On Racism, Religion, Antisemitism and ‘The Story’

Featured image above by Mario Antonio Pena Zapatería, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

Mishra’s lecture is impressive, educational and abundantly erudite.  The more disappointing was to encounter what appeared to be his uncritical promotion of certain anti-Israel accusations, usually presented wrapped in someone’s quotes.

Mishra submitted, “Why have Western politicians and journalists kept presenting tens of thousands of dead and maimed Palestinians as collateral damage, in a war of self-defence forced on the world’s most moral army, as the IDF claims to be? The answers for many people around the world cannot but be tainted by a long-simmering racial bitterness.” ‘Racial’? Mr. Mishra, are you implying that brownish Palestinians bitterly oppose fair-skinned Jews-oppressors? Let’s see. Statistically, “in the Gaza Strip, around 1% of the population is estimated to be black. Most Palestinians are Levantine Arabs, who are lighter than Gulf Arabs. In Israel, about 30% of Israeli Jews are Ashkenazi who are generally fair-skinned. Sephardic Jews are generally dark-skinned and make up about 55%. And every 5^th person is  an Arab,” (Wikipedia).  It looks then like some 75% of Israelis are ‘brown(ish)’ while most Palestinians – fair-skinned…  And of course, both peoples belong to the same race. Or may you mean the bitterness of brownish Israeli civilians victimized by fair-skinned Hamas aggressors on Oct. 7? This would seem more accurate. Still, not ‘racial’ though…

Mishra continued, “…Palestine, as George Orwell pointed out in 1945, is a ‘colour issue’, and this is the way it was inevitably seen by Gandhi… and the postcolonial nations, which almost all refused to recognise the state of Israel”.

This accusation is also grotesquely inapplicable to Israel. And it is far too grave  to be floated lightly: in our recent-postcolonial world the loaded word ‘colonialism’  eliminates any moral restrictions for those believing they fight against it; it is like red cloth for the bull. Orwell and Gandhi meant European colonizers, Britain, at the time controlling Palestine. True, Arabs and Brits belong to different races. But what on Earth does it have to do with Israel? Israel didn’t even exist in 1945.   To claim that Israeli existential struggle is “a racial issue” is like to suggest that religious wars that decimated  16th-18^th centuries Europe were “a racial issue”. To furtively substitute Britain for Israel in order to make Israeli-Arab conflict look racial is an example of despicable millennial Jew-scapegoating. 

As to postcolonial nations, their refusal to recognise Israel, referred to by Mishra, was exactly of the same nature as were 140 resolutions against Israel that the UN General Assembly adopted since 2015 (as opposed to 68 resolutions it  passed against all other countries combined, including North Korea, Iran, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Russia, etc).  It was forever preprogrammed in the UN where 22 Arab and many more other Muslim countries voted against one Israel. The name of the game is prejudice, specifically – antisemitism. 

Another example of the game: innocent children and elders are being globally stabbed on the streets if recognised as Jewish. What exactly is their fault? Many people dislike Iranian ayatollahs; many despise Putin – yet their expats are not being stabbed on the streets for being ethno-religious Iranians or Russians. But a Jew (born anywhere) is a ‘legitimate’ target for anti-Netanyahu enthusiasts anxious to find a scapegoat.

Mishra quoted, “…In 1967, Baldwin was tactless enough to say that the suffering of Jewish people ‘is recognised as part of the moral history of the world’ and ‘this is not true for the blacks.’”  It was true and outrageously unjust in 1967. Today, it seems in reverse: with the spread of the DEI concept, the West started finally to recognize/reduce anti-black injustice while antisemitism still flares up fully unhinged.

