We’re not in the 1930s… yet

Diaspora Jews the world over face a rising tide not ‘merely’ of Israel-hatred but, increasingly, of Jew-hatred. And where social media incitement, misrepresentation, religious indoctrination and miseducation lead the public, politicians are quick to follow

This Editor’s Note was sent out earlier Wednesday in ToI’s weekly update email to members of the Times of Israel Community. To receive these Editor’s Notes as they’re released, join the ToI Community here.

Jews stabbed in the street, ambulances torched, a memorial to murdered Israelis and Iranians desecrated… and a political party, led by a Jew, gaining immense resonance and no little popularity due to its open hostility to Israel and infestation with antisemitism.

Last week’s stabbing in Golders Green took place a short walk from where many of my closest relatives lived for decades after the family fled Nazi Germany in 1937. So, too, the torching nearby of four community ambulances. And the arson attack on the memorial wall.

There was always an undertone of antisemitism in the London where I grew up, emblemized by name-calling and scuffling with nearby schools. But it really was minor stuff. Jewish northwest London, with Golders Green at its heart, was broadly serene — not a remarkable haven for a large Jewish community, but an unremarkable neighborhood where residents, many of whom were Jewish, lived without fear. Indeed, they lived broadly without even considering whether there was something they might need to be fearful about.

That’s changed now. Just as Diaspora life the world over has changed — most especially since Hamas invaded Israel on October 7, 2023, and a vast, well-prepared campaign swung into action to demonize the Jewish state and deny it the right to defend itself against aggressors openly determined to destroy it. It swept up Jew-haters from left and right. And, by the violent actions of its own adherents, targeting not only those members of the Jewish people who live in Israel, but Jews everywhere, it has shown itself to be a rising tide not “merely” of Israel-hatred but of Jew-hatred.

Many governments in the free world are increasingly hostile to Israel, inclining to policies and positions that would render it more vulnerable to its overt enemies led by Iran. And their domestic policies are often feckless in the face of rising violent antisemitism. Note Britain’s failure to face up to the danger even after a deadly attack on a Manchester synagogue on Yom Kippur, or the resolute unwillingness of the Australian government to tackle a stream of attacks on Jewish targets that culminated in the massacre on Bondi Beach.

And openly or tacitly antisemitic politicians are on the rise in even the most ostensibly enlightened nations: Witness the rise of the UK Greens under the cynical, self-hating Zack Polanski — he who denounced the Metropolitan Police for the violent arrest of the Golders Green stabber; or the election in New York of Zohran Mamdani, resolutely unwilling to recognize that the Jewish people has a right to statehood in its ancient homeland.

We’re not (yet) in the 1930s. The British government has certainly failed to protect its Jewish community, but it has not turned on the Jews. London’s Metropolitan Police is belatedly showing signs of determination to restore Jewish security.

Apparently blinded by distaste for the Jewish state, a jury of 12 not all good and true Brits could not bring themselves, in February, to convict an anti-Israel activist who video footage showed attacking a policewoman with a sledgehammer during a raid on Israeli defense firm Elbit. But this week, in a retrial, the assailant was belatedly found guilty of causing grievous bodily harm. Justice still prevails, eventually, in the United Kingdom.

But actively supportive of that post-October 7 strategy of delegitimizing Israel, or duped by it, public opinion the world over is shifting against Israel… and against Jews. And where social media incitement, misrepresentation, religious indoctrination and miseducation lead the public, politicians are quick to follow and seek to capitalize.

Unholy voices

Last week, in Sydney, the Australian Hellenic Choir pulled out of a joint benefit with the Sydney Jewish Choral Society, set for June 28, for the victims of the city’s Bondi Beach massacre. “There’s a bit of antisemitism in the Greek community; I didn’t realize the extent of it,” lamented the choir’s president James Tsolakis. “The Jewish people are all into it, I’m into it, but the Greek choir was a bit anti doing it because of the political climate.”

Performers who strive for heavenly harmonies refusing to blend their voices with those of Jews, in the cause of helping the victims of mass murder in their own city? Is that how far we have now fallen?

Not at all, claimed the choir amid the outcry, denouncing “an individual” — evidently Tsolakis — who had spoken “without authorization.”

“Recent media coverage has inaccurately suggested that members of the Australian Hellenic Choir are antisemitic. This is not true! The Choir stands for inclusivity, respect, and cultural exchange. Antisemitism, or any other form of discrimination, has no place in our organization,” its management committee said in a statement on its website. “Antisemitism had no place in this decision whatsoever!”

Rather, it claimed, the issue was that banal and familiar complicating factor: scheduling difficulties. The choir was rehearsing for another concert, the statement explained, and “time constraints” necessitated the cancellation.

Curiously, however, that same website shows only one remotely proximate concert — a “lunch soiree” on May 31, four weeks before the Bondi benefit.

Tsolakis resigned as choir president on Wednesday.

Smotrich blinded

Theocratic Jewish supremacist Bezalel Smotrich, who is also Israel’s finance minister, on Tuesday asserted that former prime minister Naftali Bennett’s decision to include the Islamist Ra’am party in his 2021-2022 government was far worse than the current government’s failure to prevent Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught — the worst attack on civilians in Israeli history, with some 1,200 people murdered and 251 taken hostage, which led to a multifront war in which some 1,000 more Israelis have been killed.

Asked by a radio interviewer which was “more grave,” the formation of the previous Bennett-Yair Lapid government with Ra’am or the failures of the October 7 massacre, Smotrich replied: “Of course, the formation of the government with Mansour Abbas.”

You can read the full dismal exchange here. It shows a politician at the very heart of Israel’s government determined — just as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who Smotrich has confirmed also wooed Ra’am, is determined —  to evade his and his government’s responsibility for the catastrophe, and to demonize rival politicians ahead of this year’s elections.

More than that, it shows a politician so blinded by his hatred for all Arabs as to be incapable of internalizing his and his government’s prime obligation, and failure, to protect our nation from its murderous enemies.