Yaakov Menken

Originally published in Newsweek

A recent report from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), “Islamophobia in the Mainstream,” is a case study in projection—the psychological process of attributing one’s own defects to others. In this case, the defect is hate, and the target is an all-too familiar one: the Jewish people and their allies.

It is not difficult here to discern the hater from the hated: Just days after CAIR issued its report, Malik Faisal Akram pursued CAIR’s antisemitic agenda by entering a Texas synagogue with a gun. In a speechdelivered to a Muslim audience in November, the executive director of CAIR’s San Francisco office, Zahra Billoo, identified “Zionist synagogues” like Congregation Beth Israel and all “polite Zionists”—essentially all Jews—as “your enemies,” both Islamophobic and opposed to “human rights.” Billoo further advised those listening and watching to “fight back.”

Rather than disavow her hateful and antisemitic remarks, CAIR claimed that Billoo was “misquoted” and the victim of an “online smear campaign.” Sadly for CAIR, the video is available for all to see.

In just the past two months, CAIR also organized a series of rallies in Texas for the release of Aafia Siddiqui, just as Akram demanded. The connection between CAIR’s statements and Malik Akram’s beliefs is undeniable—and this is true regardless of whether Akram watched Billoo’s speech or was aware of the rallies. This is because CAIR is part of a global network that promotes a hateful agenda that has targeted both Jews and democratic institutions for decades.

CAIR’s report is an exercise in disinformation, dishing out terms like “hate group,” “misinformation” and “propaganda” without, in most cases, even a single purported example of “Islamophobia.” It is just a projection of CAIR’s own bigotry, which frequently takes aim at a list of prominent pro-Israel advocates, the Israel Defense Forces and the international Jewish community at-large.

Undoubtedly, before long, the Coalition for Jewish Values, where I serve as managing director, will be part of the assembly that CAIR attacks. When informed by a reporter that our organization had called the report “both pro-terror and antisemitic,” CAIR responded by branding us an “extremist voice.” And in calling our assessment of the antisemitic nature of the Texas attack “bizarre and unfounded,” CAIR professes to know more about Jew-hatred than do 2,000 observant rabbis. Good luck with that.

In its report, CAIR accused the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA) of “Islamophobia” because CAMERA once published a report on The Islamic Society of North America that “accuses multiple American-Muslim organizations and individuals to be front groups for terrorism.”

The problem for CAIR is that CAMERA’s assertions are true.

CAIR was incorporated by Omar Ahmad, Rafiq Jaber and Nihad Awad in 1994. To become its founding director, Awad left his position as public relations director for the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), which has been described by the FBI counterterrorism chief as “a front organization for Hamas that engages in propaganda for Islamic militants,” and by the U.S. government itself as a founding member of the Muslim Brotherhood’s “Palestine Committee.” Ahmad was the IAP president at that time, while Jaber became IAP president in 1996.

Within a month after its formation, CAIR, which was soon listed as a “working organization” by the Palestine Committee, received a $5,000 check—followed weeks later by a $5,000 wire transfer—from the Holy Land Foundation (HLF).

The HLF was convicted in 2008 of providing over $12 million to Hamas, a U.S. State Department-designated foreign terrorist organization. The FBI called this “the largest victory against terrorist financing in the U.S. since the 9/11 attacks.” HLF’s founders received life sentences, and CAIR was listed by the FBI as an unindicted co-conspirator, serving as the public relations arm of a web of terrorist-affiliated groups.

When CAIR was first accused in U.S. Senate testimony of receiving seed money from the HLF, Ahmad denied it, while Awad called it an “outright lie.” Presented with a copy of the check, Awad revised his testimony, describing a $5,000 check less than three weeks after incorporation as “a donation like any other.”

With its recent report accusing mainstream Jewish organizations as well as allies of the Jewish people of “Islamophobia,” CAIR both inverts hater and hated and advances the extremist agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood: to make Jews less welcome, and to make terrorism against Jews more palatable. This is, in fact, what CAIR has done from effectively day one of its existence.

