Hooray for America, the First Amendment, the ability to learn almost anything almost instantly: we live in the Internet Age.

But sometimes freedom has a dark side, and the Internet certainly has that.  Ya’akov Eilon, an Israeli news broadcaster for many years, is now the news director at Keshet Broadcasting, an Israeli broadcasting company.  Keshet, in collaboration with a Canadian company, has produced and released an important new film.

This film, “The New Anti-Semitism,” is one that every Jewish child, parent and grandparent should watch.  This documentary takes information many others have already recognized: that anti-Zionism is the updated and more fashionable disguise anti-Semitism often wears these days. But Eilon’s video goes one important important step further – it shows how this new form of anti-Semitism gets played out in the ubiquitous, and almost entirely unpoliced forum of the Internet.

The 40 minute film covers a lot of ground, but of special significance is watching the mutation of bald-faced lies.  One example is that the Jewish owner of the Twin Towers building masterminded the catastrophic attacks on 9/11 – why?  Why, to collect the insurance money, of course.

But as with all conspiracy theories, lies uttered with a straight face and, especially, in front of a room full of rapt listeners, filmed and spliced in with swelling scores and impressive statistics, turns what in print would be obviously ludicrous into a whisper down the lane of possible truths and “I heard that….” Once such a sequence shows up on multiple websites, it gains the patina of truth and then metamorphoses, for those already predisposed or simply neutral and ignorant, into a hardened fact.

The classic theories of Jews controlling the media, the banking and the financial industries are part of the new anti-Semitism, but there are several twists.  For example, the film interviews Americans who believe Jews are responsible for U.S. immigration policy – the goal of which is to pollute the white race – and the “explanations” that Norwegian mass murderer Anders Brevik acted on orders from Jews.  Naturally, many of the theories ultimately end up with Jews as the Jewish State really being uber-Nazis, thereby minimizing the harm of the Holocaust or of any current insult or assault.

So, nearly seventy years after the end of World War II, Jew-hatred has found not only a new costume, but a new stage on which to perform.  Your children may have learned to recognize the warning signs of anti-Semitism, but their classmates, professors, politicians, and future employers who haven’t, are susceptible to this new strain.  And so it is this new mutation of the ancient hatred with which we must learn to cope.

“The New Anti-Semitism” was aired for the first time in Israel on the eve of Yom HaShoah, April 7.

This film should be shown at schools Jewish children attend – whether or not they are Jewish schools.  It is one more essential inoculation against anti-Semitism that is now available, and is now necessary.  Keshet Broadcasting has provided this novel and necessary arrow which must be added to their quiver.

Major Jewish institutions show a marked propensity to promote and celebrate the enemies of Israel and even anti-Semites. Here are some examples, working backwards chronologically:

* Cardozo Law School of Yeshiva University: Plans to give its International Advocate for Peace Award to Jimmy Carter, author of Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, on April 10.

* The 92nd St. Y: Scheduled (but then postponed) a talk by Roger Waters of Pink Floyd, leading exponent of artistic boycotts of Israel and purveyor of antisemitic canards.

* San Francisco Jewish Film Festival: Showed Rachel, a film hailing anti-Israel activist Rachel Corrie, and had Corrie’s mother speak at the showing.

* Brandeis University: Bestowed an honorary degree on Tony Kushner, who says “it would have been better if Israel never happened” and accuses Israel of “ethnic cleansing” Palestinians.

* Republican Jewish Coalition: Invited Christopher Hitchens to address it, despite his calling Ariel Sharon “vile” and Zionism a “false messiah for the Jews.”

* Cardozo Law School: Gave its International Advocate for Peace Award to Desmond Tutu who has said that “Israel is like Hitler and apartheid.”

These examples hardly exhaust the list: last month, for example, the Barrack Hebrew Academy in Philadelphia hosted Abdulaziz El Sayed Nosair, the son of El Sayed Nosair who killed Meir Kahane in 1990.

What is it about Jewish organizations that they acclaim their opponents? A belief that treating opponents generously will inspire reciprocity, even though this almost never works.

