Inside and outside the Expo Tel Aviv convention center where the Jewish Federations of North America General Assembly was held, April 23, 2023. (Dario Sanchez/The Media Line)
HOWARD EPSTEIN: WHAT FUTURE FOR THE JEWISH PEOPLE?
Where to start?
The vile degradation of Jewish girls and women, cynically overlooked by every women’s rights organisation in the world, simply because the victims were Jewish? The release of pent-up Jew hatred from the intellectuals, the academics and the other flotsam and jetsam of the chattering classes of the UK, the USA and Europe? The uselessness of the Laws of War, written 70 years before asymmetric warfare first raised its monstrous head? (One side is expected to adhere to them, whilst it is accepted that the other will flagrantly break them.)
Is anti-Jewish racism in the West going to threaten only the way we live or our very lives? Where is it that’s safer? Not America, with its more frenetic version of the same problems – only with the added threat of guns.
What future for our children and grandchildren? They already experience anti-Jewish racism in primary schools and up – to the universities. Will online learning become the only route to academia for our young? Will it affect their job prospects?
So numerous and profound are the issues with which we are now confronted that knowing where to start in facing up to them is but the first problem. Yet, I suggest, it is early days.
The reality is that this is like America in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Those old enough to recall September 2001, and what followed, will remember an atmosphere close to blind panic: the president being flown around the Continental United States for hours – becoming a whole day – before the Secret Service was prepared to let him return to the White House. The whole of American airspace was cleared of civilian flights. Total chaos reigned in the war zone that was Manhattan. Then there were the scares that followed. The initial fear: was America under attack? Later a terror of biological warfare, with the possible spreading of anthrax at the head of the list. The declaration of the War on Terror followed and, within weeks, the invasion of Afghanistan.
What stood out most clearly were two horrors: the complete failure of around half a dozen US security agencies to anticipate the terror of four fully-fuelled planes being hijacked and flown into the very heart of American power and magnificence; and also an immediate rise in anti-Jewish racism.
Yes. You read it right. The Al-Qaeda attacks were explained by some as the result of Israeli intransigence in failing to provide an independent Palestinian state. A former Jewish mayor of New York City, Ed Koch, was interviewed before the day was out by the BBC about the possible culpability of the Jews.
What really took hold next was a fear of Islamic fundamentalism such that Western politicians, media and security forces would operate henceforth in awe of the terrorist’s co-religionists. This may now be seen here in the UK in the reluctance or refusal of the police over many years to take on the Asian grooming gangs operating all over Britain to the abasement of poor, vulnerable white girls; and in the reluctance or refusal most recently to rein in the anti-Israel and anti-Jewish marchers gathering in their tens of thousands on our streets. So impervious do Muslim communities feel to criticism that not one of them has condemned atrocities in the UK, such as the Manchester Arena bombing.
Then, to cap it all, last weekend the celebrated Jewish-born world statesman (or war criminal, depending on the obituary writer – hint: Laos and Agent Orange) suggests in almost his dying breath that in the long run Israel cannot survive.
So is there no ultimate sanctuary for the Jews? Israel is not forever?
Wrong. Defeatism and ignorance from Kissinger.
Anyone who doubts Israel’s permanence has not been following. Yes, the initial calamities of Simchat Torah are unforgivable and inexplicable – just as were those that facilitated 9/11. But since then the performance of the IDF, in its several branches operating as with one brain, with precision coordination in the battlefield, has been a source of wonder for the militaries of the world. And it was also clear that Israel, a country that had appeared completely riven over the independence of its courts, came together in a heartbeat.
Next, the appreciation of Israeli weaponry to come should assuage fears of military defeat – Iron Beam will soon be operational to down swarms of Iranian drones. Military exports will lead the resurgence of the economy.
Finally, Israel no longer stands alone, bereft of friends. Of course, there are few parts of Europe that can be relied upon, but (to borrow a Nazi phrase) Europe has always been our misfortune. Rather, look closer to our spiritual homeland. Consider the proximity of Saudi Arabia joining into the Abraham Accords. That will complete the strategic strengthening of Israel, for 93% of the Arab world is Sunni. Broadly, only the Iranians are Shia, and they are not Arabs.
Consider Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. All influenced by Iran and all failed states. There is one other Iranian client. The Palestinians, alone in the Sunni world, have been bought off by Iran – and one of their two greatest military machines outside Iran, Hamas, is at the time of this writing being torn apart, digit from hand, limb from limb and head from torso.
There is a future for the Jewish people. It may not be in the USA, the UK or Europe, but few informed observers consider that Israel will not endure, prosper and predominate as it inevitably grows in strength and turns to the East, away from the hateful West, to its new but firm friends in the Sunni Arab world.
© Howard D Epstein – December 2023 – www.howard-epstein.com