Now that CAIR has targeted Jews in such an open and egregious manner, it has lost any right to the benefit of the doubt—though, in fact, it never had any such right at the outset. CAIR has unmasked itself as the virulent hate group that it has always been. Americans must oppose CAIR and the antisemitism that it foments and disseminates.

Rabbi Yaakov Menken is managing director of the Coalition for Jewish Values.

Originally published in The Epoch Times

The Biden State Department is seeking to create a consulate in Jerusalem that would serve only “Palestinians.” There are two possible explanations. One, the Biden Administration has forgotten several thousand years of history. Two, they are aware of that history, but aim to sever the connection of the Jewish people to their ancient capital today. It increasingly seems both explanations are plausible.

The Christian world recently celebrated the birth of Jesus in the small town of Bethlehem, or Bet-Le?em, meaning “House of Bread” in Hebrew. Joseph and Mary were there because the Roman colonialist governor had ordered a census of the Jews in Judea. Jesus was raised in Nazareth, Natzeret in Hebrew, meaning “offspring” or “sprout.”

Archaeologists recently announced the discovery of a second ancient Jewish synagogue in Migdal, meaning “tower,” a town close to Nazareth. Migdal was the place of origin of a woman famous in Christian scripture: Mary Magdalene. Both she and Jesus went to Jerusalem because it was the site of Solomon’s Temple, and, thus, the center of Jewish worship.

In other words, Jesus was born a Jew. He grew up in a Jewish family. He kept company with other Jews. He practiced Judaism. He went to the Jewish Temple. All in Jewish territory that is now the Jewish State of Israel. And all this is found in exclusively Christian sources.

The idea of opening the Palestinian consulate was first floated in in a memo written by Hady Amr, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Israeli-Palestinian Affairs and Press and Public Diplomacy in the Biden administration. This is the same Hady Amr who called the Jewish homeland “occupied Palestine.”

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas claims that the State of Israel was formed as “a colonial project that has nothing to do with Judaism.” He’s ignoring not just archeology and the historical record, but Judaism, Christianity, and even Islam. By calling Israel a “colonial project,” Abbas and others willfully ignore the fact that indigenous Jews never left Judea except at the point of a sword. They were scattered across Europe and Arab lands by the same Roman Empire that persecuted Jesus and his early followers.

It is the colonialists, and not the indigenous documented in the Bible, that stamped the name “Palestine” upon the Holy Land.

Still, even after repeated expulsions, Jews always returned to Israel, heeding the many exhortations ensconced in the Bible, Jewish law and prayer. Every chapter of the Torah and page of Talmud reminds Jews that they have but one homeland, to which the Jewish faith binds them for all time.

This is why the great medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonides migrated from Spain to the Holy Land, and why Rabbi Yosef Karo, author of the Code of Jewish Law, followed in his footsteps centuries later. It is why Rabbi Isaac Luria, father of modern Kabbalah, moved from Egypt, and why followers of the father of Hasidism, the Baal Shem Tov, and those of his leading opponent, Rabbi Eliyahu Cramer, the Vilna Gaon, made the arduous journey from Slavic countries to Jerusalem.

They were not “colonialists” or “occupiers”—they were indigenous Jews returning home. Yet Jews in Israel today, including those who can trace their family trees back centuries, are ridiculously called both.

It is long overdue that such false and malicious narratives be put to rest.

In particular, it would be a significant setback for indigenous rights and civil liberties were the U.S. to create a Palestinian consulate in Jerusalem. The current U.S. Embassy, opened by President Trump in 2018, serves all who need its services. If a separate office were actually needed, its correct location would be in Ramallah, seat of the Palestinian Authority.

President Biden must recognize history as well as his religious education, rather than listen to the dogmatic revisionist voices that would deprive the indigenous of Israel the God-given right to live and worship freely in their Holy City.

Originally published in Newsweek

The U.S. Congress proposed an American day of thanks to the new and first president, George Washington, in September of 1789. And with Washington’s proclamation, the first Thanksgiving Day was held on Thursday, November 26 of that same year. Congress and the president had far more in mind than a turkey dinner, watching football and dashing out for savings on big-screen TVs.