Here is a more serious example of this same impulse, concerning the Israeli government in 2000, as explained by David Wurmser in an article published a few days ago, “The Geopolitics of Israel’s Offshore Gas Reserves”:

To help the development of the Palestinian economy – which was seen as key by Israeli and American leaders to politically moderating the Palestinian population and solidifying peace – and lay to rest any potential arguments in the future over the resource, Israel carved from within the demarcation of its proposed Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) between itself and Gaza an indentation rather than run the demarcation line straight from the coast as is done in every other EEZ demarcation across the globe. Israel agreed to allow the line to be indented to Israel’s disadvantage so that the entirety of Gaza Marine will be included in the Palestinian Authority area. The gas, which was to be used both inside Gaza for electricity production and exported to Israel, was to help the Palestinian Authority fund itself, have resources to build up its stature among Palestinians, and by stimulating development, to encourage political stability and moderation.

Comment: One watches and waits in vain for a recognition that being nice to enemies does not solve problems.

Originally published at DanielPipes.org, April 8, 2013.

I was appalled to learn a week ago that the Israeli prime minister had apologized to his Turkish counterpart for his government’s actions during the Mavi Marmara incident, seeing this as feeding the Turkish government’s inflated sense of grandeur and power.

That prediction was borne out in spades.

The municipality of Turkey’s capital city, Ankara, put up billboards on city streets reveling in the Israeli apology. They are not subtle, showing a sad-looking Netanyahu beneath a larger, buoyant Erdoğan, separated by the Mavi Marmara itself. Addressing Erdoğan, they read: “Israel apologized to Turkey. Dear Prime Minister, we are grateful that you let our country experience this pride.”

Erdogan himself claims not only that the apology has changed the balance of power in the Arab-Israeli conflict but that it obligates Israel to work with Ankara in its diplomacy with the Palestinians. He told parliament:

The point we have arrived at as a result of our consultations with all our brothers in Palestine and peripheral countries is increasing our responsibility with regard to solving the Palestinian question and thus is bringing about a new equation.

Erdogan also claimed that Israel agreed to cooperate with Turkey on talks with the Palestinians. Hürriyet Daily News goes on to paraphrase Erdoğan:

He said all his regional interlocutors, including Khaled Mashaal of the Hamas, admit that a new era has begun in the Middle East what they all call after Turkish victory on Israeli apology.

No less notable is Erdogan’s petty put down of the Israeli side:

Erdogan said his conversation with Netanyahu took place under the witness of Obama but he wanted first to talk with the US President as he missed his voice. “I talked to him and we have reviewed the text and confirmed the [apology] process. we have therefore accomplished this process under Obama’s witness,” Erdogan said, adding this phone conversation has also been recorded alongside with written statements issued from all three sides.

Ryan Mauro sums up Turkish actions over the past week:

Erdogan is extending his time in the spotlight by demanding that Israel pay $1 million to each of the nine casualties’ families, ten times the amount Israel has offered. He isn’t yet dropping his case against the Israeli generals involved in the raid, nor is he fully restoring diplomatic ties with Israel. And he’s announced that he will visit the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip in what is a thinly-concealed victory lap.

Indeed, the Turkish gloating has been so conspicuous and extended that it may have prompted to a healthy sense of reality. So long as the Mavi Marmara incident hung over their relations with Ankara, Israelis and others could believe that an apology would magically undo the past decade. The illusion could persist that the Turks, however unreasonably, just needed to put this unpleasantness aside and things would revert to the good old days.

Now that Israelis humiliated themselves and Erdogan is rampaging ahead, some are awakening to the fact that this apology only made matters worse. Naftali Bennett, Israel’s minister of economy and trade, slammed the Turkish response:

Since the apology was made public, it appears Erdogan is doing everything he can to make Israel regret it, while conducting a personal and vitriolic campaign at the expense of Israel-Turkey relations. Let there be no doubt — no nation is doing Israel a favor by renewing ties with it. It should also be clear to Erdogan that if Israel encounters in the future any terrorism directed against us, our response will be no less severe.

Boaz Bismuth of Israel Hayom colorfully notes that Israelis “didn’t expect to feel that only several days after Israel’s apology, Erdogan would already be making us feel that we had eaten a frog along with our matzah this year.”

