Hate Crimes Remind Us That Anti-Semitism Still Exists and Requires Our Constant Attention

ANTI-SEMITISM IS UGLY AND INDECENT. Nobody can defend anti-Semitism,except by admitting that they harbor in their heart hatred based on nothing. • SOMETIMES ANT-SEMITISM IS COUCHED IN THE USE OF THE WORD "ISRAEL." Back on January 2, 2017, American Thinker's Andrew Pessin spelled it out : "It’s the Jews (in a word). Yet remarkably, this simple fact gets obscured in all the campus squabbling over whether anti-Zionism -- or anti-Israelism, as I prefer to call it -- is anti-Semitic or not. 'We are only advocating for Palestinian human rights,' anti-Israelists proclaim, even when most of their advocacy consists of angry attacks on Israel rather than serious efforts to promote the welfare and rights of Palestinian Arabs. 'We are only against Zionism, a political ideology, and not against Jews,' they continue, even though Zionism is precisely the movement for self-determination for Jews. 'We are only criticizing the behavior of a foreign state,' they insist, adding that opponents’ efforts to label their activities as anti-Semitic are merely attempts to silence their criticism of that state. Yes they are criticizing the behavior of a foreign state -- the lone Jewish state in the world, Israel, whose complete name is 'State of Israel,' i.e., the state of the 'people of Israel' : the Jews. It isn’t quite as simple as that, but nearly. And it is only when we get this point out in the open, and establish it clearly and irrefutably, that we can clear away the distracting material and isolate where the real debate about anti-Semitism in campus anti-Israelism should be. It isn’t so much about whether what they talk about when they talk about Israel is the Jews -- for (I will argue here) it so clearly and indisputably is. It is, rather, in the many outrageous things they are willing to say when they talk about Israel -- i.e. the Jews." • Pessin drives home the fact of Israel as THE Jewish State : "Not all Jews are Zionists; not all Zionists are Jews; not all Israelis are Jews; not all Jews are Israelis. All that is obvious. Nevertheless, those obvious facts notwithstanding, most talk about Israel, whether friendly or hostile, is talk about the Jews. (1) We start (again) with its name: the State of (the people of) Israel. More generally the state is widely referred to and conceived as 'the Jewish state,' both because it is the state 'of' the Jewish people and because it has in various ways a Jewish character. There may be some 22 Arab states in the world, some 57 member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, and a good number of officially Christian states, but there is only one single Jewish state. (2) Before there were 'Israelis' and 'Palestinians,' there were 'Jews' and “Arabs.' Before 1948, what everyone was complaining about, when they complained about Zionism, was what the Jews were doing. Nearly 70 years after 'Israelis' came into being the conflict remains, despite all sorts of qualifications and nuances, one between Jews and Arabs, with an important religious dimension as well. (3) That Zionists -- Jews -- sought this particular region for their state was also no accident, as this land was the birthplace of the Jewish people, the location of their ancient sovereign kingdoms, and the primary Jewish population center for the first millennium of their existence, it is a place where Jews have lived continuously for three millennia, and it has been the central focus of the Jewish religion through those three millennia as well, including during the two millennia of dispersion. (4) Israel is by far the most densely Jewish country in the world. Demographically it is overwhelmingly Jewish, with Jews comprising about 75% of the population. The next closest countries are not remotely close at all : American Jews are less than 2% of the US population, Canadian Jews are about 1% of the Canadian population, and then the numbers are vanishingly small everywhere else. At the same time Israel is, astonishingly, home to nearly half of the world’s Jews, and is a positive focus of attention and support (religiously, ethnically, culturally) for a significant majority of the other half. (5) The establishment and subsequent development of the State of Israel is the greatest collective project of the Jewish people in the past century at least -- and perhaps in their long history, alongside the development of the Jewish religion. (6) Many non-Israeli Jews feel positively invested in Israel, in its activities, policies, and welfare, precisely because of its Jewish character. Many such Jews come to Israel’s defense, despite not living in Israel, precisely because they understand attacks on Israel to be attacks on Jews, and because they feel some obligation to defend their people when their people -- Israel -- are under attack." • These considerations, states Pessin, do not mean that Israel comprises all the Jews in the world, or that the Israeli population doesn’t include many non-Jews, or that it is impossible