Mishra elaborated, “In 2024, many more people can see that, when compared with the Jewish victims of Nazism, the countless millions consumed by slavery, the numerous late Victorian holocausts in Asia and Africa, and the nuclear assaults on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are barely remembered. …They can hardly fail to notice a belligerent version of ‘Holocaust denial’ among the elites of former imperialist countries, who refuse to address their countries’ past of genocidal brutality and plunder and try hard to delegitimize any discussion of this as unhinged ‘wokeness’… They shy away from exploring the obvious connection between the imperial slaughter of natives in the colonies and the genocidal terrors perpetrated against Jews inside Europe. One of the great dangers today is the hardening of the colour line into a new Maginot Line.” Historical racial inequality is an abhorrent inheritance people have lived with and fought against. As is historical Jew-hatred. Both – colored people and Jews – are on the same, not opposite, side of the divide even if one calamity consumed “countless millions” (out of billions) while the other ‘only’ six – out of less-than-fifteen millions. Why should limelight on one be at expense of belittling the other?  Brutalizing of natives in Congo and Namibia had been abysmal, this urgently needs recognition/admission, but how does it make the Holocaust less inhuman? After all, one might say, Holocaust remains unique in that neither slavery, nor bombing Nagasaki purposely aimed at total – think of it, literally to the last baby (as if they were plague-infected rats) – annihilation from Earth of certain people (as it had for Jews, also Gypsies, disabled, homosexuals). Only the Nazis made monstrous ‘final solutions’ their goal. It is arguably a yet-different degree of depravity.   

In short, Mishra wrongly presents Israel as a racial colonial project. And he is not alone. Columbia Professor Joseph Massad also claims that antisemitism is being used as ‘cover’ for Israeli ‘colonialism’; that genocide is Western way and Israel is deeply aligned with these values, including ‘settler colonialism’ and ‘utter racism.’  There are far too many others ready for anti-Israel, anti-Jew propaganda under the banner of this defamatory libel.

Creation and defence of Israel  have never been racially nor colonially motivated – it  is literally an existential struggle for survival of Jews as a people as well as (and it is not an exaggeration)  –  their mere physical survival. Israel has been brutalized by allied Arab countries (seven against one) since inception. Syria initiated a state of war on May 15, 1948, and never lifted it. Conversely, the settlers’ aggression, same as Palestinian car-ramming or stone-throwing, have been more desperate snapping, overreacting, than any ‘colonial ideology’. “Israel endured over 18,300 terrorist attacks last year… [in which 134 were killed and 1277 wounded], as the Jewish state faced an onslaught of terrorism from seven fronts…” (Algemeiner, January 9, 2025).

Insinuating term “’Settler colonial ideology’ closely resembles the antiracist ideology of Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X. Kendi … just as all white people are supposedly born with the original sin of racism, all non-indigenous people are born with the original sin of settler colonialism –- even those who have been around for generations. (This leads to the bizarre result that to some scholars, Black Americans whose forebears arrived in chains are viewed as colonizers.) …With ‘settler colonialism’, you are either indigenous and belong to the land, or you are non-indigenous and your presence is irrevocably evil. …Because all non-indigenous people bear the irrevocable stain of settler colonialism, they can be collectively punished.  …The original Zionists who populated the British Mandate were refugees, not colonizers. They came to escape oppression and reclaim their homeland, not to widen the boundaries of European influence. …Moreover, strikingly unlike typical colonial ventures, Israel has no mother country obligated to defend it, or to accept millions of refugees if it fails,” (Paul Schneider, Algemeiner, December 17, 2024).

Besides, it is customary to smear colonized people as inferior. However, “Palestinians and Jews are genetically closer to each other than to other populations. Jews and Palestinians are closer to each other than the Jews are to their host countries” (Wikipedia).  Call them white, brown or polka-dot – they are genetically a family. To announce Palestinians as ‘inferior’ then would have been for Jews like to spit against the wind… Two million Israeli Arabs experience this advantage of being ‘as a family’ daily: they are equal in their rights with the Israeli Jews (that is  starkly opposed to Jews who might want to live in Gaza or other Arab countries). “The number of Druze who are Israeli citizens is at 20%, double the number at the beginning of the 21st century… In the past year, the number of Druzes in Israel applying for Israeli citizenship has increased to unprecedented levels,” (January 9, 2025). Note that “the past year” was 2024 – a year of Gaza war but even this did not stop the Druzes.

What is it then if not the ‘racial bitterness’? Can Palestinians and Jews share the land and live in peace? Their mutual hostility has been purposefully fueled and financed by powerful international forces pursuing in conspiracy their own political gains. To have it masked they used conveniently available religious incompatibility. Unforgiving religious divisiveness and exclusiveness toward any non-coreligionist is notoriously known; think of European religious wars or of Sunni/Shia since-inception-conflict that cost billions of Muslim lives. This is the rupture line. To label Jews as colonizers (hence to fuel anti-Jew hatred) is another attempt of Jew-scapegoating.