Perhaps after all the apology was a good thing. For a relatively inexpensive price – some words – Israelis and others have gained a better insight into the Turkish leadership’s mentality. It’s not that they suffer from hurt pride but that they are Islamist ideologues with an ambitious agenda. If the misguided apology makes this evident to more observers, it has its compensations and possibly could turn out to be a net plus.

Originally published at DanielPipes.org and The National Review Online, The Corner under the title, “On Second Thought … Maybe that Israeli Apology to Turkey was a Good Idea,” March 29, 2013.

On Feb. 27, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan told a conference in Vienna, “Just like Zionism, anti-Semitism and fascism, Islamophobia must be regarded as a crime against humanity.” His calling the Jewish nationalist movement that built the State of Israel a “crime against humanity” prompted widespread criticism, including by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

On Mar. 19, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced, “I stand behind my remarks in Vienna.” Nonetheless, on Mar. 22, Binyamin Netanyahu issued the long-awaited apology to Turkey for the Mavi Marmara incident. His statement made it clear “that the tragic results regarding the Mavi Marmara were unintentional and that Israel expresses regret over injuries and loss of life. In light of the Israeli investigation into the incident, which pointed out several operational errors, Prime Minister Netanyahu apologized to the Turkish people for any errors that could have led to loss of life and agreed to complete the agreement on compensation.”

My take: Erdoğan’s government has mastered the art of provocation and is being rewarded for it. The Israelis should not have apologized but should have demanded an apology from Ankara for its support to the terrorist-connected group that undertook this aggressive act.

Now that the deed is done, can we expect a change in Turkish policy toward Israel, an end to its aggressive statements and support for its enemies? That would surprise me. Rather, I expect the AKP government to pocket this apology and use as a building block for its neo-Ottoman empire. (March 22, 2013)

Originally published at DanielPipes.org and The National Review Online, The Corner, March 22, 2013.

A county council in Scotland has expressed its support for boycotting Israel.

Clackmananshire County Council, the smallest local authority in Scotland, passed a motion in which it resolved to “resist, insofar as legislative considerations permit, any action that gives political or economic support to the State of Israel.”

The motion, passed last week without opposition and with only three abstentions, also compared Israel to apartheid South Africa and hoped that “individual and collective sanctions against the State of Israel will end apartheid and suffering in Palestine.” The move has been condemned by Britain’s Jewish community and pro-Israel groups.

A statement from the Fair Play campaign group — an organization set up in 2006 by the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council — criticized the council.

“The idea of Clackmannanshire Council having its own foreign policy is ridiculous. This misguided and offensive motion will have no impact on the real world, a fact acknowledged by the motion itself when it stresses that it will only act ‘insofar as legislative considerations permit.’ We urge the Council to grow up and abandon this biased stunt of a motion,” the statement said.

So two Jewish academics, one American and one Israeli, co-author a report with a Palestinian professor, paid for by the US State Department, claiming that Palestinian textbooks don’t really incite hatred against Jews and Israelis, that Israeli books are biased too, and it’s just a question of different ‘narratives’. It turns out (are you surprised?) that it is a bunch of nonsense.

Dangerous nonsense, though, because the issue of ‘incitement’ is critical — that is, if the Palestinians teach their children that

Zionism is “a colonialist political movement founded by the Jews of Europe in the second half of the 19th century… [intent on] displacing the Palestinian people in Palestine from their land.” and far worse, then it calls into question their desire to live peacefully alongside a Jewish state, as well as the advisability of Israeli concessions in order to reach an agreement with them. In all, this is a small skirmish in one of many battles in the larger information war which is a major theater in the conflict between Israel and its neighbors. Despite being nonsense, it is an effective gambit due to the academic credentials of the authors and the ‘scientific’ pretensions of the report, even though the whole enterprise is based on faulty premises (read this for the ugly details). The State Department certainly got full value for its money.

Now I want to switch gears, because it isn’t the question of textbooks and incitement that I really want to talk about (check Palestinian Media Watch for more examples than you wanted to see).

Note that the two non-Arab co-authors happen to be Jewish.

