By Phyllis Chesler
I begged, implored, warned, and advised us all, starting in 2005, more visibly by 2010, that we needed an Iron Dome against the anti-Zionist/antisemitic propaganda. This cognitive war will alone decide our fate, both globally and in terms of what Israel will be “allowed” to do militarily. I was not alone. There were other Jewish authors and columnists who shared this understanding. Richard Landes. Pierre Rehov. Nidra Poller. Bat Ye’or. Ibn Warraq. Daniel Pipes. Charles Small. Charles Jacobs. Andrew Bostom. Tammi Rossman-Benjamin. Over time, many others joined us. Now, the internet is filled with more and more Jews screaming about what’s going on.
In 2005, I was once publicly called the “Jewish Cassandra” by an official of the American Jewish Committee at a poorly attended panel at Columbia University. It was barely attended because our graduate student host had had his flyers repeatedly torn down. No one knew we were coming.
My smart mouth got the better of me, and so I quipped in response:
“Sir, so you are finally admitting that my warnings are correct, that Troy (the Jews, Israel, Western civilization) will all be destroyed. No one believed her; she lived to see her city and her people destroyed. Do you wish Princess Cassandra’s fate upon me? Agamemnon kept her as his sex-slave; she, the daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba.”
I tried to work with the first two Israeli Ministers for global antisemitism: Aviva Raz-Schecter and then Natan Sharansky. Both were given scant resources. I approached American Jewish millionaires and billionaires and called for their funding an Iron Dome to repel the Big Lies, the rank propaganda. I wrote articles documenting the lies.
My God! Only the Israeli government would have been capable of hacking into the Blood Libels, replacing them with the truth, disappearing, again and again, content from the internet that would inevitably lead to the attacks on individual Jews outside of Israel and the continued attacks on Israel itself. I started asking techies if they could “hack.”
“Sure,” most said. “But it’s illegal. I can’t do that.”
I need not tell you what I said in response.
And now I verily say unto us all: I fear it is too late to undo the damage. This is bigger than all the previous pogroms, bigger even than the Shoah (and what can be bigger than that?). World-wide hatred, not confined to one country or one continent. Defaming Jews around the clock and in every language on earth; defaming and then exiling Jews from all their fields of excellence. Excluding Jews from universities, cultural competitions, films–attacking Jews on the streets of every European capital; censoring important Jewish authors, refusing to give them platforms–not even to debate the most prominent liars. Violently marching on Jews in American cities, especially those run by Democrats, socialists, and antifa anarchists.
I am no Jeremiah. He spent 40 years warning Jews about the destruction of Jerusalem. I’m actually long past the prophet’s 40 years of warning what all the Big Lies will inevitably lead to. I’m not claiming, as Jeremiah did, that Jewish sinning is what caused our destruction and exile, but I do think that anti-Zionist Jews are functioning as a dangerous Fifth Column both globally and in Israel.
This does not mean that I approve of everything that individual Israelis or the various Israeli governments or Israeli religious leaders have done and said. However, I’ve always been a 10/8 Jew.
We have IDF, our strong suit, but I am seriously worried about Israel’s fate and that of Jews and dissidents everywhere.
Aren’t you?
P.S. Luckily, I am still bogged down in the final stages of my new book: “The Complete and Utter Palestinianization of American Feminism,” a.k.a. the Death of Feminism in our time. Otherwise, I would have written a much longer piece long ago.
First published in Phyllis’ Newsletter
