The Vortex

As expected, the 'intifada' has gone global and as a result two young and innocent people are murdered in Washington, DC

Many people may not realize it, but going to Jewish or pro-Israel events is not without risk these days. That is why if you register for one, you often do not get the location until you get a text or e-mail mere hours before the event actually starts. And you will need to bring ID most of times while private security firms keep an eye on things as you check in. Police presence is another factor, but often budgetary constraints at the municipal level leave a gap and synagogues and associations have to bring in private guards to provide safety. Our weekly hostage rally in Vancouver has a solid security presence without which there would be no event. I have to admit that my eyes from time to time scan and look around when attending certain events, all you need is one idiot to cross the line from sanity to deranged fanaticism. And at that point even police and security are only able to manage and control the resulting chaos rather than prevent the actual deadly damage.

Like this week when Yaron Lischinsky and his girlfriend Sarah Milgrim attended a reception focused on humanitarian diplomacy which included a discussion around improving the delivery of aid to Gaza at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, DC. On their way out they were shot by Elias Rodriguez who, when Sarah crawled away, proceeded by shooting her again in the back to ensure his job was completed. A cold blooded and calculated execution. And one that a seventeen year old Sarah foreshadowed, eight years ago:

This video is both sobering and maddening: our society failed Sarah. And Yaron. The world stood by and let it happen. And that is the entry point to the ‘why’ question, so let me run through the four key drivers here:

Going Global - This tragedy unfortunately was one that many were fearing and predicting following the insane increase in Israel and Jew hate, globally. It started on a relatively small scale initially, but ever since October 7th the rhetoric has been amped up, the messaging getting more direct with people all over the world suddenly appearing to have a stake in the Gaza conflict. It has become a vortex, an inescapable whirlwind that reaches ever more bystanders and institutions everywhere. This also means that more and more totally unqualified voices weigh in with ever more ill-informed and as we can see now, lethal commentary.

Many blindly start to parrot the call to ‘Globalize the Intifada’ and ‘Free Palestine’. Or channel these slogans into rallies and municipal resolutions in towns and cities light years away from Gaza. Now, both are actual calls for murder. The first one explicitly points to bringing violence wherever possible, the second one sounds as innocent as it is odious. For a ‘Free Palestine’ there is one group that needs to go somewhere else and it is very clear who they are. Vacate your land, go back to Poland, and yes, that is actually a suggestion you get to hear at some of these rallies. And ‘Free Palestine’, as shouted by Rodriguez as he went on his killing spree, means eradicating one group and then build a scripture-based Islamic state from the early Middle Ages on its ruins. The word ‘free’ is a less than useful term to use in this context one would think.

The hard left and the protest movements that have actively rallied for anti-racism (Rodriguez was involved in both) have adopted this train of thought. And, deliberately or not, are building a political collaboration between Islamists and socialists, the Green-Left alliance. It’s a temporary marriage of convenience that shares totalitarian tendencies, antisemitic instincts and moreover a deep hate and rejection of western liberal values and free-market societies. They want the free West gone and Israel is the starting point.

Signalling - And as it happens, traditionally left-leaning politicians have walked into this trap. While it once started with radical figures like Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, current more centrist politicians see no objection in taking this direction. Electoral arguments like Muslim voting blocks in their constituencies are a key consideration here. Or they are just plainly adopting the ideological fervour of woke activists who have ordained ‘Palestine’ as the next battleground for oppressed people. When leaders like Starmer, Macron and Carney team up to corner Israel (and get a thank you note from Hamas), when a right-leaning Dutch government is all of a sudden going to look into sanctions on Israel, these politicians signal something to the larger world. Rather than supporting an ally whose policies they might not readily agree with, they take the furthest and most radical option available and block, isolate and condemn that very ally. And throwing Israel under the bus gets noticed: most protestors may be thankful and give a thumbs up to a good Israel bashing, but some, maybe a few, may take it as a seal of approval of what they’re about to do. Like Elias Rodriguez.

Filling the Void - And what brought Rodriguez into the chamber of utterly deranged fanaticism? We can only guess about his psyche at the moment, but radical and deeply ideological movements tend to attract borderline personalities. And there are a lot of them right now as a failing educational system has created the space for hypercharged social media to fill empty minds with misinformation and hate.

The Accelerant - In all of this the movement is walking over a dormant yet very fertile soil of antisemitism. It has been asleep for a long time, but now it is active and that means you can use some time-tested tools to advance the cause. One of them, perhaps one of the oldest, goes back to late antiquity and was first actively used in Europe around the 1100s: the blood libel. Jews murdering children and using their blood for religious rituals. And so the UN released a statement this week that 14,000 children in Gaza were about to die in 48 hours. This blatantly incorrect missive was walked back within a short period of time, but the damage of course was already done. And the blame was not just put on Israel, no every Jew on this planet became an instant target. Maybe it was what triggered Rodriguez to get to carry out his attack.

Last week I discussed with a Jewish friend how the ‘starvation’ argument has accelerated the Jew hate and how established politicians of mainstream parties had joined the fold. He argued that there was always material to use when going after Jews and I agreed, but the last few weeks have seen such an increase and in particular mainstreaming of Jew hate that there is reason to believe that the food situation in Gaza was indeed the accelerant. And note that the UN which by many is somehow viewed as an infallible moral authority that produces credible numbers and reports, proved to be instrumental in spreading this false information.

There are lots of dots to be connected and the evidence that we will uncover will be subject to counterclaims and relentless attacks. Count on mainstream outlets and certain politicians to steer away the debate into different realms or to ask us to simply look away. And embrace the next UN declaration as a guiding piece of information that will define ‘Middle East policy’.

While antisemitism and its related violence is a direct threat to Jews, it is undermining and tearing apart the societies in which it occurs, I have said this more than once. If western democracies ignore the warning, like they did with Sarah’s message seven years ago, far worse is to come. For now let’s take a moment and think about Yaron and Sarah, two lives full of promise ripped away from what could have been a great future.

May their memory be a blessing.