Another example: “Anti-Israel groups took to social media to blame Israel for Los Angeles wildfires,” (WIN, January 10, 2025).  Huh? Then how about blaming  Syria (namely, forbidden sarin, used by Assad ) for LA smoke? And Sudan’s warlords for LA destruction? Anti-Jew prejudice craves to invent false connections between Jews and anything bad and detrimental (real or imaginary) on Earth, aiming at the ignorant who might swallow and spread it uncritically.

And yet another accusation: Israel used ‘disproportionate force’ in fighting. Israel’s stated goal was to destroy Hamas because Hamas threatened repeated future attacks– and Hamas was hiding and making human shields of the Gazans in schools and hospitals. The only way to destroy Hamas and protect Israeli citizens was therefore shelling Gazan schools and hospitals. Who staged it but Hamas? From Israel’s point of view, it was vital, existential (hence proportionate)  because it allowed (if barely) Israel to reach their goal. They stopped as soon as it was reached to have the Israeli civilians protected for now. Israel’s legitimate views are totally ignored when it is unfairly called ‘disproportionate’. Why such a lopsided anti-Israel attitude??

The fact that Israel has never been a racial colonial project certainly does not absolve Jews automatically nor keep them immune to any deserved critique. Many of Mishra’s accusative points are indisputably true. But the anti-Israel chorus is so overwhelming that I’m taking liberty here to focus on mortal prejudices against Israel/Jews.

Israel is not perfect. Who is? But other countries do not suffer background hostile pre-fixation. Nor has there been a perpetual TV flood of horrifying images of dead children and numbers-of-fatalities from other contemporaneous wars (in which civilian casualties were mostly by orders higher than in Gaza). In Sudan, for instance, “more than 2.5 million people are estimated to have been killed or to have died of conflict-related starvation and disease (Wikipedia). Sudan’s military has used chemical weapons at least twice against the paramilitary group…”, (NYT, January 17, 2025). Who knew? Imagine the global howling, if it were not Sudan but Israel…

Since 2012, al-Assad had been fighting the Syrian opposition using Russian   bombers. The UN asked not to bomb hospitals and provided their exact coordinates. But Russian and Syrian aviators used the provided coordinates to specifically target hospitals even though there were no claims that any opposition fighters were hiding there. “Over 230,000 Syrian civilians were killed [by Assad partly with sarin] …with 30,193 children and 16,451 women included in the death toll”. Not much international outcry, nor stabbing of ex-Syrians abroad, no libels… But 44,000 Gazan casualties immediately called “GENOCIDE” Why the difference?  Even at the height of atrocities in Nazi Germany nobody stabbed ex-Germans around the Globe ‘in protest’. But this natural, fair attitude seems inapplicable to Jews and only to  Jews…

Only the Gaza war is under daily magnifying glass of unfriendly global media and social press, ‘excessive response’ being the mildest accusation. ‘Excessive’ in civilian casualties? Horrifyingly so, but it was because the terrorists had been hiding among civilians and used as human shields, in hospitals and schools. However, what about effectively guaranteeing safety for Israelis –  with all the Hamas threats of ever-repeating their attacks? “Palestinian official Ali Faisal stated that another event like October 7th is on the horizon and will continue occurring until a Palestinian victory is achieved… Despite Hamas’ significant losses the terror group has effectively replenished its ranks. Together with the much smaller Palestinian Islamic Jihad organization, they now have between 20,000 to 23,000 men under arms in the Gaza Strip,” (El Pais, January 2, 2025). “The Hamas terror group has recruited enough new terrorists to replace nearly all of its operatives killed during the war,” (Blinken, online news, January 15, 2025). In this light, does the Israeli response look ‘excessive’ – or arguably sufficient?

   To dot the i’s and cross the t’s in case someone missed it: this IS rising   antisemitism. Beware of it: it always starts with Jews but never ends with Jews.  Why does it exist? Antisemitism follows religious geographic distribution and is limited to areas whose populations are Christian and Muslim. India, China and Southeast Asia are largely unaffected.

For two millennia the Church (fearing ideological competition from Judaism) and – later – fanatical Islam, had been relentlessly teaching and preaching that Jews are irredeemably evil Jesus-killers. It has worked and in generations people got used to it as something self-evident like daylight. Negative attitudes toward Jews became a social almost  instinctive norm. How many other than Jews peoples experienced in their history 150+ exiles/expulsions? Countless persecutions, mass murders, forced conversions, pogroms, humiliation, endless restrictions, ‘Jewish quotas’ widespread in the 19th and 20th centuries…  and never-ending scapegoating.

