Antisemitism, Diaspora, Israel & Jews

“New Palaestina,” by Joseph Keppler for Puck, America’s first humor magazine (1885, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection; Gift of the Katz Family)

There is currently a significant discussion about recent stupid and violent attacks on Jews, including assaults in Los Angeles, London, New York City and elsewhere during the latest peak of violence in the cruel history between Israelis and Palestinians of the West Bank, Gaza and Israel-proper. Israel launched retaliatory rocket attacks against targets in Gaza following Hamas’ rocket attacks on Israeli targets in retaliation to a violent response by Israeli Border Police against Palestinian-Israelis at al-Aqsa Mosque on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount protesting evictions of East Jerusalem Palestinian-Israelis during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Arguments in the Israel-Palestine fight typically take shape according to where the arguers choose to begin the story. And we should understand that the Israel-Palestine war is a particularly long, frustrating and brutal conflict with too many excuses for interested third parties to exploit the principal parties as proxies for their own issues.

We should remember when Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota said, in a public discussion in March of 2019, “I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is okay to push for allegiance to a foreign country.” Also, back in 2015, while then-Secretary of State John Kerry was helping craft the Iran Nuclear Deal, Rep. Steve King of Iowa told Boston Herald…