How should the Jewish world fight back against the lunacy that has engulfed the West since the Hamas-led atrocities in Israel on October 7, 2023?
When I visited Jewish communities in America, Australia and Britain last spring to promote my book analysing this pathology, The Builder’s Stone, I found them near stupefied by the tsunami of hate swamping Jews across the West.
Horrified, astounded and perplexed by the insane lies and malice, many were at a loss about how to respond.
What should I tell my grand-daughter who says Israel is committing genocide? asked a woman in New York.
In Britain, a former student leader said he had advised students to keep a low profile against anti-Israel harassment on campus. “Did I do the right thing?” he wondered repeatedly. “Should I have told them instead to engage with their opponents?”
In Melbourne, a businesswoman related how, in the middle of negotiating a business deal, her counterpart suddenly said to her without any preamble: “Why are you killing babies?”
“What should I have done?” the businesswoman asked me. ”Should I have walked out on her? Tried to argue with her? Ignored what she had just said?”
Over and over again, people asked me: “What should we do? What can we do?”
So I wrote a new book, Fighting the Hate: A Handbook for Jews under Siege, which is published this week.
Some people told me that when they came up against such malicious and obvious lies, they were nonplussed.
“I just don’t know enough about any of this to respond adequately,” they said, “and even if I did, how would I be able to react so fast if I didn’t know what was coming?”
Many don’t follow events closely enough, or know enough about Judaism and Jewish history, to have the arguments to counter the lies. Some have been so badly gaslighted they don’t know what’s true or not.
Others (particularly in Britain) thought nothing bad had happened to them and so they weren’t worried. Still others (mostly in Britain and America ) thought bad things were indeed happening to Jews but blamed Benjamin Netanyahu for causing them.
I don’t make a judgment in the book about people’s attitudes. Whatever your political or religious position, this madness is coming for all diaspora Jews.
Some have concluded over the past two and a half terrible years that they have no option but to move to Israel. The many Jews who don’t intend to leave Britain, America or Australia, however, need to know how to weather the hurricane that shows no sign of abating.
Some say that, since antisemitism is irrational and so can’t be argued with, it’s useless to respond at all. In fact, much can be done.
I’ve tried to help by suggesting some tools with which to fight back against the hate, and even more important to impart the confidence that people can fight back.
I’ve tried to explain why this onslaught takes different forms from different kinds of people who require different responses. Some Jews have found close friends from childhood suddenly cutting off all contact because of “Palestine”. Others have become horribly isolated on campus or in the office.
Most painful of all are situations in which family members have become estranged from each other over passionately held views on either side of this issue.
Underlying the question of how to respond is the deeper and perennial question: metaphorically speaking, do I fight or do I flee? There’s no one answer to this because no two situations and no two Jews are the same. Some are temperamentally combative; others are timid.
Everyone must do what is appropriate to the circumstances and what is right for themselves. So I’ve tried to give some specific advice to individuals.
This includes how to cope with verbal ambushes; how to deal with psychological isolation or a paralysing “red mist” of anger; and how to flip the script to wrong-foot your tormentor and give them something to think about that they didn’t expect.
Once you realise that flipping the script is effective, you can think up your own ways of doing so.
Individuals, though, are limited in what they can do. They need community leaders to step up to the plate.
That requires those leaders to adopt a wholly different, heads-above-the-parapet, proactive approach – for example, calling out the antisemitism of the Muslim world; developing curricula to counter anti-Israel propaganda in schools; above all, teaching Jewish children to love Judaism, Israel, and the Jewish people and understand the indelible connection between them.
I don’t claim to have all the answers. The point is that people can do far more to fight the hate than they may think. Krav Maga is a martial arts self-defence system. My book tries to provide Krav Maga for the mind.
Fighting the Hate is published by Wicked Son, but it’s available only through Amazon. I hope the book helps you. Stay cool, stay focused, stay proud of your Jewishness – and above all, stay safe.
Fighting the Hate: A Handbook for Jews Under Siege (Wicked Son) is published this week
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