to talk about Israel without talking about the Jews. Nor do they mean that talk about Israel is talk about all Jews, everywhere. BUT, states Pessin : "What they do mean is something simpler -- that of course Jews do (and should) come immediately to mind when one thinks or talks about Israel, that the compelling default assumption is that talk about Israel is talk about Jews, in general. To talk about Israel while ignoring or obscuring that fact is to miss something utterly essential to the nature and conception of the thing you are talking about. In the same way it is surely possible for you to talk about Pope Francis (for example) simply as a human being or as a man or as a physical object, but if you leave out or obscure the salient fact that (say) he is a Catholic, or Pope, then you have left out something essential. To pretend otherwise, to ignore or override what is a clearly compelling default assumption, is to engage in a profoundly dishonest act." • • • ANTI-SEMITISM IS INCREASINGLY RAISING ITS UGLY HEAD TODAY. Andrew Pession discusses the Israel-Palestinian issue. But, that is not our goal today. Today, we need to talk about the surge of campus anti-Semitism in France, Germany, the UK, and America. • • • CAMPUS ANTI-SEMITISM. AMERICA. Lincoln University Professor Kaukab Siddique, reports Pessin : "lauded on social media Hamas (for example) for fighting 'very well against the Zionist monster. Israel admitted that 13 of its best troops were killed today. One military Jew was captured. Civilian casualties of the Palestinians were extremely heavy because the rabid dogs of the Jews were doing their worst.' Siddique does this while railing against 'dirty Jewish Zionist thugs' and condemning 'Zionist Jewish dog [Alan] Dershowitz.' In a widely covered story in August 2016, a half-dozen anti-Israel students at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, most affiliated with campus anti-Israel group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), were exposed for their extensive anti-Semitic social media activity -- which drew no discernible line between anti-Israelism and anti-Semitism. Just several months later, another half-dozen students at two other Tennessee universities were exposed in the same way, with multiple social media calls to 'annihilate [the] Jewish dogs' in Israel, condemning Israeli Jews for alleged crimes, and so on....In 2015 UCLA student Rachel Beyda was grilled by four student government representatives on whether her Jewish background would make her unfit to serve impartially as on the school’s Judicial Board. 'Given that you are a Jewish student and very active in the Jewish community,' she was asked, 'how do you see yourself being able to maintain an unbiased view?' A similar event occurred at Stanford also in 2015, when student senate candidate Molly Horwitz was asked by the Students of Color Coalition, while seeking their endorsement, 'Given your strong Jewish identity, how would you vote on divestment?' Now UCLA is a school with an active chapter of SJP, where anti-Israel activism looms large, and where divestment resolutions have been passed on both the undergraduate and graduate student government levels; Stanford has also been much in the news in the past couple of years with anti-Israel and divestment activity. What Beyda’s and Horwitz’s inquisitors were concerned about was whether, as Jews, these young leaders would be inclined to support Israel." • SOUTH AFRICA. Pessin reports that : "In 2015 the student government at the Durban University of Technology in South Africa called on the university to expel all Jewish students, 'especially those who do not support the Palestinian struggle.' Not only does this phrasing imply they still would like to expel even those Jewish students who do 'support the Palestinian struggle,' but they didn’t issue any call to expel any non-Jewish students who might not support that struggle. Where Israel is in question, it is Jews who come to mind." • As Pessin notes : "It is all the more worrisome when this anti-Semitism manifests itself on campuses which, as institutions of higher learning, are supposed to be veritable bastions of epistemic rigor. When the campus commitment to epistemology is abandoned, as is occurring all over the Western world, things get uncomfortable for the Jews in a hurry. I close with a quote from Vladimir Jabotinsky, prominent early 20th-century Zionist, in a 1911 essay that only recently appeared in English for the first time. 