Another excellent column by Melanie Phillips, this one full of good advice for Jews on what to say when confronted by Jew-haters. I've used "there is no such thing as Palestinians" myself over the years. Now, I'd just like to punch these antisemites in the mouth,
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Diaspora Jews under siege; Israel’s defenders need to be smarter and more strategic
Melanie Phillips 5/30/25
"Travelling in America over the past three weeks to speak about my new
book, I found a Jewish community in shock, bewilderment and, after the
murderous attack last week on a young couple outside the Capital Jewish
Museum in Washington, DC, gripped by rising fear.
"Some of the most
poignant reactions came from liberals who, on October 7, 2023, had been
mugged by a sickening reality. Their belief in achieving harmony
between Israelis and Palestinian Arabs — a badge of their liberal
identity — had been shattered by the barbaric and depraved attacks
mounted upon Israelis that day by the people of Gaza.
"Far worse
had been the reaction to this by people they had assumed were friends
and colleagues who thought like them but were instead demonising Israel,
regurgitating the lies of Hamas and ending their friendship simply
because they hated not just Israel but those who supported it. And some
were openly anti-Jew.
"Among young people, this is
particularly heart-breaking. Having gained coveted spots at elite
universities, they have run a gauntlet of threats and intimidation on
campus; their hard-won careers have been placed in jeopardy if they
don’t go along with lie after lie about Israel, the most recent being
about starvation in the Gaza Strip.
"Eager
for the verbal ammunition with which to fight back, they haven’t found
it. They possess neither information nor a strategy that could help.
“What on earth do I say in this situation?” they repeatedly asked me.
“No facts or evidence seem to make the slightest dent in how these
people think.”
"Individuals can’t fight this on their own. These
Jews under siege have, in effect, been abandoned — with some heroic
exceptions — by leaders of the Jewish community. As in Britain, these
leaders are simply failing to address the lies.
"Unfortunately,
this is because too many of them believe some, if not all, of the
falsehoods. The relentless media saturation in Palestinian propaganda,
which receives so little informed pushback, has drawn them into that
poisonous echo chamber.
"In America, the fact that so many Jews are
ideologically attuned to liberal shibboleths means they have bought
heavily into the narrative of Palestinian Arab oppression that is now
the default position of Western progressives. The result is an absence
in the public square of truths people desperately need to hear, but
which many Jewish leaders find uncomfortable and dismiss as extremist
positions.
"For example, they should be saying loudly that
everything Israel does is in accordance with international law, and that
the Jews alone have the legal and historical right to the land many
times over.
"That the Jews are the indigenous people of the land; the Arabs are colonisers, and Zionism is a supreme decolonisation movement.
"That
there is no such thing as the Palestinian people. Palestinianism was
invented purely to destroy Israel and to steal the Jews’ own history in
the land from them. The Palestine cause is a glaring example of cultural
appropriation.
"And that anyone who supports the Palestinian cause
is incontrovertibly supporting an agenda of Nazi-style demonisation of
the Jews, ethnic cleansing and genocide.
"Just to list these key
statements of reality — so rarely voiced — is to realise the shameful
silence of the Jewish community’s leaders in the United States and the
United Kingdom, and the lethal vacuum they’ve allowed to develop in
public debate. They have effectively abandoned individual Jews and
activist groups trying to counter the falsehoods and sound the alarm
over such hate-mongering, leaving them to struggle against this
onslaught alone.
"Those involved in the defence of Israel,
moreover, need to understand a particularly devastating characteristic
of this current madness. It draws its astonishing traction from the very
fact that the Israel-haters are often idealistic people who hate
aggression and are committed to justice. And it’s why the claim of
antisemitism not only has no purchase but makes the onslaught even
worse.
"This is because there’s an infernal progression of thought
that follows inexorably from the false premise of the Israel-haters. If
you really do think that the Jews of Israel not only stole another
people’s land, not only have driven out and oppressed its rightful
inhabitants but are also now wantonly killing Arab babies in Gaza, then
you must think that the Israelis are evil people. You must think that
any Jews who support Israel and Zionism are therefore also evil.
"If
a people or their cause is evil, it’s not only permissible to detest
them and try to remove them from the world. It’s a moral obligation to
do so. If Israel, Zionism and the Jews are evil, then it’s a moral
obligation to detest them and try to remove them from the world.
"So
the truly horrifying situation is that to the Western liberal — for
whom Zionism is racism and Israel starves babies to death — antisemitism
is therefore not just the shield behind which the Jews sanitise
Israel’s crimes.
"It’s not what it actually is: a uniquely
murderous and deranged creed that all people of conscience must oppose.
Unbelievably, for the Western liberal, antisemitism has become a moral
obligation. The destruction of the Jewish homeland and the abuse of Jews
have become an expression of liberal conscience.
"And that’s why
the entire humanitarian establishment — the United Nations, the
International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, the
whole apparatus of human-rights law, and NGOs like Amnesty and Human
Rights Watch — all of this is focused on singling out Israel and the
Jews to be demonised and dehumanised.
"It’s why the most
“progressive” countries — Britain, Canada and Australia — are the most
viciously hostile to Israel. It’s rank, murderous, racist bigotry, all
in the name of conscience and justice.
"It’s as if Stalinism and
Nazism are finally winning against civilisation, destroying the Jews
through frying the Western brain. This is why so many feel they have
stepped through the looking-glass into a living nightmare.
"So what
is to be done? Clearly, the Jewish world is up against the old evil,
but of an unprecedented type and scale. And, of course, against such
derangement, reason doesn’t work.
"It’s important, though, to put
the facts into the public domain for those who are not immune to reason
but are simply ignorant of Judaism, the Middle East and the history of
the Jewish people. That, unfortunately, includes many Jews.
"As for
the haters who are indeed beyond rational argument, there is a strategy
that would be effective. This involves recognising their Achilles’
heel.
"What they most care about is not the “oppressed” Palestinian
Arabs whose cause they so noisily proclaim. They care, above all, about
their image to themselves and to others as moral, compassionate and
smart. There’s no point calling them out for antisemitism. And playing
defence is worse than useless because it’s to argue on the mind-twisting
terms they have set out and so is bound to fail.
"Israel’s
defenders should instead put these people on the back foot by calling
them out for being the very things that they purport to hate.
"So,
for example, they should be accused of promoting imperialism, in
supporting the Arab conquest of another country and extinguishing the
rights of its indigenous people; of being stupid, sloppy and credulous
in writing and broadcasting manipulative falsehoods; and of being
racist.
"Arabs comprise about 20 per cent of Israel’s population.
By demanding that the “settlers” be removed from the disputed areas of
Judea and Samaria because this supposedly prevents the creation of a
state of Palestine, the Israel-haters are supporting ethnic cleansing
and promoting a doctrine of racial purity. They should be told that
their progressivism is bogus.
"Jews in America and Britain should
stop presuming to lecture Israel about what it should be doing. If they
don’t live there, they have no right to do so. Their task — and it could
not be more urgent — is instead to start educating diaspora Jews about
Judaism and the Jewish people, and then take the fight to the enemy in a
far smarter and more strategic way."
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