In a tumultuous geo-political environment where fresh political and military, challenges arise almost unexpectedly, mounting threats to Jews everywhere deserve urgent attention. This view is based not only on daily situations in the West, but on a long and distressing history.
Concerningly, a 2023 report indicated that in New York State, "44% of all recorded hate crime incidents and 88% of religious-based hate crimes targeted Jewish victims, the largest share of all such crimes." The report reveals an increase of 89% in these crimes over the last five years. In addition, the academic year of 2024 highlights increased campus unrest, ostensibly over whether Palestinians should be given a state as a reward for terrorism. If the demonstrators really cared about Palestinians, as the Muslim Arab journalist Bassam Tawil points out:
"they would be speaking out against the repressive measures and human rights violations perpetrated by Hamas in the Gaza Strip.... instead of improving the living conditions of their people, Hamas and PIJ leaders are imposing new taxes and leading comfortable lives in Qatar, Lebanon and other countries. Instead of bringing democracy and freedom of speech to their people, the terror groups are arresting and intimidating journalists, human rights activists and political opponents."
"Buildings at Cornell University [were] vandalized," read the report; "Michigan University student government [was] calling for severing of ties with Israel; and [there were] protests leading to more arrests at Columbia University,"
Across the Atlantic, in the UK, the hostility towards Jews has displayed by mass demonstrations, violence, and "hate-marches" in favour of Islamist terrorist organizations and their claims to a fictitious, borderless and lawless "Palestine." This situation shows no sign of letting up but, to the contrary, will probably escalate, with little chance of a compromise. The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, recently made reference to this development: "antisemitism plagues our world... from the Middle East to Europe and Africa, reports of attacks and hate speech have multiplied."
Rising hostility towards Jewish minorities has started to feel like a prelude to the Nazi-inspired event, Kristallnacht ('the night of broken glass'), on November 9, 1938, when thousands of Jewish homes, businesses, stores and synagogues, were looted and destroyed throughout Germany, Austria, and areas of Poland. More than 30,000 Jewish men were sent off to centration camps. Most were executed.
"Racial hatred and hysteria seemed to have taken complete hold of otherwise decent people. said an eyewitness. "I saw fashionably dressed women clapping their hands and screaming with glee, while respectable middle-class mothers held up their babies to see the 'fun.'"
While such extreme social manifestations of Jew-hate are not yet widespread in the West, similar events show a growing animosity. In the past, such feelings in the West were subtle and largely hidden. Now, to quote Steven Spielberg, "it is no longer lurking but standing proud like 1930's Germany."
Kristallnacht occurred at the time of Adolf Hitler's rising popularity when Jew-haters – both Nazi party supporters and average citizens alike - joined forces to vent their anger, probably about the collapsed economy, on the persons and property of Jews living peacefully in their midst. While the apparent catalyst was assassination of a German diplomat, Ernst von Rath, by a 17-year-old Jewish youth in Paris, France, another of the underlying reasons was likely mass Nazi propaganda blaming Jews for Germany's defeat during World War I, as well as the dire economic situation.
Despite the fact that, prior to the Nazi Party taking power, most Jewish citizens were seemingly well integrated into German society, crowds were nonetheless stirred by anti-Semitism emanating from the Reich Minister of Propaganda from 1933-1945, Joseph Goebbels.
One can understand why Chaim Weizmann (later, Israel's first president) wrote at the time, "The world seemed to be divided into two parts—those places where the Jews could not live and those where they could not enter." In other words, they were hated on all sides and had nowhere to go.
In an ironic imitation of Nazi-era demands that Jews leave their homes in Germany and go to "Palestine," calls are now made for them to get out of "Palestine," now the State of Israel. Jews again face violent radicals seeking to expel them from their homes. For centuries past, through pogroms in Europe, as well as persecution in the Muslim world, where Jews were ousted from cities, towns and villages where they had resided peacefully since biblical times.
Although a horrific repeat of violent pogroms occurred in Israel on October 7, 2023, Jews there are no longer trespassers but rightful occupants of their ancestral homeland. They can defend their right to live there, by force if necessary, and have successfully done so. Reminiscent of numerous historic massacres over a period of some 2,000 years, Jews in the European diaspora are now facing fresh calls for their expulsion and demise. These demands are stimulated by incendiary propaganda once again, but now emanating from Islamist extremists and their Western supporters who, unwittingly perhaps, identify with Nazi intent of extermination in their shared hatred for Jews and refreshed commitments to ideologies of "blood and soil."
