The factors driving the rising tide of antisemitism sweeping across the globe may seem to be coming from different directions, but they are actually closely connected.
According to JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin, the problem is the confluence of four factors: the growing dominance of cultural Marxism and woke ideology; the left’s war on the West and the red-green alliance of liberal elites and Islamists; an ideology-driven press that embraces open bias; and the curse of antisemitism, which attaches itself to every dominant ideology. Together, they create a toxic brew that is legitimizing attacks on Israel and the Jews.
He’s joined by scholar Richard Landes, author of the book Can The Whole World Be Wrong?: Lethal Journalism, Antisemitism, and Global Jihad.
Landes argues that movements rooted in apocalyptic predictions, as were common in the Middle Ages, and today among leftists and Islamists, pave the way for a surge in hateful and violent attacks on Jews. What he calls a culture of “lethal journalism” that accepts bias against Israel and Jews has legitimized blood libels against Jews. The contemporary form of this traditional trope of antisemitism is the claim that Israelis target and murder Palestinian children, as shown by the debunked myths about the death of Muhammad al-Durrah and the 2002 battle in Jenin against Palestinian terrorists.
Landes says woke ideology paves the way for progressives to accept lies about Israel and for the media to spread an apocalyptic mindset that hinges on paranoid ideas about cosmic forces controlling the world or betraying it. Jews are always the victims of such thinking.
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