'Instead of Apologizing,' which reflects on the appropriate strategies Jews should pursue when dealing with unfair, unreasonable, malicious slander against them (such as the blood libels), opens with words that are eerily reminiscent of what it must feel like to many Jewish students on campuses today when they hear all the dreadful things being shouted around them about Israel : 'Taking a long, hard look at the current penchant for accusations of ritual murder, one is left with a most oppressive feeling -- a feeling that any impressionable individual will find hard to bear. Just think about it: these things are being said about us -- about me, about you, about your mother! So whenever we Jews speak with a Gentile [read: anti-Israelist!], we must remain aware, every one of us, that our interlocutor may at that very moment be cowering to himself and thinking, “How do I know that you, too, haven’t been tippling from the glass of ritual murder?' ” • • • EUROPE AND ANTI-SEMITISM. Townhall published a piece by Guy Benson on Wednesday with the title "Bigotry Rising: Mass Resignation of UK Labour MP's Over anti-Semitism, as France and Germany Report Spikes in Anti-Jewish Incidents." Benson begins by reporting on a visit to Auschwitz by US Vice President Mike Pence : "During a visit to an infamous Nazi concentration camp last week, Vice President Mike Pence condemned rising anti-Semitic sentiment and rhetoric around the world : 'Well we just walked to the end of the road of anti-Semitism in Auschwitz and that's why anti-Semitism needs to be universally condemned,' he said. 'And you know, you see a rise of anti-Semitic violence in Europe, I saw a report last week. I think it was in France, of a rise in anti-Semitic violence, horrific attack in Pittsburgh, and that's, you know the history in Central Europe, that's how it begins. 'It begins with vile rhetoric, then proceeds into violence,' Pence continued, before going on to passionately defend the state of Israel while condemning the virulently anti-Semitic and anti-American regime in Iran. Pence's words come at a time in which anti-Semitic violence and hate-caused incidents are spiking across the West." • Benson reminds us that : "In the United Kingdom, the Labour Party has been roiled over anti-Jewish bias, including multiple controversies involving the hardcore leftist opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn. Things have gotten so bad that a Jewish Labourite member of Parliament needed personal security at her own party's conference. The toxic environment is so acute that a group of MP's have disassociated themselves from their own party in a mass resignation : Seven MPs -- Chuka Umunna, Luciana Berger, Chris Leslie, Angela Smith, Mike Gapes, Gavin Shuker, & Ann Coffey -- just left the Labour Party in protest. Though they gave a number of different reasons, a unifying theme seemed to be a rejection of the anti-Semitism of Jeremy Corbyn. See < https://t.co/l36wSo418G >. • In Germany, anti-Semitic crimes rose by 10% in 2018, with a 60% increase in violent crimes, causing the main Jewish umbrella group in Germany to call for a “stronger commitment” from police and politicians....Nationwide, there were 1,646 anti-Semitic crimes registered in 2018, up from 1,504 the previous year. Of these, 62 were violent attacks, up from 37 in 2017. According to the Tagesspiegel, 43 people were injured in anti-Semitic attacks in 2018. A total of 857 suspects were identified, but there was only evidence for 19 arrests. • In France, anti-Semitic attacks increased in 2018 by more than 70%, according to figures released recently by the French government. Reuters reports that France had 500 reported instances of anti-Semitic incidents in 2018, a 74% increase from the year before....In one incident, a crowd of protesters reportedly gathered around well-known Jewish writer and Holocaust survivor Alain Finkielkraut, demanding that he return to Tel Aviv over his support for Israel, according to Reuters. French authorities blame the growing spate of hate on a combination of left-wing extremism, right-wing extremism, and Islamism. • • • FRANCE HAS THE LARGEST JEWISH COMMUNITY IN EUROPE -- AND A REAL PROBLEM WITH ANTI-SEMITISM. Actually, France hs the largest Jewish community in the world after Israel and the US. BBC and most media outlets reported on the nearly 100 graves that were daubed with swastikas at a Jewish cemetery in Quatzenheim, Alsace, in eastern France, and President Macron has vowed to crack down on hate crimes as the country grapples with a surge in anti-Semitic acts. See < https://t.co/YUSF05MmUn >. • The desecration of Jewish tombstones in Alsace hit France hard. The cemetery is 10 kilometers from Strasbourg, the French capital of the EU. A unit of the National Gendarmerie police force was dispatched to the site and closed the cemetery upon arrival to collect evidence. The police believe that the vandalism was carried out by two people. French President Emmanuel Macron visited the cemetery Tuesday afternoon to stand in solidarity with the Jewish community for an hour, walking through the area desecrated and holding children as he talked to the leaders of the area's Jewish community. President Macron tweeted on his way to the cemetery : "Anti-Semitism is the negation of what France is,” adding that he would visit the Holocaust memorial that evening in Paris “to recall the facts, the the biting facts of our history, and to say what the Republic is : a block against all of this.” • In late January, swastikas were painted on commemorative photos placed on letter boxes of the