If we Jews merely shake our heads in disapproval but don’t treat this seriously – including diving into the slime to know our enemies and their interlinked yet distinct motivations – we will lose.
By David Hunt
Jews everywhere are rightly concerned about the growing anti-Semitism. We cannot merely sigh and resign ourselves to the abuse like we used to do in the Shtetl, ghetto, or dhimmi communities of old. We are under attack, in a few catastrophic cases lethally, and this must be fought aggressively.
Since this is war, we would do well to follow the advice of Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese military strategist whose work, The Art of War, is one of the must-read books for any military person… indeed, any person in any combative endeavor. His advice is timeless:
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
Do we know the enemy? In this political environment, are we even willing to identify the enemy?
Jew-haters: Five Distinct Categories
It is not sufficient to say they are Jew-haters. Duh, we know that. We must look deeper into their motivation to defeat them. In doing so, I find five distinct types: Hitlerian, Christian, Islamic, Alt-Right, and Leftist.
The Hitlerian version is obvious: blame Jews for all societal ills and use them as a convenient scapegoat; also portray them as racially inferior, the better to suppress the inherent inhibitions most have against killing other people. Since there is virtually no Jewish family that did not have branches shorn from it in the Shoah, and because of this calamity in our past – still within living memory of some – we focus on it almost exclusively to our detriment. We dare not ignore the others, though, nor the fact they have different motivators.
The Christian form: Jews killed Jesus, Jews are in the “Synagogue of Satan,” Jews only care about money, and so on. Interestingly, in Evangelicals and others, e.g., Christians United for Israel and International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, we have some of our strongest supporters.
The third is Islamic. Hatred of Jews is hard-coded into the Koran itself and stems from the Jews’ rejection of Mohammed as a prophet. Initially favorably disposed towards Jews and Christians as “people of the book,” Mohammed changed when the Jews whose support he sought spurned him. Following the Principle of Abrogation, any kind words towards Jews early in his rise to power are overridden by his ire towards them later in life.
This antipathy is echoed in the calamitous effect Muslim migrants are having in Europe: open attacks on Jews, including synogogues being burned to screams of “Allahu akhbar!”; they march in European streets shouting “Khaybar! The armies of Mohammed are coming!” A recent attack involved asking pedestrians if they are Jewish before stabbing them. Thus, Jews are fleeing Europe. Jihad by migration is a doctrinal command called Hijra. Violent Islamists are outright conquering swaths of multiple Western countries; for example, Malmo, Sweden once had a thriving Jewish community and is now virtually Judenrein because of the Islamic influx. In this they reprise early Islamic history: Mohammed fled Mecca as a refugee; within10 years the Jews in Medina who took him in were dead, enslaved, or converted.
Yet, despite the calamitous effects of this migration and the rapid escalation of crimes against all native Europeans, let alone Jews – spanning robberies, assaults, rapes, and murder – many Jews encourage this migration. Most infamous is the proclamation by Barbara Spectre, whose statement is foundational in the growing Jew-hatred of the fourth kind: the so-called Alt-Right form:
“Europe has not yet learned how to be multicultural. And I think we are going to be part of the throes of that transformation, which must take place. Europe is not going to be the monolithic societies [sic] that they once were in the last century. Jews are going to be at the center of that. It’s a huge transformation for Europe to make. They are now going into a multicultural mode, and Jews will be resented because of our leading role. But without that leading role, and without that transformation, Europe will not survive.”
Jewish Values?
While many organizations – religious and not – are aiding migration to Europe and America, groups like If Not Now, Never Again Action, HIAS, and others do so while proclaiming that such aid represents “Jewish values.” And while we are commanded to welcome the stranger, the assumption is that these strangers will not harm our community. Would one knowingly welcome strangers whose philosophy not only permits, but encourages them to rape one’s wives, sisters, mothers, or daughters? The Koran commands that infidel women may be taken as sex slaves (4:24), and judging by the crime statistics migrants they do so with enthusiasm. For example, rapes in Sweden have tripled within the last four years with Islamic migrants being the vast majority of the aggressors; all over Western Europe reports are that women are now afraid to go out alone. And can we please mention the UK’s “grooming gangs” too?
If we are to consider Jewish values, we should cite Rabbi Akiva’s interpretation of “And your brother shall live with you,” where he indicates that your life takes precedence over the life of the other. Hillel’s question “If I am not for others, who am I?” is preceded by “If I am not for myself, who will be?” The first takes precedence over the second.
