Mick Hartley

A provocative opinion piece in the Jerusalem Post from David Ben-Basat – Hatred of Israel has become a proxy war on the West:

Israel is no longer merely “the small Jewish state in the Middle East.” Against its will, it has become the frontline of a global ideological struggle between democracy and ideological militancy, between freedom and totalitarian thinking, between Western values and forces seeking to dismantle them from within.

In a bitter historical irony, Europe – the continent that bore responsibility for the Holocaust, the greatest catastrophe in Jewish history – has once more become one of the main centers of modern antisemitism. This is not the crude, overt antisemitism of the 20th century, but a sophisticated form, wrapped in the language of “human rights,” “universal justice,” and the “fight against colonialism.”

In the name of historical guilt and in a culture of nearly unlimited tolerance, a paradoxical reality has taken shape in Europe: Jews are once again being targeted, not because they are seen as “foreign” but because they are identified with a state that refuses to apologize for its right to exist and defend its citizens….

This moral vacuum is being filled by a radical Islamist ideology that divides the world into only two camps: believers and infidels.

Under this worldview, anyone who is not Muslim – and certainly anyone who does not accept the supremacy of Sharia Law – is deemed an infidel.

The takeover of Western Europe is a gradual process: mass immigration, the creation of closed communities, demands for special rights in the name of religious freedom, the erosion of civil law, and ultimately the imposition of religious norms on the public sphere. This is not the pursuit of coexistence but a long-term strategy to replace Western values from within.

If Europe provides the ideological backdrop, American campuses have become the testing ground. Universities built on the values of free speech, pluralism, and critical thinking have deteriorated into arenas of silencing, intimidation, and open incitement.

Jewish students report boycotts, threats, and exclusion – not on the fringes but at the heart of prestigious academic institutions. Faculty members and administrators choose silence, fearing they will be labeled “insufficiently progressive.”…

For radical movements and Western elites that have lost confidence in themselves, Israel is a convenient target. It is easier to attack “Zionism” than to confront the failures of immigration policies and religious radicalization.

Western values are increasingly portrayed as “oppressive.” Thus, hatred of Israel becomes a tool for undermining the very idea of the West.

It’s true that a loss of confidence in western liberal democracy has coincided with a resurgence of fundamentalist Islam – “Islamism” – with the growth of the Muslim Brotherhood, and Saudi and Qatari petro-dollars spreading Wahhabism and the like.

After the break up of the Ottoman Empire and the triumph of the west, the Muslim world had nowhere to go. The muscular days of a triumphant Islam were in the past, and there was no capability within Islamic doctrine to go forward and meet or compete with the west – so they went back. They regressed to the 7th century. And now we have theocratic tyrannies like Iran, misogynist hell-holes like Afghanistan, and a forever Palestinian war against Israel, now driven by Hamas fanatics prepared to sacrifice as many Gazans as it takes to drive out the Jews.

The tragedy is that this has proved attractive to western progressives – in particular in the academy, where decades of post-modern ideologies have eaten away at enlightenment confidence. And there was always that antisemitic undercurrent which we assumed had disappeared, but have, since October 7th, discovered had not.

So here we are…