late Simone Veil, the Jewish child who survived the Nazi concentration camps to become a beloved politician and cultural figure in France. In December, a Jewish cemetery in the nearby town of Herrlisheim was also desecrated with 37 gravestones spray-painted with Swastikas and other graffiti. Chief Rabbi of Strasbourg Rabbi Harold Abraham Weill said following the incident on Tuesday that the community was “outraged and and appalled” by the incident, and demanded an increase in security for the community’s institutions. • Rabbi Weill, who is also a member of the Council of European Rabbis' standing committee, said he believed that the attack was carried out by far-right extremists Monday night ahead of planned rallies against anti-Semitism set to take place in dozens of French cities on Tuesday. One of the gravestones was daubed with the words “Black Wolves,” a militant far-right separatist group from the Alsace region, where Quatzenheim is located, which was active in the 1970s and 1980s. In one attack in 1976, the Black Wolves group set fire to and destroyed the Natzweiler-Struthof Nazi concentration camp located in Alsace. • Jewish Agency Chairman Isaac Herzog denounced the desecration of the graves, describing it as “another severe incident which underlines the anti-Semitism virus attacking Europe and threatening Jews in the streets,” adding “Governments, wake up.” • Minister of Aliyah and Integration Yoav Gallant called on Jews to immigrate to Israel in response to the vandalization of the cemetery and other recent anti-Semitic incidents. He said that the desecration of the graves was a reminder of “dark days in the history of the Jewish people,” and “strongly condemned anti-Semitism in France.” He noted that he visited the French Jewish community in Paris last week which he said was "under attack from anti-Semitism and assimilation,” and noted that “the State of Israel is a safe national house for Jews around the world.” • Meyer Habib, a Jewish member of France’s National Assembly, the French Parliament, said recent events were “raising severe question marks over the future of Jews in France,” saying the spate of anti-Semitic incidents were unacceptable. On Friday evening, for example, teenagers shot a Jewish man with an air-rifle outside a synagogue in the Paris suburb of Sarcelle, lightly injuring him. Habib said : “It’s as if we have gone back 70 years in time. I am outraged! France needs to take a deep look at itself on every level of the French people,” saying that “haters of Jews are walking around freely and raising their heads without shame or fear.” • Dozens of RALLIES against anti-Semitism were held Tuesday evening across France in response to the series of anti-Semitic incidents in France in recent weeks. The rallies were organized by 14 political parties and took place in 60 French cities. Former French Presidents Hollande and Sarkozy mingled with the crowd that filled La Place de le République and the side streets feeding into it. Many other prominent French politicians also attended the rallies. • L'Express reported that, back in Paris Tuesday evening, President Macron, together with president of the Senate Gérard Larcher and president of the National Assembly Richard Ferrand, went to the Holocaust Memorial to “express their solidarity with the Jewish community in France" and to “reaffirm their commitment to the values of the Republic and their common determination never to give in to hatred and violence.” • Last Saturday's “Yellow Vest” protestors shouts of anti-Semitic abuse at French-Jewish philosopher Alain Finkielkraut in Paris, and the chopping down of a tree planted in memorial of Ilan Halimi who was brutally murdered in 2006, ahead of a memorial event for him in Paris, received particular attention in French press and TV. Ilan Halimi, a young Jewish boy, was kidnapped and tortured for three weeks in 2006 by gang members demanding huge sums of money from his family, assuming he was rich because he was Jewish. He died on his way to hospital. Marine Le Pen visited the Ilan Halimi memorial site on Tuesday with members of her populist party and laid a wreath at the memorial plaque. • • • MACRON SPOKE TO THE REPRESENTATIVE COUNCIL OF JEWISH INSTITUTIONS IN FRANCE. President Macron addressed the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF) in Paris, where he announced new measures to tackle anti-Semitism. He told Jewish leaders that France would recognize anti-Zionism -- the denial of Israel's right to exist -- as a form of anti-Semitism. He also said the Assembly Nationale would vote on a new law to tackle hatred on the internet. Addressing the annual meeting of Jewish organisations on Wednesday, Macron said anti-Semitism in France and other Western countries had reached its worst levels since World War Two. Among a series of new measures, he said the government would act to dissolve three extreme-right groups - Bastion Social, Blood and Honour Hexagone and Combat 18 - which he said fueled hatred and promoted discrimination. Macron added : "Anti-Zionism