Anti-Semitism, Israel, US college students, US Jews

The world’s Jewish population is concentrated into two countries, Israel and the United States. Israel has app 6.2 million Jews. The US has somewhere between 5.5 - 6.1 million Jews, depending on whose numbers you believe. Most who study US Jewish population tend towards the lower estimate.

Put another way, some 83 per cent of the world’s Jews live in Israel and the US. More than 50 countries—25+ per cent of the world--have a Jewish population under 1,000 Jews.

Israel’s Jewish population grows, mostly because of Jewish birth-rates (the highest in the Developing world) and aliyah (emigration to Israel). America’s Jewish population shrinks, mostly because of assimilation and inter-marriage.

After Israel and the US, Jewish population numbers drop dramatically—very dramatically. France has the world’s third largest Jewish population. But it’s got less than 1/10^th the population of Israel or the US. France has, maybe, 470,000 Jews.

Canada has less than 390,000 Jews. Britain has less than 270,000 Jews. Russia and Argentina have less than 180,000 Jews. Germany has less than 130,000 Jews.

For pride’s sake, some dispute these numbers. They say, our Jewish population is larger than that! You short-change us!

Maybe the German and Russian Jewish population numbers should be lowered. Perhaps their ranks should be reversed. Maybe not. In the end, it doesn’t really matter (except for pride’s sake): Jewish numbers outside the US and Israel are mostly small and smaller.

Here’s an ugly observation: the more a Jewish community shrinks, the more concentrated will be the desire to ignore anti-Semitism. It’s like the concept of ‘critical mass’, but reversed.

With ‘critical mass’, something grows bigger until a point is reached where an action occurs. With Jewish communities and anti-Semitism, the reverse occurs: as a Jewish numbers shrink, ignoring anti-Semitism grows.

It’s a self-protective defense. Denial isn’t just a river in Egypt. It’s the psychological mechanism through which one adjusts one’s life when living in a hostile environment.

This week, my wife met a woman from South Africa. The woman said she couldn’t afford to make aliyah (emigrate) to Israel. In South Africa, her home is four stories high. Her property has parking spots for 9 cars. But its value isn’t what it used to be. If she sold, she’d get only enough for a down payment on a house perhaps 1/3^rd the size of her current house—or smaller.

She lives in a large city. She lives, she said, ‘in the Jewish ghetto’.

She said it the way one might say, ‘my purple dress’, as if the word ‘ghetto’ meant nothing more than the color of one’s clothing.

She didn’t appear to understand—or doesn’t want to understand--the anti-Semitic meaning of ‘ghetto’. She didn’t appear to understand—or perhaps doesn’t want to understand--the horrific Jewish history of the words, ‘Jewish ghetto’.

But like most Jews around the world today, there’s a good chance she does understand that anti-Semitism awakens. For example, around Europe, anti-Semitism could be as strong now as it was in the 1930’s, when Nazi Jew-hate was as ubiquitous as beer-halls.

But today, it’s not Nazi Jew-hate that spreads. It’s Arab Jew-hate which, you might note, often uses the same hateful images and concepts used by both Hitler and Russia’s Stalin. Just this week, an Arab ‘Palestinian’ actually quoted the viciously anti-Semitic ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ to demonize Jews in a speech at a conference on Arab-Israel peace (Sam Sokol, “PLO ambassador endorses Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, Jerusalem Post, July 7, 2015).

It’s not Israel which threatens the world, according to this speaker (ibid). It’s Jews.

That’s what the ‘Protocols’ is all about—the need for Gentiles to defend themselves from the evil Jews who, after all, plot to take over the world.

This is hate. It’s part of the foundation of the anti-Israel industry (Jeff Robbins, “Anti-Semitism and the Anti-Israel Lobby”, Wall Street Journal, September 7, 2007). It’s part of the foundation of classic anti-Semitism.

Anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism work together. Your children on America’s college campuses see that every day. The ‘Palestinian Cause’ Movement brings not just anti-Israel brochures and posters to college. It brings anti-Semitic attacks, too.

It does that because the call to demonize and delegitimize Israel isn’t just a mask to destroy Israel. It’s the transparent veil for vicious anti-Jew hatred.

Your children see it. They feel it. They understand it even if you don’t (David Horovitz, “ADL chief warns anti-Semitism worst since WWII, even US Jewish kids feel intimidated”, Times of Israel, July 13, 2015).

If you’re an American, you’re at risk. Your children are at risk. The more isolated Israel becomes, the greater will be the anti-Semitism you’ll see. The more criminalized Israel becomes, the stronger will be the Jew-hate you must face.

Make aliyah. Don’t wait. If you stay where you are, the Jew-hate will come to your city. It will come to your street. It will come to you.

Ask your college-age children. They’ll tell you all about it.