There’s an entire global industry dedicated to vilifying and isolating Israel, the world’s only Jewish-majority nation. It’s time to wake up and take careful notice. And it’s time, yes, to unleash the outrage and act. The stakes couldn’t be higher.
Seemingly overnight, anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and antisemitic incidents are being reported near and far. Many American Jews, who not so long ago thought these were threats faced by Jews elsewhere in the world but not here at home, are suddenly waking up to new realities.
Nicholas Kristof, the well-known New York Times columnist, wrote a piece this week entitled “Were My Criticisms of Israel Fair?” As he put it, he experienced “pushback from readers” who questioned his earlier thoughts on “the recent Gaza war.” This column was a response to those readers. I have considerable respect for Kristof, although I don’t always agree with his views on Israel. In this case, I thought his argument fell short in several important ways.
Without an understanding of what happened in the past, it’s impossible to grasp where we are today — and where we are has profound relevance for the region and the world. On June 5, fifty-four years ago, the Six-Day War broke out. While some wars fade into obscurity, this one remains as relevant today as in 1967. Many of its core issues remain unresolved.
It was exactly 20 years ago. My wife and I were attending a Shabbat dinner in Madrid on June 1st when someone gave us the news. A suicide bomber had struck a seaside discotheque, the Dolphinarium, in Tel Aviv. There were reportedly many casualties. It seems there’s no more understanding or, worse, concern among many today about what Hamas actually is than there was that unforgettable Friday evening in 2001.
As Hamas fired deadly missiles at Israel for 11 straight days, Israel’s critics fired one verbal salvo after another. Unable or unwilling to distinguish between a terrorist organization, Hamas, seeking Israel’s destruction, and a democratic country trying to deny the group’s wish, they went for the jugular. Here are 15 of the most memorably outrageous accusations.
In the The New York Times (May 14), U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders wrote an essay entitled “The U.S. Must Support an Evenhanded Approach in the Middle East” (and, unusually, 24 hours later, retitled “The U.S. Must Stop Being an Apologist for the Netanyahu Government”). Whatever the title, the thrust of the senator’s comments remains exactly the same.
I just watched your 10-minute monologue on the Israeli-Hamas conflict for your popular television program “The Daily Show” (May 11). Frankly, it wasn’t easy viewing. In fact, I began talking back to the screen, but, obviously, to no avail, so I chose instead to write you this open letter.
Hamas has territorial ambitions on Israel. In fact, that's putting it mildly: It would like to replace Israel in its entirety with a Muslim Brotherhood-ruled, Sharia-based state. Israel has no territorial ambitions on Hamas-ruled Gaza. To the contrary, Israel left it totally in 2005 to govern itself, something previous rulers, including Egypt and Ottoman Turkey, never remotely did. Israel hoped never to return.
May 8th marks the 76th anniversary of the defeat of Germany and its unconditional surrender to the Allied forces. Fortunately, it came 988 years short of Hitler’s prediction of a thousand-year reign, but not soon enough for the tens of millions of victims of Nazism. As the child of two Holocaust survivors, one of whom spent childhood years in Berlin, the anniversary for me is a time for remembrance, reflection, and rededication.
President Biden’s recognition of the Armenian Genocide was a groundbreaking event, one that American Jewish Committee had been advocating for over many decades. AJC CEO David Harris explains in his latest oped in The Times of Israel why acknowledging what happened to the Armenian people in 1915 is important, why the Jewish people care so much about historical truth, especially regarding genocide, and why more countries around the world should join those who have called the mass murder of Armenians by its rightful name.
Four years after the murder in Paris of Sarah Halimi, a 65-year-old French Jew, mother, and doctor, the case is back in the news in France. The French high court ruled this month that the perpetrator, Kobili Traoré, could not stand trial, even though no one contested that he had brutally beaten his victim and thrown her out a third-floor window, while declaring “Allahu akbar.”
Within a matter of days, two violent hate crimes targeting Asian Americans and Jews occurred in broad daylight on the streets of New York. If these were stand-alone incidents, they would be worrisome enough. But they are not. They are indicative of larger trends in America today, and their sources are multiple. Hate and division are on the rise, and two of the principal targets are Asian-Americans and Jewish Americans.
Modern Israel celebrates its 73rd birthday this week. Let me put my cards on the table. I’m not dispassionate when it comes to the country. It is an unparalleled tale of tenacity and determination, of courage and renewal.
Resuming contacts with Iran has become an early foreign policy priority for the Biden administration. American Jewish Committee (AJC) CEO David Harris, a long-time observer of the Iran issue, offers six recommendations to the Biden Administration for any future negotiations with the Iranian regime.
“If Only Israel (IOI) syndrome,” a term I began using several years ago, is the misguided notion, peddled in the name of Israel's “best interests” by some in the diplomatic, academic, and media worlds, that if only Israel did this or that, peace with the Palestinians would be at hand.
Those who genuinely care about antisemitism must open their eyes wide and be swivel-headed – and not allow partisan political thinking to narrow the field of vision and sense of outrage.
I am not naive about the complex history of Polish-Jewish relations, or the accusations emanating from both sides. Yet I believe, as the son of parents who suffered at the hands of both Berlin and Moscow, that what we share in common far exceeds what divides us. And those commonalities are profoundly important in our contemporary world.
