‘Pure Make-Believe’ – Separating Divestment from Antisemitism
Letter-writer Paul Cunningham picked an especially dreadful week for Jews to proclaim that antisemitism is not tied to divestment from Israel, a divisive topic in his home state of Maine in the United States.
Bruce Ticker
Tell that to the Jewish community as a school shooter in California, who once attended school near San Diego, was motivated by Palestinian deaths; an Australian synagogue was set afire; an anti-Israel mob clogged the lobby of a Canadian Parliament building; and an Israeli writer was treated like a hostage at a London airport.
So-called friends of the Palestinians seemed to ramp up antisemitic activities to a whole new level of terror rivaling that of Hamas, just as Cunningham’s letter appeared on the Portland Press Herald website last Friday.
Perhaps we should be comforted by Cunningham’s words: “Divestment from Israel is a political maneuver and has absolutely no connection to religious hatred. The assertion that divestment is inherently antisemitic is pure make-believe. Jews worldwide understand this.”
He adds, “The FBI reports that flourishing Nazi/white supremacist groups are the threat.”
Indeed, the FBI has warned that the most severe violence is committed by the right wing, but leftists also engage in violence such as occupying campus buildings. The leftists constantly violate the law by blocking roads and bridges, and harassing Jewish students. However, they went even further in recent weeks.
I understand that protesters approach the issue with various motives. Many of them have genuine concerns that Israel’s attacks killed thousands of Gaza civilians in its response to the Oct. 7, 2023, slaughter in southern Israel. However, anyone who states that antisemitism has “no connection” to divestment is a liar or a moron.
I know similar incidents are more widespread in places like Amsterdam and Paris, but I feel a more automatic connection when disturbing incidents happen in English-speaking countries.
Especially in America, where a gunman shot and wounded two children in the playground of a private Christian-affiliated school last Wednesday (Dec. 4) and then shot himself to death, according to Butte County authorities in Palermo, Calif., near Sacramento, The Algemeiner newspaper reports. The children, ages 5 and 6, were hospitalized in critical condition.
Gunman Glenn Litton, 56, left behind a note disclosing that the shootings were rooted in his objections to “America’s involvement with genocide and oppression of Palestinians.” What did two young children in northern California have to do with the deaths of Palestinians in Gaza?
Litton had a remote connection to the school, named the Feather River School of Seventh-Day Adventists, as he attended a Seventh-day Adventist school near San Diego when he was a “young man,” and may have had a relative who once attended Feather River, authorities told CNN. Authorities added that they have not determined a “current connection” between Litton and the school where the children were wounded.
Nearly 8,000 miles from San Diego, masked arsonists set fire to an orthodox synagogue in Melbourne in Australia early last Friday morning. They were seen breaking windows, pouring a liquid accelerant on the floor inside the building and tossing firebombs into the building, according to reports from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and the New York Times.
Damage was described as extensive at the synagogue, known as Adass Israel in the Melbourne suburb of Ripponlea. Congregants gathered for morning prayers and fled into the streets when the fire broke out. One person suffered a minor injury. Political figures condemned the act, urged that the perpetrators be brought to justice and proposed increasing funding for security at synagogues.
There is no indication so far as whether the arsonists are from the left or the right. However, antisemitic incidents have quadrupled in Australia since Oct. 7, 2023.
Both Jewish and government leaders had to make clear that the fire was an act of antisemitism and it became a matter of debate as to whether it constituted “terrorism”. “Whatever we label it, it is an absolute outrage,” said senior federal minister Murray Watt, as quoted in The Guardian. “It should never have happened and the people responsible have got to be hunted down and pay a price for this.”
But it did happen. So did this: Australia’s one-time brother and sister colonists in Canada last week endured an hour-long anti-Israel demonstration inside the lobby of the Confederation Building in Ottawa, which houses offices of many Members of Parliament.
Demanding an embargo of arms to Israel, protesters were generous enough to allow the MP’s to pass through the clogged room, but the MPs would need to hear their demands first, according to CBC News.
Maybe that is why 14 protesters intercepted by Parliamentary Protective Services were released after being cited for trespassing. Surely Canada has stronger laws to apply to an incident that detains visitors, creates a captive audience, produces a disturbance and potentially delays paramedics and rescue crews in case of an emergency.
Can a trespassing charge be sufficient to deter future building occupations? The protest participants must be running scared now.
And in their former mother country, Israeli writer Alon Penzel – as a one-man captive audience – learned that Oct. 7 was just one incident and that parts of Israel were illegally occupied since 1948. At least, a security officer at Luton Airport in northwest London educated Penzel of this so-called history as the author was held there for an hour on allegedly trumped-up accusations of staging a pro-Israel protest.
UK Lawyers for Israel last week claimed that the security officer harassed and abused Penzel after forcing him “to be falsely detained for over an hour, in public, by a group of security officers, while they cross examined him and investigated (footage) to see if he had been in a protest.”
The airport likely violated the Equality Act 2010 by “creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for him,” UKLFI said in a news release. It also asked the airport to punish the officer.
While Penzel was detained, the UKLFI stated, the officer “said October 7 was ‘only one incident out of many since 1948,’ implying that Israel was to blame for the massacre on 7 October.” He then “told him there had been illegal occupation since 1948, implying that Israel did not have a right to exist at all.”
Penzel was just leaving England after promoting his new book, “Testimonies without Boundaries: Israel October 7th 2023,” which includes first-hand accounts from Nova Festival survivors and medical and rescue volunteers. Perhaps the security officer had an excuse, however weak, for detaining Penzel, but he abused his authority when he lectured Penzel about Israeli history, correct or not.
It sounded like the brainwashing scenes in “The Manchurian Candidate.“
