Always Remember Goys, Anti-Semitism Is Timeless And Jews Never Did Nuffin' Wrong
The Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, which is headed by Naftali Bennett, published its annual anti-Semitism report today. The report’s bottom line was clear: The far right is more dangerous to Jews than the far left and radical Islam.
“Unlike previous years, in which Islamist anti-Semitism was the primary and most dangerous threat to Jewish communities, in 2018 there was a shift and currently anti-Semitic incidents originating in the extreme right are the primary and most dangerous factor for Jewish communities, particularly in the United States and Europe,” the report says.
Nonetheless, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chose to focus in his brief remarks on the subject on the second-largest source of anti-Semitism – radical Islam. At Sunday’s cabinet meeting he said, “Anti-Semitism from the right is nothing new. What is new in Europe is this combination of Islamist anti-Semitism and the anti-Semitism of the far left that cloaks itself as anti-Zionism, as recently occurred in Britain and Ireland. Shame.”
“What causes anti-Semitism? What is it about anti-Semitism that unites the radical left, which purports to promote humanism, with fundamentalist radical Islam and with right-wing white supremacists?” Bennett asks and then offers this answer: “The explanations for anti-Semitism are always temporary – an economic crisis, a political movement, a religious faith… And yet, even when all of these pass, anti-Semitism remains – it is timeless. For anti-Semites, the Jews will always be the scapegoat, the source of all their troubles.”
“Up to a generation ago, it was quite easy to define the far right, because its supporters adhered to various neo-Nazi and neo-fascist dogmas and spouted hatred of Jews and foreigners,” says the new report. But today, in the wake of the Muslim immigration to Europe and the formation of the European Union, there is a wider range of groups within the far right. Some are anti-Semitic, seeing Judaism as a foreign influence that must be neutralized, and emphasizing the threat to national identity. Other groups, though, are actually philo-Semitic with an ideology that is anti-Islamic at its core.
“Some of these movements froze their Jew-hatred in order to replace it with Islamophobia,” says the report. The best example is the Austrian Freedom Party led by Heinz-Christian Strache, a neo-Nazi and anti-Semitic party at its base that in recent years claims to support Israel.
The Diaspora Affairs Ministry’s report makes a simple distinction: The anti-Semitic right is more common in countries from the former Communist bloc, while extremist parties that declare themselves to be free of anti-Semitism operate in Western Europe – “either out of genuine change, or for tactical reasons,” the report says.
And what about the anti-Semitism originating in the far left? The report cites “a growing alliance between the far left and radical Islam – two groups with ostensibly different worldviews that still find common cause against Israel and Jews.” This “strange alliance” is explained by the theory of “intersectional oppression,” which calls for unity among all oppressed groups.
