This past month has made me aware that the anti-Zionism and the anti-Semitic bigotry that have infected our news media and college campuses have trickled down into my own community.
In one conversation, for instance, a good friend and fellow Catholic almost 50 years younger than I, stunned me with revelations about some of her acquaintances who despise Israel. Some of them have taken the next step, denigrating Jews in general.
Two days later, when I served up this topic to a Protestant friend, she told me that she hears the same sort of remarks from some Protestant acquaintances.
The kicker came on the two-year anniversary of the brutal Hamas massacre of more than 1,200 Israeli men, women, children, and babies. An email arrived that day from a local Catholic political group, unaffiliated with any parish, which usually dispatches valuable information concerning local elections.
This time was different. “If you haven’t been following the Israeli Genocide Campaign, you may not be aware of its scope and how free people around the world, especially in Europe, are demanding intervention by their government,” it began.
No nuance in that blunt opening. The senders take Israeli genocide for granted, urging their readers to watch videos from Europe showing anti-Israeli protests.
“If the Israelis are indeed committing genocide, then why are there so few marches and demonstrations in the Arab world?” I wondered. Why are we looking to places like London, Paris, and American universities for validation of this genocide rather than to Cairo or Riyadh? And why are conservatives joining hands with terrorists, leftist Europeans, and “River to the Sea” radicals?
Carl Cannon comments on this political coupling over at “American Greatness”: “Antisemitism, you see, is where right-wing and left-wing crazies meet, howling to the moon in concert. But genocide is a serious matter, and I’ve had friends – decent and thoughtful people – who’ve asked me pointedly about Israel’s conduct.” Cannon then looks at whether Israel has engaged in genocide. His conclusions are best summed up by a quote he uses from French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy:
A genocidal army doesn’t take two years to win a war in a territory the size of Las Vegas. A genocidal army doesn’t send SMS warnings before firing or facilitate the passage of those trying to escape the strikes. A genocidal army wouldn’t evacuate, every month, hundreds of Palestinian children suffering from rare diseases or cancer, sending them to hospitals in Abu Dhabi as part of a medical airlift set up right after Oct. 7. To speak of genocide in Gaza is an offense to common sense, a maneuver to demonize Israel, and an insult to the victims of genocides past and present.
Criticism of the Israeli government is fair and legitimate, but doesn’t accusing that government of genocide seem to reveal ourselves as ignorant and even victims of propaganda? As several commentators I’ve read have pointed out, Hamas and the Palestinians have won the war of spin and smear. “Two years after October 7, Israel has defeated its enemies,” writer Douglas Murray stated recently. “The West is still surrendering to them.”
To detest the Israeli government or even the state of Israel is one thing, but haven’t we gone too far if we then jump into the swamp of anti-Semitism? Like Hamas, like so many of the Palestinians, like the leftwing students and news media of the West, don’t we show that propaganda has poisoned us, and aren’t we then in danger of poisoning the culture?
In an Acton Institute article on American liberty and Judaism, Mike Cosper calls Jews “the canaries in the coal mine of culture.” He explains:
Historically speaking, the emergence of anti-Semitism is always a sign of something poisonous taking root in a society. It doesn’t just spell danger for Jews; it spells danger for everyone. As Bari Weiss has put it, ‘What starts with the Jews never ends with the Jews.’ The rise of anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and half a dozen Middle Eastern states was quickly followed by other forms of violence, tyranny, and authoritarianism.
Here I will pause to recount the one time I was a target of anti-Semitism. In May 2024, I wrote an article titled, “Is Common Sense Realism Making a Comeback?” If you look online and run through the comments, you’ll find two remarks that make little sense because the comment that sparked these responses has since disappeared. That vanished comment read, and I paraphrase, “Don’t pay any attention to this guy. Look at his last name. He’s obviously a Christ-killer.”
I burst out laughing on first reading this. For one, three Minick brothers, all Protestants and one of them my direct ancestor, arrived in Pennsylvania before the Revolutionary War. For another, that hackneyed, antique vulgarity deserves to be belly-laughed out of the room. One of the replies to my assailant, “I didn’t know Jeff Minick was around at the time of Christ,” only added to my merriment.
Today, the comment has lost its humor.
Maybe it’s time we all take a deep breath and consider how George Washington responded to the Hebrew Congregation in Savannah, Ga., on receiving their congratulations after he became president in 1790:
May the same wonder-working Deity, who long since delivering the Hebrews from their Egyptian Oppressors planted them in the promised land—whose providential agency has lately been conspicuous in establishing these United States as an independent nation—still continue to water them with the dews of Heaven and to make the inhabitants of every denomination participate in the temporal and spiritual blessings of that people whose God is Jehovah.
Jeff Minick is a father of four and grandfather to many. A former history, literature, and Latin teacher, Jeff now writes prolifically for The Epoch Times, American Essence Magazine, and several other publications.
This culture article was made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal, a project of 1819 News. To comment on this article, please email [email protected]. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News.
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