I used to write ‘man-bites-dog’ stories about Jewish anti-Zionism. I would write, “with Jews like these, who needs antisemites?” I spent a lot of time trying to understand their apparently inconsistent behavior, given the importance of the Jewish state to the cultural and physical survival of the Jewish people. I wrote literally tens of articles on the subject of J Street, the phony pro-Israel organization, and about the recently-elected head of the Reform Movement, who was an activist in J Street and the New Israel Fund.

I have stopped being surprised at this. It no longer appears remarkable to me when I notice that the leaders of anti-Zionist groups are Jews, sometimes rabbis. I am beginning to sympathize with whoever it was who said that whenever he or she sees a Jewish name at the bottom of a letter to the editor, there’s no need to read it. I can only shrug when I note the overwhelming Jewish support for the most anti-Israel US administration since 1948. I don’t dislike Max Blumenthal as much as I disliked Yasser Arafat any more.

There are reasons for all of these things, in psychology and politics. I am no longer interested in them. I have always thought that my mission was, above all, to educate my Jewish friends about Zionism and why it is important for Jews to be Zionists. I am no longer sure that this is possible.

No, now there is only one overriding issue for me:

How do we get Chuck Hagel a Bar Mitzvah?

—— Note: No, I don’t really think Chuck Hagel is Jewish. There is no evidence for that, unless you count his over-the-top anti-Zionism.

Visit Fresno Zionism.

I disagree with my colleague Jonathan Kay’s recent article “American super-hawks demand to know: ‘Are you Jew enough?’”

First, let me thank him for referring to me as “a feminist-turned anti-Islamist” and not as “anti-Muslim” or as an “Islamophobe.” However, in becoming an “anti-Islamist” I did not check my feminist credentials at the door; my work on honor-based violence, including honor killing among Muslims and Hindus (mainly in India) is pure feminist work. The victims are primarily women of color, and yes, in the West, they are primarily Muslims. I am championing their cause just as I have championed the cause of non-Muslim Western women. I work with Muslim and ex-Muslim dissidents who share my Enlightenment values, a single universal standard of human rights, and who, like me, have taken a stand against the persecution of girls, women, homosexuals, free thinkers and pro-Israel advocates in the Muslim world.

Second, my good colleague Kay is wrong about the early demise of conspiracy theories and blood libels against the Jews. There are so many late 20th- and early 21st-century varieties: Zionism=Racism, the Mohammed al-Dura blood libel, the Jenin massacre libel, not to mention claims that Israelis are sterilizing the Palestinians, harvesting their organs for profit, and killing babies.

Many people in North America and Europe, as well as in the Muslim world, still believe that the forgery known as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a true and accurate picture of Jews. Twenty first century European surveys, media coverage, cartoons, and direct verbal and physical attacks upon European Jews, Jewish Centers, and synagogues all document a rising hatred towards Jews and towards the only Jewish state (which is seen as controlling the world and the media). And, in 2012, a survey in the United States, found that 35 million American adults (or 15% of the population) believe that “Jews have too much power in the United States” and are “more willing to use shady practices.” More than 70 million American adults believed that American Jews are “more loyal to Israel than to America.”

I don’t know of any surveys that poll Italian-Americans, Polish-Americans, or Muslim-Americans on the dual loyalty question.

We also know that Canadian universities sponsor Israel Apartheid Week quite regularly and activists, students and professors call for boycott, sanctions, and divestment (BDS) from one country only: Israel. Not from Iran, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, or India where Muslim-on-Muslim, Muslim-on-Christian, and Muslim-on-Hindu violence and real gender and religious apartheid are epidemic. On Thursday, at Brooklyn College, in New York City, there was yet another hate fest, this time sponsored by an academic department and featuring Omar Barghouti and Judith Butler, who are both strong supporters of BDS. There are no opposing views being presented. Hate speech and falsehoods are now being granted the protection of academic freedom and, in America, the protection of the First Amendment.

Thus, I am worried — and Jonathan Kay should share my concern. Like me, Kay is a feminist and a civil libertarian. However, unlike myself, he is unable and unwilling to see how much anti-Semitism/anti-Zionism (today the two are twinned), is emanating from left-liberals: Western intellectuals, academics, artists, and journalists whose “politically correct” racism i.e. anti-Semitism/anti-Zionism has made common cause with Islamist forces who very clearly desire the extermination of one state only: The Jewish state, and who are at war with women and with Western values.

