'People are relying on hashtags over history books'

Jewish Media Review - June 2024

The headline to this month’s Jewish Media Review comes from UK journalist Hadley Freeman. Too many people – particularly teens and 20 somethings – are reacting to social media posts that appeal to emotion without historical context. Educating ourselves and the next generation is crucial to diffusing the violent rhetoric surrounding the Israel-Hamas War. We recommend starting with The foundational reasons for the conflict in Israel by Kelvin Crombie.

As followers of Jesus the Suffering Servant, we need to have compassion on both Israelis and Gazans suffering in this war. We need to suffer with them even as we speak truth about Israel’s rights to exist and defend herself as well as the truth of Hamas’ antisemitic goal to wipe Israel from the map.

These headlines are presented as a snapshot of what our Jewish neighbors are thinking and feeling and to provide data as you pray about these issues. CMJ USA does not necessarily agree with the opinions expressed in these articles.

📆‘It’s a new phase in Jewish history’ (JNS)

Reform Judaism event considers the future of American Judaism in a post-October 7 world

🦋How the phrase ‘Bring them home’ became a Rorschach test for Israeli and American Jews (Times of Israel)

While for Sabras the movement to free the hostages is critical of the Netanyahu government’s wartime policies, many Jews abroad view it as unconditional solidarity with Israel

😤White House denounces ‘repugnant’ pro-Hamas rhetoric at DC protest against Israel (Times of Israel)

‘Where is the outrage?’ fumes ADL chief after demonstration outside White House that included calls to kill Zionists — ‘aka the overwhelming majority of American Jews’

😖Oct. 7 survivor Eilat Tibi came to New York to share her story — and experienced antisemitism for the first time (The Forward)

‘I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t believe people could choose peace’

🔴‘Abhorrent’: NY officials deplore ‘antisemitic’ attacks on homes of Jewish Brooklyn Museum leaders (The Forward)

The day before, Governor Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams denounced a protest against a Manhattan exhibit on the Nova Music Festival, which was attacked by Hamas on Oct. 7.

✊🏻Are Gaza Protests Happening Mostly at Elite Colleges? Yes. (Washington Monthly)

🫱🏽‍🫲🏽As a young Zionist, I used to think anti-Zionist Jews hated being Jewish. Then I lived with them (The Forward)

Living in a Jewish dormitory at Columbia University taught me the value of dialogue with those I disagree with

😔Retiring early due to antisemitism, a professor paints a dire picture of US academia (Times of Israel)

Barbara J. Risman felt that the atmosphere among University of Illinois faculty after October 7 was too much for her to bear as a Jew. Her colleagues secretly tell her she’s right

🧑🏾‍🤝‍🧑🏽Queens College has been a model of Muslim-Jewish cooperation. Can it stay that way after Oct. 7? (The Forward)

A student body that is 1/3rd Jewish and 1/6th Muslim struggles for harmony amid war

🪧For Jewish teens critical of Israel, the generation gap is sometimes with their peers (JTA)

Excerpt: “Throughout history, young people are often at the forefront of movements for social justice,” she said. “Many refuse to accept the world as it is and instead imagine the world as it could be — a place of safety and freedom for all human beings.” In part this perspective comes from their age, according to Dov Waxman, the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation Professor of Israel Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Young American Jews, born decades after Israel’s founding, have no nostalgic memory of Israel’s early years and no experience of the emotional highs and lows of the Six-Day War,” Waxman wrote in a paper about the Jewish generation gap on Israel. 

😑All the Darkness They Cannot See: The Tunnel Vision That Drives Faculty Antisemitism (Jewish Journal)

All these faculty members can see are Israeli offenses, only Israeli offenses, out of their context, which they see as aggressions and describe using such inflammatory language as “apartheid” and “Jewish supremacy.”

