Wayward Jewish Minds
Rome is burning. The Titanic is sinking. And Jews, once again, are fiddling beside Nero while an orchestra goes down with the ship.
For a preternaturally nervous people, Jews sometimes have great difficulty in taking a hint.
A certain amount of Jewish nonchalance is understandable, I guess. The Jewish state seems to be out of crisis. That’s good for Israelis. But the same cannot be said of the Jewish people—and surely not Jewish Americans and European Jewry.
Successes on the battlefield may be a false flag. Yes, the geopolitical scorecard indicates that Israel bested five adversaries on four separate fronts: Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza; Hezbollah in Lebanon; the Houthis in Yemen; and the rabid Islamists of Iran. Nearly all were routed quickly. Had the Democratic Party not been in the White House in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 massacre, the war in Gaza would have ended sooner, fewer IDF soldiers would have lost their lives, and the remaining hostages—both alive and dead—would have been returned.
Still, Israel’s wartime achievements, with a massive air defense and buster bomb assist from the Trump administration, will stand for the ages.
The Middle East map now looks very different. Israel’s enduring nemesis to its south is nearly vanquished. Maybe Gaza will be rebuilt with the remnants of the Muslim Brotherhood making life miserable for some other Arab country. Perhaps the Lebanese will rejoin the family of civilized nations by finally removing the Shi’ites from their midst. Saudi Arabia could assist in ridding Yemen of the Houthis. Syria, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia might be persuaded to join the Abraham Accords.
Talk about a sweeping regional turnaround.
Iran is in the market for spare parts with which to spin centrifuges for their decimated uranium enrichment project. I got a better idea. How about fast-tracking the martyrs’ death wish these Islamic Revolutionaries yearn for so zealously?
Meanwhile, life for Jews outside of Israel is a bit grimmer.
In the United Kingdom, a report co-authored by the government’s adviser on antisemitism and a former Conservative Defense Secretary, revealed some alarming changes in the usual stiff upper lip of British society. The country is awash in widespread antisemitism, everywhere one looks—ranging from healthcare and university life to cultural institutions. British Jews are now apparently being excluded from professional and public arenas that once embraced them.
Worse still, hate crimes against Jews, especially when they occur during pro-Palestinian protests, are the lowest priorities of the Metropolitan Police. Indeed, antisemitism is no longer viewed as racism. Pervasive anti-Israel sentiments have spurned the old rules. Attacking Jews in jolly London is now accepted as a righteous human rights crusade.
How appropriate to kick off this new species of hatred in the United Kingdom. England expelled its Jews for nearly the entirety of the Middle Ages—the first European country to do so. Not a single Jewish person lived in England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth.
No wonder the groundlings at the Globe Theater jeered Shylock so mercilessly in those first performances of “The Merchant of Venice.” The English hadn’t seen a Jew in over 200 years!
I wish I could report better news in other European nations—but I can’t.
Meanwhile, across the pond, Democrats in North Carolina, a moderate swing state, formally condemned Israel for “apartheid rule.” They also called for an arms embargo against America’s Middle East ally. The Democratic Party in Wisconsin and Washington State passed similar resolutions.
Michigan has a crowded field of candidates running for a U.S. Senate seat, in a battleground state where a Muslim candidate is charging Israel with genocide, and where 100,000 withheld their votes in the last election in protest against Joe Biden’s perceived support of Israel.
Polling nationwide is dismal—especially among Democrats. The Pew Research Center reported that among adults, 53 percent have an unfavorable opinion of Israel, an increase from three years earlier, when it was 42 percent. A sizable majority of Democrats, 69 percent, view Israel negatively, compared to Republicans at 37 percent.
A survey by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs rated Israel with a 41 on a 100-point scale. It was an 11-point decline since 2022. Never has Israel’s rating sunk that low. Nearly 70 percent of Democrats believed that the United States should stay out of the Israel-Palestinian conflict altogether. If forced to choose, 20 percent favor the Palestinians; fewer than half favor the Israelis.
MAGA Republicans are losing their love of Israel and affection for Jews—if such amorous feelings ever existed at all. Trump’s hardcore base opposed America’s involvement in Israel’s airstrikes over Iran—even after it proved to be an overwhelming success. Now right-wing gadfly Tucker Carlson is arguing that any American who served in the IDF, assisting Israel in any capacity, should forfeit American citizenship. He also now speculates that sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was for many decades a Mossad agent, and that the Justice Department’s failure to release the names of his associates is a Deep State coverup serving the interests of Israel. Many of his viewers are in agreement.
MAGA Republicans are losing their love of Israel and affection for Jews—if such amorous feelings ever existed at all.
New York City, the financial capital of the world, and home to the largest population of Jews outside of Israel, appears to be on the verge of electing a Marxist mayor who does not believe the Jewish state has a right to exist and has no intention to ever visit Israel should he get elected. What’s more, Zohran Mamdani refuses to disavow the chant “globalize the intifada.” Like “by any means necessary,” he maintains that such loaded language is nothing but a vague expression of Palestinian support. It most certainly is not an explicit call for the murder of Jews—no matter what the practitioners of such tradecraft say.
Voters beware: the pro-Hamas campus protests are coming to a City Hall near you. Mamdani’s candidacy is complicated by the public statements of his father, a Columbia history professor who has glorified suicide bombers, supported the BDS movement, and charged the Jewish state with genocide.
Most Democratic elected officials have stayed silent. Even Jewish Democrats have declined to reject Mamdani’s fitness to represent them. Some have bizarrely formed a bandwagon to make Mamdani’s campaign kosher.
The Chairman of the Democratic National Committee opined that there is plenty of room in the party for a broad coalition—one that apparently includes those who wish the destruction of Israel and personally despise American Jews.
Would this “big tent” also welcome the Klan?
The Chairman of the Democratic National Committee opined that there is plenty of room in the party for a broad coalition—one that apparently includes those who wish the destruction of Israel and personally despise American Jews. Would this “big tent” also welcome the Klan?
It’s all too easy to dismiss Jew-haters as unenlightened. The biases of human beings, after all, are often hidden from view. And there are wide gaps in knowledge.
You know Jews are in trouble when artificial intelligence produces the same results. Elon Musk’s company, xAI, and its chatbot, Grok, regurgitated antisemitic tropes this week that would have made even neo-Nazis blush.
Let’s hope Jews are paying attention.
Thane Rosenbaum is a novelist, essayist, law professor and Distinguished University Professor at Touro University, where he directs the Forum on Life, Culture & Society. He is the legal analyst for CBS News Radio. His most recent book is titled, “Beyond Proportionality: Israel’s Just War in Gaza.”
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