America was forged by religious people, many seeking to escape persecution. The New England colonies were founded by Puritan separatists fleeing the Church of England, and Pennsylvania offered a haven for the Amish. Similar examples abounded. All were genuinely grateful for the opportunity to live in freedom in a country where no one mistreated them for their beliefs, and where they governed themselves.

It was faith that drove that gratitude. In his declaration of the first Thanksgiving Day, Washington began from the premise that it was “the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits and humbly to implore his protection and favor.” And thus the holiday was made with our Creator in mind: “a day of public thanksgiving and prayer…devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be—that we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks.”

The Founders also knew that respecting the right of others to practice their faith was the best way to ensure the same right for themselves. As Washington wrote, in a letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island, the United States, “which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens.”

There is a parallel between the Founding Fathers and the religious survivors of the Holocaust who came far more recently to these shores. I have known many of them, though most are sadly no longer with us. Despite having seen the bloodiest and most depraved form of religious oppression in the history of mankind, I do not remember them as sad or vengeful people, despite seeing their parents and entire families wiped out. They were too busy caring for their own children and grandchildren, and grateful to have been given the opportunity to rebuild their lives in freedom.

It turns out that for both the Founding Fathers and these Holocaust survivors, faith and gratitude may have played a decisive role in their contentment.

A recent study in Israel found that religiosity was one of the biggest determinants of happiness. Sixty-two percent of fervently religious Israeli respondents described themselves as “very satisfied” with their lives, in contrast to only 26 percent of secular Jewish citizens of Israel.

Among several factors that explain the gap, researchers cited the high level of gratitude that is integral to the Jewish religion. Every morning, religious teachings instruct Jews to thank G-d for another day of life, and every type of food has its own blessing of gratitude. In the Sabbath morning prayers, we find the following passage:
If our mouths were filled with song like the sea, and our tongues joyous lyrics like the multitude of its waves, and our lips with praises like the breadth of the Heavens… we would still not suffice to praise You, L-rd our G-d and the G-d of our forebears, and to bless Your Name for even one of the thousands, thousands upon thousands, hundreds of millions of times, the favors that You have bestowed upon our forebears and upon us.
It is obvious that prayers like these are utterly inconsistent with a feeling of entitlement, like that which has swept across America in recent years. When people imagine that they are unfairly held back, are not getting their fair share and that others are ruining their future, they inevitably feel angry, resentful and, ultimately, sad.

The Founding Fathers demonstrated that gratitude, generosity and unity all travel together, and are closely tied to happiness and satisfaction. Those traits helped make Americans both ambitious and industrious, and transformed the United States into a global superpower able to make the world a better place. This Thanksgiving, let’s pray that all of us will take to heart the value of old lessons, and America will recapture the culture that made productivity, prosperity and the pursuit of happiness achievable in this blessed nation.

Originally published in Townhall

On Tuesday, the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law publicly demanded the University of Massachusetts address an antisemitic incident that the university has tried to keep under wraps since June. Per the Brandeis Center, a reporter was “accosted, spat at, shoved and called a Nazi and a pig solely based upon his perceived identity as a Zionist.” The culprits were local affiliates of a group familiar to anyone studying antisemitism on campus: Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).

Not long ago, idealistic young students gathered at college to promote human rights causes around the world. Fighting for truth and justice, they called international attention to Apartheid in South Africa, and genocide in Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur. No more.

It is not as if the world has less need for their voices. According to Freedom House, home of an annual global survey of political rights and civil liberties, 2020 was the fifteenth consecutive year of decline. Yet during that same period, virtually all of the campus bumper stickers, placards, digital campaigns, and de-platforming protests fixated upon one imagined culprit: Israel.

The first-ever International Religious Freedom (IRF) Summit convened this past summer in Washington, DC. Government officials and activists from around the globe gathered to highlight and address repression and persecution.

