It’s Not About Land 11/1/23

What do we do about Antisemitism? It's hard to fathom that a two thousand year old problem is still the go-to dogma for haters. Goebbels would certainly be proud. I wish we could harness AI to create a step-by-step plan to systematically outsmart it, but its source defies logic. The catalyst is emotional and that's inherently tricky. You can't reason with those who cave to their basest instincts. It requires a contrary emotional appeal to wrestle believers away from gut-based decisions. That is a daunting, long term proposition and we don't have time: Israel's survival is at stake. Most Jews, religious or not, feel that their safety and identity is inextricably tied to Israel, whether we live there or not. It's our backstop, our native home, our no-matter-what safe space. That's why, during this past week, immigration to Israel continued to rise. Jews from the UK, France and Germany are leaving; those elsewhere in the Low Lands, as well as Argentina, will surely follow soon. I said it in my last blog, but I repeat: Jews are moving to Israel in a time of war because they feel safer there. That's a hard pill to swallow. 

I'll admit that on November 8th, as the true scale of the attack began to take shape, I checked my family's paperwork. I knew a spike in antisemitism was coming and wanted to confirm that I had copies of all the social security cards, birth certificates and passports. My survivor father never talked about the war, but he did harp on keeping documents tidy. If paperwork isn’t in order, that means a loss of mobility, which leads to vulnerability. And that's unacceptable. But where would I go? I'm American! After two decades of visiting Israel, my family finally built a house there, but I don’t feel compelled to transplant my children to a war zone, solidarity or not. Each night before bed, my husband and I rehash the same conversation: if push comes to shove, where would we go? Are we liquid enough to move quickly? Should we unload some fixed assets anyway, so we don't get stuck in a distressed sale? Could we find a place where the kids could matriculate to good schools with safe campuses? Should we get another passport as a back-up? This paranoia might sound stereotypical, but I think I finally grasp the concept of generational trauma. Expulsion almost feels inevitable, if not this generation, then in the next. 

While I appreciate the support from Biden and DeSantis, opposite ends of the political spectrum who've given Jews a semblance of comfort, I maintain a wary distance from politics. I am equally skeptical of the diminished power of modern diplomacy. The old guard of diplomats has been quietly overtaken by an assertive China, Russia and Iran. With this new trifecta, extremism goes unchecked, or is fomented, depending on the agenda. I don't just refer to Iran-sponsorship fundamentalism in the Middle East, but to the most recent Jihad that transpired on its border between Azerbaijan and Armenia: the ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh last month. For roughly thirty years, Christian Armenians and Muslim Azeris were braced in an intractable conflict over this parcel of land. The dispute's finale was unexpected, quick and brutal. It is a cautionary tale about modern conflicts and how they culminate: fundamentalist rhetoric is employed, proxy states (of China, Iran or Russia) are established and brute force is employed to crush opponents. No cease-fire or treaty negotiations required.

It is the exact scenario Samuel P. Huntington predicted in his seminal work, Clash of Civilizations. It was my Investor Relations 101 textbook in undergrad and its premise still rings true: conflicts post-WWII will evolve into cultural and religious disputes, no longer based on ideology like Communism or Capitalism, but a true clash of civilizations, of which he identified 9. Check out the map on this blog’s front page. Note that massive swath of green land, in the Middle East and South East Asian, is where problems continue to percolate. That’s the fundamentalism heartland, but don’t worry, it’s spread out. Their constituents have dispersed and are simply biding their time. Countries like Iran and China operate on 100 or 200 year plans, where people and individual battles are expendable in pursuit of the long term goal. The States? We have a 4, potentially 8, year attention span, then we play musical chairs with our goals and players. It might feel like we’ve had short term wins, but I fear that we have already lost the long term game. Most countries in Europe will be majority Muslim in the next twenty years. Jihad, the creation of a caliphate, destruction of the Jews and the undoing of Western culture are fundamentalist goals. They will be hard to counter if the battle comes from within.

I don’t want to punt the task of tackling Jihad to my kids, but the West currently does not have a cohesive plan. As for modern diplomacy, if Huntington and the latest Armenian ethnic cleansing tell us anything, it’s that it’s ineffective at countering fundamentalism. And while Nagorno-Karabakh was about Muslim extremists taking a piece of land, don't be fooled into thinking Israel's conflict is the same. It is not about a Palestinian state, or a claim made in some sing-song chant about rivers and seas. It's about antisemitism and the extinction of Jews. Golda Meir said it best: " this is something that must be realized by people in the world, and unless they realize that, there's no understanding of the entire situation. This...the quarrel with the Arabs is not a quarrel for a piece of land, it's not for territory, it's not for anything concrete. They just refuse to believe that we have the right to exist at all."

Am Yisrael Chai