were used by Hamas as human shields, is abominable. Decent, functioning societies do not cherish the destruction of human life and property. Israel is fighting a defensive war with “Never Again” in mind to prevent Hamas from ever being able to perpetrate such massacres - which Hamas leaders have threatened to execute again and again given the opportunity. Hamas was and is intent on killing as many Jews as possible, which only those possessed of a genocidal mind would consider.
Glazer, in his pandering to the enemies of Israel made a mockery of the Holocaust and, in essence, equated the brutal murderers - Gazan Palestinian civilians - men and women and even youngsters - who followed the Nukhba fighters invasion of Israel in looting and murdering Jewish civilians. Did he not read of the young Gazan who called his parents after killing 10 Jews and was praised by them? There is simply no moral equivalency between an outraged nation defending Jewish lives in order to prevent Israeli and Jewish blood from being wantonly spilled and punishing the perpetrators of deliberate murder.
Glazer may know something about directing a movie, but he has much to learn about the Middle East and occupation. Israel left the Gaza Strip with its green houses and agricultural infrastructure back in 2005. Gaza could have become a sort of Singapore, instead, it became a murderous enclave led by a violent Hamas dictatorship. Jew-hatred for Hamas superseded economic, political, and social consideration.
David Schaechter, President of the Holocaust Survivors’ Foundation who survived the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps, condemned Jonathan Glazer’s acceptance speech. He wrote an open letter to Glazer saying, “I watched in anguish Sunday night when I heard you use the platform of the Oscars ceremony to equate Hamas’s maniacal brutality against innocent Israelis with Israel’s difficult but necessary self-defense in the face of Hamas’s ongoing barbarity.”
While Glazer and company fall into the category that Einstein labeled as the “cowards who leave us” there are still national governments that foster and fund antisemitism, especially Iran. Antisemitism is pervasive in the Muslim world, especially since the rise of political Islam. In the Western world, while the governments have not encouraged antisemitism, they have done little to eradicate it in their societies with a pertinent educational campaign and severe punishment for violent Jew hatred – especially true in France and the United Kingdom. Government policies that often demonize Israel and use double standards by singling out Israel, provide fertile ground for antisemitism.
In America, in recent months and particularly since the war in Gaza began, Jew-hatred has been exploding at an unprecedented level, along with violent antisemitic demonstrations in major cities and on campuses. Frustrated, (un)educated college students who learned to hate America are using Jews as scapegoats, albeit, under the guise of anti-Zionism. Ignorance has made such students “useful idiots” for leftist professors and Islamist groups on campus. When students chant “From the River to the Sea Palestine Will be Free” and are asked: What River and What Sea, they have no clue, nor do they grasp the fact that it calls for the elimination of Israel, the denial of Jewish self-determination in their ancestral home and, ultimately, genocide.
It is sometimes said that antisemitism has, despite its ugliness, united the Jewish people. But the Holocaust experience demonstrated that abandoning Judaism by conversion didn’t sparethe lives of Jews. This war has given the people of Israel a clearer understanding of who theyare, the level of Jew-hatred worldwide, and a determination to survive as Jews in a united Jewish state.