Photo Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons: MathKnight
The Jewish people are once again under the same threat that they have been for most of their history: that of extremism. Jews have faced many forms of extremism, ranging from the Spanish Inquisition, to Eastern European pogroms, to the Nazis. Today, radical Islamism and growing populist anti-Semitism pose serious threats to Jews across the world — threats that are difficult to combat. But even more concerning than radical Islam and populist anti-Semitism is Jewish extremism itself, which could undermine the vast progress made by the Jewish people.
Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, which just last week won a plurality of seats in the Israeli parliamentary elections, virtually guaranteeing a continuation of its government, has engaged in extreme militarism toward Palestinians. These policies delegitimize Israel in the eyes of its international supporters, and moreover, threaten the Jewish people by failing to preserve the legitimacy of their national homeland, Israel.
For so much of history, the Jewish people have been oppressed and persecuted by governments and societies that failed to recognize Jews as citizens, limited their educational opportunities and professions and circumscribed where they could live. But now, approximately 14 million Jewish people flourish in Israel, North America and other parts of the world. To be sure, there is still organized anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist activity directed towards Jews throughout world, but most of this activity is not sponsored by legitimate governments.
The Islamic State may call for the destruction of Israel, and too many violent acts of anti-Semitism occur, as we tragically saw in the Ile-de-France terrorist attacks over the winter, but most powers that be condemn this anti-Semitism, and Israel has never been in a stronger position to defend itself militarily from its enemies.
But the Israeli political right wing, led by Netanyahu’s Likud party, is undermining the progress of the Jewish people. The Netanyahu government’s militarism and oppression of Palestinians has soiled global opinion of Israel.
The state of Israel was created by the United Nations in the wake of World War II to protect the Jewish people from the oppression that they had so long endured. For decades, Israel was spectacularly successful in protecting the Jewish people, and moreover, acted as a model state while doing so — turning the desert into farmland, acting as a beacon of liberal democracy in the authoritarian Middle East, fending off its enemies in spectacular military victories and developing a prosperous startup economy.
To be sure, Israel has always had flaws. It has often acted in its own interest and in the interest of the Jewish people with little regard to Palestinians. The blockade of the Gaza Strip has deprived Gazans of basic resources and human decency with questionable strategic benefit. And the Jewish settlements in the West Bank since the Six-Day War in 1967 have displaced Palestinians and made a lasting peace settlement more difficult to achieve.
But nonetheless, the powers of Europe and the United States have supported Israel as a liberal democracy and a Jewish state for the many virtues that outweighed these flaws. They have provided financial, military and diplomatic resources that have allowed Israel to flourish.
Netanyahu’s government is increasingly destroying this international support. The government’s overly destructive campaigns against Hamas in Gaza this past summer, continued settlement building and interference with American domestic politics have made many of Israel’s former supporters question the Jewish state.
The Prime Minister’s recent denunciation of a two state solution for the Israel-Palestine conflict during his electoral campaign, then subsequent rejection of his comments after his Likud party won the election, have infuriated the Obama administration. The United States has long supported a two-state solution, and Israel has at least nominally supported this as well. Netanyahu’s political flip-flopping has confirmed the Obama administration’s doubts that the Prime Minister is serious about his country’s commitment.
Support for Israel has long been one of the only political issues that United States’ Democrats and Republicans could agree upon. This bipartisan support seems to be eroding, though. Many on the left have grown disillusioned by Israel’s militarism and oppression of Palestinians. While in 1988, Democrats and Republicans sympathized with Israel in similar numbers, recently Democratic support has quickly eroded while Republican support has increased. A February Gallup poll found that 83 percent of Republicans sympathize with Israel more than Palestine, while only 48 percent of Democrats do.
Source: GALLUP
Europe has turned against Israel even more than the United States has. During the Gaza conflict last summer, there were mass protests around Europe decrying Israeli aggression against Palestinian civilians. Israel is losing the support of its allies in the United States and Europe. The legitimacy of Israel as a liberal democracy is being called into question. The action and rhetoric of the Netanyahu government
risk turning Israel into an international pariah that the United States and Europe will not support if new existential crises emerge.
