Even before the bombs went off, Jews in Britain were having a rough summer. During the week of Shavuot the community was shaken by three major cemetery attacks in the space of seven days. London’s mayor Ken Livingstone condemned the cemetery attacks – one of which has been hit 117 times in 15 years – as outrageous acts of anti-Semitism which would not be tolerated in his city. But such statements ring hollow in a community which still awaits the mayor’s apology for comparing a Jewish reporter to a concentration camp guard. Having witnessed the slaughter in his city from the safety of an Olympic junket in Singapore, perhaps Mr Livingstone will think twice before embracing another Jihadist cleric who openly praises the work of suicide bombers.
To add to their feelings of insecurity, Jews in the UK have also had to deal with an anti-Israel boycott movement. First the university teachers wanted to boycott Israeli academics. Now the Anglican Church has the same idea for Israeli products. But they prefer to call it ‘divestment’. So much more civilised, old chap!
Those of us who thought that anti-Semitism could not re-emerge in a liberal democracy are now waking up to the reality that it has found a back door. Today’s anti-Semites insist they are not against the Jews; only against Israel. In this process Israel has effectively become The World’s Jew.
Once we accept this reality, it is important to take a close look at the World’s Jew and to ask how he is going to survive. For all Jewish mamas, the greatest fear is that their son will marry out. The grandchildren will no longer go to Jewish schools, the home will no longer be kosher and the whole family lineage will disappear in a sea of assimilation.
Well, if Israel is the World’s Jew, Europe is its shiksa. For Ramat Aviv’s enlightened secularists, the greatest national achievement would be Israel’s enrolment as a full member of the European Union. Many of the older members of the EU’s squabbling family show nothing but contempt for the World’s Jew. It would be unseemly for them to take a Jew into the house and upset their ever-increasing number of Moslem lodgers. Moreover, there are the family businesses to consider, which are so dependent on oil and the lucrative contracts that flow from Arabia.
Oblivious to these prejudices, the likes of Shimon Peres doggedly pursue the courtship and continue to date Scandinavian socialites like Terje Roed Larssen, architect of the Oslo Accords. But for Israel, such a marriage would represent its own Naqba, or national catastrophe. Imagine having to allow the free movement of thousands of Spanish, Turkish and Croatian workers traipsing though our national home? How could we ever keep the place kosher? What would become of our family life and traditions? Within two generations, the World’s Jew will surely have become totally assimilated.
In truth, the World’s Jew is an abused child. Its neighbours tried to suffocate it at birth. Over the last 67 years it has had almost no respite from attacks of one kind or another. From physical attacks like bombings, kindergarten attacks, airplane hijackings, the slaying of its Olympic athletes and outright wars, to the psychological torture of defamation, demonization and an endless flow of hostile resolutions from the UN. The bizarre reaction of an abused child is to seek to please its abuser, much like a battered wife feels she is to blame for the beatings. So, for every act of abuse, there is more fawning and concession. The World’s Jew continues to appease its abuser with territorial concessions and prisoner releases as well as providing the weapons and freedom of movement with which the abuse is guaranteed to continue.
