(Author: Rodney Mazinter, Vol. 73, No. 2, Rosh Hashanah 2018)
…[W]e have now entered a new era of global antisemitism.1 The continued scapegoating of Israel and of European Jews by multiple groups simultaneously, the systematic shedding of Jewish-Israeli blood, has reached a dangerous, contagious level. Even as civilian Israel is attacked literally every day, anti-Zionists and antisemites deny that this is so and falsely accuse Israel of atrocities it has not committed.
“Let me be clear: the war against Jews is being waged on many fronts – militarily, politically, economically, and through propaganda – and on all continents. In my opinion, anyone who denies this, or who blames the Jews for provoking the attacks, is an antisemite. Anyone who falsely accuses Israel of committing atrocities and massacres it has not committed is an antisemite. Anyone who cannot talk about Israel’s mistakes, failures and imperfections without demonizing Israel is an antisemite.
… I am forced to conclude…that the new antisemite is an anti-Zionist…someone who is willing to deny a national refuge to only one group in the world: the long oppressed Jews. They assume that every other group on Earth deserves its own nation, no matter how barbaric its leaders and citizens may be.
Flying home from Israel to South Africa I had time to ponder Phyllis Chesler’s words in the book I was reading.2 Coupled with the rise of antisemitism in the world I had a moment of sudden insight against the backdrop of my life growing up in a secular environment in South Africa and what I had experienced on this visit to the Holy Land.
In the row in front of my seat sat a middle aged Israeli couple who, while he wore a kippah, did not require a special kosher meal on El Al. The family across the aisle, comprising father, mother and two children did order a special kosher meal and spent the entire flight reading from religious books and praying.
Behind them sat my travelling companion, Elad, a 30-year old native Israeli now permanently resident in South Africa. Elad displayed all the fine leadership qualities of an Israeli who after school had graduated through the hard-knocks of obligatory three years army service and emerged as an independent thinker set to improve by dint of hard work the wealth and growth of any country that enjoys his talents. Alongside me sat a pretty young Israeli woman, modern, self-assured, with a stud protruding from her nose, listening to music on her i-Pod. Towards the back of the plane was a group of excited young South African Jews returning home after a year in Israel under the auspices of Bnei Akiva.
To my mind you could not find a more interesting and inoffensive representation of humanity anywhere. And yet, these are the people that the world is growing to hate. I had arrived at Ben Gurion airport ten days previously to attend the Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism, held at Jerusalem’s Crowne Plaza Hotel. It was my first time back in Israel after eighteen years. My taxi sped along the main traffic artery between Tel Aviv and the capital. A few kilometres from the airport at the Shar Ha Gay Interchange we came across deeply forested slopes that stretched away on either side and ahead, unbroken as far as the Hemed Interchange where the road started its assent to Jerusalem. A few days later as I retraced my steps on my way to Tel Aviv I would have the distinct pleasure of forgoing the highway and driving through those forests punctuated by fields of intense cultivation.
I might just as well have been driving through the Knysna forests back home in the Southern Cape; there was that same feeling of tranquillity and peace. The difference was that the forests in South Africa took thousands of years to establish themselves and were now under threat because of human encroachment, while those in tiny, crowded Israel had sprung from the ‘infertile’ desert just seventy years ago. Israel is the only country that has shown an increase in the number of trees on its land. I am not an observant Jew, but I nevertheless could not prevent the thought that here indeed was God’s work carried out by the inspired and loving hand of man.
Growing up Jewish in South Africa after World War ll
I was born ten years prior to the founding of Israel, and raised and educated in South Africa. I grew up in a period that was one of unprecedented worldwide sympathy for Jews far removed from the killing fields of Europe. The details of the Holocaust and tiny Israel’s struggle to survive the early days of its existence saw global public opinion shifting in favour of Jews, who were increasingly recognised as being innocent victims of an unrelenting and unreasoning hatred. This natural tolerance impacted on my life and formed my opinions.
My formative and adult years led me to believe that at long last, antisemitism was a thing of the past, a bad memory. I remember reading Thomas Friedman’s From Beirut to Jerusalem, and what an impression it made on me. It so beautifully and compellingly put both the Jewish and Arab sides of the question, finding justification in each, and concluding that Israel, because of its military advantage, was in the most favourable position to accommodate the most important demands of the Palestinians and thereby bring about peace – a truly liberal, humanitarian concept that resonated at the time with my feelings of justice being served for all. At no stage of my life had I ever felt more at peace and optimistic about the future.