For too much of history, the Jewish people have suffered under the yoke of outside extremist ideologies inflicted upon them. Now, via the actions of Netanyahu and his supporters, an indigenous Jewish extremism threatens the Jewish people’s hard won success. Israel is the national home of Jews, and the support of Europe and the United States is vital for its success in protecting Jews from the oppression that so long plagued them.
The Jewish community, both inside and outside of Israel, has an obligation to distance itself from Netanyahu. While the Jewish people were unable to stop previous extremists threats, Jews are now in a better position than they have been possibly in their entire history to counter the extremism of Israel’s right wing government. It must not fall victim to this latest brand of extremism.
Ben Perlmutter is a College junior from Chappaqua, New York.
Ben Perlmutter is a College junior from Chappaqua, New York majoring in Math and Political Science. In addition to being a staff writer for Editorials, he's involved with the Emory Journal of International Affairs, TableTalk, the Center for Law Politics and Economics and the Media Council.
Ben, being an idealist is so damn easy. It is so damn comfortable to say “I am for equal rights” or “I am for social justice.” Who could argue with that?
The problem is, though, we live in the real world.
There were Jews in the late 1930s and early 1940s who were liberals. They supported Neville Chamberlain who told them “Hitler was a man we can work with.”
Those Jews did not buy guns, or leave Germany, but fooled themselves into thinking the world could be a better place despite over two thousand years of the opposite being true.
Well, Ben, you know how that story ended.
Now Jews are telling themselves we can work with the Palestinians. Even though Palestinian leaders – religious and otherwise – all call for the destruction of Israel (at least they do so in private at the bare minimum) Jews like you, Joel, believe this time it will be different.
My advice to you, Joel: Live in the real world, not some fantasy world afforded you by your cushy background. Buy a gun. Learn how to use it. It wasn’t that long ago that six million Jews wished they had done so, so as to protect their loved ones from yesterday’s Islamists.
Sometimes leaving the world a better place means destroying the world’s Hitlers before they destroy you, or at the minimum being able to defend oneself from today’s Hitlers.
What do you propose? Launch an all out assault in Palestine? Watch how quickly the world turns against Israel. China would most definitely back Palestine and Russia would back the opposite of anything America supports, India would likely back Palestine too and so would EVERY SINGLE country around Israel. Israel is already straining relations with the United States. Israel is literally being held by a string and if they push for a war, they will likely get it.
Ironically enough, the person who solidified Palestine-Chinese relations name is Yasser Arafat.
I would propose doing the right thing. Meaning support civilization (Israel and reject Islam.
The world really does not need another dysfunctional, murderous, prejudice, hate-filled Islamic state; and if you think Palestine will be anything but that then you are living in Wonderland.
I also propose we behave like adults. We call a spade a spade. We openly and honestly discuss Islam. We do not afford it special treatment – above and beyond what we give to any other religion.
We acknowledge Mohammed’s cruelty, his stealing, his rapaciousness without feeling the rash of those who cannot take the truth. We communicate openly and honestly and as adults about Islam’s core values including supremacism, inequality for non-Muslims and women, insistence on creating a worldwide caliphate where all non-Muslims are subjugated.
Additionally I propose we make it easy for Muslims to leave their faith without fear of recrimination to themselves or their family. We encourage Muslims to embrace individual freedoms and respect for all lives. We encourage Muslims to be like westerners and to not live in fear, to live as individuals, for we are all individuals, each of us unique. And if we cannot respect our differences then we find ourselves like people living under Islam: Repressed, fearful and feared and treated like so much camel piss.
Are these proposals too humanistic for you?
I feel like you’re idea of what a muslim is was crafted from a blend of sarah palin speeches and fox news binges.
No. It was crafted by years of studying Islam. I feel like your idea of what Islam is was crafted by years of substance abuse.
