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Britain Israel USA 

From Congress to classrooms: reframing the Israel narrative

Melanie, , ,

Concern about resurgent antisemitism has been at fever-pitch among Diaspora Jews for years. In Britain, the veteran Jewish Labour MP Dame Louise Ellman resigned this week from the party to which she has belonged for more than half a century. A leaked Labour headquarters report on her Liverpool Riverside constituency party showed that in 2017, there was a “worrying amount of antisemitism” and a “toxic atmosphere” with members fearing for their physical safety. If the far-left party leader Jeremy Corbyn became prime minister, says Ellman, he would be a danger…

Culture wars Global conflict USA 

How black and white thinking clouds realpolitik

Melanie, , ,

Black and white thinking, which divides the world into absolute camps of good and evil, is associated with religious fanaticism from medieval Christianity to the Islamic world. There are now troubling signs that a secular equivalent is contributing to our current political turmoil. There appears to be an increasing inability to grasp that people are capable of both good and bad acts. There is a corresponding failure to acknowledge that just because someone is the target of falsehoods or bigotry, that person may not always be in the right. Recent…

conversation Culture wars 

The secular inquisition

Melanie, ,

A few days ago, the philosopher John Gray wrote on the Unherd website a bleak but precisely directed analysis of why the humanities can’t be saved. It used to be said, he wrote, that the humanities taught people how to think. No longer. “Students learn an intra-academic argot – intersectionality, hetero-normativity and the like — that has zero utility in the world in which they will go on to live.They also learn that disagreement in ethics and politics is illegitimate. Anyone who departs from the prevailing progressive consensus is not…

Global conflict Israel 

The incendiary balloon of international law

Melanie, , ,

For months now, Israel has been attacked by aerial incendiary weapons launched by Hamas during riots at the Gaza border fence. These weapons – balloons or kites attached to flammable material – are driven by the winds off the sea towards southern Israel. In just one week in June, they started nearly 100 fires in farmland and forests, in playgrounds and private yards. By last month, Hamas had burned more than 7,400 acres of Israeli land. At the same time, Israeli communities near the border are also routinely attacked with…

conversation Culture wars USA 

The real racism behind the Trump/Omar furore

Melanie, ,

There’s always something ugly and disturbing about an enormous crowd being roused to mass emotion by the words of a charismatic orator. So it was when Americans chanted “lock her up” about Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign in response to then candidate Donald Trump’s repeated claims that she had committed crimes for which she should be prosecuted. And so it was again during this week’s Trump rally in North Carolina when a section of the crowd started chanting “send her back” in response to President Trump’s attack on…

Global conflict 

The dark shadow Iran is casting on the world

Melanie, , ,

In Israel, as the drumbeats of war grow ever louder, people are preparing with a mixture of dread, stoicism and determination for the long-feared, ultimate showdown with Iran. After reported Iranian attacks on two oil tankers last month near the Straits of Hormuz, Iran also shot down a U.S. military surveillance drone. Following this, U.S. President Donald Trump said he had cancelled an airstrike on Iranian targets with only 10 minutes to spare because of last-minute concerns that the likely number of casualties would be disproportionate. Earlier this week, Iran…

antisemitism Culture wars Global conflict 

The dangerous equation of Islamophobia with antisemitism

Melanie, , ,

The Somali-born congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who has made a number of antisemitic remarks, is currently embroiled in controversy over her marriage history. When claims against her of bigamy and immigration fraud first emerged in 2016, Omar accused the journalists involved of “Islamophobia.” Omar has also made a claim being heard more and more: that Muslims are called antisemites only because they are Muslim. In other words, anyone who calls out Muslim antisemitism is Islamophobic. This twisted claim is a way of making Muslim antisemitism unsayable. The claim is being…

conservatism Culture wars 

Jewish conservatism is the key to our survival

Melanie, , ,

In his new book The Second Mountain, the American writer David Brooks says something that shocked me. After a long night of the soul Brooks, a distinguished New York Times columnist, has realised that what should drive us is not worldly ambition and achievement. What’s more important is to live a moral life and put others first. Accordingly, he’s also come to realise that the hyper-individualism now dominating the west, the ideological pivot of left-wing politics, is inimical to human flourishing. This is all part of his moral and religious…

antisemitism Britain Israel USA 

The groups who hand antisemites their get-out-of-jail-free card

Melanie, , ,

What has caused the deeply alarming upsurge in antisemitism across the West? As many have observed, there are three principal sources: the political left, Islamic culture and neo-fascist or white-supremacist cults. One further factor, though, is crucial. Never disappearing altogether, antisemitism can be kept to a low level by condign social disapproval that deems antisemites to be totally beyond the pale. If, however, that social stigma is lifted and society tolerates, excuses or sanitizes antisemitism, then it roars out of control. That’s precisely what is now happening. In America, astoundingly,…

Britain Israel USA 

Leaving Egypt to cross the (metaphorical) seas

Melanie, , ,

At the festival of Passover, which Jews are about to celebrate, the story is recounted of how the children of Israel managed to redeem themselves from slavery through their miraculous crossing of the Red Sea in which their Egyptian pursuers proceeded to drown. Plunging into the sea was a supreme act of collective faith by the escaping Israelites, involving extraordinary courage and requiring an equally crucial act of leadership. These three factors are in conspicuously short supply in the west today. In Britain, the stalled and sabotaged Brexit process irresistibly…