Sarah Gon: How antisemitic libels fuel the war on Jews

Key topics:.Hamas's invasion of Israel sparked intense violence and global antisemitism.Western support for Hamas overlooks the truth and history of the conflict.Anti-Jewish rhetoric is deeply rooted in both Christian and Islamic history..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here..The seventh BizNews Conference, BNC#7, is to be held in Hermanus from March 11 to 13, 2025. The 2025 BizNews Conference is designed to provide an excellent opportunity for members of the BizNews community to interact directly with the keynote speakers, old (and new) friends from previous BNC events – and to interact with members of the BizNews team. Register for BNC#7 here..If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..By Sara Gon*.Jews were horrified by the invasion by Hamas of Israel, the horror of the murders, the rapes, the venomous hatred, the unalloyed glee of the perpetrators, the torture and the kidnapping by the equivalent of between four and six battalions of Hamas and its Gazan supporters..Jews have spent the past 16 months living with feelings that can best be described as a physical pressure in the chest and an emotional (and sometimes literal) inability to breathe. The depravity of the attack on and response to the Jews has been so acute as to take one's breath away..This sense of literal and figurative suffocation has been accompanied by anxiety, depression, anger, rage, helplessness, hopelessness, and debilitating sadness..It wasn't just the frenzied hatred against the Israelis. It very quickly became the hatred of the Jews in general. Many of the naïve young elites of the West assumed that the unspeakable horror perpetrated by Hamas had to have been a response to Israel having perpetrated prior terrible acts on the Gazans. The fact is that nothing had happened to "justify" Hamas's attack..The profound anguish lies in the fact that the accusations against Jews are devoid of truth; embellished by a wilful, negligent or deliberate failure to know anything about Jewish history and particularly the history of this conflict; and the preparedness to regard the perpetrators of 7 October and those they represent as "victims", completely without any agency, only to be pitied and shown unquestioning solidarity..Not all of the student protesters since 7 October have been ignorant of the genocidal impulses behind their protest slogans. They know exactly what they meant, and mean them..There's a patronising idea that those who seek the genocide of the Jews don't really mean what they say: the slogans are merely figures of speech. They are not: they are the success that results when Islamist propaganda, arising from a 'shame: honour' culture, elides with the arrogance of a Western guilt paradigm in the interpretation of events..Lies, damned lies, and libels.The accusations are libellous. They are intended to harm Jews, even to annihilate them. And they must be rejected in clear and unambiguous terms..I recently wrote an article which covered the 60-year portion of the history of European Jewry from 1881, resulting in the creation of a Jewish state as a refuge from persecution, not as a colonial enterprise..In November 2023 I wrote about the libels that are and have been issued repeatedly by the Palestinian media to demonise Israel and Jews out of existence..Examples I gave, dating back to 1997, include:."Zionists are descendants of apes and pigs"."Jews are 'the descendants of the Devil'"."The Jew was 'the disease of the century'"."Jews are a cancer and caused the Tsunami"."Pigs in our time have their origins in Jews who angered Allah, such that He turned them into monkeys, pigs, and Satan-worshippers, and it is obligatory to kill and slaughter them [the pigs."."Our enemy, Zion, is Satan with a tail" (A child reciting a poem)."Jews 'are defiling our Al-Aqsa Mosque'"."Jews are 'human waste', Europe and the US will do anything to keep them in Israel.".The most infamous libel is the original Christian libel that "Jews kill Christian children to make Passover bread" and, unbelievably, it still has currency..As recently as 7 February 2025, an imam in a sermon on official Palestine Authority television said: "O Allah, strike them… O Allah, count them one by one, kill them one by one, and do not leave even one"..The libels are cruel and false, and yet the Western "progressive" left is completely uncritical of them. They are ludicrous and medieval. They are the fodder for conspiracy theorists..Soviet journalist and novelist Vasily Grossman wrote in Life and Fate: "Tell me what you accuse the Jews of, I'll tell you what you are guilty of.".Christian supersessionism.The obsession with the Jews became fundamental to both Christianity and Islam as