The 21st-century assault on Judaism is more lethal than the 20th-century assault - opinion

‘In every generation, someone rises to eradicate us,” goes the line recited in the Passover Seder. In Passover 2023, it seemed to be about long-past history, but by Passover 2024 it was clear: This generation is now.

However, there is a dangerous misunderstanding about who that “someone” trying to eradicate us is.

This generation is facing two simultaneous attempts to eradicate Judaism, coming from two autonomous actors: a physical attempt to eradicate Judaism coming from Iran, and an ideological attempt to eradicate Judaism coming from the West. The latter is by far the biggest threat to the survival of Judaism. While Iran and its proxies have the ability to kill many Jews, as they do day after day, they do not have the capabilities to eradicate Judaism. Indeed, the path to the destruction of Judaism is not through war but through war crime indictments.

While the Jewish nation has the tools, resolve, faith, and creativity to cope with the physical attack, the ideological attack has been all but ignored. In my new book, The Assault on Judaism, I aim to refocus global attention to this daunting threat: the rapidly expanding Western attempt to negate the idea of the Jewish state and, through it, to negate the idea of Judaism.

‘Jews brought it upon themselves’ – again. For example, as unimaginable as it was merely a year ago, in Europe once again the legal groundwork for the mass arrest of Jews is being prepared.  It started this week with the arrest warrants against the Jewish state's leaders, but the effort led by the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice is much broader: It targets Jews who serve in the Israeli military, who live or work in Judea and Samaria, and those who support the “war crimes” of the aforementioned Jews – in short, all Israeli Jews.

This comes while global public opinion, which is needed to justify such horrific anti-Jewish actions, has already been set exactly as it was in the early 20th century: “The Jews have brought it upon themselves.” Such a hostile global mindset inevitably impacts Western governments – including those countries that vigorously defend the physical assault on the Jewish state. Indeed, today’s ideological assault on Judaism is nuanced and is carried out not just by foes but also by friends.

This ranges from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who indoctrinates the global population with slanderous lies that Jews in Israel “kill women, children, and babies,” to US President Joe Biden giving the US Treasury and the State Department a broad license to impose sanctions on Israeli Jews of all walks of life. In doing so, they are reversing an 80-year-old process of restoring Jewish self-confidence and instead instilling Jewish insecurity. Which Jew will be sanctioned next?

The assault on Judaism in the 2020s: More advanced than that of the 1920s

The early stages of the Western assault on Judaism in the 2020s had similar features to that of the 1920s.Back then, Jews were accused of contaminating humanity, occupying Europe, and corrupting the fabric of society through their malignant actions. This was enough to draft a sufficient portion of the European population for the attempt to eradicate Judaism by killing Jew by Jew – an attempt that resulted in the murder of one-third of the global Jewish population.

Today, Jews are once again accused of committing crimes against humanity, occupying Gaza, Palestine, and the land they call their home, as well as destabilizing the world. Indeed, just like Jews in the 1920s were accused of initiating World War I, Jews in the 2020s are accused of initiating World War III through their actions in Lebanon, Gaza, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and Iran.

Yet dangerously, the 21st-century assault on Judaism is much more mainstream than the 20th-century assault. Back then, the accusation that Jews corrupt humanity relied on the gospel of opinion leaders such as composer Richard Wagner; but today, it relies on the gospel of credible Western news outfits, as well as Western-sponsored organizations such as the United Nations, the European Union, the International Criminal Court, and the International Court of Justice.

Let’s be clear: Today’s assault on Judaism is by far more advanced and lethal than the last century’s assault on Judaism.

To counter the assault, one must acknowledge that it exists. And yet, the Western assault on Judaism is not getting proper attention. This is in part due to the belief by many Jews, back then and today, that the assault is not directed at them – not at proper German Jews in the 1920s nor proper American Jews in the 2020s – only at other Jews, such as Russian Jewish immigrants in the 1920s, and Israeli Jews in the 2020s.

Yet there is another reason which is much simpler: Every day, missiles are coming in, Jews are being killed, hostages are still in Gaza, and families are torn, as sons, fathers, and sometimes even grandfathers are away for months, fighting in Gaza and Lebanon, and so many families have been displaced from their homes, farms, and the life they knew.

Therefore, I am told this is not the right time to draw attention to an amorphous ideological threat coming from polite Europeans and their Europhile counterparts in the US. Let us first fight off the physical assault, the logic goes, and then, in the years to come, worry about the so-called Western assault that today tends to be reduced to understated terms such as “antisemitism” and “media bias.”

However, one of the lessons of the last century’s assault on Judaism is not to wait until it is too late. Who could have imagined in the roaring mid-1920s that just two decades later, the Holocaust would eradicate much of European Jewry?

Today, in 2024, it is not just imaginable but quite clear. The ideological assault on Judaism is expanding rapidly and becoming more and more mainstream. The most important step needed to counter the assault has yet to happen: Acknowledge that it exists. ■

The writer is the author of a new book, The Assault on Judaism: The Existential Threat Is Coming from the West. He is chairman of the Judaism 3.0 Think Tank and author of Judaism 3.0: Judaism’s Transformation to Zionism (Judaism-Zionism.com). His geopolitical articles are featured on EuropeandJerusalem.com.