It is disgusting to see a bestial, 1930s-style antisemitism running rampant in Europe and around the world at demonstrations ostensibly devoted to education, the cost of living and the “future” of young people.
Israeli Ambassador to Belgium David Saranga captured the disturbing phenomenon after seeing young protesters in Lyon jumping on a burning Israeli flag. “I have seen Israeli and American flags burned only in Iran and in France,” he said.
But what Saranga described is now happening far beyond France. Wherever these large green-red student demonstrations erupt, the burning or desecration of the Israeli flag seems to have become an almost ritual feature.
In Rome on Oct. 16, high school students marching toward the Education Ministry burned Israeli and American flags while chanting calls for a boycott of the Jewish state, according to ANSA. Palestinian flags filled the procession.
What does Israel have to do with the price of food, the quality of schools or the prospects of young Europeans?
That is precisely the point.
Antisemitism as political glue
Antisemitism has become the real glue holding empty protests together. Causes that have little or nothing to do with Israel or Jews acquire a common enemy and, suddenly, an identity.
Apparently, in parts of Europe today, one must hate Jews in order to demand the right to an education.
Politicians hunting for votes enthusiastically join the madness, heedless of the deranged slogans that accompany it. In Carpentras, the cry is: “The Jews! We trample them.” In Paris, demonstrators tell police to stop using tear gas because, “We are not Jews.”
And politicians then express solidarity with these young people as though they were simply a generation searching for a better future. When such language becomes part of a political demonstration, however, we are witnessing something far more sinister.
In Sweden, a shoe store declares itself “Judenrein” to please the crowd. In Germany, Spain, Portugal and Italy, antisemitism is increasingly intertwined with social revolt. The phenomenon has spread far beyond Europe, even reaching Thailand.
Meanwhile, in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed’s campaign has taken on the same green-brown hue. Like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, only at an even higher voltage, El-Sayed represents a politics in which hostility toward Israel can become a banner for political mobilization.
The tragedy is that only a society coming apart needs hatred of Jews as political glue.
The double-headed axe
Ilaria Salis, Jean-Luc Mélenchon and El-Sayed deceive the public when legitimate demands for social justice become contaminated with antisemitism. Worse still, they degrade democratic institutions when that rhetoric becomes a means of winning votes.
In the streets, one can almost see the double-headed axe, the Doppelaxt associated with the Hitler Youth: on one side, social grievance; on the other, antisemitic hatred used as bait.
The story in Italy of Youssef Siher, a university-educated agitator and jihadist, and of those who defend him in the name of civil liberties, illustrates the penetration of anti-Western, antisemitic ideology into institutions, the judiciary, social media and, ultimately, the minds of young people.
The fantasies range from the ancient blood libel, now repackaged around Palestinian children, to accusations that Jews were somehow responsible for the train disaster in Spain.
Antisemitism has always been adept at disguising itself in the dominant moral language of its time. Under Nazi Germany, it attached itself to nationalism and race. Today, it dresses itself in the language of globalism, anti-colonialism and Third World solidarity.
Reality scarcely matters.
Burning their own future
In Israel’s Oct. 27 election, Arab parties won 19 seats in the 120-member Knesset, an unprecedented political presence. Yet those who seek to portray Israel as inherently illegitimate will continue chanting “apartheid,” regardless of what takes place inside Israel’s democratic institutions.
That is why the sight of young people burning Israeli flags should concern everyone, not only Jews.
They believe they are burning a symbol of oppression.
They may actually be burning their own future.