🫷🏻After Oct. 7, UK journalist Hadley Freeman believes ‘the progressive left hates Jews’ (Times of Israel)

The New York-born writer comes out with a new essay on the antisemitism emerging after the Hamas atrocities in Israel, and how it’s rooted in a hypocritical and myopic ideology

🏃🏻‍♀️The rush to think the worst of Israel… again (Times of Israel)

The world's ongoing eagerness to decry Israel's handling of the war - before the facts are in and despite previous proof to the contrary - is maddening

🙏🏻‘Pray that the Lord will watch over us’ - Messianic soldier talks about fighting in Gaza (All Israel)

Messianic Jews serving in the IDF: A legacy of service and dedication

📖Live by the Law or Die on the Cross (Tablet)

Israel must stop pretending it is a nation like any other

Editor's commentary: This essay explaining that Israel is not bound by the ethic the world demands of them resonates with a conversation I had not long after October 7. A friend asked me to dinner to talk about the war. She wanted to know why Israel had to fight back so hard by invading Gaza. Why don’t they just be the bigger person and take Hamas’ aggression and negotiate for their 250 hostages? Isn’t that the “evolved” thing to do here? This echoes some of what we have heard from the nations criticizing Israel’s offensive. The nations, in part, are speaking from a humanistic point of view that if we are mature, evolved humans we can sort this out without violence. And yet, this humanistic position develops from Christianized Europe and the Americas. The concept of “turn the other cheek” is a Christian one. Yes, it was said by the Jewish Rabbi Jesus of Nazareth, but it develops over the next 2,000 years as part of the Christian ethic. Turning the other cheek is a micro picture of Jesus dying for the sin of the world.

The world wants Israel to abide by a Christian ethic that the nations themselves will not abide by. How can the nations demand that Israel turn the other cheek when they do not know Jesus, the one who died for them. If turning the other cheek and dying to self is hard (sometimes feels impossible) for those of us who know Jesus, how can we dare expect those who don’t know Jesus to live by his Sermon on the Mount? They do not have the Suffering Servant as an example. So why does the world keep holding them to that standard?

We Christians don’t have the right to tell Israel how to defend themselves. We have the obligation to pray for the peace of Jerusalem (Ps 122:6), that God would have mercy on all those suffering, and that God would open the eyes of both Israelis and Gazans to the reconciling and healing love of Jesus.

🤔Is There a Solution for the Problem of Campus Antisemitism? (complied by the Jewish Journal)

Since October 7th, campuses have become increasingly hostile to Jewish students and Jewish life. Is there any way to reverse this trend?

• Fight Back By Excelling at School
  David Suissa, Jewish Journal: “There’s an additional way to fight back against the forces of hate: through the chutzpah of success.”

• Change the National Narrative
  Samuel J. Abrams, Jewish Journal: “On the macro level, we must change the national narrative and engage in real political action and coalition building. On the micro level, we must support our students therapeutically and legally, letting them know they have a community off campus and that they are welcome and safe.

• Find New Schools to Attend 
  Cherryl Smith, Israel Hayom: “…the ideology that considers both Israel and America as evil, and that allows for antisemitism and anti-Americanism to be normalized is a systemic problem, one that is not going away. There are other schools available for students besides the highly rated and highly problematic ones. And for Jewish students, there are a number of Jewish schools. And there is Israel.”

⚙️What Makes Anti-Zionist Jews Tick? (complied by the Jewish Journal)

Here are three takes on the psychology of Jewish anti-Zionists:

• Opposition Based on Trends 
  Karen Lehrman Bloch, Jewish Journal: “Conforming to trends — ideological or sartorial — is everything to you, even if those trends could eventually kill you and your family.”

• Opposition Based on Theology
  Staff, Israel Hayom: “To understand the Neturei Karta’s ideology, we must delve into the historical and theological context of the relationship between Judaism and Zionism. While the early Zionist leaders were mostly secular and focused on the practical realities of building a state, many devout Jews wrestled with the theological issues surrounding the establishment of a modern Jewish state.”

• Opposition Based on Misinformation
  Yisrael Medad, Jerusalem Post: “In keffiyeh-clad unison, they exclaim various pro-Palestine propaganda terms that pervert historical truth. They are “progressive” yet regressively twist terms on their heads. “Genocide”, “Apartheid”, “Settler-Colonialism” and “West Bank” all are applied with no justification to Israel and Zionism.”

Thumbnail/banner photo by Can Pac Swire via Flickr (cc)