Growing Anti-Semitism

Asks Brendan O’Neill:

This is the question anti-Israel campaigners have never been able to answer: why do they treat Israel so differently to every other nation on Earth? Why is it child-killing bloodlust when Israel takes military action but not when Turkey or India do? Why must we rush to the streets to set light to the Israel flag but never the Saudi flag, despite Saudi Arabia’s unconscionable war on Yemen? Why is it only ‘wrong’ or at worst ‘horrific’ when Britain or America drop bombs in the Middle East but Nazism when Israel fires missiles into Gaza? Why do you merely oppose the military action of some states but you hate Israel, viscerally, publicly, loudly? (Spiked)

This irrational hatred of Israel very easily spills into old fashioned anti-semitism. On Sunday, a video was posted on social media appearing to show a group four of cars draped with Palestinian flags driving down a street in London’s St John’s Wood, with a man shouting anti-Jewish slogans from a megaphone. That part of town is known for its Jewish community.

I support the state of Israel's right to exist and its right to defend itself. That does not mean I support all its government’s policies, nor that I think the Arab population is entirely wrong to feel aggrieved. Neither am I some ultra-Zionist who bedecks my house with Israeli flags and thinks the Jew can enter heaven without Christ. Yet I see in much of the ‘Free Palestine’ movement a cover and mask for the ancient hatred of Jewishness. From Haman to Agagite to Antiochus Epiphanes (Daniel’s ‘Little Horn’), Jewishness has often produced antipathy in the most godless. That those four cars could drive around the streets of London threatening to rape and murder Jews in our nation is despicable and gut-wrenching. I have a special affection for the race of people to whom and from whom my Saviour came. Judah’s blood coursed through His veins, and I look forward to the day when more of them call upon Him. In the meantime, while the Metropolitan Police busily arrest elderly Christian preachers for quoting the Bible, Islamist hotheads are openly calling for the extermination of His countrymen. 

And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.

Zechariah 12:10

Image by Eduardo Castro from Pixabay