Then occurred a new sequence of events, starting with the Camp David-Taba debacle in 2000-01. Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s unprecedented offer of giving virtually everything the Palestinians had been demanding was inexplicably rejected and the world watched in horror as Arafat took his people down the slippery slope to poverty, disease and war. In Arafat’s mind, there was simply no compromise when dealing with the Jews – it was everything for the Arabs or nothing. However, and inexplicably, instead of sympathy remaining with Israel for having made so far-reaching a peace offer, international public opinion shifted away towards the Palestinians with a vengeance. The world’s brief flirtation with the Israeli position was over; it reverted to what can only be described as a paroxysm of hatred not seen since the 1930s. Once more, antisemitism was stalking the university campuses and academic circles of the so-called civilised countries of the West.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row] Those of us still hopeful of the wisdom of the silent majority being able to see through the slander, distortions and lies, were quickly disabused by the excesses of Durban 2001, the UN General Assembly, the Human Rights Council and its infamous Goldstone Report and its continuing biased infatuation with Israel, and myriads of op-eds written by journalists and media commentators on Israel in particular, and Jews in general. There was the resurfacing of the vile antisemitic Russian fraud The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The one single matter that Thomas Friedman does not explain in his book is how to counter the hatred that is the driving force of the Arabs. Hatred of Jews is enshrined in the Hamas and PA charters, tracts acting as a model for those intent on lies, distortions, vilification, delegitimisation and antisemitism for the sole purpose of killing Jews. The fast spread of antisemitism has as much to do with the easy availability of information, true and false, over the Internet, as with the commensurate lack of interest among the general population to concern itself with the issue. The truth is no match for lies. To invent a lie is easy and to spread it around even simpler. All one need do is repeat it often enough for it to take hold. Churchill famously said, “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” Countering untruths with a riposte, “that’s a lie”, is no argument. To put the facts requires much reading, firstly to educate oneself about the general situation and then to research the lie in order to rebut it, and only then counter it with the verifiable truth. By that time the lie is “halfway around the world” and has secured a limpet-like hold aided and abetted by a hostile Western press. People have come to rely uncritically on the media, so that when newspapers, TV, radio and websites support a lie about the Jews and Israel, or are even complicit in a lie’s invention as is too often the case today, that is antisemitism pure and simple. Too many Western intellectuals and academics who pride themselves on being non-racist do not make a stand against the orgy of racism against Jews. On the contrary, they are traitors to their own non-racist principles when it comes to the Jews and Israel and are often found to be leading the racist mob. They have deserted the path of objectivity, neutrality and sanity. Today you find antisemitism not only among the illiterate, indoctrinated or unemployed, but also among the intelligentsia and Muslim immigrants to Europe, the USA and the United Kingdom. The new antisemite is also, as described by Chesler, (The New Antisemitism, 2003, pp178-9): “…an Egyptian physician or journalist, a Saudi Arabian prince, an Iranian cleric, a North American college student or his esteemed professor, or an Islamic terrorist in Indonesia, Africa, Chechnya, Lebanon, Iraq or Syria. The new antisemite can also be a Nobel Prize winner, an international scholar, an activist, a journalist, or a poet.” Boycotts of Israeli goods and academics are neither logical nor morally sustainable. Their oxygen can be found in the heady atmosphere of lies and distortions. It can only be explained by being based on conditioning; feeding on a dormant hatred that confounds reason and rational thinking. When the Palestinians, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan, all accuse Israel of purposely targeting innocents, the West should recognise immediately that this Jew-hatred is based on lies. However, as we are well aware, if repeated often enough, lies come to be accepted as truth. This fact is exploited by people, especially Europeans and the political Left, with a malevolent agenda targeting Jews and Israel.. In March 2014, French Interior Minister Manuel Valls called anti-Zionism “an invitation to antisemitism”. He made this remark on the two-year anniversary of the fatal shootings at a Jewish day school of Rabbi Jonathan Sandler, his two sons, Arieh, 6, and Gabriel, 3, and Miriam Monsenego, 8. “The old antisemitism of the French extreme right is renewed,” Valls said, “It feeds off hate for Israel. It feeds off anti-Zionism. Because anti-Zionism is an invitation to antisemitism.” Antisemitism did not just disappear with the end of World War II. Like most Jews, we got used to having ugly things said about us from time to time. Mostly we were lucky and grateful for the many Christian friends who stood up for us, and still do. But nothing prepared us for today’s misinformation, demonisation of Israel, and the gut-wrenching, anti-Israel, antisemitic hostility expressed by many students, professors, church members, and even erstwhile “liberal” newspapers – and now, even Jews who act out their anti-Israel stance for heaven knows what reason. I was shocked by how unaware the Jewish community is and how little they are actually doing to counter this rising antisemitism in the guise of anti-Zionism. This new form of bigotry against Israel is called the “new antisemitism,” with “Israel” replacing “Jew” in traditional antisemitic imagery and canards, singling out and discriminating against the