is one of the modern forms of anti-Semitism. This is why I'm confirming that France will put forward the definition of anti-Semitism as drawn by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance." • • • THE QUESTION BEING ASKED : WHY FRANCE? Various theories have received air time recently. The France 24 outlet wrote on February 13 : "A spate of high-profile anti-Semitic incidents has shocked France, where officials say attacks against Jews rose by 74% last year -- an alarming trend experts have linked to the spread of hate speech and the tension surrounding 'Yellow Vest' protests. During a cabinet meeting...French President Emmanuel Macron denounced the 'unacceptable increase' in anti-Semitic acts and hate speech, which he linked to the latest wave of demonstrations against his government. The incidents mark 'a new turn of events linked to the movement,' Macron said, referring to the so-called 'Yellow Vest' anti-government rallies that have roiled France over the past three months. 'Anti-Semitism is a repudiation of the Republic, in the same way that attacking elected officials or institutions is a repudiation of the Republic,' the French president added." • According to Vincent Duclert, a historian at the Paris-based School for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS), anti-Semitism has also found “a breeding ground inside the Yellow Vest movement because it is violent.” On the fringes of the tenth consecutive weekend of protests, on January 19, various anti-Semitic groups, including prominent anti-Jewish figure Alain Soral, tried to coordinate and “goad the Yellow Vests.” Three weeks later, a graffiti spraying “Macron Jew’s Bitch” was found in the heart of Paris after another day of protests. • According to Frederic Potier, a French government official in charge of fighting anti-Semitism, racism and anti-gay discrimination, “what is new and what is feeding this anti-Semitic fever [...] is the resurgence of a far right with really violent speech and acts.” Until now, most of the anti-Semitism in France was derived from Islamism and linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the French official added. • Violent acts are also fueled by “an enabling context,” argues sociologist Michael Wievorka, coupled with a “liberation of hate speech -- mostly on the internet but also in public.” • But the increase in hate speech “is not particular to France, even though it has been really strong lately in France. It is everywhere. In Germany, anti-Semitic offenses rose almost 10% in 2018, with violent attacks up more than 60%. Police recorded a total of 1,646 offences motivated by hatred of Jews, including 62 violent offenses that left 43 people injured. In comparison, there were 37 physical attacks in 2017. • According to Potier, the French government official, the same figures also surged by “66% in Italy last year, and around 50% in the US.” • Experts warn that the rising attacks are alarming not only for the Jewish community, but for the wider population, too. One expert told France 24 : "We have known this for centuries, anti-Semitism is always a prelude to a general outbreak of violence : when there are attacks against Jews, it always means that the rest of the population is going to be attacked very soon.” The Jewish community is not the only target of hate crimes, with all French communities and religions, including Roman Catholics, coming under threat. Last week, at least five churches were desecrated around the country, according to the police. Another expert says : “Moslems have also been largely targeted. But unlike Christians, Moslem communities rarely press charges in such cases, so we don’t have a precise figure concerning them. The same is true of Romani [formerly called gypsies] people.” • Why France? There is no real answer. Perhaps the better question is 'Why Europe?' The Gilets Jaunes and Moslems were not around in the Middle Ages when European Jews were ghetto-ized and faced pogroms. Nor were they around in the 19th century when European Jews were excluded from 'polite society' -- until Disraeli in Britain and the Rothschilds in France made that no longer totally possible, although 'casual' anti-Semitism can still be found, in mild but disgusting, form in the comments of wealthy, well-educated French from the “beaux quartiers” of Paris. And, there were no Gilets Jaunes during the Holocaust, although some Moslems in the Midle East sided with Nazi Germany. BUT, Vichy France, like most of Europe, tuened over to the Nazis their Jewish citizens, perhaps hoping the obscene gesture would save themselves. It didn't. • The Local France says : "There is the historic, far-right, French nationalist or ultra-Catholic strand. This goes back far beyond the Dreyfus affair [of the 19th century], the Vichy government collaboration with the Nazis in the early 1940s or the rise of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s Front National in the 1970s and 1980s....For 30 years or so, there has also been a radical Moslem and ultra-leftist