Israel is being denigrated for getting ‘excessive’ US aid. U.S. foreign aid (grand total) was as follows:

1. Ukraine $17,193,710.40
2. Israel  $ 3,302,860.88
3. Jordan$ 1,686,862.60
4. Egypt  $ 1,503.609.42

But once again it is only Israel that attracts global attention – not for turning swamps and deserts into gardens but “…for actions inconsistent with international law.” Perhaps, all the other countries are forever blameless?

Allow me a metaphor. Tiny Israel among the countries is not unlike Cinderella in her step-mother’s house: the scapegoat, always at fault, no matter what. “The international Jewish conspiracy… has been described as ‘one of the most widespread and long-running conspiracy theories‘… Belief in an international Jewish conspiracy for world domination can be traced back to the thirteenth century…” (Wikipedia).

It is human to look for a scapegoat: it is hard to blame oneself…  Defenseless stateless Jews fit perfectly into this common psychological need. And again, in two millennia masses got used to it as to some natural global order. This combination – religion-orchestrated making ‘whipping boys’ of Jews and the common emotional need in a scapegoat – has cultivated two-millennia-long European antisemitism. It is something that people still receive ‘with mother’s milk’, before they are able to form their own conscious attitudes and choices.

“If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself,” (Goebbels’ doctrine).

Humans are unique in their ability (critical for forming our cooperative on-demand responses/efforts that make Homo Sapiens uniquely powerful) for story-telling and -believing. “In order to cooperate, Homo Sapiens… just had to know the same story. And the same story can be familiar to billions of individuals.   …What they have connected to has been a carefully crafted story…  A ‘brand’ is a specific type of story. To brand a product means to tell a story about this product, which may have little to do with the product’s actual qualities but which consumers nevertheless learn to associate with the product [like a story about Jesus killed by Jews, SD]. …As numerous modern studies indicate, repeatedly retelling a fake memory eventually causes the person to adopt it as genuine recollection. …If people stop talking about them, they disappear,” (Y.N. Harari, Nexus, 2024).

Antisemitism is a branded Story mightily spread for two millennia by both  Abrahamic religions. It has not helped that both of them are fiercely relentlessly proselytizing (while Judaism forbids proselytizing). The quotes of Church Founding Fathers (St. Augustine, Chrysostom, Tertullian, Origen, etc.) as well as the quotes from Islamic Quran about Jews as a people have been their mortal weapon.

It took the Story and a few first centuries CE for the Church Fathers to dehumanize/demonize Jews into global pariahs, to make Jew-hatred legitimate. “The early Church Fathers introduced a major source of hatred into the founding of the Church…  They became the foundation of a much more aggressive form of Jew-hatred that kept growing and morphing over the centuries. This hatred towards the Jewish people and Israel still persists today… Origen injected a special brand of unforgiveness that targeted Jewish people as ‘Christ-killers’, Tertullian –  with his ‘Against the Jews’ and  Augustine in his Sermon Against the Jews (8.11): ‘You killed Christ in your ancestors’,” (O.J. Melnick online, 2021). Those texts have been the learning sources for billions of people starting from two millennia ago.

And now antisemites apply maximal efforts NOT to let people stop talking about it. That’s why the anti-Israel chorus is so deafening. Groups that seemed ideologically incompatible are united through antisemitism. “The surprising nature of the spread of antisemitism between the far left and Islamist groups, has been called the “Red-Green Alliance,” (I. Grand, Algemeiner, January 21, 2025).

Previous anti-Jew riots in history were just the expressions of well-known  xenophobia common among all races and ethnicities. The list of historical ethno-religious cleansings has far over 250 items (anti-Catholic, -Shia vs. Sunni, -Hindu/Buddhist vs Muslim, anti-Armenians, -Albanians,  -Bosniacs, -Greeks, -Turks, -Soviet minorities [Tatars, Bashkirs, others] -non-Han Chinese,  etc, etc). “The first organized anti-Jewish uprising accompanied by looting and massacre we know of took place in Alexandria in the year 38 CE. . …Jews were accused of not honoring the Emperor,” (Wikipedia). If anti-Jew riots appear specifically outstanding, it is because of this perennial pariah-status of Jews as compared to all the others.

