It means that pro-Israel governments may be riddled with it
Antisemitism does not only come from antisemites.’ I like to think that the anti-Zionist who made the sardonic revelation was not trying to be cute. Yes, anomalies deviate from orthodoxy but that does not make them loony. To the contrary; the case in question lights upon a neglected truth with momentous upshots that we’d otherwise never spot.
Start here. The darkest of days on October 7, 2023 produced the inescapable tenet that Hamas had to be eliminated or it would rebuild and carry out a defiant promise to massacre Jews again and again. ‘Rebuild.’ With money from…? The answer leads to the crucial revelation however implausible. “Antisemitism does not only come from antisemites” but from Washington and Brussels and the bogus international community, malice bustling on the flag poles at the United Nations.
Antisemitism is not a light accusation. In every antisemite is a Pavlovian rage to kill the Jew. The world’s knee-jerk horror at the daring rescue of four Jewish hostages held by Hamas signalled that Jews had no right to save their brethren from death. In his preface to “Anti-Semite and Jew: An Exploration of the Etiology of Hate” Michael Walzer writes:
“Jean-Paul Sartre’s book is a brilliant portrait of both anti-Semite and Jew, written by a non-Jew and from a non-Jewish point of view. Nothing of the anti-Semite either in his subtle form as a snob or in his crude form as a (Jew-killer) escapes Sartre’s sharp eye. The whole problem is examined in a concrete and living way, rather than in terms of sociological abstractions.
Inadvertently the Economist bolstered the truth of this killer instinct possessing every antisemite when it identified the three sources of power on which Hamas depends: “Its physical force in Gaza, the reach of its ideas and its income.”
“Israel’s declared goal of destroying Hamas for good requires its financial base to be dismantled, too. Very little of this sits in Gaza. Instead, it is overseas in friendly countries. Hamas’s financial empire is reckoned to bring in more than $1bn a year. Having been painstakingly crafted to avoid Western sanctions, it may be out of reach for Israel and its allies.”
Dismantling the financial base, contrary to the Economist, is well within the reach of Israel and its allies, partly because the allies are the financial base and partly because if they had the will they have the way to close the laundry tap.
While Donald Trump, properly, entered hush money under ‘legal expenses’ in his books of account, Washington and Brussels slyly bundled billions for Gaza in a ‘Humanitarian Relief’ account. By means of creative bookkeeping western powers have turbo charged Hamas, again and again. Just a week ago President Biden ‘cooked the books’ when he spun the latest hostage deal proposal. “The third phase calls for the start of a major reconstruction of Gaza, which faces decades of rebuilding from devastation caused by the war.” Again the mortal sin word – ‘rebuild.’ Hamas will certainly rebuild, as Iran did, thanks to a President on the ropes playing fast and loose with the public purse. Some of the free money will foot the bill for civic projects: roads sanitation hospitals and what else. Even so it would enable Hamas to rebuild by conserving what capital it gets from allies for the top priority project, waging war on Jews over the border. God forbid, but should Hamas ever put a plaque on the wall of a rebuilt parliament in Gaza City, it would accurately inscribe the plaque with this fitting tribute: ‘In gratitude to the West for helping Hamas develop our mammoth military base complete with metro system greater than the London and New York subways.’
Compared to the indiscernible ‘financial bases’ in friendly countries” those in allied countries are practically audited. Qatar openly gives (not loans) the terrorist group billions for civic projects that any normal elected authority incurs to uplift the lives of citizens, and is audited to hold the authority accountable. There’s no one holding Hamas accountable. Give, give. Take, take. If the humanitarian relief being trucked into Gaza daily is anything to go by, Hamas deems it right and proper to divert Qatari billions for military assets and metro development.
Iran the principal franchisor of Hamas provides the bulk of capital, some 93% of the total. For its nefarious part the Biden presidency has busily developed the mullah’s fiscal muscle. Biden personally strained every decrepit sinew to enrich Tehran by, (1) not enforcing sanctions on its oil and gas exports; (2) unfreezing billions of Iranian assets; and (3) paying the Jihadist regime billions in extortion money for getting American hostages back home. Pursuing the holy grail of a nuclear deal, Washington chased after murderous mullahs with fistfuls of banknotes. They promptly allotted them to projects among which the climatic massacre and kidnap campaign on October 7 has passed down to folklore far and wide.
No – the world is not neatly divided into Jew-hating and Jew-friendly actors. Heads of state pursuing policies (deliberate or unwitting) to keep Hamas in power while they discourage and deter Israel from defeating it, are accomplices of the Islamic project to wipe Israel off the Middle East map. “Does Biden Reject Israel’s Right to Self-Defense?” is affirmation if any were needed.
When someone sets up, deliberately or not, Jews to be murdered there can be no question, the acts of that person are antisemitic. If indeed Biden rejects the right of Israel to protect citizens from a bloodthirsty enemy, there can be no question: he’s setting up Jews to be killed with impunity. We are not mind readers. We don’t know the man’s true intent, though a desperate move to rescue his flailing re-election campaign could be a motivating force. By acts alone and their obvious consequence we can only judge. A man who cries ‘fire’ in a crowded theatre may not anticipate crushed bodies, nevertheless he gets treated as a guilty killer.
The international community as an antisemitic ghoul seems to be geared up for telling Israel, ‘You may not kill to prevent your people being killed.’ Only when Jewish lives are at stake the right to live is traded off, whether calculated or ill considered. As a by-product of this hurly-burly pursuit of geopolitical and personal gain, antisemitism can take on shades ranging from pale grey to dark black, morphing according to the self-serving calls of statecraft.
This is not to assert that political leaders hate Jews enough to want them exterminated, at least not consciously. The point is to make them recognize that rebuilding Gaza before eliminating Hamas involves the murder of Jews. If policy makers really aren’t antisemitic, and wish not to be publicly accused, they get the chance to set their moral compass aright.
Balaam's Curse 