strand of anti-Semitism in France, born from support for Palestine and hatred of capitalism ( [stereotypically] seen as dominated by wealthy Jews). The revival of anti-Semitic acts, and violence, in the 1990s and the 2000’s was mostly due to this new phenomenon. The figurehead of this “new anti-Semitism” is M’bala M’Bala Dieudonné, the stand-up comedian who has been convicted of anti-Semitic hate-speech. His emblem is the “quenelle,” an arm gesture which may or may not be a perversion of the Hitler salute. It has certainly become a widespread means of deniable, anti-Semitic behavior. The kind of graffiti which appeared in Paris last weekend -- the swastikas and the word 'juden' -- bear the finger-prints of the older, rather than the newer brand of anti-Semitism. Increasingly, however, it is difficult to tell them apart. The Gilets Jaunes have on their various websites anti-Semitic slogans and anti-Semitic arguments such as : 'Macron once worked for a Rothschilds bank. He is a tool of ultra-liberal, globalist forces, controlled by Jews...' This is not something that you hear from 'ordinary' Gilets Jaunes on roundabouts. Anti-Semitism has specifically been decried in several lists of Gilets Jaunes positions and demands. But there is undeniably a sickening anti-Semitic obsession in one section of the yellow vests movement. It is tempting to attribute this influence to Dieudonné’s political mentor, Alain Soral. Mr Soral, 60, would certainly love to claim the credit. A former speechwriter for Jean-Marie Le Pen, he met recently with a group of Gilets Jaunes spokespeople. It has long been his strategy, partly through his disciple, Dieudonné, to unite the two strains of anti-Semitism: the far left and far right, the radical Moslem and the ultra-Catholic. He describes his own micro-party, Egalité & Réconciliation, as the 'ideological inspiration' of the Gilets Jaunes, an insurrection by a France Profonde humiliated by masters of pouvoir profond.' " BUT, all that said, the Gilets Jaunes are, at heart, a movement of moderate, ordinary people with radical, extraordinary demands -- they want to have salaries that allow them to live and feed their children and heat their homes. They say that they are non-political or anti-political, yet they are in danger of being led down strange and sometimes anti-Semitic paths. • • • AMERICA IS NOT EXEMPT. Townhall's Guy Benson lays out the case for American anti-Semitism : "Here in the United States, anti-Semitic crimes have also increased in recent years -- with Jews being targeted in an outright majority of all religious-based hate crimes (despite Jews accounting for a little over 1% of the US population). Frighteningly, there has been a spate of ugly assaults in Brooklyn, which haven't gotten much attention beyond local reports. Ben Shapiro writes that the national press has been too busy focusing on a narrative-driving hoax : 'The media ran with the story. Good Morning America hosted Jussie Smollett, where he maligned anyone who asked questions as a racist and a homophobe. CNN’s Brooke Baldwin stated, 'This is America in 2019.' Celebrities parroted their support for Smollett, with many blaming President Trump and Vice President Pence for the attack. The story was a hoax. That same night, a Jewish man in New York was beaten by three thugs. Nothing was stolen. The attack was caught on video...This isn’t the only story of anti-Semitism in New York. Not by a long shot. Two weeks before that beating, a Jewish man, 19, was 'violently assaulted' as he walked past a local laundromat by a group of teenage black males. In December, a 16-year-old Jewish teen spent a week in a hospital after being beaten by two other teens; witnesses said that the teens screamed 'Kill the Jew.' The NYPD categorized the attack as 'gang related' rather than a hate crime, angering Jews in the area....Vandals shattered the window of a Chabad in Bushwick as the rabbi and his family slept inside. This list goes on. In fact, according to NBC New York,'“The city has seen a sharp increase in reported hate crimes so far in 2019, the NYPD said. Police had investigated 42 hate crimes through February 4, compared with 19 at the same point last year. Most of those were anti-Semitic.' Many of these attacks have been carried out by African-American suspects, including a former Obama campaign volunteer. And yet, the lazy lefty-media take is that this is Trump's fault, even as Congressional Democrats have been forced to grapple with anti-Semitism within their own ranks (the Alt-Right and Alt-Left often unite in their vile hatred of Jews). • • • DEAR READERS, I am simply not competent to explain anti-Semitism. But, I know that in Europe its roots go back a thousand years, fed by the Catholic Church's traditional statement that the Jews were responsible for Christ's death. That doctrine was abandoned only in the past 30 years, but it goes some way to explaining why Europeans have what seems often to be a visceral hatred of Jews. But, it is not the entire explanation. • Israel Today's Brian Hennessey