Monday, February 7, 2022

Amnesty International's Disgraceful Anti-Israel Report is the Modern "Protocols of the Elders of Zion"

The "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" is a fraudulent work that purports to describe a Jewish plot to take over the world. The U.S. State Department's 2004 "Report on Global Anti-Semitism" stated that the "clear purpose" of the book is to "incite hatred of Jews and of Israel." The "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" has been praised and distributed by antisemites ranging from Henry Ford to Adolf Hitler to various Arab/Islamic leaders who incorporate "The Protocols" into their countries' school curricula.

Amnesty International just produced an updated version of  the "Protocols," issuing a report that attacks the entire creation and development of Israel by falsely accusing Israel of being an apartheid state. Apartheid has a very specific legal definition but the term has been hijacked and turned into a propaganda tool to use against Israel and the Jewish people. The misuse and abuse of apartheid in this fashion is not only antisemitic, but it insults the people who suffered under real apartheid in South Africa. The corruption of language is the first step toward living in a totalitarian nightmare, as George Orwell demonstrated so eloquently in his classic dystopian novel 1984.

One might expect that Jewish organizations would lead the charge against Amnesty International's attack against Israel, but many Jewish organizations lean to the Left politically and have thus painted themselves into a corner in the current political environment when a person on the political Left feels obliged to criticize every person on the political Right and vice versa. It took a while for the ADL to even acknowledge the existence of antisemitism emanating from the political Left. In Fighting or promoting antisemitism? ADL reaction to Amnesty report shows where they stand, Caroline Glick describes the Anti-Defamation League's confusion:

The Anti-Defamation League, which has an annual budget of around $100 million, is supposed to be the leading Jewish organization in the Diaspora in the fight against Jew-hatred. But Amnesty's declaration of war against the Jewish state placed the ADL in a bind. Just a bit over a year ago, the ADL defended Amnesty.

In October 2020, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced his plan to list Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and Oxfam as antisemitic organizations due to their efforts to advance the antisemitic boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against Israel.

Pompeo's plan was in keeping with the Trump administration's overall policy for fighting antisemitism.

In December 2019, then-President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order that provided civil rights protection to Jewish students persecuted by BDS campaigns on their campuses.

Given the central role Amnesty and other phony human rights groups play in the political war for the destruction of the largest Jewish community in the world, Pompeo's planned move was not just reasonable, it was imperative. But rather than applaud him for his resolve, the ADL attacked Pompeo and his plan...

When the ADL torpedoed Pompeo's plan to designate Amnesty, HRW and Oxfam as antisemitic organizations, it gave them carte blanche to escalate their antisemitic campaigns.

Had the ADL put aside its progressive politics and hatred for Trump for just a moment to support rather than undermine Pompeo, it is highly likely that these groups would have reconsidered their plans to escalate their war against the Jews.

Antisemitism is an existential issue for the Jewish people in general and for Israel in particular; the Holocaust is still within living memory for thousands of survivors, and antisemitism has been surging around the world recently, including within the United States. The ADL's role is not to side with the Democrats or the Republicans but to first and foremost fight antisemitism. Antisemitism from the Left is every bit as dangerous as antisemitism from the Right. In fact, one could argue that Leftist antisemitism is more dangerous precisely because so many people and organizations ignore or even defend it; antisemitism from the Right is condemned by most people other than antisemites from the Right, but antisemitism from the Left--as noted by Glick--is not condemned in the same way. 

Overt antisemitism and anti-Zionism has become acceptable to many Democrats--most notably the much-publicized "Squad"--and the Left's increasing embrace of socialism endangers the United States in general but is particularly threatening to the Jewish people, because socialist organizations and countries tend to be viciously antisemitic no matter what rhetoric they spew about equality and justice; this is very evident when reviewing the track record of an organization like Amnesty International, which espouses noble goals but has been corrupted by extreme Leftist thinking (and funding) such that it focuses much of its energy on trying to destroy the only democracy in the Middle East. If the ADL and other Jewish organizations that seek salvation in self-proclaimed "progressive" causes do not learn the lessons of history then they will face the same grisly fate as the German Jews who could not believe that an "enlightened" country like Germany could descend into genocidal madness. Genocidal madness is not the exclusive province of the Right or the Left, as the Jewish people experienced as victims of both Nazi terror and Stalinist terror. Attempts to accommodate either form of antisemitism never end well; the ADL's job is not to befriend Democrats or condemn Republicans, but to forcefully confront antisemitism regardless of its source or its underlying ideology.

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