Antisemitism and the Response of Anglo Jewish Leadership

From a transcript of Isi Leibler's excellent talk [of particular relevance to Australian Jewry] at the Symposium "Islam, British Society & the Terrorist Threat" which took place on January 2 at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.....

Antisemitism and the Response of Anglo Jewish Leadership
....In the 1980s ... most analysts were describing anti Semites as an extinct species. Yet today the world's oldest hatred has not only emerged as the greatest international political growth industry – as Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks described it 'an anti Semitic tsunami' – but it has actually succeeded in once again transforming British Jews into pariahs.

...Malignant Islamic Arab anti Semitism has been at the forefront of promoting the new brew of the world's oldest disease..... But we should be under no illusions. In Western countries, it was the indigenous people, the educated classes who were responsible for generating the hatred throughout the media and in cultural and social circles.

Today, most of the world is once again accusing Jews of poisoning the wells. The Jewish state is regarded as a collective manifestation of evil incarnate. Left and Right, Christian and Moslem, Sunni and Shiite and even a number of self hating Jews, have all united, to demonize Israel. Even human rights bodies have been hijacked by our enemies.

George Orwell would have been stunned to observe that to most nations of the world Israel is regarded as a far greater threat to world peace than rogue states like Iran and North Korea.....

United Kingdom
It is of course somewhat obscene that beyond the Arab world, the principal centers of anti Semitism are now once again to be found in Europe whose soil only 60 years ago was drenched with Jewish blood.

...At all levels Israel and the Jews are under siege. But [in the UK] the brunt of the attack emanates not from Moslems, but from indigenous Britons.... They are the ones who have made anti Semitic discourse respectable.

....It is indigenous British academics - not Moslem immigrants, who are the driving force for anti Israel boycotts and divestment campaigns at the universities.

....Today in Britain there is open chatter that the creation of Israel was a mistake and there are even increasing calls for an end to the Jewish "apartheid" state.

...In these days Liberals, Progressives, Arabs, Human Rights activists, the ultra Right, and others – are all willing to indulge in the anti Zionist frenzy and march under the banner of "we are all Hezbollah".

Reinforced by the renewed influence of replacement theology and having succumbed to the prevailing climate of post modernism which fails to distinguish between good and evil, the Church of England has displayed crude and shameless bias and employed double standards against Israel.

One would have expected the devastating impact of home bred Islamic terrorism to have created some countervailing reactions. But alas, the main response has been that the UK had become a target for terror because British foreign policy had been too pro Israeli. There are now increasing calls on the government to be more critical of Israel in order to avoid future terrorist attacks.

Multiculturalism
In this environment, Anglo Jewry, like Jewish communities in other democracies... should ...think twice about their inclination to mindlessly repeat the ritual condemnations against what is described as "Islamophobia" - despite the behavior of the radical leadership of the Moslem community and [the] failure to condemn terrorism and extremism ....

In Australia, multiculturalism was the framework of the Jewish community's integration into Australian society..... Little did we dream that two decades later multi-culturalism would be serving as a Trojan horse for Jihadists to establish themselves in Western countries and that we would have enclaves of Moslems incubating indigenous home grown terrorists.

Multi-culturalism becomes a prescription for disaster if...it provides a platform for a minority like the Moslems, to anchor themselves in a society, with the objective of asserting their separatism ... of seeking to control the state and impose their way of life on society....

The role of the Jewish community
...the problem in England is that shtadlanut, the belief that reliance on discreet appeals to those in authority rather than public protest is the effective manner of pursuing Jewish objectives, has become an accepted dogma within the Jewish establishment. ....There is to my mind considerable merit in the depiction of Anglo Jewish leaders as trembling Israelites, grateful for the protection accorded them and desperate not to rock the boat. This outlook is epitomized by Henry Grunwald, the current President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, a decent traditional Jew ...who even formally articulates the need to direct Jewish affairs on the basis of "softly softly" ... stating "why must one shout when a whisper can be heard?".

In recent years, these negative trends have been accentuated by increasingly shrill condemnations of Israel by ... Anglo Jewish anti Israeli Jewish activists, including academics, writers, actors, musicians and others including even a number of progressive Rabbis whose signatures regularly appear in petitions and advertisements hostile to Israel. This trend is exemplified by Anthony Lerman, Executive Director of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, a body funded by Jewish philanthropists and purporting to be the premier "think tank" of Anglo Jewry.

Lerman publicly states that in view of the fact that the State of Israel and Zionism have been failures and that Israel perpetuates substantial human rights abuses, the Jewish state should be transformed into a bi-national state which would repatriate Arab refugees. Such views are increasingly being expressed by left wing Jewish fringe groups who ally themselves with Arabs and others seeking to dismantle the Jewish state. But to have such views expressed by the head of the leading Anglo Jewish think tank, funded and patronized by Jewish establishment personalities is obscene. It is symptomatic of the impotence of a communal leadership lacking the backbone to act against a chief executive officer of a purported Jewish public body which endorses the destruction of Israel. The negative impact of this anti Israeli hostility from fringe Jews is vastly underestimated.

It should be noted that the obsession of Anglo Jewry to rely exclusively on silent diplomacy is not shared by many rank and file Jews. For example, at the outset of the Intifada, the Anglo Jewish leadership refused to accede to calls to hold public protest meetings, insisting it would be counterproductive because few Jews would participate. It was pressure from the Jewish street which forced them to change their approach. The subsequent level of participation demonstrated that the mass of British Jews were frequently more assertive than their leaders.
The flow of supportive letters I receive from English Jews whenever I write on this theme, also confirms that many of them, especially the younger generation, are keen to adopt more assertive public postures.

The serious negative repercussions when those demonizing Israel and attacking Jews are not confronted are two-fold. Clearly the case for Israel is lost by default in the absence of vigorous repudiation of those demonizing Israel. But it has even worse repercussions on the Jewish community itself. In a climate which is saturated with anti Israeli venom, the absence of debate accelerates the marginalization of Jews from their roots. The cowardly behavior of parents in the presence of their children invariably undermines the self confidence of the younger generation who become less inclined to take up the cudgels for Israel after observing their parents running for cover. It will doubtlessly encourage many of them to opt out entirely. If anti Semitic and anti Israeli libels remain unanswered, we will simply lose the younger generation by default!

My experience as a leader of the Australian Jewish community has convinced me that a twin track approach of tough lobbying by a courageous community with parallel silent democracy can transform the role of a Jewish community from one of inferiority and subservience to one of pride and dignity. This should especially be so in a nation which prides itself on freedom of expression and the right to public protest.

...Today the principal disaster in England, as in many other countries, is that with Jews having failed to convey the Jewish narrative of the Arab-Israeli conflict to the public and frequently their own children, there is an almost universal acceptance of the distorted versions disseminated by the Arabs and their allies. They have succeeded in positioning Israel as a rogue state, born in sin, illegally occupying Arab territory and denying the Palestinians their basic human rights.

It is still not too late for us to galvanize ourselves in the war of ideas. But we must do so with no less determination than the countermeasures we adopt against physical terrorism.

A video of the entire symposium including contributions by Melanie Phillips, author of "Londonistan" and Professor Robert Wistrich, head of the Hebrew University Vidal Sassoon International Centre for the Study of Antisemitism will posted on the website of the Vidal Sassoon Centre at in a few weeks.