Jewish state, and denying the Jewish people alone the right to self-determination. The new antisemitism is packaged in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS), which claims to champion Palestinian rights though its real goal is to erode support for Israel, discredit Jews who support it and pave the way for eliminating the Jewish state. Many anti-Israel advocates deny that they belong to or support the BDS movement; this despite the documented fact that they on many occasions speak in support of boycotting, divesting from and implementing sanctions against Israel. They use subtle language that if pursued to its logical end would mean the end of Israel as the Jewish homeland because it would turn Israel into a Palestinian-Arab majority state. For Israel to retreat to the lines that as a border would make Israel completely exposed and almost impossible to defend, would be national suicide. It is surprising that an extremist group like BDS is ever taken seriously, yet its advocates have found receptive audiences in some circles. Their campaigns are well organised and in many cases well financed. They have lobbied parliamentarians, universities, corporations, food co-ops, churches, performing artists, labour unions, and other organisations to boycott Israel and companies that do business with it. Even if many don’t agree to treat Israel as a pariah state, BDS activists still manage to spread their anti-Israel misinformation, lies and prejudice simply by forcing a debate on their false claims. Those who fall for this in the spirit of hearing the other side find themselves in a trap of having to debate a lie, thereby lending credibility to it. To give you a taste of the viciousness of the BDS attacks, let me cite just one of many shocking examples. At a BDS event in Portland, USA, a professor from a Seattle University told her audience that the Jews of Israel have no national rights and should be forced out of the country. When asked, “Where do you want them to go?” she calmly answered, “I don’t care if they don’t have any place else to go. They should not be there.” When it was pointed out that she was calling for ethnic cleansing, both she and her supporters denied it. On other BDS occasions Jews were repeatedly accused of being killers, while at others, anti-Israel activists called Jews rapists. In my own experience, at the BDS anti-Apartheid week at UCT in 2011, I heard members of a panel declaim against Israel in the most offensive way. The empty rhetoric goes beyond being absurd – in one case, a very courageous young woman who defended Israel was asked by one of the panellists if she knew how many Palestinians have been raped by IDF forces. She answered that as far as she knew, none. The panellist triumphantly responded, “Israeli soldiers don’t rape Palestinians because Israelis are so racist and disgusted by them that they won’t touch them.” Such irrational argument is symptomatic of dangerous antisemitism. Yet, alarmingly, many Jews living in South Africa and elsewhere are completely oblivious of this ugly movement and the threat it poses. They seem to be unaware that this bigotry is peddled not only on campuses, but also by speakers in high schools, churches, and political meetings, deceptively camouflaged in the rhetoric of human rights. Jews in South Africa have a moral duty to defend Israel, a country that for decades has pursued peace with the Palestinians, and who consistently appeal for cooperation and negotiation despite rebuffs leading to murderous attacks being launched against them by an enemy whose sole motivation is its destruction. The final point I wish to make is, I believe that this whole edifice of hatred has been tackled in entirely the wrong way. I agree that when the Arabs, supported by the international press, tell lies they should be confronted, but not in a manner that makes the entire issue one of “how many were killed?” Whether it is a thousand Arabs who died or a hundred Israelis, you are still talking about dead people. That is the Arabs’ game, not the Israelis’. We are constantly giving those who would pillory us home ground advantage. David Ben Gurion said, “Jews did not take readily to bearing arms. As a people we have an ingrained abhorrence to violence….Our weapons were intellectual, based upon reason and persuasion. …for Jews to take rifles and defend that which they had sown seemed at first as going too far.” To effectively combat antisemitism, why emphasise death when Jews can promote what they are best at doing: celebrate life? Israel and Jews worldwide have by any standard an enormous amount of moral capital, and yet we hide it in a display of false modesty, or unconcern. We should be telling the world about how many lives we have saved – the thousands of Palestinians and others who are today walking and living with their families who, but for the medical genius and humanity of Israel would be dead or too severely ill to function normally. As just one such example: There is an organisation in Israel called Save A Child’s Heart (SACH) that has saved over 400 Palestinian children and many thousands from other countries. SACH is an Israeli-based international humanitarian project, whose mission is to improve the quality of paediatric cardiac care for children from developing countries who suffer from heart disease and to create centres of competence in those countries. Today Syria continues to disintegrate in a brutal civil war that has left nearly 500 000 dead and millions displaced. Israel initially responded by providing medical treatment to Syrian wounded, treating more than 3000 people in field hospitals on the border and in Israeli public hospitals. Israel works to keep starvation away from thousands of Syrians and provide basic medical treatment to those who cannot access it in their own war ravaged country. Over 600 Syrian children, accompanied by their mothers, have come to Israel for treatment. Two Israeli constructed clinics within Syria, another inside Israel, support 80 000 Syrians refugees. The quantity of food sent to Syria has increased more than tenfold in the past couple of years. Syrian civilians