Liberal & Pro-Israel
by Kathryn Jean Lopez

Phyllis Chesler is an emirita professor of psychology and women’s studies, and the author of twelve books, including The New Anti-Semitism: The Current Crisis and What We Must Do About It.

KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: What is "the new anti-Semitism"? Isn't it quite old?
PHYLLIS CHESLER: The phenomenon is very complex, but let me mention at least five or six ways in which both new and old anti-Semitism operate in the world today.
The "old" anti-Semitism is still with us: Many people still believe that the Jews run the media, control the banks, killed Christ, seek world domination, and have ears everywhere, but also remain a people "apart."
Today, what's new about anti-Semitism is its extraordinary global reach. Jew hatred is being mass-produced. The Internet, films, and the media have the power to circulate these virulent opinions around the globe, 24/7. The most illiterate of peoples have "seen" the Israelis commit a "massacre" in Jenin, something Israelis did not do - even the United Nations finally admitted this. But no matter: A false picture is more powerful than a thousand words.
What's new is that Jew-hatred has reached a surreal level in the Islamic world. The Arab Islamic Middle East is almost entirely judenrein (free of Jews), except for Israel, which remains under profound and almost permanent siege. Christians still remain endangered in Muslim lands. Historic Islamic and Koranic views portray Jews as "pigs and monkeys," to be segregated, impoverished, jailed, tortured, exiled, and massacred.
What's new is that these ideas and practices, which are native to Islam, gathered additional force over an 80-year period in which Arab Muslims collaborated - literally - with Nazis during the 1930s and 1940s, and with Stalinists from the 1950s until the fall of the Soviet Union. Islamic Jew-hatred, anti-Americanism, and totalitarianism now fuse both East and West.
What's new is that this hatred has, incredibly, been embraced and romanticized by Western liberals, public intellectuals, Nobel Prize winners, all manner of so-called progressives and activists and, to a great extent, by the presumably objective media. The educated elites claim that they do not in fact hate Jews. How can they - the noblest among the "politically correct" - be racists? They loathe racism - except, of course, where Jews are concerned.
What's new is that Jew-hatred (disguised as anti-Zionism) has itself become "politically correct" among these so-called intellectuals. They have one standard for Israel: an impossibly high one. Meanwhile, they set a much lower standard for every other country, even for nations in which tyranny, torture, honor killings, genocide, and every other human rights abuse go unchallenged.
Today anti-Zionism is the new anti-Semitism. Israel has increasingly come to represent the Jews of the world, and is treated as they have been treated for thousands of years. She is demonized, isolated, and attacked while the world either actively rejoices, or simply does nothing to stop it. Israel has also become the symbolic scapegoat for America and for Western values such as democracy, religious freedom, and individual and women's rights.
The intellectuals control the masses with linguistic distortions that would make George Orwell weep. The way language is being used to misrepresent both the truth and Jews is relatively new. The intelligentsia tell us that Israelis are the "new Nazis" and "worse than Nazis." This is a new form of Holocaust denial. It lets Europeans off the hook: they no longer must wrestle with their own formidable colonial pasts and their persecutory-collaborationist-bystander roles in the Holocaust.
The propagandists go further, calling Israel the apartheid state. This is a lie. Islam is the largest practitioner of both gender and religious apartheid in the world: It persecutes all non-Muslims. Jews cannot apply for citizenship in Jordan, for example, and yet no Western group has called for divestment campaigns there. Meanwhile, the Arab leadership continues to terrorize the last Jewish enclave in the Middle East.
LOPEZ: Who is your target audience in The New Anti-Semitism?
CHESLER: I hope to reach and strengthen all those who are still guided by reason, moral clarity, and intellectual sanity, Americans especially. We must understand that a new war has been declared against us and it is one we must fight - appeasement is not an option. I also want to reach the uninformed, and the misinformed, especially young people. I hope to strengthen existing and create additional necessary alliances between Jews and Christians; Jews and those moderate Muslims who have the courage to resist Islamic fascists and terrorists; peoples of faith for religious freedom and democracy; and between Jews and conservative Christians and Republicans who have been standing fast for Israel.
LOPEZ: You say that most anti-Zionists are probably anti-Semitic. That's a significant accusation. Is it really fair? I mean, you yourself aren't a blind acolyte for Israeli policy.
CHESLER: This probably makes me a very good defender of Israel, and of America too. I have gone on record calling for both Israel and America to "do better." For example, I am part of a landmark lawsuit on behalf of Jewish women's religious rights in Jerusalem, asking that women be allowed to pray in women-only groups in the Kotel, the strictly female section at the Western Wall. Our case has so far received three separate decisions in the Israeli Supreme Court. Had we tried to bring such a lawsuit in Iran, Egypt, or Saudi Arabia, we would probably have been imprisoned and executed. While Israeli Arabs (i.e., Palestinians) are second-class citizens, their live birth rates, incomes, health care, and freedom of worship and expression are vastly greater in Israel than in any Arab country. In a sense, those Palestinians who might find themselves fenced in by Israel's self-defense might also, theoretically, become Israeli citizens, which would improve matters for them.