With this unique and uniquely toxic background one must be by orders more careful to avoid fanning and fuelling already-existing irrational hostility against the people made forever pariahs – because the soil for antisemitism is quite fertile, particularly now in radical Islam.

Another example of branded story with calamitous consequences: witch hunts in Europe in 15-18^th centuries. “The most influential book which promoted [witch-hunts] was the Malleus Maleficarum, published in 1487 by clergyman and German inquisitor Heinrich Kramer”, (Harari, Nexus).  Printing press was conveniently just invented. Some 50,000 witches were burned alive, 80% of them – older women, all accused of causing disasters and diseases. 

Current conspiracy stories, proliferating in social  media like bacteria, being anti-democracy, anti-Jew, anti-Muslim, anti-gay, etc, are as mortally toxic.

“Blame it on the Jews.”

Nobody knows how accurate the numbers of civilian casualties were as given by the Gazan ministry. “The report by the British Henry Jackson Society security think tank breaks down the figure of Gaza casualties (about 44,000 to the date as reported by Ministry): this figure does not distinguish between civilians and some 19,000 terrorists Israel says it has killed in Gaza, as well as includes about 5,000 people who die of natural causes each year,” (National Post, December 18, 2024). This correction alone more than halves (to 46%) the total casualties.  And even for those 46% – “Blame Hamas and Hezbollah for Civilian Deaths, Not Israel” (Con Coughlin, December 29, 2024). Hamas designed it as a provocateur and a puppeteer: “hit Jews where it hurts,” that is by fueling global  antisemitism. And the way to reach this goal is to have Jews kill Gazan civilians – the more the better. “The blood of our women, children and elderly… we are the ones who need this blood…” (I. Haniyeh, MEMRI, October 26, 2023). Even if 13,000 dead Gazan children were an inflated number, even if ‘only’ 3,000 or even 3… One is too many. And Hamas, the mastermind of the war, must be held totally responsible.  Similarly, the UN lately condemned the Israeli military response to the Houthis shelling. But what remained – welcome Houthi’s shelling?

   Was there any slightest possibility to avoid war had Israel, say, unlikely ‘let it go’ after the Oct. 7 massacre? Not a chance. Ghazi Hamad publicly vowed to repeat the October 7 attacks “time and again until Israel is annihilated,” and expressed a desire to “sacrifice martyrs” referring to Gazan civilians (October 24, 2023, LBC TV, Lebanon).  Peace is not an option for Hamas, only violence: “There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad,” (Hamas Charter, Article 13). And repeatedly: “We’ll do it again and again”. Even on the day of signing the ceasefire: “Senior Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya pledges to repeat the Oct. 7 massacre just hours after ceasefire agreement,” (MEMRI, January 16, 2025). When talking about “stolen Palestinian land”, quoting Amery who implored to Israel to “acknowledge that your freedom can be achieved only with your Palestinian cousin, not against him”– did Mishra mean illegal settlements and aggressive settlers? This seems to be the sensible way to read. But it is not how Hamas reads it: “Israel is a country that has no place on our land…” (Ghazi Hamad). “Bring annihilation upon Jews,” (Hamad al-Regeb). “Kill them all without leaving a single one,” (Ahmad Bahr). Doesn’t it look like the right addressee for Mr. Mishra’s call about ‘achieving  freedom for both cousins‘ would be Hamas rather than Israel?

Besides, “The normally foreseen rate of civilian-combatant casualties in urban warfare is 9:1, whereas in Gaza, despite Hamas using civilians as human shields and killing so many civilians by misfiring rockets and for wishing to flee to safer zones, the rate is 1:1… The fact that the real casualty rate is so low compared to other similar conflicts and to the number of Hamas et Co. combatant deaths, actually puts Israel in a remarkable place of managing to avoid civilian casualties to the extent of achieving the lowest civilian-combatant casualty rate EVER. …During WW2, the Germans suffered over 2 million civilian deaths in British air raids, while the British suffered ‘only’ 70,000 civilian deaths? Are you claiming that you support Nazi Germany because of this?

   …International law says that Israel is acting in accordance with the internationally accepted rules of engagement…  Some of the rules governing the use of force in armed conflicts are set forth in treaties, such as the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the Regulations annexed to the Fourth Hague Convention of 1907… The Israeli High Court has ruled that these customary international law rules bind Israel under both international law and Israeli law,” (Wikipedia).

