by Nils A. Haug
It is the existence of Israel – not settlements or other pretexts – that underlies most of the conflict between Israel and radical Islamists in the Middle East.
"Anti-Zionism is the demand that Israel cease to exist as a Jewish state," writes columnist Luke Tress. It is the existence of Israel – not settlements or other pretexts – that underlies most of the conflict between Israel and radical Islamists in the Middle East. Some countries in the area, such as Qatar and Turkey, appear less interested in "peace and prosperity" than in the elimination of Israel.
In Western societies, anti-Zionism seems to be the "politically correct" root of social conflict wherever Islamists have settled. Unfortunately, as these Western societies have yet to find out, the wish to eliminate "undesirables" is not limited to Israel and Jews, but extends to Christians and all other "infidels" – including many Muslims not considered the "right" kind of Muslim... In Nigeria, Islamists have reportedly murdered more than 52,000 Christians just since 2009 -- with the additional incentive of then being able to seize their land. To various degrees, much of Western civilization is engulfed in this grave issue of "replacement."
"Wherever individuals are persecuted because of their race, religion, gender, or political views, that place must, at that moment, become the center of the universe." — The late Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, December 10, 1986.
A small reminder: Jews were expelled from England during the decade of 1290; from France in the 1390s; from Spain in the 1490s; from Sicily in the late 1400s; from Portugal in the 1500s; Ukraine in the 1640s; Russia in the 1880s; Germany in the 1930s; and various Arab countries in the 1940s to 1960s.
Now, in the decade of 2020, when "Statistical data shows the doubling and trebling of anti-Semitic incidents on America's streets," where are Jews to go? The only place that welcomes them with open arms is their ancestral home of Israel. Jews from anywhere in the world now have the absolute right of return to Israel, at state expense.
Western countries have allowed in Jewish immigrants in the last several decades, but history shows that might always be temporary, subject to the winds of prevailing ideologies and political whims. In the West, as Islam starts to dominate the political, religious, and social landscape, including in the US, the Jews' options narrow.
Beginning with the Israelites' arrival in Egypt, after a famine, roughly 3,700 years ago at the time of Jacob and his children, Jews became slaves there for 400 years. Their long and torturous journey back to their promised land was begun by their great leader Moses, in about 1,300 BCE.
During the destruction of Jerusalem and the Roman expulsion of Jews in 70 CE , they became widely scattered, stateless, without a permanent home. Over centuries, Jews have been persecuted, slaughtered, and hounded everywhere they tried to settle.
In 1948, with the establishment of modern Israel as the rightful historic homeland of the Jewish people, Jews again had a place to call their own. Even so, they are still relentlessly scapegoated on the world stage, as is their homeland. The core problem appears not about land but about deep-seated anti-Semitism, which now manifests itself at a national level, in the supposedly more politically-correct antagonism to the existence of Israel (Zion).
The concept of Israel as the rightful homeland of indigenous Jewish people is anathema to many. In the West, as publicly expressed Jew-hate is occasionally considered impolite, Jew-haters of this world use the term "Zionist" as a mask for their animosity. Zionists are those who believe in the political, legal, historic and religious right of Jews to their ancient homeland of Israel – an entity which has become the main focus of global prejudice, bitterness and attack.
We are therefore subjected to the disparaging use of the word "Zionist" as an epithet, as the new, supposedly socially acceptable, word for "Jew." This bias is often disguised under various pretexts to distract from possible hate-speech sanctions in the West.
In October 2025, after their release from Hamas' tunnels after two years in darkness, twin brothers, Gali and Ziv Berman, said: "Don't forget, we are one people and we have nowhere to go." Apart from Israel, most Jews indeed have nowhere else to go. The antagonism by Islamists and their supporters on both the left and the right leads to the central danger for all Jews: the ongoing intent to destroy their sanctuary, the ancestral homeland, the fount of Zionism, Israel.
Despite the current Gaza ceasefire, a British anti-Israel student group claimed their task was "not over" until "Zionism is completely eradicated."
"Eradicating Zionists," commented journalist Melanie Philips, "surely can't be far behind." Jew-hate, she further points out, has suffered "no pushback at all in the West." So, the global hatred of Jews escalates, without reason, rationality, or justification.
In Italy recently, protestors carrying Palestinian flags, shouted, "Yesterday partisans, today anti-Zionists and anti-Fascists" – not "anti-Israel" or "anti-Jews." Professor Maxim Shrayer, however, who taught at Italy's University of Pisa, divulged that "some Italian intellectuals felt emboldened to turn their anti-Zionism [technically meaning Israel] into attacks against all Israelis and Jews." The Hamas Covenant (Charter) of 1988, in Article 7, clearly states "all Jews":
"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him."