LOPEZ: Do feminists have a position on female suicide bombers?
CHESLER: In my view, certain feminists seem to have a deep and abiding respect for the so-called "freedom fighter" who is willing to die for the "revolution" and to kill the "colonial oppressor." The fact that Palestinian suicide bombers, and their fascist and misogynist Iranian and Saudi funders, are not stirring a democratic or feminist revolution is cause for irony and tears. Some feminists are still fighting against the Vietnam War and have confused it with American and Israeli wars of self-defense against al Qaeda.
LOPEZ: You're a liberal feminist. Is it odd to have more in common with the Right than the Left on this issue?
CHESLER: These distinctions are no longer useful for any of us. I am a hawk on American, Israeli, and Western self defense. I am a bleeding-heart softie when it comes to the slaughter of innocent civilians held hostage to terror anywhere, though many right-wingers are too.
I am also a hawk on abolishing the global sexual slavery of women and children - which, increasingly, the Bush administration has taken on as a serious issue and which the liberal feminist movement has opposed.
I am a religious Jew and thus have the greatest respect for other people of faith. Atheists and secularists are extremely intolerant toward religion, and do not view freedom of worship - even for women and gay people - as an important issue.
As I write in my book, 9/11 was a direct attack on democracy, modernity, religious pluralism, and women's rights. When Islamo-fascist terrorists are attacking my country, my culture, and my people, I oppose them. While war is hell, self-defense is a duty.
If the fact I understand all this makes me a conservative, then so be it.
LOPEZ: At the time, the Jerusalem Post called for the assassination of Arafat. Did that kind of talk feed anti-Semitism?
CHESLER: That's like asking whether the call for Hitler's assassination feeds anti-Semitism. Arafat has done as much evil in the world as Hitler did. He has waged unceasing war against Israel and has turned down every offer of a separate Palestinian state (which would be the 23rd Arab state in the region, by the way). He has impoverished his own people and enriched himself personally. He has been the willing and canny tool of the Arab leadership who for generations have exploited the Palestinians, keeping them as a permanent wedge against the Jews and Westerners in their midst. Not a single Arab country granted citizenship to the roughly 200,000 Palestinian Arabs who fled in 1948; Israel granted citizenship to more than 700,000 Arab Jews who fled post-1948. In my view, Jordan and parts of Syria, not Israel, should be Palestine.
LOPEZ: How can this new anti-Semitism be combated (along with the old)?
CHESLER: I write about this in my book. We - Jews and Americans - must understand that we do not cause anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism, and that both Jews and Americans have been the targets of a massive hate campaigns against them.
We must monitor this, and get it to stop; we must fight the lies wherever we find them. We must unceasingly stand up to evil as best we can. Writing a letter to an editor, withholding monies from anti-American or anti-Israel academic programs, speaking at conferences, conducting teach-ins, finding and funding pro-American and pro-Israeli faculty to teach our young the truth - all are crucial things to do.
We must move beyond rigid ideology. I am now a "hawk" on Israel and America and a "dove" on other issues. I am beyond "Right" and "Left," and so must we all be. I do not agree 100 percent with the Republican party, but I do not agree 100 percent with the "politically correct" crowd either. I agree with the Bush administration's war on terrorism, support for Israel, and increasingly strong opposition to the sexual trafficking of women and children.
We must support Israel's right to exist, and to exist free from terrorist violence. Israelis have endured the equivalent of 9/11 almost every other week for the last three years. I am a psychologist and a pioneer of trauma and healing therapies, and even I cannot imagine the level of post-traumatic stress symptoms Israelis must be suffering - they, who have lived through so many wars of self-defense and whose parents and grandparents endured Hitler's Final Solution, the gulags, Cossack pogroms, and persecution and exile from Arab and Muslim lands. We understand that Israel cannot afford to lose a single war, not even a single battle.
We must form Jewish-Christian alliances. Perhaps we must form alliances among all the dhimmi - Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Assyrians, Zoroastrians, Kurds, Persians, etc. - who are suffering under Islamic jihadic rule.
We must continue to oppose the liberal media on all these issues.
LOPEZ: What's the most important message you hope people take from your book?
CHESLER: That, unbelievably, the dark side of Jewish history is repeating itself; the world is again demonizing Jews and creating a situation in which another Holocaust might be possible. I want all people of good will to make sure this does not happen.
I also want my readers to understand that all civilians are Israelis now. I would like us to combat terrorism with all our hearts and minds and might.
We must understand that a new kind of war has been declared upon our civilization, and that we must patiently, carefully, morally, militarily, and strategically find effective ways of stopping those who wish to destroy Western civilization and freedom. Appeasement is no longer an option.
Phyllis Chesler’s website is www.phyllis-chesler.com

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Liberal & Pro-Israel by Kathryn Jean Lopez

Liberal & Pro-Israel
by Kathryn Jean Lopez