When I moved to the U.S., most of my library stayed behind in the UK. There was a distinct pleasure in seeing many of my Torah books divided and distributed among my children and friends; after all, this is something you generally only get to observe looking down from heaven.
None of my secular books crossed the Atlantic and as a resource for writing and research, I missed some of them a lot.
One such book I bought after hearing its author speak about it on BBC Radio. It is called, “Hitler’s Pope…The Secret History of Pius XII.” The author explained that, as a Catholic, he began the work to exonerate Eugenio Pacelli (The Pope’s birth name) from charges that he aided the work of the Nazis and their allies. He found instead that the evidence drove him to write a book that showed that the charge was abundantly true.
Unsurprisingly, other historians challenged his conclusions and he later softened some of his harsher language about Pius while still arguing that he was guilty.
There is a simple formula to gauge whether someone suffers from the cancer of anti-Semitism. If a person remains silent in the face of attacks on Jews, then they are indifferent to the genocidal conclusion anti-Semitism strives to achieve. Naturally, cowardice may play a part in that silence too. If a person supports, facilitates and protects anti-Semitism and anti-Semites, then they have crossed the line and become an anti-Semite.
Of all the vilest anti-Semites and enemies of the Jewish people, one category stands out above all the rest: Jews.
This topic, even 76 years after the end of WWII, is so sensitive and upsetting that Jews instinctively shy away from it. To call a fellow Jew a “Kapo” is the ultimate disgrace and the worst insult. It defines the most appalling and dreadful thing you could say about anyone born of a Jewish mother.
But there were Kapos. They acted as facilitators and supporters of the Nazis. They beat and sometimes murdered their own people. They played an essential role in sending millions to the gas chambers and ovens.
In Socialist Russia they were even more active. The Yevsektzia, Jewish Communists, rooted out Judaism, its teachers and adherents, often killing them or sending them to their deaths in Siberia. Their brutality was arguably worse than the Nazi Kapos as most were themselves passionate believers in Marxism and enthusiasts for their work.
Of course, the Kapo phenomenon reaches back into the earliest chapters of the Jewish story. They aided the ancient Greeks. They helped the Romans. They supported and worked with the medieval church and its Inquisition.
What of the phenomenon today?
A recent Times of London headline declares, “Social Media Giants fail to curb 90% of anti-Semitism?” and states,
Nine out of ten anti-Semitic posts on Facebook and Twitter stay online despite being reported, a large-scale study has found. Holocaust denial, incitement to violence against Jews and other conspiracy theories remained even after they were flagged to moderators.
Now this is hardly the first time that this kind of accusation has been brought to the attention of Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey or Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. To repeat, if someone supports, facilitates and protects anti-Semitism and anti-Semites, then they are an anti-Semite.
Sacha Barron Cohen blasted Dorsey, Tweeting,
“Why do you allow, #HitlerWasRight ?! Those who celebrate the Holocaust aim to perpetrate another!”
But Jack Dorsey and his anti-Semitism stems from someone who is not a Jew; Zuckerberg however is one.
If only 10 percent of the evilest anti-Semitism on Facebook is dealt with, it is only a process of window-dressing, a fig-leaf smokescreen and a charade. Zuckerberg is as guilty as Pius XII.
Then there are Ben and Jerry. They are a little like Tom and Jerry, only not even a little bit funny, except when they try to explain the thinking behind their attack on the State of Israel and they emerge as true clowns.
Those who read what they wrote in the New York Times (where else?) will recognize that they fit perfectly Lenin’s definition of “Useful idiots.”
The pride with which these two Jews expressed their self-adulation, while demonstrating a near perfect ignorance of what they were talking about, was pitiful. So too was their joyful acceptance of the plaudits of some of the Left’s most unrepentant Jew haters and those who inhabit the same Leftist echo chamber that they do.
Being an ignorant or stupid Jew, or being absorbed in narcissistic justification for facilitating and aiding anti-Semites, is not an excuse. You have still shamed yourself with the ultimate disgrace and the worst insult any Jew can carry. You have become an enemy and betrayer of your own people.
But these two examples are only the most recent high-profile cases. A survey by the Jewish Electorate Institute, a group led by prominent Jewish Democrats reports a quarter of American Jews agreed that “Israel is an apartheid state” and 22 percent agreed that “Israel is committing genocide (sic) against the Palestinians.”
Among younger voters, agreement with those statements was higher. The poll found that 9 percent of voters agreed with the statement “Israel doesn’t have a right to exist.” Among voters under 40, that proportion was 20 percent!
That survey shows that those who “celebrate the Holocaust and aim to perpetrate another” will try as usual to recruit Jewish anti-Semites to aid them. From Ice cream to Facebook, they already have.
Moving forward, they will find no shortage of Jews happy and proud to carry the worst insult and ultimate disgrace that any Jew can, a facilitator and supporter of anti-Semites.