With a Grain of Salt

US President Joe Biden said Thursday that “the risk of nuclear ‘Armageddon’ is the highest it has been in 60 years after Russian President Vladimir Putin renewed his threats as his military retreats in Ukraine.” However, according to a story published in the Los Angeles Times, the statement “appeared to go beyond U.S. intelligence assessments.” In fact, “National security officials say they have no evidence that Vladimir Putin has imminent plans for a nuclear strike.” In this case, I too believe that we should take both leaders’ statements with a grain of salt.

If humanity plunges into a nuclear world war, we have no idea where it will lead us or how it will end. I think that everyone realizes this and will act accordingly. There is simply too much at stake, too much to lose to gamble with a nuclear war.

In the end, the Russians, too, fear the consequences of using nuclear weapons. Humanity has never seen what a nuclear world war looks like. The precedents in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as horrific as they were, are nothing compared to the massive and prolonged destruction that a nuclear world war will inflict, especially given the power of today's atom and hydrogen bombs.

The threats by Russia and its allies are unnerving, but I think that this is their intention—to demoralize and frighten. I do not think that there is a genuine intention to employ tactical nuclear warheads or any other kind of nuclear weapons.

If humanity plunges into a nuclear world war, we have no idea where it will lead us or how it will end. I think that everyone realizes this and will act accordingly. There is simply too much at stake, too much to lose to gamble with a nuclear war.

Besides, such an attack would turn the entire world against the aggressor. No superpower, however strong and however weaponized, can stand against the entire world. Therefore, threats to use nuclear weapons and disheartening declarations about a possible nuclear Armageddon are, in my opinion, unrealistic, at least at this point in time.

That said, as a whole, the world is certainly moving in a negative direction. If we cannot understand that war is not the way to achieve political or economic benefits these days, we will eventually plunge into a third world war.

The developments in Ukraine should worry all of us, and encourage us to nurture stronger ties among all parts of humanity in order to avoid a possible breakdown of global society.

If we can learn the lesson from this painful war, perhaps it will give some meaning to the misery that millions are experiencing. If we cannot learn from it, we will need another war, most likely a crueler one, to accept that we must lay down our arms and treat humanity as it really is—a single entity whose parts are interconnected and interdependent.

Eventually, we will learn that war is not the way. I only hope we learn it not through a nuclear ordeal.

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A Hard Awakening – There Is Antisemitism on the Left

The 2022 report by the policy planning think tank Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI), titled Annual Assessment: The Situation and Dynamics of the Jewish People, has revealed many things about the current state of world Jewry. Particularly, it has acknowledged a painful truth: While there is antisemitism on the Right, there is more of it on the Left, it is more sinister, and more institutionalized. Now we can talk about the peril that lurks for the Jews in the “enlightened” Left.

This is not antisemitism from the street, from the populace; it is institutional antisemitism, antisemitism as a policy and as a political instrument. Antisemitism from the street is violent, and can be homicidal. Institutional antisemitism is suave, and can be genocidal.

It may be surprising but the US, France, the UK, and Germany, certainly among the strongholds of democracy, are also today’s most active hotbeds of antisemitism. This is true not only in terms of antisemitic attacks, but also, and perhaps mainly, in terms of ideological justification for hatred of Jews, the Jewish state, and excommunicating them from the circles of society.

For example, the report talks about “Normalization of the antisemitic discourse,” where “Antisemitic discourse is becoming normalized and is penetrating mainstream national politics on university campuses and on the street,” with “a clear rise in anti-Israel or anti-Zionist expressions from progressive groups that have significantly crossed into antisemitic territory.”

Worse yet, “Identity politics in the progressive discourse places Jews into the ‘oppressors’ camp (white skin color, social privilege, and power). On this basis, Jewish support for Israel is sometimes equated with complicity with racist policies.”

Western Europe, too, is experiencing “progressive” antisemitism. In France, Muslims and progressives rise above the ideological chasm between them and unite for the “noble” cause of bashing Israel and Jews. “The growing recognition of the cardinal role of Islamist antisemitism in the resurgence of Judeophobia is challenged by ‘woke’ ideology and the intersectionality movement, which jumped from academic theory into left-wing political activism,” details the report. “This ideology incorporates a post-modern corpus of theories, a fusion of the Frankfurt school’s neo-Marxist ideas and the ‘French theory’ that garnered considerable academic truck (sic) in the United States beginning in the 1980s. The common fight against imperialism, colonialism, capitalism, and widespread class stratification has thus manifested itself in a convergence of struggles between the radical left and radical Islam, and has in some cases translated into virulent antisemitism.”

Across the channel, the UK is experiencing its own wave of woke antisemitism. “Jewish communities perceive a lack of support in combating antisemitic phenomena,” says the report, “particularly within progressive left circles. British Jews grapple with a frequently imposed framing of Jews in progressive discourse. This framing is an obstacle to fighting antisemitism and contributes significantly to failures to recognize and stand against antisemitism among the broader left.”

I am glad that the cloak of civility has been lifted, or is at least beginning to be lifted from the face of the Left. The “civilized” and “enlightened” nations have always been our worst oppressors. This was true in antiquity, when Babel demolished the first Kingdom of Israel, and Rome demolished the second. It was also true in the late Middle Ages with the Spanish Inquisition, and in the previous century with Germany’s Third Reich.

As the report details, public figures on the Left do not portray themselves as antisemitic. Instead, they disguise their venom behind highbrow contentions of injustice to Palestinians, migrants, people of color, underprivileged population groups, gender equality, and everything and anything related to identity politics. However, the implicit, and sometimes explicit culprit will almost always somehow turn out to be Jewish, the Jews as a whole, or the Jewish state.

This is not antisemitism from the street, from the populace; it is institutional antisemitism, antisemitism as a policy and as a political instrument. Antisemitism from the street is violent, and can be homicidal. Institutional antisemitism is suave, and can be genocidal.

Besides noting the rising antisemitism on the Left, the report also notes the disunity within the Jewish community, particularly with regard to dealing with antisemitism. I will address this issue in one of my coming posts, but I should point out here that joining the ranks of the Left will not save Jews from the whip when it lashes. Now that it is clear that antisemitism is spreading through all parts of society, and especially in democratic countries, it is time for Jewish unity as an antidote for Jew-hatred.

You can find more on contemporary antisemitism and its history in my books, New Antisemitism: Mutation of a Long-lived Hatred, and The Jewish Choice: Unity or Anti-Semitism.