Mishra quoted, “ In 1980, the Israeli columnist Boaz Evron carefully described… the tactic of conflating Palestinians with Nazis and shouting that another Shoah is imminent. [It] was, he feared, liberating ordinary Israelis from ‘any moral restrictions, since one who is in danger of annihilation sees himself exempted from any moral considerations which might restrict his efforts to save himself.”  Killing in self-defence is not a crime in the Americas, Europe and most of the world. Here is a thought experiment. The scenario: a maniac-murderer threatens to kill your entire family.  He is a sniper, he already killed your teenager; you have three more kids, your wife and parents to protect. And yourself. The police do not respond, you are alone. You know where he is hiding; five innocent families (over 20 persons) inhabit the same house.

Suppose that you can send a drone to  destroy this house. With 20+ innocents in it. If you don’t though, your entire family is doomed (7 remaining persons). No other solution is available. What should you do? This is an unsolvable ethical problem not unlike the ‘trolley problem’ (“a thought experiment in ethics in which an onlooker has the choice to save 5 people in danger of being hit by a trolley, by diverting the trolley to kill just 1 person.”

Now let’s make our imaginary scenario even more dramatic. Suppose, you belong to an ethno-religious minority historically unjustly disliked by many of  your countrymen due to prejudice… While 20+ dwellers of the house all belong to the majority. You have to weigh the consequences of their becoming victims from this perspective too. It might provoke pogroms… Your totally innocent co-religionists elsewhere might be irrationally held responsible and  stabbed on the streets… Whom would the masses, long fed on homophobic propaganda, choose to blame for the inevitable in your case loss of innocent life – the maniac or you?

Actually, real life presented this dilemma in practice. On September 1, 2004, in Beslan, Ossetia (Northern Caucasus) 32 Islamic terrorists occupied a school taking over 1000 hostages, teachers and children. The hostages were denied water/food; some children resorted to drinking urine. Russian Special Forces (RSF) attacked. One third (about 330 mostly children) were killed in the attack, many more wounded by Russian fire. Should we blame the RSF  for this suffering/loss of life? Wouldn’t justice be done by having blamed the Islamic terrorists even if technically most hostages, yes, were killed by RSF bullets? Similarly, why on Earth does the social media blame Israel for ‘Palestinian genocide’ orchestrated by Hamas? Even if those were Israeli bombs that killed the Gazans – just like they were the RSF bullets in Beslan?

Mishra stated: “It is possible that Israel will succeed in ethnically cleansing Gaza, and even the West Bank as well”. Despite all the Arab-Jew mutual accusations of ‘ethnic cleansing’ in the Middle East, the Arab population has been growing and is as widespread and dense as ever (including in Israel). However, this is not true in reverse: there are no longer any Jews in the Middle East (except in Israel). “Around 850,000 Jews were forced out… from Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia and several other Arab countries in the 20 years that followed the Arab-Israeli war of 1948. …Age-old communities, with roots dating back millennia, were gone. It was the largest exodus of non-Muslims from the middle east…” (Wikipedia). It has become a ‘Jew-free’ zone, a Nazi dream come true. Palestinian population has steadily grown while the Jews are eliminated in the Middle East which has become a Juden Frei world (save for Israel)? Who and by whom then has been victimized – ‘ethnically cleansed’ in the Middle East?

“Colonial practices…”?  More accurate name for it is worse: final ethnic cleansing (of all Jews by the Arabs). Is it because “In Islam, the concept of “Dar al-Islam” signifies that a land once considered Islamic ought to remain under Islamic rule forever”? Where is the public outcry?

The war, initiated by Hamas, has been a calamity for both sides – with its huge civilian casualties and destruction for Gaza as well as with Hamas violence, hostage-taking and upswing of global antisemitism – for Israel. Hamas/Hezbollah shamelessly disclosed once again that destruction of Israel was their priority far above the lives, let alone well-being of innocent civilians, equally in Gaza and in Israel. They wanted this war and made it inescapable.

What was achieved? Israel mightily weakened Hamas,  Hezbollah (killed their leadership, their fighters and destroyed their tunnels and material bases), and Iran (they planned a joint Hezbollah-Hamas operation under Iranian leadership). It will take time and resources for them to recover. With those wins, Israel has achieved for now safety of its borders.  And Hamas?