reflected in the theory of supersessionism. The apostle Paul claimed that the followers of Jesus replaced the Jews as the "true Israel." Paul decided to turn the new faith away from its Jewish origins along with shifting the guilt for the crucifixion of Jesus from the Romans to the Jews. This theme appears in Christian literature from the second century..Catholicism only removed the collective and eternal blood guilt of the Jews with Vatican II in 1965. A 1986 declaration by Pope John Paul II referred to the Jews as "our elder brother"..Some Christian sects still assert that Christianity has replaced Judaism as the chosen religion. Pope Benedict XVI stressed a desire "for the instant in which Israel will say yes to Christ"..Early in 2008 the Vatican revived the traditional Latin prayer for the conversion of the Jews, which was removed in 1969..In 2008, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops decided to delete from the United States Catholic Catechism for Adults the sentence "the covenant that God made with the Jewish people through Moses remains eternally valid for them". I understand that this decision still awaits Vatican approval..When Martin Luther founded the Protestant Church in the 16th century, he welcomed the Jews, expecting them to convert to Protestantism..After they refused to do so, he became viciously anti-Semitic. Luther argued that Jews were no longer the Chosen People and were instead "the Devil's people," adding that the Jews were "base, whoring…that is, no people of God, and their boast of lineage, circumcision, and law must be accounted as filth.".Not all groups which grew from the Protestant Reformation adopted the anti-Judaism of Luther. There was no contradiction between their role as the new and true Israel, and the continuing role of the Jews as a unique and "chosen" people. These anti-Jewish doctrines were rejected by the mainstream churches and were regarded as marginal and extreme..Evangelicals still believe in their own 'chosenness' and attach great importance to their duty to spread their Christian values through the world. However, they no longer subscribe to the supersessionist and displacement doctrine that refuses to recognise the viable existence of the Jewish people..Islam's supersessionism.Islamic supersessionism, however, is different and contributes to the anti-Semitism that is core to the conflict today. Muslim displacement theory does not base itself on being the "New Israel". Instead, it recasts the Jewish prophets as Muslims by creating a direct link with Ishmael, the son of Abraham, the "first Muslim", according to the Qur'an..Muhammad made a conscious effort to bring the Jews within the fold of Islam. Muhammad accepted the Jewish God, prophets, and many Jewish practices, including initially the orientation of prayers toward Jerusalem..In the Qur'an, Mohammed referred to the Jews as the "Chosen People" and to the Land of Israel as their "Promised Land". The Qur'an also acknowledged the Jews' covenant with God: "O Children of Israel! Remember my favour which I bestowed upon you and that I exalted you above all people." In particular it exhorts the Children of Israel regarding the Land of Israel, telling them to "dwell securely in the Promised Land.".However, after the Jews refused to recognise Muhammed as their prophet and refused to convert to Islam, relations between Muslims and Jews deteriorated quickly. Mohammed declared that Mecca, not Jerusalem, was the holy city..In 628 CE Muhammad and his Muslim army attacked Khaybar, an oasis in what is now Saudi Arabia, that was home to a notable Jewish community. Mohammed and the Muslim army destroyed the community: it dispossessed, enslaved, exiled, and massacred the Jews of Khaybar..Some of the anti-Israel/Jewish protesters since 7 October have chanted "Khaybar, Khaybar, ya yahud! Jaish Muhammad soufa yaʿoud!" – "Khaybar, Khaybar, Oh Jews! The army of Muhammad will return!".The slogan was coined the late 1980s during the First Intifada by Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas..Muslim supersessionism was similar to the supersession complex of Christianity, but Islam's similarity to and reliance on Judaism seemed to have cast the Jews as the worst enemies of Islam..Vilifying or killing Jews became a recurring motif in Muslim supersessionism. The Qur'an repeatedly accuses the Jews of falsehood, distortion, and of being "corrupters of the scriptures". It argues that the Jews did not deserve to be the Chosen People, and because of their sins are condemned to "degradation in this world"..An oral tradition from Muhammad contends that the rivalry with the Jews will last until the end of days: "The Last Hour will not come until the Muslims fight against the Jews, and the Muslims