Are Jews the canary in Western Civilization’s cultural mine?
Anti-Semitic violence in France; demonstrations against Israel and vitriolic anti-Semitism in Germany; threats against Jews in Italy. (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/02/world/europe/anger-in-europe-over-the-israeli-gaza-conflict-reverberates-as-anti-semitism.html).
A necessary, defensive but horrifying war rages in Gaza that must be fought to protect Israelis. Gaza’s civilians are dying, exploited by their own government as human shields in the immoral calculations of asymmetrical warfare. Only an irresponsible or weak government would tolerate Hamas’ tunnels or rockets. So why the hatred aimed again at Europe’s Jews for Israel acting as any rational government would act?
The war in Gaza is not the issue. We are focused in the wrong place, and I fear we will pay the price.
The Egyptian army under President al-Sisi had the power not only to oust a democratically elected government, but to suppress the Muslim Brotherhood relentlessly without attracting world condemnation. Problem solved, at least temporarily for Egypt.
ISIS (The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) proclaims a caliphate in northeast Syria and northwest Iraq, murdering Shi’ites and now Kurds along the way. The world’s public ignores the carnage and the expanding threat. The United States struggles to determine how to support Iraq while the prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, resists sharing power with Sunnis; and the United States fears handing de facto control in Iraq to totalitarian Iran while fighting ISIS.
Jordan suffers but holds on, even while over 1 million refugees enter from Syria to the north and King Hussein attempts to prevent al-Qaeda from gaining strength.
The Taliban will eventually regain control in Afghanistan, after the United States wasted our “nation building” efforts, thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars over 13-plus years. Al-Qaida operations extend to most of the Arab and Muslim nations, particularly Yemen, as well as nations like Germany and Indonesia. (see:http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/05/12/world/12aqmap.html).
All of this manifests the theology of virulently anti-Western culture, anti-modern, caliphate oriented, Islamism, resolute to destroy free society, personal liberty, separation between religion and state, and as ruthless as any regime in the history of the world. Originating in Wahabbism, this is not peaceful Islam, a respected religion. Islamism is a political/religious movement, and a threat to democracy everywhere because Islamists stop at nothing to gain political control. Their vision is of god-ordained domination. They will exploit, then cause, an end to democracy, like any totalitarian regime. Today they are the real adversary of freedom.
Hamas understands what it is doing. They’ve been in this place before. Running out of money and diminishing in power, they provoked Israel in order to gain the world’s sympathy, and Prime Minister Netanyahu foolishly complied. Rather than strengthening the Palestinian Authority, Israel sadly chooses confrontation with Hamas. Rather than creating a Palestinian Authority that can rule, Israel gerrymanders the West Bank. But, though choosing the wrong path, Israel is not criminal. Wrong-headed: maybe. But it is now embroiled in the worldwide Islamist struggle. No longer simply the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, we have moved to a manifestation of the global Islamist threat.
President Obama set out at the beginning of his administration to establish a new tone with the Muslim world. It has not worked. But the fact that the governments of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Iraq recognize the threat to their existence ought to be exploited. Great Britain, France, Germany and all of Europe need to heed the new totalitarian threat. Israel stands and fights on the front lines. Jews are right to fear, particularly in France and Israel, that we will once again be sacrificed by the nations of the world to a global menace bent on obliterating freedom.
Finally, we in the United States need to understand that with Hamas (an affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group) controlling Gaza without regard for its people’s lives but with the goal of a Judenrein Middle East controlled by a sovereign Muslim Caliph, American policy must be to support the Israeli democracy and suppress Islamism wherever it rears its murderous head.
Rabbi Mark H. Levin is founding rabbi of Congregation Beth Torah.