My idea of islam was crafted by being a muslim and by these beautiful thing called perspective and common sense. Things you seem to struggle with.
A beheading in Woolwich, a suicide bomb in Beijing, a blown-up marathon in
Boston, a shooting in the head of a young Pakistani girl seeking education, a
destroyed shopping mall in Nairobi – and so it continues, in the name of Islam,
from south London to Timbuktu. It is time to take stock, especially on the
left, since these things are part of the world’s daily round.
Leave aside the parrot-cry of “Islamophobia” for a moment. I will return to
it. Leave aside, too, the pretences that it is all beyond comprehension.
“Progressives” might ask instead: what do Kabul, Karachi, Kashmir, Kunming and
a Kansas airport have in common? Is it that they all begin with “K”? Yes. But
all of them have been sites of recent Islamist or, in the case of Kansas, of
wannabe-Islamist, attacks; at Wichita Airport planned by a Muslim convert ready
to blow himself up, and others, “in support of al-Qaeda in the Arabian
Peninsula”. “We cannot stop lone wolves,” a British counterterrorism expert
told us after Woolwich. Are they “lone”? Of course not.
A gas facility in southern Algeria, a hospital in Yemen, an Egyptian police
convoy in the Sinai – it’s complex all right – a New Year’s party in the
southern Philippines, a railway station in the Caucasus, a bus terminal in
Nigeria’s capital, and on and on, have all been hit by jihadis, with hostages
taken, suicide belts detonated, cars and trucks exploded, and bodies blown to
bits. And Flight MH370? Perhaps. In other places – in Red Square and Times
Square, in Jakarta and New Delhi, in Amman and who-knows-where in Britain –
attacks have been thwarted. But in 2013 some 18 countries got it in the
neck (so to speak) from Islam’s holy warriors….
Araft, your solution to this problem is literally the definition of terrorism and no different than ISIS. The only point being, from your perspective it is in the name of self defense. You’re advice is to literally kill anyone who disagrees or poses a threat to Israel. I’m shocked that you could exhibit such bigotry towards a religion of 1.6 billion people. Have you ever met a muslim person? Do you think all of them are some satanic spawn?
You are the literal example of exactly what Ben is referring to….an extremist and ideas like yours only further violence and suffering.
You should be ashamed of your self. The level of ignorance and outright hate you expressed is disgusting.
KIR,
You certainly have an over-active imagination.
lol k. keep sippin on that hateorade
Muslims have been warring with their neighbors since
Mohammed founded Islam. In fact within 300 years of Islam’s birth, Muslim
jihadists had violently conquered most of the Middle East, most of North Africa,
large sections of Asia, Spain, Portugal, Sicily. Muslims had their eyes set on
Rome before the Pope finally declared the First Crusade.
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Muslims antipathy towards Jews is not unique. Their antipathy includes all
infidels as is made clear in the Qur’an, Hadiths and Sunna.
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It is said Muslim jihadists have killed up to 70 million Hindus in their
jihadist wars in southern Asia. I’d suggest Islam is an equal-opportunity
hater.
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What baffles me is that people do not understand this. I mean two decades ago
Muslims killed most of the Animists in Sudan. Muslims are currently wiping out
Christians in Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, Nigeria and elsewhere. Muslims are
ethnically cleansing what remains of the indigenous Hindu people of Pakistan
and Bangladesh. Why is it people cannot connect these dots?
Despite its precedents in the Nazis’ kauf nicht bei Juden
campaign begun in 1933 and the expulsion of Jews from German universities by
“Hitler’s Professors,” and the Arab economic boycott of Israel now over 66
years old, the BDS movement may fairly be called, despite local variations,
“Jews Against Themselves.” It was begun in England in April 2002 by the Jewish
academic Steven Rose and his wife. Espousal of the boycott of Israel,
especially its academic institutions, soon became the identifying mark of
“progressive” English Jews, so much so that Howard Jacobson devoted a whole
satirical novel (The Finkler Question, 2010) to “the Jews of shame,”
people who were ashamed of Israel’s very existence, though not of their own
illiteracy, cowardice, and treachery.
