Talk at Hostage Rally

Yesterday I did a talk at the weekly ‘Bring Them Home Now - Vancouver’ rally, organized every week since October 7th, 2023 by Daphna Kedem. Here is what I said, more or less:

I think we all know what anti-Semitism is and how it manifests itself. What deserves a lot more analysis and attention is what causes it. Why is there a sudden wave of Jew hate? Where did that come from, in particular in western democracies who all until very recently so solemnly stood behind slogans like ’never again’ or ‘no more Auschwitz’. What on earth happened?

This definition, not sure who phrased it, puts us in the right direction:

“The cause of anti-Semitism is a profound malaise in the cultures in which it appears. Anti-Semitism is either the last gasp of a declining culture or the first warning sign of a new totalitarianism”

And so things become a lot clearer. Turmoil in Europe, massive immigration movements, war in Ukraine, political divisions all over the western world, affordability crises, a pandemic and an ever increasing disconnect between voters and governments: here is your decline and how it provides western democracies a fertile soil for anti-Semitism.

And not for the first time I might add, how many times in history have we seen how negative and evil sentiments are focused on Jews. In the middle ages they were prosecuted because of their religion which was different from the mainstream Catholic church, how in the late 1400s they were expelled from Spain and Portugal, how later Jews were targeted because of their professions and wealth and how turmoil in Eastern Europe contributed to the pogroms around the turn of the 19^th and 20^th centuries. Not long thereafter another theme was invented to isolate and persecuteJews: race, which channeled the degrading Nazi ideologies about a new Germany and which ended in the darkest places: Auschwitz, Sobibor, Majdanek and Buchenwald to name only a few.

As a Dutchman I grew up with stories of how not less than three-quarters of Dutch Jews were murdered during World War II and how Amsterdam, better known for its Jewish nickname Mokum, became a symbol of the tragedy that unfolded. The city today has many memorials devoted to the loss of 102,000 Dutch Jews. The Anne Frank house, the Jewish Museum, the Monument of Names and earlier this year a National Holocaust Museum that was inaugurated by the King of The Netherlands.

But instead of a respectful ceremony without any unnecessary political excursions it turned into one of the most lamentable displays of Jew hatred seen in recent times. At the very moment the museum was opened by a survivor and his granddaughter (the family largely perished in Sobibor) by attaching a mezuzah to the entrance, a massive choir of hate drowned out this very solemn moment. The ‘Free Palestine’ supporters put their full repertoire on display, hitting the bottom of the pit of unfiltered evil by screaming ‘cancer Jews, fuck off’.

Amsterdam’s mayor had allowed a counter-protest to take place, citing free speech and the right to demonstrate. Police stood by and looked the other way. The dark spectre of the finger pointing to “the Jew” was back, eighty years after we thought that level of hate and depravity had been firmly extinguished. It hadn’t.

And again the same city was embroiled in a scandal only last month where police and authorities completely misjudged an organized pogrom against the visiting football fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv who played local side Ajax Amsterdam. Former Canadian ambassador to Israel Vivian Bercovici interviewed me on her podcast about it and in preparation for our chat she asked me: “are Dutch Anti-semitic?”. My answer was clear: they aren’t. Few nations are born Jew haters. But once a small group starts instigating certain behaviours and pushing certain political agendas, there are a lot of people that will fall silent or worse, collaborate and join the fray. In this case it means marginalizing and isolating Jews while concurrently throwing Israel under the bus.

And we see it everywhere. In New York, in Toronto, in Montreal, in London, and all of a sudden the voices that could matter, that could spend political capital and stand up for Jews like they do for any other minority, fall silent. And that silence encourages others, as they now see the moment they have been waiting for. And endless rhetoric and distortion of what is happening in Israel and in Gaza ensues. It’s adding fuel to a smouldering fire.

It is a toxic mix that emerges and grows in societies that are beginning to come apart and in the process lose their sense of history, morality and humanity. And it rips the places we live in apart.

Let me end by circling back why we are here today. For the hostages. It has been 436 days.

And let me go back to 1976 when Israel took the extreme risk of rescuing 106 Israeli Jewish hostages in faraway Uganda where they were held by Arab and German terrorists. It was a daring risk with a high potential for failure. It was an all or nothing operation. Yet despite all that, they pulled it off and although 4 hostages and 1 Israeli officer, Yoni Nethanyahu, were killed, the group came home safe on Israeli soil.

The commander of the group was a man named Dan Shomron, and in the years after when movies, books and documentaries were made he was once asked what the most special moment was of the rescue mission. And he was very clear about it. He said it was the moment after the fight and rescue when everyone was checking that all were onboard the Hercules planes for the ensuing flight back home to Israel. Is everyone on board? Is everyone here? And they were.

That is the ethos of the State of Israel. To bring back everyone, dead or alive. We will leave no one behind.

It also highlighted perfectly how Jews themselves have to step up for themselves as no one else will do it for them. Take care of their own security and take the most extreme risks to save their loved ones. That is why we are here today, again. And let’s raise that very question again: are all the hostages here? Are they on board? Then let’s take them home. Now. עכשיו