Who decides: Who will live, who will die? - opinion

Europe claims to be the arbiter of which freedoms Israeli Jews should have. Last weekend, Jews around the world gathered in synagogues prayed to be inscribed in the Book of Life for the coming year, and professed that God is the one who decides “who will live and who will die.” 

While Jews spent this last month of the year, Elul, asking their creator and each other for forgiveness, EU Foreign Policy chief Josep Borrell has spent the last month initiating a new front in the Western assault on Judaism: Negating the Israeli public’s right to choose their own representatives. He plans to sanction elected Israeli ministers whose words are not to his liking. Jews, who for a brief period of 80 years enjoyed freedom of speech and self-expression and who felt confident to be themselves in their own land, are now in the process of being denied those freedoms.

It is no surprise that Europe is leading this campaign – both directly and through its sphere of influence. After all, for 2,300 years Europe not only opposed the idea of Judaism in any form but also turned this opposition into a key European ethos. That was what Theodor Herzl identified when he defied the conventional wisdom of his milieu and argued that the perceived freedoms granted by Europe to Jews in the late 19th century were only superficial. “There is no use in suddenly announcing in the newspaper that starting tomorrow, all people are equal,” he warned Germany’s first chancellor, Otto von Bismarck. 

Indeed, the idea of Jewish freedoms, then and now, was met with a fierce European counter-reaction. In Herzl’s time, it was the rapid rise of the new ideology of antisemitism – opposition to the emancipated Jew. In our time, it is the rapid rise of the new ideology of anti-Zionism – opposition to the Jewish state. Let’s be clear: Today’s assault on Judaism through anti-Zionism and Israel-bashing is expanding at a much faster pace than last century’s assault on Judaism through antisemitism.

The term “antisemitism” was coined in the 1870s; the ideological development took decades. During the first few decades of antisemitism, there was a lingering debate if antisemitism was a form of Jew hatred or merely directed to a subset of Jews and a “friendly effort” to reform them. While today, the term “antisemitism” is synonymous with Jew hatred. Many, through the early 20th century, considered it a legitimate political view. It took 70 years for antisemitism to mature and serve as the ideology that governed the German-led genocide of Jews in the 193s and ‘40s.

To get a sense of the rapid pace of today’s assault on Judaism, one just needs to look at the European actions over the last year. First, the EU’s heartwarming expression of unequivocal support for the Jewish state on Oct. 7, then turning the blame for Oct. 7 on the Jews themselves, an attitude perfectly encapsulated in the words of United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that it “did not happen in a vacuum.” 

Shortly after that, the incitement of global public opinion against the Jews (a staple of European history). By the spring of 2024, the European-based and sponsored International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) were setting the groundwork for the arrest of Israeli Jews. This was followed by the pledge of European countries, such as France, that when arrest warrants were issued against Jews, they would collaborate (just as they did 80 years ago). And in recent months, the suppression of Jewish confidence and personal freedoms through looming threats of sanctions against Israeli Jews.  Now, less than a year since Europe’s first reaction of “We stand with Israel,” come Borrell’s efforts to effectively “cancel” the Israeli electorate.

This is not because of accusations that the Israeli Jews’ elected officials engaged in “war crimes” or voted for the “deliberate starvation of Palestinians” as per ICC prosecutor Karim Ahmad Khan’s slanderous accusation. This, according to Borrell, is because of the way they speak. Borrell made a clear statement: Europe will decide how Israeli government ministers should speak, and Europe should, at least metaphorically, be the one to decide who will live and who will die. Not the Israeli electorate, and certainly not some other idea “primitive” Israeli Jews have.This is a déjà vu to 2,300 years ago when a European invader initiated a well-funded project to suppress Jewish freedoms and self-confidence. 

An assault on Americanism

The assault on Judaism from the West is not just a threat to Judaism but also to US national security and the essence of Americanism. President Joe Biden has stated: “America is an idea.” Borrell’s actions are a snub to the idea of America. They attack the sacred American principle of freedom of speech while championing the idea of voter suppression. A short while after Borrell began his “Elul project,” he announced which part of the Israeli electorate he was targeting first: religious voters.  Is it a coincidence that the representatives of those Israelis who continuously thank God and talk about the sacred covenant and the holiness of the Land of Israel were the ones who were first targeted for sanctions due to the way they speak?

Borrell and his colleagues will not stop there. They would likely follow the lead of Europe-based ICC prosecutor Khan, who announced upon his first set of indictments of alleged Jewish war criminals: “My office will not hesitate to submit further applications for warrants of arrest.” In the coming days, over 85% of Israeli Jews, including secular Jews, will mark Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur in prayer, fasting, and religious rituals. 

Are their representatives the next to be targeted by the EU?

As of now, Borrell’s efforts have been stopped by righteous Europeans, underscoring that there are those in Europe who want to break from that age-old European ethos of opposing Judaism. On Rosh Hashanah, Jews forgive one another. While Foreign Minister Israel Katz labeled Borrell “an antisemite and Israel hater,” Borrell should be forgiven if he changes course. He personally is not the issue; he is merely a reflection of the 2,300-year-old ecosystem of European opposition to Judaism. Like his predecessors, he makes it clear that it is Europe that, in its grace, will decide which freedoms Jews should be granted and to what extent: freedom of speech, freedom to vote, freedom of self-defense, and freedom to live. In doing so, Borrell reminds us how rapidly the existential threat to Judaism is advancing from the West.■

The writer is author of the new book The Assault on Judaism: The Existential Threat Is Coming from the West (TheAssaultonJudaism.com). He is chair of the Judaism 3.0 Think Tank and author of Judaism 3.0: Judaism’s Transformation to Zionism.