antisemitism Archives | Page 2 of 9

From Aalst to America: the post-modern, anti-Jewish reconfiguration of the west

February 28, 2020February 28, 2020 MelanieAalst, antisemitism, JCPA, Shmuel Trigano

The annual parade in Aalst, Belgium, last Sunday turned into a carnival of monstrous Jew-hatred. Participants portrayed Jews as insects topped with fur shtreimel hats and peyot (sidelocks). Others were dressed in Nazi uniforms, among other vicious Jewish caricatures, libels and insults. The mayor of Aalst defended the carnival on the basis that it mocked Christians and Asians, too. He thus showed no understanding of the difference between vulgar mockery and the murderously dehumanizing, historical phenomenon of antisemitism. This was followed by a carnival parade in the Spanish village of…

Culture wars

Sanitising Soros through guilt by association

February 21, 2020 MelanieAlan Dershowitz, antisemitism, George Soros, nationalism

The law professor Alan Dershowitz has thrown a legal hand-grenade into America’s political civil war by claiming to have evidence that former President Barack Obama “personally asked” the FBI to investigate someone “on behalf” of Obama’s “close ally,” billionaire financier George Soros. He made his cryptic remark in an interview defending U.S. President Donald Trump against claims he interfered in the prosecution of his former adviser, Roger Stone. Dershowitz, a confirmed liberal, drew the ire of the left by joining Trump’s impeachment defense team —not because he’s a Trump fan,…

Israel Jewish people

Denying their parent and embracing their assassin

February 14, 2020 Melanieantisemitism, church, Islam, supersessionism

The Church of England has once again been performing the ritual that has been enacted by progressive protestant churches in the West for decades: liberal self-flagellation. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said this week that he was ashamed of the Anglican attitude to black people, and declared that the church was “deeply, institutionally racist.” So ashamed was he of having previously been unaware of his “white privileges and advantages,” he even compared the behavior of the church to the way the German people allowed the Nazis to persecute the…

Global conflict Jewish people

Holding hostage the memory of the Jewish dead

January 24, 2020 Melanieantisemitism, holocaust, Poland, Russia

A profound and bitter battle between Israel and Poland has been brought to crisis point by the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, which is being commemorated by world leaders this week at Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem and next week at Auschwitz itself. The roots of the row lay in remarks made last December by Russian President Vladimir Putin. He claimed that Poland helped start World War II, and accused it of being an antisemitic country that had welcomed Hitler’s plan to liquidate Europe’s Jews. A few days later, Polish…

Jewish people

The west mourns the Jewish dead. But what about the living?

January 17, 2020 Melanieantisemitism, Auschwitz, holocaust, Jewish history

At Yad Vashem in Jerusalem on Jan. 23, some 46 political leaders and royals, including Britain’s Prince Charles, will be attending the fifth World Holocaust Forum to commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Day and the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. At this and doubtless other such memorial events, many eloquent, important and heartfelt observations will be made about the evils of Nazism and Jew-hatred. In today’s climate, however, there’s something disquieting about such memorializing. Given the eruption of physical and verbal attacks on Jews in Britain, America and Europe, it…

Culture wars

Antisemitism: the ultimate marker of cultural derangement

January 3, 2020January 7, 2020 Melanieantisemitism, New York, rationality

The attacks against Jews in New York and London during the past week have left people deeply shocked. The stabbing rampage against Hanukkah celebrants in Monsey, N.Y., following a deadly attack on a kosher supermarket in New Jersey in which two Chassidic Jews were shot and killed, has produced much anguished discussion among American Jews about the loss of a security they had previously taken for granted. In London, graffiti promoting an unhinged conspiracy theory linking Jews with the 9/11 attacks materialized on a synagogue wall and storefronts prominently situated…

Britain Israel

A Boris bear-hug against British antisemitism

December 27, 2019December 27, 2019 Melanieantisemitism, Boris Johnson, jews, Palestinians

Is the British government beginning to change its century-old attitude of ambiguity towards Israel and come out instead as its unequivocal friend? Don’t get too excited just yet. It’s certainly true that, fresh from his thumping election victory, Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson delivered an extraordinary Hanukkah message to the country’s antisemitism-beleaguered Jewish community. Going far beyond predictable seasonal bromides, he delivered a very pointed profession of heartfelt support. The festival of lights, he said, was a time to celebrate the Jews’ unique identity. “When the Maccabees drove the forces…

Britain Culture wars USA

Political auto-immune disease among diaspora Jews

December 19, 2019December 20, 2019 Melanieantisemitism, Board of Deputies, Islamophobia, Jewish Chronicle

Why are so many diaspora Jews doing the dirty work of their mortal enemies for them? In the United States, most Jews still support the Democratic Party despite the refusal by some politicians — namely, the four freshmen congresswomen who call themselves “the Squad,” and have made anti-Jewish and anti-Israel remarks — to distance themselves from the Jew-baiting Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. American Jewish leaders are also deeply reluctant to speak out against black or Muslim Jew-hatred, of which there have been some shocking recent examples. Immediately after…

Britain Culture wars

The shocking thinking of Britain’s Jewish community leadership

December 19, 2019December 19, 2019 Melanieantisemitism, Islamophobia, Jewish Chronicle, leadership

My column in last week’s Jewish Chronicle, which you can read here, ignited a firestorm of controversy – most of it abusive, much of it tendentious, and all of it missing the point of or actively misrepresenting what I actually wrote. In the piece I argued that, while attacks on Muslims should be condemned, the specific charge of Islamophobia was designed to silence any criticism of the Islamic world. I further argued that it was terribly wrong to equate antisemitism with Islamophobia, the accusation of which provided cover for Muslim…

Culture wars Videos

Our cultural crisis: conversation with John Anderson

December 17, 2019December 17, 2019 Melanieantisemitism, cultural crisis, John Anderson, national identity

I recently sat down for a second video discussion with John Anderson, the former deputy prime minister of Australia, over the crisis in western culture and society. We discussed my own political journey, described in my memoir Guardian Angel, in which I came to understand that the great battles over the traditional family or education involved a wholesale repudiation of objectivity, evidence and truth itself. The result is our current era of cultural totalitarianism. We also talked about the war to the political death between on the one hand, national…