(Related by al-Bukhari and Moslem in the book of Mohammed's sayings and deeds, the Hadith.)
Shrayer asserted that, in reality, anti-Zionism is simply a mask for Jew-hatred. To paraphrase Katharina von Schnurbein -- the EU's commissioner on anti-Semitism – "antisemitism hides behind anti-Zionism."
As a consequence, many Jews and Israelis no longer feel safe in most Western European countries and have been departing for safer locations.
Using "Zionist" as an avenue of attack against Jews seemingly seeks to "oust Israel from the community of nations, deny Jewish experience, and strip us Jews of our very identity, including our status as an indigenous people," suggests the Scottish author Ben M. Freeman.
"For a Jew, to be in Jerusalem [the heart of Zion]," Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel is quoted , "is to be at home."
The use of "Zionist" as a degrading term has roots going back to the USSR, where a policy of state-sponsored antisemitism prevailed. During the Soviet period, "antisemitism officially came in the form of anti-Zionism." In Russia and other Soviet nations, "there was a whole, massive, organised campaign geared against Israel, geared against Zionism, and it was international," Russian émigré, Izabella Tabarovsky recalled.
Leftist "anti-Israel progressives," he adds, at present "use the exact same language that Soviet propaganda used. Same tropes, same motifs, same explanatory logic, even the same stories that Soviet propaganda used." Western neo-Marxist academia contributed vastly to the rise of this irrational hatred, fatuously founded on inverted oppressor-oppressed social justice doctrines. With anti-Semitism regarded as the world's oldest hatred, some things never go out of fashion.
Although modern Zionism emerged from the ideas of Theodor Herzl (1860-1904) as a political movement, it has early biblical roots. The Torah records an irrevocable covenant with Abraham concerning the perpetual allocation of a homeland to his descendants -- through his only legitimate son, Isaac, and then to his son Jacob, father of the 12 tribes of Israel.
Since the Roman-era dispersion, and for centuries thereafter, Jews have been comforted by the divine promise in Deuteronomy of return to their ancestral roots:
"Even if you have been banished to the most distant land under the heavens, from there the Lord your God will gather you and bring you back. He will bring you to the land that belonged to your ancestors, and you will take possession of it."
"Anti-Zionism is the demand that Israel cease to exist as a Jewish state," writes columnist Luke Tress. It is the existence of Israel – not settlements or other pretexts – that underlies most of the conflict between Israel and radical Islamists in the Middle East. Some countries in the area, such as Qatar and Turkey, appear less interested in "peace and prosperity" than in the elimination of Israel.
This "holy war" can be seen in the forcible displacement of the great Byzantine Empire by Islamists in what is now called Turkey.
In Western societies, anti-Zionism seems to be the "politically correct" root of social conflict wherever Islamists have settled. Unfortunately, as these Western societies have yet to find out, the wish to eliminate "undesirables" is not limited to Israel and Jews, but extends to Christians and all other "infidels" – including many Muslims not considered the "right" kind of Muslim, such as the Alawites, the Druze, the Ahmadiyya, the Baha'i, and, in Turkey, the Alevi. In Nigeria, Islamists have reportedly murdered more than 52,000 Christians just since 2009 -- with the additional incentive of then being able to seize their land. To various degrees, much of Western civilization is engulfed in this grave issue of "replacement."
If one cares about one's physical and cultural survival, there can sadly be no "neutral" stance. Shrayer, referring to the largely international chill of Israel fighting on seven fronts to defend the West, wrote: "The response to the war in Israel has proved, yet again, that silence is acquiescence." The very lives of not just of an ancient, brilliant, people and their legitimacy to live peacefully on ancestral land are at stake, but our own.
Elie Wiesel, in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, elaborated on the West's enduring obligation to support the Jewish nation:
"Wherever individuals are persecuted because of their race, religion, gender, or political views, that place must, at that moment, become the center of the universe."
As the Jews fight for survival in the face of unrelenting persecution for their supposed arrogance in defending themselves and their land, this is no time for silence. The rest of us come next.
Nils A. Haug is an author and columnist. A Lawyer by profession, he is member of the International Bar Association, the National Association of Scholars, the Academy of Philosophy and Letters. Dr. Haug holds a Ph.D. in Apologetical Theology and is author of 'Politics, Law, and Disorder in the Garden of Eden – the Quest for Identity'; and 'Enemies of the Innocent – Life, Truth, and Meaning in a Dark Age.' His work has been published by First Things Journal, The American Mind, Quadrant, Minding the Campus, Gatestone Institute, National Association of Scholars, Jewish Journal, James Wilson Institute (Anchoring Truths), Jewish News Syndicate, Tribune Juive, Document Danmark, Zwiedzaj Polske, Schlaglicht Israel, and many others.
Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/22071/extremist-persecution
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