tell of their enormous gratitude for the aid that came from a country they had been educated to believe was their enemy. “Israel is the only country that has done something like this with the Syrians,” a wounded Syrian man who had been brought to Israel for treatment said. “Israel is the friend of the Syrian people, a humanitarian country.” These are the numbers we should be displaying on billboards and shouting to the rooftops, not how many have been killed, albeit in self-defence. Let us tell the world what tiny Israel has given, and is still giving, to all people in medical research, medical care in natural disaster areas, succour and medical help in war zones, water security and technological genius. Meanwhile, venture capital continues to pour into Israel. The business world, the engine of growth, education and prosperity, is voting with its feet to seek investments in the only reliable country that consistently points the way for the future of humanity. The hate-mongers will not be able to stand up to the bright light of truth. Let them skulk back into their corners confronted by a vigorous presentation of the facts. The future may look bleak. Hatred, jealousy, power-broking, bloodshed and antisemitism are still abroad on Earth. The world’s redemption lies through Israel and the effective combating of antisemitism. It won’t be easily done, certainly not by combat alone no matter how much Israel’s qualitative superiority of arms and men may be. This only retains the semblance of security. The countries of the world must be brought around to face the truth and face up to their responsibilities in combating antisemitism. Our only hope of doing that is to emphasise what Israel really stands for and what it can bring to the world. Israel is a legitimate country. It is also a moral country that can hold its head high in the company of the most moral in the international community. It has tried for peace and has failed only because of the recalcitrance of the Palestinians, who have no wish for peace or show any care for their own people. After the Holocaust, the Jewish people recognized that they must reclaim their own state, their historic homeland where they could forever be safe from a repetition of such horrors as an antisemitism that inevitably would lead to a Holocaust. Putting their trust in Western civilization was never again going to be enough. Since then, Israel has had to fight no fewer than five major wars for her very existence. She has been on the front line in the War against Terror and has been fighting the West’s battles, decades before 9/11 ever happened. Until radical Islam accepts the concept of an Israeli State, so will the struggle be likely to continue for another seventy years. There are those who seek more and more concessions from Israel but the Jews know that it is dangerous entrusting their security to anyone else. Very often in the West, especially when faced with the overwhelmingly anti-Israeli bias endemic in our left-leaning media, we fail to ask ourselves what we in South Africa would have done placed in Israel’s position? The population of South Africa is seven times that of Israel. In July 2006, to take one example, Hezbollah crossed the border with Lebanon into Israel and killed eight patrolmen and kidnapped two others, and that summer fired four thousand Katyusha rockets into Israel which killed a further forty-three civilians. To put that in perspective, If we multiply those numbers by seven to get the South African equivalent, just imagine what we would do if a terrorist organisation based in Zimbabwe were to fire rockets into Pietersburg and Messina, killing 300 South African civilians, after killing fifty-six South African servicemen in an ambush and capturing fourteen. There is absolutely no lengths to which our government would not go to protect its citizens under those circumstances, and rightly so. Why should Israel be expected to behave any differently? What right has anyone to expect Jews and the Jewish state to place themselves in a position where they would without doubt be contemplating another Auschwitz-Birkenau, invoking a memory of the infamous huts, slave labour, railway sidings offloading their human cargo, and crematoria? In case anyone reading this thinks that such a scenario is highly unlikely, just envision what has happened in Syria where hundreds of thousands have been killed and the economy and infrastructure all but destroyed. The state of Israel today guarantees that the obscenity of genocide which killed six million people in Auschwitz and camps like it will never again befall the Jewish people, to whom the rest of civilization owes so much. Can anyone deny this observation: No people in history have needed the right to self-defence and legitimacy more than the Jews of Israel, and that is what we, Jews, Christians and people of goodwill, demand today. Nothing ever seems to change in the Middle East. Still today at Masada the scene where freedom was deemed to be more worthy than life, where supreme sacrifice was chosen by the Jewish warriors, who believed truly that it is noble to die for your freedom and country. Troops called up to the Israeli army today still take the oath of allegiance as aircraft fly over, saluting those warriors enlisting for freedom. The same tradition of the Jewish people fighting for their freedom reinforces the need in every Jewish breast that they must have a homeland, and its achievement that led the League of Nations, and then the United Nations and, most importantly, the United States, that led President Harry Truman to proclaim that Israel would once again be an independent state and that the West, and especially America, would always be there to defend this brave nation against the threat of barbarism. Rodney Mazinter a Cape Town-based writer, poet and author, has been involved in media activism on behalf of Israel for many years. He has held many leadership positions within a wide range of Jewish educational and communal bodies, and currently serves as vice-chairman of the SA Zionist Federation in the Western Cape. 
The Hate Industry
Awareness and Morality
NOTES
