כׇּל־כְּלִ֞י יוּצַ֤ר עָלַ֙יִךְ֙ לֹ֣א יִצְלָ֔ח וְכׇל־לָשׁ֛וֹן תָּקוּם־אִתָּ֥ךְ לַמִּשְׁפָּ֖ט תַּרְשִׁ֑יעִי זֹ֡את נַחֲלַת֩ עַבְדֵ֨י יְהֹוָ֧ה וְצִדְקָתָ֛ם מֵאִתִּ֖י נְאֻם־יְהֹוָֽה׃ {ס}
No weapon formed against you shall succeed,
And every tongue that contends with you at law you shall defeat.
Such is the lot of the servants of GOD’s servants,
Such their triumph through Me —declares GOD.
– Isaiah 54:17
The Jewish people are under attack, an unfortunately common dynamic in their history. Isaiah (8th century BCE) wrote about it as did many other Jewish prophets, and their common call was for Jews to focus on self-reflection, improve upon their actions and turn towards Gd. The physical battle will ultimately be secured by Gd if Jews adhere to the commandments.
But the war of words is one in which Jews need to take on themselves. In Chapter 54 of Isaiah, the prophet made it clear, saying that if enemies use language to attack Jews, Jews should fight against them.
In the United States today, there are many raging antisemites who have been given platforms to air their putrid rantings.
Rep. Rashia Tlaib (D-MI) is an American Arab who addressed the vehemently anti-Israel Democratic Socialists of America in August 2021 and told them that Jews exploit working class people from Gaza to Detroit, concealed behind the curtain, in order to make money.
Columbia University professor Joseph Massad tells his students that Jews have no history in the land of Israel, and that they have faked their heritage in usurping “Palestinian Hebrews” who are the real people of the Bible to whom Gd gave the land.
Princeton University has a book on its reading list that claims Israel maims Arabs in order to harvest their organs, in a twist to outrageous Jewish blood libels.
The list of antisemitic slander goes well beyond members of Congress and college campuses.
The United Nations has declared that any Jew living east of the 1949 Armistice Lines – lines specifically negotiated between Israel and Jordan to not be construed as a border – do so illegally, even in the Old City of Jerusalem, which even the U.N. had conceived of as an international city for everyone to live in under the 1947 Partition Plan.
That same global body and much of the world have said that Jews cannot pray at their holiest location on the Jewish Temple Mount, with some validating their reasoning by falsely stating that Jews never had a temple at the location.
Politicians around the world claim that the Jewish State is practicing ethnic cleansing in the holy land, even though the number of non-Jews in the region has grown faster than Jews since Israel’s creation. The anti-Zionists shout that Israel is an apartheid state, even though it is the most liberal democratic country for 1,000 miles in any direction.
Jews are discriminated against on college campuses, denied internships and scholarships because they are Sabbath observant or viewed as too White to be a minority. They have to hide their kippahs and signs of being Jewish lest they get berated by professors and fellow students with false charges of being homophobic, insular and enjoy seeing Arab babies killed for fun.
Some Jews have opted to say nothing in response to the hail of lies. Cowering behind the recognition that most people listen to idiots and cannot be swayed, they hope for the moment of hatred to pass and do not confront the slander in fear of fanning the flames.
As discussed in “Organized and Disorganized Antisemitism“, hiding is not the appropriate response. Organizations and platforms like the United Nations, Democratic Socialists of America and Nation of Islam should be fought, boycotted and sued as aggressively as possible to remove their power and influence. Conversely, individuals should be swarmed and educated to get to know and appreciate Jews around the world.
The Jewish prophets warn us to not let antisemitic slander pass without confrontation. Today, that includes calling our members of congress and chancellors of universities to stop advancing Jew hatred, suing colleges which discriminate, and registering as Democrats and voting in the Democratic primary to kick antisemitic DSA members out of Congress.
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