I welcome the support of Christian Zionists, Evangelicals, and conservatives. I will not mock them merely because we disagree on some other subjects any more than I would mock feminists because we disagree on other burning issues.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I did not label the Shin Bet or the filmmaker of “The Gatekeepers” as “suicidal and traitorous.” I wrote this: “To the extent to which this film is accurate I salute it. To the extent to which it is false, defamatory, biased, exaggerated — I consider it suicidal and traitorous.”

By the way, Kay should know that these Shin Bet heads went public in 2003, not in 2012, and that they are the ones who urged Prime Minister Sharon to pull out of Gaza. Which he did. Israel now has Hamastan and constant rocket barrages on her border. Does Kay believe this is actually good for humanity and for the Jews?

This morning, the streets of Israel are littered with tens of thousands of now irrelevant campaign flyers blowing in the wind – a reminder that governments come and governments go, but the word of the Lord endures forever.

Amongst the piles of garbage are flyers boldly proclaiming that it is forbidden by Judaism to vote in the Zionist elections. These poor, confused souls who distributed these flyers forget that Abraham, Issac, and Jacob were Zionists. They forget that Moses was a Zionist, and Joshua, and King David, Rabbi Akiva, the Maccabees were all ardent Zionists too. They forget that Hashem is the biggest Zionist of all. After all, who has transformed the State of Israel into a dynamic world leader, in almost every field of endeavor, in such a short time, if not the Master of the World? It is He who returns His People to Zion, in fulfillment of our prayers. These people don’t like the way He is handling things.

One of their ridiculous claims is that God wouldn’t bring our Redemption about through secular Jews like “the Zionists.” Even though everyone can clearly see that this is exactly what Hashem has done in the last few generations, it isn’t kosher enough for some tastes.

In order to address their groundless claims, and keep others from being led astray by their blindness, we will excerpt some explanations from a small, but very important book, “A Question of Redemption,” written by Rabbi Yaacov Moshe Bergman, and translated by Rabbi Moshe Lichtman, who also gave us the wonderful translation of the incredible book, “Eim HaBanim Semeichah.”

Can the redemption come about through people who fail to keep God’s commandments?

When Jews dreamed of redemption in the past, they certainly did not imagine it unfolding in its present form.  Everyone believed that a righteous, God-fearing king would deliver the nation and generate a sweeping spiritual revival among the people, causing all of Israel to observe the mitzvot and become righteous Torah scholars.  However, to think that God must execute the redemption as we see fit is extremely reprehensible.  For My thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not My ways, says the Lord.  As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts [higher] than your thoughts(Yeshayah 55:8-9).

The redemptive process, from its very inception, has always followed the path that is furthest from our expectations.

The Exodus

Were all Jews God-fearing people at the time of the exodus from Egypt?  Did they all keep their ancestors’ traditions meticulously? Scriptures (Yechezkel 20) and Chazal indicate that the exact opposite was true.  Citing a Midrash Mechilta, Rashi teaches that the Jews were steeped in idolatry at the time, lacking even one mitzvah in whose merit they could be redeemed:

[God said:] “The time has come [for Me to fulfill] My promise to Avraham and redeem his descendants, but they have no mitzvot to perform in order to be redeemed… for they are steeped in idolatry”  (Rashi, Shemot 12:6).

The Jewish people had reached such a low spiritual plane that even Moshe Rabbeinu did not believe that they could be redeemed.  He, too, thought that redemption cannot occur unless the nation is completely righteous (Rashi, Shemot 3:11).  Indeed, today’s oft-repeated question – how can a spiritually debased people be worthy of redemption? – has a basis.  It is truly difficult to understand this; even Moshe Rabbeinu had trouble with it at first.  Nevertheless, redemption came specifically in this manner.

We must also remember, painfully, that only a minority of the nation was privileged to leave Egypt.  Eighty percent died in the Plague of Darkness, because of their sins (Rashi, Shemot 10:22). Midrash Tanchuma (BeShalach 1) quotes R. Nehurai as saying that only one out of every five thousand Jews left Egypt, and one opinion in the Talmud places the ratio at one in 300,000 (Sanhedrin 111a)!  Despite all this, the redemption began.  Let us not forget that the Plague of Darkness, in which the sinners perished, was the ninth plague that descended upon the Egyptians.  Even though Israel’s spiritual state was very poor during the first eight plagues, the redemption began and progressed.