Ultimately, if “When someone says they want to kill you, believe them (Elie Wiesel),” and “When someone comes to kill you, arise and kill them first (Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin 72a)” are two examples where we wisely take threats seriously and act proactively, then how then can we describe the Jewish advocacy of mass Islamic immigration – when that same Islam clearly states “DEATH TO JEWS!” – as anything but Jewicidal folly?
In short: the Alt-Right looks at the crime (including record-shattering levels of rapes and murders) and outright territorial conquests these migrants are achieving (no-go zones all across Europe, and places like Dearborn, MI), and hears statements made by Spectre among others. They see groups declare it is Jewish values to force the West to admit migrants heedless of the damage they do and the crimes they commit while ignoring the fact that sovereign nations have a right to control their borders. Putting these facts together, they conclude that Jews are working to undermine America and Europe. Are these Jewish values? No… but that perception has become their reality, and such Jewish groups’ actions are held against us.
And lastly, the fifth type is Leftist anti-Semitism. From “It’s all about the Benjamins” said by the Left’s darling Ilhan Omar (who still holds her three committee memberships), to Elizabeth Warren’s fundraising for a known anti-Semite, to Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer attending a J Street conference with speakers from the PLO, to Bernie Sanders hiring a Hamas-supporting campaign manager and BDS- & Sharia-promoting Linda Sarsour as a campaign surrogate, anti-Semitism has blossomed on the Left. Let us not forget former President Barack Obama’s forbidding US flights to land in Israel as an economic threat, his degrading treatment of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and letting UN Resolution 2334 pass without a veto… the hate flows from the Democrats who, almost unanimously, favor using aid as a cudgel to force Israel to cede land critical to Israel’s security. Gaza was handed over in toto in 2005, yet missiles flew; so what would happen to Israel were every inch of Jewish-held land to be within missile range?
The Power of ‘Intersectionality’
Through the power of “intersectionality” every Leftist cause has been linked to every other cause. Thus the Palestinians have gained sympathy in no small part through their effective use of Pallywood – and the Left’s useful idiot acceptance of it. Jews rank low on the Left’s hierarchy of victimhood, having been promoted from oppressed to oppressor. Consider the Jewish lesbian women ejected from a gay rights parade because their rainbow flag had a Star of David… the organizers didn’t want the Palestinian supporters in that parade there to be upset. And don’t forget the tremendous upswing of attacks on Jews in New York, done overwhelmingly – insofar as data supports – by a more favored victim group that votes Democrat even more lopsidedly than Jews do.
Despite the fact that many Jews have money to fund campaigns, ultimately it is votes that matter. And the Democrats have made a cynical calculation that even if they lose Jews, the Jews they lose are in districts they would win anyway. Better to pander to their new, and increasing, Muslim voter base whose holy book says that Jews are apes and pigs and whose American Imams preach about the coming end-of-days slaughter of Jews.
The worst part comes where these parties interact. Alt-right, neo-Nazis, and the Left support Palestinians because it hurts Israel, even as the Alt-Right decries Muslim immigration and neo-Nazis doubtless plan to turn on the brown-skinned Arabs after Jews are gone. Vandalized graves and synagogues, festooned with swastikas, could easily be done by Muslims knowing the Jews will race to blame “white nationalists” and, in parallel, reach out to and want to increase the Muslim population as a “fellow put-upon population,” thus aiding their hijra.
The progressive Left’s takeover of many Christian denominations powers their adoptions of BDS resolutions, in parallel reinforcing the Christian form. And yet another interaction is that the Nazi, Alt-Right, and some Christian types see the open tolerance by the Left of Islamic anti-Semitism, let alone the Left’s own anti-Semitism, and conclude that it’s OK to let their own be seen once more. Tolerance of one type of anti-Semitism in the name of “multiculturalism” results in all mushrooming up. It never pays to underestimate your enemies or their willingness to join hands when faced with a common foe: Jews.
In sum, we face a war where all our opponents share a common end: dead Jews and a destroyed Israel. The reasons for their desires, however, differ vastly – and while we face attacks from multiple agendas, a serious discussion of those motivations can lead more effectively to tactics to target those who hate us. Additionally, grasping how these hatreds interact and support each other against their common enemy – Jews! – is also a necessary insight.
If we Jews merely shake our heads in disapproval, cluck “Hate is bad…” but don’t treat this seriously – which must include diving into the slime to know our enemies and their interlinked but nonetheless distinct motivations – we will lose. A multi-axis threat cannot be successfully repulsed by a single-axis response.
David Hunt is on the board of Connections Israel, an Israel-based charity that supports IDF soldiers. He lives in southern New Hampshire.