As too frequently occurs, Jews suffer collateral damage from economic, ethnic, and religious developments beyond their control. Loud anti-Semitic displays of Jew-hate have erupted in Norway, France, Canada, UK, Ireland, Germany, Italy, Sweden, the US and other nations of the Western alliance with no sign of abatement, and effectively no concrete action by authorities. Although Western governments do not openly advocate discrimination against their resident Jews, "many of them are feeding anti-Semitic sentiments" to their citizens, such as allegations that Israel is supposedly committing genocide. There has also recently been the official recognition a prohibited by the Oslo Accords, which declared that any agreement between Israel and the Palestinians had to be negotiated face-to-face. Nevertheless, Spain, Ireland, and Norway have rushed to declare a State of Palestine.
Goebbels' Nazi-era anti-Semitic "strategy" has been largely duplicated by Hamas, Iran, and Hezbollah's "well-oiled propaganda machine." The lies were designed to "elicit sympathy abroad" while also seeking "on one front to instil fear among Israelis, and on another front to rally support from their Palestinian and international bases." This was precisely the Nazi method of resolving the so-called "Jewish question"; namely, to first "instil fear" among them and then "elicit sympathy" from the general population. The Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer relentlessly vilified Jews -- an act that resulted in frequent acts of terror that successfully "instilled fear," as was the intention.
A comparable incident occurred in the 2024 French national elections with the far-left political candidate, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, according to Drieu Godefridi:
"Mélenchon has been courting radical Muslim voters first and foremost, and is multiplying incendiary declarations in favor of Palestine, and hateful verbal arabesques about Jews. incendiary declarations in favour of Palestine, and hateful verbal arabesques about Jews... The message seems to be the all-too-familiar Marxist concept of Volksrache ("the people's revenge"): arousing hatreds in order to channel them towards the "enemies of the regime", and, in the end, liquidate them."
The Nazi regime applied this method so Jews would find themselves the objects of wrath, as do pro-Hamas activists in the West.
Jihadist media efforts, and especially massive donations to universities from Qatar and other oil-rich Islamic countries, have been so successful that many academics and students in Western tertiary educational institutions have been captivated by the narrow ideology of Jew-hate. Rabbi Andy Bachman warns that colleges across the US are the centre of "hatred, intolerance and violence" and have become "staging areas for levelling the incessant drumbeat charge of racism, colonialism, and genocide against Jews." He also identifies the foundational ideologies of "racism" and "colonialism" underpinning the hatred.
These ideologies can perhaps be understood as the interlinked concepts of blood, soil, and religion. First, ethnicity ('race') supposedly confers legitimacy. According to Nazi theology, as the Jews were not of Aryan descent they were illegitimate, unwanted, and unworthy of life. Many Islamists appear hold a similar approach: The 1988 Hamas Covenant's article 7, copied from the Hadith -- the acts and sayings of Mohammad, Islam's other holy book, after the Qur'an — states:
"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him."
Second, the question of soil: the homeland. Many Muslims – in a religion that did not even exist until the seventh century CE -- regard Jews not as people who have resided in the land continuously for nearly 4,000 years – rather longer than the 1,400 years since the seventh century CE, when Mohammad appeared -- but as trespassers in the region, settlers and colonialists, to be expelled or eradicated. Jihadists claim that the identical area, which, under the British Mandate, was called "Palestine," and lasted from the end of the Ottoman Empire in 1922, almost until Israeli independence in 1948. Under the British, everyone there was a Palestinian. "Palestine" was what was stamped on one's passport, whether one was a Muslim, a Christians or a Jews. As the late Palestinian Liberation Organization official, Zuheir Mohsen openly admitted to the journalist James Dorsey in the Dutch newspaper Trouw in 1977:
"The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct 'Palestinian people' to oppose Zionism."
Third, the issue of religion. In a 1940 radio address, the German novelist Thomas Mann, stated that the Third Reich's program in purging European Jews, "was nothing else but the ever-recurrent revolt of unconquered pagan instincts, protesting against the restrictions of the Ten Commandments." In the jihadist view, Islam is the one true faith and therefore Christians, Jews, Hindus, and all other "disbelievers" are following a false religion and therefore can be righteously killed:
"And when the sacred months have passed, then kill the polytheists wherever you find them and capture them and besiege them and sit in wait for them at every place of ambush. But if they should repent, establish prayer, and give zakah, let them [go] on their way. Indeed, Allah is Forgiving and Merciful." — Qur'an 9:5, Sahih translation
"Fight those who do not believe in Allah or in the Last Day and who do not consider unlawful what Allah and His Messenger have made unlawful and who do not adopt the religion of truth from those who were given the Scripture - [fight] until they give the jizyah willingly while they are humbled." — Qur'an 9:29, Sahih translation
"Kill them [disbelievers] wherever you come upon them1 and drive them out of the places from which they have driven you out." — Qur'an 2:191, Sahih translation
The situation becomes concerning for Jews everywhere, as well as for two political leaders of the US, President Joe Biden and vice president and presidential candidate, Kamala Harris. The "two-state solution" for them is Michigan and Minnesota. Biden and Harris, and leaders in the West generally, fail to condemn public demonstrations of Jew-hate and appear to tolerate such acts domestically.