They studied Nigeria‘s ongoing war against Christians, with over 50,000 murderedover the past two decades. They reviewed the ISIS-led massacre of Yazidis and Christians in Northern Iraq, where well over one million Christians have been slaughtered or ethnically cleansed since 2003, such that only 250,000 remain. Meanwhile, 3,000 Yazidis remain missing, believed to be enslaved by Islamist captors. And, of course, they highlighted China’s ruthless occupation of Tibet, Southern Mongolia, and East Turkestan—where minority Uygher Muslims by the millions are herded into concentration camps for “re-education.”

With all eyes upon ongoing repression, forced labor, sexual violence and genocide, the IRF Summit featured no plenary address, breakout session or even resource table regarding the purported plight of Palestinians.

How could it be otherwise? Freedom House reports that Israel is the only free country in that part of the world. Arabs in Israel and its territories enjoy longer lifespans, superior healthcare, greater access to higher education, and dramatically higher respect for their human rights and personal dignity. Israel is the only Middle Eastern country with both Jews and Arabs in its government, and the only one where Ahmadiyya Muslims practice without persecution.

Thus going onto a college campus is akin to stepping through the looking glass into an inverted reality, where words like “genocide,” “ethnic cleansing” and “apartheid” mean no more than the verses of Jabberwocky. America’s future leaders are being coopted into an antisemitic campaign thinly disguised as a human rights movement.

Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) was founded at University of California, Berkeley, where Israel is less respected than ISIS and Hamas. It celebrates those who commit antisemitic atrocities, such as Dalal Mughrabi, who murdered 38 civilians, including 13 children, on a bus in 1978, and Rasmeah Odeh, who orchestrated terror bombings resulting in the murder of a pair of college students. One searches in vain for an honoree at any of SJP’s over 200 campus chapters who is not a murderer, terrorist, or a promoter of antisemitic tropes.

The organization’s vision of “peace” is that of Iran, Hamas, and Hizbollah: a Middle East rendered Judenrein—”free” of Jews. Yet despite the obvious, this hate group is commonly granted college recognition and funding.

As it diverts attention from genuine atrocities, SJP incites students to commit their own. At the University of California, Davis, SJP pushed an unconstitutional “divestment” from Israel through the Student Senate in 2014, shouting “Allahu Akhbar!“ at Jewish students and their allies. Two separate Jewish organizations at UC Davis were defaced with swastikas and graffiti calling to “grout out the Jews” in succeeding days.

In 2018, SJP members committed vandalism and physical assault against Jewish students at New York University. Outrageously, the university conferred the President’s Service Award upon the organization a year later; a Jewish campus leader correctly likened this to giving a humanitarian honor to the Ku Klux Klan. The university later reached a settlement with the U.S. Department of Education after having “mishandled“ incidents of antisemitism.

In 2020, the three highest elected officers of the University of Southern California’s Undergraduate Student Government were intimidated into resigning by ruthless antisemitic attacks and online harassment incited by the local SJP. Two of the three were explicitly targeted for their affiliation with Hillel International, a non-partisan Jewish student organization. USC’s President eventually condemned the outrageous behavior, but it was too little, too late. And these are merely a sampling, documenting the direct connection between SJP’s “Anti-Israel” activism and overt antisemitism.

The fall semester is well underway. But there are no “die-ins” for Nigeria’s Christians, no mock Uygher concentration camps, no “Sharia Apartheid Week” for the Islamic world’s embattled minorities—including American allies and Christians endangered by Afghanistan’s new rulers. Rather, SJP is planning the 2022 installment of “Israel Apartheid Week,” agitprop protests supporting freedom for suicide bombers that routinely and unsurprisingly descend into antisemitic harassment and violence.

Make no mistake: the myopic focus on Israel engendered by SJP is not merely antisemitic. It delights tyrants and emboldens perpetrators of human rights abuses, diverting attention from their crimes as their victims suffer and die in what should be plain sight. Too few on American campuses possess the will—or the moral clarity—to notice or even care.

America desperately needs future leaders who will champion universal human rights and call out actual human rights abuses, unperturbed by antisemitic distractions. We could begin by quelling SJP’s Jew-hatred now poisoning their minds.

Photo Credit: Ariel Hayat, Flickr

Originally published in Fox News

And criticism of Soros is legitimate.