I’m not surprised you do not believe those things for like all liberals you
do not believe in facts. (This is not to say republicans are all that much
better.)
But the facts are pretty straightforward.
Islam was born in bloodshed. Its prophet Mohammed was no Buddha, Chri*t or
Moses. In fact turning the other cheek, or accepting all life as of equal value
was as alien to Mohammed as it is, say, to Omar al-Bashir.
Mohammed stole his way to wealth. Stealing from helpless caravans and
villages. He stole and enslaved and r*ped women. He and his men were involved
in more than 60 battles in their jihadist efforts to spread Islam. And they did
so successfully.
So successfully that within 300 years of his birth Islam had violently
conquered most all of the Middle East and North Africa, huge sections of Asia
and also Spain, southern France and other sections of Europe. This happened
much like what we have seen happening in Sudan where countless millions were
made miserable and/or killed in the name of Allah. And it goes without saying
this is also happening currently in Somalia, Nigeria, southern Sudan now, among
other places where Muslims are forcing their beliefs on those unable to resist
their onslaught.
There’s a reason people like you generalize about republicans but will never
do so when talking about Muslims and it’s known as hypocrisy, naivety and
stupidity. Like all liberals you see what you want to see and generalize what
you want to generalize regardless of the facts. I get it, but you don’t.
So you can believe Islam is like any other religion but it ain’t. It’s less
like Buddhism than night is like day. It is less like Judaism than black is
like white.
This is not to say that Muslims are different than you or I for they are
not. At least they are not when born, but much like republicans and democrats
they are socialized to believe certain things just like you have been. And,
sadly, far too many of them buy into the meme like you have bought into your
meme. They are as close-minded and sure of their beliefs as you are. They
believe the way to Paradise is through violent Jihad with the killing of Jews
being the utmost act of Jihad. Unlike Buddhists who are socialized to believe
and act as if we are all part of the same fabric and that all life is precious,
Muslims are socialized to believe there are Muslims and then there are the rest
of us – the lowly, lousy infidels.
So I really don’t give a d*mn what you believe in as I no more think you are
open to honest discussion than a horse is in learning how to fly; but I thought
it would be fun and worthwhile to shed some light on your naive, stupid and
prejudicial article for the readers who are open enough to learn something
other than the popular anti-Sem*tic meme that you have bought hook, line and
sinker.
To me you are nothing more than a naive, ardent tool of the fifth column.
Really pretty despicable, IMHO.
My friend, have you read the torah recently? Remember that part were the ancient Hebrews conquered the people who were in Canaan?
http://www.myjewishlearning.com/history/Ancient_and_Medieval_History/2500_BCE-539_BCE/Social_History/Conquest_of_Canaan.shtml
comparing Israel’s self defense to radical Islam is like comparing acne to leukemia. Undoubtedly, if Perlmutter were an American Jew during the Holocaust, he would lament the global warming coming from Jewish ash at Auschwitz
A bizarre, rambling diatribe against the democratically elected leader of America’s most reliable friend in the entire Middle East, one of the World’s most volatile and important regions.
The op-ed’s characterization of Prime Minister Netanyahu as an impediment to peace is absurd. It stems from suggestions he made on the campaign trail that he no longer supports a two-state solution, a position he backed away from after the polls closed.
An even greater sticking point to a two-state solution is the final status of the so called Palestinian ” refugees”. The unyielding Palestinian demand that the “right of return” be acknowledged and implemented is a call for Palestinian “justice ” that carries within it the seed for Israel’s destruction. The “right of return” has become sacred dogma for Palestinians. Perhaps equally fixed is the Israeli rejection of the idea as suicidal for the Jewish state. The refugee issue proves clearly that the Palestinian intent is to Arabize Israel and obliterate the Zionist enterprise.
The Israelis simply do not have a partner in peace. Until that changes, the best Netanyahu or anyone else can do is manage the conflict the Arabs refuse to end.