In general, ambivalence and appeasement are hallmarks of Biden's administration. In his August, 2024, Democratic National Convention speech, Biden said, "those anti-Israel protesters out in the street, they have a point." Vice-President Kamala Harris stated, "the protesters are showing exactly what the human emotion should be, as a response to Gaza, and I understand the emotion behind it." Shortly after the jihadi massacre on October 7, Biden declared "rock solid and unwavering" support for Israel but soon ended up denying Israel defensive weapons, or promising their delivery in 2029!
With criticism of their blatant anti-Semitic acts – and to try to avoid accusations of religious, ethnic racism -- pro-Hamas groups such as "Student Intifada" on the Western campus disguise Jew-hate within the now-derogatory code word "Zionists." This terms seems intended to avoid delicate connotations of the Jews' religion or ethnicity and deflects the focus of their accusations exclusively to that of soil: that Jews are illegal settlers-colonialists on purportedly Palestinian land.
At colleges such as Sarah Lawrence in New York State, "deep hatred is so embedded into many facets of the campus that an entirely new strategy is necessary." It can be certain, therefore, that pro-jihadist activists "will be back this fall, louder and more determined than before." As the college campuses frequently produce future educators and political leaders, the current situation looks a bit bleak. At least in Israel, unlike other nations, the government is concerned for the safety of its citizens.
In spite of widespread threats to national security, Western nations have been slow to react, if they react at all. They do not seem to grasp that the animosity towards their Jewish citizens is indicative of a deeper challenge to the existence of West's liberal democratic tradition, as a whole. Political leaders appear not to comprehend the long-term plan of their nation's adversaries. China, Russia, North Korea and Iran all seek the West's downfall and are implementing malignant strategies -- military, economic and electronic -- to being this about. As the China scholar Gordon G. Chang has pointed out, Communist China has already planted surveillance devices in industrial cranes in US ports that could easily be instructed from Beijing to bring all supply-chains to a halt or crush vessels by dropping shipping-containers on them.
Vilification of Jews is often a litmus test, an indicator of coming strife. In Germany, during the Nazi era, persecution started with Jews, then quickly spread to members of other ethnic groups, other religions, "imperfect" people, economically unproductive people and so on. Then came imperialist-nationalist aims, justified by ideologies based on blood, soil or religion. The result was injury and death to millions.
For some reason, the Jews always seem to be unjustly blamed for what occurs –scapegoats for other issues in society. During the horrific Chmielnicki massacres of 1648, for instance, Jews became innocent victims in a conflict between Cossack warriors and Polish forces, and were slaughtered mercilessly.
During the 17th and 18th centuries, remote tribes of "Mountain Jews" located along both sides of the Azerbaijani-Russian border, were "attacked and killed in fighting that took place between their neighbors." Jews were slaughtered during the Inquisition, and centuries earlier, during the First "Christian" Crusade of 1096, knights on their way to liberate the Holy Land from Muslims killed any Jew they met. Upon arrival in Jerusalem, Crusaders slaughtered the Jews there:
"[T]he Crusaders conquered Eretz Israel, reaching Jerusalem in 1099. Once there, they gathered all the Jews of Jerusalem into the central synagogue and set it afire. Other Jews, who had climbed to the roof of Al-Aksa mosque on the Temple Mount, were caught and beheaded."
Anti-Semitism should not be minimized nor disparaged. It is not a temporary development. It is an ongoing, unyielding, malignant ideology manifesting itself over millennia. Whenever it finds no opposition, it grows explosively.
At this distressing time, one might recall the words of Rabbi Isaac ben Judah Abarbanel (1437-1508): "There are religions today who put to death all who would repudiate their faith. The Ishmaelites of Islam fall into this category." More than five hundred years later, nothing much has changed.
Nils A. Haug is an author and columnist. A Lawyer by profession, he is member of the International Bar Association, the National Association of Scholars, a faculty member at Intercollegiate Studies Institute, the Academy of Philosophy and Letters. Retired from law, his particular field of interest is political theory interconnected with current events. He holds a Ph.D. in Apologetical Theology. Dr. Haug is author of 'Politics, Law, and Disorder in the Garden of Eden – the Quest for Identity'; and 'Enemies of the Innocent – Life, Truth, and Meaning in a Dark Age.' His work has been published by First Things Journal, The American Mind, Quadrant, Gatestone Institute, Jewish News Syndicate and many others.
Paul