Soros and his Open Societies Foundations have been working to elect left-wing district attorneys whose focus on “criminal justice reform” has resulted in the failure to prosecute even violent offenders, targeting of police, and unsafe streets for millions of Americans. In 2020, he started the Open Society University Network to “transform” higher education by integrating “civic engagement,” meaning left-wing indoctrination, into academics.

Regarding children’s schooling, a Soros priority for decades, the Open Society Foundations are backing the “1619 Freedom School,” started by Nikole Hannah-Jones, the New York Times journalist responsible for the “1619 Project” that slanders the United States as founded to promote racism and slavery, rather than freedom.

Not incidentally, the foregoing are also not the worst of Soros’ activities.

Open Society funds groups like the Arab American Institute, which condemned Israel for protecting civilians by placing barriers in the way of suicide bombers; Ilam, a propaganda network blaming Israel for Arab terrorism; Gisha, which aims to give terrorists from Hamas-run Gaza free rein to enter Israel; and the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), which lobbies on behalf of the murderous, theocratic Iranian regime.

NGO-Monitor, a respected research institute promoting transparency and human rights, concluded in a 2013 report that Soros-funded groups exacerbate tensions throughout the Middle East, while pretending to promote peace.

These Soros investments make life less safe for everyone, especially for Jews. Criticizing him for these reasons is not anti-Semitic. In fact, it is absolutely fair and right and just.

In the Book of Isaiah [5:20] we read, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.” In other words, call it like it is.

Unfortunately, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) sometimes doesn’t do that. The ADL, founded to combat anti-Semitism a century ago, was taken over in 2015 by CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, an ex-Obama appointee with no background in Judaism or Jewish causes, much less in fighting anti-Jewish hatred. It released a report in 2018 dismissing criticism of Soros’ targeted investments in left-wing causes as “conspiracy theories” spread “in far-right circles.”

Given that he previously directed a program funded by Soros, it is unsurprising, though distressing, that Greenblatt would leverage the ADL’s credibility to protect his former patron. But if criticizing wealthy Jews for funding political causes is anti-Semitic, why did the ADL not defend the late Sheldon Adelson, a wealthy supporter of conservative causes, with equal vigor?

Hatred of Jews is too real and too dangerous to be utilized as a partisan cudgel. It makes the charge of anti-Semitism more likely to be dismissed on the occasions when the danger is, in fact, real.

Fighting anti-Semitism is obviously a Jewish value, but it is also an American value. As George Washington wrote in his letter to the Jews of Newport in 1790, the government of the United States “gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”

When people use their wealth to promote partisan causes, that is certainly their right. Similarly, it is not illegitimate, much less anti-Semitic, to criticize them and the organizations they back. In fact, when their efforts result in less civility, increased tension and danger to our very lives, this condemnation is an expression of both Jewish and American values.

Originally published in Townhall

By now, most public figures have commented on the tragic situation in Afghanistan, and the members of “the Squad” are no exception. But what is most notable about their statements is what is left unsaid. These purported advocates for Muslims, women, and People of Color are displaying no concern for the Afghan people as living, breathing human beings. Instead, they are exploiting a humanitarian crisis to further their partisan agenda.

The Squad displays concern for those few Afghans able to reach the United States, 7,400 miles from home, to the near-total exclusion of the 38 million Afghans in Afghanistan. In other words, its members care less about Afghans than their own “open borders” agenda, which falsely portrays America as racist and lacking empathy. Every member of the Squad is demanding entry of Afghan refugees into the United States before considering the fate of those left behind with the maniacal Taliban, which despises notions of equality and individual liberty.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) tweeted that “the United States has a singular responsibility in extending safe refuge to the Afghan people.” She elaborated, “We must waste no time or expense in helping refugees safely & swiftly leave Afghanistan. We must immediately welcome them to the U.S. & provide real support.”

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) echoed, “The US—and the rest of the international coalition—must provide shelter to *all* fleeing the Taliban,” and “Let’s start by opening our country to shelter refugees fleeing the consequences of our actions.”

Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) said, “we must welcome many, many more refugees as quickly as possible.”

Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) added that “we should reassess the humanity and viability of the White House’s limit on refugee arrivals—and exceed that limit if necessary.”

And Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) called for the US “to provide refuge for the huddled masses yearning to breathe free in Afghanistan and around the world.”

Rep. Ayanna Pressley’s tweet, while proclaiming humanitarian concern, summarized the blindness of the Squad’s approach. She wrote, “The U.S. should do everything in our power to safely evacuate advocates, refugees, and journalists alongside U.S. personnel and allies. Each person in harms [sic] way matters deeply.” Her only suggestion was that refugees be evacuated, mentioning no destination other than the United States. Her obvious and egregious failing is to imagine that the tens of millions of Afghans left under Taliban rule are not in harm’s way.

For those few who did not make individual statements, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) spoke on behalf of the full Congressional Progressive Caucus. She demanded, first and foremost, that “The United States must ensure refugee processing moves forward without bureaucratic delay.” Only then did she add a call for “humanitarian aid to support civilians who fled to Kabul and provincial capitals” and “urge” Biden to “to continue engaging diplomatically with the Taliban.”

It is astounding that not one member of the Squad emphasized those with U.S. citizenship or Special Immigrant Visas, given to those individuals who helped the United States, and whose lives, thus, are particularly at risk. They said nothing, in fact, about the need for the United States to maintain some degree of presence in Afghanistan until people at risk are evacuated.

Rep. Omar, to her credit, is the exception in that regard. She said that “we must hold the airport in Kabul and lead a multinational airlift operation” in order to “evacuate every Afghan citizen who is fleeing for their lives.” But she said that while praising “the largest evacuation in US history,” failing to note that the need for such a large and rapid evacuation was the direct result of American malfeasance, mendacity, and abandonment, and that it was certain to leave tens of millions behind under Taliban oppression.

Rep. Omar is apparently unaware that the United States abandoned large numbers of Americans and Afghans. She claimed instead that the airlift has gone off “without hostages or causalities [sic].” She should try explaining this to Americans attacked and driven off trying to reach the airport, now in fear for their lives—much less the millions of Afghan women left begging to be freed. If they are not hostages, it is only because the United States has abandoned them entirely.

The Squad seems to display no interest in the oppression of Muslims, or anyone else, unless the United States—or Israel—can be blamed. America’s true failure here was deserting Afghans to live under totalitarian repression, rather than continuing to protect their natural and civil rights.

The Squad must distract our attention from that simple truth, because it contradicts their ongoing demonization of the militaries and law enforcement of first-world democracies. During what AOC described as “20 years of war and occupation,” and Bowman called “the most recent example of American interventionism gone wrong,” Afghans voted for their leaders for the first time in history. Women were able to go to school, gain advanced degrees, and run businesses. Now those women unable to flee for their lives are more likely to be taken as Taliban sex slaves than to enjoy the human rights and civil liberties that they had under U.S. military control.

It took years of American involvement in Germany, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, El Salvador, and elsewhere for democracy to flourish. But the freedoms and opportunities granted to the citizens of those nations were immediate and extensive. America’s greatest failure in Afghanistan was abandoning 38 million Afghans to the Taliban. The Squad, whose narrative depends upon depicting the U.S. military as evil occupiers, would prefer that you not notice.

Rabbi Yaakov Menken is managing director of the Coalition for Jewish Values.

Photo Credit: Brad Sigal, Flickr

Originally published in Jewish News Syndicate

America has long been a welcoming home for minority religious groups, observant Jews being a notable example. In addition to synagogues, day schools and yeshivahs, growing demand is such that most sizable Jewish communities support at least one kosher grocery store with larger ones having multiple supermarkets carrying exclusively kosher foods.

Shoppers will find baked goods, produce, soda and so on, as they would in a Kroger or Publix supermarket, or Whole Foods Market, except that all items are kosher. But here’s what they will no longer find: Ben & Jerry’s. In response to the company’s announcement last month that selling ice-cream to Jews in Judea is “inconsistent” with its “values,” there isn’t a kosher supermarket or grocery store in the country willing to carry its products.