The Second Temple Era

Scriptures state clearly that the Jews who returned from Babylonia with Ezra and Nechemyah were extremely irreligious. Many of them, including sons of officers and the High Priest, married foreign wives (Ezra 9:2).  They had forgotten the Torah to such an extent that they were unaware of the mitzvah to build sukkot (huts/booths) on the holiday of Sukkot (Nechemyah 8:14).  They desecrated the Sabbath openly, making it the market day in Jerusalem.  The Talmud tells us that many of the returnees were the most wretched Jews possible – bastards, foundlings, etc. (Kiddushin 69a).  Some of them even committed immoral sexual acts, like those of Sodom and Gomorrah (ibid. 70a, with Rashi). Despite their shortcomings, however, God redeemed them and even held them in high esteem (ibid.).

That generation had its share of “anti-Zionists,” as well.  Reish Lakish (the Talmudic Sage) asserts that the redemption in the days of Ezra and Nechemyah was short-lived because of those Jews who refused to return to Zion (Yoma 9b).  In other words, we could have merited eternal redemption 2,500 years ago, had all Jews returned to Eretz Yisrael.

R. Yehudah HaLevi strongly denounces these slothful Jews in his classic Sefer HaKuzari (2:24).  When the King of the Kuzars asks why the Jewish people do not ascend to Eretz Yisrael nowadays (in the eleventh century!), the Jewish sage answers mournfully:

Alas, King of Kuzar, you have exposed my point of disgrace! Indeed, this sin prevented the fulfillment of that which God had destined for the Second Temple…  For Divine Providence was ready to rest upon [the Jews] as at first, if they had all willingly heeded the call and returned to Eretz Yisrael.  However, only a minority took heed, while the majority – including the most prominent among them – remained in Babylonia, acquiescing to exile and bondage, just so that they would not have to part with their dwellings and businesses…  If we would be prepared to draw near to the God of our forefathers wholeheartedly, He would save us as He saved our ancestors in Egypt.  But since that is not the case, our utterances of “Bow at His holy mountain,” “Bow at His footstool,” “Who restores His presence to Zion,” etc. are like the chirping of the birds, for we say these things without proper intent.

Thus, redemption does not always unfold as we think it should. The previous two redemptions began when the Jews were very deficient in mitzvah observance, and Chazal say that the third (and final) redemption may occur in similar fashion.  According to R. Yochanan, it can even come to a generation that is completely corrupt (Sanhedrin 98a).

The Netziv’s Conclusion

Rav Naftali Tzvi Yehudah Berlin (the Netziv) lived most of his life in Volozhin, where he served as av beit din and rosh yeshiva of the foremost Torah center in Europe at the time.  He wrote many books, including Ha’amek She ’eilah, Ha’amek Davar (on the Chumash), and Meishiv Davar.  He publicized the following paragraphs in a book called Shivat Tzion – a compilation of letters from great Torah authorities in favor of the modern-day return to Zion:

We must not speculate that this great matter [the resettlement of Eretz Yisrael] should have occurred differently, as people visualize it in their mind’s eye…  Indeed, one must not express his opinion to God, as the prophet Yeshayah says, For My thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not My ways, [says the Lord]…  We must not be overly wise and say that it has to happen in a different way.  (Shivat Tzion, sec. 1, p. 17-18).

Ezra the Scribe gathered a few thousand Jews in Babylonia, all types of people – great Torah scholars, God-fearing individuals, and also men who had foreign wives, people who regularly violated the Sabbath, and those who had no Torah knowledge whatsoever.  These people worked together and prepared the Land for settlement, until it was eventually filled with its children.  We, too, must awaken to the sound of God’s desire, which resonates from one end of the earth to the other, wherever our brethren are scattered… all types of Jews…  (ibid., sec. 2, p. 6).

So, brothers and sisters, don’t let election results in Israel give you another excuse for not coming home to Israel. Don’t remain on the sidelines – become a part of Hashem’s wonderful and mysterious plan!