wrote in November, 2016 : "After Israel was miraculously restored from oblivion in the last century, Jews began to return from every nation to their ancient homeland. But they weren’t the only ones rushing to set foot on that storied land. Christians began flocking to 'the Holy Land' as well. At first, we came as tourists to visit the ancient churches and to walk where Jesus walked. Then God awakened us to see this re-born nation was a fulfillment of biblical prophecy, and we came as wide-eyed pilgrims. But as the years passed, God showed us something else. We saw in this restoration His everlasting love and compassion for His people who had suffered so much for so long. Often at the hands of those who called themselves Christians. And we began to understand and love the people as much as the land. And we came as friends. Over the last 40 years or so, a number of ministries have arisen to help Christians bless the nation in many ways. From bringing Christians around the world to march in streets of Jerusalem waving banners of encouragement. To providing much needed physical and prayer support. To standing up for the nation in political forums. To encouraging tourism, and even more recently, bringing volunteers to help harvest their crops. Through it all, I believe God has been trying to show Jewish Israel (and us) how much He loves the descendants of Abraham. And how He has never forsaken them, even though it may have looked like it for a time. Isaiah anticipated this time of restoration when he wrote : “For a brief moment I forsook you, but with great compassion I will gather you. In an outburst of anger I hid My face from you for a moment, but with everlasting lovingkindness I will have compassion on you, says the LORD your Redeemer” (Isa. 54:7,8)." • Hennessey says this "Christian attraction" for Israel is not diminishing, but "growing ever stronger." • BUT, Israel Today published on Friday a report titled "Exposed: World Council of Churches Spying Against Israel," written by David Lazarus. It is a horrifying report about the World Council of Churches (WCC) caught funding spies posing as tourists to present biased and incendiary reports about Israel’s “brutal and oppressive treatment” of Palestinians. Lazarus states : "The WCC program called the Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) sends foreign nationals to Samaria and Judea pretending to be tourists. Posing as Christian pilgrims visiting biblical sites around Jerusalem and Hebron, these politically-motivated activists take pictures and publish fake news reports slamming Israel’s so-called 'abuses' against Palestinians. In their 'news reports,' these anti-Israel spies use Bible verses and theological terms 'loaded with anti-Semitism,' said Amit Barak, one of the Israelis who exposed the group. They even posted anti-Semitic pictures like a 'Star of David bleeding on Palestinian children,' he said. Barak, who lives in the Judean mountains south of Bethlehem, kept seeing the EAPPI activists mingling outside his home. After several weeks of watching them pose as tourists, he decided to 'take the gloves off' and expose their scam. Itai Reuveni, an expert working for NGO Monitor, pointed out that these EAPPI activists being sent only to Israel and not to any other conflict zone in the world proves that 'it’s a political project in disguise of human rights.' Reuveni’s group reported that the World Council of Churches has sent 1,800 volunteers to Judea and Samria to 'witness life under occupation.' Despite marketing itself as a human rights and protection program, EAPPI places significant emphasis on political advocacy before, during, and after the trip. When volunteers return to their home countries and churches, they engage in anti-Israel advocacy, such as BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) campaigns and comparing Israel to apartheid South Africa and Nazi Germany. WCC-funded activists have been working closely with Hassan Breijieh, spokesperson for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terror group. They also sent volunteers to the home of the Palestinian terrorist who stabbed to death Yosef Salomon, his daughter Chaya and son Elad in 2017. According to The Jerusalem Post, the WCC has refused to comment on reports published by numerous news agencies exposing their illegal activities in Israel." • Anti-Semitism is everywhere. The best thing we as individuals can do is to be attentive to its nuanced use of words and phrases, and to call out its existence wherever we find it -- not always with shouts -- that is reserved for the deliberate hate words and hate acts levied against Jews by determined anti-Semites. For those who are anti-Semitic in a callously casual, almost nonchalant, way, we can remind them of the historical violent import of their words and ask them to step back and consider why they are uttering anti-Semitic words and ideas, perhaps without even knowing it. And, of course, we can, all of us, reach out to our Jewish neighbors and friends with love and brotherhood.