“There was a 340% increase in the total number of antisemitic incidents reported worldwide in 2024 compared to 2022, and nearly a 100% increase compared to 2023… The choice of 2022 as the methodological reference year was due to its status as a year without exceptional events affecting the level of global antisemitism, unlike 2023, which was significantly impacted by the events of October 7 and their aftermath… A massive increase in the number of antisemitic incidents across North America between 2022 and 2024, rising by 288% and peaking in April 2024. The incidents included severe acts of violence, such as murder… attacks on synagogues; and violence in educational institutions… In Canada, the situation is even more severe, with a 562% increase in antisemitic incidents, a quarter of which were violent. Significant increases in the number of reported antisemitic incidents were also found in Europe, with a 450% increase in Britain and a 350% increase in France…

Some 76 percent of people in the United States said they thought another Holocaust could happen, followed by the UK at 69%, France at 63%, Austria at 62%, Germany at 61%, Poland at 54%, and Hungary at 52%. In Romania, 44% said they thought such a scenario was possible,” (Times of Israel, January 22, 2025).

“Worldwide… 46 percent of adults backed a majority of the antisemitic tropes, representing around 2.2 billion people… Western Europe was the least antisemitic region, at 17%, followed by the Americas at 24%; Oceania, 20%; sub-Saharan Africa, 45%; Eastern Europe, 49%; Asia, 51%, and the Middle East and North Africa, 76% …[the latter figure] ascribed to Al Jazeera – a ‘nonstop fountain of antisemitism.’ Al Jazeera’s Arabic coverage differs significantly from its English-language coverage, and Iran is the only country in the region, besides Israel, that does not mainly speak Arabic… Iran was the least antisemitic of the 18 countries in the region, with 49% of respondents holding significant antisemitic views,” (ADL survey of 58,000 respondents in 103 countries; Times of Israel, January 15, 2025). This was rich. Hamas did not need a military victory.

What is the major obstacle to any progress? Hamas is fanatically set on destroying Israel.  The US and UN offered Hamas unlimited control over Gaza and West Bank as well as money had Hamas agreed to stop fighting – and Hamas refused. Everyone who blames Israel rather than Hamas must understand very clearly that it approves of the total destruction of Israel. It is not about Israel’s need to fix its errors which it does have. It is an existential problem for Israel. It is where Jews are defenseless and vulnerable with no fault of their own whatsoever.. This is not any fair struggle; it is super-despicable since Hamas used a two-millennia-long anti-Jew injustice created by religious fictional ‘stories’. The only viable and morally valid solution will be a two-state land but Hamas wants it Judenfrei just like the entire Middle East has become. Will the world allow them?

Hamas, founded in 1987, emerged from the 1973 Mujama al-Islamiya charity affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, whose goal since inception has been a massive Sunni alliance in the area, which then could destroy Israel and proceed to conquer the remaining infidel countries.

Does history repeat itself? Al Jazeera has been creating another Jew-hating ‘Story’ in Islamic world – they also need an all-purpose scapegoat. Would it take another two millennia to recede the tide of hatred to liveable for Jews levels? An abysmal perspective… Will the world allow them?

Just one last quote on a connected topic. Mishra submitted, “The full-throated endorsement of Israel by far-right figures like Javier Milei of Argentina and Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil and its patronage by countries where white nationalists have infected political life – the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy – suggests that the world of individual rights, open frontiers and international law is receding… There is too much evidence that the arc of the moral universe does not bend towards justice.”

A grain of truth here is that ‘the arc of the moral universe does not bend towards justice‘ in our times. We are currently on a descending branch of the sinusoidal curve that represents historical fluctuations of global civilizations – and the bottom has not been reached yet (S. Dulesh. Humanist Perspectives, #224, June 4, 2023). But it eventually gets better, initiating the next sinusoidal upward wave. Jew-hatred historically fluctuates synchronously. It was noted that Jews have been ‘a canary in the coal mine’ – with antisemitism up fast and early with obscurantism and fanaticism on upswing in Europe. It was so on the verge of the 20^th century and climaxed in WWI, WWII, Nazism and Holocaust. Later, there were six decades of globally rising democracies, human rights, decolonization, fading antisemitism. In the last 15 years this ascending curve reverted downwards again… But now that AI is a reality, it might – by creating economic abundance – change/cancel this historical sinusoidal pattern based on periodically arising scarcity of material resources (as a result of concomitant explosion of overpopulation).