The British newspaper The Times (with a circulation of about one million readers a day across its print and digital editions) printed on its front page last Friday the following headline: “Jews urged to keep doors closed and not to gather in groups.”
A disgusting headline written the day after the attack at the synagogue in the city of Manchester in England, during the holiest day of the Jewish people, Yom Kippur. An attack in which two Jews were brutally murdered and about ten others were injured. A nauseating headline that recalls newspaper headlines from mid-20th century Europe during the Holocaust.
If any reporter/editor/newspaper in England or any other Western country had replaced the word “Jews” with the word “Muslims,” we all know the reporter/editor would have been fired on the spot and the newspaper would have had to publish a clarification and an apology.
But in the current atmosphere in Europe, a headline like this is natural and goes down easily for everyone.
Anyone who follows what is happening in Jewish communities around the world knows that for decades, only Jewish communities have had to fortify themselves and live behind fences, walls, and locks. Only Jewish institutions, schools, synagogues, and community centers must hire 24/7 security services. There is no other ethnic/religious community that must do this for the safety of its people and members.
This practice exists in communities all around the world- Europe, the US, Australia, South Africa, and beyond.
This should not surprise us, because for several decades, only the State of Israel, the nation-state of the Jewish people, has been threatened with annihilation by a UN member state, Iran, and the world goes about its business. Zero sanctions on Iran, and certainly no expulsion from UN membership. In fact, the "civilized" world has become accustomed to this reality without pangs of conscience or guilt.
Prominent antisemitic voices
Moreover, recently prominent opinion leaders in the US have risen up, led by Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, who accuse their critics of trying to silence them by labeling them antisemitic.
Carlson has turned this claim into a winning card. In his great cunning he understood that if he accuses his critics of such a serious charge, he will intimidate them and cause the criticism against him to fizzle out.
It is time to state the simple truth: it is allowed to criticize Israel and the Jewish people, and not every criticism is antisemitic, but when there is an obsession with Israel and the Jewish world, and when Jews are singled out and expected to meet a different standard than other societies and people, that is antisemitism par excellence.
When Carlson accuses the State of Israel of controlling US decision-makers and taking more aid money than any other country, and at the same time refrains from criticizing Qatar, which for thirty years has been able to play and influence public opinion, the media and decision-makers, and which also hosts the largest US base in the Middle East at a cost of billions of dollars a year, that is not substantive criticism. It is antisemitic criticism that treats the Jewish state differently from other countries. It must be said, sometimes they really do go after the paranoid.
It is time for the State of Israel to go on the offensive against a newspaper that supposedly cares about the safety of Jews in Britain. But in practice, however, a headline like that singles out the Jews of the United Kingdom. It is time to attack opinion leaders who hide behind lies as if their criticism is legitimate, when in fact everyone understands it is a unique and different form of criticism aimed at Israel compared with other countries around the world.
We should remember that the best defense is offense. And the best offense is targeted, relentless personal shaming of those who generate the criticism. The days are over when people both attack the Jews and then blame them.
The author is the Former Chief of Staff of the Israeli Foreign Minister and Consul General of Israel to the Southwest.