Attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner is founder and President of Shurat HaDin, a non-profit and non-partisan organization that has won more than $1 billion in judgments against terrorist groups and their state sponsors, frozen more than $600 million in terrorist assets and collected $120 million in actual payments to the victims and their families. Just like the lawyers who I profiled in a 2016 article, she is "doing well by doing good." Terrorists and the states who sponsor them must be fought militarily, on social media, on mainstream media platforms, and in the halls of justice.
Some people are self-proclaimed activists who actually are just making money off of the chaos that they perpetuate, living in mansions while dispatching others to march and make mayhem in the streets.
The real heroes are those who use their talents and their voices to promote and create positive changes.
The normalization and mainstreaming of antisemitic hatred--which inevitably erupts into antisemitic violence--should be deeply concerning to everyone, not just Jews. Even if you are not Jewish and do not care about Jews, if you are an informed student of history then you know that Jews--and now the Jewish State--are the canaries in the international coal mine. Paraphrasing Martin Niemoller's famous quote, if you do not act when they come for the Jews, by the time they come for you there may be no one left to act. The antisemites in Poland in the 1930s may not have cared much about Adolf Hitler's antisemitic policies, but it did not take long before Hitler's hatred was not confined to Jews or to Germany's borders.
The Iran/Hamas war against the Jewish State is also a war against Jews, and therefore it is a war against civilization. In Anti-Israel Rhetoric Has Always Been About the Jews, Darshan-Leitner refutes the notion that anti-Israel rhetoric is not antisemitic:
Over the course of 11 days in May, Hamas fired 4,360 rockets and missiles at the population centers of southern and central Israel, killing 13 people. Dozens more were wounded and Israel, of course, struck back – precisely, carefully, and doing what was technically possible to destroy high-value Hamas targets without endangering the lives of innocent civilians.
Hamas knew that men, women and children would be killed in the fighting – that's precisely why they launched their ordnance from apartment buildings, hospitals and schools. The use of the two million Palestinians in Gaza as human shields and insidiously intending that the dead serve their ghoulish propaganda agenda are the very foundations of Hamas's strategy.
The usual suspects in the media – the Hollywood posers, the trolls and the woke progressive Left – swallowed the Hamas propaganda hook, line and sinker. Israel seemed unprepared to explain the conflict. The Start-Up Nation couldn't find a stand-up English speaker to be the country's singular voice to the rest of the world. But even the most articulate barrister of common sense pressed into hasbara (public diplomacy) service would have been unable to shield the Jewish state from what it would encounter on air and online...
Natan Sharansky, the former refusenik and Israeli politician, defined modern anti-Semitism with the "Three D" formula: The Demonization of Israel, the Delegitimization of Israel, and subjecting Israel to grossly unfair Double standards. The recent fighting in Gaza is slam-dunk proof of Sharansky's thesis. The pro-Palestinian rallies in Europe and the United States that followed the Gaza fighting were marked by calls to liberate Palestine from the "River to the Sea," a call to eradicate all Jews from Israel. Many of these rallies featured Palestinian flags flying alongside swastikas. In Los Angeles, in New York City, and Montreal, Jews were savagely beaten by mobs...
The fact that anti-Israel anti-Semitism is embedded in the halls of power should come as no surprise. When reason abandons the debate, the crazies on all sides feel empowered. Hatred for the Jewish people and Israel is the one thing that the alt-right and the woke Left agree on...
According to the Anti-Defamation League, the words "Hitler was right" were posted more than 17,000 times in just seven days in May. Extremist hashtags against Israel and Jews were trending wildly. The vile knows no bound. Even Lily Ebert, a 97-year-old Holocaust survivor who educates the world about the horrors of hate on social media, was overwhelmed on her TikTok account by the most disgusting messages, including countless posts that praised Hitler...
But let's not kid ourselves: Facebook and Twitter are monopolist businesses, and they've made billions off of this latest round of malignant incitement. The social media platforms did not stop designated anti-Israel terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah from recruiting and fund-raising online, so why should calling for the extermination of the Jewish people be any different? As the founder of an NGO that battles terrorists in court and who warned anyone who would listen that hatred on social media would lead to bloodshed, this handwriting was hash-tagged on the wall years ago.
In the hate business, anti-Semitism was always an easy sell and business is really good now. If hatred can't be stopped and decency won't win out over wokeness, perhaps legal liability – even criminal culpability – might be one way of getting the social media behemoths of Silicon Valley to stop their detestable practices. It isn't a vaccine for the hatred, of course, but it will limit the spread of the contagion.
Until then, it's a certainty that social media will promote more anti-Israel and anti-Semitic hate. Terrorists will be emboldened and, in the process, many more innocent Jews will have to pay the price in broken bones and shattered lives.
The rallying cry "Never Again" loses meaning and relevance when people--including politicians, media members, and social media platforms--ignore or even incite antisemitism. Israel-bashers, including politicians who are praised as "progressives," often assert that they are not antisemites and that accusations of antisemitism are being used as a weapon to silence them. That is nonsense, and it is easily refuted by using Sharansky's three Ds. If you are criticizing a specific Israeli policy or suggesting that Israel should consider enacting a different policy then you are treating Israel like a normal nation. If you are falsely accusing Israel of being an "apartheid state" committing genocide, then you are demonizing and delegitimizing Israel. If you are silent about the misogyny, oppression, and murder being committed by Arab/Islamic states and terrorist groups but you are loudly condemning Israel for defending herself against enemies committed to destroying Israel, then you are treating Israel with a double standard. This is not difficult to figure out, but it does require a refusal to be brainwashed by self-proclaimed "progressives" who rewrite history to suit their ideological preferences.
There is one other thing to consider: democracies do not wage war against other democracies. Israel is demonstrably a democratic state in which all citizens enjoy full and equal rights under the law. Look at the countries that are actively trying to destroy Israel, including Iran and Syria. How can any "progressive" person take the side of repressive regimes like Iran and Syria?
If you voted for one of the loudmouth self-proclaimed "progressives" who keep saying stupid and hateful things about Israel, it is all right to admit to yourself that you were fooled, and to make better choices in the next election. This is not--or should not be--about Democrats versus Republicans. There are antisemites on both sides of the aisle, and I condemn them all with equal fervor, but the reality is that right now the most outspoken anti-Israel politicians in America are the self-proclaimed "progressives" and that is a problem that the Democrats need to address before it does further damage not only to their party but to our country.