The Orthodox community clearly does not regard this corporate decision as a mere political matter. Few would go out of their way to boycott ice-cream if this were, in fact, solely about a geopolitical conflict, let alone one occurring thousands of miles away. What the Orthodox community instead perceives, rightly so, is a manifestation of the millennia-old hatred that we now term anti-Semitism.

Revealingly, a plethora of increasingly influential left-wing Jewish organizations disagree. The views of Moriah Richman, who is part of the national communications team for J Street U, are emblematic. She claims that Ben & Jerry’s actions are “principled and commendable,” a brave stand to combat “the systemic injustice of occupation.”

J Street is far from alone in adopting a stance foreign to that of the Orthodox community. Dozens of proudly progressive Jewish groups signed a letter claiming that AIPAC falsely accused Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) of supporting hate. The more than 1,500 observant rabbis of Coalition for Jewish Values, for which I serve as managing director, attest that there was nothing false whatsoever about AIPAC’s “accusation.”

How, then, do we explain this split in the Jewish community? Why do self-proclaimed “progressive” Jews defend Ben & Jerry’s policy and Omar’s rhetoric when practically all observant Jewish Americans, like the vast majority of Israelis, consider them anti-Semitic?

The difference between the Orthodox community and the secularist (and increasingly anti-Zionist) Jewish left can be summed up in one word: education—meaning, the Jewish sort. What the leaders and members of groups like J Street, IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace share in common is an unwillingness to seriously engage with Jewish history, Jewish ideas and Jewish texts. In short, they have little connection to anything authentically Jewish.

No one imagines that a person can gain expertise in, for example, medicine, mathematics or literature by accident of birth. Yet these progressive groups lay claim to Jewish wisdom—and, specifically, “Jewish morality”—simply because many of their members were born to Jewish parents. This is, in essence, a racialist appeal for credibility.

“Anti-Semitism” is a German euphemism for a much, much older form of hatred. In every generation, it has found a new, socially acceptable facade. To combat it honestly and effectively, one must be educated in its underlying signs and symptoms. For thousands of years, observant rabbis have educated themselves to pierce the veil and identify the hate festering beneath. No one is born with this knowledge or the ability that attends it.

Here, however, is a brief primer: Anti-Semitism has always begun from the false belief in a vast Jewish conspiracy to steal, defraud and harm. The same bigoted myth of Jewish control of banks found in the fabricated The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Hitler’s Mein Kampf is at the core of accusations that Jews are “occupiers” for moving back into the vicinity of the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, and the Old City of Jerusalem where King Solomon built the Temple, after they were ethnically cleansed from these holy sites by Arab mobs and the Jordanian army in the early 20th century. Anti-Semitism today involves, as it always has, a hateful inversion of reality.

Since economics are at the root of the imagined crimes of Jews, they provide the first “reprisal” as well. This is why Jews were herded into ghettos and prohibited from owning property outside them during the Middle Ages. It is also why the first Nazi edict, in 1932, was a boycott of Jewish businesses, which the Arab League then adopted as a boycott of Palestinian goods in 1945. (In 1945, “Palestinians” referred exclusively to Jews.)

Proponents of the anti-Semitic Ben & Jerry’s boycott, subsumed under the “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” movement, believe that reprising this ancient animus and Nazi tactic will eventually force Israel to abandon its defensive posture. Omar Barghouti, the founder of BDS, has declared that “no Palestinian … will ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine.” BDS’s goal is to deny Jews self-determination. As a result, BDS, contrary to its stated purpose, drives Israel away from the negotiating table not only because it demands Jews compromise their safety and the safety of their children, but because it is redolent with Jew-hatred.

In other words, none of this is complicated, but it requires adequate grounding in the nature of anti-Semitism and the way that it mutates to hide in plain sight.

Those without a substantive Jewish education cannot understand this. Nor can they speak for Jewish morality; their words are liable to do more harm than good. As the late Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks said, “Most anti-Semites do not think of themselves as anti-Semites.” This is all the more true when the anti-Semites are of Jewish ancestry.

Rabbi Yaakov Menken is managing director of Coalition for Jewish Values.

Photo Credit: Bundesarchiv
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