A Threat Assessment for American Jewry, Part Two

My earlier column on this subject listed four manifestations of anti-Semitism—physical attacks, campus campaigns of disinformation, penetration of the Democratic Party, and the collapse of moral self-confidence among a growing segment of American Jewry. The last of these, which may have seemed the most innocuous, proves the success of the other three.

Those of us fortunate enough to have been raised and educated as Jews—as opposed to the majority of American Jews now who are merely born to a Jewish parent—enjoy the blessings of our rich inheritance within the freedoms of North America. We find it wondrous to adhere to a civilization that has borne the Hebrew Bible through millennia of interpreters, to live and learn as a people among the nations of the world and, after the most harrowing of human trials, to have recovered sovereignty in our Land of Israel, a land plundered for millennia by foreign invaders. In many other ways, Jews share the blessings of fellow Americans who are raised in their own strong faith or ethnic identity, each with its particular features and respectful of all the others.

But none of the others confronts an ideology aimed at its destruction. One claim to distinction that Jews would gladly yield is their historical and continuing role as the world’s prime political target. Of the 193 nation-states in the United Nations—several of which are at war with each other—none except Israel has ever been refused recognition by fellow members, in direct violation of the UN Charter. No other people has been accused of “racism” for exercising its sovereign right to a homeland. The UN’s Human Rights Council coalesces against the Jewish people to prevent prosecution of its members’ own abuses. Anti-Semitism updated as anti-Zionism is one of modernity’s most effective political instruments, and it is organized against the Jews alone.