will kill them until the Jews will hide themselves behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say: 'O Muslim, the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me. Come and kill him.'".Islam's obsession with Judaism, however, persists and is fundamental to explaining the essence of the Israel/Palestinian conflict. .Virulently antisemitic rhetoric is a staple in official Palestinian media, in the curriculums in Palestinian schools, and in the ongoing distribution of the anti-Jewish Russian forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The tropes and dehumanising language blame the Jews for deceiving the world into thinking that "they are the chosen people and that God wants them to once more take possession of Palestine, the promised land.".The 'sin' of the Jews.Probably the great 'sin' of Jews has been their survival, while the great empires around them crumbled. Despite their wide dispersion, lack of sovereignty, strong forces of assimilation, and the violent hatred aimed at them, Jewish survival has been perplexing to its enemies..Religious inquiry is critical to the survival of the Jews because almost all anti-Semites employ myths and prejudices that have strong religious roots. "The Jewish mystery goes back to the very roots of Christian and Muslim belief and dogma." The 'chosen' doctrine of Islam is crucial to the continued existence or not of the Jews..As Douglas Murray noted in an interview, there is an Islamist theological worldview that fuels anti-Zionism and anti-Westernism..Murray says that the Quran is meant to be the final revelation of God to man − there is none after it. All the revelations that came before from Judaism and Christianity are part of Islam, and Muslims are the recipients and followers of the final word, and the followers of the Prophet Mohammed and Allah..Although Islam received the final Revelation, becoming the last and greatest monotheistic religion, many Muslim societies do not work and yet other, non-Muslim, societies do work..This causes a serious cognitive dissonance; it's why the Muslim world is so vulnerable to conspiracy theories. This seeing the hand of the satanic Jews is reminiscent of seeing the hand of the West as an explanation of why many Muslim countries are unsuccessful: their peoples are immiserated, they are unable to unleash talent. There is a failure to understand that political, personal and religious freedom − freedom of speech and freedom of worship − are absolute prerequisites for the success of Israel and the West..It is not the role of Western countries founded upon Judeo-Christian values to change the internal contradictions in Islam. Muslims are responsible for the interpretations in their faith..But Western leadership should not content itself, in 2025, with merely saying such things as "Anti-Semitism is unacceptable…" or "Anti-Semitism in our [put in country of choice] should not exist.".Where they are uttered, appalling, genocidal libels must be condemned, irrespective of their origins, in the most emphatic way. Western leadership must make it more than categorically clear that the West will protect its Jews to the fullest..Getting rid of the Jews won't solve the problem.Islam created some of the greatest empires in human history. Yet fundamental to the Arab nationalism that developed in the 19th century is the demonisation of the Jews; the Jews were never to be Islam's equals; the idea of there being a Jewish state is intolerable: Muslim greatness under Allah depends on the subjugation and annihilation of the Jews..If Islam's status depends on the demonising and annihilation of the Jews, it is in very great trouble as a faith. Getting rid of the Jews will not enhance Islam, but the world will be a poorer place for their absence..As at February 2025, the Jewish population of the world has not even returned to the level it was in 1939 − before the Final Solution exterminated over 60% of the Jewish population of Europe. Over 6,000,000 of 11,000,000 Jews were murdered..Today there are fewer than 16,000,000 Jews in the world, compared to 3.3 billion Christians and 2.2 billion Muslims. Jews are not a threat to the world: they are only a threat to those who act in the belief that they are..Read also:.Trump v SA: How the world is seeing the flashpoint'Yes Please' – 17,000 Saffers want Trump's olive branch; urge Ramaphosa to talk – Neil Diamond SACCUSAFrans Cronje on Trump v ANC: The Uber Truth – SA running risk of '85-type sanctions.*Sara Gon rants professionally to rail against the illiberalism of everything..This article was originally published by the Daily Friend and is republished with permission.

Sarah Gon: How antisemitic libels fuel the war on Jews

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